Speaker 1: The man leaned against a boulder, taking respite in the
Speaker 1: wind's brief lull. His eyes were red, his lips cracked
Speaker 1: and parched. Another squall of warm air thick with dust
Speaker 1: hit him again. He ducked to shield his eyes and
Speaker 1: cursed its constant rattling round his head. It was only wind,
Speaker 1: but it was driving him to distraction. The man was
Speaker 1: fifty three year old Episcopalian Bishop James Albert Pike. In
Speaker 1: early September nineteen sixty nine, he and his twenty eight
Speaker 1: year old wife Diane, ventured out into the Judean Desert
Speaker 1: in the West Bank. They were looking for the place
Speaker 1: where Jesus was supposedly tempted by by the Devil for
Speaker 1: a book Pike was writing. Driving out of bethy Hem
Speaker 1: one morning, they turned off the main road onto a
Speaker 1: dirt track, believing they were heading north toward Jericho, but
Speaker 1: the track was instead taking them further east toward the
Speaker 1: Dead Sea, further into the desert. When they finally realized
Speaker 1: their mistake, the couple attempted to turn the car around,
Speaker 1: only for it to get stuck in a rut. After
Speaker 1: an hour spent battling to free the vehicle with a
Speaker 1: faulty carjack, they were forced to accept they were now stranded.
Speaker 1: They'd already drunk the two cokes they took with them
Speaker 1: that morning and had no other liquid. With the heat
Speaker 1: steadily intensifying, their only option was to get walking in
Speaker 1: the hope of finding help before it was too late.
Speaker 1: Not used to the desert environment, the heat fell like
Speaker 1: a great pressure that seemed to be pushing them down
Speaker 1: into the dusty ground with each step, and without water,
Speaker 1: they became rapidly dehydrated. After mercifully coming across a large,
Speaker 1: overhanging rock, they stopped to get some pressure shade, but
Speaker 1: James no longer had the strength to continue. Diane looked
Speaker 1: out into the desert toward a shady looking canyon or
Speaker 1: waddy in the distance, as a wind began to pick up,
Speaker 1: sweeping sand into the air like a haze. She knew
Speaker 1: then that she was their only hope. If she couldn't
Speaker 1: find help before nightfall, they would most likely both die there,
Speaker 1: and so she told her husband to sit tight, then
Speaker 1: headed back out into the irrepressible heat. James watched Diane
Speaker 1: until her silhouette disappeared into the horizon, then lay back
Speaker 1: against the rock and fell asleep with exhaustion. You're listening
Speaker 1: to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. Hours later, James
Speaker 1: awoke to find the sun much lower in the sky,
Speaker 1: but the wind still blowing incessantly, feathering grains of sand
Speaker 1: over the desert floor towards him. As it tugged at
Speaker 1: his shirt and blue dust in his eyes, it almost
Speaker 1: felt like fluttering. Insistent fingers were scratching, even clawing at him.
Speaker 1: He couldn't stand it any longer. Perhaps if he could
Speaker 1: follow his wife into that shady waddy, he could get
Speaker 1: out of the wind, find her footsteps, and walk to safety.
Speaker 1: James staggered to his feet and made it a few
Speaker 1: hundred yards into the waddy, where he found a large
Speaker 1: shaded pool of water. He took long, desperate gulps of
Speaker 1: the warm, silty liquid, then sat down again to rest.
Speaker 1: But still the wind would not leave him alone. It
Speaker 1: snaked through the canyon, tugging at his hair, ruffling his
Speaker 1: damp cotton shirt. He knew in his head that the
Speaker 1: safest thing was to stay put and wait for Diane.
Speaker 1: He had shelter and water, but he just had to
Speaker 1: get away from that wind with a renewed sense of
Speaker 1: strength and purpose, he turned to face the wall of
Speaker 1: the canyon. Finding a solid hole to grip, he pushed
Speaker 1: up from the ground and began to climb elsewhere. Diane
Speaker 1: had been stumbling across the stony desert for hour I
Speaker 1: was barely managing to keep going in the encroaching darkness.
Speaker 1: She later said that what prompted her to keep going
Speaker 1: was that if her body were found on the way
Speaker 1: to get help, at least people wouldn't think that the
Speaker 1: couple had committed suicide. After ten strenuous hours, first scrambling
Speaker 1: up the walls of the canyon, then stumbling along a
Speaker 1: road under construction, relief washed over Diane when finally in
Speaker 1: the distance she saw the camp of the laborers who
Speaker 1: were building the road. As she staggered into the camp,
Speaker 1: the men reached out to stop her from collapsing to
Speaker 1: the ground. They sat her down and wrapped a blanket
Speaker 1: around her while they waited for their foreman to arrive.
Speaker 1: Having recovered somewhat, Diane was then taken to the nearest
Speaker 1: army camp, where she asked the camp's captain to help
Speaker 1: her rescue her husband, but with it now long in
Speaker 1: the night, there was little the captain could do. The
Speaker 1: search for James would have to wait until the next day.
Speaker 1: It wasn't long before the Pike's abandoned car was located
Speaker 1: just at the beginning of a waddy called Mura Barat.
Speaker 1: A few of the men helped pull it out of
Speaker 1: the rut in no time. The engine still worked perfectly,
Speaker 1: but there was no sign of James. James Pike had
Speaker 1: risen to prominence within the Episcopal Church in large part
Speaker 1: due to his outspoken liberal views, which were both fated
Speaker 1: and hated in equal measure. In nineteen fifty eight, Pike
Speaker 1: was appointed as the fifth Bishop of California, in which
Speaker 1: capacity he was an early promoter of the acceptance of
Speaker 1: LGBT people into the church, civil rights, and the ordination
Speaker 1: of women into the priesthood. By nineteen sixty six, Pike
Speaker 1: had grown tired of all the politics that came with
Speaker 1: his position. He left California and went to share a
Speaker 1: period of sabbatical study at Cambridge University in England with
Speaker 1: his son, Jim, one of four children from his second marriage.
Speaker 1: In early February, Jim left his father in Cambridge and
Speaker 1: returned to the US. A few days later, he fatally
Speaker 1: shot himself in the head in a New York City
Speaker 1: hotel room just over two weeks later. Having just returned
Speaker 1: to Cambridge from attending his son's funeral, James walked into
Speaker 1: the bedroom of the apartment he and his son had
Speaker 1: shared to find two postcards that he'd never seen before
Speaker 1: lying on the floor. They were positioned at an angle
Speaker 1: of approximately one hundred and forty degrees, apparently mimicking the
Speaker 1: hands of a clock, showing the precise time that his
Speaker 1: son had killed himself. It was just the first in
Speaker 1: a number of bizarre occurrences that led James to believe
Speaker 1: his son was trying to communicate with him from beyond
Speaker 1: the grave. In response, Pike dived deeply into a very
Speaker 1: public pursuit of various spiritualist and clairvoyant methods. He even
Speaker 1: participated in a televised seance supposedly with his dead son
Speaker 1: through the so called medium Arthur Ford in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 1: By nineteen sixty seven, Pike had been divorced twice and
Speaker 1: was living with his then girlfriend Marion Bergrad, when she
Speaker 1: also committed suicide. The following year, he married Diane Kennedy,
Speaker 1: whom he'd collaborated with on his book The Other Side,
Speaker 1: in which he outlined his experiences with supposed paranormal phenomena
Speaker 1: following his son's suicide. The marriage was controversial among members
Speaker 1: of Pike's church, and three days after the wedding, Pike
Speaker 1: was barred from performing all priestly functions, and so it
Speaker 1: was with Pike free to pursue new projects, that in
Speaker 1: August nineteen sixty nine, Pike and Diane traveled to Israel
Speaker 1: to conduct research for a new book Pike wanted to
Speaker 1: write about the historical Jesus. A few days later, they
Speaker 1: made their fateful trip into the desert. For three days,
Speaker 1: with temperatures reaching a above one hundred degrees fahrenheit, hundreds
Speaker 1: of off duty soldiers searched high and low for James,
Speaker 1: but found no sign of him. With little chance that
Speaker 1: the bishop could survive that long out in the desert,
Speaker 1: the official search was called off, while a number of
Speaker 1: Bedouin and former army scouts continued to look for him.
Speaker 1: At the end of that third day, Diane gave a
Speaker 1: press conference to update the media on the situation. Shortly after,
Speaker 1: she received a phone call from her family in the States.
Speaker 1: They'd received word from Arthur Ford, the self described medium
Speaker 1: who'd apparently helped Pike contact his dead son. Ford said
Speaker 1: that Pike was still very much alive and sheltering in
Speaker 1: a cave close to where Diane had last seen him,
Speaker 1: but he was sick and in need of urgent medical attention.
Speaker 1: After that, Diane was suddenly inundated by numerous self described
Speaker 1: mediums offering to help locate her husband in Tel Aviv.
Speaker 1: One so called medium swung a pendulum over a large map,
Speaker 1: then recorded the position on the map where it stopped.
Speaker 1: When they repeated the pendulum swing over a different map, miraculously,
Speaker 1: it stopped at the precise same location. Two men were
Speaker 1: despatched from Tel Aviv immediately to locate the spot, but
Speaker 1: when they got there, the place was deserted, with no
Speaker 1: sign of Pike having ever been there. The following day,
Speaker 1: the same medium attempted a spot of automatic writing to
Speaker 1: see if that might help. Holding a pen over a
Speaker 1: piece of paper, they fell seemingly into a trance as
Speaker 1: another spirit entered their body and began to move their
Speaker 1: hand across the paper. Snapping out of the apparent trance
Speaker 1: moments later, the medium consulted the paper on which a
Speaker 1: message was now written. It had supposedly come from infamous
Speaker 1: apparent psychic Edgar Case, who died almost twenty years earlier.
Speaker 1: The message declared that Pike was lying unconscious and close
Speaker 1: to death in a cave on a narrow ridge that
Speaker 1: was hidden by shrubs. A team of volunteers raced back
Speaker 1: out to the desert and searched for the cave to
Speaker 1: no avail. On September fifth, five days after Pike had
Speaker 1: last been seen alive, a search volunteer close to Wadi Murabarat,
Speaker 1: came across a map, then a pair of undershorts, followed
Speaker 1: by some glasses and later a contact lens case. It
Speaker 1: was a part that had been laid out by Pike,
Speaker 1: and at the end of it, part way down Wadi Murabarat,
Speaker 1: was Pike's body, sprawled out on the floor at the
Speaker 1: bottom of a steep face. It appeared that he'd fallen
Speaker 1: from high up, having attempted to climb out of the canyon.
Speaker 1: The next day, he was buried in Saint Peter's Protestant
Speaker 1: Cemetery in Jaffa, Israel, and it wasn't long before the
Speaker 1: rumors began that something weird had happened to Pike while
Speaker 1: he was out in the desert that it wasn't the
Speaker 1: fall that killed him, but rather he'd been driven to
Speaker 1: his death by a weird kind of madness brought on
Speaker 1: by the wind. The wind that James and Diane Pike
Speaker 1: experienced on their desert misadventure is known in Israel as
Speaker 1: the Sharav and more widely across the Mediterranean as the Soroco.
Speaker 1: It's a wind that brings warm air from the Sahara
Speaker 1: and the Arabian Peninsula, with many names, the Levante in
Speaker 1: Spain or the Camscene in Egypt. Its characterized by a
Speaker 1: temperature roughly twenty five degrees fahrenheit higher than the seasonal average,
Speaker 1: and south of the Mediterranean, the Sorocco is always dry,
Speaker 1: with a relative humidity sometimes falling to zero. Some believe
Speaker 1: these two characteristics do something fundamental to the wind's electrical
Speaker 1: properties and to anybody unfortunate enough to be caught in
Speaker 1: its grip. One researcher at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem
Speaker 1: found that almost one third of Israel's population experience some
Speaker 1: kind of adverse reaction, and the Charaf blows forty three
Speaker 1: percent of the people he tested experienced unusually high concentrations
Speaker 1: of the hormone serotonin in their blood system when the
Speaker 1: wind was blowing. Serotonin causes the constriction of peripheral blood vessels,
Speaker 1: including those in the brain and ones that control sleep.
Speaker 1: In modest concentrations, it's a natural tranquilizer, but too much
Speaker 1: serotonin produces migraines, allergic reactions, flushes, palpitations, irritability, and sleeplessness.
Speaker 1: That people might be driven to distraction, even madness by
Speaker 1: the wind is not a new theory or specific to
Speaker 1: any one part of the world. The Greek physician from
Speaker 1: the fourth century BCE, Hippocrates, was convinced that certain winds
Speaker 1: made people in ancient Greece sick. He wrote that the
Speaker 1: west winds were worse and that people exposed to them
Speaker 1: became pale and sickly, with digestive organs that were quote
Speaker 1: frequently deranged from the phlegm that runs down into them
Speaker 1: from the head. The French Enlightenment writer, philosopher and historian
Speaker 1: Voltaire spent time in England while in exile from its
Speaker 1: native France during the seventeen twenties. He wrote that in London,
Speaker 1: when the east wind blew. A black melancholy spreads over
Speaker 1: the whole nation. Even the animals suffer from it and
Speaker 1: have a dejected air. Men strong enough to preserve their
Speaker 1: health in this accursed wind lose their good humor. Everyone
Speaker 1: wears a grim expression and is inclined to make desperate decisions.
Speaker 1: Even claimed that it was under the influence of the
Speaker 1: East wind that the English beheaded King Charles the First
Speaker 1: and opposed King James the Second. It hadn't crossed the
Speaker 1: mind of travel writer Nick Hunt how the wind might
Speaker 1: affect his state of mind and well being as he
Speaker 1: set out in twenty sixteen on a walking adventure across
Speaker 1: Europe to experience its various winds, a journey that became
Speaker 1: the subject of his next book, Where the Wild Winds Are.
Speaker 1: Things went as well as expected as Nick trekked across
Speaker 1: the Low Pennine Hills of northern England, experiencing Britain's only
Speaker 1: named wind, the Helm. He continued to enjoy his wonderings
Speaker 1: as he traveled to Trieste, from where he sauntered across Slovenia,
Speaker 1: then down the coast of Croatia, enjoying chile blasts at
Speaker 1: the borer a frigid blast of air that blows across
Speaker 1: the Adriatic coast from snow covered mountains to its northeast.
Speaker 1: Then Nick arrived in Switzerland looking forward to sampling the fern,
Speaker 1: a warm, dry wind that blows down from the Alps
Speaker 1: in spring and at its most intense as the power
Speaker 1: to bring down cable cars and derailed trains. Having mentioned
Speaker 1: his plans to a German friend, the person replied, Ah, yes,
Speaker 1: the fern. That's why everyone in Bavaria is crazy. Famed
Speaker 1: novelist Hermann Hess had even written about the fern as
Speaker 1: a boy. He said that he was afraid of even
Speaker 1: hated that wind. Everything was going smoothly as Nick began
Speaker 1: his traverse of alpine foothills in the German speaking part
Speaker 1: of the country, until he reached the village of inert
Speaker 1: Kirchen in the Canton of Bern, where the fern began
Speaker 1: to blow. Are you sure you want to do this?
Speaker 1: It's a bit a bit windy, shouted the owner of
Speaker 1: a campsite where Nick had decided to pitch his tent
Speaker 1: for the night. After repeated attempts wrestling with the writhing
Speaker 1: giant nylon manta, ray that his tent had become. He
Speaker 1: managed to peg it down under a lone peach tree
Speaker 1: that thrashed wildly in the howling gale all night. Nick's
Speaker 1: tent bucked and flapped, while the wind all around him
Speaker 1: bellowed like a banshee. He wrote that at some point
Speaker 1: in the next twelve hours it was as if something
Speaker 1: in his brain snapped. He struggled for breath as he
Speaker 1: packed his tent the following morning, then walked on watching
Speaker 1: waterfalls being blown upwards. His limbs felt heavy and tired,
Speaker 1: his mind seemed clouded and foggy, and he was overcome
Speaker 1: with a sudden sense of despair. For three weeks, the
Speaker 1: wind continued to howl, and Nick's mood worsened. Even boarding
Speaker 1: a high speed train to the French speaking part of
Speaker 1: the Swiss Alps didn't seem to help. As he watched
Speaker 1: the landscape speed by, his anxiety grew. He found accommodation
Speaker 1: with a hospitable Buddhist woman clothed in yellow robes, but
Speaker 1: still couldn't seem to relax as he collapsed into bed.
Speaker 1: He felt plagued by an inexplicable apprehension that, in his words,
Speaker 1: something had gone extremely wrong on waking. The next morning, however,
Speaker 1: Nick stepped outside to find that the fern had finally stopped.
Speaker 1: He admired a blue sky peppered with cotton wool clouds,
Speaker 1: and was charmed as he watched his host to feed
Speaker 1: her rabbits. Then strolled contentedly down the street to buy
Speaker 1: a croissant. Instead of looking desolate and forbidding, the surrounding
Speaker 1: hillsides now seemed inviting. His dark mood had miraculously lifted.
Speaker 1: Suddenly the world was full of possibilities. Nick continued his
Speaker 1: hike down the valley with all the gloom from the
Speaker 1: previous few days having completely evaporated. Over the centuries, there's
Speaker 1: been general agreement that the wind can deeply influence our
Speaker 1: bodies and mines. South African biologist and anthropologist Lyle Watson,
Speaker 1: author of the best selling New Age classic SuperNature, published
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three, spent his life trying to make
Speaker 1: sense of natural and supernatural phenomena in biological terms. He
Speaker 1: examined and wrote about the effects of the wind in
Speaker 1: some detail in his nineteen eighty four book Heaven's Breath,
Speaker 1: A Natural History of the Wind. In it, he wrote
Speaker 1: that it's easy to imagine that in human prehistory, days
Speaker 1: with a lot of wind were dangerous, with the ability
Speaker 1: to destroy shelters, disperse warning scents, and mask the sound
Speaker 1: of approaching predators. Lyle Watson suggested that the effect of
Speaker 1: the wind on the human body is to invoke a
Speaker 1: classic alarm reaction, increasing the production of adrenaline, speeding up metabolism,
Speaker 1: dilating blood vessels in the muscles and heart, widening the pupils,
Speaker 1: and even causing hares to stand on end with a
Speaker 1: prickle of apprehension. A study documenting the effect of temperatures
Speaker 1: on physical fitness tests found that performances reached their efficiency
Speaker 1: when a wind blew on the subjects at about twenty
Speaker 1: five kilometers per hour or four four Any higher or
Speaker 1: lower and performances began to drop off. One American study
Speaker 1: investigating how wind affects the behavior of children in the
Speaker 1: playground found that when wind speeds rose above four six
Speaker 1: or forty four kilometers per hour, the average number of
Speaker 1: fights that broke out doubled. As Lyle says, there is
Speaker 1: something about wind, quite apart from its cooling influence, that
Speaker 1: directly affects our well being. Lyle hypothesized that the bodies
Speaker 1: of sailors and fishers who live constantly under the strain
Speaker 1: of the wind have adapted to the constant stimulus. Conversely,
Speaker 1: many city dwellers have lost the ability to withstand it sufficiently,
Speaker 1: leading to increased incidences of heart attacks and strokes on
Speaker 1: windy days. One study revealed that fifty percent of all
Speaker 1: strokes and myocardial infarctions happened when the wind was blowing
Speaker 1: at fourse four or five. Strangely, when the wind speed
Speaker 1: is higher, however, the effect is diminished. Reaction times can
Speaker 1: also be effected, so much so that, according to Touring
Speaker 1: Clubs SUE, a nonprofit representing the interests of motorists in Switzerland,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two, traffic accidents in Geneva increased by
Speaker 1: over fifty percent when the fern wind was in effect. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: as lyell wrights. In nineteen seventy six, the medical department
Speaker 1: of the West German Weather Station in Freiburg published the
Speaker 1: results of a four year study proving that industrial accidents
Speaker 1: during the fern wind required surgery sixteen percent more often
Speaker 1: and other medical treatment twenty percent more frequently than at
Speaker 1: any other time. Increases in hypotension, coronary crises, migraine, and
Speaker 1: psychic disturbances both during and on the day preceding a
Speaker 1: fern wind were also reported Lyle continues, the incidence of
Speaker 1: post operative death due to both heavy bleeding and thrombosis
Speaker 1: during a fern wind has become so high that in
Speaker 1: some hospitals in Switzerland and Bavaria, major surgery is postponed
Speaker 1: whenever possible until the wind has passed, and, like something
Speaker 1: out of an Mnite Shamalan movie, even suicides and suicide
Speaker 1: attempts sore to epidemic proportions throughout Switzerland and into Austria
Speaker 1: whenever the Witch's wind, as the fern is sometimes called
Speaker 1: touches ground. This episode was written by Dianehope and Richard
Speaker 1: McClain smith Unexplained as an av Club Productions podcast created
Speaker 1: by Richard McClain smith. All other elements of the podcast,
Speaker 1: including the music, are also produced by me Richard McClain
Speaker 1: Smith Unexplained. The book and audiobook, with stories never before
Speaker 1: featured on the show, is now available to buy worldwide.
Speaker 1: You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and
Speaker 1: other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in
Speaker 1: touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've
Speaker 1: heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of
Speaker 1: your own you'd like to share. You can find out
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