Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind? My name is Robert Man, and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And hey, it's still October here on the Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind podcast. So we're going to be talking
Speaker 1: about something weird. I mean, we often talk about things
Speaker 1: that are weird, but I guess we get even weirder
Speaker 1: this month. So, Rob today you picked out the topic
Speaker 1: of the cattle mutilation panic, which I think is going
Speaker 1: to tie into a very exciting weird house cinema movie
Speaker 1: that we're gonna be uh doing an episode on tomorrow.
Speaker 1: But this is something that I've been aware of my
Speaker 1: whole life, but never actually properly looked into. It was
Speaker 1: just kind of one of those things always in my
Speaker 1: peripheral vision. Yeah, somewhere out there, this is a topic
Speaker 1: people care about, but I don't know anything about it.
Speaker 1: And uh it actually, you know what, It's gotten more
Speaker 1: interesting the more I looked at it, not because it's
Speaker 1: aliens or a government conspiracy, but uh, I don't know
Speaker 1: the some of the smart takes you found about, like
Speaker 1: the sociological phenomenon. Yeah, I think it was pretty much
Speaker 1: in the same boat concerning this topic. I knew it
Speaker 1: was something that comes up in conspiracy circles and among
Speaker 1: UFO enthusiasts. I knew that it was the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that might pop up on say, an episode of
Speaker 1: The X Files here or there um, but I'd never
Speaker 1: really look closely at it. And and I do wanna Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do want to tell everybody out there. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: will be maybe a few little mentions of the grizzly
Speaker 1: details in this episode, but for the most part, the
Speaker 1: really interesting stuff about this is not what was allegedly
Speaker 1: done or not done to cattle, but yes, some of
Speaker 1: these other things surrounding it, such as, you know, the
Speaker 1: idea of cattle mutilation as a uh is a is
Speaker 1: a is a panic or a mild panic, as a
Speaker 1: as an idea, as a script for for some sort
Speaker 1: of unexplained event, or is a script into which one
Speaker 1: could poor ones anxieties and concerns, And so we're gonna
Speaker 1: be getting into a lot of that. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: think cattle mutilation is one of those topics that, despite
Speaker 1: all of its grotesque and outrageous properties, is easy to
Speaker 1: overlook and not to think about, especially for those of
Speaker 1: us living outside of the times, and this is generally
Speaker 1: like a mid uh, mid nineteen seventies kind of situation.
Speaker 1: We'll get into the dates in a bit. Also, if
Speaker 1: you if you live outside of the places where the
Speaker 1: phenomenon resonates the strongest, namely American cattle country and again
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen seventies, though of course, there are still
Speaker 1: people who say that the cattle mutilation phenomenon continues to
Speaker 1: this day, and it's kind of hard to know whether
Speaker 1: to argue with that or not, because as the what
Speaker 1: the social phenomenon, it does seem to have peaked very
Speaker 1: much in the seventies, But of course there are still
Speaker 1: like cattle carcasses that people find and sometimes they look strange,
Speaker 1: and sometimes people try to categorize those along with whatever
Speaker 1: was being discussed in this other phenomenon from the and
Speaker 1: these yeah, yeah, uh so it seems to be the
Speaker 1: case when you look at uphologists and conspiracy theory enthusiasts
Speaker 1: out there, it seems like maybe they're more often drawn
Speaker 1: into more human centric topics like UFO sightings, I saw something,
Speaker 1: this person saw something. Alien abductions, in which you have
Speaker 1: a personal testimony of of beings from the outside or
Speaker 1: stuff like jfk assassination theories and various modern trends and
Speaker 1: conspiracy circles. But yeah, I feel like for the rest
Speaker 1: of us outside of those circles, outside of the world
Speaker 1: of American cattle country in the mid seventies, it's easy
Speaker 1: to just dismiss cattle mutilation as to the realm of
Speaker 1: hoax and superstition without stopping to wonder like why it
Speaker 1: emerged as an idea, Like hoaxes and superstitions do not
Speaker 1: come about without, you know, some sort of reasoning, without
Speaker 1: some sort of of of cause, Like they're interesting effects,
Speaker 1: even in the creation of something that is objectively not true.
Speaker 1: Because as if the alleged mutilations were not the result
Speaker 1: of secret government experiments or alien visitations or the work
Speaker 1: of strange cryptids eating on cows in the night, then
Speaker 1: what were they the result of. If these are misinterpretations
Speaker 1: of actual physical evidence, then what is being misinterpreted, Why
Speaker 1: is it being misinterpreted, what is fueling the ensuing panic,
Speaker 1: and what does it mean? So these are some of
Speaker 1: the topics we're going to be exploring in this episode. Now,
Speaker 1: a couple of key sources that I'll be referring to
Speaker 1: in this episode, and and I think we're gonna throw
Speaker 1: a couple other things in there as well. But one
Speaker 1: is an excellent two thousand and eleven paper by Michael J.
Speaker 1: Goldman that was published in Agricultural History titled Wave of Mutilation,
Speaker 1: The Cattle Mutilation Phenomenon of the nineteen seventies. And another
Speaker 1: paper I was looking at, a paper titled Death by Folklore, Ostension,
Speaker 1: Contemporary Legend and Murder by Bill Ellis published in Western
Speaker 1: States Folklore Society. Now, I know we said we're not
Speaker 1: going to dwell more than we need to on the
Speaker 1: the specific grizzly details, though I guess we do need
Speaker 1: to begin by sort of describing what people are talking
Speaker 1: about when they talk about cattle mutilation. That's right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Goldman in his in his paper points out that among
Speaker 1: the ranchers that we are that are reporting these cases
Speaker 1: beginning in earnest, he says, during nineteen seventy three, and
Speaker 1: continuing through the end of the nineteen seventies, these are
Speaker 1: a few of the the details we can generally tick
Speaker 1: check off the list. First of all, the apparent removal
Speaker 1: of an animal's eyes, ears utters anus and sex organs. Uh.
Speaker 1: Not only removal, but reports that the parts are um
Speaker 1: are are surgically removed, or the cuts have surgical like precision,
Speaker 1: or that there was some sort of coring methodology to
Speaker 1: their removal. Something that that at least to the either
Speaker 1: to the eyes of the nous or in the retelling
Speaker 1: of the event, does not seem in keeping with with
Speaker 1: with the work of of say animals. Yeah, they lean
Speaker 1: on this kind of detail a lot. That the stories
Speaker 1: involve um injuries are alterations to livestock animal carcasses. Uh.
Speaker 1: That Uh, that would that are not understood as like
Speaker 1: the kind of ragged tearing one would expect to see
Speaker 1: if say, a predator had had attacked an animal carcass,
Speaker 1: but instead that they describe sort of clean cuts, surgical
Speaker 1: precision incisions, or excisions as if made by a sharp
Speaker 1: metal instrument. Yeah. And sometimes you also see it listed
Speaker 1: that there was an apparent absence of footprints or tire tracks,
Speaker 1: thus ruling out human interference. Also the apparent absence of
Speaker 1: usual scavenger species, uh, playing into the argument, well, and
Speaker 1: with the scavengers couldn't have done this, there's no sign
Speaker 1: of the scavengers. Another one of the claims I've seen
Speaker 1: emphasized pretty often by the the cattle mutologists is the
Speaker 1: idea that there was not a single drop of blood
Speaker 1: on the site. I watched one really stupid documentary about
Speaker 1: cattle mutilation that heavily leaned on the alleged lack of blood,
Speaker 1: both in the body and on the ground around the animal. Uh,
Speaker 1: sort of trying to emphasize the idea that it is
Speaker 1: impossible that, say, the soft tissue and the organs that
Speaker 1: you described earlier could have been removed as they were
Speaker 1: without spilling blood all over the place. So something is
Speaker 1: defying the laws of physics here. Yeah. Now, Additionally, in
Speaker 1: some cases, according to Goldman, and we'll get into some
Speaker 1: of this in the bed, there were also reports of
Speaker 1: aerial activity, um of aerial phenomena happening as well, uh,
Speaker 1: such as strange objects seen in the sky for days
Speaker 1: or weeks after the incident, or the sighting of unmarked
Speaker 1: or black helicopters hovering over areas near known mutilations. And
Speaker 1: those are common themes. But I would say it doesn't
Speaker 1: stop there actually, Uh, just that cattle mutilations are often
Speaker 1: paired with other weird observances that you know, might not
Speaker 1: be like those things at all, like it might be, Oh,
Speaker 1: there was a figure in a tree that had glowing
Speaker 1: yellow eyes and it was staring at me. Now at
Speaker 1: this point, regular listeners to stuff to blow your mind
Speaker 1: might realize, hey, this is very similar to what we
Speaker 1: just talked about in a couple of episodes on elf Shot.
Speaker 1: And indeed there is a lot of unexpected synchronicity between
Speaker 1: these topics. Uh. The idea, like one of the ideas
Speaker 1: I brought up was, you know, you you go out
Speaker 1: into the woods looking for star jelly, you will find
Speaker 1: star jelly. You know, if if your your your your
Speaker 1: curiosity is um is heightened, and your awareness is heightened
Speaker 1: for the uncanny or verse signs of the uncanny, you
Speaker 1: can probably find something that the mind will then interpret
Speaker 1: as as the uncanny. Right now, I guess from here,
Speaker 1: now that we've described what some of these reports are like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make a lot of sense to like quibble
Speaker 1: over how accurate the observational reports of these animal carcasses are,
Speaker 1: because probably in some cases they're not reported totally right,
Speaker 1: But we should just I think, except for the sake
Speaker 1: of argument, that basically there are cases in which some
Speaker 1: or many or even all of these details have been
Speaker 1: observed and and work from there. Right, like, assuming people
Speaker 1: did at least in some cases fine livestock carcasses that
Speaker 1: had these features. How to make sense of it? Now?
Speaker 1: Of course, some people are going to go to, well,
Speaker 1: it was aliens, or it's cryptids, it's the chipcabra, or
Speaker 1: it's some kind of weird government conspiracy. It's a cover up,
Speaker 1: they're doing biological weapons experiments, that the kind of things
Speaker 1: you already mentioned. Um, but what what would the skeptical
Speaker 1: side tend to come back on? Well, I mean, on
Speaker 1: one level, what we're talking about here, like the most
Speaker 1: logical path for understanding catle mutilation phenomenon or a cattle
Speaker 1: mutilation panic is that you're talking about misinterpretation of the dead.
Speaker 1: Um and this this is certainly with this would not
Speaker 1: be the first time in human history that such misinterpretations
Speaker 1: played into folklore and superstition. We've talked about various examples
Speaker 1: on the show before, for instance, the misinterpretation of drowned
Speaker 1: bodies and the Japanese Kappa tales to uh oh, the
Speaker 1: various misinterpretations of human decay that played into the vampire
Speaker 1: legends of Europe, like casts gets open to reveal blood
Speaker 1: bloated bodies supposedly, or fingernails that seem to have kept
Speaker 1: growing after death. That sort of thing. Yeah, which are
Speaker 1: actually just normal ways that a corpus might appear due
Speaker 1: to the physical process of decomposition. But people not understanding
Speaker 1: really what they were looking at that like, a swollen
Speaker 1: corpse would be swollen because of it's it's decomposition state,
Speaker 1: not because it has recently engorged itself on a meal
Speaker 1: of blood. Right, but how often are you opening up caskets.
Speaker 1: You're probably only opening up caskets of suspected vampires. So
Speaker 1: and then when you open them up, this is what
Speaker 1: you see, You've you probably don't have a lot to
Speaker 1: compare it to. And therefore the super natural provides a
Speaker 1: script by which to understand, uh, the the the strange,
Speaker 1: and the uncanny. Robbie just threw the comparison to our
Speaker 1: elf shot episodes. But I also think of the story
Speaker 1: of the farmer who has a calf dropped dead and
Speaker 1: then opens up the body and finds that it has
Speaker 1: a hole in its heart or so, so the farmer thinks,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not said in that story, how much
Speaker 1: experience the farmer had looking at calf hearts. I mean
Speaker 1: maybe they had a lot, maybe they had none. I
Speaker 1: don't know. But in any case, this is interpreted as
Speaker 1: a fairy weapon because what else could explain it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now this is probably good at time as any to
Speaker 1: remind everybody when when we when we talk about um
Speaker 1: phenomena like this, situations where they're they're they're very well,
Speaker 1: maybe some sort of a moral panic or public panic
Speaker 1: in place, and there's some sort of a uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a paranormal angle. Uh. You know, it doesn't mean by
Speaker 1: any by any stretch of the imagination that you have
Speaker 1: just like dumb individuals falling for something that that you
Speaker 1: know that this is just like stupid people making a
Speaker 1: stupid mistake. Uh, It's it's a lot more complicated than that,
Speaker 1: you know. And once you're you're you're in the middle
Speaker 1: of of one of these situations, uh, you know, you
Speaker 1: have you have various forces kind of steering your mind
Speaker 1: towards the supernatural script and then the interpretation of reality
Speaker 1: through that script. So I want to drive that home
Speaker 1: because and and also it ultimately builds up from there
Speaker 1: because one of the things that Goldman points out is
Speaker 1: that ultimately multiple local and state law enforcement agencies open
Speaker 1: investigations into cattle mutilation. This includes the cb I, the
Speaker 1: Minnesota field office of the a t F, as well
Speaker 1: as federally funded investigations directed by the Northern New Mexico
Speaker 1: d d a's office. You had senators and congressmen raising
Speaker 1: questions about the phenomenon, and Canadian reports were investigated by
Speaker 1: the Mounties. So um, so yeah, we we we have
Speaker 1: to be careful looking back at this, uh these events
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies. Uh, um, with knowing what we
Speaker 1: know now well and also being humble about what we
Speaker 1: know now because while I think we can offer some
Speaker 1: some very reasonable guesses that would explain many of these cases,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's totally possible that there are some cases,
Speaker 1: some reports of cattle mutilation phenomenon that in fact we
Speaker 1: have no idea what the explanation is. That doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you have warrant to jump to conclusions of aliens or
Speaker 1: government conspiracies or whatever. But you know, we should be
Speaker 1: humble about our you know, the limits of our ability
Speaker 1: to explain things. Sometimes the cases are just underdetermined. We
Speaker 1: don't have enough evidence. We don't know what happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and of course I think today's audience certainly realizes the
Speaker 1: role of the media can play in UM in presenting
Speaker 1: like conspiracy ideas and um in even paranormal ideas about
Speaker 1: what's going on in the world. And Yeah, at the time,
Speaker 1: Goldman points out, it wasn't just fringe conspiracy reporting that
Speaker 1: was fueling this um yet, even though cattle mutilation is
Speaker 1: largely the domain of of these groups today. But at
Speaker 1: the time, the Associated Press and Newsweek both covered cattle
Speaker 1: mutilation phenomena. There there was even a regional Emmy Award
Speaker 1: winning documentary in Night Uh, So you had that going
Speaker 1: on as well to to fuel uh the paranoia. So
Speaker 1: but while aliens and UFOs and ultimately I think cryptids
Speaker 1: would play a part in the various interpretations and stories
Speaker 1: about supposed cattle mutilations, the most pervasive version of the
Speaker 1: cattle mutilation script during the nineteen seventies, the most pervasive
Speaker 1: version that was being reported, reported to the media and
Speaker 1: so forth, was that of a conspiracy theory concerning the
Speaker 1: US government. And this is one of Goldman's key points
Speaker 1: in his writings because while it's easy to dismiss cattle
Speaker 1: mutilation is being just a part of the larger UFO
Speaker 1: hysteria gripping the country at the time. Quote, it reveals
Speaker 1: much about the socio economic condition of Midwestern ranchers. It
Speaker 1: demonstrates the volatility of the cattle industry during the nineties
Speaker 1: seventies and a growing distrust of the federal government among
Speaker 1: many small scale ranchers who had limited holdings, worked their
Speaker 1: ranch part time or relied on public land used to
Speaker 1: sustain their cattle. I think Goldman makes a great point
Speaker 1: that during the seventies especially, there were multiple factors sort
Speaker 1: of working together at the same time, a sort of
Speaker 1: disembodied conspiracy working to really, uh put the pressure on
Speaker 1: on Western ranchers in the US. Yeah, especially the smaller
Speaker 1: scale ranchers, which is something he touches on again and again.
Speaker 1: The bigger ranchers they were not reporting these incidents, and
Speaker 1: they were they seemed largely skeptical of these reports. It
Speaker 1: was the smaller scale ranchers that that were reporting these Now,
Speaker 1: this period economically is often reported referred to as the
Speaker 1: Great Stagflation, a time to find by high inflation, high unemployment,
Speaker 1: and economic stagnation and heap onto that high food prices,
Speaker 1: a global food shortage, and UH and so forth. Goldman
Speaker 1: provides a great deal more insight on the economic and
Speaker 1: policy details here, but one of the key details concerns
Speaker 1: what's known in um in in the cattle business and
Speaker 1: UH agricultural history of the time as and also in
Speaker 1: the reporting of the time as the wreck in three now. Again,
Speaker 1: this is just the brief version. Goldman goes into a
Speaker 1: lot more detail, but basically, President Nixon institutes a ninety
Speaker 1: day price freeze on certain meats to halt inflation. Then
Speaker 1: the freeze is lifted on everything except cattle. So cattle
Speaker 1: ranchers they hold off on slaughtering their cattle till the
Speaker 1: freeze lifts. They know the freeze is gonna lift, so
Speaker 1: why why slaughter and cell now when they can wait
Speaker 1: until the prices go back up. But this ends up
Speaker 1: impacting the meat packing industry, putting people out of jobs,
Speaker 1: and this results also in a nationwide beef shortage. I
Speaker 1: think Goldman also makes the point that the ranchers were
Speaker 1: sort of in a bind because so there was a
Speaker 1: temporary freeze on the price of beef, but there was
Speaker 1: but Meanwhile, inflation was still affecting, say, the price of
Speaker 1: the grains that they would be using for feed and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, so they weren't completely insulated
Speaker 1: from from everything either. They were still filling the you know,
Speaker 1: the tough socio economic pressure as well. So Goldman argues
Speaker 1: that the distrust ranchers held towards the federal government during
Speaker 1: this time, coupled with the turbulent economic conditions and government
Speaker 1: interference in the cattle industry, fed and helped sustained cattle
Speaker 1: mutilation phenomena. The script of cattle mutilation gave them a
Speaker 1: means of understanding certain cattle deaths, but also a way
Speaker 1: to project their fears and insecurities into this uh conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Goldman also links this atmosphere of hostility to the sage
Speaker 1: Brush Rebellion, in which Western state lawmakers attempted to reclaim
Speaker 1: federally protected public land for ranchers and miners, and the
Speaker 1: libertarian movement of the sixties and seventies, and and also
Speaker 1: hostility towards nineteen seventies environmental regulations that had come online. So,
Speaker 1: if I'm understanding Goldman's interpretation right, and and if he's correct,
Speaker 1: what he's saying is that they're essentially were all these
Speaker 1: real conditions that were making life very hard for for
Speaker 1: ranchers in the seventies, and some of those real conditions
Speaker 1: at least were perceived to be due to to to
Speaker 1: government influence. And then you pair that with Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe you have some random cattle die offs that are
Speaker 1: due to a number of different causes, perhaps and you
Speaker 1: sort of project this, this frustration and this unease onto
Speaker 1: the deaths of those cattle, and imagine that the deaths
Speaker 1: of the cattle is actually caused by the government, like
Speaker 1: directly in a violent way. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, again, an
Speaker 1: anxious situation, very tense, especially among these smaller scale ranches,
Speaker 1: and you already have a a very low opinion of
Speaker 1: the government, of the federal government at the time, and
Speaker 1: then cattle mutilation provides a means of unleashing all of
Speaker 1: these feelings onto an even more diabolical vision of the
Speaker 1: US federal government, one that isn't just restricting your freedoms
Speaker 1: or hurting your livelihood, but who is actively and physically
Speaker 1: visiting your livestock and mutilating them with bizarre methods for
Speaker 1: unfathomable ends. So the you know, in this strip, the
Speaker 1: agents of the government become virtually identical to imagine, which is,
Speaker 1: and wizards at black masses, you know, engaging in bloody
Speaker 1: acts to a dark forces, and the dead body of
Speaker 1: the cow becomes a kind of physical evidence to back
Speaker 1: up one's view of of the federal government. So Goldman
Speaker 1: explains that in seventy three, in the aftermath of the wreck,
Speaker 1: ranchers in Kansas and Nebraska began to report cattle mutilations,
Speaker 1: and some also reported strange lights in the sky. And
Speaker 1: the way Goldman describes it, uphologists are UFO enthusiasts, were
Speaker 1: We're quick to jump in and offer their favorite explanation
Speaker 1: for the lights especially, but also the mutilations. And apparently
Speaker 1: some ranchers described what they saw in those terms, but
Speaker 1: others were more vague about it. They might say, well,
Speaker 1: there's a big ball of fire in the sky. But
Speaker 1: Goldman rights that quote. Many more reported seeing strange, unmarked helicopters.
Speaker 1: So again, for the most part, it doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: like the individuals that were reporting these in the seventies
Speaker 1: we're talking about UFOs, most of them were drawing in
Speaker 1: these ideas that some sort of strange helicopters were seen nearby, Uh,
Speaker 1: strange helicopters that might well be the work of the government. Now,
Speaker 1: there were other initial explanations for the helicopters. There was talk, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it's cattle wrestlers. But then, you know, why would
Speaker 1: cattle wrestlers kill a cow and only take like the
Speaker 1: eyeballs and the other strange parts. Um. You know. Then
Speaker 1: there was also the idea that was some sort of
Speaker 1: military operation based out of Fort Riley in Kansas, or
Speaker 1: that it was indeed the work of some government secret
Speaker 1: government agency, and the mutation the mutilations were the result
Speaker 1: of some sort of biological weapons test program. And these
Speaker 1: ultimately become the more um widely circulated ideas. And I
Speaker 1: think it is totally worth noting that while I think
Speaker 1: you and I agree that government conspiracies do not seem
Speaker 1: like a very good explanation for the alleged cattle mutilation phenomenon,
Speaker 1: they're actually almost certainly were some government conspiracies at least
Speaker 1: one we know of that did lead to dead livestock
Speaker 1: in the years just before this, uh, the the so
Speaker 1: called doug Way sheep incident or the doug Way Sheep massacre. Uh,
Speaker 1: though I think there's some very important differences I want
Speaker 1: to mention, But like that that does appear, I think
Speaker 1: due to some document disclosures now to be pretty clearly
Speaker 1: the fault of some government weapons testing. Yeah, this was
Speaker 1: night the doug Way sheep incident, in which I think
Speaker 1: Goldman sites hundred sheep, but I've seen I've seen six
Speaker 1: thousand sided elsewhere, so I'm gonna go with gold It
Speaker 1: on this one. But perhaps the number has shifted. Um.
Speaker 1: At any rate, that's a lot of sheep. Thousands of
Speaker 1: sheep were killed on ranches near the U. S. Armies
Speaker 1: dug Way proven Ground in Utah, and accusations were made
Speaker 1: at the time against the army, saying, you guys did this,
Speaker 1: You did something with your weapons tests and you killed
Speaker 1: all these sheep, and the Army said, no, no, that's
Speaker 1: not true, we didn't do that. And then these incidents
Speaker 1: were revealed to have been caused by tests apparently of
Speaker 1: the nerve agent VX. So Goldman quote points out that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Dugway sheep incident could have also contributed to the
Speaker 1: cattle mutilation script involving you know, clandestine US military testing
Speaker 1: and certainly made it seemed more possible, uh, like like
Speaker 1: here's this other incident, Like you can't argue with all
Speaker 1: the thousands of dead sheep, we think the government had
Speaker 1: something to do with that. So perhaps it's also they
Speaker 1: also had something to do with this cow that was
Speaker 1: found on your land, or that this cow that was
Speaker 1: found on a neighbor's ranch. Though I think there are
Speaker 1: some very important differences, one of which being that I
Speaker 1: think in the Dugway incident, there was some there was
Speaker 1: some additional evidence to confirm that the government testing of
Speaker 1: nerve agents intended as weapons had possibly been involved, Like
Speaker 1: like there were some lab tests that that showed the
Speaker 1: presence of VX and some of these sheep. Am I
Speaker 1: right about that? Yeah, that's my understanding that there were
Speaker 1: clear signs that a nerve agent of some sort have
Speaker 1: been used. Uh. And there were, of course no signs
Speaker 1: of mutilation. These were just sheep. They were uh, they
Speaker 1: were dying or dead and all of a sudden. The
Speaker 1: other thing I would say is that while I think
Speaker 1: it's always important to be modest about trying to uh
Speaker 1: to reason out, how you know, reason out what would
Speaker 1: have made sense to happen, because sometimes they're just situations
Speaker 1: where you know, you don't know why something would have happened.
Speaker 1: But but given that caveat, the alleged chain of events
Speaker 1: that happened to Dugway makes sense. So this is a
Speaker 1: weapons testing grounds. Uh, they're testing secret weapons programs. They're
Speaker 1: testing nerve gas. There's a malfunction. It releases gas into
Speaker 1: a ranch populated area nearby and poisons and kills a
Speaker 1: bunch of sheep and I think also possibly affected some
Speaker 1: humans living there as well. And while this could just
Speaker 1: be a failure of imagination, again to be humble about that,
Speaker 1: I have a hard time coming up with an equally
Speaker 1: logical chain of events leading to a government conspiracy to
Speaker 1: mutilate random cows and horses on people's ranch land and
Speaker 1: then cover it up. Like if men in secret black
Speaker 1: helicopters needed cow organs, this is often what is supposed that, Like,
Speaker 1: they're doing biological experiments and they need cow organs for them. Uh,
Speaker 1: it seems like a really weird choice to source them
Speaker 1: by attacking other people's privately owned cattle herds in the
Speaker 1: night and trying to keep it a secret. Like again,
Speaker 1: you can't say that's impossible, but I'm just trying to
Speaker 1: think why they would go that route instead of just
Speaker 1: like buying or raising their own stocks of cattle to
Speaker 1: run the tests. Yeah, especially since the testing question are
Speaker 1: supposed to be secret. You know, Um, how are you
Speaker 1: going to maintain secrecy by by by conducting your experiments
Speaker 1: on on on the land of of others and then
Speaker 1: running away from and just leaving all the evidence there?
Speaker 1: I mean, running a secret helicopter operation. That's got to
Speaker 1: actually be expensive. It's hard for I'm not an expert
Speaker 1: on the you know, agricultural pricing, but I would think
Speaker 1: you could actually get the cows cheaper than like running
Speaker 1: a helicopter program. This is going to be mostly a discussion,
Speaker 1: will say, for this week's Weird House, but I feel
Speaker 1: like the Alan Rudolph film Endangered Species, uh, which is
Speaker 1: not the main film we're gonna be talking about this Friday,
Speaker 1: but it is a cattle mutilation film that involved It
Speaker 1: takes the conspiracy thriller route and has a government conspiracy
Speaker 1: at the heart of things. This movie probably does as
Speaker 1: logical and a good job as you could possibly do
Speaker 1: to to to bring that to life on the screen
Speaker 1: and make it feel like it makes and in a
Speaker 1: big part of how Rudolph pulls it off and the
Speaker 1: screenwriters pull it off is by not filling in those blanks,
Speaker 1: by keeping the mystery there. Like you see government researchers
Speaker 1: doing this, collecting cattle and talking about it, and they're
Speaker 1: just kind of like talking shop, like why should we
Speaker 1: go out and get one more before we have to
Speaker 1: clear out of here for secret reasons, And they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll do it, and you buy into it because it's
Speaker 1: well constructed and well presented on the screen, But they
Speaker 1: don't actually explain. They don't they know better than to
Speaker 1: try to explain why they would be doing this at
Speaker 1: any rate. Is um as Goldman points out, like this
Speaker 1: does seem to create a genuine feeling of fear and
Speaker 1: disquiet in these regions about cattle mutilations. It's not just
Speaker 1: again there's a lot of tension, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: anxiety already about the socio economic conditions. Then this is
Speaker 1: occurring there. People were thought telling tales about this, and
Speaker 1: it's not just like casual like like oh here you
Speaker 1: have the media, come over, I'm gonna tell owned by
Speaker 1: this cow. I think it was alien, so I think
Speaker 1: it was a conspiracy you know, people were apparently concerned,
Speaker 1: and it led to the actual formation of vigil anti
Speaker 1: groups who were checking out of state vehicles for signs
Speaker 1: of cattle blood. Um. There were reports of encounters with
Speaker 1: strange helicopters that were spreading around, So you had some
Speaker 1: some unfortunate and dangerous incidents, like in Nebraska, a farmer
Speaker 1: apparently shot at a utility helicopter and the Nebraska National
Speaker 1: Guard had to ask all schoppers to start flying at
Speaker 1: a higher altitude for a while. There was another case
Speaker 1: with a rancher firing and a military chopper. So at
Speaker 1: a state level, officials were worried that someone might get
Speaker 1: hurt over this. Like it wasn't just there's some superstition
Speaker 1: out there, but like it's it's leading to some potentially
Speaker 1: dangerous situations. And on top of this, like the ranchers
Speaker 1: are still saying, yes, something terrible is happening here, something
Speaker 1: strange is happening here, cash rewards are being offered, and
Speaker 1: also and ultimately official in the investigations are opened into
Speaker 1: the matter. But when do we get to the Satanic cults? Oh,
Speaker 1: now we get to the Satanic cults, because yeah, one
Speaker 1: of the investigations that's opened. This is seventy five, so
Speaker 1: this is this is pretty much the peak. According to Goldman,
Speaker 1: you have the Minnesota a t f U, that's the
Speaker 1: alcohol to back in firearms opening investigation, which led to
Speaker 1: satanic biker gangs or as um as Goldman quotes them,
Speaker 1: is saying hell oriented biker gangs hell oriented. Yeah. Uh
Speaker 1: And according to Goldman, this comes about because the lead
Speaker 1: investigator ends up talking to a convicted bank robber and
Speaker 1: that bank robber insists that bikers hell oriented bikers are
Speaker 1: the ones running around mutilating cows. Uh So yeah, at
Speaker 1: this point the devil and his bikers are involved. But
Speaker 1: of course, within the confines of an actual investigation, this
Speaker 1: leads nowhere because because this was not actually happening, they
Speaker 1: apparently did turn up some evidence on illegal motorcycle gang activities,
Speaker 1: illegal motorcycle club activities in the region, but nothing that
Speaker 1: connected to cattle mutilations. So the case was closed. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it probably was not satanic biker gangs, right, I
Speaker 1: think we can rule that out. But then the Colorado
Speaker 1: Bureau of Investigation gets involved. Also in seventy five, a
Speaker 1: nineteen month investigation with Carl Whiteside looking at more than
Speaker 1: two hundred reported mutilations in the cropsies of nineteen carcasses.
Speaker 1: I think they were going to try and do more,
Speaker 1: but ended up being nineteen um Eleven of these cases
Speaker 1: were ruled to have possibly had cuts made by a
Speaker 1: sharp object or or instrument post mortem, but all signs
Speaker 1: still pointed to natural causes of death. The cb I
Speaker 1: posted a forty dollar reward for information on cattle mutilations.
Speaker 1: They even set up a witness protection program for anyone
Speaker 1: who would come forward with information, but no one came forward.
Speaker 1: The case was closed due to lack of apparent criminal
Speaker 1: activity and due to the fact that reports of cattle
Speaker 1: mutilations began to drop off on their own by mid
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six. Now, during that CBI investigation, apparently Whiteside
Speaker 1: asked the FBI for assistance, which was denied, apparently due
Speaker 1: to lack of evidence. But of course the FBI's refusal
Speaker 1: to investigate played right into the hands of conspiracy theorists
Speaker 1: who are like, well, yeah, of course the FEDS aren't
Speaker 1: going to look into it. It's the FEDS doing it right, right.
Speaker 1: I Mean, one of the things about the conspiracy mindset
Speaker 1: is it can accommodate anything. So if the FBI does investigate,
Speaker 1: that's validation. If they don't investigate, that's also validation. Right.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Camp Cornea Goldman seventy five was the peak
Speaker 1: for reported cattle mutilations. He writes that actual numbers of
Speaker 1: reported cases are spotty, but some of the reported numbers
Speaker 1: break down as follows. So there's like a hundred mutilations
Speaker 1: in Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa between May seventy three and
Speaker 1: September seventy four, twenty two mutilations in Minnesota between nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy and nineteen seventy four, and Colorado reports were high,
Speaker 1: but also they fluctuated somewhat, So depending on apparently which
Speaker 1: source you're looking at, could be as few as fifty
Speaker 1: or as many as two hundred. It's interesting those numbers
Speaker 1: are different than generalizations I know I've seen in the
Speaker 1: more like fringe leaning cattle mutilation sources which say that
Speaker 1: you know, there are thousands and thousands of incidents. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think, as we'll discuss um, even that might
Speaker 1: might not not be as impressive a number as we think. Um.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Yeah, here here are the hard facts that
Speaker 1: all evidence suggests that that these apparent mutilations were not
Speaker 1: due to any of these um outrageous or otherworldly or
Speaker 1: conspiracy minded um causes. They were in all likelihood due
Speaker 1: to scavenger activity, with the possibility that there may have
Speaker 1: been some human involvement in a few instances. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and as for the cause of death, which again in
Speaker 1: the cases where we had actual necropsies, uh, they seem
Speaker 1: to all be natural causes. Goldman does drive the cattle
Speaker 1: death is just a way of life, obviously generally caused
Speaker 1: by diseases such as black leg, which apparently is a
Speaker 1: common cattle disease all lightning strikes. Sorry black leg came
Speaker 1: up in the elf shot episode because that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were asking the in one of those reports, asking
Speaker 1: the farmer whether the calf could have fallen ill, because
Speaker 1: apparently with black leg also known as quarter ill, which
Speaker 1: again is an infection caused by Clostridium bacteria, that often
Speaker 1: an animal can seem healthy and then drop dead very rapidly.
Speaker 1: It can be extremely sudden. Yeah, lightning strikes or another one.
Speaker 1: And lightning strikes apparently can they can leave quite perplexing
Speaker 1: injuries on the on a dead cow or horse, also
Speaker 1: gastro intestinal problems due to consuming nails, barbed wire, et cetera. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, whilst grazing. But here's a Here are some
Speaker 1: numbers from Goldman and I think are pretty interesting. Quote
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy four, again this is the this is
Speaker 1: right around the peak, you know, right before the peak.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy four, the U s d A estimated
Speaker 1: that six point one million cattle deaths had occurred over
Speaker 1: the course of the year, which equates to only four
Speaker 1: point five percent of the overall cattle population of one
Speaker 1: thirty one point eight million head. And this number, he adds,
Speaker 1: was actually down from seventy three spike a six point
Speaker 1: five million deaths. So Goldman contends that finding a dead
Speaker 1: cow was nothing that unusual, and certainly ranchers would be
Speaker 1: used to it. But but the thing is when there's
Speaker 1: some other reason to be suspicious, if there's some other
Speaker 1: possible idea that's introduced, that is backed up by media
Speaker 1: circulation and so forth, then things can become different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And of course the people who would say, well, know,
Speaker 1: cattle mutilation, there is something actually weird going on, they
Speaker 1: would come back to that stuff we talked about before,
Speaker 1: like the their claims about the characteristic features of the
Speaker 1: injuries to these cow carcasses that they would say could
Speaker 1: not be the result of natural predators or scavengers, right,
Speaker 1: and that yeah, that and that's it's unfortunate that you
Speaker 1: still see that reporting where where they will say, well,
Speaker 1: this couldn't be animals doing this. What predator would would
Speaker 1: leave all the good meat? What predator would only eat
Speaker 1: these strange fleshes. But that's the thing, Uh, we can
Speaker 1: we can pretty much agree that this is the work
Speaker 1: of scavengers. Um. The frequently cited missing bits in the
Speaker 1: cattle mutilation are exactly the sorts of flesh that scavengers
Speaker 1: like coyotes, foxes, vultures, magpies, bobcats, badgers and flies would
Speaker 1: go for. This is the soft tissue. And I think
Speaker 1: we've discussed this very situation before in reference to crabs
Speaker 1: on the show. There's also the argument, well, scavengers can't
Speaker 1: be that precise with their cuts, but I think is
Speaker 1: it we'll discuss that again in a little bit here,
Speaker 1: but um, but also I think it's it's fair to
Speaker 1: say that scavengers can can probably be more precise than
Speaker 1: you think, especially if they're removing the soft flesh from region.
Speaker 1: And then there's also the argument while there was no blood.
Speaker 1: While the lack of blood it was apparently often due
Speaker 1: to the post mortem coagulation of blood in the lower
Speaker 1: regions of the animals. So again, the animals died of
Speaker 1: some of their cause. It's not been killed by a predator.
Speaker 1: It dies, it falls over, the blood coagulates in the
Speaker 1: lower regions, drains and coagulates, and then the scavenger arrives. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The blood phenomenon also known as liver mortis l I
Speaker 1: v o R. Another potential source of strange looking injuries
Speaker 1: on an animal cadaver. That that I was reading about
Speaker 1: decomposition itself. Decomposition of an animal body by insects and
Speaker 1: by micro organisms does not always look the way you
Speaker 1: would expect it to, and it can produce some very
Speaker 1: weird and creepy looking details. For example, I was reading
Speaker 1: in the Skeptics Dictionary by Robert Todd Carroll an account
Speaker 1: of an experiment carried out by the Sheriff's Department of
Speaker 1: Washington County, Arkansas. I think this was in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: in which a cal carcass was left out in a
Speaker 1: field and observed for forty eight hours just to see
Speaker 1: what the natural course of decomposition looked like. And Carol
Speaker 1: writes that you know what, They found that blowflies and
Speaker 1: maggots cleaned out portions of soft tissues sometimes said to
Speaker 1: be missing from cases classified as cattle mutilation. And also
Speaker 1: I found this maybe the most interesting part quote bloating
Speaker 1: lead to incision like tears in the skin. So a
Speaker 1: lot of the belief that it must be aliens or
Speaker 1: it must be a government conspiracy leans heavily on the
Speaker 1: cuts that resemble clean incisions or excisions rather than ragged tearing.
Speaker 1: But it seems like there are cases where just regular
Speaker 1: decomposition can lead to what looked like very clean splits
Speaker 1: or cuts in the hide. Yeah. This, uh, this study
Speaker 1: is one that I believe Goldman Niches as well, conducted
Speaker 1: by anthropologist Nancy Owen Um funded about the University of
Speaker 1: Arkansas using lethally tranquilized but already dying cows or already
Speaker 1: dying cow and they found that the resulting scavenger wounds
Speaker 1: matched up closely with reported um cattle mutilation quote surgical
Speaker 1: cuts after thirty hours of exposure. Okay, So it seems
Speaker 1: likely to us at least that many of the animals
Speaker 1: reported as part of the cattle mutilation phenomenon probably had
Speaker 1: injuries as a result of scavengers or as a result
Speaker 1: of decomposition, but probably also some of them were actually
Speaker 1: just cases where like a human person went out and
Speaker 1: tampered with a cow carcass. Yeah, especially once the script
Speaker 1: is is is it full power once the idea is
Speaker 1: out there? So yeah, you do have again a few
Speaker 1: cases of suspected human activity, and these were thought to
Speaker 1: be poor post mortem wounds, so again that the animal
Speaker 1: had died of some of their cause and then humans
Speaker 1: came and messed with the with the body. And when
Speaker 1: you get into the reason for this, well, I think
Speaker 1: we'll get into that question a bit more and a
Speaker 1: bit here. But um, at the time, one mode of
Speaker 1: trot it out for these quote unquote rural vandals by
Speaker 1: some local agencies was good old fashioned cult activity. So yeah,
Speaker 1: this again we're kind of slapped up in the middle
Speaker 1: of Satanic panic here. Uh So, I guess it unfortunately
Speaker 1: makes sense that Satanic colts would be uh fingered in
Speaker 1: all of this, So sort of like they were with
Speaker 1: the biker scenario, so right, but not satanic bikers, just
Speaker 1: your average running the mills satanic farm teenagers. Right And
Speaker 1: according to Goldman, Iowa's Department of Criminal Activity at the
Speaker 1: time claimed to have found evidence connecting some of the
Speaker 1: mutilations to Satanic activity, but no arrests were ever made,
Speaker 1: and at any rate, the cases with suspected human involvement
Speaker 1: were very low compared to the overall reported rate of mutilations.
Speaker 1: Given the general credulity about satanic cult phenomenon at the time,
Speaker 1: I would be doubtful of that connection, right, but will
Speaker 1: come back to this in a it. But essentially what
Speaker 1: ends up happening, though, again is the rate drops on
Speaker 1: its own. Uh. And investigations are less about let's find
Speaker 1: these people before they strike again, or let's stop these
Speaker 1: aliens or whatever, let's find out what's happening, but instead
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what happened. Why Why were there
Speaker 1: so many reports of cattle mutilations, and again mostly by
Speaker 1: small scale ranchers blaming the federal government. Uh so you
Speaker 1: had various surveys take place. Um. Former FBI agent Kenneth
Speaker 1: Rommel investigated on behalf of the d a's office in
Speaker 1: New Mexico, and he I think offered a very logical
Speaker 1: sounding uh analysis of everything, blaming it on the power
Speaker 1: of suggestion, media sensation, as well as irresponsible local law
Speaker 1: enforcement officials. So basically, according to Rommel, you you'd have
Speaker 1: this script already out there in the world and and uh,
Speaker 1: then you'd have sensationalization by the media. And then comes
Speaker 1: a local law enforcement officer into to uh to who
Speaker 1: respond to your report of a cattle death, an officer
Speaker 1: who probably didn't have experience with bovine deaths of goldman ads,
Speaker 1: and who would then suggest the cattle mutilation script and
Speaker 1: not necessarily simply coming out and saying, well, that looks
Speaker 1: mighty strange. I reckon it was aliens, but even by
Speaker 1: more casually just mentioning some of the sort of the
Speaker 1: keywords of the script, like saying like like remarking that
Speaker 1: the wounds look surgical, or remarking that that the wounds
Speaker 1: look like cuts, and the mind can just fill in
Speaker 1: the rest, was Rammel's argument. And the results of this then,
Speaker 1: as this gets passed up the chain, the media catches
Speaker 1: wind of it, and the so the results feed the
Speaker 1: media coverage and the mild mass hysteria, as Goldman describes it, continues. Now,
Speaker 1: of course we know conspiracy mindset can accommodate anything. So
Speaker 1: if you have somebody investigated and find there's nothing to it,
Speaker 1: well that that confirms it because they're part of the conspiracy,
Speaker 1: right right, And yeah, So detractors argue that ramel With
Speaker 1: clearly part of a conspiracy, especially with his FBI background. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's another investigation that the Goldman mentions, a private investigation
Speaker 1: by Daniel Kagan and Ian Summers. Uh and these backed
Speaker 1: up most of Rama's findings as they conducted interviews across
Speaker 1: the country and learn linked the reports to a loss
Speaker 1: of faith in American institutions. Uh, so, belief in the
Speaker 1: bizarre fueled by disillusionment. So Goldman spends a lot more
Speaker 1: time making this case. And again, I think this paper
Speaker 1: is worth checking out if you're really interested in the
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts of it. Again, the wreck and the
Speaker 1: cattle industry peaks in seventy five and falls away after that,
Speaker 1: which matches up with the rise and fall of reported mutilations,
Speaker 1: with small ranches hit the hardest by the wreck being
Speaker 1: the main source of the reports. While larger ranchers remain
Speaker 1: skeptical of the whole deal than you know. To echo
Speaker 1: an idea that I think you already started to raise here,
Speaker 1: it seems to me that perhaps a major source of
Speaker 1: confusion is the very creation of this category known as
Speaker 1: cattle mutilations, into which many, uh literally different incidents with
Speaker 1: probably different causes can all be kind of sorted together.
Speaker 1: And then once you have them all in the same
Speaker 1: conceptual bucket, people naturally tend to assume they therefore must
Speaker 1: all share a single explanation. So if you say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I'm looking at this case of alleged
Speaker 1: cattle mutilation, and this could probably just be a result
Speaker 1: of natural predation or an animal dying of natural causes
Speaker 1: and then being attacked by a scavenger, And then of
Speaker 1: course someone could say, well, but that couldn't explain the
Speaker 1: weird features of this other cattle mutilation case. And then
Speaker 1: you could say, well, that could be just a product
Speaker 1: of the normal features of decomposition of an animal body.
Speaker 1: And they could say, well, but decomposition couldn't explain this
Speaker 1: and this these other cases, and you could say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe in that case a person just mutilated a cow,
Speaker 1: like for some reason, some person did that, and then
Speaker 1: they say, but a person couldn't have done what we
Speaker 1: saw in this other case. So the problem would be
Speaker 1: you were assuming these are all cattle mutilation phenomenon, which
Speaker 1: mentally makes them all the same thing, which makes you
Speaker 1: assume they must all have the same cause. And because
Speaker 1: there's no one explanation that fits all of them, therefore
Speaker 1: there's no way to explain the phenomenon. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think this might this This is interesting because I think
Speaker 1: it's also could help explain why, despite government conspiracies and
Speaker 1: government tests and black helicopters being the primary detail of
Speaker 1: the script UH in the nineties seventies, why it seems
Speaker 1: to have drifted more towards the alien UH explanation in
Speaker 1: like modern conspiracy treatment of it. Because yeah, if you
Speaker 1: if you start saying again like you were saying, well,
Speaker 1: if it can't if you can't be a person here,
Speaker 1: but it, but it, you know, maybe could be here,
Speaker 1: Like you eventually reach a point where the idea that
Speaker 1: it's government agents doesn't even fit anymore. You have to
Speaker 1: go entirely into the unseen world. You have to go
Speaker 1: entirely into the realm of either elves or aliens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think the the impulse to say, well, it
Speaker 1: has to be aliens really arises from the ones where, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the details people describe in the reports seem
Speaker 1: to defy the laws of physics at least as you know, understood,
Speaker 1: Like so the ones where they say, like there was
Speaker 1: not a single drop of blood on the ground. I
Speaker 1: don't know what to make of those cases. I don't
Speaker 1: think it. I don't think you're justified in jumping yet
Speaker 1: to it must be aliens. I think it's more likely
Speaker 1: to say, maybe there's something you don't quite understand about
Speaker 1: the way this scene is reported, or how exactly the
Speaker 1: decomposition of an animal works, And that seems more likely
Speaker 1: to me. But who knows, you know, I'm not all knowing.
Speaker 1: But uh, anyway, to come back to my summary thoughts
Speaker 1: on this, I personally think it makes the most sense,
Speaker 1: when looking at this whole thing, to say cattle mutilation
Speaker 1: is actually just a rouping of diverse instances of dead
Speaker 1: animals with various injuries that have a number of different causes.
Speaker 1: So some might be the work of natural predators and scavengers,
Speaker 1: some might be animals that died of disease and simply
Speaker 1: decomposed in a way that looked odd. Some might be
Speaker 1: struck by lightning, some were actually mutilated by people for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, and some might have explanations we haven't thought
Speaker 1: of yet. Yeah, and I want to get here, and
Speaker 1: we're not gonna spend as much time with this, but
Speaker 1: I do want to touch on ostension as a way
Speaker 1: of potentially understanding these cases, these few cases where human
Speaker 1: acts seem to have been involved, where humans seem to
Speaker 1: have come along and potentially uh carved up some of
Speaker 1: these animals um post mortem to sort of prop up
Speaker 1: the myth, prop up the legend. And I was treating
Speaker 1: about this potential angle and death by folklore extension contemporary
Speaker 1: legend and murdered by Bill Ellis again. That's published eighty
Speaker 1: nine Western It's Folklore Society, and he discusses a quote
Speaker 1: third dimension of the legendary Elis writes, quote Folklore's disagree
Speaker 1: about whether legends describe events that actually did or did
Speaker 1: not happen in the past, but in the light of
Speaker 1: recent events and scholarship, it seems more accurate to describe
Speaker 1: legends as normative definitions of reality. Maps by which one
Speaker 1: can determine what has happened, what is happening, and what
Speaker 1: will happen. I think that's incredibly perceptive and very well
Speaker 1: put that in a way. When people are arguing about
Speaker 1: the truth of a legend, often you know it takes
Speaker 1: the form of arguing about whether or not something literally
Speaker 1: did or did not happen at a particular time in
Speaker 1: the past. But that's not really the spirit of what
Speaker 1: they're arguing about. Often the spirit of what they're arguing
Speaker 1: about is is this story reflective of how things are
Speaker 1: in the world. Ellis cites the work of folkloreist Linda
Speaker 1: dag and I hope I'm getting that right. If or not,
Speaker 1: I apologize and Andrew Asan who contend that quote not
Speaker 1: only can facts be turned into narratives, but narratives can
Speaker 1: also be turned into facts, and so in this we
Speaker 1: get into austension theory. Uh. These two authors were the
Speaker 1: first to use austension in folklore, but the idea in
Speaker 1: communication theory goes back further. Um Umberto Echo discussed it
Speaker 1: in A Theory of Semiotics from nine but even in
Speaker 1: that I was looking up some of his his writings
Speaker 1: in that book about this topic and even that he's
Speaker 1: he's citing Wittgenstein. So, um, I'm not not sure where
Speaker 1: we are, how far back we trace this discussion, but uh,
Speaker 1: Echo writes, quote austension occurs when a given object or event,
Speaker 1: produced by nature or human action, intentionally or unintentionally, and
Speaker 1: existing in a world of fact among facts, is quote
Speaker 1: unquote picked up by someone and shown as the expression
Speaker 1: of the class of which it is a member. And
Speaker 1: so Echo uses examples in the books such as showing
Speaker 1: a brand of cigarettes or showing a shoe and you
Speaker 1: and you know, you might be conveying something like, uh,
Speaker 1: the shoe is dirty or I need more of these cigarettes,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Ah, but I can see how
Speaker 1: this would apply to folklore and even to uh, to
Speaker 1: fringe beliefs and conspiracy theories, and that uh, you know,
Speaker 1: when you believe very much in sort of a story
Speaker 1: about something that recurs in the world or a way
Speaker 1: the world is you, you don't just believe in the
Speaker 1: instances of it that you already know about. You want
Speaker 1: to like show new instances of that event as exemplars
Speaker 1: of the fact that the the overall arc, the overall
Speaker 1: narrative really does take place yeah, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: it's kind of difficult to think about this because it's
Speaker 1: you know you, I kind of waver on interpreting it
Speaker 1: as like how much of it is so is sort
Speaker 1: of subconscious? How much of it is conscious? Not to
Speaker 1: say that it's entirely subconscious, but like, how much of
Speaker 1: it is the conscious dimension of the act and how
Speaker 1: much is the subconscious um. So, to explain things better,
Speaker 1: Ellis brings up examples of folkloric ostensive actions such as
Speaker 1: legend tripping. So going to or engaging in acts that
Speaker 1: are said to elicit a supernatural response. So going out
Speaker 1: and setting on railroad tracks at night, by the way,
Speaker 1: do not do that generally. I think it's in many
Speaker 1: of not most cases, it may be illegal to set
Speaker 1: on those railroad tracks in addition to being dangerous. So um,
Speaker 1: but doing things like that, hanking three times looking for crypto,
Speaker 1: it's going on a bigfoot search. Uh. These are all
Speaker 1: potentially examples of legend tripping. They're all essentially benign acts
Speaker 1: for the most part. No one is going to get
Speaker 1: hurt because you went out and search for bigfoot. And
Speaker 1: doing this search doesn't rule out the monster but fuels
Speaker 1: the legend, like nobody has ever gone out searching for
Speaker 1: Bigfoot and then said, well, we didn't find him. I
Speaker 1: just don't believe in it anymore. And to be fair though,
Speaker 1: of course I'm not advocating the existence of squatch here,
Speaker 1: but you know, you need to say, you need to
Speaker 1: keep in mind search spaces like if you went out
Speaker 1: looking for Bigfoot, even if Bigfoot really existed, would you
Speaker 1: expect to find him on one trip into the woods.
Speaker 1: Probably not. Yeah, So this is where things going to
Speaker 1: do like darker shades of folklore, and Ellis discusses such
Speaker 1: things as food tampering and ritual murder, but he also
Speaker 1: brings up the cattle mutilation of phenomenon or cattle mutilation
Speaker 1: panic at one point in the article, focusing on cult
Speaker 1: interpretations of the crime, which we already discussed some of
Speaker 1: those that were brought up in the other sources, as
Speaker 1: well as some really out there statements from a couple
Speaker 1: of Texas inmates at the time who said that it
Speaker 1: was an elaborate satanic undertaking by cultists. Uh. He also
Speaker 1: points to other nineteen seventy six reports of animal mutilations
Speaker 1: cattle and other animals, some of which involved reports of
Speaker 1: black robe figures and all the usual bells and whistles
Speaker 1: of of cult activity. Uh. There were, of course no
Speaker 1: firsthand accounts of any of this, but these were the
Speaker 1: stories that were circulating. Was there a sacred bejeweled dagger?
Speaker 1: So Ellis stresses that these rumors and legends reflect they
Speaker 1: quote complex assortment of deliberate acts, misinterpreted evidence, and exaggeration.
Speaker 1: And he writes that while logic neatly handles all the
Speaker 1: challenges of the mystery, quasi extension plays the key role here.
Speaker 1: Quote the observer's interpretation of puzzling evidence in terms of
Speaker 1: a narrative tradition. So if if you're prepared to find
Speaker 1: evidence of X, then you will find evidence of X.
Speaker 1: If you go out looking for Bigfoot, yeah you may
Speaker 1: you're not gonna fa see him, but you're probably gonna
Speaker 1: there's a good chance you'll find something. Right, if you
Speaker 1: find some hair, well that might be bigfoot. Here, there's
Speaker 1: some bigfoot for right there. Uh, you know some other
Speaker 1: strange mark. If you go looking for star jelly in
Speaker 1: the woods, you'll find star jelly. But then human actors,
Speaker 1: he writes, can insert themselves into a given script by
Speaker 1: engaging in in acts of extension like legend tripping, which
Speaker 1: sounds like a potential way to understand those few incidents
Speaker 1: of cattle mutilation which human activity may have been involved. Uh,
Speaker 1: and there's I want to read one last quote from
Speaker 1: Ellice here that I thought was particularly creepy and very
Speaker 1: seasonal quote. In contemporary times too, legends about satanic murder
Speaker 1: and cattle mutilation are not just expressions of fictive horror.
Speaker 1: They are paradigms for making the world more horrifying. The
Speaker 1: haunted house and the outside world are always in danger
Speaker 1: of merging. I guess that's true. It is up to
Speaker 1: humans not to decide to make them merge by by
Speaker 1: acting out a legend or or or dangerous fiction in reality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean, we have to remind ourselves that a
Speaker 1: lot of these dangerous fictions they're not just idle fascinations
Speaker 1: or or they're they're not necessarily idle fascinations. Like certainly
Speaker 1: you can have an idle fascination with with any number
Speaker 1: of conspiracy theories, certainly, But where these things seem to
Speaker 1: have more attraction is where like one's um you know,
Speaker 1: personal identity or um or view of the entire world
Speaker 1: becomes wrapped up in that thing. Uh. That seems to
Speaker 1: be the area where you get some real potential for
Speaker 1: for danger. That's where the haunted house in their outside
Speaker 1: world can potentially merge. All right, well, we're gonna go
Speaker 1: and close out the episode right here, but we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from everyone out there. Obviously, this is a
Speaker 1: topic of much rumination in some circles, and some of
Speaker 1: you might have read some other sources that you know,
Speaker 1: you might have some examples of faulty logic on this
Speaker 1: that would be interesting to share. You might have some
Speaker 1: some examples of some very strong points or or or
Speaker 1: a counter arguments. Also just other theories because some of
Speaker 1: them the material out there. We we looked at a
Speaker 1: particular recent documentary in which the another idea was brought
Speaker 1: up that large ranches where the we're the cause of this,
Speaker 1: like big ranchers were targeting the small ranches, and I
Speaker 1: had not heard that. I didn't see that. That That wasn't
Speaker 1: mentioned as a possibility in the sources I was looking at,
Speaker 1: and I certainly don't think that was the case, but
Speaker 1: I did think it was interesting because it does it
Speaker 1: does fit in with the um the sort of socioeconomic
Speaker 1: setting of the time of the mid nineties seventies. You
Speaker 1: know the idea that again it is the struggling, smaller rancher,
Speaker 1: that is, that is feeling the pain and is reporting
Speaker 1: these incidents. So it would make sense that at least
Speaker 1: some of them might say, well, I think it's these
Speaker 1: big ranches that are doing it. Like you can see
Speaker 1: why that script would would gain traction, is what I'm saying. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting premise. Unfortunately, that document in particular, I
Speaker 1: think is the result of a government conspiracy. It was
Speaker 1: designed in a lab in order to reduce people's critical
Speaker 1: thinking faculties. All right, well, we'd love to hear from
Speaker 1: everyone out there if you haven't and have some critical analysis, uh,
Speaker 1: or if anyone out there has, if you have ties
Speaker 1: to the ranching world and have some insight, we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. You know, any everything's about it's
Speaker 1: a uh feel free to write in in the meantime.
Speaker 1: Core episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind publish on
Speaker 1: Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: podcast feed on Monday's. We do listener mail. On Wednesday's
Speaker 1: we do a short form uh monster fact or artifact,
Speaker 1: and on Fridays we do weird how cinema. That's our
Speaker 1: time to set aside most concerns, serious concerns, just talk
Speaker 1: about a weird film. In this Friday, we have a
Speaker 1: weird one that is also a cattle mutilation film. UM.
Speaker 1: I think it'll be a fun episode. Huge thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
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