Speaker 1: January six, eighteen ninety six. I went to see the
Speaker 1: sick man today and he's a pitiful looking devil. They
Speaker 1: had him with about six blankets and he still was
Speaker 1: nearly freezing. I can do nothing for him. January twelve.
Speaker 1: I went to see him today and he looks worse
Speaker 1: than ever. I gave him a dose of castor oil,
Speaker 1: but he he says his heart is freezing. He keeps
Speaker 1: insisting he'll become a cannibal. He wants the Algonquins to
Speaker 1: kill him before he gets worse. January Francois came here
Speaker 1: and asked me if I would read some prayers for
Speaker 1: the sick man. He doesn't look like a human being.
Speaker 1: He seems to be terribly swollen in the body and face.
Speaker 1: The sight of him is enough to frighten any person.
Speaker 1: The poor Algonquin slept very little here for the last
Speaker 1: nineteen days since he arrived. They have been watching him
Speaker 1: all the time. I don't know how this will end.
Speaker 1: January one Friendzois, came from me last night and I
Speaker 1: went with him. I told him we ought to take
Speaker 1: some rope with us and tie him up if we could.
Speaker 1: The sound of him was terrible. It was like the
Speaker 1: calling of a wild animal. We tied him with the
Speaker 1: ropes and I left to find some more, but but
Speaker 1: he couldn't find any, and when I got back, the
Speaker 1: cords around his arms were already breaking. The Gonquins asked
Speaker 1: what we shouldn't do. They said that when he got up,
Speaker 1: he would kill all of us. I told them to
Speaker 1: do what they had to do is I had no
Speaker 1: more ropes which to bind him. Welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And that was the
Speaker 1: account of Francis work beaten uh the Orkney HBC clerk
Speaker 1: at the Trout Lake Outpost the winter of eight during
Speaker 1: the alleged Windigo possession of napatan Auger. Edited slightly for
Speaker 1: clarity's sake, but otherwise exactly what's in the history books.
Speaker 1: And we wanted to bring that bit to your attention
Speaker 1: because what we're talking about is a creature or a
Speaker 1: possession that has to deal with cannibalism. Yeah, and even
Speaker 1: though the creature itself is obviously a creature of myth,
Speaker 1: we've talked before about the power of myth, the power
Speaker 1: of paranormal scripts within a culture, as well as the
Speaker 1: real life incidences that have allegedly occurred because of or
Speaker 1: alongside the Wind to Go belief. Because if the oral
Speaker 1: account of this particular Wind to Go possession story, as
Speaker 1: collected by the University of Alberta's Nathan D. Carlson, holds true,
Speaker 1: then the Algonquin tribes people gave Napappen boiling bear grease
Speaker 1: an attempt to cure him after this, uh this account
Speaker 1: that I read, and then when that didn't work, they
Speaker 1: executed him with an axe, cutting off his head and
Speaker 1: bearing it separate from his body. Now, there are various problems,
Speaker 1: of course, with any account of cannibalism, just just cannibalism alone,
Speaker 1: much less when you start involving supernatural uh in material
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, and that's the thing about Window that's
Speaker 1: so interesting is it really highlights this issue of cannibalism.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about this before. It's very hard to
Speaker 1: really pin down cannibalism what has actually happened with humans
Speaker 1: for sure, Actually in nature it's very easy to explain,
Speaker 1: right because they are not ashamed of it, they're not
Speaker 1: ashamed and and they have a purpose, a real clear
Speaker 1: purpose their cannibalism. And you have um, the sexual cannibalism
Speaker 1: in orb spiders, right, that helps in terms of sexual
Speaker 1: reproduction fitness. And then in tiger sharks you have siblicide. Right,
Speaker 1: you have a tiger that eats excuse me, a tiger
Speaker 1: shark that eats a sibling because it's an easy source
Speaker 1: of energy. Yeah, it's it's just pure economics. It's a
Speaker 1: harsh world. Sometimes you have to reabsorb energy back into
Speaker 1: the the winning prospects, and that's just how it goes.
Speaker 1: But of course in human culture the economics may still
Speaker 1: hold true, but we have all of these layers of
Speaker 1: of moral concerns of society and culture. They just complicate
Speaker 1: the equation. Well, I mean, when you say the economics,
Speaker 1: you're talking about survival cannibalism. In other words, you're just
Speaker 1: at the end of your rope and you may be
Speaker 1: with someone who could provide you with a bit of energy,
Speaker 1: or perhaps there is even a body who that has
Speaker 1: recently passed that someone uses. And we have many accounts
Speaker 1: of this survival cannibalism in history. There a count that
Speaker 1: are proven and then there are accounts that are sort
Speaker 1: of forever being argued about, such as the Dolmar party,
Speaker 1: where that some saying well, maybe they didn't resort to
Speaker 1: survival cannibalism, whithers say yes, some say well the bones,
Speaker 1: there's no bone evidence that they did, and others say, well,
Speaker 1: well they wouldn't know on the bones, they would have
Speaker 1: eaten the soft flesh, and of course that wouldn't the
Speaker 1: evidence of that wouldn't survive. And then you know how
Speaker 1: many people are going to come back from a chaotic
Speaker 1: trip to the mountains and be like, WHOA, I only
Speaker 1: survived because I ate my friend Caleb. Right, it's just
Speaker 1: probably something that you're going to admit at cocktail parties, right, Um, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got the survival cannibalism. And then, just to complicate
Speaker 1: things a little bit further, we have these accounts of
Speaker 1: cultural rituals which may or may not be symbolic cannibalism, right,
Speaker 1: They may actually have occurred or occurred in different ways
Speaker 1: that we don't think is cannibal as Dick. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean you always have the the outsider viewing some
Speaker 1: sort of cannab supposedly cannibalistic ceremony or hearing about it.
Speaker 1: You're having Westerners observed or hear about a ritual that
Speaker 1: that from the people that they view as primitive, and
Speaker 1: so you know, it's hard to tack down the actual
Speaker 1: truth of the matter. Yeah. Actually, if you want to
Speaker 1: look at a good example of this and someone who
Speaker 1: actually furthered this idea of cannibalism, you can look to
Speaker 1: Columbus who encountered the Arawak people in Hispaniola during the
Speaker 1: fifteenth century and they warned him of another tribe, the
Speaker 1: carab that eight people, which it appears this other tribe
Speaker 1: never existed. So this has been really hard for anthropologists
Speaker 1: to go through and to try to figure out. But
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, this other tribe just
Speaker 1: wasn't a reality. So it may have just been for
Speaker 1: them this story about another tribe just kind of a boogeyman,
Speaker 1: a boogeyman right telling the night there's another tribe out
Speaker 1: there and they're so bad they eat people. You don't
Speaker 1: want to be like that and you don't want them
Speaker 1: to come for you, right, Or maybe they just wanted,
Speaker 1: you know, Columbus to hang around and they were like,
Speaker 1: how we need to get him to stay here with
Speaker 1: us and not go exploring. So in addition, Columbus may
Speaker 1: have mistaken the ritual of keeping a loved one's bones
Speaker 1: around the house. So that's what the Arrow act people did,
Speaker 1: and he may have mistaken that for evidence of cannibalism.
Speaker 1: And of course the whole thing is ridiculous too when
Speaker 1: you realize that Columbus h comes bearing his his Catholic faith,
Speaker 1: and of course Catholicism, like a lot of Christianity, is
Speaker 1: rich in this symbol symbolic consumption of Christ's blood and flesh,
Speaker 1: which even though you're not actually consuming blood and flesh, uh,
Speaker 1: it is, it is symbolic cannibalism at heart, right, which
Speaker 1: we see in so many other cultures. The problem, of course,
Speaker 1: is that Columbus was the authority on all matters for
Speaker 1: and at that point, so people are like, so where'd
Speaker 1: you go, what'd you see? What you experience? And then
Speaker 1: whatever he said became sort of the gospel. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's one of the problems you have throughout history too.
Speaker 1: I mean, going back to plenty of the Elder and
Speaker 1: all these guys where you just have certain voices and
Speaker 1: there aren't a lot of there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: discussion about the matter. But you know, this guy said
Speaker 1: that there are cannibals living in Africa and that remains
Speaker 1: sort of the voice of truth for a matter of centuries.
Speaker 1: So that's why The Wind to Go is such an
Speaker 1: interesting thing to look at, because it really gets at
Speaker 1: the heart of the taboo of cannibalism, but also the
Speaker 1: psychology of the ways in which we behave when we
Speaker 1: have these folk tales as stand ins for for what
Speaker 1: becomes a reality. Yeah, so I want you to imagine
Speaker 1: a dark, gaunt giant that haunts the woods, clad only
Speaker 1: in matted hair, and it's peering attitude from the wild depths,
Speaker 1: with blood red eyes as wild as sinister and sinister
Speaker 1: as those of an owl, with claws that are curl
Speaker 1: and muscles that are coiled with the strength of a bear,
Speaker 1: and its teeth are eager, and its foul tongue is
Speaker 1: longing for the taste of human flesh that sounds cuddly. Yeah. Yeah, Now,
Speaker 1: this is something that is This creature is known to
Speaker 1: different north around in tribal groups. Um. And when we're
Speaker 1: talking about the geography here, we're talking about French Canadian
Speaker 1: territory UM and the Algonquins. Are they figure in this
Speaker 1: quite a bit as well as a couple of the
Speaker 1: other tribes. Yeah, the Algonquins as one of the most
Speaker 1: populous and widespread North American native language groups, and uh,
Speaker 1: at different times it composed like a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: different tribes. You know, they did a lot of different
Speaker 1: tribes that would spoke the Algonquin tongue, and there was
Speaker 1: a lot of shared beliefs among them, and they they
Speaker 1: thrived in the harsh world of northern North America, a
Speaker 1: land of vast unforgiving wilderness, brutal winners, particularly during the
Speaker 1: Little Ice Age era in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries,
Speaker 1: which correlates exactly with a lot of this exploration by
Speaker 1: French Canadians who met up with these different tribes. And
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this more, but they began to um
Speaker 1: actually adopt some of these folk tales of the Wendico
Speaker 1: and also wanted to mention that it goes by Whittakao
Speaker 1: Witigo Wikio and Weendigo long Ago Windigo Witigo and we
Speaker 1: ti Goigo. It sounds like a corporation, Yes, secretly is
Speaker 1: based on cannibalism. It's right we tigo, you can we
Speaker 1: tigo to um. And the cool thing about this is
Speaker 1: that the windogo really sort of describes two different things
Speaker 1: at play here. One is the beast that you described
Speaker 1: who lives in that forest waiting to feast on a human.
Speaker 1: The other is a cannibalistic spirit that can possess a human. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that spirit kind of walks the barrier between the
Speaker 1: world and the world of the spirits. And of course
Speaker 1: that's a very important area in the tales and the
Speaker 1: belief systems in the world view of the the first
Speaker 1: people of North America. Yeah, and if you look at
Speaker 1: the Algonquins, they they really focus on these spirits as
Speaker 1: uh as a sort of cautionary tale to people during
Speaker 1: these very harsh winters not to turn to cannibalism, because
Speaker 1: they're saying that if you eat the flesh of another, well,
Speaker 1: your soul is now susceptible to the wind to go. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There there were a number of causes, a number of
Speaker 1: things that could turn you into a window go. Most
Speaker 1: of them are are based in diet and food and
Speaker 1: and hunger. Um. So you might be cursed by a
Speaker 1: sorcerer always a possibility, you know, it'll happen if you
Speaker 1: are yourself, if you yourself are a sorcerer, you might
Speaker 1: seek the transformation in yourself. Always an option, all right.
Speaker 1: You might trigger the change if you fast too long
Speaker 1: or feast too heavily, So a little too much food,
Speaker 1: a little too little food, you're gonna potentially open yourself
Speaker 1: up to the window goes caress. But most importantly are
Speaker 1: all of all as you mentioned, if you if you
Speaker 1: were forced to consume human flesh, or if you're tripped
Speaker 1: into doing so, even in a dream, then the window
Speaker 1: go can reach out to you, touch your soul and
Speaker 1: bring on this steady and horrible change, And then you
Speaker 1: might feel ice in your hearts. Yeah, because that's uh,
Speaker 1: that's that's the big thing right there. Um. They're number
Speaker 1: of symptoms. According to the Algonquin Reports catalog by Nathan D. Carlson,
Speaker 1: the symptoms include stupor, catatonia, depression, paranoia, and orexia or
Speaker 1: the inability to hold down food, nausea, vomiting, emaciation, glazed eyes,
Speaker 1: bodily or facial swelling, violent shouting, hallucinations of family members
Speaker 1: as food animals, particularly as beavers, and finally, this unstoppable
Speaker 1: urge to consume human flesh. Yeah, there was one account
Speaker 1: that reading in a separate book where like a mother
Speaker 1: was was potentially turning into a window go and she
Speaker 1: was telling her she's matter or children. She's saying, you
Speaker 1: all look like beavers to me. Now wow, But but
Speaker 1: it's that. But the big thing that, like the major
Speaker 1: symptoms and the ultimate symptoms are the unstoppable urge to
Speaker 1: consume human flesh. And this chill in your in your torso,
Speaker 1: in your heart as your heart becomes this lump of ice,
Speaker 1: that's right, as the transformation occurs. Let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break and when we get back, we'll talk about psychosis.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. We're just talking about the symptoms
Speaker 1: in the folk tales of the of the Wind to
Speaker 1: Go and uh, and how your heart may seem to
Speaker 1: become this lump of of of ice and you have
Speaker 1: this irresistible urge to consume human flesh. Now, there were
Speaker 1: a few cures curative measures that were also related in
Speaker 1: the folk tales. But I think it's interesting for you
Speaker 1: talking about the curative measures, is that people took this
Speaker 1: folklore and then they began to exhibit these symptoms, and
Speaker 1: this is what that psychosis is in these cases of
Speaker 1: people actually coming down with not actually turning into these
Speaker 1: sort of werewolf like creatures, but actually comminating some dastardly acts. Yeah, because,
Speaker 1: on one hand, as h as Nathan D. Carlson points
Speaker 1: out in his excellent article reviewing Wittico and Ethno History
Speaker 1: of Cannibal Monsters and the Athabaska District of Northern Alberta
Speaker 1: nineteen ten um, this was not just a you know,
Speaker 1: folk tale that was told. This was something in which
Speaker 1: there was a lot of belief. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of fear, he says, quote in the collective belief systems
Speaker 1: of pre twenty one century algonquins. Contrary to the opinions
Speaker 1: of some modern academics, as discussed below, the Wittigo condition
Speaker 1: was not a legendary fabrication. For example, in early eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety six, Richard Young, the Anglican Bishop of the Athabaska District,
Speaker 1: wrote the following in a letter journal to the Evangelical
Speaker 1: Fathers in the Church Missionary Society. Quote, the Indians have
Speaker 1: a great terror of these so called windigoose or cannibals.
Speaker 1: They believe that after eating human flesh, their heart becomes
Speaker 1: a lump of ice and no one alive is safer
Speaker 1: them assert as all of this sounds to us, it
Speaker 1: is a real terror to the untutored Indian. So there's
Speaker 1: a little obviously there's a bit of xenophobia and UH
Speaker 1: and and racism and in that uh, that particular portrayal,
Speaker 1: but but still it underlines that this was this was
Speaker 1: serious medicine. And if you're in a situation where you
Speaker 1: have been forced to resort to survival cannibalism, and then
Speaker 1: it's known, or even if it's known only to you
Speaker 1: and you return with shame, perhaps they other members of
Speaker 1: your your group know that this occurred, and before you
Speaker 1: know what, you're ostracized, and maybe you feel and there
Speaker 1: are a number of these symptoms, like if there's a
Speaker 1: whole list of possible symptoms, and if you begin if
Speaker 1: you experience one of them or feel like you experience
Speaker 1: one of them, uh, combined with the guilt that you feel,
Speaker 1: then how long before you begin manifesting this this paranoid
Speaker 1: idea you were transforming. Yeah, let's set the scene for
Speaker 1: this too. Or we're talking about these sort of starvation
Speaker 1: winters that would occur and in this part of the world, um,
Speaker 1: particularly as you said, during that period from the sempent
Speaker 1: century to the nineteenth century. And you know, you have
Speaker 1: people who would sort of collectively get together as families
Speaker 1: during that time and band together and try to survive.
Speaker 1: But there is still a huge amount of isolation. So
Speaker 1: you might be with five, six, seven of your fa
Speaker 1: only members. Um, you know, out in the middle of
Speaker 1: nowhere with this wind whistling or this wind howling. And
Speaker 1: when you look at these algonquin Um depictions, the wind
Speaker 1: is a huge force here. So I don't have you
Speaker 1: ever been like on the mountain before, and and um,
Speaker 1: there's just huge amounts of wind coming in at your structure.
Speaker 1: If you're in a tent or in a cabin, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just if you're you're out in the open, it's
Speaker 1: just whipping by. It's all you can hear in your ears.
Speaker 1: And if you're in a structure or even you know,
Speaker 1: in the shelter of a tree or or or some stone,
Speaker 1: and it's just whistling by, and it's and it varies,
Speaker 1: it's it's this changing tone almost the song. Yeah. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember when I was in Costa Rica, Monteverde and
Speaker 1: I was I spent a couple of nights in a
Speaker 1: cabin on the top of the mountain there, and the
Speaker 1: first night I was like, oh, this is beautiful. It's gorgeous.
Speaker 1: The second night I was like, it's this is awful.
Speaker 1: I cannot get any sleep. The wind is howling. The
Speaker 1: third night I started to feel like I was going crazy.
Speaker 1: So imagine months of this going on. I want to say,
Speaker 1: if you resort to cannibalism and Monteverdi, that's on. You
Speaker 1: don't try and pin that on a wind to go. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing, right, So I go out with a friend.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go try to trap something. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: he breaks his leg. You know, things aren't looking good forms,
Speaker 1: so off them and I have a little bit of
Speaker 1: his meat. And then as we as you said, come
Speaker 1: back to camp or to your cabin, and you feel
Speaker 1: in the shame for it. Um. Now, I didn't want
Speaker 1: to point out that Kevin Vulcan a professor of psychology.
Speaker 1: He's often called on as a behavioral expert on TV shows,
Speaker 1: and they're like, he categorizes it as an extreme form
Speaker 1: of cabin fever. So again, you've got harsh environmental factors there.
Speaker 1: You're with a couple of people and things can go awry.
Speaker 1: You're with a bunch of people that you love but
Speaker 1: are also maybe driving in a little crazy yeah. And
Speaker 1: uh and because that's one of the common tropes of
Speaker 1: the window go story is you have like a mom
Speaker 1: or a dad or even both that go nuts and
Speaker 1: start eating the kids. And then you know, you eat
Speaker 1: one kid, then you eat the second, and then and
Speaker 1: then it just could out a hand. Yeah, Vulgan says,
Speaker 1: it becomes a compulsion. So there you are in your cabin,
Speaker 1: the wind howling for months on end, and you began
Speaker 1: to really think that you are the winding go right,
Speaker 1: it's it's taken hold of you. You're feeling icing in
Speaker 1: your heart and uh, your your child is starting to
Speaker 1: look like a drumstick yeah or beaver beaver. Yeah. All right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna continue talking talking about that particular strain, but
Speaker 1: just to go back presented cures that that we're explored
Speaker 1: for for the wind to go situation, Carlson relates to
Speaker 1: several from different sources, but they include drinking high wines
Speaker 1: by the fire, which sounds rather pleasant. I would say
Speaker 1: that should be your first stop on any attempt to
Speaker 1: treat a suspected wind to go situation. Next the hit
Speaker 1: the consumption of heated or even boiling animal flats fats.
Speaker 1: So you have some some moose meat, bear meat, what
Speaker 1: have you. You heat to heat the fat up, get
Speaker 1: it nice and boiling, and then you drink it. Now,
Speaker 1: both of these methods drinking by the fire, drinking hot
Speaker 1: animal fat. The idea is that it would help uh
Speaker 1: burn away the ice that is formed in the heart.
Speaker 1: That's the key to the window go There was another
Speaker 1: tail that I believe Carlson related in which there was
Speaker 1: a group of window goes and they were they were
Speaker 1: just a you know, complete terror and you know, eat
Speaker 1: everyone in sight. And they were particularly hard to deal
Speaker 1: with because, on one hand, window goes were said to
Speaker 1: be bulletproof, you know, or bullets didn't affect them, and
Speaker 1: the only way to to really kill them was to
Speaker 1: deal with that icy heart. But these window goes had
Speaker 1: taken their icy hearts out and store them elsewhere so
Speaker 1: that they were they weren't not susceptible to that. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: um so those are some options. Also, you could of
Speaker 1: course get a spirit medium to use a shaking tent ritual,
Speaker 1: which is a special tint in which spirits could be summoned.
Speaker 1: But if these didn't work, the only thing to do
Speaker 1: was to tie the window go down and hack it
Speaker 1: to pieces with an axe bearing the pieces so as
Speaker 1: to keep it from becoming whole again and killing everyone inside. Now,
Speaker 1: someone by the name of Jack Fiddler, an Okay CREA member,
Speaker 1: actually took that the kind of became the van helsing
Speaker 1: for his community of window Goes. He claimed to have
Speaker 1: slaid fourteen people who were possessed, and he was in
Speaker 1: prison when he murdered a woman who he says was
Speaker 1: on the verge of turning into a windinga. So just
Speaker 1: you know, there were people out there that we're trying
Speaker 1: to actually, you know, stop it before it started what
Speaker 1: they really thought was going to be a possession. And
Speaker 1: of course we have so many different examples of people
Speaker 1: who actually did this to their families, who actually ate
Speaker 1: their families. So you can see why someone like Jack
Speaker 1: Fiddler might really take this to heart as his cause,
Speaker 1: his his reason for being. Yeah, and now, of course
Speaker 1: one of the of course, the problems we mentioned with
Speaker 1: cannibalism and cannibism stories, so the window Goes stories were
Speaker 1: we're told enough around the campfire and by a bi
Speaker 1: bi Algonquin tribes people who really love stories and told stories.
Speaker 1: And the nature of stories that are told as is
Speaker 1: that you you take on stories as your own that
Speaker 1: are other people's. You you prop up a story by
Speaker 1: saying you were there when you weren't. All of these
Speaker 1: things happened. The fish gets a little larger with each telling, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And then you have the French Canadian voyagers, the travelers
Speaker 1: who are who are who are meeting these people trading
Speaker 1: stories with them, and of course they're early into telling
Speaker 1: stories as well. Uh So we can't take every story
Speaker 1: to heart, but some of them are are are actually
Speaker 1: really well found at For instance, uh the swift Runner kids, Now,
Speaker 1: this was a Cree trapper who serially murdered and consumed
Speaker 1: the bodies of his wife and five children. And this
Speaker 1: was near Athabaska Landing Trading Post in the north the
Speaker 1: Central Um in north central Alberta in the Winner of
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy eight, and um, all the murders except the
Speaker 1: last one, we're more of a clear case of starvation cannibalism.
Speaker 1: But then the last one, well, I'll just read you
Speaker 1: what he had to say, when when he was interviewed,
Speaker 1: he said, at that that moment, the window go suddenly
Speaker 1: took possession of my soul, and in order to live longer,
Speaker 1: far from people, and to put out of the way
Speaker 1: the only witness to my crime, I seized my gun
Speaker 1: and killed the last of my children, and aid him
Speaker 1: as that I had done the others. Some weeks later
Speaker 1: I was taken by the police, sentenced to death, and
Speaker 1: in three days I am to be hanged. And indeed
Speaker 1: this is where it gets a little a little extra
Speaker 1: historical importance added to this is that, according to Carlson,
Speaker 1: uh swift Runner was the first person hanged by the Mounties,
Speaker 1: the Mounted Police UH, which which gives this Uh swift
Speaker 1: Runner winding. Okay, so a unique position in the history
Speaker 1: of Canadian jurisprudence. So the thing about this is that
Speaker 1: we don't know that it's actually a psychosis. In fact,
Speaker 1: academics have seen it, or they've talked about as a
Speaker 1: cultural balanced psychosis, but they've also called it UM perhaps
Speaker 1: a culturally localized manifestation of paranoid schizophrenia, because we see
Speaker 1: some mental illness UM in this area. And then a
Speaker 1: correlate of scapegoating. And then also in Nathan D. Carlson's
Speaker 1: paper Reviving Whittico, he says that it could have been
Speaker 1: a culturally mediated performance. So in some ways, again it
Speaker 1: was taking to heart this, uh, this story and performing
Speaker 1: it in a way. Uh. Perhaps that person didn't actually
Speaker 1: want the taste of flesh, but they were caught up
Speaker 1: in the moment, in these long winters and the sort
Speaker 1: of disease that would settle in with this, and maybe
Speaker 1: they began to display these historyonics. Yeah. And then also
Speaker 1: there there are situations where you can well imagine one
Speaker 1: using the wind to go idea and wind to go
Speaker 1: stigma for personal gain, like, for instance, here at work,
Speaker 1: so we all have new desks. Um, louder Milk Alson.
Speaker 1: Louder Milk has a particularly nice desk. It's like right
Speaker 1: next to the window. It's pretty good. So I can
Speaker 1: imagine that if ladder Milk were to be accused of
Speaker 1: being a wind to go, um, you know, someone might say, well, hey,
Speaker 1: I kind of want louder Milks desk, So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: jump in on that bandwagon and try to to push
Speaker 1: that that idea among my my fellow a coworker. And
Speaker 1: then you originally reached the point where there's nothing left
Speaker 1: to do but chopped her into pieces, and then lo
Speaker 1: and behold, I'm setting in her new desk. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you're the one who started the rumor about not going
Speaker 1: into the bathroom alone when ladder Milk was using yes
Speaker 1: and about what she's really been bringing in her launch pail. Okay.
Speaker 1: The second thing, someone I want to mention is that
Speaker 1: some of us might apply a little magical thinking to
Speaker 1: that space and think that they wouldn't want to inhabit
Speaker 1: it for fear of being possessed by the Wind to
Speaker 1: Go as well. Yeah, exactly, I just want to point
Speaker 1: that out. Okay, but maybe I'm strong enough to set there.
Speaker 1: It's my my thing. I'm just gonna keep my desk
Speaker 1: far away from me just in case though. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: fair enough, all right, we're gonna do another break, and
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're gonna keep discussing the Wind
Speaker 1: to Go myth and uh and some of the really
Speaker 1: interesting cultural aspects of it. All Right, we're back. We're
Speaker 1: still talking about the Wind to Go myth of the
Speaker 1: Algonquin people. And of course it's uh. It's been picked
Speaker 1: up over the years we're gonna talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about how it was picked up by the French Canadians.
Speaker 1: But of course even in modern culture you see it
Speaker 1: to show up in in different forms of media. For instance, Uh,
Speaker 1: Stephen King's novel Pet Cemetery has a wind to Go
Speaker 1: in it that uh I remember is working pretty well. Um.
Speaker 1: The movie Ravenous uh is uh it also features the
Speaker 1: wind to Go myth pretty strongly, kind of kind of
Speaker 1: taking it and combining with Western vampire uh folk folklore
Speaker 1: to create kind of I think an interesting Animal's been
Speaker 1: a while since I've seen it, but as a really
Speaker 1: awesome soundtrack by Damon Auburn of Blur and Guerillas and
Speaker 1: minimalist composer Michael Nyman. And uh, let's see, there was
Speaker 1: Larry Fresden's film Windigo, which was like an indie horror film.
Speaker 1: It was pretty interesting. And the TV show Hannibal has
Speaker 1: sort of dream hallucination sequences in which a wind to
Speaker 1: Go character appears. That that I thought was pretty effective
Speaker 1: and one of the pieces of media that may have
Speaker 1: started at all in terms of mass consumption. Uh, sorry
Speaker 1: about that pun is Algernon Blackwood's nineteen o seven shorts
Speaker 1: read the Wind to Go, you know, and I like
Speaker 1: Ultra and on Blackwood. I have enjoyed his writing in
Speaker 1: the past, but I started to reread his Wind to
Speaker 1: Go story and I have to say I didn't like it.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel like it was really very wind to
Speaker 1: go e. You know, it was just he kind of
Speaker 1: took the name Win to Go and some a certain
Speaker 1: amount of the feeling for it. But then I don't know,
Speaker 1: I thought I thought it felt kind of felt like
Speaker 1: it fell flat a bit. Well though, you you could
Speaker 1: say that at that point Blackwood didn't have this sort
Speaker 1: of vast stores of information about the Wind to Go
Speaker 1: to pull from. You couldn't go to the Wikipedia or
Speaker 1: listen to our podcast. No, no, you probably had a
Speaker 1: French Canadian friend who was like, let me tell you
Speaker 1: about this crazy thing that happened to a friend of
Speaker 1: a friend of a friend of mines. Right, And when
Speaker 1: someone tells you a story like, especially when it's from
Speaker 1: a different culture, what can you do but combine the
Speaker 1: scraps that you were given. It may or may not
Speaker 1: make sense from from your own cultural standpoint. You combine
Speaker 1: it with the ideas that you already have in your
Speaker 1: own culture. And you end up with sort of a
Speaker 1: new animal, a new myth emerges from this synthesis of ideas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's let's sort of do some time traveling here
Speaker 1: to say, the Lake Superior region in Canada eighteen fifties.
Speaker 1: You probably would hear a French Canadian really complaining about
Speaker 1: this really harsh winter and saying that they were so
Speaker 1: hungry and there were so little resources that they actually
Speaker 1: boiled their moccasins in eighth them. I mean these are
Speaker 1: true accounts, and um and then and but then also
Speaker 1: of the story that is so popular that you end
Speaker 1: up telling it even if you didn't necessarily experience it, right,
Speaker 1: And then of course one thing leads to another. You
Speaker 1: start talking about canibalism, right because you say, oh, man,
Speaker 1: if I ate my my Momkasons from just two seconds
Speaker 1: away from from you, buddy, right, and the conversation gets
Speaker 1: really awkward. Yes, this was This was all excellently discussed
Speaker 1: in Werewolves and Windy Goes Narratives of cannibal Monsters in
Speaker 1: French Canadian uh voyageer oral tradition by Caroline Protruction of
Speaker 1: York University, where she she really goes into what happens
Speaker 1: when the French Canadian voyagers encounter the algonquins and start
Speaker 1: swapping tails. Yeah, because you have to again sort of
Speaker 1: imagine this this time period. There are missionaries, fur traders, colonists,
Speaker 1: the voyagers all going through and meeting different tribes and
Speaker 1: then hearing about these atrocities. Now, if you are someone
Speaker 1: who is French Canadian, you might be familiar with some
Speaker 1: other folklore from Europe, like say werewolf, So it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be too crazy because you may have a belief system
Speaker 1: that supports that. Yeah, because the werewolf myth of course
Speaker 1: is that on certain nights because of the moon, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe some curses are in play as well. But a
Speaker 1: man transforms into a wolf or a wolf like being
Speaker 1: and then goes out and eats things, including human flesh,
Speaker 1: and then the next morning he's like, well, what do
Speaker 1: I What had happened? What did I do? What horrible
Speaker 1: things happened to me? What kind of monster did I become? Right?
Speaker 1: And then you've got the whole like, man, I was
Speaker 1: boiling my my moccasins, and you have all these other accounts.
Speaker 1: In fact, I wanted to bring up Jamestown. So Tino
Speaker 1: nine um that that colony had such a harsh winter
Speaker 1: that we know that they engaged not in just eating
Speaker 1: say dogs, cats and horses. But recently this year, the
Speaker 1: bones of a fourteen year old girl were excavated, and
Speaker 1: um Douglas Owsley, he's the Smithsonian forensic anthropologist who analyzed
Speaker 1: the bones, says, given, given these bones in a trash pit,
Speaker 1: all cut up and chopped up, it's clear that this
Speaker 1: body was dismembered for consumption. So in the same way,
Speaker 1: if you have these this folklore from Europe and you
Speaker 1: know about werewolves, you know that people can be transformed
Speaker 1: into them, and you also have these folk tales standing
Speaker 1: in for moral code, then as a European who is
Speaker 1: in this territory, this Algonquian territory, you probably would say, wow,
Speaker 1: we gotta watch out here. Yeah, because I mean, the
Speaker 1: werewolf myth ultimately revolves around the idea, you know what
Speaker 1: happens if I give in to my besteal nature? What
Speaker 1: if my my beasteal nature overcomes me? What have I
Speaker 1: given to the economic sensibility of cannibalism, for instance, despite
Speaker 1: all of my human moral standing. And so there's a
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of of comparisons to be made
Speaker 1: between the werewolf myth and the Wind to Go myth,
Speaker 1: And you can definitely see where the werewolf myth would
Speaker 1: help you understand the Wind to Go myth, even though
Speaker 1: the Wind to Go myth is totally about human human
Speaker 1: flesh being consumed, totally about cannibalism, whereas cannibalism is just
Speaker 1: sort of one aspect of the werewolf myth. Yes, patruct
Speaker 1: actually says and as you say her find paper that
Speaker 1: what we can learn from this is that the cannibal
Speaker 1: monster stories that for yousers told each other revealed many
Speaker 1: aspects of their lives and cosmology, such as starvation, mental illness,
Speaker 1: and metamorphoses because in a way they were undergoing a
Speaker 1: transformation themselves. Yeah, they started out as Westerners in a
Speaker 1: strange world. They travel out into this just I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to imagine. There's some books have
Speaker 1: really done a great job of of portraying this excursion
Speaker 1: into the wilds of some of this territory. I think
Speaker 1: of like Northwoest path Sage. I also think of Black Robe,
Speaker 1: excellent book. Um, you go into this just rich, wild
Speaker 1: world where there are no Westerners there, they are these
Speaker 1: these foreign peoples that you can only partially understand, that
Speaker 1: have a totally different world view than you do. And
Speaker 1: and then you start and you're in dealing with with
Speaker 1: limited resources, you're suddenly you find yourself starving or you're
Speaker 1: you're ill, and then what are you to make up
Speaker 1: of all that? And then over time you have the
Speaker 1: Westerners assimilating more and more with the native cultures to
Speaker 1: the point where they're they're taking uh, they're taking Algonquin brides,
Speaker 1: They're they're they're they're becoming their own communities with this
Speaker 1: shared mythos that has been weaved together from both the
Speaker 1: Algonquin traditions and the the European traditions that they imported.
Speaker 1: And yet xenophobia exists. And that's where it becomes really interesting,
Speaker 1: because the Windigo is really a stand in for this otherness.
Speaker 1: As you said, these are people in a new land
Speaker 1: with new experiences, and everything is the other, including the
Speaker 1: Algonquin at some point in other tribes. So uh, you know,
Speaker 1: with the Winding carries this idea that you're you're engaging
Speaker 1: in this other world, the supernatural world. You know, I
Speaker 1: can't in thinking about the Windo go I keep coming
Speaker 1: back to some material that we came across in our
Speaker 1: episode on the Problem of Hell, where we talked about
Speaker 1: the the old gods that that society has had, the
Speaker 1: hunter gatherer gods, the horned gods that were more chaotic,
Speaker 1: that were that that dealt thematically with the scarcity of
Speaker 1: food and the the uncertainty of tomorrow's meal and the
Speaker 1: meal after that and the in and in doing so
Speaker 1: you can see where that you can see why the
Speaker 1: wind to Go is really the ultimate evil spirit of
Speaker 1: the Algonquins, because it represents the uncertainty of food, and
Speaker 1: it represents the likelihood at even at times of starvation
Speaker 1: and in falling, what it would take to fall below
Speaker 1: the barrier, the threshold for um civilization, you know, because
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of our stories deal with that.
Speaker 1: Like we watched the show like Breaking Bad, and we
Speaker 1: see that these cars to see a character that's falling
Speaker 1: throughout the entire show, and at what point does he
Speaker 1: fall below the threshold? And you see these other characters
Speaker 1: that you know, addicts and whatnot, and you you look
Speaker 1: at them and you think there's a character who's fallen
Speaker 1: below the threshold. Woe as would be me if I
Speaker 1: were to to to fall that low as well, and
Speaker 1: uh in in a society like that, like that is
Speaker 1: the base mark cannibalism. You've fallen below the moral standing
Speaker 1: that defines that protects the culture well right, And it's
Speaker 1: a reminder of that time period when that the line
Speaker 1: between you know, death and survival, which is just like
Speaker 1: that you cross over so quickly. So it would be
Speaker 1: tempting to engage in cannibalism if you had to, because
Speaker 1: it may be the difference between life and death. Indeed,
Speaker 1: product me Up points out that a lot of these stories,
Speaker 1: he shared stories of the wind to Go that the
Speaker 1: French Canadians shared with the Algunquins, that there were there
Speaker 1: were two lessons essentially in all of them, particularly for
Speaker 1: the the the French Canadian listener. First of all, the
Speaker 1: idea that the native people's are your friend or at
Speaker 1: least to be relied upon in the wilds, because a
Speaker 1: lot of these stories they end with either you're starving
Speaker 1: and uh and some Algonquins come along and they feed
Speaker 1: you and then you're you're saved, or the Windigo situation
Speaker 1: happens and they're the ones who come with the knowledge
Speaker 1: of how to defeat the Wind to Go or they
Speaker 1: actually chop it up for you. But then the second lesson,
Speaker 1: and this lesson, and she says is a is a
Speaker 1: little more subdued. The lesson is that starvation cannibalism is
Speaker 1: an option. It's kind of a whisper in the ear
Speaker 1: saying and so this is horrible, but if you've got
Speaker 1: to do it, you can do it. And if it's
Speaker 1: going to get whispered into your ear, you might as
Speaker 1: well blame it on the wind, right. Yeah. Um, you
Speaker 1: know the thing about this is that anthropologists, when they
Speaker 1: began to study this in earnest, found that it pretty
Speaker 1: much dried up. All of these these expressions of windigo
Speaker 1: possession just evaporated. So again it brings into question whether
Speaker 1: or not it was really a psychosis or if maybe
Speaker 1: this part of the world was opening up, and um,
Speaker 1: there were other influences going on. So there you have it.
Speaker 1: The Wind to Go one of my favorite monsters, evil spirits,
Speaker 1: and one is just so so rich, just such a
Speaker 1: rich creature, a rich mythological idea, and uh and I
Speaker 1: love how it it also exists in this meeting of
Speaker 1: worlds with these two distinct alien cultures of the French
Speaker 1: Canadians and the Algonquins coming together. Yeah, and now I
Speaker 1: challenge you guys to go and watch American Werewolf in
Speaker 1: London again if you've already seen it or for the
Speaker 1: first time, and think about it through that lens, because
Speaker 1: it becomes a bit of a different movie, still stellar,
Speaker 1: maybe even better actually, And and I would also challenge
Speaker 1: anyone to take take the idea with you too, that
Speaker 1: the Wind to Go may come to you and your dreams.
Speaker 1: So throughout the next week as you dream, uh interpret
Speaker 1: your dreams in light of the Wind to Go? Myth
Speaker 1: was that was that was there ice? Was there a
Speaker 1: chilling wind where there? Who did the beast itself appear
Speaker 1: to you in the woods. I'd love to hear about that. Now.
Speaker 1: I feel like we should have like a logo with
Speaker 1: the wind to Go challenge the challenge alright, So hey,
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us about any
Speaker 1: of that, you know the general ways to do it.
Speaker 1: You can go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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