Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for an older episode
Speaker 1: of the show. This one was called Ghosts of Wind
Speaker 1: and Rain. I believe it was about weather oriented ghost
Speaker 1: lore and and other creatures. This was originally published on October.
Speaker 1: Let's let us Unleash the Storm. There's a storm coming.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: Rob correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this
Speaker 1: is finally the year that you've gotten full blown into
Speaker 1: Rocky Ericson. Is that right? Uh? Yeah, yeah, I would guess. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got. I listened to him a little in the past,
Speaker 1: and in this year I got even more into it. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So Rocky has long been one of my favorite rock
Speaker 1: and roll vampires, and one of the things I love
Speaker 1: about Rocky Ericson Monster songs is how much they're about
Speaker 1: the weather. Um. So you may remember the line from
Speaker 1: his great, his great anthem, The Night of the Vampire
Speaker 1: if it's raining and you're running, don't slip in mud,
Speaker 1: because if you do, you'll slip in blood. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's just logic, and there's a really infectious glee to
Speaker 1: that kind of logic. But also I enjoyed the weather
Speaker 1: weather represented in songs like the Wind and More, which
Speaker 1: I know compares sort of the voice of Lucifer to
Speaker 1: to the storm winds that are battering through the house. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: And And if anyone out there is not sure who
Speaker 1: we're talking about, um, you should look up Rocky erricks
Speaker 1: and who also was the other group like Man from
Speaker 1: the late sixties early seventies based in I think Austin,
Speaker 1: definitely out of Texas. Uh, fantastic psychedelic rock. But then
Speaker 1: Rocky Ericson had had a long solo career after that
Speaker 1: of all different kinds of music, you know, he he
Speaker 1: um so some of the stuff he released, uh he
Speaker 1: he had a lot of troubles with mental health and
Speaker 1: at some points he was in psychiatric institutions. But even
Speaker 1: in those periods would sort of make these little demos
Speaker 1: of UH songs recorded it sounds like just on a
Speaker 1: tape recorder that are very simple. But but strangely beautiful,
Speaker 1: and then at other times he would make full blown,
Speaker 1: uh monster rock and roll albums. There's one called Evil
Speaker 1: One that's just fantastic, that's got a kind of Credence
Speaker 1: Clearwater Revival style rock production. But all the songs are
Speaker 1: about demons and ghosts and and fifties atomic age monster movies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty hard stuff too, Like it's like it's
Speaker 1: it's it's got a hard rock vibe that I think
Speaker 1: might surprise some people. So it's I think was produced
Speaker 1: by somebody from Credence. If never so, I think so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but but but harder than Credence, Uh, in my opinion. Well,
Speaker 1: all that is preamble to the fact that today we
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about the intersection of ghosts and weather. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I have to stress that we absolutely won't be
Speaker 1: able to cover everything here because there are just too
Speaker 1: many storm monsters and storm deities out there storm related
Speaker 1: ghosts and other creatures. But we're gonna be covering various
Speaker 1: examples that seem related to some of the core ideas
Speaker 1: that we were kicking around for this episode. And uh
Speaker 1: and and really, the the central idea has to do
Speaker 1: with a recent trip you went on. Oh yeah, so
Speaker 1: I was recently in coastal South Carolina. Rob, have you
Speaker 1: been to coastal South Carolina? I assume probably, oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And and of course South Carolina placed with a lot
Speaker 1: of ghosts, tons of ghosts everywhere you go there, Like
Speaker 1: you can find a little local visitor center that's got
Speaker 1: a local uh self published ghost author who's collected all
Speaker 1: the lore and they've got it in a in a
Speaker 1: book that the font of the book is usually times
Speaker 1: New Roman, uh, but it's but it will have lots
Speaker 1: of great, you know, local ghost stories in it. And
Speaker 1: so there's one that I was reading about from a
Speaker 1: particular place on the South Carolina coast, a little island
Speaker 1: called Paul's Island. And so to explain this, so on
Speaker 1: refer to an article that was published by Myrtle Beach Online.
Speaker 1: So it's a local news article from the Myrtle Beach
Speaker 1: area that's also coastal South Carolina by a writer named
Speaker 1: Tyler Fleming. The article says it was last updated in
Speaker 1: September nineteen. I'm not sure if that's when it was
Speaker 1: originally published, but it's this local news article trying to
Speaker 1: track down the origins of a bit of ghost lore
Speaker 1: from this area of the South Carolina coastline, and specifically
Speaker 1: this is the story of a being called the gray Man.
Speaker 1: You know, I'd say it's used a lot, but I'm
Speaker 1: still a sucker for for that formulation of a creature
Speaker 1: name just the blank man, especially if whatever the word
Speaker 1: in the middle is is a single syllable. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like the Green Man, the tall Man. Yeah. So, according
Speaker 1: to the legend, this is a spirit that wanders around
Speaker 1: on the shore on and around this small island called
Speaker 1: Poly's Island, South Carolina. Uh, usually appearing just before the
Speaker 1: landfall of terrible storms as a translucent gray figure stalking
Speaker 1: the beaches and boardwalks in a long cloak. Sometimes he's
Speaker 1: literally described as dressed like a pirate. Uh. And one
Speaker 1: one funny I think a little little justified accusation of
Speaker 1: his identity is that he is black Beard. He is, Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you're supposed to say his last
Speaker 1: name ed Edward Teach or Teach or Thatch, however it
Speaker 1: is yeah yeah, with the with the burning brands in
Speaker 1: his beard. Yeah. This this gets into an interesting area
Speaker 1: that I would like about about ghosts of this nature
Speaker 1: because uh, and this is all thoroughly non scientific, of course,
Speaker 1: but we have this idea that you know, that something
Speaker 1: bad happens and the ghost is like a lingering after
Speaker 1: effect of that thing. Um. And then certainly there's also
Speaker 1: this idea that a ghost, it's a Blackbeard's ghost or
Speaker 1: just this mysterious gray man, would have potentially insider information
Speaker 1: about what's going to happen. Maybe you know, they died
Speaker 1: at sea and therefore they know the sea a little
Speaker 1: better and they can they can warn us about things.
Speaker 1: But then there's also an idea of the of of
Speaker 1: hauntings as being uh, you know, things that work in
Speaker 1: both directions and time, that they can be harbingers of
Speaker 1: of the terrible events. Um. You know, perhaps they're even
Speaker 1: attached to events that have yet to come. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that is exactly the case with the Gray Man.
Speaker 1: So contrary to what you might assume about this spectral figure,
Speaker 1: you know, crunching along through the sand, in the in
Speaker 1: the in the storms and the wind, local legend usually
Speaker 1: describes the gray Man as a nine or even a
Speaker 1: helpful spirit, and the purpose of his hauntings is to
Speaker 1: serve as a warning to people who live nearby that
Speaker 1: the coming storm is going to be especially destructive. So
Speaker 1: as a few examples of this, uh this belief among locals,
Speaker 1: I was looking at a article in Southern Living by
Speaker 1: Megan over Deep about this ghost legend, and it describes
Speaker 1: how there were locals in in South Carolina who claimed
Speaker 1: sightings of the gray Man just before Hurricane Hazel in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four and Hurricane Hugo in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: But as a more recent example, also this this article
Speaker 1: embedded tweets like people tweeting grainy photos of alleged gray
Speaker 1: Man sightings ahead of Hurricane Florence in ten. So Rob,
Speaker 1: I've embedded one for you to look at here. Listeners,
Speaker 1: you can go look up this article in Southern Living
Speaker 1: if you want to find these tweets. But m this
Speaker 1: one embeds a photo that is allegedly taken at boardwalk
Speaker 1: that goes over the beach on Pouli's Island, and there
Speaker 1: is I don't know, so it's a it's a very
Speaker 1: grainy photograph. It's got a lot of what looks like
Speaker 1: digital artifacts and pixelation in it, and then there's this
Speaker 1: big sort of pale gray smudge in the middle. Of
Speaker 1: it that looks, oh yeah, maybe like it could be
Speaker 1: some kind of vertical object on the boardwalk. But some
Speaker 1: people apparently looked at that and said, hey, it's the
Speaker 1: gray Man. Well I have to point out that the
Speaker 1: tweet that is shared in this article, uh, the tweeter
Speaker 1: does have a blue check mark. So this is verified.
Speaker 1: This is this is verified. It proof of the afterlife
Speaker 1: confirmed as usual. Why decidings of the paranormal so strongly
Speaker 1: favor low fidelity documentation. I think I'm not positive, but
Speaker 1: this looks like it's from some kind of like uh uh,
Speaker 1: stationary live camera that sort of documents, you know, foot
Speaker 1: traffic on the beach. I think that you can tune
Speaker 1: into and see what's going on there. I'm not positive
Speaker 1: that's what it is, but I know there is stuff
Speaker 1: like that around there, and so that that's what it
Speaker 1: looks like to me, But it could be something else anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's very grainy, it's got all you know, it's got
Speaker 1: the pixelated artifacts in it, and I just want some
Speaker 1: high definition gray Man, but I can't get it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, I think that gets down to just
Speaker 1: the fact that sightings occur when things are obscured and
Speaker 1: uncertain They emerge out of uncertainty and uh and and
Speaker 1: and and depleted the visual efficiency. That'll come back later
Speaker 1: with something I want to get into in a minute.
Speaker 1: So to quote from this article by Tyler Fleming here quote,
Speaker 1: not only does he warn people, but he's also known
Speaker 1: to protect their property from a storm. A woman in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four claimed to see the Gray Man ahead
Speaker 1: of the infamous Hurricane Hazel hitting the area. She said
Speaker 1: not only was her house spared from the devastation, the
Speaker 1: beach towels she left on her balcony were still hanging up.
Speaker 1: So the ghost is like, oh, Madam, I I I
Speaker 1: those those beach towels are just too beautiful. I can't
Speaker 1: stand to see them swept into the store. I'll protect
Speaker 1: your house, but what about all the people who died?
Speaker 1: I mean, you shouldn't the ghost of priorities the people
Speaker 1: instead of the beach towels. I've seen people, but these
Speaker 1: beach towels, my god, they're beautiful. So this article in
Speaker 1: Myrtle Beach Online goes on to list some of the
Speaker 1: local speculation about the alleged origin of this ghost. It
Speaker 1: does not mention black Beard that one might be a
Speaker 1: kind of spurious allegation. Uh well, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: all of these are probably just made up later legends.
Speaker 1: But but trying to track down at least what are
Speaker 1: the earliest of the legends. Um. So, the source that
Speaker 1: the article sites on these is the Georgetown Museum. Georgetown
Speaker 1: is a city near A. Pauli's Island. Um, And so
Speaker 1: they've got to, I guess a museum that has some
Speaker 1: stuff about this local legend. And one story, this, this
Speaker 1: appears to be the dominant one, is about a man
Speaker 1: who perished in the South Carolina low country in eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty two. And the tale goes that this young man
Speaker 1: had been traveling abroad for two years, and in September
Speaker 1: of eighteen twenty two, he decided he wanted to come
Speaker 1: home so he could see his fiancee uh back in
Speaker 1: South Carolina and they could set a date for their wedding.
Speaker 1: And he was apparently in such a hurry to get
Speaker 1: back and see her face again that he took a
Speaker 1: shortcut through the marsh and he ended up stuck in quicksand,
Speaker 1: which spelled his doom and then his fiance she's grieving
Speaker 1: over the fact that I guess. I don't know if
Speaker 1: she found out that he died or if he just
Speaker 1: never showed up, but she's grieving for some reason. And
Speaker 1: she goes out walking along the shore and she's treading
Speaker 1: through the sand, and while strolling alone on the beach,
Speaker 1: she sees a dark silhouette. It's a it's the figure
Speaker 1: of a man, and she realizes that it's the soul
Speaker 1: of her would be husband who died in in the marsh.
Speaker 1: And she's so troubled by this vision and others like it.
Speaker 1: She has later that that her family decides to relocate inland.
Speaker 1: They move away from that house, and the very next
Speaker 1: day after they leave, a hurricane sweeps through, leaving a
Speaker 1: path of destruction that would have killed them had they
Speaker 1: not left. And it's apparently this legend that that could
Speaker 1: give rise to this this common belief that the ghost
Speaker 1: appears to people to warn them of storms. And as
Speaker 1: a quick side note, I wanted to mention I love
Speaker 1: that the story involves quicksand, which of course is one
Speaker 1: of my favorite plot devices, but that does have an
Speaker 1: environmental reality to it. You might not want to call
Speaker 1: it quicksand, but the South Carolina low country, especially the marshes.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like the mouth of the what they
Speaker 1: could usually call the creeks, you know, the little uh
Speaker 1: the tributaries of water that eventually drained out into the ocean. Um.
Speaker 1: These areas will form this build up of fine sediment
Speaker 1: that is known as pluff mud and uh So I
Speaker 1: was reading at least one article from the I think
Speaker 1: it was the Hilton Head area that was all about
Speaker 1: the story of a lady who goes out walking in
Speaker 1: the marsh for some reason and she ends up stuck
Speaker 1: in the pluff mud. And she's there until like into
Speaker 1: the evening, and they have to send rescuers and to
Speaker 1: dig her out. Because you can very easily get stuck
Speaker 1: in this stuff. You can sink into it. It's a
Speaker 1: there are a lot of myths about quicksand and uh
Speaker 1: and and things like it that you would like sink
Speaker 1: down under your head and drown. That's usually not a
Speaker 1: very common thing to happen, if it happens at all. Really,
Speaker 1: I think the risk of of quicksand and even pluff
Speaker 1: mud is just that you would get stuck in it
Speaker 1: and have trouble getting yourself out. Yeah. I've certainly been
Speaker 1: in I don't know if it constitutes pluf mud or
Speaker 1: or if it's just you know, very wet sand. But
Speaker 1: I've been in I've noticed some coastal situations where you
Speaker 1: have a real, real bootsucker or sandal sucker of of
Speaker 1: a situation, you know, where the sand is just the
Speaker 1: right consistency that if you you step into it, you
Speaker 1: might be pulling a bare foot back out. Yes, And
Speaker 1: it's it's almost it's wonderful that it creates this um,
Speaker 1: this almost untouchable terrain, because there are a lot of
Speaker 1: areas around in the low country where you can, like
Speaker 1: if there there will be a nature preserve and you
Speaker 1: can take a board walk out over the marsh and
Speaker 1: if you look down on it, I see all kinds
Speaker 1: of life. You know, things are happening down in the
Speaker 1: pluff mud. There may be these big colonies of oysters,
Speaker 1: and you can see fiddler crabs popping up out of
Speaker 1: holes and running around and all the birds hunting them.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's the kind of place where you wouldn't
Speaker 1: really want to go down and venture yourself, at least
Speaker 1: not without some special equipment, maybe like weight displacement boots
Speaker 1: or something. Now apparently there's some alternatives for the origin
Speaker 1: of the gray Man legend um uh. To quote again
Speaker 1: from the Myrtle Beach Online article quote uh. Other theories
Speaker 1: tell a different story. One still has a man returning
Speaker 1: from c but this time his fiance decided to marry
Speaker 1: his best friend instead. He throws himself into the wacam All.
Speaker 1: This is the Wake Them All River, which is a
Speaker 1: nearby river, and then later his fiance and friend do
Speaker 1: the same. Other stories say he was an unknown sailor
Speaker 1: who washed up on shore and died shortly after. Some
Speaker 1: believe he is the original owner of Polly's Island, George Polly,
Speaker 1: who lived there in the early seventeen hundreds. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. Now. Of course, this would be far from
Speaker 1: the only legendary supernatural being associated with weather phenomena. You
Speaker 1: know they're there are tons of ghosts and monsters and
Speaker 1: creatures and gods that may not serve exactly this purpose,
Speaker 1: saying like, hey, a storm's coming, but there in one
Speaker 1: way or another associated specifically with storms or other transient
Speaker 1: weather phenomena. And so while poking around on the subject,
Speaker 1: I came across what I thought was an interesting and
Speaker 1: kind of funny article. So this was on. This was
Speaker 1: a weather news article by Michael Cune on ACU weather
Speaker 1: Dot Calm with the headline quote ghost hunter colon thunderstorms
Speaker 1: cause an increase in paranormal activity. Well, I mean, certainly,
Speaker 1: if you've watched enough horror films and ghost movies, you
Speaker 1: know that this is the case. You've got to have
Speaker 1: a thunderstorm going in the background, right, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's a classic of horror fiction. Right. So you could
Speaker 1: argue about the the order of causality there, but uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know you got the classic what's the bulward Lytton line?
Speaker 1: It was a dark and stormy night, and then the
Speaker 1: idea that it seems that stormy conditions have long inspired
Speaker 1: Gothic modes of thought. I mean, you know, there's the
Speaker 1: classic story of, Uh, how did Mary Wilston craft Shelley
Speaker 1: come up with the idea for Frankenstein. It was during
Speaker 1: that summer when when she and Byron and the whole
Speaker 1: crew were sort of like stuck inside due to this
Speaker 1: this dark and stormy summer sort of it was the
Speaker 1: year without a summer, which, uh, in a weird twist
Speaker 1: of fate, I think was likely due to volcanic activity
Speaker 1: on the other side of the world. Um, that that
Speaker 1: was the summer where she worked out the ideas for
Speaker 1: the story that would become Frankenstein, sort of a foundational
Speaker 1: text of modern horror. And so it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: for me to believe that the dark and stormy summer
Speaker 1: didn't in a way play a role in the formation
Speaker 1: of that story in her mind. But um, but anyway,
Speaker 1: so so this article about the paranormal activity in the thunderstorm.
Speaker 1: So the article consults a paranormal enthusiast named Mark Keys,
Speaker 1: who at the time of this article at least was
Speaker 1: director of the Pennsylvania Paranormal Association. I looked him up
Speaker 1: and it seems like he's featured on some kind of
Speaker 1: some ghost hunter type TV shows. The one that was
Speaker 1: I forget the name, is called like Paranormal nine one
Speaker 1: one or something, And based on his quotes, I think,
Speaker 1: I think this guy seems to uh take a sort
Speaker 1: of ghost realist position, at least like he he uh
Speaker 1: he cites, for example, the advice of a of a
Speaker 1: spirit medium as if he believes this is likely to
Speaker 1: contain information. And so do you think there are skeptical
Speaker 1: ghost hunters who you call them they show up at
Speaker 1: their door and you're like, hey, I think I've got
Speaker 1: a hunting and their first thing as well. Look, first
Speaker 1: of all, ghost aren't real well there and there could be.
Speaker 1: There could be open minded but skeptical ghost hunters. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like I I feel like that's the
Speaker 1: attitude I would try to take. I would say, you know,
Speaker 1: I probably I think most ghost sightings are probably all
Speaker 1: of them are not really a spectral beings from another play,
Speaker 1: and they're probably something about the perception of the person experiencing.
Speaker 1: But you don't know for sure. I mean you at
Speaker 1: least look and see, you try to find some out.
Speaker 1: I mean, it would be beneficial to have more people
Speaker 1: in that in that mode where like they're an expert
Speaker 1: you consult and they're like, okay, there are no said
Speaker 1: there's there no ghosts, but here a list of things
Speaker 1: that that could contribute to this this very real and
Speaker 1: potentially frightening experience that you have. I'm sure there are
Speaker 1: some people like that, but I guess I would assume
Speaker 1: this may not be fair. I don't know, but I
Speaker 1: would assume if you've got like TV shows, you're you're
Speaker 1: probably at least at least for the cameras, meaning into
Speaker 1: embracing the sort of ghost realist position. Yeah, nobody's watching.
Speaker 1: I guess you could watch it. I could. I guess
Speaker 1: I could imagine a ghost Hunter show with this kind
Speaker 1: of a theme, like we're here to bust the ghosts,
Speaker 1: but not only the ghost themselves, with the idea of
Speaker 1: ghosts that that could be fine kind of a pin
Speaker 1: and teller um, you know, kind of approach to it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: sure right. I don't know, it could be done well,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like like most things, you know, it
Speaker 1: could be done well if it was done well. But
Speaker 1: coming back to this article, the thing that really got
Speaker 1: a hook in my brain about it and that I
Speaker 1: thought was really interesting was that the article made an
Speaker 1: attempt to posit a physical mechanism by which thunderstorms allow
Speaker 1: ghosts to appear. And I think basically the implication is
Speaker 1: that ghosts need to get charged up by lightning. It's
Speaker 1: not said explicitly, but this does appear to be the
Speaker 1: implication given by the guy sided in this article. So
Speaker 1: to quote from the article, Some bel that apparitions or
Speaker 1: spirits needs some source of energy to manifest their presence
Speaker 1: into the physical plane. In order to communicate with the living.
Speaker 1: This could include drawing energy from electrical circuits and even batteries.
Speaker 1: And then this is quoting from Keys, if a spirit
Speaker 1: is trying to manifest, that is, become physically visible, it
Speaker 1: will pull energy out of the environment to do that.
Speaker 1: This could include heat, as cold spots are commonly reported,
Speaker 1: as well as in areas where haunting has been reported.
Speaker 1: It seems to be shortly after a lightning storm that
Speaker 1: they do notice an increase, he said. And then then
Speaker 1: this is the part where Keys claims that his psychic
Speaker 1: medium will back up the fact that after a thunderstorm
Speaker 1: there is quote a lot more activity. Um. Now, you know,
Speaker 1: as as I think, uh, we'll be clear if you've
Speaker 1: listened to us for a while or even from our
Speaker 1: earlier discussion, I would say we generally take a you know,
Speaker 1: broadly open minded, but specifically skeptical position on the physical
Speaker 1: reality of paranormal reports like this. So so while we're
Speaker 1: not going to embrace the ghost realist position, I would
Speaker 1: be potentially open to the claim from the the experience
Speaker 1: of a paranormal investigator who says that thunderstorms are correlated
Speaker 1: with increased reports of ghost sightings, poulter geist hauntings and
Speaker 1: so forth. So I think that could well be true,
Speaker 1: and that could well be informed by experience, because there
Speaker 1: would be nothing supernatural in that. You just have to say, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: people do say they get haunted more often after there's
Speaker 1: been a storm or around the time of a storm. Um,
Speaker 1: But I would tend to think that if this is true,
Speaker 1: the mechanism would more likely be the thunderstorm somehow causes
Speaker 1: the perception of ghosts and wandering spirits rather than literally
Speaker 1: conjuring them. Yeah, I mean we have to remember that
Speaker 1: what is what does lightning do? But but very briefly
Speaker 1: illuminates the darkened world, um, and just a flash and
Speaker 1: gives us a chance to sort of fill in in
Speaker 1: the gaps there with whatever you might you know, expect
Speaker 1: to be there in the storm. That's a really good point,
Speaker 1: and it's further informed by some of the stuff that's
Speaker 1: quoted in this article. Is like, what are the most
Speaker 1: common things people report as evidence of hauntings in their homes?
Speaker 1: According to this paranormal investigator. He says that, Okay, so
Speaker 1: first of all, you've got I think, you know, visual
Speaker 1: evidence such as people witnessing shadows and spectral human forms,
Speaker 1: which I mean seems like the darkened sky, and then
Speaker 1: like briefly illuminated flashes of lightning. That seems like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's sort of perfect conditions to create illusory perceptions of
Speaker 1: strangely shaped shadows and things like that. But then another
Speaker 1: thing that it identifies, and this is something that I
Speaker 1: think from my reading, is is a very common, UH
Speaker 1: source of paranormal reports, what what I would call appliance phenomena. UM.
Speaker 1: So the the article says, quote reports of lights flickering
Speaker 1: and electronic equipment turning on and off on its own
Speaker 1: even when unplugged is common. Other people report more physical activities,
Speaker 1: such as doors opening or closing, lights or TVs turning
Speaker 1: off by themselves. Believe it or not, we've had a
Speaker 1: lot of reports of stereos radios turning themselves on when
Speaker 1: they're not even plugged in, and so, you know, it's
Speaker 1: hard to judge just from generalizations like this, but it's
Speaker 1: funny to me how much like everything that was just listed,
Speaker 1: except for the unplugged part UH is stuff that would
Speaker 1: be pretty much perfectly explained by the physical effects of
Speaker 1: a storm. So like doors opening and closing by themselves.
Speaker 1: Of course, during a storm, you have wind and pressure
Speaker 1: differentials that can blow a door one way or the other.
Speaker 1: And then the appliance phenomena, that's the the anomalous activation
Speaker 1: or deactivation of electrical appliances, which I know from personal
Speaker 1: experience and probably most of you do as well, that
Speaker 1: this can happen due to storms affecting the power grid
Speaker 1: and the power lines leading to your house. And Rob,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever had this happen in
Speaker 1: your house, but sometimes, like power supply issues during a
Speaker 1: storm don't affect the entire house at once, you know,
Speaker 1: so like you can have um uh, you can have
Speaker 1: like a power outage where just everything goes out. We
Speaker 1: usually recognize what that is, but we we occasionally have
Speaker 1: stuff happen where, you know, like some parts of the
Speaker 1: household kind of flash on and off and other things won't. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: Now I think that would not explain issues where people
Speaker 1: are claiming that appliances that are not plugged in start
Speaker 1: turning on and stuff, Like a lot of the reports
Speaker 1: emphasize these extra levels of implausibility. You know, the stereo
Speaker 1: wasn't even plugged in and it started playing Whalen and uh,
Speaker 1: I have no way of knowing this, but part of
Speaker 1: me just kind of suspects that the appliance was unplugged.
Speaker 1: Claim In particular, it seems like a like a just
Speaker 1: a very likely exaggeration place to go, like maybe you
Speaker 1: witness some apparently anomalous activation or deactivation of an appliance,
Speaker 1: an electrical appliance, and it feels notable when you first
Speaker 1: notice it, but then thinking back on it, uh, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes things do just turn on and off. This kind
Speaker 1: of needs some extra beef. And it's like, well, we're
Speaker 1: we even sure it was plugged in. It might not
Speaker 1: have even been plugged in. Yeah, I mean, we have
Speaker 1: so many things plugged in these days. It's sometimes it's
Speaker 1: hard to keep count of what's what's plugged in, what's unplugged.
Speaker 1: And you got to unplug one thing and actually unplugged
Speaker 1: the other. So plenty of room for misunderstanding and altered
Speaker 1: memory there. Yeah. But so the other main fork of
Speaker 1: the storm causation here on on the hauntings I would
Speaker 1: think would tend to be um. The effects of storms
Speaker 1: on human psychology is storms or even atmospheric conditions before
Speaker 1: or after storms yeah, I mean this makes perfect sense.
Speaker 1: You know, ghosts are often associated with darkness. Lightning again
Speaker 1: momentarily illuminates the dark. And even if it's not nighttime. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you have a storm roll in, what does
Speaker 1: it do? It brings a certain level of darkness and
Speaker 1: shadow with it, throwing the rain, uh, some booming thunder,
Speaker 1: and you have just a cree the environment not just creepy.
Speaker 1: But I'm thinking about the informational and sensory effects of storms.
Speaker 1: Coming back to that grainy photo we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: I would argue that stormy weather reduces the sensory resolution
Speaker 1: of your environment. Um, So there's darkening due to cloud cover.
Speaker 1: They're less light means less visual information or certainly less
Speaker 1: certainty in your visual information. And then once you get
Speaker 1: mist and rain, visibility is further reduced. And wind and
Speaker 1: thunder and rain also reduced the auditory clarity of your environment.
Speaker 1: So imagine, you know, turning up the volume on a
Speaker 1: staticky radio channel. It's harder to discern the true signals
Speaker 1: sound signals around you, and it's easier to mistakenly perceive
Speaker 1: a signal within the noise. And I think this would
Speaker 1: fit with what I said earlier about ghosts so often
Speaker 1: appearing these days on low resolution film, video and audio recordings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if I'm not sure what I see, if I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what is recorded in one form or another, then
Speaker 1: that creates an opportunity to lean into some sort of
Speaker 1: supernatural understanding of what it might be. Now, I was
Speaker 1: trying to think about other things here where, um, could
Speaker 1: could there be other sensations people get maybe when a
Speaker 1: storm is approaching that puts them in an alternative, an
Speaker 1: alternative state of mind, or has some detectable effect on
Speaker 1: humans that could lead to paranormal experiences. Um, I'm not
Speaker 1: convinced on this one, but there there are at least
Speaker 1: some questions I would like to pose. Um. And So,
Speaker 1: for example, one of the things I was thinking about
Speaker 1: was barometric pressure. So we all live under atmospheric pressure
Speaker 1: at sea level. Under normal conditions, you walk around with
Speaker 1: about fourteen points seven pounds per square inch of atmosphere
Speaker 1: pressing down on and around you. But we don't normally
Speaker 1: perceive the weight of the atmosphere because were equalized to it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in fact, if a significant amount of that weight
Speaker 1: were to be removed, we could probably notice it like
Speaker 1: if you go high up enough, if you go to
Speaker 1: a high altitude, you can feel a difference in the
Speaker 1: reduced air pressure, obviously, because you know the higher up
Speaker 1: you go, the less atmosphere there is two is above
Speaker 1: you to press down. But air pressure at any surface
Speaker 1: altitude is variable, so at sea level, changes in the weather,
Speaker 1: changes of the heating of the Earth's surface can cause
Speaker 1: imbalances in barometric pressure. So as you have a region
Speaker 1: of the Earth's surface that gets hot, that hot air rises,
Speaker 1: you can almost imagine it being sucked up into the
Speaker 1: upper atmosphere by a giant vacuum. This forms a vacuum
Speaker 1: below it. It forms a low pressure system. And when
Speaker 1: you have a low pressure region, pressure is falling. That
Speaker 1: means air from the surrounding regions of the Earth's surface
Speaker 1: will flow into that area of falling pressure to compensate
Speaker 1: and perceive this flow of air as wind. This is
Speaker 1: what wind is uh. And then the rising warm air
Speaker 1: in a low pressure system also carries with it water
Speaker 1: vapor content, which condenses into clouds and eventually has to
Speaker 1: fall back down as rain. So falling barometric pressure is
Speaker 1: generally taken as a sign that storms are coming. If
Speaker 1: your barometric pressure is going down and your wind speed
Speaker 1: is increasing, you can be pretty sure there is a
Speaker 1: storm headed your way. So that's generally factual. But I
Speaker 1: guess what I was wondering about was, well, okay, so
Speaker 1: do signs like that, Does low or falling barometric pressure
Speaker 1: have any effect on humans that could lead to sort
Speaker 1: of different states of mind or behavior? This one seems
Speaker 1: uncertain to me. I'm not sure psychological studies have tracked
Speaker 1: all kinds of effects of weather on mood, cognition, and behavior,
Speaker 1: and it seems to me that while there have been
Speaker 1: a few studies finding some effects of barometric pressure, if
Speaker 1: those effects are sound, they appear to be a lot
Speaker 1: more subtle than the stronger effects of factors like temperature.
Speaker 1: But to cite just a couple at least of the
Speaker 1: reported effects. For for one example, I was looking at
Speaker 1: a study called a Warm Heart and a Clear Head,
Speaker 1: The Contingent Effects of Whether on mood and Cognition. This
Speaker 1: was published in Psychological Science in two thousand five. This
Speaker 1: was a study of weather as a as a function
Speaker 1: generally of seasonal changes, and and looking somewhat into questions
Speaker 1: about seasonal effective disorder. But the authors here right in
Speaker 1: their abstract quote in two correlational studies and an experiment
Speaker 1: manipulating participants time outdoors pleasant weather, this would mean higher
Speaker 1: temperature or higher barometric pressure was related to higher mood,
Speaker 1: better memory, and broaden cognitive style during the spring. As
Speaker 1: time spent outside increased, the same relationships between mood and
Speaker 1: whether we're not observed during other times of year though,
Speaker 1: and indeed, hotter weather was associated with lower mood in
Speaker 1: the summer. Uh of course, obviously you know you can
Speaker 1: have hot weather in the summer that is associated with
Speaker 1: low pressure regions that lead up to to a storm.
Speaker 1: And to further elucidate their findings that they're right in
Speaker 1: their results section that quote. As in some of the
Speaker 1: previous research, and they cite Clark and Watson in nine
Speaker 1: and Watson in two thousand, neither temperature nor barometric pressure
Speaker 1: was directly related to mood valance. However, the interactions of
Speaker 1: time spin outside with temperature and with barometric pressure, we're
Speaker 1: both significantly related to mood valence in the expected direction.
Speaker 1: As time spin outside increase, the temperature, mood and pressure
Speaker 1: mood relationships became more positive. So basically, if you have participants,
Speaker 1: if you tell them they need to spend more than
Speaker 1: thirty minutes outside. Higher temperatures and higher pressure are associated
Speaker 1: with better moods and outcomes, um and uh and but
Speaker 1: if you have people spend less than thirty minutes outside,
Speaker 1: then the relationship is actually reversed. So like good weather
Speaker 1: outside and having to stay indoors apparently has has a
Speaker 1: negative effect on mood and cognition. In this finding, R Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think most of us can relate to that. You know,
Speaker 1: if you if it's a nice day outside, but it's
Speaker 1: a day where you only get to experience that whilst
Speaker 1: moving from one indoor environment to another, yeah, that's kind
Speaker 1: of a bummer. But if you get to be outside
Speaker 1: the whole day or a large portion of the day,
Speaker 1: and that's great. But unfortunately, so while this did look
Speaker 1: at barometric pressure as one of the things informing the
Speaker 1: the weather states, it was looking at this combination of
Speaker 1: temperature and barometric pressure. What they were really looking at
Speaker 1: was like, what are the effects of good good you know,
Speaker 1: so like high pressure, high temperature. Is there anything that
Speaker 1: directly tests for no? No, no, what is it? What
Speaker 1: is it about low pressure? Specifically? You know that state
Speaker 1: when you would expect a storm to be heading your way. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are some other findings that seem potentially more directly
Speaker 1: informative on this question, but I also feel somewhat cautious
Speaker 1: about them that they don't feel uh, super conclusion of. So,
Speaker 1: for example, one study I came across was published in
Speaker 1: the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry in two thousand three by
Speaker 1: Thomas Shorey at All, and it looked at documented emergency
Speaker 1: psychiatric visits to a city psychiatric emergency room in the
Speaker 1: year ninet in a mid sized city, and they also
Speaker 1: looked at city police department data and suicide data, and
Speaker 1: what they found was, quote, the data suggests that total
Speaker 1: numbers of acts of violence and emergency psychiatry visits are
Speaker 1: significantly associated with low barometric pressure. But then they found
Speaker 1: that psychiatric in patient admissions and suicides were not associated
Speaker 1: with any of the weather variables they investigated. So that's
Speaker 1: one of those things that's okay that that's a bird's
Speaker 1: eye level observation of something that happened in one city
Speaker 1: that might mirror it further investigation. But I don't think
Speaker 1: we could say anything conclusive just based on that, um,
Speaker 1: so I would be skeptical about drawing two many conclusions
Speaker 1: from from ideas about the relationship between barometric pressure specifically
Speaker 1: and psychology, but the conditions that precede a storm, both
Speaker 1: the obvious and cognitively recognized conditions like clouds, darkening skies,
Speaker 1: and thunder, and then perhaps some subconsciously perceived conditions like
Speaker 1: dropping barometric pressure or increasing winds. I think it could
Speaker 1: possibly give rise to a different state of mind when
Speaker 1: a storm is approaching, certainly the cognitively recognized ones. Thank So,
Speaker 1: I think these are all excellent ideas to keep in
Speaker 1: mind as we proceed through the rest of the episode.
Speaker 1: Where I thought we might just look at some various
Speaker 1: ghosts and monsters and sometimes divine or partially divine figures
Speaker 1: from around the world that have something to do with
Speaker 1: with whether or in or at least in one in
Speaker 1: one case, has nothing to do with what there but
Speaker 1: gets into the idea of a ghost harbinger. So, um,
Speaker 1: first of all, we'll go ahead and get the one
Speaker 1: out of the way that doesn't really seem to have
Speaker 1: anything to do with weather. Um. Well, actually, I guess
Speaker 1: I have a couple of them here, and the first
Speaker 1: one here is is her name the Hunter. Have you
Speaker 1: heard of this particular ghost, not until you introduced him
Speaker 1: to me. So this is apparently a ghostly phosphorescent mounted
Speaker 1: hunter said to ride through the woods surrounding Windsor Castle
Speaker 1: in the UK. He's covered in furs and his head
Speaker 1: is obscured by the skull and antlers of a great stack.
Speaker 1: Now when I when I heard about this, I had to,
Speaker 1: of course look it up in in Carol Rose's encyclopedic
Speaker 1: volumes on monsters and fairies and whatnot, and she makes
Speaker 1: a possible connection here between this legend and older Celtic
Speaker 1: beliefs in a particular horned fertility god whose name was
Speaker 1: Sir nunus Um. That's c e r in you in
Speaker 1: an Os. That's at least one modern spelling of it.
Speaker 1: But this, uh, this particular their apparition was was referenced
Speaker 1: by Shakespeare, and in the twentieth century at least has
Speaker 1: come to be seen as a harbinger of disaster, not
Speaker 1: of storms, but of economic and political disaster, which I
Speaker 1: found interesting. So sightings of the Hunter here have been
Speaker 1: attributed to the ninety one economic depression, the nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: six abdication crisis, the nineteen thirty nine Declaration of War
Speaker 1: and the nineteen fifty two death of George the sixth.
Speaker 1: Another version I've read is that her name the Hunter
Speaker 1: always appears when a monarch is close to death. Well,
Speaker 1: this raises a question for me about a distinction we
Speaker 1: could make about Harbinger deities, or maybe not deities. I
Speaker 1: don't know if if her name here is a is
Speaker 1: a god or just a creature being of some kind,
Speaker 1: whatever you would call it. These Harbinger beings, you could
Speaker 1: say that, okay, if they appear right before a disaster
Speaker 1: of some kind, whether that's a hurricane or or an
Speaker 1: economic depression or the death of a monarch, are appearing
Speaker 1: in a benign spirit saying like, hey, i have divine
Speaker 1: fore knowledge because I'm of the other plane. I'm not
Speaker 1: of this world, so I'm not bound by time, and
Speaker 1: I'm just giving you a warning, like I'm here to
Speaker 1: let you know so you can prepare. Or are they
Speaker 1: on the sort of uh, disastrous causation side is like,
Speaker 1: you know, are they an ill omen is seeing them
Speaker 1: in some way part of the causative structure of the
Speaker 1: disaster that comes, or do they even directly bring it about?
Speaker 1: By appearing. Yeah, yeah, you see various interpretations I guess
Speaker 1: of what exactly is going on. Um, and and well
Speaker 1: we'll keep discussing this. But another little tale that I
Speaker 1: read this was in Roses book, referring to work by
Speaker 1: folklore's Ruth Tongue. Um, it's a story Tongue rights of
Speaker 1: the this tale that was circulating about three British youths
Speaker 1: who are decked out in the teddy boy style of
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties with up if if you need a
Speaker 1: visual of what that would look like. Uh, they were
Speaker 1: they were, you know, up to I don't know if
Speaker 1: they were up to no good, but they were. They
Speaker 1: were out. They were hanging out in the woods and
Speaker 1: what do they find? A horn? And um, I believe
Speaker 1: the story goes that they're thinking, oh, well, there must
Speaker 1: have been some sort of a film shoot going on here,
Speaker 1: and they left a prop. Uh, we've got this horn,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and blow it. So they blow the
Speaker 1: horn and then sure enough, the unseen spirit begins to
Speaker 1: pursue them through the woods and you know, getting closer
Speaker 1: and closer, and finally an arrow seems to fly uh
Speaker 1: and slays one of them dead. But there's not a
Speaker 1: single physical wound. It seems to have been some sort
Speaker 1: of a ghost era. Uh so that's that's a that's
Speaker 1: a fun little tale as well. And of course this
Speaker 1: all relates back to other traditions of the wild hunt
Speaker 1: myth of some sort of of a ghostly being or
Speaker 1: beings sometimes in the company of of of hell hounds
Speaker 1: that goes out on strange hunts in the night and
Speaker 1: you don't want to on a foul of them. Something
Speaker 1: is incongruous between that and the teddy boy thing. I'm
Speaker 1: hung up on the teddy boy detail. Is this a
Speaker 1: commentary on the teddy boy fashion trend or I think
Speaker 1: it's just, you know, on the youth of the day.
Speaker 1: So it's like whatever the youth. You can imagine various
Speaker 1: youth fashion trends in Britain and h and then being
Speaker 1: reflected in versions of this story. It makes it seem
Speaker 1: very cinematic. I can imagine the cinematic version is so
Speaker 1: if her name has a stag skull on top of
Speaker 1: his head and you look up teddy boy hairstyles, I
Speaker 1: mean you could see some certain basic shape and contour
Speaker 1: similarities where their pompadours look kind of like stag skulls. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess without horns. But now as far as his
Speaker 1: ghostly harbingers go, I know some of you are probably
Speaker 1: thinking of this. Um, this is more in the realm
Speaker 1: of cryptids and and ufo ology. But um, there's the
Speaker 1: the alleged supernatural harbinger of the Silver Bridge collapse of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven. There's the bridge that spanned the Ohio River.
Speaker 1: The Mothman. Uh. They've been books and movies about this,
Speaker 1: but the connection, the original connection between the collapse and
Speaker 1: sightings of the Mothman, I'm to understand, are largely due
Speaker 1: to the writings of ufo ologist John Keel. I think
Speaker 1: this story is the inspiration behind the plot of that
Speaker 1: Richard Gear movie The Mothman Prophecies, isn't it It is? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've never seen it, but I am familiar with you
Speaker 1: know what, so we watched it a few years back.
Speaker 1: We'd like to revisit, Uh, not just classic horror films,
Speaker 1: but you know, Rachel and I sometimes watch like Fallen
Speaker 1: by the Wayside, horror films that nobody really talks about anymore,
Speaker 1: And so this one was what did this come out
Speaker 1: in the early two thousands, or something. Um, I think
Speaker 1: that sometime around then has Richard Gear and it's about
Speaker 1: this whole situation, and you know what, I gotta says,
Speaker 1: It's not perfect, but there it's got some good ghostly
Speaker 1: atmosphere and it was actually pretty spooky, A pretty solid
Speaker 1: thumbs up. Now, there are some other Harbinger spirits of note.
Speaker 1: There's the Chirath, which is a harbinger spirit. It in
Speaker 1: the folklore of whales. It's a bandshe like being that
Speaker 1: whales and groans as she passes through the city streets
Speaker 1: at night, warning of impending disaster, including epidemics, which of
Speaker 1: course is interesting. And then, of course, speaking of there's
Speaker 1: the Banshee of Irish legend that whales under the window
Speaker 1: of a family member to portend that family member's death.
Speaker 1: I guess this comes back to the question I brought
Speaker 1: up a minute ago, because I think I've read about
Speaker 1: this in the context of the band sheet before, where
Speaker 1: it's not really clear to me whether the belief is
Speaker 1: that the band she knows the death is going to
Speaker 1: happen and is sort of informing the family of such
Speaker 1: by their behavior, or whether or not it's intentional on
Speaker 1: the Banshe's part the banshees letting them know, or the
Speaker 1: bandshe's presence is somehow causing the death. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: unanswerable questions about the strange doings of of weird creatures.
Speaker 1: And I guess that's one of the reasons that makes
Speaker 1: them weird in other world is you don't know what
Speaker 1: their role in the whole scenario is. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: what are you doing here? Are you're feeding off of
Speaker 1: the the of the misery of the bereavement, or are
Speaker 1: you here as an agent of death? What exactly is
Speaker 1: going on? Are you're trying to warn us or is
Speaker 1: it something to be on any of these interpretations, they're
Speaker 1: here on ghost business. That's all you know. Now, let's
Speaker 1: get back into just ideas of storms and rain and
Speaker 1: water and cataclysmic weather. So plenty of cultures have major
Speaker 1: flood storm and cataclysm myths and and China is no exception. There's,
Speaker 1: of course, the story of You the Great who overcomes
Speaker 1: the day lose with drainage channels and earthwork. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: also the Chinese flood myth concerning the water god Uh
Speaker 1: Gong Gong Uh sometimes relegated as one of the four perils.
Speaker 1: So this is a vast serpent with a human head
Speaker 1: red hair, and Gong Gong is said to have caused
Speaker 1: a great flood by bumping into Mount Bouzio, which caused
Speaker 1: the sky pillar to collapse, resulting into cosmic disorder. You
Speaker 1: end up having to have the goddess nuah Uh step
Speaker 1: in repair the sky pillar in order to bring order
Speaker 1: back out of chaos. And sometimes this myth and the
Speaker 1: myth of You the Great are are linked together. And
Speaker 1: then there's the myth of whole Ye the Archer. You
Speaker 1: may remember him from his key row in the Myth
Speaker 1: of the Surplus Sons, or his part in the lunar
Speaker 1: myth of Changa and the Potion of Immortality. But to refresh.
Speaker 1: During the time of the Ten Sons, Emperor Yau calls
Speaker 1: upon Ye to shoot the nine Surplus Sons out of
Speaker 1: the sky, and he does so, saving the earth from
Speaker 1: fiery desolation. But the time of the Ten Sons is
Speaker 1: also a period of great disruption, and many unnatural beings
Speaker 1: roam free to commit great offenses against the gods, and
Speaker 1: so Emperor Yao charges Ye with the destruction of these
Speaker 1: monsters as well. He has to hunt them down and
Speaker 1: slay them in order to protect the people. So is
Speaker 1: this after the sun shoots down the nine surplus sons
Speaker 1: and then goes to he has to clean up afterwards
Speaker 1: with the monsters, right, yeah, yeah, because the cosmic disorder,
Speaker 1: it kind of is You've left with the idea that
Speaker 1: it kind of unleashed these beings or it created an
Speaker 1: atmosphere in which they could thrive, and now they need
Speaker 1: to be put back and check rounded up the loose ponies. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: according to the translator's John Major at All in two
Speaker 1: thousand tens the Hawaii non Z, a Guide to the
Speaker 1: Theory and Practice of Government in early Han China, these monsters,
Speaker 1: these monsters that that Ye has to has to hunt down. Um.
Speaker 1: They pop up in various warring states and Han works
Speaker 1: and seem to represent destructive forces of nature. One of
Speaker 1: these monsters you'll learn about next week on The Monster
Speaker 1: Factor or Wednesday Shorty episode UH. And that one I
Speaker 1: think you can also make. There's also a strong evidence
Speaker 1: to support the idea that it represents some sort of
Speaker 1: natural disaster as well. But there's one uh in particular
Speaker 1: that's very connected to the idea of storm, and that
Speaker 1: is the wind bird daufing, So this literally means a
Speaker 1: strong wind. Sometimes I see it translated as typhoon. It's
Speaker 1: a giant, ferocious bird of prey that brings with its
Speaker 1: strong winds whipped up by its mighty wings, so everywhere
Speaker 1: it goes it brings destructive winds with it. So of
Speaker 1: course he has to has to hunt it down, and
Speaker 1: he uses the Interestingly enough, he basically just uses the
Speaker 1: techniques that one would use in hunting birds, especially during
Speaker 1: this time period. He attaches a cord to his arrow
Speaker 1: and shoots the mighty bird out of the sky. He
Speaker 1: holds the cord firmly so that he can, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of keep track of it and kind of bring
Speaker 1: it down, and then he follows that chord to the
Speaker 1: site where he has grounded the mighty uh Daufing, and
Speaker 1: then he cuts its head off with his sword. In
Speaker 1: other tales, he also exacts revenge on the damaging river
Speaker 1: god he Bow, who he blinded in one eye. And
Speaker 1: then he also hunts down or seeks a vengeance the
Speaker 1: wind god thing Bow, who he shot in the knee.
Speaker 1: So you might be a win god on a chariot
Speaker 1: pulled by dragons, or a or a god who actually
Speaker 1: takes on the form of a dragon. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean he doesn't have a receipt for you if you
Speaker 1: caused a bunch of storm damage. So this raises a
Speaker 1: thought for me. I'm thinking about, um, what are the
Speaker 1: different influences that determine sort of what level the embodiment
Speaker 1: of the storms uh represents within the pantheon, or maybe
Speaker 1: not even the pantheon. These sort of the supernatural theater
Speaker 1: of a mythological belief system, because I'm thinking about these
Speaker 1: cases where you can have a specific monster or creature.
Speaker 1: In this case, it is a ferocious monster being that
Speaker 1: represents a kind of disorder. It is that it is
Speaker 1: a pony that has gotten loose from a from a
Speaker 1: unharmonious phase of the universe, and it has to be
Speaker 1: slain and set right. So this is the embodiment of
Speaker 1: storms in this one type of mythology. But you have
Speaker 1: plenty of other mythologies where storms are not only part
Speaker 1: of the natural divine order, but they are particularly the
Speaker 1: power of the like most powerful god or the King
Speaker 1: of the gods. Think of you know, the storm associations
Speaker 1: with with Zeus or Jupiter, or the storm associations with
Speaker 1: the some of the chief gods of the ancient Near
Speaker 1: Eastern pantheons. Yeah, it's it's it's interesting to think about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you can there's a huge difference between the storm
Speaker 1: that is caused by the high god or a particularly
Speaker 1: powerful deity, one that is worshiped, and a storm caused
Speaker 1: by various monsters that are rampaging. Uh. You know, things
Speaker 1: that represent cosmic disalignment, um and uh. And you know
Speaker 1: you can have ramifications based on how you view that.
Speaker 1: But uh, it's it's interesting to think about, even in
Speaker 1: our modern times, what do we do with hurricanes and
Speaker 1: tropical storms. You know, we aim them and of course
Speaker 1: they're they're very good reasons to name a storm, to
Speaker 1: give it a human name. It it helps, uh in
Speaker 1: communicating things about that storm and tracking them and making
Speaker 1: sure that people are prepared for this particular storm and
Speaker 1: not approaching it like you know, the last storm. You know,
Speaker 1: each each hurricane that makes landfall is coming in a
Speaker 1: difference in different intensities, and it's gonna infect a different
Speaker 1: area in a different way. It does seem interesting that
Speaker 1: I could be wrong about this, but my gut feeling
Speaker 1: is that people have an easier time knowing which hurricane
Speaker 1: you're talking about when they have names attached to them
Speaker 1: than they would if you were just referencing it by
Speaker 1: like a year or something. You know, yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 1: storm of ninety seven or something. But if you if
Speaker 1: you give it a human name, yeah, you're you're anthropomorphizing
Speaker 1: it a little bit. Just you know, there's no way
Speaker 1: around it. Uh, But people are going to remember it,
Speaker 1: people are going to know it's coming. It seems to
Speaker 1: me that, like when you say Andrew, that conjures up
Speaker 1: like specific imagery that you recall from being associated with
Speaker 1: that name. Verse is like if you were just to
Speaker 1: say the year number. I don't know, maybe it would
Speaker 1: be different if we were referred to it by years,
Speaker 1: but that's my feeling on it. Thank now to move
Speaker 1: elsewhere in the world. Another one that I ran across
Speaker 1: the Blue Men of minch Uh. So. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of mr Folk myths and legends out there that
Speaker 1: involve the creatures having some degree of control over or
Speaker 1: knowledge of weather and storms, and they're ultimately just too
Speaker 1: numerous to go through. There's a lot of similarities between them,
Speaker 1: but this one stood out to me. The mer people
Speaker 1: were said this particular variety of people anyway, were said
Speaker 1: to haunt the Minch passage of the Outer Hebrides off
Speaker 1: of Scotland. Uh. This body of water is known in
Speaker 1: Gaelic as uh thruth nap fear Gorma, the channel of
Speaker 1: the blue Men. Uh. So this is also interesting Conserdaly,
Speaker 1: we're talking about gray men, and here we are with
Speaker 1: blue men. So they were said to look like normal humans,
Speaker 1: except up with entirely blue skin and gray beards. And
Speaker 1: it's a treacherous passage of water apparently. And so the
Speaker 1: legend was that the blue men would rise up from
Speaker 1: their deep caves and they would summon fierce storms against
Speaker 1: trespassing human ships and wreck them. But wise captains knew
Speaker 1: that the blue men loved rhyming contests, so they could
Speaker 1: earn the ship's safety across the passage if they just
Speaker 1: had some great rhymes up there at sleeves. Now. Carol
Speaker 1: Rosen in her book she she shares that the myth
Speaker 1: is thought to be based on Moorish slaves marooned by
Speaker 1: Vikings in the area during the ninth century. And the
Speaker 1: idea here is that, uh that these these individuals would
Speaker 1: have worn long blue robes and gray blue veils. Huh.
Speaker 1: And incidentally, the Tuareg people of of Saharan Africa, uh,
Speaker 1: apparently do wear these fashions like these are the traditional
Speaker 1: fashions of the tire people. Now do you know if
Speaker 1: that's more of a kind of legendary explanation or is
Speaker 1: that thought by any modern scholars to have any likely
Speaker 1: explanatory power in the origin of the myth? Well, I
Speaker 1: was looking into it a bit, and apparently Scottish folkloreist
Speaker 1: Donald A. Mackenzie, who lived eighteen seventy three through nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, it was kind of the the individual who
Speaker 1: really popularized this hypothesis. And today I think there's some
Speaker 1: individuals who think that the true origin might just be
Speaker 1: accounts of the Tireg people, although the Saharan Africa that traveled, um,
Speaker 1: you know, some sort of you know, communication of this idea,
Speaker 1: maybe that you have some sort of a murfulk tradition
Speaker 1: and you combine that with with uh, you know, some
Speaker 1: sort of knowledge of Tareg people and what they wore.
Speaker 1: Or if not the tire people, then perhaps um predecessors
Speaker 1: to them that had similar fashions and similar uh you know,
Speaker 1: dies and use. But another suggest explanation is that this
Speaker 1: belief in the blue people, the blue men, and that
Speaker 1: it refers in some fashion to tattooed pitts. Uh. These
Speaker 1: were have been uh uh you know, people who were
Speaker 1: known for their tattoos, uh. And that the Latin origin
Speaker 1: of picks is painted people. I seem to recall this
Speaker 1: from the Roman period at least some author talking about
Speaker 1: the idea that there would be people in um. I
Speaker 1: don't know what they called it at the time. It
Speaker 1: was at Caledonia, you know, the area that is now Scotland,
Speaker 1: you know, north of England, so you would have had
Speaker 1: Roman Britain, and then at a certain point that you
Speaker 1: have Hadrian's Wall, and then there are tribes that live
Speaker 1: north of that that they regarded as very barbaric, and
Speaker 1: I think they there's some reference there to these people
Speaker 1: being painted in blue, or their warriors being painted in blue. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So ultimately, you know, we don't we don't know exactly
Speaker 1: what the blue men of min is referring to, or
Speaker 1: what indeed what which what influences or what combination of
Speaker 1: influences led to this tradition, but it was said they
Speaker 1: can control the weather, so it's certainly worth mentioning here.
Speaker 1: Now another one. I have to get into the realm
Speaker 1: of yokai here for a bit um and. And I'm
Speaker 1: especially excited to talk about this because I recently picked
Speaker 1: up a fun little book to read with my son
Speaker 1: titled Yokai Attacked the Japanese Monster Survival Guide. Um. This
Speaker 1: is by Yoda and Alt and illustrated by by Tatsuya Marino.
Speaker 1: And it's a fun little book with uh that that
Speaker 1: has some wonderful illustrations but also some great information in it.
Speaker 1: It's well cited and very informative and very fun for
Speaker 1: young readers. Uh so. Uh. I was looking through that
Speaker 1: and I was like, okay, I know there's some yokai
Speaker 1: that relate to the weather or to the water, so
Speaker 1: there's got to be something good in here. It on me. Well,
Speaker 1: there's one by the name of Umi bo Zoo. Uh.
Speaker 1: They're known as the Sea Monks, Japanese yokai said to
Speaker 1: resemble great black bull black beings with glowing eyes emerging
Speaker 1: from the water. Uh In. The black may or may
Speaker 1: not be fur if you could touch it, depending on
Speaker 1: the the account. Also depending on the account, they might
Speaker 1: be vengeful ghosts of the sea. Uh. And in this
Speaker 1: they have much in common with some Chinese ghost traditions
Speaker 1: uh the boat's spirits or fun yura, which you'll find
Speaker 1: illustrations off as well. But in anyway, the the umu
Speaker 1: boz are said to rise from the surface of the
Speaker 1: ocean even during the day. Even so, even if they're
Speaker 1: there's there's nothing going on, you know, with darkness and storm,
Speaker 1: but they bring with them atmospheric disturbances and storms. Um.
Speaker 1: And of course this means that ultimately what they're trying
Speaker 1: to do, of course, is they want to bring down vessels.
Speaker 1: They want to cause your ship to sink, drag it
Speaker 1: to the bottom of the ocean. And the smaller ones
Speaker 1: you might be able to drive away, but the larger
Speaker 1: ones are just too powerful. Okay. So this would be
Speaker 1: more in line with the type of creature like the
Speaker 1: in the bird from from Chinese legend that literally brings
Speaker 1: the storm and weather disturbances by its own like it
Speaker 1: directly causes them. Yeah, yeah, it would seem to be
Speaker 1: the case. Um. And these are these are fun ideas
Speaker 1: to get into as well, because first of all, the
Speaker 1: idea of any kind of enormous being certainly, um. You
Speaker 1: know this, this black creature emerging from the water. Uh,
Speaker 1: it instantly makes us think of whales. And indeed, there
Speaker 1: may be some connection there between between these legendary creatures
Speaker 1: and whale sightings. And I also there's the possibility that
Speaker 1: there's some sort of atmosphereic ghost lighting involved as well,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, something worth remembering anytime you're dealing
Speaker 1: with ghosts of the ocean. But one of the interesting
Speaker 1: takes I was reading about the fun yuri that the
Speaker 1: Chinese version of this the boat spirits uh, is that
Speaker 1: they were sometimes attributed with ladling water into ships and
Speaker 1: causing them to sink, or or just by their very
Speaker 1: presence causing compasses not to work. But they were also
Speaker 1: said to simply hold ships in place, and some have
Speaker 1: theorized that this might occur due to dead water. So
Speaker 1: this is a nautical phenomenon which UH you see take
Speaker 1: at least a couple of different forms. UH. For instance,
Speaker 1: you see it in in far northern um environments. You
Speaker 1: see this situation where slow moving vessels can become stuck
Speaker 1: due to a thin layer of fresh water spreading over
Speaker 1: the sea from melting ice. UM. But then also you
Speaker 1: see the situation with internal waves due to shallow brackish
Speaker 1: water and the upper layer of the water column, making
Speaker 1: it where if ship will feel stuck in the water,
Speaker 1: as if something is holding it there. So it's been
Speaker 1: hypothesized that this could be a possible one of the
Speaker 1: possible reasons for this kind of myth, like something is
Speaker 1: holding the ship in place. What is it? It must
Speaker 1: be some sort of ghostly presence. Oh yeah, I think
Speaker 1: the snake spirit. It might have been. In our episodes
Speaker 1: about the sarcassom seaweed that we uh discussed other other
Speaker 1: supernatural ideas about the dull drums and ways that your
Speaker 1: ship can become stuck in water without a propelling wind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course that's interesting too, right because because the the
Speaker 1: idea of a terrible storm can be devastating to the
Speaker 1: ship at sea, but also uh a complete absence of
Speaker 1: weather can be equally disturbing. Yeah. Now here's another creature
Speaker 1: that came up when I was looking around, and that's
Speaker 1: uh Um the Alps an interesting lake monster at this
Speaker 1: time from the folklore of Switzerland centered on the lake
Speaker 1: um uh Sellsburg see near lucerne uh sidings are recorded
Speaker 1: from eighty four through nine six. Kind of a bulky,
Speaker 1: multi limbed dragon creature that may suddenly surface alongside boats
Speaker 1: and scare people. Also may rage sheep herds at night
Speaker 1: and leave disturbingly mutilated bodies in its wake. Um, but
Speaker 1: there are arians in the water. Was said to foretell
Speaker 1: a powerful storm. Um. And so I had to look
Speaker 1: this wake up. I wasn't familiar with it. Uh. It's
Speaker 1: also known as Seeley and it covers forty four acres
Speaker 1: and reaches depths of thirty seven meters or one feet. Now,
Speaker 1: in Irish mythology, you also have the Fomorians. Um. These
Speaker 1: were said to be the original occupants of Ireland who
Speaker 1: were defeated by the invading fur Bags and then transformed
Speaker 1: into grotesque monsters or giants. And then of course the
Speaker 1: to offend Dan and come along and they invade and
Speaker 1: they defeat the defeat the fur Bags. And so the
Speaker 1: Fomorians are sometimes attributed with power over weather, over storms,
Speaker 1: as well as given the power to blight crops. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: we we We talked about Fomorians in the context of
Speaker 1: Kuhlan or Kukullen. Yeah. Now, another interesting monster that is
Speaker 1: that is definitely tied to the wind. At least in
Speaker 1: its origins, are the Harpies. And I think harpies are
Speaker 1: interesting because I think a lot of modern monster fans
Speaker 1: probably think of of maybe two or three different things
Speaker 1: when you imagine the harpy. First of all, they're Ray
Speaker 1: Harry Housing's harpies from Jason and the Argonauts. Do you
Speaker 1: remember these, Oh, yeah, these terrible blue women with the
Speaker 1: with the large blue bat wings. Yeah, they have bat
Speaker 1: like wings in uh, in Jason and the Argonauts. But
Speaker 1: they're they're pretty creepy, very gargoyle esque. Um. Outside of
Speaker 1: this tradition, they're they're pretty weak enemies and dungeons and dragons, uh,
Speaker 1: not very impressive, but there's some cool illustrations of them.
Speaker 1: And then of course there's the harpy in um the
Speaker 1: last Unicorn, which is a terrifying and powerful creature that
Speaker 1: is is pretty much the direct opposite of everything they
Speaker 1: are in Dungeons and Dragons and so in. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, generally, in our interpretation of the harpies, we
Speaker 1: think of grotesque hybrids of vultures and women, sometimes with
Speaker 1: the other influences thrown in. I've seen accunts where they
Speaker 1: say that they have bare ears and in wait, bare ears,
Speaker 1: bare ear, it's like the ears of a bear. I
Speaker 1: can't even picture bare ears what a bear ears look like.
Speaker 1: I don't. I mean, that's why I'm I think we
Speaker 1: we often just just whittle it down to just uh,
Speaker 1: you know, an old woman plus uh vulture, you know,
Speaker 1: because you throw in these other influences. Yet, what does
Speaker 1: it even mean? Okay, I just time barriers. They're little nubs.
Speaker 1: I mean like barriers. Do not seem like especially notable
Speaker 1: kinds of animal ears. Yeah, well maybe an admant more
Speaker 1: during the time when when this was attributed to their
Speaker 1: to their their these these monsters. That's such a funny choice.
Speaker 1: I love it. Now. In Greek and Roman myth the
Speaker 1: number of the harpies it it varies. There may be
Speaker 1: as few as one or as many as five. And
Speaker 1: in origin they are linked to traditions of wind spirits,
Speaker 1: and we see that in the various names that have
Speaker 1: been attributed to them. So in theogeny Hessiod rights quote
Speaker 1: and Thomas wedded Electra the daughter of deep flowing ocean
Speaker 1: and she bare him swift risks and the long haired
Speaker 1: harpies a yell o storm, swift and nosepates swift flyer
Speaker 1: who on their swift wings keep pace with the blasts
Speaker 1: of the winds and the birds for quick as time
Speaker 1: they dart along. By the way, Dungeons and Dragons gives
Speaker 1: harpies a laughable forty foot flying speed. Come on, that
Speaker 1: does not sound as fast as time? What is it? Okay?
Speaker 1: So I don't know flying speeds usually what is fort Oh?
Speaker 1: I think I've got a I think my character, who's
Speaker 1: kind of a whimp, has a thirty foot walking speed.
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah? Yeah, thirty foot walking walking is
Speaker 1: like a general humanoid walking speed. So the harpie can
Speaker 1: fly just a little further than a human being can walk.
Speaker 1: Uh in Dungeons and Dragons, which is clearly this is
Speaker 1: a creature that needs a needs a reboot. In the
Speaker 1: Monster Manual, now A Homer also wrote of harpies, particularly
Speaker 1: the harpy podar j which means a swift foot, and
Speaker 1: this is said to be the mother of Balius and
Speaker 1: xanthus the steeds of Achilles, And in a more general sense,
Speaker 1: the harpy is a human bird hybrid. Of course, and
Speaker 1: we see a lot of these and global myth cycles,
Speaker 1: and it's often pointed out that this sort of particular
Speaker 1: hybrid between humans and creatures of the air, it often
Speaker 1: has some sort of connection between earth and sky, between
Speaker 1: the world of mortals and the abode of the gods. Uh.
Speaker 1: The harpy also specifically is often brought up as an
Speaker 1: example of the monstrous feminine uh in in myth, making
Speaker 1: so an imagined creature used to convey negative attitudes about
Speaker 1: females and female bodies. Yeah. I think of it as
Speaker 1: a kind of standard genre of misogynist comment to to
Speaker 1: compare a woman that you don't like to a harpy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it seems that in their original form, in their origins,
Speaker 1: they were more like minor wind gods or or wind demons,
Speaker 1: perhaps more in keeping with the furies who might descend
Speaker 1: on a mortal at the behest of a god. By
Speaker 1: the way, an interesting wrinkle on all of this, I
Speaker 1: think we've discussed before is that the sirens, who we
Speaker 1: often think of now, and this is represented in our
Speaker 1: you think of mermaids, or you think of, you know,
Speaker 1: beautiful veiled women emerging from the surf, but they were
Speaker 1: originally bird female hybrids as well, and so ancient depictions
Speaker 1: of what we might think of as harpies in the
Speaker 1: modern sense, Uh, might have been sirens or in some cases, uh,
Speaker 1: just we're something else, some other kind of bird human hybrid.
Speaker 1: For instance, there is a tomb, the tomb of Xantha's
Speaker 1: found uh and uh there's a carving from it, various
Speaker 1: carvings from it, I think that you can find in
Speaker 1: the British Museum, and it's it's been referred to for
Speaker 1: a long time as the harpy tom. I mean, you
Speaker 1: see this winged female figure. Though it's it's far from
Speaker 1: certain that these were sirens, but they were probably not
Speaker 1: harpies either. Uh. So I think it's still an open
Speaker 1: question exactly what this particular being is supposed to be,
Speaker 1: you know, bringing this back to the special poe and
Speaker 1: see of weather mythology and weather monsters when it comes
Speaker 1: to sailing and ocean going. This reminds me of a
Speaker 1: few years ago I had a conversation with the author
Speaker 1: Chet van Douser about his his books about the history
Speaker 1: of depictions of monsters on maps and um and one
Speaker 1: of the surprising things about that is if you had
Speaker 1: to guess, okay, what are the most common types of
Speaker 1: sea monsters, you would imagine depicted on a map. Uh,
Speaker 1: you would probably guess what's some kind of like ocean
Speaker 1: dragon type thing, or maybe the the kraken, or like
Speaker 1: a snake like sea monster. No, by far, the most
Speaker 1: common type of monster, at least depicted throughout the Western
Speaker 1: history of maps, is the siren. If you're gonna have
Speaker 1: one type of monster on there, it's going to be
Speaker 1: a siren. And and do you remember if it was
Speaker 1: the more mur folk style siren or the winged I'm
Speaker 1: cautious to answer that because I'm not positive, but I
Speaker 1: seem to recall representations both ways. Um, so I guess
Speaker 1: the wing adverse Asian would probably be closer to this
Speaker 1: association with weather events, Yeah, I would, I would think so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they and certainly the the the curious nature of winds
Speaker 1: and winds at sea. And I guess that's where a
Speaker 1: lot of this comes back to, like how how do
Speaker 1: we today and how have people throughout history thought about
Speaker 1: weather patterns, particularly destructive weather that seem out of the normal. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, that are unique and dangerous? How do we
Speaker 1: think about those? Are those the work of strange creatures
Speaker 1: that we can't quite understand? Are they cosmic? Anomalies. Might
Speaker 1: there be some sort of magical being that would warn
Speaker 1: us if these are occurring? Is there some hero that
Speaker 1: could protect us from them, because they could slay these
Speaker 1: monsters and return the world to to some sort of normality. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's fascinating to think about. I wonder about something else,
Speaker 1: coming back to gray Man type sightings of you know,
Speaker 1: the being that would warn you about about a coming storm.
Speaker 1: I wonder to what extent legends like that could also
Speaker 1: sort of be going the other way in terms of
Speaker 1: our internal mental causation, meaning like how much of it
Speaker 1: is based in People have some kind of experience, you know,
Speaker 1: they see what they think is a is a spectral
Speaker 1: figure or spirit of something or something, and they want
Speaker 1: it to mean something. They don't want to just be
Speaker 1: I saw something weird and there's no reason for it,
Speaker 1: so they try to connect it to something significant. It's
Speaker 1: trying to tell me X. This means why when we
Speaker 1: have unusual experiences. I think it's very natural for us
Speaker 1: to try to say no, no, no, that was not
Speaker 1: just an unusual experience. It was an indication of something.
Speaker 1: It was somehow informative, It meant something, and it seems
Speaker 1: like possibly the single easiest place you could go to
Speaker 1: there is connecting it to external environmental events like the weather. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think this is one reason there's so
Speaker 1: much weather lore where people can say, oh, you can
Speaker 1: tell the storm's coming when I don't know when cow
Speaker 1: sits down at night, or something like. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a million sayings like that, and it's because weather is
Speaker 1: constantly changing. So there's just like constant opportunities for you
Speaker 1: to observe one thing and then something happens with the
Speaker 1: weather and you make a connection there. Yeah, And our
Speaker 1: mind is constantly looking for those connections. We want to
Speaker 1: make those connections, and often with whether the stakes are
Speaker 1: are enormous, particularly when we're talking about highly destructive weather patterns.
Speaker 1: So of course we're looking for some sort of connection
Speaker 1: between the things we see in the world and what's
Speaker 1: going on in the weather. And that includes, uh, things
Speaker 1: we don't completely see, you know, or we we we
Speaker 1: miss see, or we misinterpret or hallucinations and so forth,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, I think that Uh. One I guess
Speaker 1: one place I was going with that is that perhaps
Speaker 1: that selective sort of meaning seeking whenever you have a
Speaker 1: strange experience could lead to a form of selective reporting
Speaker 1: that informs So, you know, somebody thinks they see something
Speaker 1: weird in a photo or thinks they see something weird
Speaker 1: on the beach, and then nothing happens the next day. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know who they really tell about that.
Speaker 1: But if the next day the hurricane hits and you
Speaker 1: think you've discovered some kind of uh, informative correlation there,
Speaker 1: you might be much more likely to tell everybody this story. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and if it's not, if not the weather, then
Speaker 1: perhaps there's something else that occurs. You know, you see
Speaker 1: something strange and then the next day a monarch dies
Speaker 1: or yeah, storm occurs, or a family member grows sick.
Speaker 1: Then you can make that connection. You'd be like, ah,
Speaker 1: this is what that was about. It didn't happen for
Speaker 1: no reason. It was a warning. It was a communication.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's funny because if you broughten it that
Speaker 1: much to just like basically any significant event. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's always something in the news, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: something happens every day. Yeah, I mean stuff happens. It
Speaker 1: seems to happen for no reason. And if that if
Speaker 1: that's the case, you know, you have nothing, but if
Speaker 1: you have ghosts, well then you have everything. Right. Very nice,
Speaker 1: very nice to bring it back to Rocky Well, you
Speaker 1: know they say the moon to the left is a
Speaker 1: part of my thoughts, and a part of my thoughts
Speaker 1: is a part of me is me? Uh So, so
Speaker 1: maybe before our fangs get too long, we should cut
Speaker 1: this episode off, all right, But of course we're going
Speaker 1: to be discussing losts of ghostly and monstrous things for
Speaker 1: the rest of this month, and it probably a little
Speaker 1: bit beyond We're we're we're we're well into the season now,
Speaker 1: so stay tuned. It should be fun. Uh. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to listen to other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your mind, Her core episodes are on Tuesday
Speaker 1: and Thursday, we have an artifact or a monster fact
Speaker 1: on Wednesday. Monday is a listener mail. Friday is Weird
Speaker 1: how Cinema. That's our time to just unwind and discuss
Speaker 1: a weird film, and of course we have some very
Speaker 1: spooky films to discuss this month as well. And then
Speaker 1: on the weekend we do a vault episode, which is
Speaker 1: of course a rerun from the previous year. I just
Speaker 1: want to give a teaser that this week's episode of
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema I think is without a doubt, can
Speaker 1: be our longest most epic episode of all time, and
Speaker 1: uh may may remain that way because I don't know
Speaker 1: if it can be outdone. I wonder if it's longer
Speaker 1: than the movie itself. I think that at least once. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll tune in to find out what that is. Huge.
Speaker 1: Thanks as always to our wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
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,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're
Speaker 1: listening to your favorite shows. Four four ninbre numbers nine