Hunters' Journals: discuss

[ratherastory]

Okay, so I have a random thought about hunters' journals which has been rattling around in my head ever since Season 1, especially after "Dead Man's Blood" aired.

John has kept a journal for the past twenty-two years when the show starts. Daniel Elkins has a similar journal (and we are given to understand that he was John's mentor, which would explain the similarities), but much older, dating back to the sixties, if memory serves.

Given the amount of lore out there, and the fact that John himself appears to have not only documented his hunts but also at least occasionally used it as a personal journal, how the heck does it all fit into that teeny-tiny book?

Hell, when I'm doing research for a story, I can easily fill a 100-page notebook with my scribblings, and they're not all that extensive.

I would have thought that a hunter would end up with a string of journals, each filled to the brim with clippings, notes, photographs, and scraps of lore.

Can anyone explain this to me in a satisfactory manner? Please?

Or, y'know, feel free to have a debate in the comments.

Comments

[bellatemple]

Am I recalling correctly that John's journal is a refillable binder sort of thing, rather than a fully bound book? If I am, then I would propose that the journal is a continual work in progress, with eliminations of no longer pertinent material (sort of like my mp3 player). It has a limited storage capacity, so it's been continually audited to contain only the information that John thought he need/only those entries that he felt an attachment to (ie. "I went to Missouri and learned the truth"). Things that may, in fact, be important but which serve as difficult reminders might also be removed (ie. the Striga, which wasn't in the journal at all).

And, hey, maybe he and Elkins both kept all the other stuff tucked away in the giant storage lockers of Indiana-Jones-trap-filled doom. . . .

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

I was thinking along the lines of your last thoughts, myself. Maybe they have older journals tucked away in storage, but then, how can Sam and Dean STILL be finding relevant stuff years later? It's perplexing. ;)

[tversan.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking the same thing, considering Sam and Dean seem to find very much in that journal, even though it's quite thin.
Maybe he just write very tiny. And the pages aren't thick. Or maybe there's more journals out there, hiding...
Eeeehm, not a very good answer I guess. I'm a bit confused by it too.
And do Sam and Dean have journal? Sam was writing stuff down in the first season.
(by the way, where is John's journal? Did I miss them using it the last few episodes, or has it been a while since we saw it?)

Sorry for jumping in by the way, hope it's okay =)

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Dude, jump in at will! This is a public LJ and I asked for opinions and theories! :)

[liliaeth]

If I remember well, one of the boys mentioned that John wrote like Yoda. I'm inclined to think that his 'personal journal bits were one, maybe two lines a time. And that most of what he wrote in that journal was bits about the monsters he fought. And not repeating himself on the lore, if he'd already described a specific monster, he wouldn't rewrite the data on said monster.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

True, but still. Twenty-two years of lore, and he only filled one notebook? It makes no sense to my OCD-esque self. ;)

[sandymg.livejournal.com]

Easy. It's like the TARDIS. Um, bigger on the inside? [Hee...sorry, couldn' resist]

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

I love my flist. :D

[katwoman76.livejournal.com]

Damn, I should really start reading comments before writing my own.
Now I feel like a copy-cat. But I swear, I didn't see your comment before I wrote my own.

[greeneyes-fan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the only explanation that makes any sense.

[twirlycurls.livejournal.com]

*love* :)

[hsifeng.livejournal.com]

I suppose it depends mostly on the nature of the writings. We know that John had additional research materials out there (the clippings from hotel room walls, the binder of documentation that Dean and Sam passed over to Ash for his analysis, etc.); so perhaps the journal really was a “journal” in the sense that it distilled only the most essential thoughts and impressions from a hunt, rather than every detail?

Then again, my grandfather kept a journal during his time in Europe during WWI - I believe he was there more than four years - and it does not even fill up all the pages in the tiny notebook (think of it as a small spiral bound stack of 3” X 5” cards and you’ll get an idea of the size I am talking about). However, the stories he described in it are vivid in their detail, with only a few words used.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I suppose there is something to be said for concision.

[sothcweden.livejournal.com]

Maybe each hunt had its own journal for scribbling down anything and everything they found, but once the hunt was over, John would compile only the information that would possibly be relevent to other cases (feeding habits, habitat, methods of execution, etc.) and that's all that exists in the journal he carried with him through the years. After all, everything owned by a 3-person family had to fit into the Impala, and that included a lot of weapons.

[nwspaprtaxis.livejournal.com]

I've wondered this exact thing.... because REALLY?!

[disneymagics.livejournal.com]

I don't know the answer to your question, but I have a related question of my own. If hunters all keep these extensive journals (as we are led to believe that they do) then how is it that all the knowledge from Grandpa Campbell and great-Grandpa Campbell with fantastical cures to being turned into a vampire and djinn poison get lost between generations. It seems that knowledge would have been available to hunters like Bobby and John expecially with Bobby's extensive contacts and library full of lore???

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

I've wondered about this myself. Mind you, a lot of hunters, Samuel Campbell included, appear to be a paranoid lot who don't really share information all that much. Bobby appears to be an exception to that rule, letting hunters come to him for information, but he also appears to be more of a research guy, someone who acts as a resource for others because he can't be as active in the field anymore.

I can see information being handed down in families, and then when tragedy strikes like in the Campbells, that knowledge would be lost. Mary probably kept it locked away somewhere, and with her death (and the fire in her house) it was likely destroyed forever until Grampa came back from the dead. There's no evidence that the other Campbells had access to this information before that, for instance.

[jesseofthenorth.livejournal.com]

My theory? Very small printing.

Actually I have a journal for research and though there is a small amount of personal stuff referenced it is mostly observations taken over a ten year period. When it gets full i bundle the notes and add new pages. But I also keep the really interesting or relevant stuff in the binder.

[calamitycrow.livejournal.com]

personally? this kitty thinks John kept entries short and cryptic, because otherwise, the info in the journal could be used to incriminate him in court. Also, he would have to remove any info that talked about things that were blatantly illegal. Otherwise, if it ever fell into law enforcement hands, it could tie him to a lot of stuff. This would be consistent with the LEO's assessment of the journal in the pilot.

The bigger question is what happened to Elkin's journal? The boys stumbled on a valuable resource and then it DISAPPEARED. Unless John took it and the demon then possessed him and destroyed it?

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, good point about the whole incriminating evidence thing.

I would like to know what happened to Elkin's journal too!

[ianthe-echo.livejournal.com]

I have imagined that John's journal was like a TARDIS, with a large amount of space in a small package...but that's my inner Doctor Who fangirl talking.

I agree with calamitycow on this one.

[katwoman76.livejournal.com]

Ups, looks like we had the same idea. My first thought was also TARDIS - much bigger on the inside. ;)

[authoressnebula.livejournal.com]

Agreeing with what the people above said regarding the type of journal it is. Easy to pop open and take out pages so you can put in new, better fitting ones. That'd be my guess, at any rate. The first picture we saw of it in the Pilot looked like it had a ton of tiny additional notes and things, stickies everywhere. From experience, though, those never last very long. At all. *isn't saying anything about having lost important information on said stickies*

Hmm. Now I'm all a'pondery.

~Nebula

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

I too, have lost tons of information on said stickies. It does make one ponder...

[katwoman76.livejournal.com]

Maybe it just contains the cliffnotes and the detailled research for each case is stored somewhere else like in the lockup John had.
Maybe he also took out pages that seemed not important in the long run to look up again, so they just went into storage.
Thin paper and small font would also help with keeping it thinner.

Did you read the matching book? There are just occasional personal entries for special dates. And the monster-descriptions are sometimes really just short notes. Plus - he probably met the same kind of monsters over and over again, so that he could use and maybe expand his existing entries instead of making new ones.

Okay okay, I admit, that's all just a bunch of crap excuses.
You want to know the truth?

That journal is like the Tardis - much bigger on the inside ;)
It's magic. \o/

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the matching book, no. I like the idea of John having to cull information as he went, since some of it would be incriminating, although the pack rat/library geek inside me is FREAKING OUT about all that lost data. ;)

I love how many of my flist immediately thought of the TARDIS.

[honeylocusttree.livejournal.com]

Obviously the journal is a portal to a pocket dimension where infinite amounts of information are stored and made available for easy access by whoever possesses the journal at any given moment.

What? That's not the least plausible thing that's been written into this series.

Alternately, John was a master of shorthand. Before he went on a bloody vengeance quest he moonlighted as a secretary.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

Alternately, John was a master of shorthand. Before he went on a bloody vengeance quest he moonlighted as a secretary.

I desperately want someone to write this now.

[crayola-fics.livejournal.com]

It's a quantum journal. And most of John's hunts were stupid ghosts that he didn't need to document other than "yup, salt and fire still works!" Haha

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

True. I keep overlooking that, until the Show begins, most of the hunts were straightforward: mostly spirits and poltergeists, and some of the "staples": werewolf, skinwalker, black dog, and of course the infamous striga who got away.

There needs to be a meta on why all the supernatural critters started coming out of the woodwork at the beginning of the series. That was when all the demon signs started multiplying (just about when the YED had Jess killed) and all sorts of other supernatural fuglies got all excited and made themselves known.

[primrose-1.livejournal.com]

It's like the Tardis. It's bigger on the inside.

[ratherastory.livejournal.com]

I love that so many of my flist immediately thought "TARDIS!"

\o/

[twirlycurls.livejournal.com]

Hell, when I'm doing research for a story, I can easily fill a 100-page notebook with my scribblings, and they're not all that extensive.

Heh, me too! But then I am a freak. If I had John's job, tracking all that madness for 22 years? I'd have an entire library of notebooks and journals and newspaper clippings and whatnot. And then it would all be painstakingly cataloged and cross-referenced on a computer and notecards etc. Actually, I probably wouldn't have any time to do any actual hunting because I would be too busy maintaining my super-scary library.

Ahem.