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Speaker 1: A howling wind whipped through the pine trees, blowing icy

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Speaker 1: crystals from snow heavy branches. In a small clearing, A

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Speaker 1: thin curl of smoke rose from the roof of a

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Speaker 1: dome shaped dwelling made from tree branches covered with rush

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Speaker 1: matting and a dusting of fresh snow. Inside, a family

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Speaker 1: lay as close as possible to the meager fire and

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Speaker 1: its hot stones, Too tired and famished to move. There

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Speaker 1: were occasional whimpers from the small children as the mother

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Speaker 1: weakly stroked their hair. Three other adults were listlessly sleeping,

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Speaker 1: her mother and brother in law, and her husband. Scraps

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Speaker 1: from their last meal, fragments of the skin and bone

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Speaker 1: of a beaver, the snowshoe hare stripped of every last

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Speaker 1: morsel of flesh, and several days old, lay scattered near

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Speaker 1: the hearth. The husband, empty whiskey bottles at his feet,

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Speaker 1: had fallen into a fitful sleep. Somewhere deep in his mind.

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Speaker 1: The sound of the gusty wind howling around the wigwamp

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Speaker 1: morphed first into a semi human howl, and then into

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Speaker 1: an insistent, rasping whisper that sounded like bone scraping on bone.

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Speaker 1: Then he found himself, staring out into a snowstorm and

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Speaker 1: through a white mist, the shape of an impossibly tall figure,

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Speaker 1: gaunt and skeletal, emerged in the distance. He could see

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Speaker 1: it hiding in the trees, deathly ashen gray, with desiccated

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Speaker 1: skin pulled tightly over its bones. It had only sock

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Speaker 1: it for eyes, and in place of lips there was

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Speaker 1: only tattered, bloody flesh, stinking of decay and decomposition. The

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Speaker 1: creature raised one emaciated clawlike hand, beckoning Kakisi Kutcheon closer,

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Speaker 1: but the man stayed still, too terrified to move. He

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Speaker 1: could see then that the creature was chewing on what

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Speaker 1: looked like raw pink flesh, the blood dripping from its mouth.

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Speaker 1: Khakisi Kutcheon woke suddenly from the nightmare, drenched in cold sweat.

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Speaker 1: Shaking it off, he rose weakly to his feet and

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Speaker 1: snaggered outside to relieve himself. The gathering dusk was descending

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Speaker 1: like a blanket over the trees, the start of another interminable,

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Speaker 1: frozen Canadian winter night. Through a groggy haze, the man

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Speaker 1: remembered his dream. He gazed out into the growing blizzard,

36
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Speaker 1: trying to discern shapes in the trees beyond. Then, as

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Speaker 1: if hypnotized, he began shuffling slowly back to the relative

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Speaker 1: warmth of the Wigwam, Gripped by an insatiable urge in sight.

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Speaker 1: He stared at the forms of his wife, mother in law, brother,

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Speaker 1: and his six children. They seemed to shift and change

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Speaker 1: before him in the flickering half light of the dying fire,

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Speaker 1: into the shapes of beavers, hares, and rabbits. His eyes

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Speaker 1: glazed over with a strange intensity. Saliva dripped from the

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Speaker 1: corners of his mouth, and a terrible hunger twisted in

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Speaker 1: his gut. Consumed by the unstoppable desire to eat flesh,

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Speaker 1: he took up the hunting rifle resting against the wall

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Speaker 1: and raised it to his shoulder. Then he took aim

48
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Speaker 1: and opened fire. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard

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Speaker 1: mc lean smith. The Wendigo is held deep in the

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Speaker 1: collective memory and traditional folklore of the Ojibwe, Cree, Chippewa,

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Speaker 1: and Algonquin tribes. These Annishinabe peoples ancestral homelands stretch across

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Speaker 1: much of the northern u s and Canada for centuries.

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Speaker 1: Every year, at the end of fall, when the lakes

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Speaker 1: began to freeze over and the snow started to fall,

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Speaker 1: and a Shinabe people would spread out from communal summer

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Speaker 1: camps deep into the woods, with each family group going

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Speaker 1: to traditional winter camp sites. There, they hunted deer and moose,

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Speaker 1: snowshoe hair, and beaver, as well as fishing through the

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Speaker 1: ice and using stores of wild rice, berries and maple

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Speaker 1: sugar to survive the winter months. They were often haunted

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Speaker 1: by the Wendigo, an evil spirit said to roam the dark,

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Speaker 1: intensely cold forests, preying on starving humans. As they sat

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Speaker 1: in their traditional wooden framed wigwams draped in tree bark,

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Speaker 1: the cracks stuffed with grass, they would tell tales around

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Speaker 1: the fire of how the Wendigo would sometimes be seen

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Speaker 1: by one or more members of a group who'd fallen

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Speaker 1: on hard times, used up their store of berries and

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Speaker 1: failed to catch enough game. This spirit creature would strike

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Speaker 1: whenever it found people starving and at their most desperate,

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Speaker 1: often preceded by a foul stench or sudden extra icy chill.

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Speaker 1: The creature would appear as a giant, gray skinned, emaciated humanoid.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes it is said that the windigo would mimic human voices,

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Speaker 1: which appeared to be carried on the wind, luring an

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Speaker 1: unsuspecting victim deep into the trees, where it would attack

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Speaker 1: and then feast on them. Whenever a wendigo ate someone,

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Speaker 1: it was said to grow in proportion to the size

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Speaker 1: of the meal, and so never able to satiate its hunger.

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Speaker 1: The wendigo was also and still is, an embodiment of gluttony, greed,

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Speaker 1: and excess. Although the wendigo is frequently depicted as having

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Speaker 1: horns or antlers, these features never appeared in the original

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Speaker 1: indigenous stories. They are modern inventions of horror novels and

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Speaker 1: Hollywood movie plots. On other occasions, the Anishinabis said that

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Speaker 1: one or more starving people became possessed by the wendigo,

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Speaker 1: with historical accounts of such possessions going at least as

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Speaker 1: far back as sixteen sixty one. In the seventeenth century,

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Speaker 1: Jesuit ministries reported being greatly concerned when they learned that

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Speaker 1: some people they were supposed to rendezvous with had died

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Speaker 1: in a very strange manner the previous winter. These people,

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Speaker 1: they said, seemed to have suffered from some type of

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Speaker 1: frenzy which made them so ravenous for human flesh that

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Speaker 1: they pounced upon women, children, and men like veritable werewolves,

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Speaker 1: devouring them voraciously without being able to appease or stem

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Speaker 1: their appetite. But Jesuits reported that having been thus afflicted,

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Speaker 1: the individuals were then killed by fellow members of their

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Speaker 1: tribe to halt the madness. Fear of anyone suspected of

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Speaker 1: having been so possessed was rife, and members of a

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Speaker 1: community would sometimes band together and kill a person suspected

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Speaker 1: of wendigo possession. In spring seventeen seventy five, Hudson's Bay

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Speaker 1: Company officer Samuel Hearn was busy building what's known today

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Speaker 1: as Cumberland House, the Hudson's Bay Company's first inland for

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Speaker 1: trading post. When a lean, hardy looking Native American of

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Speaker 1: the Wapoos tribe arrived at the settlement, he was soon

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Speaker 1: accosted by a group of fellow Native Americans, who gathered

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Speaker 1: around him, demanding to know where he'd come from. He

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Speaker 1: said only that he'd come a considerable way by himself,

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Speaker 1: without a gun or ammunition. The others quickly became suspicious

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Speaker 1: and wondered if he'd perhaps met an killed someone along

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Speaker 1: his way later, once the young Wapoos had found lodgings,

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Speaker 1: he was seen secretly snashing a bag of provisions up

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Speaker 1: a nearby pine tree. Some women stealthily crept out to

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Speaker 1: the tree and pulled down the bag. Inside they found

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Speaker 1: meat that they were certain was human flesh. Fearing they

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Speaker 1: might have a real life Wendigo on their hands, the

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Speaker 1: men loaded up their guns and readied their bows and arrows,

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Speaker 1: while the women took up hatchets, all intent on killing

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Speaker 1: the hapless stranger. Luckily, some elders quickly debunked the claims

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Speaker 1: and declared that the young man was guilty of nothing

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Speaker 1: more than traveling two hundred miles alone. On this occasion,

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Speaker 1: a life was saved, but not everyone was so lucky

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Speaker 1: or so innocent. One spring day in eighteen seventy nine,

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Speaker 1: a tall, apparently healthy cree man wandered alone into the

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Speaker 1: Catholic mission town of Saint albert on the Sturgeon River,

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Speaker 1: just northwest of the city of Edmonton in Alberta. Far

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Speaker 1: from staggering to the steps of the mission, he walked

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Speaker 1: jauntily and appeared to be a specimen of good health.

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Speaker 1: His name was Khaki C. Kutchin or swift Runner, as

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Speaker 1: it translates to English. Over six feet tall and a

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Speaker 1: father of six children, he'd been a popular man in

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Speaker 1: the Cree community for many years, making his living as

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Speaker 1: a trapper, then working as a guide for the Northwest

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Speaker 1: Mounted Police. But over time swift Runner developed a taste

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Speaker 1: for whiskey and became an alcoholic. He was said to

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Speaker 1: be an angry drunk with the tendency to violence, and

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Speaker 1: his habit would eventually get him fired by the police

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Speaker 1: force and kicked out of his tribe. In the winter

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Speaker 1: of eighteen seventy eight, swift Runner took his wife, six children,

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Speaker 1: mother in law, and brother out into the forest, ostensibly

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Speaker 1: to hunt food to last them the winter months, but

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Speaker 1: only swift Runner returned from the stay. When asked by

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Speaker 1: the priests in Saint Albert what had happened to his family,

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00:11:35,480 --> 00:11:39,640
Speaker 1: swift Runner claimed they had all starved to death. It

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Speaker 1: had been an especially brutal and bitter winter that year,

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Speaker 1: But the priests had trouble believing the story. They knew

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Speaker 1: quite a few other Cree who'd had a pretty successful

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Speaker 1: winter hunting season that year, and if the family had

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Speaker 1: experienced trouble catching food, why hadn't they traveled to the

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Speaker 1: Hudson's Baker Company post, located a mere twenty five miles

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Speaker 1: from their camp, where they would have been given emergency rations.

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Speaker 1: But more strange is the fact that, despite his family

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Speaker 1: having apparently starved to death at about two hundred pounds

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Speaker 1: in weight, swift Runner seemed not in the least bit

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Speaker 1: malnourished himself. Over the next few days, the priests kept

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Speaker 1: swift Runner under observation. In the daytime, he acted perfectly normal,

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Speaker 1: but at night time the town would be plagued by

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Speaker 1: the sound of swift Runner's screams, the result of terrible

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Speaker 1: nightmares that often had him waking up in terror and

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Speaker 1: gasping for breath. When quizzed by the priests about it,

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Speaker 1: he replied simply that he was being tormented by an

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Speaker 1: evil spirit called a Wendigo, which wouldn't elaborate any further. Then.

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Speaker 1: One day, it was to governed that some of the

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Speaker 1: children from the town had gone missing. Swift Runner was

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Speaker 1: found soon after attempting to lead them out into the woods.

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Speaker 1: Swift Runner was promptly arrested, and, with the priests now

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Speaker 1: convinced that he was hiding something, they ordered him to

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Speaker 1: lead them to his family's winter camp. Swift Runner was

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Speaker 1: reluctant to do it at first. Some say that he

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00:13:32,600 --> 00:13:36,440
Speaker 1: tried to mislead the police, only cooperating with them after

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Speaker 1: they got him drunk. Others that he first led them

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Speaker 1: to the wrong place, but eventually the man did lead

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Speaker 1: them to where they wanted to go, and soon they

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Speaker 1: arrived at a small clearing in the forest, where before

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Speaker 1: them was a modest dome shaped dwelling made from tree branches,

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Speaker 1: covered with rush matting and topped with the light dusting

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Speaker 1: of snow. Lifting the flap to go inside, the police

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Speaker 1: were confronted with a scene like hell on Earth. The

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Speaker 1: place was littered with scraps of human flesh, hair, and bones.

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Speaker 1: Some of the larger ones had been snapped and the

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Speaker 1: marrow sucked out of them. It said that they even

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Speaker 1: found a pot full of human fat. With nowhere left

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Speaker 1: to hide, swift Runner made his terrible confession. The truth

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Speaker 1: was they had struggled to find food, but when his

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Speaker 1: eldest son had died of starvation, swift Runner's response was

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Speaker 1: to murder his remaining family members one by one. Some

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Speaker 1: of them he shot, others he bludgeoned with an axe.

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Speaker 1: He confessed to strangling one of his daughters with a cord,

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Speaker 1: while he fed his eldest son's flesh to another son,

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Speaker 1: before killing and eating that boy too. At his trial,

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Speaker 1: swift Runner claimed that a Wendigo spirit had somehow possessed him,

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Speaker 1: forcing him to carry out the atrocities, but the jury

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Speaker 1: didn't believe him. After twenty minutes of deliberation, they found

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Speaker 1: him guilty of the multiple murders and he was sentenced

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Speaker 1: to death. Swift Runner's execution took place on December twentieth,

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Speaker 1: eighteen seventy nine. He was the first man to be

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Speaker 1: legally hanged in Alberta. According to some reports, before the

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Speaker 1: death sentence was carried out, swift Runner converted to Catholicism

196
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Speaker 1: and admitted his guilt. Moments before the trap door dropped.

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Speaker 1: He was said to have expressed extreme remorse, telling his

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Speaker 1: confessor father LeDuc, I am the least of men and

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Speaker 1: do not merit even being called a man. Quite a

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Speaker 1: few spectators arrived to watch swift runners execution. One proclaimed

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Speaker 1: that he was thoroughly impressed with the show and that

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Speaker 1: it was the prettiest hanging he'd ever seen. The Ani

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Speaker 1: Shinabe peoples, especially the Ojibwe and Cree. Like most people,

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Speaker 1: were extremely repelled by the idea of cannibalism, and far

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Speaker 1: from living the impoverished, mean, hand to mouth existence that

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Speaker 1: some white settlers thought they saw. The Anishinabi's lives were

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Speaker 1: typically filled with joy, love, and fulfillment. It was only

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Speaker 1: during times a great hardship that the Wendigo spirit was

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Speaker 1: said to surface. Victims of wendigo possession were said to

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Speaker 1: show physical changes, their bodies, reputedly swelling and growing, their

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Speaker 1: lips and mouths, also becoming in large lodged. Some spoke

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Speaker 1: of being unable to warm their bodies as an icy

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Speaker 1: cold gripped their chest. Of the many supposed wendigo possessions

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Speaker 1: between the mid eighteen hundreds and the nineteen twenties, there

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Speaker 1: were other reports of unofficial wendigo executions, and a Jibwe

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Speaker 1: creed chief and shaman called in English Jack Fiddler, known

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Speaker 1: for his powers defeating wendigoes, was said to have in

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Speaker 1: some cases euthanized people said to be possessed. However, in

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Speaker 1: nineteen o seven, the law caught up with Jack Fiddler

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Speaker 1: and his brother Joseph when they were arrested by Canadian

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Speaker 1: authorities for murder. Jack committed suicide, while Joseph was tried

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Speaker 1: and sentenced to life in prison. It was psychologist and

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Speaker 1: missionary J. E. Sanden who first made a formal definition

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Speaker 1: of what he termed a sickness while he worked among

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Speaker 1: the cree of Western James Bay on the southern end

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Speaker 1: of Hudson Bay in the early nineteen hundreds. But far

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Speaker 1: from resembling the gruesome case of swift Runner, what Sanden

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Speaker 1: observed corresponded closely with some Northern Ajibwe accounts of wendigo possession.

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Speaker 1: The main symptoms shown by one female victim was that

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Speaker 1: she didn't wish to see anyone outside her immediate family,

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Speaker 1: because she said strangers looked like wild animals to her,

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Speaker 1: an appearance that gave her the urge to kill them

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Speaker 1: in self defense. After receiving assurances from Sandon, the women

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Speaker 1: did soon apparently recover. Another psychologist, lou Moreno, who conducted

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Speaker 1: field studies among the Anish and Arbi, reported two similar

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Speaker 1: cases involving married women who had become reclusive, expressing fear

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Speaker 1: of all but their closest relatives. In nineteen thirty three,

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Speaker 1: priest and anthropologist John M. Cooper published the first so

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Speaker 1: called scientific report in which the word psychosis was applied

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Speaker 1: to the wendigo phenomenon, based on observations among Cree and

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Speaker 1: other Algonquin speaking peoples. He wrote cannibalism was resorted to

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Speaker 1: only in cases where actual starvation threatened and people were

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Speaker 1: driven to desperation by prolonged famine, after which they often

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00:19:32,800 --> 00:19:36,800
Speaker 1: suffered from mental breakdown. He went on to say that

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Speaker 1: the Cree would sometimes eat the bodies of those who

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Speaker 1: had perished, but only rarely kill the living and eat

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Speaker 1: their flesh, which, according to him, left as its aftermath

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Speaker 1: an unnatural craving for human flesh, or a psychosis that

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Speaker 1: took the form of such a craving. In nineteen thirty four,

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Speaker 1: Irving Halliwell, a cultural anthropologist known for his work on

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Speaker 1: the Ojibwe, claimed to confirm the existence of the wendigo

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Speaker 1: psychosis among the Baron's River Salto, a northern Ojibwe group,

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Speaker 1: despite its lack of firsthand knowledge. He categorized early physical

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Speaker 1: symptoms of the disease as a distaste for ordinary foods, nausea,

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Speaker 1: and vomiting. Of the disorder's later stages, he wrote, the

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Speaker 1: individual may exhibit a positive desire for human flesh or

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Speaker 1: even take steps to satisfy this desire, and the persons

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Speaker 1: affected were either killed or they recovered. Babies and even

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Speaker 1: dogs became suspected of being afflicted with wendigo psychosis. Also

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirty the anthropologist Ruth Lands described how

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Speaker 1: the infant son of a shaman named Great Mallard Duck

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Speaker 1: began eating his fingers, then bit off the nipples off

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Speaker 1: his dead mother's breasts during a period of starvation in

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Speaker 1: which seven out of sixteen family members died of hunger.

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Speaker 1: Lands wrote the baby's eyes were blazing and his teeth rattling,

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Speaker 1: his wendigo symptoms indicating fever, privation and neurotic fury. Having

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Speaker 1: decided he was turning into a wendigo, the baby boy

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00:21:38,480 --> 00:21:45,320
Speaker 1: was killed by his grandmother. Interestingly, very different conclusions were

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Speaker 1: reached about a group of white Mormon pioneers also caught

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Speaker 1: in starvation circumstances drawn by the promise of fertile farmlands

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Speaker 1: in central California. In spring eighteen four six, the families

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Speaker 1: of George Donna, Jacob Donner, and James Reed left Illinois

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Speaker 1: to migrate west. They made good progress as far as

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Speaker 1: Fort Laramie in what is now Wyoming, but where most

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Speaker 1: wagon trains turned north taking the Oregon Trail. In late

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Speaker 1: summer eighteen forty six, the Reeds and Donners chose an

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Speaker 1: apparent short cut to California, another path known as the

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00:22:29,960 --> 00:22:36,159
Speaker 1: Hastings cut Off. It was a disastrous decision. The so

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Speaker 1: called Donna Party, consisting of eighty seven people, including fifteen

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Speaker 1: women and forty three children, with twenty three ox drawn wagons,

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Speaker 1: believed it would shave more than three hundred miles off

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Speaker 1: the journey. It was in fact one hundred and twenty

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Speaker 1: five miles longer than the established trail, traversing some of

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Speaker 1: the most inhospitable country in the West, including the Great

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Speaker 1: Salt Lake Desert. Migrants taking the main trail had already

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Speaker 1: arrived in California in late September, while the Donner Party,

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00:23:12,200 --> 00:23:15,600
Speaker 1: having lost dozens of cattle and been forced to abandon

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Speaker 1: several wagons along the way, found themselves in a race

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00:23:19,359 --> 00:23:23,400
Speaker 1: against time to clear the high passes of the Sierra

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Speaker 1: Nevada Mountains before it started snowing. Running very low on food,

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Speaker 1: the Donner Party and their exhausted animals approached what is

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Speaker 1: now called Donna Pass on October thirty first, and found

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Speaker 1: it blocked by snow. Building crude cabins by a lake,

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00:23:50,320 --> 00:23:54,840
Speaker 1: they sat through eight straight days of heavy snowfall. Many

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Speaker 1: of the oxen wandered off and were lost. On December fifteenth,

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Speaker 1: an employee of the Reed family died of malnutrition. Determined

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Speaker 1: not to meet the same fate, the next day, ten

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Speaker 1: men and five at the women set out to cross

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Speaker 1: the mountains on improvised snow shoes through deep snow with

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Speaker 1: inadequate food. Eight of the men died, and in an

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Speaker 1: act of terrible desperation, the two surviving men and five

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00:24:26,040 --> 00:24:32,560
Speaker 1: women cannibalized some of the bodies. Sustained by this, the

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00:24:32,600 --> 00:24:37,439
Speaker 1: seven survivors finally reached the Sacramento Valley in January of

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Speaker 1: eighteen forty seven. They organized a relief party who struggled

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Speaker 1: back through the deep snow, reaching the camp at what

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00:24:46,640 --> 00:24:51,639
Speaker 1: is now called Donna Lake in mid February. Alfter the

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00:24:51,680 --> 00:24:57,240
Speaker 1: remaining party had died one by one. Those left alive

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00:24:57,840 --> 00:25:04,600
Speaker 1: had also resorted to canlizing the corpses of the dead. Incredibly,

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Speaker 1: survivors of the harrowing journey seemed undeterred by it all.

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Speaker 1: Fourteen year old Donna Party member Virginia Reid wrote soon

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00:25:14,440 --> 00:25:17,240
Speaker 1: after to a cousin in Illinois who was due to

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00:25:17,240 --> 00:25:22,000
Speaker 1: make the journey herself the following year. After detailing some

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00:25:22,080 --> 00:25:27,359
Speaker 1: of the events, she finished simply with, Oh, Mary, I

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00:25:27,400 --> 00:25:29,680
Speaker 1: have not wrote you half the trouble we have had,

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00:25:30,119 --> 00:25:32,479
Speaker 1: but I have wrote you enough to let you know

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00:25:32,560 --> 00:25:36,920
Speaker 1: what trouble is. But don't let this letter dishearten anybody.

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00:25:37,720 --> 00:25:42,040
Speaker 1: Never take no cutoffs, and hurry along as fast as

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00:25:42,040 --> 00:25:48,040
Speaker 1: you can. Later that year, gold was discovered in California,

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00:25:48,080 --> 00:25:53,000
Speaker 1: turning the trickle of westbound migrants into a flood. It

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00:25:53,080 --> 00:25:56,920
Speaker 1: was never suggested that having tasted human flesh, members of

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00:25:57,000 --> 00:26:03,359
Speaker 1: the Donner Party became permanent slaves to in satiable cannibalistic psychosis,

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Speaker 1: and the group were never suspected of now being prone

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00:26:06,800 --> 00:26:12,280
Speaker 1: to stalking the California gold fields searching for unsuspecting prospectors

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00:26:12,320 --> 00:26:17,040
Speaker 1: to dine on. By the nineteen eighties, there was a

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Speaker 1: hot debate among Western ethnographers, psychologists, and anthropologists as to

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00:26:23,080 --> 00:26:28,399
Speaker 1: whether wendigo psychosis even existed at all. By the time,

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00:26:28,520 --> 00:26:34,160
Speaker 1: so called wendigo possessions reached their peak, many Anishanabi had

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00:26:34,160 --> 00:26:37,480
Speaker 1: been involved in the fur trade for more than two centuries,

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00:26:38,440 --> 00:26:41,920
Speaker 1: begun as a means of supplementing income in exchange for

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00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:47,360
Speaker 1: providing European traders with luxury goods. Fur trapping often led

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Speaker 1: Native Americans into debt with the trading posts. So many

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Speaker 1: newly arrived people indiscriminately hunting so many game animals, especially

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00:26:58,400 --> 00:27:02,800
Speaker 1: moose and beaver, also depleted vital winter food sources for

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00:27:02,880 --> 00:27:09,320
Speaker 1: indigenous tribes, contributing to widespread famine. Perhaps, in some ways,

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00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:13,760
Speaker 1: the wendigo was merely a manifestation of a Native American

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00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:17,760
Speaker 1: collective fear of what might become of them in their

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00:27:17,800 --> 00:27:29,439
Speaker 1: newly depleted world. In the nineteen sixties, reports appeared of

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00:27:29,480 --> 00:27:34,000
Speaker 1: an indigenous woman with a number of strange behavioral problems,

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00:27:34,160 --> 00:27:39,480
Speaker 1: most especially food hoarding. In the beginning, the woman took

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00:27:39,520 --> 00:27:42,399
Speaker 1: to carrying around a cooked hot dog in her purse,

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00:27:42,760 --> 00:27:47,000
Speaker 1: but soon switched to raw hamburger meat. For two years,

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00:27:47,040 --> 00:27:50,120
Speaker 1: she bought two to five pounds of hamburger a day,

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00:27:50,760 --> 00:27:55,800
Speaker 1: later increasing her purchases to around sixty pounds per day,

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Speaker 1: carrying the meat with her in her car. She had

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00:27:58,600 --> 00:28:03,320
Speaker 1: trouble parting with it even when it became rotten, just

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00:28:03,359 --> 00:28:06,679
Speaker 1: as a jeepway hunters had roamed the dark woods for

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00:28:06,800 --> 00:28:11,159
Speaker 1: centuries in search of prey, so night after night, the

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00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:14,960
Speaker 1: woman would drive the darkened streets of the city searching

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00:28:15,040 --> 00:28:19,280
Speaker 1: for open stores where she could buy hamburger meat. She

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00:28:19,320 --> 00:28:22,960
Speaker 1: did not eat the raw hamburger, although on one occasion,

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00:28:23,359 --> 00:28:27,520
Speaker 1: while looking at a supermarket's meat display, she reported feeling

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00:28:27,600 --> 00:28:30,720
Speaker 1: the sudden impulse to bury her face in it and

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00:28:30,840 --> 00:28:36,600
Speaker 1: devour it all. Two psychiatrists treating the woman concluded that

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00:28:36,680 --> 00:28:40,520
Speaker 1: she was a symbolic cannibal, and for a while she

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00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:45,120
Speaker 1: was confined to a psychiatric hospital. There, she switched from

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00:28:45,200 --> 00:28:48,440
Speaker 1: hoarding hamburger, which she could no longer get her hands on,

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00:28:49,080 --> 00:28:53,160
Speaker 1: to hoarding bread, and eventually she gave up hoarding food

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Speaker 1: altogether and was released. It's not known how many people

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00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:02,640
Speaker 1: over the last three centuries or more, propelled by a

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00:29:02,680 --> 00:29:08,680
Speaker 1: mixture of desperation, starvation, cultural and environmental oppression, have been

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00:29:08,720 --> 00:29:13,080
Speaker 1: convinced that they've seen the Wendigo or succumbed to so

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00:29:13,200 --> 00:29:18,360
Speaker 1: called Wendigo psychosis, or how many Indigenous people were forced

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Speaker 1: to resort to cannibalism during times of extreme privation, or

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00:29:22,920 --> 00:29:27,240
Speaker 1: were killed for wendigo possession, and while no one has

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Speaker 1: ever produced physical evidence that the wendigo really exists. From

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Speaker 1: time to time, eerie howls are heard drifting through North

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Speaker 1: America's boreal forests. In twenty nineteen, reports of one such

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Speaker 1: mysterious howl being heard and recorded in the Canadian wilderness

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00:29:48,240 --> 00:29:53,840
Speaker 1: emerged online. Genomechus was out hunting grouse with his wife

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Speaker 1: and grandson in northwestern Ontario, more than thirty miles from

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Speaker 1: the nearest town, when they heard a series of eerie

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00:30:02,000 --> 00:30:07,040
Speaker 1: screams ringing out from somewhere deep in the forest. An

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Speaker 1: experienced an avid hunter from a young age, Mikus said,

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Speaker 1: I've heard many different wild animal calls, but nothing like this.

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Speaker 1: Initially distant, the howls appeared to be approaching the family.

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Speaker 1: We could hear it moving. It sounded kind of heavy,

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Speaker 1: Mikus told a local news station. His frightened wife grabbed

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Speaker 1: their grandson, and the family retreated as fast as they

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Speaker 1: could back to their truck. They never saw the creature

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Speaker 1: making the sounds, the recordings of which were passed on

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Speaker 1: to a number of government biologists, and none of them

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Speaker 1: could identify it. This episode was written by Diane Hope

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Speaker 1: and produced by Richard mclan smith. Unexplained as an Abe

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00:31:00,200 --> 00:31:05,120
Speaker 1: Club Productions podcast created by Richard McClain Smith. All other

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00:31:05,160 --> 00:31:08,840
Speaker 1: elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced

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00:31:08,840 --> 00:31:13,480
Speaker 1: by me Richard McClain smith. Unexplained. The book and audiobook

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00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:16,640
Speaker 1: with the stories never before featured on the show, is

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00:31:16,680 --> 00:31:20,640
Speaker 1: now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon,

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Speaker 1: and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and

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00:31:29,080 --> 00:31:31,360
Speaker 1: feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or

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00:31:31,400 --> 00:31:35,200
Speaker 1: ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps

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00:31:35,240 --> 00:31:37,720
Speaker 1: you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.

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00:31:38,360 --> 00:31:41,800
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