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Speaker 1: I'm you never know stories of things we simply don't
Speaker 1: know the answer too. Hey, guys, welcome to an episode
Speaker 1: of Thinking Sideways the podcast. I am Devin, joined as
Speaker 1: usual by Steve Joe and the Ghost in the mixer,
Speaker 1: which is on, which is totally yes, it's on. Also,
Speaker 1: I haven't mentioned the tuper coper lately, so so why not.
Speaker 1: Let's just say he's here in spirit. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: you really have upset some of our listeners. The tuper
Speaker 1: Copera hasn't made an appearance on the show in a while.
Speaker 1: I'm sure, I'm sure that we can work it into
Speaker 1: this before we get too far into it. And by
Speaker 1: too far into it, I mean into it at all. Uh,
Speaker 1: this suggests this is a listener suggestion. I believe it's
Speaker 1: pronounced tomorrow. I think that's right. It's like Maru the
Speaker 1: Cap but with an O Insteadmorrow. Yeah. Anyway, this week
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about what is up with the
Speaker 1: Agatha Christie disappearance? She vanished for eleven days? She did? Yeah, actions, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we're talking about that she disappeared in nineteen six.
Speaker 1: And if you're a doctor who nerd like me, you
Speaker 1: know that it's because of a giant space wasp. It's proven. No,
Speaker 1: I didn't see that particular episode, did he did he
Speaker 1: actually transport her like ten days forward in time? Spoilers? Sorry, Oh,
Speaker 1: come on, that was like season three those spoilers. Actually,
Speaker 1: I think of season five. It was the Donna season.
Speaker 1: So yeah, five, Oh it was, and then' like that season.
Speaker 1: Let's let's see this a doctor on now like thirty
Speaker 1: seven or something. This is a very long conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so here's the story. You guys, Ready for the story? Yes,
Speaker 1: all right. On December three, Agatha Christie and her husband
Speaker 1: Archie had been fighting a little bit, just a little.
Speaker 1: He had asked her for a divorce because he was
Speaker 1: in love with another woman. By the way, this is
Speaker 1: kind of a jerk jerk thing from to do. Because
Speaker 1: her mother died recently, she was under a lot of stress. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and to top it off, he had a quote unquote
Speaker 1: problem with sick people. Yeah, so he was nowhere to
Speaker 1: be seen, like a month or two. He was hanging
Speaker 1: out in London. Yeah, no, no, if I'm not coming
Speaker 1: to the the house, yeah yeah. Archie left the house that
Speaker 1: afternoon to spend some weeks with his mistress, who was
Speaker 1: named Nancy Neal. I thought they were just going to
Speaker 1: spend like a weekend again. I was gonna say, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I've seen both. That's why I was trying to see
Speaker 1: if you'd found anything that said he said X amount
Speaker 1: of time. Okay, I think a weekend, a long weekend.
Speaker 1: You know, it's British timing. I don't know what. I
Speaker 1: don't know what that is, but I don't know. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff where you're kind of like, I
Speaker 1: don't actually know how what that's referencing. But okay, cool.
Speaker 1: So after a little while, I think it was like
Speaker 1: nine pm or something like that. After he left, Agatha
Speaker 1: got up from her chair, went upstairs, kissed her daughter,
Speaker 1: and left a note for her secretary saying that she
Speaker 1: was going to Yorkshire for a bit. Later that night,
Speaker 1: her car was found abandoned, lights on quote perched above
Speaker 1: a chalk quarry. Yeah you hear that differently suddeny here,
Speaker 1: it's like run into some sort of bush. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: hear it's like kind of on the precipice, yeah something,
Speaker 1: or just hood up lights on. Yeah. But I think
Speaker 1: the consistent thing and all of these versions is all
Speaker 1: of her stuff was in the car. I've never heard
Speaker 1: when where her stuff wasn't abandoned at the car. Most
Speaker 1: of her stuff. Yeah, it was a fur and a
Speaker 1: bag with a little bit of clothing and and of
Speaker 1: course your driver's license was in there. Yes, And interestingly
Speaker 1: it was found. It was found southwest of London, which
Speaker 1: is like totally the wrong direction to go if you
Speaker 1: want to have to the Yorkshire Yeah, fifteen miles. I
Speaker 1: pulled it up on the map. It's about fifteen miles
Speaker 1: south south west, southwest of Yeah, no southeast, yeah, from
Speaker 1: their home. From their home, she drove southeast, yeah, instead
Speaker 1: of driving northeast to go to Yorkshire. Correct. Yeah. Well
Speaker 1: maybe she was confused, Yeah, maybe maybe she couldn't read
Speaker 1: a map. Yeah. Anyway, that was it for eleven days,
Speaker 1: that the map upside down. Yeah, it's possible actually. Yeah.
Speaker 1: People suggested that this was the publicity stunt, after all,
Speaker 1: the murder of Roger Ackroyd had just been published I
Speaker 1: think within a year of the of her disappearance, and
Speaker 1: it was, you know, a massive success of course, yes,
Speaker 1: but for some reason people thought that she needed a
Speaker 1: publicity stunt on top of that. Maybe she wanted to
Speaker 1: give it a little boost. I guess, yeah, I'm going
Speaker 1: to disappear and give our ratings a booth. But most
Speaker 1: people suspected that her husband had something to do with it,
Speaker 1: which I think you would naturally assume a little bit
Speaker 1: after the search had been going on for a few days.
Speaker 1: It actually made the cover of the New York Times,
Speaker 1: the New York Times, So of course if that ended
Speaker 1: up in a huge nationwide manhunt. Almost about fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: people volunteered to help search for her, as well as
Speaker 1: dogs and airplanes they had searching for her as well.
Speaker 1: Apparently that was an historical first for Britain. Yeah, the airplanes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: using them to search for people. And since they kind
Speaker 1: of feared the worst, they started dredging streams and lakes
Speaker 1: especially there was there was a little lake right and
Speaker 1: right near where a car was found, so that's the
Speaker 1: first place they turned to. Yeah, and there's a great
Speaker 1: picture that shows during the search when they're doing the dredging.
Speaker 1: And I don't know that everybody understands, so I had
Speaker 1: never really thought about it, But do you know how
Speaker 1: you dredge for a Well, what they were doing is
Speaker 1: they had basically a giant, three pronged hook on a rope,
Speaker 1: chucking it in, letting it sink and dragging it back
Speaker 1: to the top, which would have paid in the butt.
Speaker 1: And I would hate to be the guy who was like,
Speaker 1: I gotta bite yeah, really seriously, probably brought up a
Speaker 1: lot of logs, car tires, maybe some road signs, and
Speaker 1: probably some of Churchill's tea set. Wait, I mean a
Speaker 1: Turing t set. Yeah. Yeah, you guys you've heard about
Speaker 1: what happened with his teacup, right, didn't He used to
Speaker 1: like lock it to his death. It was just kind
Speaker 1: of a weirdo move. Yeah, I don't know, like why. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out to somebody at Bletchley Park thought that
Speaker 1: they were a really funny prankster and would steal people's teacups,
Speaker 1: and nobody really knew what the deal was until a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago when they drained the pond and
Speaker 1: on them all in the middle. He just thought it
Speaker 1: was funny for them to disappear all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: So that's criminally irresponsible. In the middle of a war.
Speaker 1: You're wasting precious teacups. Yeah, I'm not gonna I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna tell the whole story here, But someday, if you're curious,
Speaker 1: like you're listening to this, you should go out on
Speaker 1: the internet and try to find the story of Churchill's parrot. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: that's a great story. Yeah, not for this show now,
Speaker 1: Batgar story. Sorry. Famous people started getting involved. Arthur Conan
Speaker 1: Doyle remember him. Yeah, he gave a psychic one of
Speaker 1: Agatha Christie's gloves. The psychic who was Horace Leaf. You guys,
Speaker 1: you've heard of I am not. Actually you haven't. I
Speaker 1: may have, but the name is not ringing a bell.
Speaker 1: So he was like one of the most He was
Speaker 1: kind of the spearhead of the spiritualist movement and he
Speaker 1: would hold all of these like seances and stuff like
Speaker 1: that and just with a total hack. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of that stuff going on. Yeah, yeah, there was.
Speaker 1: He said that he could tell she was still alive
Speaker 1: though quote half days and half purposeful unquote. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that's that's the whole thing, right, it's like mediums
Speaker 1: and spiritualists. It's that like cold reading situation. Anyway, He however,
Speaker 1: did predict that she would surface a few days later,
Speaker 1: and accurately she did. Bob Tappen the banjo player at
Speaker 1: the then named Harrowgate Hydropathic Company or the hydro which
Speaker 1: is now called the Old swan In because sure he
Speaker 1: recognized Christie. She had apparently checked in some number of
Speaker 1: days ago. Though I've never been able to find out
Speaker 1: when under the assumed name of Mrs Teresa Neil. That
Speaker 1: theme sound familiar, does do? Who? Just? It's um archies
Speaker 1: love her? Nancy Neal? Oh used the same last name? Okay,
Speaker 1: got it? Yeah? No, sorry, not to res Nel, but yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why I was confused. I wanted banjo player, by
Speaker 1: the way, the one of the London papers that offered
Speaker 1: a one hundred pound reward and he collected it. He
Speaker 1: got to collect it with hundred pounds back in those days,
Speaker 1: was you know, chunk changed nair amount of money? Definitely apparently?
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, that was also gonna say that. Apparently one
Speaker 1: of the stories goes that it was actually one of
Speaker 1: the one of the maids that recognized her, and she
Speaker 1: mentioned it to him, and he just so he jumped
Speaker 1: in there and grabbed the rewards. She should have kept
Speaker 1: her mouth shut, should have she should have told somebody. Yeah, Apparently,
Speaker 1: according to the prevalent theory, whatever, Christie had crashed, her
Speaker 1: car gone into the what the old timey doctors called
Speaker 1: the out of body amnesia experience, boarded a train to
Speaker 1: the Hydro, checked in with almost no luggage, and lived
Speaker 1: like a normal guest for eleven days. She had like
Speaker 1: a pouchful of money, she like three hundred pounds or
Speaker 1: something like. She had a lot of money. She had
Speaker 1: like a money belt yeah yeah, which like, okay, I
Speaker 1: don't know why, like her driver's license and stuff weren't
Speaker 1: in there, but okay, fine, who goes around with a
Speaker 1: money belt stuffed full of cash all the time. I
Speaker 1: don't know rich people. I guess, I guess. Actually, when
Speaker 1: I travel, I usually have a money belt with money
Speaker 1: in it if I'm traveling overseas, right, yeah, but that's
Speaker 1: that's traveling overseas. Yeah, not when you're, you know, going
Speaker 1: to drive over to Yorkshire for a little bit. It
Speaker 1: is admittedly it's two miles something from It's a couple
Speaker 1: hour drive, is what it is. Though, that's that's not
Speaker 1: far enough to me to justify trapping on yield money belt.
Speaker 1: I agree, Well, I'm sure a lot of people do
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Yeah, she I guess she had
Speaker 1: read the newspapers with her name and picture plastered kind
Speaker 1: of all over it, without apparently recognizing herself nor anybody
Speaker 1: else looking at the you know, she's sitting there reading
Speaker 1: the newspaper. There's the picture of her. You know, you
Speaker 1: can play that in a movie, right, there's a picture
Speaker 1: of her. You look at that, You look at her,
Speaker 1: You look at that, You look at her, and you go, no,
Speaker 1: it's not her. It's not her at all. Did you
Speaker 1: did you look at the photos that they have of her,
Speaker 1: because they had renditions of hers. Yeah, they especially with
Speaker 1: that that weird little little um the glasses and the
Speaker 1: high shirt. Yeah, or that weird haircut, or she looked
Speaker 1: like what's his name from the three students? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And I kind of imagine, like, I don't know how
Speaker 1: tappens revelation played out, I guess I imagine him just
Speaker 1: kind of looking at her and saying, oh, hey, you're
Speaker 1: Agatha Christie, the people are looking for you, and her
Speaker 1: being like, no, I'm I'm miss Neil, and he's like, nah, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure you're Agatha. I'm going to call a police.
Speaker 1: You probably didn't say that because she might iran if
Speaker 1: she's maybe done that, that's true. Yeah, the police did
Speaker 1: show up, and her husband did as well. Apparently this
Speaker 1: rated on his like how much do I care about
Speaker 1: my soon to be ex wife scale her disappearance. I
Speaker 1: think the guy who philanders as much as he was
Speaker 1: this is it's really weird that this rank's okay, but
Speaker 1: the death of her mother doesn't. Yeah, but I think
Speaker 1: at this point he was under a lot of scrutiny
Speaker 1: from the press, and you know, you don't you know,
Speaker 1: it's like you're treating her so bad, you don't care
Speaker 1: care about her at all, and so you wanted to
Speaker 1: demonstrate that. I don't. I don't think you probably especially
Speaker 1: wanted to go. But I mean, I think in addition
Speaker 1: to that, it's, you know, you're treating her so bad,
Speaker 1: you're being horrible to her. You probably killed her. If
Speaker 1: we can't find her, we'll probably think that you killed her.
Speaker 1: He probably had a pretty big vested interest in trying
Speaker 1: to make sure that she was found safe and sound.
Speaker 1: True anyway, he without I guess, protests from her. I
Speaker 1: never read any stories about her, you know, kicking and
Speaker 1: screaming and protesting and saying, oh I'm not a good Christie.
Speaker 1: Um no ah. He took her from the hydro to
Speaker 1: Las Palmas, which like, why would you complain about that?
Speaker 1: Spain little island off Spain, got it, beautiful little resort community.
Speaker 1: Hang on, I'm gonna go see a check it out
Speaker 1: a street view. Yeah, you should have done that already. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So she fully recovered and never had a spell of
Speaker 1: lost time, at least that we know of. Again, never
Speaker 1: had out of body or not anesthesia the same thing, totally.
Speaker 1: Anesthesa does give you amnesia, does you know? So that's
Speaker 1: the story. We don't know anything. I mean, we don't
Speaker 1: know what happened during the love and days at all.
Speaker 1: There's no record of it, and she didn't talk about
Speaker 1: it in her memoirs at all either. She seems to
Speaker 1: not genuinely. She never wanted to talk about She didn't remember.
Speaker 1: That's what she said. That's what she said. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: there's a lot of questions how did she get from
Speaker 1: why did she go south? And then how did she
Speaker 1: get from the car to the train, because it's not
Speaker 1: like it was across the street from the train depot
Speaker 1: or just down the street from it. There are there's
Speaker 1: that town just to the northwest of where they found
Speaker 1: the car, and it's it's spelled Guildford, but if I know,
Speaker 1: the British just pronounced Jolfer, but it's spelled Guildford. So
Speaker 1: there's a train station there and that's not very far
Speaker 1: from where she crossed your car five, not even that
Speaker 1: I don't, okay, Yeah, and so she but she would
Speaker 1: have to be aware of what's around her to then
Speaker 1: know to go that direction. I mean, it's just there's
Speaker 1: a lot of things. Well, I mean, I guess somebody
Speaker 1: could have picked her up. It it was dark. Somebody
Speaker 1: could have said, oh, yeah, i'll give you a right
Speaker 1: to the nearest town and you can, you know, deal
Speaker 1: with everything there. And she just was maybe a little
Speaker 1: you know, adult, and so it was like, oh, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: I'll get on the train. Well, yeah, it was one
Speaker 1: way to look at it. Yeah, it's possible. There was
Speaker 1: a rumor you'll read sometimes on the internet, um that
Speaker 1: there was a cottage not far by that was found
Speaker 1: with women's clothes like left in it. It was an
Speaker 1: abandoned cottage or something that it meant that Agatha had
Speaker 1: like changed her clothes. But that was total bunk. That
Speaker 1: didn't actually happen. It's like a late addition to the story.
Speaker 1: I want anything like that ever happened on the internet. Never, never,
Speaker 1: never ever. So theoris the first one is the doctor obviously,
Speaker 1: yeah for real, I mean the giant Wasp aliens could
Speaker 1: have been involved in the episode slash real life, because
Speaker 1: we all know the doctor, who is a documentary Agatha
Speaker 1: has been luring had been luring the Wasp away from
Speaker 1: a party when she crashed her car. She suffered some
Speaker 1: pain as the Wasp dies and she passes out, and
Speaker 1: the doctor realizes that, like, oh, I'm the reason that
Speaker 1: she was gone for eleven days, although in the episode
Speaker 1: it was ten days. So I'm just going to take
Speaker 1: her to the small where she was found. But no,
Speaker 1: you don't think that as much as I like, dr
Speaker 1: who is that not ane? I'm putting theory nobly not
Speaker 1: like yet, as you would say, okay, fine, all right,
Speaker 1: serious Option one, she was faking it yeah, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of liken this one. Okay, So in true again Devin fashion,
Speaker 1: we're doing the titles subheadings. But and this one is
Speaker 1: actually pretty plausible that she was faking it. I mean again,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like what you see pictures of yourself
Speaker 1: all over the place, Like, how do you not? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because even if you've forgotten who you are, you're still
Speaker 1: looking in the mirror every day. I don't know what
Speaker 1: you look like. Yeah, um, but how many times have
Speaker 1: you gone and looked at yourself in the mirror and
Speaker 1: not notice something about yourself? You know, Let's say you've
Speaker 1: got some you know, there's a wrinkle in your forehead
Speaker 1: or something, you've got that distinct pattern, and you just
Speaker 1: don't notice those anymore. And it might be that if
Speaker 1: she's you know, a little screwed up in the head,
Speaker 1: you just ignore that. Your brain just says, well, I
Speaker 1: normally don't look at that, So I'm not gonna look
Speaker 1: at that. I'm not gonna look at this. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: look at that. And I just don't know who that
Speaker 1: that that funny bit of nose and eyebrow wiz, you know. Actually,
Speaker 1: and maybe she'd put out a whole lot of weight recently.
Speaker 1: You know, the pictures were not you know, taken just yesterday. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they weren't. Yeah, it's not like we were in the
Speaker 1: age of instant photos. Yeah. So maybe she had the
Speaker 1: picture those photos, that photo was taken and then she
Speaker 1: put on like three pounds. That didn't happen, But it
Speaker 1: might be a couple of years out of date. Yeah,
Speaker 1: before we get too deep into this, this theory and
Speaker 1: kind of you know, why and and how, let's pause
Speaker 1: for a second to take a step out of the
Speaker 1: Agatha Christie story and into psychology. Whoo, who at least
Speaker 1: favorite college class? He's my favorite college class. It's weird
Speaker 1: that they kept taking me stare at that black and
Speaker 1: white spinning wheel. Yeah, by and I wouldn't remember anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, well maybe you had this happen to Actually
Speaker 1: I have to have that sometimes when I've just sort
Speaker 1: of lost memory. Yeah, usually alcohols involved. Yeah, usually yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned before, officially Agatha was diagnosed with out
Speaker 1: of body amnesia and I had to turn to our
Speaker 1: experts on this. So a huge thank you to Luke, Hannah,
Speaker 1: Aaron Jacob, and Elena and thanks guys. You guys were
Speaker 1: like crazy helpful. I can google all I want and
Speaker 1: read the Wikipedia articles that you quoted back to me,
Speaker 1: and it will never be as good as somebody you know,
Speaker 1: writing out in layman's terms what this means and giving
Speaker 1: me their professional opinion on something. So thank you. Everybody
Speaker 1: pretty much agreed that the modern diagnosis of an out
Speaker 1: of body amnesia experience would be what's called a FuG state.
Speaker 1: If you're a fan of Breaking Bad, you probably have
Speaker 1: a little bit of experience with this. You guys on
Speaker 1: Walter had to account for some lost time. What are
Speaker 1: you staring me? Yeah? Yeah, here right, yeah, any any
Speaker 1: you know? So he's naked in a store and he
Speaker 1: doesn't really know who he is, and thanks for spoiling
Speaker 1: that spoils a very small part of it. But in
Speaker 1: the in the episode, it's very clear that he isn't
Speaker 1: actually in state. He's faking it. Yeah. Essentially, as I
Speaker 1: understand it, when somebody is under a huge amount of
Speaker 1: stress or incredibly depressed, the brain basically decides to say, like,
Speaker 1: by Felicia, let's start a whole new life as a
Speaker 1: whole new person, and makes it up for you. I
Speaker 1: don't know how often this happens though, I well, nor
Speaker 1: do I, and we'll we'll talk about that. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: does seem to be Yeah, um, it can also be
Speaker 1: caused by trauma, like a car crash, right if you
Speaker 1: hit your head hard enough, your brain wakes up and
Speaker 1: it's like, I don't know what's going on. She ran
Speaker 1: her car into a bush. I thought, Yeah, have you've
Speaker 1: seen the hedgerows? Those things are stout? Didn't think, have
Speaker 1: you ever seen I've never seen a small headge in
Speaker 1: England and they're all massive. Yeah. I guess for me,
Speaker 1: it's a little bit like I don't know what caused
Speaker 1: her to crash her car, So I don't even know
Speaker 1: if it was crashed well, or to run off the
Speaker 1: road or whatever. You know, it wasn't in the middle
Speaker 1: of the road. It was off the road for some reason.
Speaker 1: So she might not have you know, this, this head
Speaker 1: injury that we're now talking about, might not even happen
Speaker 1: in the car. It may not have happened at all.
Speaker 1: It may have been you know, she may have slipped
Speaker 1: into a few state because because her husband, her mom
Speaker 1: just died and her husband is leaving her, and like
Speaker 1: that's a pretty a small child, pretty high level of stress.
Speaker 1: That is a lot of stress. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: as far as the car thing goes, I'm not sure
Speaker 1: she even crashed. And I think what happened is this
Speaker 1: was this was early December in Britain. She's driving a
Speaker 1: British car. What does a British car have in it?
Speaker 1: Nothing that Lucas electrics, Yeah, which means that the car
Speaker 1: will just stop running for no reason whatsoever. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: never You never experienced Lucas electrics, so you haven't. I
Speaker 1: drive Japanese cars mostly. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, that's why I
Speaker 1: drive good cars. That's what I donna say. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: no reliance, no Robin reliance. Um. So the experts did
Speaker 1: agree on that bit. Just across the board. Everybody said, yes,
Speaker 1: huge state, that's a thing. It's an actual thing. What
Speaker 1: they didn't super agree about is how common it is.
Speaker 1: The answers kind of varied from not uncommon to extremely uncommon.
Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, not uncommon is like
Speaker 1: the term that clinicians use when they're like, well, you
Speaker 1: might know somebody who has this happened to them. I don't,
Speaker 1: you know, It's not like I don't know either. I
Speaker 1: had one expert who said that, UM, in all you know,
Speaker 1: she's practicing clinician, And she said, in all of her time,
Speaker 1: like twenty years or whatever, and in everybody that she knows,
Speaker 1: none nobody has ever actually encountered, UM, somebody who's been
Speaker 1: in a few state. So I wonder, certain diagnosed this
Speaker 1: come into fashion and and things. More and more of
Speaker 1: the medical practicing, psychologist psychological practices seem to keep being
Speaker 1: subdivided into smaller, smaller, more finite answers. So I wonder
Speaker 1: if fugue state was kind of that blanket general term
Speaker 1: they used for this whole group of things they didn't understand.
Speaker 1: And as time has gone on and things have gotten
Speaker 1: more exact, they've kind of abandoned that term or even
Speaker 1: the whole thing, because then, oh no, it's actually this
Speaker 1: one thing, or it's, oh, this other thing. I don't
Speaker 1: think fugue state is an old term. It's that out
Speaker 1: of out of body amnesia is what they used to
Speaker 1: call it. FuG state is certainly not a new diagnosis,
Speaker 1: but I also don't think it's particularly old. UM. One
Speaker 1: of the people that I talked to UM said that
Speaker 1: oftentimes people who suffer from PTSD will experience moments of
Speaker 1: these not weeks months, you know, and you you you
Speaker 1: hear stories like there's all those stories of villagers after
Speaker 1: you know, bombs go off, planes drop a gazillion bombs
Speaker 1: and obliterate the town and they're all just kind of
Speaker 1: wandering around, going where what is this place? Where am I?
Speaker 1: What's going on? So, I mean, it's a very famous
Speaker 1: example of a potential we'll maybe do an episode. Is
Speaker 1: Benjamin Kyle. Yeah, if he's not faking it, he is
Speaker 1: in a few state. That's that's a thing. Apparently. Well
Speaker 1: if I mean, either he's faking it or he's in
Speaker 1: a few state, those are the only two options he
Speaker 1: needs to snap out of it. Yeah, somebody needs to
Speaker 1: give him a shake, Yeah, because that's I'm sure what cost.
Speaker 1: That always clears it right up. I'm going to shake you. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, this is actually a recurring
Speaker 1: theme and a lot of like comedies like whatever, people
Speaker 1: would get it, get hit in the head and they
Speaker 1: would have amnesia. And then while it turns out that
Speaker 1: you know American television, another blow to the head and
Speaker 1: the exact same spot will bring your memory back. So
Speaker 1: I didn't somebody hit her on the head with a
Speaker 1: rock really though, or put her in a car and
Speaker 1: shut it down the hill. I mean, the thing is right,
Speaker 1: is it seems like I haven't heard anybody say she
Speaker 1: totally denied it. You know, there's no record of how
Speaker 1: she reacted once somebody was like, hey, you're at the Christie.
Speaker 1: There's no record of how she reacted or anything. And
Speaker 1: it was not really thoroughly investigator. Yeah, they beat the bushes,
Speaker 1: but once they found her, they didn't really question anybody there.
Speaker 1: It seems like, well, it's I think it's because everybody
Speaker 1: was really peeved. She wasted a lot of people's time,
Speaker 1: and obviously that would be a good reason to say
Speaker 1: what she said, which is that I was in a
Speaker 1: huge state or out of body or whatever, I just
Speaker 1: had no memory, because obviously otherwise one up there and
Speaker 1: knowing the papers says that thousands of people are out
Speaker 1: looking for her, and she didn't lift a finger to
Speaker 1: let anybody know that she was. Okay, So we'll we'll
Speaker 1: talk about this. We're getting a little ahead of ourselves. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the for option, as we were going to play
Speaker 1: now off pause, is the first serious option is she
Speaker 1: was faking it. So if we go with the experts
Speaker 1: who say it's extremely uncommon for people to experience this
Speaker 1: sort of you know, time lost, lost self fugu state.
Speaker 1: Then we end up with the theory that um Agatha
Speaker 1: was faking it. But why would she fake it? I
Speaker 1: can think of one reason. I can think of a couple. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for real, let's talk about a couple of them, all right.
Speaker 1: The first one is she was attempting to sully the
Speaker 1: name of her husband, right, yeah, n married what twelve
Speaker 1: fourteen years at that point, I mean, she'd been wrong
Speaker 1: pretty seriously. I would say, oh yeah, and they had
Speaker 1: a kid too, don't forget, you know. And so suddenly
Speaker 1: and it's like, you know, we've been together, we've had
Speaker 1: a kid, and now I want to I'm in love
Speaker 1: with a younger woman. That's kind of rude, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think it was just a matter
Speaker 1: of sullying his name as Ash, staging a disappearance and
Speaker 1: drawing a lot of attention to that and well than
Speaker 1: basically his romantic getaway for the weekend. Yeah. There's actually
Speaker 1: a quote that I have here um by the author
Speaker 1: of Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days, whose name
Speaker 1: is Jared Cade and he says, quote, hell, hath no fury.
Speaker 1: She wanted to disrupt his weekend with Nancy Neal and
Speaker 1: make him suffer, although she still adored him. What no
Speaker 1: one could have foreseen was the press reaction. She was
Speaker 1: propelled from being an author with a reputation into one
Speaker 1: of the most famous women in England unquote, which I
Speaker 1: think is fair. Right. It's who who says I'm gonna
Speaker 1: run away from home for a couple of days with
Speaker 1: the anticipation of a national manhunt. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: think you don't. There's no way you would consider that
Speaker 1: that would ever happen. That it would just be that
Speaker 1: Archie her husband would get word that she was missing,
Speaker 1: and he would say, oh, better go look for her.
Speaker 1: And she would resurface a few days later and say
Speaker 1: see how see how it feels or whatever, I got
Speaker 1: you or whatever. But once it gained steam, she couldn't
Speaker 1: get out from under it. Right, That's exactly I mean.
Speaker 1: I think you kind of panic, right if you see
Speaker 1: your face on the front page of the New York
Speaker 1: Times and they're like missing thousands of people looking, well,
Speaker 1: you're not going to be like, oh, I better like
Speaker 1: show up because you're going to see if you can
Speaker 1: find a way to make it go away. Yeah. Last
Speaker 1: the thing is like, by by doing what she did,
Speaker 1: I don't think she really thought through the consequences that, well,
Speaker 1: if she fixed leaving her car in someplace not anywhere
Speaker 1: in New Yorkshire, what they're belonging still in it, you know.
Speaker 1: And then she picks up the papers, sees her name
Speaker 1: in there and her pictures, says, oh, gets in touch
Speaker 1: with the police right away. They go say, well, why
Speaker 1: was your car parked where it was? There's not a
Speaker 1: lot of good explanations for that. And I don't think
Speaker 1: she thought her planned to to really quite carefully enough.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm I'm sure that it wasn't really a plan.
Speaker 1: I I get the feeling that if she did this intentionally,
Speaker 1: it was a bit of I'm going to do this,
Speaker 1: and then she stops, crap, I can't do that, you know,
Speaker 1: like just kind of making it up as she goes along,
Speaker 1: and she's like, well, I said i'd go to Yorkshire.
Speaker 1: So I went to Yorkshire and then I checked in
Speaker 1: and I was having a good couple of days and
Speaker 1: then oh, hell, it's all over the news. If I
Speaker 1: come out now, it's gonna be terrible. Oh it's another day.
Speaker 1: It's still terrible. You know, it's just every day just
Speaker 1: hoping it'll go away, it'll die down. Yeah, make um fun. Fact,
Speaker 1: she was actually driving the way she was driving. I
Speaker 1: know you guys were kind of speculating back but first left. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when she first left, because she wasn't driving towards Yorkshire,
Speaker 1: Yorkshire from from their house, and I know that Joe
Speaker 1: does this all the time, so it's my turn to
Speaker 1: do this. Um. She was actually driving towards the place
Speaker 1: where Archie was spending the weekend with his lover. On
Speaker 1: the map, it kind of lines up in the direction
Speaker 1: she was going, so Mary was actually maybe she sat
Speaker 1: down and thought, I'm actually I need to go confront
Speaker 1: him or confront them or whatever. And then car breaks
Speaker 1: down with the great electronics, with great electronics, that's that's
Speaker 1: seriously a possibility. I remember like some years back, in
Speaker 1: front of mine had a chance and heally convertible my
Speaker 1: little Brady sports car that had Lucas electrics in it,
Speaker 1: and we he was living in Newport at the time,
Speaker 1: and we went to a concert in Eugene and night
Speaker 1: it's night night. We're driving back to Newport and well
Speaker 1: the car just crapt out in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 1: We had to spend the night sleeping in the car. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so she could have been doing it. She could have
Speaker 1: been going to ruin their weekend. She could have been lying,
Speaker 1: faking it because it was a trick gone awry. I
Speaker 1: guess she could have been doing it to stage a disappearance,
Speaker 1: to have his name be sullied. I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: she was heading that direction to murder him, and it's unlikely,
Speaker 1: but maybe if bowl Yeah, yeah, but then why she
Speaker 1: went in border to train to some place ELTs She
Speaker 1: was being stupid, Not to be mean, but she's like,
Speaker 1: this is stupid. What am I doing? Not bad idea,
Speaker 1: It's like bad idea became another. Yeah, yeah, imagine you
Speaker 1: know for what Imagine her car did break down. That
Speaker 1: the nearest town is that little town called Guildford or
Speaker 1: whatever it's however was pronounced, and so she walks back
Speaker 1: there and just says, he says, you know what, screw
Speaker 1: that car, I'm just gonna get on a train. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or you know, she decides, oh wow, that was crazy talk.
Speaker 1: I need to go take a spaw day and then it,
Speaker 1: you know, gets out from under her again. Don't These
Speaker 1: are all theories, you know. The I didn't have time, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: to read Jared Kade's book about the Missing Eleven Days,
Speaker 1: did I Yeah, if I wish I had, But I
Speaker 1: did read. I did read a few summaries of it.
Speaker 1: Apparently he interviews some of the some of the relatives
Speaker 1: of some of the people who were actually involved in this,
Speaker 1: and they said that she actually concocted this whole scheme
Speaker 1: with one of her friends and actually got some help
Speaker 1: and support from these people. Yeah. I've seen stuff about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's theory. Serious theory number one. Serious theory number
Speaker 1: two is that she was actually doing it to slowly.
Speaker 1: The name of her husband's lover did sort of bring
Speaker 1: that out of the open, huh that did? I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, it brought that whole situation out in the open.
Speaker 1: But also she did check into the hotel under the
Speaker 1: same last name as her husband's lover, which is kind
Speaker 1: of sketchy, like it's not Neil isn't the most common
Speaker 1: last name, especially if he's just said, oh, I'm leaving
Speaker 1: you from Nancy Neil. So the other little thing that
Speaker 1: I read and I don't I honestly don't remember where
Speaker 1: I read it, but I read that Agatha when she
Speaker 1: was asked why she took the why she gave that
Speaker 1: as her fake name, she actually gave the mailing address
Speaker 1: of the Neil family and said that inquiries regarding this
Speaker 1: matter should be directed there, which is pretty boss, right,
Speaker 1: So that I don't know. In a way though, if
Speaker 1: she was faking it, it kind of worked because I
Speaker 1: don't think she and her husband officially were divorced for
Speaker 1: another year and a half, for another year, another year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it took. It wasn't like, you know, I mean, they
Speaker 1: had already had their trial separation, which was her reconciliation,
Speaker 1: which didn't work at all. So in a way, she
Speaker 1: kind of got it kind of worked because he had to.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like he was free to just go about
Speaker 1: with with miss Neil and have an open relationship because
Speaker 1: technically he's still married and that was highly frowned upon. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's another option. I guess Batley was an attempt
Speaker 1: to just spoil their weekend and maybe shine a little
Speaker 1: bad light of publicity on both of them. But there's
Speaker 1: also the option to that she wasn't faking it that
Speaker 1: she really did go into a few state. I also
Speaker 1: think this is fairly re in a ball. You know,
Speaker 1: Agatha was under a lot of stress, as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: emotionally maybe physically I don't know, but certainly emotionally. She
Speaker 1: had a lot of the stuff that we were talking
Speaker 1: about earlier, and she was It turns out, according to
Speaker 1: most reports, she was really still in love with her
Speaker 1: husband Archie. So it wasn't just the embarrassment of a
Speaker 1: divorce and him taking a lover. It was also the
Speaker 1: heartbreak of you know, him saying, oh I don't love
Speaker 1: you anymore. I'm leaving you for a younger woman. By So,
Speaker 1: I don't know, she could have She could have easily
Speaker 1: slipped into a few state even before she left the house.
Speaker 1: I mean, she got in the car, she was driving
Speaker 1: the wrong direction. She could have been confused at that point.
Speaker 1: She could have she could have hit her head in
Speaker 1: the car. You know, in some way, she could have
Speaker 1: slipped into a feug state wall she was driving. That's
Speaker 1: you know, she kind of lost control of the car. Fine,
Speaker 1: and then she gets out and is confused, and so
Speaker 1: basically she could have slipped into that huge state for
Speaker 1: many time, when she was in the house, when she
Speaker 1: left to after she left her car. Yeah, I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I would say that if if she actually was in
Speaker 1: a few states. It wasn't at the spa like she
Speaker 1: got there and checked it, you know that. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: didn't get such a great massige. Yeah. So yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe it was a car breaking down. Maybe that was
Speaker 1: a less straw. It's yeah, it's possible. Maybe that was it.
Speaker 1: Maybe the car broke down and she just lost it. Literally,
Speaker 1: I need to stop doing this podcast. But no, it
Speaker 1: is stressful. It's super stressful, especially as a woman, you
Speaker 1: know in the English countryside. Just suddenly you know, there's
Speaker 1: nothing you want to be in the next Morrow Murray, Yeah,
Speaker 1: or or the first mor Murray. Yeah, it wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been the next Well I'm just saying. I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: if you're a woman today and you break down, then
Speaker 1: you could be the next Mornure. Yeah yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: you know what, Honestly, I'm torn. I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't I like, I don't know about
Speaker 1: this well I am I'm trying to remember where where
Speaker 1: I where I read this. But she was there for
Speaker 1: like about ten days. I think nobody knows exactly. I
Speaker 1: don't think exactly when, which is weird lit right now,
Speaker 1: she had to go to London and then catch a
Speaker 1: train from London. Supposedly she had some co conspirators in London,
Speaker 1: if you believe that particular theory, she might have stayed
Speaker 1: there for a day or two. And apparently these people
Speaker 1: also helped her out by giving her some cash, um,
Speaker 1: and then she headed on up there. But apparently while
Speaker 1: she was staying there, it happens a week before this
Speaker 1: whole thing happened, she was I think, at Herod's in London,
Speaker 1: and she had lost her ring in the store and
Speaker 1: she um. While she was staying at the bath the hydro,
Speaker 1: she actually wrote a letter to Herod's inquiring about the
Speaker 1: lost ring. Oh yeah, she did, she I believe it
Speaker 1: in the name Agatha Christie. She so it appears that
Speaker 1: she her memory was intact. If this is true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if that's true, Yeah, it would appear that. But I
Speaker 1: don't know that we can you know, prove it either.
Speaker 1: Well that's it, I mean, I don't I haven't seen
Speaker 1: a copy of the letter. Eventually, the rain was found apparently, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but uh, Yeah. The one thing about Agatha Christie that
Speaker 1: always that makes me wonder if maybe it's not real
Speaker 1: and that she was faking it is. For the most part,
Speaker 1: I never really saw her ever reflected in any way
Speaker 1: as an exceptionally happy person. She hated a lot of things. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: I mean she was a bit of an anti semit
Speaker 1: she was. She also hated her own characters books, uh
Speaker 1: perot and um, what's the marvel? Marvel? Miss Marple hated them?
Speaker 1: Why don't hate them? She was tired of writing about them.
Speaker 1: And she really had created these characters that she said
Speaker 1: she detested. It was nineteen five she killed him, um
Speaker 1: pro she had written his death and then put it
Speaker 1: in a safe deposit box with instructions for it to
Speaker 1: be published upon her death. And you know, and then
Speaker 1: she ended up, of course publishing that story just shortly
Speaker 1: before she died, because she knew she was going to pass.
Speaker 1: But she, I mean, in general, just didn't seem like
Speaker 1: a happy person. So I don't know that that suddenly,
Speaker 1: you know, her husband turned the tables on her. I
Speaker 1: can't see it is coming as a shock because if
Speaker 1: she had been that angry or not happy about things
Speaker 1: for a while people tend to know when their relationships
Speaker 1: are on the skins, it does sond like she was
Speaker 1: kind of a hard person to live with. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was an incident of her throwing a full teak out
Speaker 1: let Archie's head. Yeah, I did not know that. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know if that was before or
Speaker 1: after he asked for the divorce after just I was
Speaker 1: gonna say it was probably just before he's like, that's it,
Speaker 1: good divorce. Yeah, So I don't know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: I think I do break a little bit more towards
Speaker 1: the she faked it. I think that seems more likely.
Speaker 1: But I also know that the mind is capable of
Speaker 1: doing some really weird stuff. And the line is, the
Speaker 1: mind is capable of doing strange things, but it's still
Speaker 1: incredibly rare. Whereas the mind is capable of hatching sneaky
Speaker 1: plots to spell your husband's weekend. So there's much much
Speaker 1: more capable of doing that. But you know, the defense
Speaker 1: mechanisms of your psyche they're pretty they're crazy creative too.
Speaker 1: So like even if you know, if she was never
Speaker 1: really happy and she just got like way way less happy,
Speaker 1: became really really depressed, was dealing with all of this
Speaker 1: emotional baggage and stuff. Those are literally the textbook circumstances
Speaker 1: of somebody going into this kind of few state. So
Speaker 1: it's also not, I think unreasonable to say that it
Speaker 1: could have happened. I wish we had descriptions from the
Speaker 1: staff of how Teresa Neil her assumed name, behaved. If
Speaker 1: she was a totally happy, go lucky kind of person
Speaker 1: that would totally support the fuge to the brain snaps,
Speaker 1: takes a break everything. Like, I wish we had anything
Speaker 1: from the staff. It doesn't even have to be even
Speaker 1: like as much as ah, she reacted poorly when we
Speaker 1: told her that she was not that person, or she
Speaker 1: seemed like she knew that would be super helpful. The
Speaker 1: descriptions I have seen about what the staff said is
Speaker 1: they said that she wasn't holding up in her room.
Speaker 1: She was actually hanging out readings, going to dances. She
Speaker 1: this this was the fun. Like when her husband Archie
Speaker 1: came to retrieve her, she made him wait until she
Speaker 1: had changed into her evening gown, which again, like I
Speaker 1: don't know, like it's never explained how she had those clothes.
Speaker 1: Did she buy them? Did she Yeah, Well, she was
Speaker 1: in London, she could have stopped off and then done
Speaker 1: a little shopping. Yeah, that's so she actually changed into
Speaker 1: her evening gown because it was evening before she came
Speaker 1: and left with him. I mean she seemed to be
Speaker 1: she was socializing. Yeah, and that supports the thing that
Speaker 1: Joe was talking about. It if she had bought those clothes,
Speaker 1: she would have had to stop in London and couldn't
Speaker 1: have gone shopping till the day after she left her house.
Speaker 1: Because if she leaves her house and it's dark, okay,
Speaker 1: it's Christmas, that's about five o'clock or so, plus a
Speaker 1: train ride to London, you're gonna get there about nine o'clock.
Speaker 1: Nothing is open in London after nine o'clock. You're not
Speaker 1: going to get there. Well, she left the house at nine,
Speaker 1: I thought. Yeah, I'm saying, I'm saying, best case scenario,
Speaker 1: she leaves when it gets dark, She's still got hours
Speaker 1: before she gets here. There's no way she could have
Speaker 1: made those purchases that same day. She mean, she had
Speaker 1: to have somewhere to stay. Yeah, she might have even
Speaker 1: stayed in Guildford for the night. Yeah, Yeah, she possibly
Speaker 1: could have stayed there. Train in the morning. It might
Speaker 1: not even be that there's a you know, ten o'clock
Speaker 1: PM trained like there wouldn't be. But my yeah, so
Speaker 1: yeah that's our stories. Do you guys have any more thoughts?
Speaker 1: Not really, I'm just I'm just saying it was just
Speaker 1: her being sneaky. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I'm waffle
Speaker 1: on this one. Sure, me too. That's kind of how
Speaker 1: I feel. And it is a little bit of a
Speaker 1: shorter show. Sorry. If you follow us on social media,
Speaker 1: you know why. Actually, actually, if you guys would like,
Speaker 1: I can pad it out a little bit by just
Speaker 1: reading something out of a random book. No, that's okay,
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, we don't really want any of you.
Speaker 1: We don't need that. So there's gonna be some links
Speaker 1: that we use to research this as well as um
Speaker 1: you know, link to download the podcast on the website.
Speaker 1: The website is, of course, Thinking Sideways podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on iTunes. Of course, you
Speaker 1: know that you can leave us a comment and reading
Speaker 1: if you'd like. That helps people find us. We're streaming
Speaker 1: on almost every single thing that you can stream anything
Speaker 1: on anymore. We are on Facebook. We have a page
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Speaker 1: found on Reddit this past weekend that some people were
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Speaker 1: But check out reddit our subreddit, um, it's just thinking
Speaker 1: Sideways for links to that. You can also find us
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Speaker 1: can always send us an email. That email address is
Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com, and you can
Speaker 1: find us on Patreon, which is patreon dot com slash
Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways. Thank you pretty much. Sum it up? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so too. Tweet cool. Well, I guess have
Speaker 1: a good week everybody, and we'll talk to you later.
Speaker 1: See you next week, folks, Later everybody, Bye, guys,