1
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Speaker 1: The man leaned against a boulder, taking respite in the

2
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Speaker 1: wind's brief lull. His eyes were red, his lips cracked

3
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Speaker 1: and parched. Another squall of warm air thick with dust

4
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Speaker 1: hit him again. He ducked to shield his eyes and

5
00:00:28,880 --> 00:00:34,200
Speaker 1: cursed its constant rattling round his head. It was only wind,

6
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Speaker 1: but it was driving him to distraction. The man was

7
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Speaker 1: fifty three year old Episcopalian Bishop James Albert Pike. In

8
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Speaker 1: early September nineteen sixty nine, he and his twenty eight

9
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Speaker 1: year old wife Diane, ventured out into the Judean Desert

10
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Speaker 1: in the West Bank. They were looking for the place

11
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Speaker 1: where Jesus was supposedly tempted by by the Devil for

12
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Speaker 1: a book Pike was writing. Driving out of bethy Hem

13
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Speaker 1: one morning, they turned off the main road onto a

14
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Speaker 1: dirt track, believing they were heading north toward Jericho, but

15
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Speaker 1: the track was instead taking them further east toward the

16
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Speaker 1: Dead Sea, further into the desert. When they finally realized

17
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Speaker 1: their mistake, the couple attempted to turn the car around,

18
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Speaker 1: only for it to get stuck in a rut. After

19
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Speaker 1: an hour spent battling to free the vehicle with a

20
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Speaker 1: faulty carjack, they were forced to accept they were now stranded.

21
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Speaker 1: They'd already drunk the two cokes they took with them

22
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Speaker 1: that morning and had no other liquid. With the heat

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Speaker 1: steadily intensifying, their only option was to get walking in

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Speaker 1: the hope of finding help before it was too late.

25
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Speaker 1: Not used to the desert environment, the heat fell like

26
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Speaker 1: a great pressure that seemed to be pushing them down

27
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Speaker 1: into the dusty ground with each step, and without water,

28
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Speaker 1: they became rapidly dehydrated. After mercifully coming across a large,

29
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Speaker 1: overhanging rock, they stopped to get some pressure shade, but

30
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Speaker 1: James no longer had the strength to continue. Diane looked

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Speaker 1: out into the desert toward a shady looking canyon or

32
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Speaker 1: waddy in the distance, as a wind began to pick up,

33
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Speaker 1: sweeping sand into the air like a haze. She knew

34
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Speaker 1: then that she was their only hope. If she couldn't

35
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Speaker 1: find help before nightfall, they would most likely both die there,

36
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Speaker 1: and so she told her husband to sit tight, then

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Speaker 1: headed back out into the irrepressible heat. James watched Diane

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Speaker 1: until her silhouette disappeared into the horizon, then lay back

39
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Speaker 1: against the rock and fell asleep with exhaustion. You're listening

40
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Speaker 1: to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. Hours later, James

41
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Speaker 1: awoke to find the sun much lower in the sky,

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Speaker 1: but the wind still blowing incessantly, feathering grains of sand

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Speaker 1: over the desert floor towards him. As it tugged at

44
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Speaker 1: his shirt and blue dust in his eyes, it almost

45
00:03:38,120 --> 00:03:44,280
Speaker 1: felt like fluttering. Insistent fingers were scratching, even clawing at him.

46
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Speaker 1: He couldn't stand it any longer. Perhaps if he could

47
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Speaker 1: follow his wife into that shady waddy, he could get

48
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Speaker 1: out of the wind, find her footsteps, and walk to safety.

49
00:03:58,160 --> 00:04:01,360
Speaker 1: James staggered to his feet and made it a few

50
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Speaker 1: hundred yards into the waddy, where he found a large

51
00:04:05,080 --> 00:04:10,040
Speaker 1: shaded pool of water. He took long, desperate gulps of

52
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Speaker 1: the warm, silty liquid, then sat down again to rest.

53
00:04:15,560 --> 00:04:20,080
Speaker 1: But still the wind would not leave him alone. It

54
00:04:20,200 --> 00:04:24,719
Speaker 1: snaked through the canyon, tugging at his hair, ruffling his

55
00:04:24,920 --> 00:04:29,320
Speaker 1: damp cotton shirt. He knew in his head that the

56
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Speaker 1: safest thing was to stay put and wait for Diane.

57
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Speaker 1: He had shelter and water, but he just had to

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Speaker 1: get away from that wind with a renewed sense of

59
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Speaker 1: strength and purpose, he turned to face the wall of

60
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Speaker 1: the canyon. Finding a solid hole to grip, he pushed

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Speaker 1: up from the ground and began to climb elsewhere. Diane

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Speaker 1: had been stumbling across the stony desert for hour I

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Speaker 1: was barely managing to keep going in the encroaching darkness.

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Speaker 1: She later said that what prompted her to keep going

65
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Speaker 1: was that if her body were found on the way

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Speaker 1: to get help, at least people wouldn't think that the

67
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Speaker 1: couple had committed suicide. After ten strenuous hours, first scrambling

68
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Speaker 1: up the walls of the canyon, then stumbling along a

69
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Speaker 1: road under construction, relief washed over Diane when finally in

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Speaker 1: the distance she saw the camp of the laborers who

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Speaker 1: were building the road. As she staggered into the camp,

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Speaker 1: the men reached out to stop her from collapsing to

73
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Speaker 1: the ground. They sat her down and wrapped a blanket

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Speaker 1: around her while they waited for their foreman to arrive.

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Speaker 1: Having recovered somewhat, Diane was then taken to the nearest

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Speaker 1: army camp, where she asked the camp's captain to help

77
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Speaker 1: her rescue her husband, but with it now long in

78
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Speaker 1: the night, there was little the captain could do. The

79
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Speaker 1: search for James would have to wait until the next day.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't long before the Pike's abandoned car was located

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Speaker 1: just at the beginning of a waddy called Mura Barat.

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Speaker 1: A few of the men helped pull it out of

83
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Speaker 1: the rut in no time. The engine still worked perfectly,

84
00:06:35,920 --> 00:06:40,720
Speaker 1: but there was no sign of James. James Pike had

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Speaker 1: risen to prominence within the Episcopal Church in large part

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Speaker 1: due to his outspoken liberal views, which were both fated

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Speaker 1: and hated in equal measure. In nineteen fifty eight, Pike

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Speaker 1: was appointed as the fifth Bishop of California, in which

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Speaker 1: capacity he was an early promoter of the acceptance of

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Speaker 1: LGBT people into the church, civil rights, and the ordination

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Speaker 1: of women into the priesthood. By nineteen sixty six, Pike

92
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Speaker 1: had grown tired of all the politics that came with

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Speaker 1: his position. He left California and went to share a

94
00:07:21,320 --> 00:07:26,040
Speaker 1: period of sabbatical study at Cambridge University in England with

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Speaker 1: his son, Jim, one of four children from his second marriage.

96
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Speaker 1: In early February, Jim left his father in Cambridge and

97
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Speaker 1: returned to the US. A few days later, he fatally

98
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Speaker 1: shot himself in the head in a New York City

99
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Speaker 1: hotel room just over two weeks later. Having just returned

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Speaker 1: to Cambridge from attending his son's funeral, James walked into

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Speaker 1: the bedroom of the apartment he and his son had

102
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Speaker 1: shared to find two postcards that he'd never seen before

103
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Speaker 1: lying on the floor. They were positioned at an angle

104
00:08:04,920 --> 00:08:09,720
Speaker 1: of approximately one hundred and forty degrees, apparently mimicking the

105
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Speaker 1: hands of a clock, showing the precise time that his

106
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Speaker 1: son had killed himself. It was just the first in

107
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Speaker 1: a number of bizarre occurrences that led James to believe

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Speaker 1: his son was trying to communicate with him from beyond

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Speaker 1: the grave. In response, Pike dived deeply into a very

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Speaker 1: public pursuit of various spiritualist and clairvoyant methods. He even

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Speaker 1: participated in a televised seance supposedly with his dead son

112
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Speaker 1: through the so called medium Arthur Ford in nineteen sixty six.

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Speaker 1: By nineteen sixty seven, Pike had been divorced twice and

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Speaker 1: was living with his then girlfriend Marion Bergrad, when she

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Speaker 1: also committed suicide. The following year, he married Diane Kennedy,

116
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Speaker 1: whom he'd collaborated with on his book The Other Side,

117
00:09:07,600 --> 00:09:12,479
Speaker 1: in which he outlined his experiences with supposed paranormal phenomena

118
00:09:12,840 --> 00:09:18,800
Speaker 1: following his son's suicide. The marriage was controversial among members

119
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Speaker 1: of Pike's church, and three days after the wedding, Pike

120
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Speaker 1: was barred from performing all priestly functions, and so it

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00:09:28,200 --> 00:09:32,439
Speaker 1: was with Pike free to pursue new projects, that in

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Speaker 1: August nineteen sixty nine, Pike and Diane traveled to Israel

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Speaker 1: to conduct research for a new book Pike wanted to

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Speaker 1: write about the historical Jesus. A few days later, they

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Speaker 1: made their fateful trip into the desert. For three days,

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Speaker 1: with temperatures reaching a above one hundred degrees fahrenheit, hundreds

127
00:10:03,120 --> 00:10:07,000
Speaker 1: of off duty soldiers searched high and low for James,

128
00:10:07,400 --> 00:10:11,520
Speaker 1: but found no sign of him. With little chance that

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Speaker 1: the bishop could survive that long out in the desert,

130
00:10:15,240 --> 00:10:18,600
Speaker 1: the official search was called off, while a number of

131
00:10:18,600 --> 00:10:23,600
Speaker 1: Bedouin and former army scouts continued to look for him.

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Speaker 1: At the end of that third day, Diane gave a

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Speaker 1: press conference to update the media on the situation. Shortly after,

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00:10:32,720 --> 00:10:35,800
Speaker 1: she received a phone call from her family in the States.

135
00:10:36,600 --> 00:10:41,200
Speaker 1: They'd received word from Arthur Ford, the self described medium

136
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Speaker 1: who'd apparently helped Pike contact his dead son. Ford said

137
00:10:46,760 --> 00:10:50,720
Speaker 1: that Pike was still very much alive and sheltering in

138
00:10:50,760 --> 00:10:54,240
Speaker 1: a cave close to where Diane had last seen him,

139
00:10:54,600 --> 00:10:58,360
Speaker 1: but he was sick and in need of urgent medical attention.

140
00:10:59,559 --> 00:11:05,000
Speaker 1: After that, Diane was suddenly inundated by numerous self described

141
00:11:05,080 --> 00:11:10,240
Speaker 1: mediums offering to help locate her husband in Tel Aviv.

142
00:11:10,760 --> 00:11:15,400
Speaker 1: One so called medium swung a pendulum over a large map,

143
00:11:15,880 --> 00:11:19,280
Speaker 1: then recorded the position on the map where it stopped.

144
00:11:19,920 --> 00:11:25,160
Speaker 1: When they repeated the pendulum swing over a different map, miraculously,

145
00:11:25,800 --> 00:11:30,440
Speaker 1: it stopped at the precise same location. Two men were

146
00:11:30,440 --> 00:11:34,840
Speaker 1: despatched from Tel Aviv immediately to locate the spot, but

147
00:11:34,960 --> 00:11:38,679
Speaker 1: when they got there, the place was deserted, with no

148
00:11:38,760 --> 00:11:43,240
Speaker 1: sign of Pike having ever been there. The following day,

149
00:11:43,880 --> 00:11:48,040
Speaker 1: the same medium attempted a spot of automatic writing to

150
00:11:48,080 --> 00:11:51,840
Speaker 1: see if that might help. Holding a pen over a

151
00:11:51,880 --> 00:11:56,320
Speaker 1: piece of paper, they fell seemingly into a trance as

152
00:11:56,360 --> 00:12:00,200
Speaker 1: another spirit entered their body and began to move their

153
00:12:00,280 --> 00:12:04,880
Speaker 1: hand across the paper. Snapping out of the apparent trance

154
00:12:05,000 --> 00:12:09,560
Speaker 1: moments later, the medium consulted the paper on which a

155
00:12:09,679 --> 00:12:14,679
Speaker 1: message was now written. It had supposedly come from infamous

156
00:12:14,920 --> 00:12:20,120
Speaker 1: apparent psychic Edgar Case, who died almost twenty years earlier.

157
00:12:20,920 --> 00:12:25,840
Speaker 1: The message declared that Pike was lying unconscious and close

158
00:12:25,880 --> 00:12:29,280
Speaker 1: to death in a cave on a narrow ridge that

159
00:12:29,520 --> 00:12:34,480
Speaker 1: was hidden by shrubs. A team of volunteers raced back

160
00:12:34,520 --> 00:12:37,960
Speaker 1: out to the desert and searched for the cave to

161
00:12:38,120 --> 00:12:43,839
Speaker 1: no avail. On September fifth, five days after Pike had

162
00:12:43,920 --> 00:12:49,720
Speaker 1: last been seen alive, a search volunteer close to Wadi Murabarat,

163
00:12:50,040 --> 00:12:54,640
Speaker 1: came across a map, then a pair of undershorts, followed

164
00:12:54,640 --> 00:12:59,560
Speaker 1: by some glasses and later a contact lens case. It

165
00:12:59,600 --> 00:13:02,560
Speaker 1: was a part that had been laid out by Pike,

166
00:13:03,360 --> 00:13:07,719
Speaker 1: and at the end of it, part way down Wadi Murabarat,

167
00:13:08,360 --> 00:13:12,080
Speaker 1: was Pike's body, sprawled out on the floor at the

168
00:13:12,120 --> 00:13:17,040
Speaker 1: bottom of a steep face. It appeared that he'd fallen

169
00:13:17,120 --> 00:13:20,920
Speaker 1: from high up, having attempted to climb out of the canyon.

170
00:13:22,280 --> 00:13:25,920
Speaker 1: The next day, he was buried in Saint Peter's Protestant

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Speaker 1: Cemetery in Jaffa, Israel, and it wasn't long before the

172
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Speaker 1: rumors began that something weird had happened to Pike while

173
00:13:35,679 --> 00:13:38,640
Speaker 1: he was out in the desert that it wasn't the

174
00:13:38,679 --> 00:13:42,000
Speaker 1: fall that killed him, but rather he'd been driven to

175
00:13:42,040 --> 00:13:46,240
Speaker 1: his death by a weird kind of madness brought on

176
00:13:46,520 --> 00:13:57,000
Speaker 1: by the wind. The wind that James and Diane Pike

177
00:13:57,200 --> 00:14:01,760
Speaker 1: experienced on their desert misadventure is known in Israel as

178
00:14:01,760 --> 00:14:07,000
Speaker 1: the Sharav and more widely across the Mediterranean as the Soroco.

179
00:14:07,480 --> 00:14:10,160
Speaker 1: It's a wind that brings warm air from the Sahara

180
00:14:10,520 --> 00:14:15,800
Speaker 1: and the Arabian Peninsula, with many names, the Levante in

181
00:14:15,960 --> 00:14:20,800
Speaker 1: Spain or the Camscene in Egypt. Its characterized by a

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00:14:20,880 --> 00:14:26,800
Speaker 1: temperature roughly twenty five degrees fahrenheit higher than the seasonal average,

183
00:14:27,440 --> 00:14:31,640
Speaker 1: and south of the Mediterranean, the Sorocco is always dry,

184
00:14:32,240 --> 00:14:37,640
Speaker 1: with a relative humidity sometimes falling to zero. Some believe

185
00:14:37,760 --> 00:14:42,880
Speaker 1: these two characteristics do something fundamental to the wind's electrical

186
00:14:42,920 --> 00:14:47,600
Speaker 1: properties and to anybody unfortunate enough to be caught in

187
00:14:47,640 --> 00:14:53,200
Speaker 1: its grip. One researcher at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem

188
00:14:53,520 --> 00:14:57,920
Speaker 1: found that almost one third of Israel's population experience some

189
00:14:58,120 --> 00:15:02,920
Speaker 1: kind of adverse reaction, and the Charaf blows forty three

190
00:15:03,040 --> 00:15:08,120
Speaker 1: percent of the people he tested experienced unusually high concentrations

191
00:15:08,160 --> 00:15:12,000
Speaker 1: of the hormone serotonin in their blood system when the

192
00:15:12,040 --> 00:15:18,400
Speaker 1: wind was blowing. Serotonin causes the constriction of peripheral blood vessels,

193
00:15:18,920 --> 00:15:22,520
Speaker 1: including those in the brain and ones that control sleep.

194
00:15:23,400 --> 00:15:28,440
Speaker 1: In modest concentrations, it's a natural tranquilizer, but too much

195
00:15:28,520 --> 00:15:38,240
Speaker 1: serotonin produces migraines, allergic reactions, flushes, palpitations, irritability, and sleeplessness.

196
00:15:39,800 --> 00:15:43,720
Speaker 1: That people might be driven to distraction, even madness by

197
00:15:43,760 --> 00:15:47,280
Speaker 1: the wind is not a new theory or specific to

198
00:15:47,360 --> 00:15:51,480
Speaker 1: any one part of the world. The Greek physician from

199
00:15:51,560 --> 00:15:56,680
Speaker 1: the fourth century BCE, Hippocrates, was convinced that certain winds

200
00:15:56,800 --> 00:16:00,760
Speaker 1: made people in ancient Greece sick. He wrote that the

201
00:16:00,800 --> 00:16:04,600
Speaker 1: west winds were worse and that people exposed to them

202
00:16:05,040 --> 00:16:09,960
Speaker 1: became pale and sickly, with digestive organs that were quote

203
00:16:10,400 --> 00:16:14,480
Speaker 1: frequently deranged from the phlegm that runs down into them

204
00:16:14,720 --> 00:16:20,200
Speaker 1: from the head. The French Enlightenment writer, philosopher and historian

205
00:16:20,440 --> 00:16:24,600
Speaker 1: Voltaire spent time in England while in exile from its

206
00:16:24,680 --> 00:16:29,040
Speaker 1: native France during the seventeen twenties. He wrote that in London,

207
00:16:29,400 --> 00:16:33,680
Speaker 1: when the east wind blew. A black melancholy spreads over

208
00:16:33,760 --> 00:16:37,760
Speaker 1: the whole nation. Even the animals suffer from it and

209
00:16:37,880 --> 00:16:42,240
Speaker 1: have a dejected air. Men strong enough to preserve their

210
00:16:42,320 --> 00:16:47,280
Speaker 1: health in this accursed wind lose their good humor. Everyone

211
00:16:47,520 --> 00:16:52,120
Speaker 1: wears a grim expression and is inclined to make desperate decisions.

212
00:16:53,160 --> 00:16:55,720
Speaker 1: Even claimed that it was under the influence of the

213
00:16:55,760 --> 00:16:59,640
Speaker 1: East wind that the English beheaded King Charles the First

214
00:17:00,160 --> 00:17:04,760
Speaker 1: and opposed King James the Second. It hadn't crossed the

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Speaker 1: mind of travel writer Nick Hunt how the wind might

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Speaker 1: affect his state of mind and well being as he

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Speaker 1: set out in twenty sixteen on a walking adventure across

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Speaker 1: Europe to experience its various winds, a journey that became

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Speaker 1: the subject of his next book, Where the Wild Winds Are.

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Speaker 1: Things went as well as expected as Nick trekked across

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Speaker 1: the Low Pennine Hills of northern England, experiencing Britain's only

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Speaker 1: named wind, the Helm. He continued to enjoy his wonderings

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Speaker 1: as he traveled to Trieste, from where he sauntered across Slovenia,

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Speaker 1: then down the coast of Croatia, enjoying chile blasts at

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Speaker 1: the borer a frigid blast of air that blows across

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Speaker 1: the Adriatic coast from snow covered mountains to its northeast.

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Speaker 1: Then Nick arrived in Switzerland looking forward to sampling the fern,

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Speaker 1: a warm, dry wind that blows down from the Alps

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Speaker 1: in spring and at its most intense as the power

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Speaker 1: to bring down cable cars and derailed trains. Having mentioned

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Speaker 1: his plans to a German friend, the person replied, Ah, yes,

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Speaker 1: the fern. That's why everyone in Bavaria is crazy. Famed

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Speaker 1: novelist Hermann Hess had even written about the fern as

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Speaker 1: a boy. He said that he was afraid of even

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Speaker 1: hated that wind. Everything was going smoothly as Nick began

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Speaker 1: his traverse of alpine foothills in the German speaking part

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Speaker 1: of the country, until he reached the village of inert

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Speaker 1: Kirchen in the Canton of Bern, where the fern began

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Speaker 1: to blow. Are you sure you want to do this?

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Speaker 1: It's a bit a bit windy, shouted the owner of

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Speaker 1: a campsite where Nick had decided to pitch his tent

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Speaker 1: for the night. After repeated attempts wrestling with the writhing

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Speaker 1: giant nylon manta, ray that his tent had become. He

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Speaker 1: managed to peg it down under a lone peach tree

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Speaker 1: that thrashed wildly in the howling gale all night. Nick's

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Speaker 1: tent bucked and flapped, while the wind all around him

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Speaker 1: bellowed like a banshee. He wrote that at some point

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Speaker 1: in the next twelve hours it was as if something

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Speaker 1: in his brain snapped. He struggled for breath as he

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Speaker 1: packed his tent the following morning, then walked on watching

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Speaker 1: waterfalls being blown upwards. His limbs felt heavy and tired,

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Speaker 1: his mind seemed clouded and foggy, and he was overcome

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Speaker 1: with a sudden sense of despair. For three weeks, the

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Speaker 1: wind continued to howl, and Nick's mood worsened. Even boarding

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Speaker 1: a high speed train to the French speaking part of

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Speaker 1: the Swiss Alps didn't seem to help. As he watched

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Speaker 1: the landscape speed by, his anxiety grew. He found accommodation

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Speaker 1: with a hospitable Buddhist woman clothed in yellow robes, but

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Speaker 1: still couldn't seem to relax as he collapsed into bed.

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Speaker 1: He felt plagued by an inexplicable apprehension that, in his words,

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Speaker 1: something had gone extremely wrong on waking. The next morning, however,

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Speaker 1: Nick stepped outside to find that the fern had finally stopped.

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Speaker 1: He admired a blue sky peppered with cotton wool clouds,

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Speaker 1: and was charmed as he watched his host to feed

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Speaker 1: her rabbits. Then strolled contentedly down the street to buy

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Speaker 1: a croissant. Instead of looking desolate and forbidding, the surrounding

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Speaker 1: hillsides now seemed inviting. His dark mood had miraculously lifted.

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Speaker 1: Suddenly the world was full of possibilities. Nick continued his

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Speaker 1: hike down the valley with all the gloom from the

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Speaker 1: previous few days having completely evaporated. Over the centuries, there's

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Speaker 1: been general agreement that the wind can deeply influence our

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Speaker 1: bodies and mines. South African biologist and anthropologist Lyle Watson,

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Speaker 1: author of the best selling New Age classic SuperNature, published

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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three, spent his life trying to make

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Speaker 1: sense of natural and supernatural phenomena in biological terms. He

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Speaker 1: examined and wrote about the effects of the wind in

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Speaker 1: some detail in his nineteen eighty four book Heaven's Breath,

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Speaker 1: A Natural History of the Wind. In it, he wrote

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Speaker 1: that it's easy to imagine that in human prehistory, days

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Speaker 1: with a lot of wind were dangerous, with the ability

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Speaker 1: to destroy shelters, disperse warning scents, and mask the sound

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Speaker 1: of approaching predators. Lyle Watson suggested that the effect of

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Speaker 1: the wind on the human body is to invoke a

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Speaker 1: classic alarm reaction, increasing the production of adrenaline, speeding up metabolism,

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Speaker 1: dilating blood vessels in the muscles and heart, widening the pupils,

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Speaker 1: and even causing hares to stand on end with a

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Speaker 1: prickle of apprehension. A study documenting the effect of temperatures

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Speaker 1: on physical fitness tests found that performances reached their efficiency

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Speaker 1: when a wind blew on the subjects at about twenty

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Speaker 1: five kilometers per hour or four four Any higher or

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Speaker 1: lower and performances began to drop off. One American study

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Speaker 1: investigating how wind affects the behavior of children in the

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Speaker 1: playground found that when wind speeds rose above four six

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Speaker 1: or forty four kilometers per hour, the average number of

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Speaker 1: fights that broke out doubled. As Lyle says, there is

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Speaker 1: something about wind, quite apart from its cooling influence, that

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Speaker 1: directly affects our well being. Lyle hypothesized that the bodies

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Speaker 1: of sailors and fishers who live constantly under the strain

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Speaker 1: of the wind have adapted to the constant stimulus. Conversely,

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Speaker 1: many city dwellers have lost the ability to withstand it sufficiently,

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Speaker 1: leading to increased incidences of heart attacks and strokes on

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Speaker 1: windy days. One study revealed that fifty percent of all

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Speaker 1: strokes and myocardial infarctions happened when the wind was blowing

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Speaker 1: at fourse four or five. Strangely, when the wind speed

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Speaker 1: is higher, however, the effect is diminished. Reaction times can

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Speaker 1: also be effected, so much so that, according to Touring

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Speaker 1: Clubs SUE, a nonprofit representing the interests of motorists in Switzerland,

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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two, traffic accidents in Geneva increased by

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Speaker 1: over fifty percent when the fern wind was in effect. Furthermore,

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Speaker 1: as lyell wrights. In nineteen seventy six, the medical department

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Speaker 1: of the West German Weather Station in Freiburg published the

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Speaker 1: results of a four year study proving that industrial accidents

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Speaker 1: during the fern wind required surgery sixteen percent more often

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Speaker 1: and other medical treatment twenty percent more frequently than at

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Speaker 1: any other time. Increases in hypotension, coronary crises, migraine, and

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Speaker 1: psychic disturbances both during and on the day preceding a

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Speaker 1: fern wind were also reported Lyle continues, the incidence of

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Speaker 1: post operative death due to both heavy bleeding and thrombosis

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Speaker 1: during a fern wind has become so high that in

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Speaker 1: some hospitals in Switzerland and Bavaria, major surgery is postponed

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Speaker 1: whenever possible until the wind has passed, and, like something

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Speaker 1: out of an Mnite Shamalan movie, even suicides and suicide

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Speaker 1: attempts sore to epidemic proportions throughout Switzerland and into Austria

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Speaker 1: whenever the Witch's wind, as the fern is sometimes called

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Speaker 1: touches ground. This episode was written by Dianehope and Richard

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Speaker 1: McClain smith Unexplained as an av Club Productions podcast created

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Speaker 1: by Richard McClain smith. All other elements of the podcast,

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Speaker 1: including the music, are also produced by me Richard McClain

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Speaker 1: Smith Unexplained. The book and audiobook, with stories never before

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