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Speaker 1: Approach production. Hi, Welcome to Silent Secrets, a bedtime podcast

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Speaker 1: for curious minds. I'm jay, I'm glad you're here. This

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Speaker 1: is your time to let go of today, to settle

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Speaker 1: in and slow down, and let curiosity gently carry you

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Speaker 1: towards sleep. In each episode, I'm going to share a

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Speaker 1: true story of the unexplained, not to alarm you, but

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Speaker 1: to quiet your mind, to remind you that the world

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Speaker 1: is full of wonder and some things we'll never truly understand.

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Speaker 1: So take a deep breath, feel your body sink into comfort,

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Speaker 1: let the weight of the day drift away. As we

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Speaker 1: begin tonight's story, close your eyes and imagine England in

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Speaker 1: the twelfth century. The country is a patchwork of fields

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Speaker 1: and forests, dotted with small villages that feel timeless. It's

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Speaker 1: the middle of the eleven hundreds and the era of

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Speaker 1: castles and knights, of market fairs and wandering story tellers.

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Speaker 1: Superstitions run deep. The forests are filled with whispered tales

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Speaker 1: of fairies, spirits, and other worlds such as lie just

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Speaker 1: beyond the veil of our own. In this world of

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Speaker 1: shadow and folklore, something extraordinary is said to have happened

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Speaker 1: in the quiet village of Wolpit. Two children appear one day,

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Speaker 1: a boy and a girl. They were dressed in clothes

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Speaker 1: made from fabric no one had ever seen. They spoke

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Speaker 1: an unknown language, and the most unsettling of all, their

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Speaker 1: skin was green. They seemed to have stepped out of nowhere.

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Speaker 1: Where did they come from? Some believe they wandered from

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Speaker 1: afar off land. Others say they came from an underground world,

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Speaker 1: or perhaps from the stars themselves. Tonight we journey back

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Speaker 1: to medieval Suffolk in a story that's fascinated historians and

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Speaker 1: storytellers for more than eight hundred years. It's the Tale

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Speaker 1: of the Green Children of Wolpit. Wolpit, even today, is

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Speaker 1: a small village which its name was derived from the

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Speaker 1: deep wolf pits that were dug to trap wolves that

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Speaker 1: roamed the English countryside. Pictriot in the twelfth century thatched

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Speaker 1: cottages with smoke curling from their chimneys, Villages working fields

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Speaker 1: during the day, swinging through ripe and wheat, the distant

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Speaker 1: toll of church bells marking the hours. Life here was

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Speaker 1: simple but harsh. The average person rarely traveled more than

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Speaker 1: a few miles from home. Stories of strange creatures and

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Speaker 1: magical lands were part of everyday conversation. It was here

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Speaker 1: sometime in the reign of King Stephen or King Henry,

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Speaker 1: that this strange event unfolded. It was harvest time, likely

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Speaker 1: in late summer. The sun was warm and the fields

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Speaker 1: were alive with the sounds of villages gathering crops. A

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Speaker 1: group of workers was out in the field near one

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Speaker 1: of the old wolf pits when they noticed something unusual.

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Speaker 1: Two children, a boy and a girl, were standing by

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Speaker 1: the edge of a pit. They were holding hands, looking

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Speaker 1: frightened and confused. The villagers stopped what they were doing.

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Speaker 1: These children were unlike any they'd ever seen. Their skin

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Speaker 1: had a green tint, not pale or sunburned, but the

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Speaker 1: color of fresh spring leaves. Their clothes were made from

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Speaker 1: fabric no one recognized, rough but colorful, and stitched in

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Speaker 1: an unfamiliar style. And when the villagers tried to speak

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Speaker 1: to them, the children replied language no one understood. The

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Speaker 1: children were taken to the village. They were thin and exhausted,

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Speaker 1: as if they had walked a great distance. The villagers

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Speaker 1: tried to feed them, but the children refused everything bread, meat, vegetables.

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Speaker 1: They looked at the food with confusion, as though they

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Speaker 1: didn't recognize it as something edible, and someone bought them

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Speaker 1: freshly picked raw beans still in their pods. The children

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Speaker 1: lit up. They opened the pods, ate the raw beans,

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Speaker 1: and smiled for the first time. This small moment two

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Speaker 1: frightened children eating beans by the hearth was the start

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Speaker 1: of their new life in woolpits. The villagers cared for

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Speaker 1: the children, giving them a place to stay and teaching

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Speaker 1: them English. But after just a few weeks, tragedy struck

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Speaker 1: the boy, the younger of the two, became ill. He

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Speaker 1: never fully recovered from their mysterious journey, and he died.

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Speaker 1: The girl, however, grew stronger. Her greenish hue slowly faded,

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Speaker 1: and she began to adapt to the ways of the village.

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Speaker 1: Over time, she learned enough English to tell her story,

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Speaker 1: a story that would only deepen the mystery, which she

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Speaker 1: could finally speak clearly. The girl told the villages about

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Speaker 1: the place she came from. She said that her and

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Speaker 1: her brother came from a land they called Saint Martin's Land.

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Speaker 1: This was a place of twilight, where the sun never

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Speaker 1: rose in the sky. Instead, it was always dusk. A soft,

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Speaker 1: dim light covered the land everyone there, she said, had

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Speaker 1: a skin color of green leaves, just like they did.

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Speaker 1: She told the villagers that while tending their father's cattle,

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Speaker 1: she and her brother heard the sounds of bells. They

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Speaker 1: followed the sound, and somewhere in the forest they found

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Speaker 1: what they described as a long, dark tunnel or cave.

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Speaker 1: They walked through the darkness, and when they emerged on

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Speaker 1: the other side, the light was blinding, brighter than they

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Speaker 1: had ever seen. The warmth of the sun was strange

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Speaker 1: to them. Before they could figure out where they were,

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Speaker 1: they saw the wolf pit, and the villages found them.

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Speaker 1: Soon after, the girl grew up in wool Pit, she

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Speaker 1: was baptized and became part of the community. As she matured,

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Speaker 1: she worked as a servant for the local landowner. According

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Speaker 1: to one account, she eventually married a man from a

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Speaker 1: nearby village in King's Lynn. By all records, she lived

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Speaker 1: a normal life, but she never forgot where she came from.

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Speaker 1: So what could explain the story of the green children.

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Speaker 1: Some historians argue this is just a medieval folklore preserved

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Speaker 1: by chroniclers like William of Newbury and Ralph of Cogsall.

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Speaker 1: Folklore often used mysterious children to symbolize outsiders, strangers, or immigrants.

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Speaker 1: Others believed the children might have been Flemish immigrants. In

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Speaker 1: the twelfth century. Parts of England are home to Flemish settlers,

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Speaker 1: who spoke their own language and wore different clothes. The

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Speaker 1: green tint on their skin could have come from malnutrition

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Speaker 1: or iron deficiency, known as green sickness. Some believe the

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Speaker 1: girl's story of a twilight world suggests a realm beneath

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Speaker 1: the earth, a legendary hollow earth, or parallel to mention.

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Speaker 1: Medieval folklore often told of fairylands where time and light

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Speaker 1: were different. In modern times, some writers have suggested that

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Speaker 1: these two were not human children at all, but beings

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Speaker 1: from another world accidentally crossing into ours. Part of what

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Speaker 1: makes the Green Children's stories so enduring is that it

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Speaker 1: straddles the line between fact and legend. Two separate historians

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Speaker 1: recorded it as truth, yet its details feel like something

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Speaker 1: out of a fairy tale. It's a story asks the

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Speaker 1: big questions. Could there be places we don't know about,

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Speaker 1: just beyond our perception? As you drift off to sleep,

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Speaker 1: picture that harvest field and suffolk more than eight hundred

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Speaker 1: years ago, the gold stalks of wheed swaying in the breeze,

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Speaker 1: the sound of six cutting through the grain, and then silence,

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Speaker 1: as the village has noticed two strange children by the

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Speaker 1: wolf pit, frightened, hungry, speaking a language no one knows.

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Speaker 1: Their skin, the color of leaves, the green children of

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Speaker 1: Woodpit remains a mystery, a reminder that sometimes the line

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Speaker 1: between our world and the unknown is thinner than we think.

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Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to silent secrets. I hope tonight's

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Speaker 1: story has given your mind something soft to wander through

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Speaker 1: as you drift towards rest at the quieter the night.

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Speaker 1: Wrap around you now and know that mysteries will still

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Speaker 1: be here tomorrow. Close your eyes, breathe deeply, and let's

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Speaker 1: sleep take over until we share another secret next time.

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Speaker 1: Good Night to the money in the Way, and