These are two stories where the evil is going to win at the end. They are about two creepy old witches who are praying on young innocent people to prolong their lifespans. One is Stephen King’s short story Gramma and the other one is a movie named The Skeleton Key. Gramma and The Skeleton Key both have pretty good plot twists and both stories progress in a similar manner.
Two protagonists who face horrors beyond the imagination are George Bruckner from Gramma and Caroline Ellis from The Skeleton Key. George is an 11 years old boy and Caroline is a 25 years old woman.
What are the similarities between The Skeleton Key and Gramma?
Both stories begin when a woman moves in to a house to take care of an elderly disabled person. In Gramma it is George’s mother Ruth. She takes George and her other son Buddy to go to live with her mother so she can take care of her bedridden, half blind mother. In The Skeleton Key Caroline accepts a new job as a full-time, live-in hospice caretaker to an old paralyzed man. Her job requires her to move in to an old creepy house in a bayou.
With the progression of stories emotional states and beliefs of protagonists gradually change. In Gramma, George’s childish fear of his grandmother turns into an unbearable terror. And the thought that his grandmother is a witch, turns into an undoubtable certainty. Caroline hasn’t believed in her local brand of witchcraft named Hoodoo despite living among many believers. Hoodoo is different from Voodoo. The catch is you need to believe in Hoodoo to get affected by this branch of magic. But things she has found in that huge house especially in the attic causes some cracks in her skepticism. The back story of the owners of strange artifacts in the locked room in the attic does not help either.
There is a major difference between Gramma and The Skeleton Key. In Gramma, George’s fears or beliefs does not affect the outcome. The witchy grandma or whatever evil entity who is possessing her body is too powerful to care about a little boy’s feelings. But in The Skeleton Key it is crucial to turn Caroline into a believer of Hoodoo. So the witch in that story uses a clever trick. She gives a skeleton key to Caroline. It is a master key to open any 30 plus rooms in the house, except one door in the attic. When Caroline finds out about that out of bound room, curiosity takes the better of her. She picks the lock and snoops around that room. Things and artifacts in that room send her in to a Hoodoo rabbit hole.
In the beginning of both stories the existence of the magic is a mere superstitious thought. Caroline downright says that to her friend. She starts to use Hoodoo remedies on old paralyzed Ben as a psychosomatic treatment. But what she experiences in that house has made her a believer in Hoodoo even without her realizing it.
George has feared his grandmother from the moment he saw her for the first time when he was 6 years old. In the beginning of the story George finds himself home alone with the women he has feared all his life. His mother has reluctantly left him home for few hours because she had to go to the hospital to see her other son who has broken his leg. Little George starts to get flash backs of incidents where he learns bits and pieces about his grandmother’s past. It becomes clear and clearer to him why everyone in their family have some irrational fear about this old woman. No one dare to cross her or challenge her authority even after she got bedridden. George realizes that his grandmother’s temper tantrums which they used to call as “bad spells” were not mere tantrums but actual incantations with some sinister outcomes.
Unexpected Plot twists in The Skeleton Key and Gramma
Both stories have unexpected plot twists in their climaxes. In Gramma I thought Stephen King was creating a horror scene using a spooky setting and the wild imagination of a little kid. George was basically scaring himself to death. It peaked when George found that his Grandmother had died and now he was home alone with a dead body. I thought that was the end of the story. Little George thought so too. But that was just the beginning of the real horror. All doubts about old women’s witchy past were thrown out the window when Grandmother’s corpse started to walk and grabbed poor George. When George’s mother Ruth came back from the hospital she found oddly calm George who informed her the passing of his grandmother. Gramma or whatever evil entity is now possessing George’s body. I never anticipated the body swapping part of the story.
In The Skeleton Key it is obvious that the old woman is up to something and it’s no surprise to learn that she is practicing Hoodoo. It’s a mild surprise to learn that the young lawyer is also into Hoodoo too. Story line seems pretty clear. There is a creepy old house with a dark history. It still has a room full of Hoodoo artifacts including spell books. The old woman dabbles in dark arts and uses Hoodoo to harm her own husband. Young woman uncovers her plan and turns to the lawyer for help. Plot twist is that the lawyer is actually an accomplice of old woman and a fellow Hoodoo practitioner himself. They are going to sacrifice the young woman to prolong their lives. But the young woman is not a fool, she has picked up some tricks for herself. She is going to use Hoodoo against the old witch and her accomplice.
But the biggest plot twist happens when she tries to play uno reverse card on the witch by using a protection spell. Caroline wasn’t being clever as she thought. She wasn’t defending herself against Hoodoo. Instead she was unknowingly preparing herself to be a sacrifice for the witch. The spell which she found and thought as a protection spell was actually a spell to keep her locked in place so the witch could fulfill her ultimate goal which is to take Caroline’s body as her new host.
The big plot twist or the revelation is that no one is as they seem. Old woman is not an evil witch. Paralyzed man is not paralyzed. Young lawyer is not an accomplice. Most importantly old witch couple Papa Justify and Mama Cecile are not really dead. They had developed a ritual to transfer their consciousness to new host bodies to virtually prevent death by old age. They successfully jumped into their master’s two children. Then they jumped into Violet and Ben Devereaux. Now they are shopping for new bodies. Papa Justice has already claimed young lawyer’s body. Lawyer’s consciousness has transferred to old Ben’s body. Movie shows us how they pick, prepare and ultimately succeed in transferring Mama Cecile’s consciousness from Violet Devereaux to Caroline Ellis.
Witches operate in different manner
I think similarities end here. There are few key differences in how witches operate in two stories. In The Skeleton Key, Papa Justify and Mama Cecile had to do many preparations before jumping into new bodies. They had to choose and vet their victims carefully. Then they came up with a cover story to hide their true intensions and worked within that story to prevent any complications. Then the hardest part was they had to convince their victims into believing in Hoodoo. Then they performed the ritual. And at the end they disabled their victims who were transferred in to their old host bodies and discarded them without raising suspicion.
The witch in the Gramma did not have to do any of that. She just grabbed poor George by throat, left her dead body behind and possessed George’s body. And about taking care of loose ends, Possessed George just killed off only witness to the body snatching using his far reaching powers.
George’s Aunt had a bad feeling that something was not right and called to check up on her sister. During the fight for his life, George picked up the phone to get help from anyone from the outside. His Aunt immediately realized that her mother was acting up and George was in serious danger. Unfortunately she couldn’t help George. After the possession, George uttered some short series of strange words to kill off the only witness. His aunt who was at 2000 miles away dropped dead from a brain hemorrhage. Everyone in Gramma’s family was scared of Gramma even after she was paralyzed because she did not need to use anything but her words to cause harm. In The Skeleton Key, Hoodoo priests do not possess such powers. Even big bad Papa Justify and Mama Cecile had to use guns and physical force on Caroline to bring her back when she tried to escape.
Ironically Caroline could have save herself if she had a gun because Papa Justify and Mama Cecile’s hosts are vulnerable to bodily harms. And I think if a host die they cannot survive. When Caroline pushed the old witch down the stairs, Papa Justify got really scared for his wife. Gramma did not have such limitations. She actually died before get reanimated and snatch her next host body. That’s why I think there was an evil entity inside Gramma’s body and it transferred itself from dead grandmother to next available living host which was George.
Do witches have access to their hosts’ memories?
It’s not enough to just snatch a body, you need to convince the world that nothing is wrong with the host. In order to do that you need to act and mimic host’s personality and behaviors at least for a short while until host’s family and friends and neighbors get use to new you. If you could access host’s memories this won’t be a problem. But in The Skeleton Key it is clear that Papa Justify and Mama Cecile do not have access to their host’s memories. Papa Justify was reading basic and fundamental law books so he could pass as the lawyer. And right after Mama Cecile took Caroline’s body she couldn’t recognize Caroline’s best friend Jill. But she was able to mask that by using her improvisation skills.
In Gramma it is not clear whether the witch inherited George’s memories or not. But to me, it seems like that it is not simple as Gramma jump from her frail old body to young and new George’s body. If that is the case, George should have think like Gramma. Instead, at the end of the story we can see that Possessed George is plotting to take revenge from his bully of a big brother Buddy, like an evil kid. It’s like something evil got transferred from Gramma’s body to George’s body while retaining his memories. At least that’s how I interpret it.
The Skeleton Key and Gramma both are good horror stories with surprising plot twists. On the other hand Gramma’s movie adaptation, Mercy (2014) is not that good. I have already written a separate article to discuss what went wrong with that movie adaptation.
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