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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is The

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Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short-form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

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Speaker 2: focusing on mythical creatures, ideas, and monsters in time. It's

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Speaker 2: been a while since we discussed a Pokémon on The

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Speaker 2: Monster Fact, and since it's the Halloween season, I figured, hey,

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Speaker 2: why not a ghost type? I considered some of the

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Speaker 2: more popular ghost types out there before zeroing in on

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Speaker 2: the dark slash ghost type, Sableye. Sableye, if you're not familiar,

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Speaker 2: looks like a small purple goblin with blue gemstones for

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Speaker 2: eyes and a red gemstone on its torso. In many renderings,

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Speaker 2: its sharp claws and teeth give it a hungry, bitey appearance.

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Speaker 2: We're told that they're cave dwellers and that they eat gemstones,

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Speaker 2: digging for them endlessly in the earth. They protect their

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Speaker 2: food source with sinister pranks, and in this, the creatures

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Speaker 2: are reminiscent of various real-world goblin, dwarf, and mine spirit traditions,

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Speaker 2: which we've discussed in the past on Stuff to Blow

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Speaker 2: Your Mind. Now, various Pokemon reference sites point to a

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Speaker 2: connection between Sableye and a 1955 alleged alien encounter in

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Speaker 2: Christian County, Kentucky. a case that received a great deal

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Speaker 2: of ufology media coverage in Japan over the decades. It

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Speaker 2: is the Hopkinsville Goblins. There are actually some great Japanese

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Speaker 2: children's book illustrations from the 70s of these creatures and

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Speaker 2: other cryptids, which I highly recommend looking up. The Hopkinsville

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Speaker 2: Goblins encounter itself is certainly dramatic stuff. So dramatic that

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Speaker 2: it apparently inspired an early script of what would eventually

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Speaker 2: become Steven Spielberg's E.T., Following a UFO sighting, a Kentucky

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Speaker 2: family is besieged in their home by multiple goblin-like creatures

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Speaker 2: with glowing eyes and large hands, floating up to the windows,

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Speaker 2: you know, that sort of thing. Colin Dickey writes about

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Speaker 2: the incident in the 2024 Atlas Obscura article, The Long

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Speaker 2: Surprising Legacy of the Hopkinsville Goblins, discussing, among other things,

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Speaker 2: the way that the creatures were said to appear at

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Speaker 2: the window screens of the family home. later roosting on

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Speaker 2: tree limbs and on the roof of a nearby house.

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Speaker 2: It's frightful stuff, and I don't want to discredit the

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Speaker 2: traumatic experience of the people involved, but most skeptics now

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Speaker 2: believe that the sightings were a pair of great horned owls,

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Speaker 2: their large eyes appearing to glow as they reflected lantern light,

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Speaker 2: their outstretched wings reading as oversized hands, and their silent

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Speaker 2: nocturnal flight, as is common in owls, contributing to the

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Speaker 2: feeling of something altogether otherworldly. If you've ever observed an

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Speaker 2: owl in flight, certainly at night, you have some idea

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Speaker 2: of what I'm talking about here. Now, certainly the people

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Speaker 2: who experienced the Hopkinsville goblins would not have been the

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Speaker 2: first to interpret owl sightings as something out of the ordinary.

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Speaker 2: Because throughout the world, the owl has long been associated

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Speaker 2: with spirits and gods, representing everything from evil and death

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Speaker 2: to divine wisdom. In many, many respects, the 20th century

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Speaker 2: experience of UFOs and extraterrestrials was, of course, a continuation

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Speaker 2: of these same sorts of encounters, interpretations, and ideas. The

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Speaker 2: great horned owl doesn't only look the part of a

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Speaker 2: fiendish goblin, it is a very impressive organism, it also

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Speaker 2: frequently smells the part as well. You see, while skunks

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Speaker 2: are able to keep many would-be predators away with their

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Speaker 2: potent stink, The great horned owl's weak sense of smell

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Speaker 2: makes it an excellent skunk killer, preying upon them with

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Speaker 2: a ferocity that dwarfs that of any other predator, and

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Speaker 2: certainly anything even thinking about preying on a skunk. As such,

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Speaker 2: the owls in their nests, which may be littered with

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Speaker 2: skunk remains, frequently carry a strong odor, and the birds

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Speaker 2: may even leave traces of the smell behind at kill

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Speaker 2: sites where they have preyed on some sort of animal

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Speaker 2: that they're hunting. Now, there's no indication that that Sableye,

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Speaker 2: the Pokemon, stinks. Certainly nothing like, let's see, Skuntank and Stunky.

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Speaker 2: Both are Pokemon based on the skunk. And then we

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Speaker 2: also have the owl-based Noctowl. I'm going to hold up...

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Speaker 2: I actually have the Pokemon card of this little guy

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Speaker 2: right here for our video viewers. Certainly resembles the Great

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Speaker 2: Horned Owl, and I think is likely based upon this

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Speaker 2: real-world organism. So always enjoy diving into the Pokedex here

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Speaker 2: and seeing what we have, because as I've mentioned before

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Speaker 2: on the show, like the designs of the various Pokemon,

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Speaker 2: they speak to so many different things in our natural world,

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Speaker 2: in our folkloric and mythological history. Then there's a lot

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Speaker 2: to admire in their interactions. Tune in for additional episodes

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Speaker 2: of the Monster Fact, the Artifact, or Atomalia Stupendium each week.

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Speaker 2: As always, you can email us at contact at stuff

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Speaker 2: to blow your mind dot com.

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio.

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