Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick, and it's time to go
Speaker 2: into the vault for an older episode of the show.
Speaker 2: This one originally published on October sixth, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: It's the one we did on the cattle mutilation panic
Speaker 2: of the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: That's right, strange lights, black helicopters, and ultimately a skeptical
Speaker 1: look at what was going on.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And hey, it's still October
Speaker 2: here on the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. So
Speaker 2: we're going to be talking about something weird. I mean,
Speaker 2: we often talk about things that are weird, but I
Speaker 2: guess we get even weirder this month. So, Rob, today
Speaker 2: you picked out the topic of the cattle mutilation panic,
Speaker 2: which I think is going to tie into a very
Speaker 2: exciting weird house cinema movie that we're going to be
Speaker 2: doing an episode on tomorrow. But this is something I've
Speaker 2: been aware of my whole life, but never actually properly
Speaker 2: looked into. It was just kind of one of those
Speaker 2: things always in my peripheral vision. Yeah, somewhere out there,
Speaker 2: this is a topic people care about, but I don't
Speaker 2: know anything about it, and it actually, you know what,
Speaker 2: it got more interesting the more I looked at it,
Speaker 2: not because it's aliens or a government conspiracy, but I
Speaker 2: don't know some of the smart takes you found about,
Speaker 2: like the sociological phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I was pretty much in the same
Speaker 1: boat concerning this topic. I knew it was something that
Speaker 1: comes up in conspiracy circles and among UFO enthusiasts. I
Speaker 1: knew that it was the kind of thing that might
Speaker 1: pop up on saying an episode of the X Files
Speaker 1: here or there, but I'd never really looked closely at it,
Speaker 1: and I do want to Yeah, I do want to
Speaker 1: tell everybody out there. Yeah. There will be maybe a
Speaker 1: few little mentions of the grizzly details in this episode,
Speaker 1: but for the most part, the really interesting stuff about
Speaker 1: this is not what was allegedly done or not done
Speaker 1: to cattle, but yeah, some of these other things surrounding it,
Speaker 1: such as the idea of cattle mutilation as a panic
Speaker 1: or a mild panic as an idea, as a script
Speaker 1: for some sort of unexplained event, or as a script
Speaker 1: into which one could pour one's anxieties and concerns, And
Speaker 1: so we're going to be getting into a lot of that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think cattle mutilation is one of those
Speaker 1: topics that, despite all of its grotesque and outrageous properties,
Speaker 1: is easy to overlook and not to think about, especially
Speaker 1: for those of us living outside of the times, and
Speaker 1: this is generally like a mid mid nineteen seventies kind
Speaker 1: of situation. We'll get into the dates in a bit,
Speaker 1: also if you live outside of the places where the
Speaker 1: phenomenon resonates the strongest, namely American cattle country and again
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen seventies.
Speaker 2: Though of course, there are still people who say that
Speaker 2: the cattle mutilation phenomenon continues to this day, and it's
Speaker 2: kind of hard to know whether to argue with that
Speaker 2: or not, because, as what the social phenomenon, it does
Speaker 2: seem to have peaked very much in the seventies. But
Speaker 2: of course there are still like cattle carcasses that people find,
Speaker 2: and sometimes they look strange, and sometimes people try to
Speaker 2: categorize those along with whatever was being discussed in this
Speaker 2: other phenomenon from the seventies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so it seems to be the case when
Speaker 1: you look at ufologists and conspiracy theory enthusiasts out there,
Speaker 1: it seems like maybe they're more often drawn into more
Speaker 1: human centric topics like UFO sightings, I saw something, this
Speaker 1: person saw something, alien abductions in which you have a
Speaker 1: personal testimony of beings from the outside, or stuff like
Speaker 1: jfk assassination theories, and various modern trends and conspiracy circles.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I feel like for the rest of us
Speaker 1: outside of those circles, outside of the world of American
Speaker 1: cattle country in the mid seventies, it's easy to just
Speaker 1: dismiss cattle mutilation as to the realm of hoax and
Speaker 1: superstition without stopping to wonder why it emerged as an idea,
Speaker 1: Like hoaxes and superstitions do not come about without some
Speaker 1: sort of reasoning, without some sort of cause, Like they
Speaker 1: are interesting effects, even in the creation of something that
Speaker 1: is objectively not true. Because if the alleged mutilations were
Speaker 1: not the result of secret government experiments or alien visitations
Speaker 1: or the work of strange cryptids eating on cows, in
Speaker 1: the night, Then what were they the result of. If
Speaker 1: these are misinterpretations of actual physical evidence, then what is
Speaker 1: being misinterpreted, Why is it being misinterpreted, what is fueling
Speaker 1: the ensuing panic, and what does it mean? So these
Speaker 1: are some of the topics we're going to be exploring
Speaker 1: in this episode. Now, a couple of key sources that
Speaker 1: I'll be referring to in this episode, and I think
Speaker 1: we're going to throw a couple other things in there
Speaker 1: as well. But one is an excellent twenty eleven paper
Speaker 1: by Michael J. Goleman that was published in Agricultural History
Speaker 1: titled Wave of Mutilation, The Cattle Mutilation Phenomenon of the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. And another paper I was looking at, a
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine paper titled Death by Folklore, Ostension, Contemporary
Speaker 1: Legend and Murder by Bill Ellis published in Western States
Speaker 1: Folklore Society.
Speaker 2: Now, I know we said we're not going to dwell
Speaker 2: more than we need to on the specific grizzly details, though,
Speaker 2: I guess we do need to begin by sort of
Speaker 2: describing what people are talking about when they talk about
Speaker 2: cattle mutilation.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah. Goleman in his paper points out that
Speaker 1: among the ranchers that are reporting these cases, beginning in
Speaker 1: earnest he says, during nineteen seventy three and continuing through
Speaker 1: the end of the nineteen seventy uh. These are a
Speaker 1: few of the the details we can generally tick check
Speaker 1: off the list. First of all, the apparent removal of
Speaker 1: an animal's eyes, ears, utters, anus, and sex organs. Not
Speaker 1: only removal, but reports that the parts are are are
Speaker 1: surgically removed, whether the cuts have surgical like precision, or
Speaker 1: that there was some sort of coring methodology to their removal,
Speaker 1: something that that, at least to the either to the
Speaker 1: eyes of the witness or in the retelling of the event,
Speaker 1: does not seem in keeping with with with the work
Speaker 1: of of say animals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they lean on this kind of detail a lot.
Speaker 2: That the stories involve injuries or alterations to livestock animal carcasses,
Speaker 2: uh that are that would that are not understood as
Speaker 2: like the kind of ragged tearing one would expect to
Speaker 2: see if say, a predator had had attacked an animal carcass,
Speaker 2: but instead that they describe sort of clean cuts, surgical
Speaker 2: precision incisions, or excisions as if made by a sharp
Speaker 2: metal instrument.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and sometimes you also see it listed that there
Speaker 1: was an apparent absence of footprints or tire tracks, thus
Speaker 1: ruling out human interference. Also the apparent absence of usual
Speaker 1: scavenger species playing into the argument, well, and the scavengers
Speaker 1: couldn't have done this, there's no sign of the scavengers.
Speaker 2: Another one of the claims I've seen emphasized pretty often
Speaker 2: by the cattle mutologists is the idea that there was
Speaker 2: not a single drop of blood on the site. I
Speaker 2: watched one really stupid documentary about cattle mutilation that heavily
Speaker 2: leaned on the alleged lack of blood, both in the
Speaker 2: body and on the ground around the animal, sort of
Speaker 2: trying to emphasize the idea that it is impossible that, say,
Speaker 2: the soft tissue and the organs that you described earlier
Speaker 2: could have been removed as they were without spilling blood
Speaker 2: all over the place. So something is defying the laws
Speaker 2: of physics here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, Additionally, in some cases, according to Goldman, and
Speaker 1: we'll get into some of this in a bed, there
Speaker 1: were also reports of aerial activity of aerial phenomena happening
Speaker 1: as well, such as strange objects seen in the sky
Speaker 1: for days or weeks after the incident, or the sighting
Speaker 1: of unmarked or black helicopters hovering over areas near known mutilations.
Speaker 2: And those are common themes. But I would say it
Speaker 2: doesn't stop there. Actually, it just seems that cattle mutilations
Speaker 2: are often paired with other weird observances that might not
Speaker 2: be like those things at all, Like it might be, oh,
Speaker 2: there was a figure in a tree that had glowing
Speaker 2: yellow eyes and it was staring at me.
Speaker 1: Now at this point, regular listeners to stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind might realize, hey, this is very similar to
Speaker 1: what we just talked about in a couple of episodes
Speaker 1: on Elfshot. And indeed there is a lot of unexpected
Speaker 1: synchronicity between these topics. The idea, like one of the
Speaker 1: ideas I brought up was, you know, you go out
Speaker 1: into the woods looking for star jelly, you will find
Speaker 1: star jelly. You know, if your curiosity is heightened and
Speaker 1: your awareness is heightened for the uncanny or for signs
Speaker 1: of the uncanny, you can probably find something that the
Speaker 1: mind will then interpret as the uncanny.
Speaker 2: Right now, I guess from here, now that we've described
Speaker 2: what some of these reports are like, it doesn't make
Speaker 2: a lot of sense to like quibble over how accurate
Speaker 2: the observational reports of these animal carcasses are, because probably
Speaker 2: in some cases they're not reported totally. Right, But we
Speaker 2: should just, I think, accept for the sake of argument
Speaker 2: that basically there are cases in which some or many
Speaker 2: or even all of these details have been observed and
Speaker 2: work from there, right, like, assuming people did, at least
Speaker 2: in some cases find livestock carcasses that had these features.
Speaker 2: How to make sense of it? Now? Of course, some
Speaker 2: people are going to go to, well, it was a
Speaker 2: or it's cryptids, it's the chupacabra, or it's some kind
Speaker 2: of weird government conspiracy. It's a cover up, they're doing
Speaker 2: biological weapons experiments, the kind of things you already mentioned.
Speaker 2: But what would the skeptical side tend to come back.
Speaker 1: On, Well, I mean, on one level, what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here, like the most logical path for understanding cattle
Speaker 1: mutilation phenomenon of a cattle mutilation panic is that we're
Speaker 1: talking about misinterpretation of the dead. And this is certainly
Speaker 1: this would not be the first time in human history
Speaker 1: that such misinterpretations played into folklore and superstition. We've talked
Speaker 1: about various examples on the show before, for instance, the
Speaker 1: misinterpretation of drowned bodies and the Japanese Kappa tales to oh,
Speaker 1: the various misinterpretations of human decay that played into the
Speaker 1: vampire legends of Europe, like casts gets open to reveal
Speaker 1: blood bloated bodies supposedly, or fingernails that seem to have
Speaker 1: kept growing after death, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which are actually just normal ways that a corpse
Speaker 2: might appear due to the physical process of decomposition. But
Speaker 2: people not understanding really what they were looking at that, Like,
Speaker 2: a swollen corpse would be swollen because of its decomposition state,
Speaker 2: not because it has recently engorged itself on a meal
Speaker 2: of blood.
Speaker 1: Right, but how often are you opening up caskets. You're
Speaker 1: probably only opening up caskets of suspected vampires. So and
Speaker 1: then when you open them up, this is what you see.
Speaker 1: You probably don't have a lot to compare it to.
Speaker 1: And therefore the Supernatural provides a script by which to
Speaker 1: understand the strange and the uncanny.
Speaker 2: Rob You just threw the comparison to our elfshot episodes.
Speaker 2: But I also think of the story of the farmer
Speaker 2: who has a calf dropped dead, and then opens up
Speaker 2: the body and finds that it has a hole in
Speaker 2: its heart, or so the farmer thinks. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: not said in that story how much experience the farmer
Speaker 2: had looking at calf hearts. I mean, maybe they had
Speaker 2: a lot, maybe they had none. I don't know. But
Speaker 2: in any case, this is interpreted as a fairy weapon,
Speaker 2: because what else could explain it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Now this is probably a good time as any
Speaker 1: to remind everybody and when when we when we talk
Speaker 1: about phenomena like this, uh, situations where they're they're they're
Speaker 1: very well, maybe some sort of a moral panic or
Speaker 1: public panic in place, and there's some sort of a
Speaker 1: uh you know, a paranormal angle. Uh. You know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean by any by any stretch of the imagination
Speaker 1: that you have just like dumb individuals falling for something
Speaker 1: that that you know, that this is just like stupid
Speaker 1: people making a stupid mistake. Uh, It's it's a lot
Speaker 1: more complicated than that, you know. And once you're you're
Speaker 1: you're in the middle of one of these situations, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you have you have various forces kind of
Speaker 1: steering your mind towards the supernatural script and then the
Speaker 1: interpretation of reality through that script. So I want to
Speaker 1: drive that home because and and also it ultimately builds
Speaker 1: up from there, because one of the things that Goldman
Speaker 1: points out is that ultimately multiple local and state law
Speaker 1: enforcement agencies open investigations into cattle mutilation. This includes the CBI,
Speaker 1: the Minnesota Field Office of the ATF, as well as
Speaker 1: federally funded investigations directed by the Northern New Mexico DA's office.
Speaker 1: You had senators and congressmen raising questions about the phenomenon,
Speaker 1: and Canadian reports were investigated by the Mounties. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we have to be careful looking back at these events
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies with knowing what we know now.
Speaker 2: Well and also being humble about what we know now
Speaker 2: because while I think we can offer some very reasonable
Speaker 2: guesses that would explain many of these cases, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's totally possible that there are some cases, some reports
Speaker 2: of cattle mutilation phenomenon that in fact we have no
Speaker 2: idea what the explanation is. That doesn't mean you have
Speaker 2: warrant to jump to conclusions of aliens or government conspiracies
Speaker 2: or whatever. But we should be humble about our know
Speaker 2: the limits of our ability to explain things. Sometimes the
Speaker 2: cases are just underdetermined. We don't have enough evidence, we
Speaker 2: don't know what happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and of course I think today's audience certainly realizes
Speaker 1: the role the media can play in presenting conspiracy ideas
Speaker 1: and in even paranormal ideas about what's going on in
Speaker 1: the world. And yeah, at the time, Goldman points out,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just fringe and conspiracy reporting that was fueling this,
Speaker 1: even though cattle mutilation is largely the domain of these
Speaker 1: groups today. But at the time, the Associated Press and
Speaker 1: Newsweek both covered cattle mutilation phenomena. There was even a
Speaker 1: regional Emmy Award winning documentary in nineteen eighty, so you
Speaker 1: had that going on as well to fuel the paranoia.
Speaker 1: But while aliens and UFOs and ultimately I think cryptids
Speaker 1: would play a part in the various interpret rotations and
Speaker 1: stories about supposed cattle mutilations, the most pervasive version of
Speaker 1: the cattle mutilation script during the nineteen seventies, the most
Speaker 1: pervasive version that was being reported, reported to the media
Speaker 1: and so forth, was that of a conspiracy theory concerning
Speaker 1: the US government. And this is one of Goldman's key
Speaker 1: points in his writings because while it's easy to dismiss
Speaker 1: the cattle mutilation as being just a part of the
Speaker 1: larger UFO hysteria gripping the country at the time, quote,
Speaker 1: it reveals much about the socioeconomic condition of Midwestern ranchers.
Speaker 1: It demonstrates the volatility of the cattle industry during the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies and a growing distrust of the federal government
Speaker 1: among many small scale ranchers who had limited holdings, worked
Speaker 1: their ranch part time or relied on public land use
Speaker 1: to sustain their cattle.
Speaker 2: I think Goldman makes a great point that during the
Speaker 2: seventies especially, there were multiple factors sort of working together
Speaker 2: at the same time, a sort of dis bodied conspiracy
Speaker 2: working to really put the pressure on Western ranchers in
Speaker 2: the US.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially the smaller scale ranchers, which is something he
Speaker 1: touches on again and again. The bigger ranchers they were
Speaker 1: not reporting these incidents, and they seemed largely skeptical of
Speaker 1: these reports. It was the smaller scale ranchers that were
Speaker 1: reporting these Now, this period economically is often referred to
Speaker 1: as the Great Stagflation, a time defined by high inflation,
Speaker 1: high unemployment and economic stagnation, and heaponded that high food
Speaker 1: prices a global food shortage, and so forth. Goldman provides
Speaker 1: a great deal more insight on the economic and policy
Speaker 1: details here, but one of the key details concerns what's
Speaker 1: known in the cattle business and agricultural history at the times,
Speaker 1: and also in the reporting of the time as the
Speaker 1: wreck in nineteen seventy three. Now, again, this is just
Speaker 1: the brief version. Goldman goes into a lot more. Basically,
Speaker 1: President Nixon institutes a ninety day price freeze on certain
Speaker 1: meats to halt inflation. Then the freeze is lifted on
Speaker 1: everything except cattle. So cattle ranchers they hold off on
Speaker 1: slaughtering their cattle till the freeze lifts. They know the
Speaker 1: freeze is going to lift, so why slaughter and sell
Speaker 1: now when they can wait until the prices go back up.
Speaker 1: But this ends up impacting the meat packing industry, putting
Speaker 1: people out of jobs, and this results also in a
Speaker 1: nationwide beef shortage.
Speaker 2: I think Goldman also makes the point that the ranchers
Speaker 2: were sort of in a bind because so there was
Speaker 2: a temporary freeze on the price of beef, but there
Speaker 2: was but Meanwhile, inflation was still affecting, say, the price
Speaker 2: of the grains that they would be using for feed
Speaker 2: and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So they weren't completely insulated from everything either.
Speaker 1: They were still filling the tough socioeconomic pressure as well.
Speaker 1: So Goldman argues that the distrust ranchers held toward the
Speaker 1: federal government during this time, coupled with the turbulent economic
Speaker 1: conditions and government interference in the cattle industry, fed and
Speaker 1: helped sustained cattle mutilation phenomena. The script of cattle mutilation
Speaker 1: gave them a means of understanding certain cattle deaths, but
Speaker 1: also a way to project their fears and insecurities into
Speaker 1: this conspiracy. Goldman also links this atmosphere of hostility to
Speaker 1: the Sagebrush Rebellion, in which Western state lawmakers attempted to
Speaker 1: reclaim federally protected public lands for ranchers and miners, and
Speaker 1: the libertarian movement of the sixties and seventies, and also
Speaker 1: hostility towards nineteen seventies environmental regulations that had come online.
Speaker 2: So, if I'm understanding Goldman's interpretation right, and if he's correct,
Speaker 2: what he's saying is that there essentially were all these
Speaker 2: real conditions that were making life very hard for ranchers
Speaker 2: in the seventies, and some of those real conditions, at
Speaker 2: least were perceived to be due to government influence. And
Speaker 2: then you pair that with okay, maybe you have some
Speaker 2: random cattle die offs that are due to a number
Speaker 2: of different causes, perhaps, and you sort of project this,
Speaker 2: this frustration and this unease onto the deaths of those cattle,
Speaker 2: and imagine that the deaths of the cattle is actually
Speaker 2: caused by the government, like directly in a violent way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, again, an anxious situation, very tense, especially
Speaker 1: among these smaller scale ranches. And you already have a
Speaker 1: very low opinion of the government, of the federal government
Speaker 1: at the time, and then cattle mutilation provides a means
Speaker 1: of unleashing all of these feelings onto an even more
Speaker 1: diabolical vision of the US federal government, one that isn't
Speaker 1: just restricting your freedoms or hurting your livelihood, but who
Speaker 1: is actively and physically visiting your livestock and mutilating them
Speaker 1: with bizarre methods for unfathomable ends. So you know, in
Speaker 1: this strip, the agents of the government become virtually identify
Speaker 1: call to imagine witches and wizards at black masses, you know,
Speaker 1: engaging in bloody acts to a dark forces, and the
Speaker 1: dead body of the cow becomes a kind of physical
Speaker 1: evidence to back up one's view of the federal government.
Speaker 1: So Goldman explains that in seventy three, in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of the wreck, ranchers in Kansas and Nebraska began to
Speaker 1: report cattle mutilations, and some also reported strange lights in
Speaker 1: the sky, and the way Goldman describes it, ufologists or
Speaker 1: UFO enthusiasts were quick to jump in and offer their
Speaker 1: favorite explanation for the lights especially, but also the mutilations.
Speaker 1: And apparently some ranchers described what they saw in those terms,
Speaker 1: but others were more vague about it. They might say, well,
Speaker 1: there's a big baalifier in the sky. But Goldman writes
Speaker 1: that quote. Many more reported seeing strange, unmarked helicopters. So again,
Speaker 1: for the most part, it doesn't seem like the individuals
Speaker 1: that were reporting these in the seventies we're talking about UFOs,
Speaker 1: most of them were drawing in these ideas that's some
Speaker 1: sort of strange helicopter were seen nearby, Strange helicopters that
Speaker 1: might well be the work of the government. Now, there
Speaker 1: were other initial explanations for the helicopters. There is talk, well,
Speaker 1: maybe it's cattle wrestlers, But then why would cattle wrestlers
Speaker 1: kill a cow and only take like the eyeballs and
Speaker 1: other strange parts, you know. Then there was also the
Speaker 1: idea that it was some sort of military operation based
Speaker 1: out of Fort Riley in Kansas, or that it was
Speaker 1: indeed the work of some government secret government agency, and
Speaker 1: the mutation the mutilations were the result of some sort
Speaker 1: of biological weapons test program, And these ultimately become the
Speaker 1: more widely circulated ideas.
Speaker 2: And I think it is totally worth noting that while
Speaker 2: I think you and I agree that government conspiracies do
Speaker 2: not seem like a very good explanation for the alleged
Speaker 2: cattle mutilation phenomenon, there actually almost certainly were some government
Speaker 2: conspiracies at least one we know of, that did lead
Speaker 2: to dead livestock in the years just before this, the
Speaker 2: so called Dugway Sheep incident or the Dugway Sheep massacre.
Speaker 2: Though I think there's some very important differences I want
Speaker 2: to mention, but like that that does appear, I think
Speaker 2: due to some document disclosures now to be pretty clearly
Speaker 2: the fault of some government weapons testing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was nineteen sixty eight, the Dugway sheep incident,
Speaker 1: in which I think Goldman sites forty five hundred sheep,
Speaker 1: but I've seen I've seen six thousand sited elsewhere, So
Speaker 1: I'm going to go with Goldman on this one. But
Speaker 1: perhaps the number has shifted at any rate. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of sheep. Thousands of sheep were killed on ranches
Speaker 1: near the US armies Dugway proven ground in Utah, and
Speaker 1: accusations were made at the time against the Army, saying,
Speaker 1: you guys did this, You did something with your weapons
Speaker 1: tests and you killed all these sheep, and the Army said, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's not true, we didn't do that. But then in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight these incidents were revealed to have been
Speaker 1: caused by tests apparently of the nerve agent VX. So
Speaker 1: Goldman points out that, yeah, the Dugway sheep incident could
Speaker 1: have also contributed to the cattle mutilation script involving you know,
Speaker 1: clandestine US military testing, and certainly may it seemed more possible,
Speaker 1: like like here's this other incident, like you can't argue
Speaker 1: with all the thousands of dead sheep, we think the
Speaker 1: government had something to do with that, So perhaps it's
Speaker 1: also they also had something to do with this cow
Speaker 1: that was found on your land or this cow that
Speaker 1: was found on a neighbor's ranch.
Speaker 2: Though I think there are some very important differences, one
Speaker 2: of which being that I think in the Dugway incident
Speaker 2: there was some there was some additional evidence to confirm
Speaker 2: that the government testing of nerve agents intended as weapons
Speaker 2: had possibly been involved, Like there were some lab tests
Speaker 2: that showed the presence of VX and some of these sheep.
Speaker 2: Am I right about that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's my understanding that there were clear signs that
Speaker 1: a nerve agent of some sort of been used, and
Speaker 1: there were, of course no signs of mutilation. These were
Speaker 1: just sheep that were that were dying or dead all
Speaker 1: of a sudden.
Speaker 2: The other thing I would say is that while I
Speaker 2: think it's always important to be modest about trying to
Speaker 2: reason out, how you know, reason out what would have
Speaker 2: made sense to happen, because sometimes there are just situations
Speaker 2: where you know, you don't know why something would have happened.
Speaker 2: But given that caveat the alleged chain of events that
Speaker 2: happened at Dougway makes sense. So this is a weapons
Speaker 2: testing grounds, they're testing secret weapons programs, they're testing nerve gas.
Speaker 2: There's a malfunction. It releases gas into a ranch populated
Speaker 2: area nearby and poisons and kills a bunch of sheep
Speaker 2: and I think also possibly affected some humans living there
Speaker 2: as well. And while this could just be a failure
Speaker 2: of imagination, again to be humble about that, I have
Speaker 2: a hard time coming up with an equally logical chain
Speaker 2: of events leading to a government conspiracy to mutilate random
Speaker 2: cows and horses on people's ranch land and then cover
Speaker 2: it up. Like if men in Sea Black helicopters needed
Speaker 2: cow organs. This is often what is supposed that, Like
Speaker 2: they're doing biological experiments and they need cow organs for them.
Speaker 2: It seems like a really weird choice to source them
Speaker 2: by attacking other people's privately owned cattle herds in the
Speaker 2: night and trying to keep it a secret. Like again,
Speaker 2: you can't say that's impossible, but I'm just trying to
Speaker 2: think why they would go that route instead of just
Speaker 2: like buying or raising their own stocks of cattle to
Speaker 2: run the tests on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially since the tests in question are supposed to
Speaker 1: be secret. Yeah, you know, how are you going to
Speaker 1: maintain secrecy by by by conducting your experiments on on
Speaker 1: on the land of others and then running away from
Speaker 1: and just leaving all the evidence there?
Speaker 2: I mean, running a secret helicopter operation. That's got to
Speaker 2: actually be expensive. It's hard for me. I'm not an
Speaker 2: expert on the you know, agricultural pricing, but I would
Speaker 2: think you could actually get the cows cheaper than like
Speaker 2: running a helicopter program.
Speaker 1: This is going to be mostly a discussion, will say,
Speaker 1: for this week's Weird House, but I feel like the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two Alan Rudolph film Endangered Species, which is
Speaker 1: not the main film we're gonna be talking about this Friday,
Speaker 1: but it is a cattle mutilation film that involved that
Speaker 1: takes the conspiracy thriller route and has a government conspiracy
Speaker 1: at the heart of things. This movie probably does as
Speaker 1: logical and a good a job as you could possibly
Speaker 1: do to bring that to life on the screen and
Speaker 1: make it feel like it makes sense. And a big
Speaker 1: part of how Rudolph pulls it off and the screenwriters
Speaker 1: pull it off is by not filling in those blanks
Speaker 1: by keeping the mystery there. Like you see government researchers
Speaker 1: doing this, collecting cattle and talking about it. I mean
Speaker 1: they're just kind of like talking shop, like, well, should
Speaker 1: we go out and get one more before we have
Speaker 1: to clear out of here for secret reasons, And they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll do it. And you buy into it because it's
Speaker 1: well constructed and well presented on the screen. But they
Speaker 1: don't actually explain. They don't they know better than to
Speaker 1: try to explain why they would be doing this at
Speaker 1: any rate. As Goldman points out, like this does seem
Speaker 1: to create a genuine feeling of fear and disquiet in
Speaker 1: these regions about cattle mutilations. It's not just again there's
Speaker 1: a lot of tension, there's a lot of anxiety already
Speaker 1: about the socioeconomic conditions. Then this is occurring. The people
Speaker 1: were taught telling tales about this, and it's not just
Speaker 1: like casual like, oh, here we have the media, come over,
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell them about this cow. I think
Speaker 1: it was aliens or I think it was a conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Now people were apparently concerned, and it led to the
Speaker 1: actual formation of vigilante groups who were checking out of
Speaker 1: state vehicles for signs of cattle blood. There were reports
Speaker 1: of encounters with strange helicopters that were spreading around, So
Speaker 1: you had some unfortunate and dangerous incidents, like in Nebraska,
Speaker 1: a farmer apparently shot at a utility helicopter and the
Speaker 1: Nebraska National Guard had to ask all shoppers to start
Speaker 1: flying at a higher altitude for a while. There was
Speaker 1: another case with a rancher firing and a military chopper.
Speaker 1: So at a state level, officials were worried that someone
Speaker 1: might get hurt over this. Like it wasn't just there's
Speaker 1: some superstition out there, but like it's leading to some
Speaker 1: potentially dangerous situations. And on top of this, like the
Speaker 1: ranchers are still saying, yes, something terrible is happening here,
Speaker 1: something strange is happening here. Cash rewards are being offered,
Speaker 1: and ultimately official investigations are opened into the matter.
Speaker 2: But when do we get to the Satanic cults?
Speaker 1: Oh, now we get to the Satanic cults, because yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the investigations that's opened this is seventy five.
Speaker 1: So this is pretty much the peak. According to Goldman,
Speaker 1: you have the Minnesota ATF that's the alcohol to back
Speaker 1: in firearms opening investigation which led to satanic biker gangs,
Speaker 1: or as Goldman quotes them as saying, hell oriented biker
Speaker 1: gangs hell oriented. Yeah, and according to Goldman, this comes
Speaker 1: about because the lead investigator ends up talking to a
Speaker 1: convicted bank robber and that bank robber insists that bikers
Speaker 1: hell oriented bikers are the ones running around mutilating cows.
Speaker 1: So yeah, at this point the devil and his bikers
Speaker 1: are involved. But of course, within the confines of an
Speaker 1: actual investigation, this leads nowhere because this was not actually happening.
Speaker 1: They apparently did turn up some evidence on illegal motorcycle
Speaker 1: gang activities, illegal motorcycle club activities in the region, but
Speaker 1: nothing that connected to cattle mutilation, so the case was closed.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it probably was not satanic biker gangs, right.
Speaker 1: I think we can rule that out. But then the
Speaker 1: Colorado Bureau of Investigation gets involved also in seventy five,
Speaker 1: a nineteen month investigation with Carl Whiteside looking at more
Speaker 1: than two hundred reported mutilations in the cropsies of nineteen carcasses.
Speaker 1: I think they were going to try and do more,
Speaker 1: but ended up being nineteen eleven of these cases ruled
Speaker 1: to have possibly had cuts made by a sharp object
Speaker 1: or instrument post mortem, but all signs still pointed to
Speaker 1: natural causes of death. The CBI posted a forty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars reward for information on cattle mutilations. They even set
Speaker 1: up a witness protection program for anyone who would come
Speaker 1: forward with information, but no one came forward. The case
Speaker 1: was closed due to lack of apparent criminal activity and
Speaker 1: due to the fact that reports of cattle mutilations began
Speaker 1: to drop off on their own by mid nineteen seventy six. Now,
Speaker 1: during that CBI investigation, apparently Whiteside asked the FBI for assistance,
Speaker 1: which was denied, apparently due to lack of evidence. But
Speaker 1: of course the FBI's refusal to investigate played right into
Speaker 1: the hands of conspiracy theorists who are like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course the FEDS aren't going to look into it.
Speaker 1: It's the FEDS doing it, right.
Speaker 2: Right, I Mean one of the things about the conspiracy
Speaker 2: mindset is it can accommodate anything. So if the FBI
Speaker 2: does investigate, that's validation. If they don't investigate, that's also validation.
Speaker 1: And right, But yeah, Cornea Goldman seventy five was the
Speaker 1: peak for reported cattle mutilations. He writes that actual numbers
Speaker 1: of reported cases are spotty, but some of the reported
Speaker 1: numbers break down as follows. So there's like one hundred
Speaker 1: mutilations in Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa between May seventy three
Speaker 1: and September seventy four, twenty two mutilations in Minnesota between
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy four, and Colorado reports were high,
Speaker 1: but also they fluctuated somewhat, So depending on apparently which
Speaker 1: source you're looking at, could be as few as fifty
Speaker 1: or as many as two hundred.
Speaker 2: It's interesting those numbers are different than generalizations I know
Speaker 2: I've seen in the more like fringe leaning cattle mutilation
Speaker 2: sources which say that you know, there are thousands and
Speaker 2: thousands of incidents.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think, as we'll discuss even that might
Speaker 1: might not be as impressive a number as we think.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Yeah, here are the hard facts that all
Speaker 1: evidence suggest that these apparent mutilations were not due to
Speaker 1: any of these outrageous or otherworldly or conspiracy minded causes.
Speaker 1: They were in all likelihood due to scavenger activity with
Speaker 1: the possibility that there may have been some human involvement
Speaker 1: in a few instances. And as for the cause of death,
Speaker 1: which again in the cases where we had actual necropsies,
Speaker 1: they seem to all be natural causes. Goldman does drive
Speaker 1: home the cattle death is just a way of life,
Speaker 1: obviously generally caused by diseases such as black leg, which
Speaker 1: apparently is a common cattle disease, lightening strikes.
Speaker 2: Sorry, blackleg came up in the elfshot episode, because that's right,
Speaker 2: it did. Yeah, they were asking in one of those reports,
Speaker 2: asking the farmer whether the calf could have fallen ill,
Speaker 2: because apparently with black leg also known as quarter ill,
Speaker 2: which again is an infection caused by Clostridium bacteria, that
Speaker 2: often an animal can seem healthy and then drop dead
Speaker 2: very rapidly. It can be extremely sudden.
Speaker 1: Yeah, lightning strikes are another one, and lightning strikes apparently
Speaker 1: can they can leave quite perplexing injuries on the on
Speaker 1: a dead cow or horse. Also gastro intestinal problems due
Speaker 1: to consuming nails, barbed wire, et cetera, you know, whilst grazing.
Speaker 1: But here's here's some numbers from Goldman that I think
Speaker 1: are pretty interesting. Quote in nineteen seventy four. Again, this
Speaker 1: is the this is right around the peak, you know,
Speaker 1: right before seventy five of the peak. In nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: the USDA estimated that six point one million cattle deaths
Speaker 1: had occurred over the course of the year, which equates
Speaker 1: to only four point five percent of the overall cattle
Speaker 1: population of one hundred and thirty one point eight million head.
Speaker 1: And this number, he adds, was actually down from seventy
Speaker 1: three spike of six point five million deaths. So Goldman
Speaker 1: contends that finding a dead cow was nothing that unusual,
Speaker 1: and certainly ranchers would be used to it. But the
Speaker 1: thing is when there's some other re and to be suspicious,
Speaker 1: if there's some other possible idea that's introduced that is
Speaker 1: backed up by media circulation and so forth, then things
Speaker 1: can become different. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And of course the people who would say, well, no
Speaker 2: cattle mutilation, there is something actually weird going on, they
Speaker 2: would come back to that stuff we talked about before,
Speaker 2: like their claims about the characteristic features of the injuries
Speaker 2: to these cow carcasses that they would say could not
Speaker 2: be the result of natural predators or scavengers.
Speaker 1: Right, and that yeah, and that's it's unfortunate that you
Speaker 1: still see that reporting where where they'll say, well, this
Speaker 1: couldn't be animals doing this. What predator would would leave
Speaker 1: all the good meat? What predator would only eat these
Speaker 1: strange fleshes. But that's the thing we can we can
Speaker 1: pretty much agree that this is the work of scavengers.
Speaker 1: The frequently cited missing bits in the cattle mutilation are
Speaker 1: exactly the sorts of flesh that scavengers like coyotes, foxes, vultures, magpies, bobcats, badgers,
Speaker 1: and flies would go for. This is the soft tissue.
Speaker 1: And I think we've discussed this very situation before in
Speaker 1: reference to crabs on the show. Oh yeah, there's also
Speaker 1: the argument, well, scavengers can't be that precise with their cuts,
Speaker 1: but I think we'll discuss that again in a little
Speaker 1: bit here. But also I think it's fair to say
Speaker 1: that scavengers can probably be more precise than you think,
Speaker 1: especially if they're removing the soft flesh from a region.
Speaker 1: And then there's also the argument, well there was no blood. Well,
Speaker 1: the lack of blood was apparently often due to the
Speaker 1: post mortem coagulation of blood in the lower regions of
Speaker 1: the animals. So again the animals died of some of
Speaker 1: their cause. It's not been killed by a predator. It dies,
Speaker 1: it falls over, the blood coagulates in the lower regions,
Speaker 1: drains and coagulates, and then the scavenger arrives. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The blood phenomenon also known as liver mortis liv R.
Speaker 2: Another potential source of strange looking in on an animal
Speaker 2: cadaver that I was reading about decomposition itself. Decomposition of
Speaker 2: an animal body by insects and by microorganisms does not
Speaker 2: always look the way you would expect it to, and
Speaker 2: it can produce some very weird and creepy looking details.
Speaker 2: For example, I was reading in The Skeptic's Dictionary by
Speaker 2: Robert Todd Carroll an account of an experiment carried out
Speaker 2: by the Sheriff's Department of Washington County, Arkansas. I think
Speaker 2: this was in nineteen seventy nine, in which a cal
Speaker 2: carcass was left out in a field and observed for
Speaker 2: forty eight hours just to see what the natural course
Speaker 2: of decomposition looked like. And Carol writes that you know
Speaker 2: what they found that blowflies and maggots cleaned out portions
Speaker 2: of soft tissue. Sometimes said to be missing from cases
Speaker 2: classified as cattle mutilation. And also I found this maybe
Speaker 2: the most interesting part. Quote bloating led to incision like
Speaker 2: tears in the skin. So a lot of the belief
Speaker 2: that it must be the aliens or it must be
Speaker 2: a government conspiracy leans heavily on the cuts that resemble
Speaker 2: clean incisions or excisions rather than ragged tearing. But it
Speaker 2: seems like there are cases where just regular decomposition can
Speaker 2: lead to what looked like very clean splits or cuts
Speaker 2: in the hide.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This study is one that I believe Goldman mentions
Speaker 1: as well, conducted by anthropologist Nancy Owen, funded by the
Speaker 1: University of Arkansas, using lethally tranquilized but already dying cows
Speaker 1: or already dying cow and they found that the resulting
Speaker 1: scavenger wounds matched up closely with reported cattle mutilation quote
Speaker 1: surgical cuts after thirty hours of exposure.
Speaker 2: Okay, So it seems likely to us at least that
Speaker 2: many of the animals reported as part of the cattle
Speaker 2: mutilation phenomenon probably had injuries as a result of scavengers
Speaker 2: or as a result of decomposition, but probably also some
Speaker 2: of them were actually just cases where like a human
Speaker 2: person went out and tampered with the cow carcass.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially once the script is it full power, once
Speaker 1: the idea is out there. So yeah, you do have
Speaker 1: again a few cases of suspected human activity, and these
Speaker 1: were thought to be post mortem wounds, so again that
Speaker 1: the animal had died of some of their cause and
Speaker 1: then humans came and messed with the body. And when
Speaker 1: you get into the reason for this, well, I think
Speaker 1: we'll get into that question a bit more in a
Speaker 1: bit here, but at the time, one mode have trotted
Speaker 1: out for these quote unquote rural vandals by some local
Speaker 1: agencies was good old fashioned cult activity. So yeah, this
Speaker 1: again we're kind of slapped up in the middle of
Speaker 1: satanic panic here, so I guess it unfortunately makes sense
Speaker 1: that satanic cults would be fingered in all of this,
Speaker 1: so sort of like they were with the biker scenario.
Speaker 2: So right, but not satanic bikers, just your average run
Speaker 2: of the mill satanic farm teenagers.
Speaker 1: Right. And according to Goldman, Iowa's Department of Criminal Activity
Speaker 1: at the time claimed to have found evidence connecting some
Speaker 1: of the mutilations to satanic activity, but no arrests were
Speaker 1: ever made, and at any rate, the cases with suspected
Speaker 1: human involvement were very low compared to the overall reported
Speaker 1: rate of mutilations.
Speaker 2: Given the general credulity about Satanic cult phenomenon at the time,
Speaker 2: I would be doubtful of that connection.
Speaker 1: Right, we'll come back to this in a bed. But
Speaker 1: essentially what ends up happening, though, again is the rate
Speaker 1: drops on its own, and investigations are less about let's
Speaker 1: find these people before they strike again, or let's stop
Speaker 1: these aliens or whatever, let's find out what's happening, but
Speaker 1: instead trying to figure out what happened. Why were there
Speaker 1: so many reports of cattle mutilations, and again mostly by
Speaker 1: small scale ranchers blaming the federal government, So you had
Speaker 1: various surveys take place. Former FBI agent Kenneth Rahm investigated
Speaker 1: on behalf of the DA's office in New Mexico, and he,
Speaker 1: I think, offered a very logical sounding analysis of everything,
Speaker 1: blaming it on the power of suggestion, media sensation, as
Speaker 1: well as irresponsible local law enforcement officials. So basically, according
Speaker 1: to Rommel, you'd have this script already out there in
Speaker 1: the world, and then you'd have sensationalization by the media,
Speaker 1: and then comes a local law enforcement officer in to
Speaker 1: respond to your report of a cattle death, an officer
Speaker 1: who probably didn't have experience with bovine deaths, of Goldman ads,
Speaker 1: and who would then suggest the cattle mutilation script and
Speaker 1: not necessarily simply coming out and saying, well, that looks
Speaker 1: mighty strange. I reckon it was aliens, but even by
Speaker 1: more casually just mentioning some of the sort of the
Speaker 1: keywords of the script, like remarking that the wounds look surgical,
Speaker 1: or remarking that the wounds look like cuts in the
Speaker 1: mind can fill in the rest was Rommel's argument. And
Speaker 1: the results of this. Then, as this gets passed up
Speaker 1: the chain, the media catches wind of it, and so
Speaker 1: the results feed the media coverage, and the mild mass hysteria,
Speaker 1: as Goldman describes it continues.
Speaker 2: Now, of course, we know conspiracy mindset can accommodate anything.
Speaker 2: So if you have somebody investigated and find there's nothing
Speaker 2: to it, well that confirms it because they're part of
Speaker 2: the conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Right right, And yes, so detractors argue that Rommel was
Speaker 1: clearly part of conspiracy, especially with his FBI background. There's
Speaker 1: another investigation that the Goldman mentions. A private investigation by
Speaker 1: Daniel Kagan and Ian Summers, and these backed up most
Speaker 1: of Rommel's findings as they conducted interviews across the country
Speaker 1: and learned link the reports to a loss of faith
Speaker 1: in American institutions. So belief in the Bizaarre fueled by disillusionment.
Speaker 1: So Golman spends a lot more time making this case.
Speaker 1: And again, I think this paper is worth checking out
Speaker 1: if you're really interested in the nuts and bolts of it. Again,
Speaker 1: the Wreck and the cattle industry peaks in seventy five
Speaker 1: and falls away after that, which matches up with the
Speaker 1: rise and fall of reported mutilations, with small ranches hit
Speaker 1: the hardest by the wreck being the main source of
Speaker 1: the reports, while larger ranchers remain skeptical of the whole deal.
Speaker 2: You know, to echo an idea that I think you
Speaker 2: already started to raise here, it seems to me that
Speaker 2: perhaps a major source of confusion is the very creation
Speaker 2: of this category known as cattle mutilations, into which many
Speaker 2: literally different incidents with probably different causes can all be
Speaker 2: kind of sorted together, and then once you have them
Speaker 2: all in the same conceptual bucket, people naturally tend to
Speaker 2: assume they therefore must all share a single explanation. So
Speaker 2: if you say, well, you know, I'm looking at this
Speaker 2: case of alleged cattle mutilation, and this could probably just
Speaker 2: be a result of natural predation or an animal dying
Speaker 2: of natural causes and then being attacked by a scavenger,
Speaker 2: And then of course someone could say, well, but that
Speaker 2: couldn't explain the weird features of this other cattle mutilation case.
Speaker 2: And then you could say, well, that could be just
Speaker 2: a product of the normal features of decomposition of an
Speaker 2: animal body. And they could say, well, but decomposition couldn't
Speaker 2: explain this and this these other cases, and you could say, well,
Speaker 2: maybe in that case a person just mutilated a cow,
Speaker 2: like for some reason, some person did that, And then
Speaker 2: they say, but a person couldn't have done what we
Speaker 2: saw in this other case. So the problem would be
Speaker 2: you are assuming these are all cattle mutilation phenomenon, which
Speaker 2: mentally makes them all the same thing, which makes you
Speaker 2: assume they must all have the same cause. And because
Speaker 2: there's no one explanation that fits all of them, therefore
Speaker 2: there's no way to explain the phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think this is interesting because I think
Speaker 1: it's also could help explain why, despite government conspiracies and
Speaker 1: government tests and black helicopters being the primary detail of
Speaker 1: the script in the nineteen seventies, why it seems to
Speaker 1: have drifted more towards the alien explanation in like modern
Speaker 1: conspiracy treatment of it. Because Yeah, if you start saying yeah,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, well, if it can't you can't
Speaker 1: be a person here, but it, you know, maybe could
Speaker 1: be here, Like, you eventually reach a point where the
Speaker 1: idea that it's government agents doesn't even fit anymore. You
Speaker 1: have to go entirely into the unseen world. You have
Speaker 1: to go entirely into the realm of either elves or aliens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think the the impulse to say, well,
Speaker 2: it has to be aliens really arises from the ones where,
Speaker 2: you know, the details people describe in the reports seem
Speaker 2: to defy the laws of physics, at least as you
Speaker 2: know understood, Like so the ones where they say, like
Speaker 2: there was not a single drop of blood on the ground.
Speaker 2: I don't know what to make of those cases. I
Speaker 2: don't think think, I don't think you're justified in jumping
Speaker 2: yet to it must be aliens. I think it's more
Speaker 2: likely to say, maybe there's something you don't quite understand
Speaker 2: about the way this scene is reported, or how exactly
Speaker 2: the decomposition of an animal works. That seems more likely
Speaker 2: to me, But who knows, you know, I'm not all knowing.
Speaker 2: But anyway, to come back to my summary thoughts on this,
Speaker 2: I personally think it makes the most sense, when looking
Speaker 2: at this whole thing, to say cattle mutilation is actually
Speaker 2: just a grouping of diverse instances of dead animals with
Speaker 2: various injuries that have a number of different causes. So
Speaker 2: some might be the work of natural predators and scavengers.
Speaker 2: Some might be animals that died of disease and simply
Speaker 2: decomposed in a way that looked odd. Some might be
Speaker 2: struck by lightning, some were actually mutilated by people for
Speaker 2: whatever reason, and some might have explanations we haven't thought
Speaker 2: of yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I want to get here, and we're not
Speaker 1: going to spend as much time with this, but I
Speaker 1: do want to touch on ostension as a way of
Speaker 1: potentially understanding these cases, these few cases where human acts
Speaker 1: seem to have been involved, where humans seem to have
Speaker 1: come along and potentially carved up some of these animals
Speaker 1: post mortem to sort of prop up the myth, prop
Speaker 1: up the legend. And I was reading about this potential
Speaker 1: angle in Death by Folklore Atension Contemporary Legend and Murdered
Speaker 1: by Bill Ellis again. That's published eighty nine Western States
Speaker 1: Folklore Society, and he discusses a quote third dimension of
Speaker 1: the legendary Elvis writes, quote folklorests disagree about whether legends
Speaker 1: describe events that actually did or did not happen in
Speaker 1: the past, but in the light of recent events and scholarship,
Speaker 1: it seems more accurate to describe legends as normative definitions
Speaker 1: of reality, maps by which one can determine what has happened,
Speaker 1: what is happening, and what will happen.
Speaker 2: I think that's incredibly perceptive and very well put that
Speaker 2: in a way. When people are arguing about the truth
Speaker 2: of a legend, often it takes the form of arguing
Speaker 2: about whether or not something literally did or did not
Speaker 2: happen at a particular time in the past. But that's
Speaker 2: not really the spirit of what they're arguing about. Often,
Speaker 2: the spirit of what they're arguing about is is this
Speaker 2: story reflective of how things are in the World.
Speaker 1: Alice cites the work of folklos Linda Dage, and I
Speaker 1: hope I'm getting that right. If I'm not, I apologize
Speaker 1: and Andrew Vassangni, who contend that quote not only can
Speaker 1: facts be turned into narratives, but narratives can also be
Speaker 1: turned into facts, and so in this we get into
Speaker 1: ostension theory. These two authors were the first to use
Speaker 1: ostension in folklore, but the idea in communication theory goes
Speaker 1: back further. Umberto Echo discussed it in a Theory of
Speaker 1: Semiotics from nineteen seventy nine. But even in that I
Speaker 1: was looking up some of his writings in that book
Speaker 1: about this topic, and even that he's citing Witgenstein. So
Speaker 1: I'm not not sure where we how far back we
Speaker 1: trace this discussion. But Echo writes, quote ostension occurs when
Speaker 1: a given object or event, produced by nature or human action,
Speaker 1: intentionally or unintentionally, and existing in a world of fact
Speaker 1: among facts, is quote unquote picked up by someone and
Speaker 1: shown as the expression of the class of which it
Speaker 1: is a member. And so Echo uses examples in the
Speaker 1: books such as showing a brand of cigarettes or showing
Speaker 1: a shoe and you and you know you might be
Speaker 1: conveying something like this shoe is dirty, or I need
Speaker 1: more of these cigarettes, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Ah, But I can see how this would apply to
Speaker 2: folklore and even to fringe beliefs and conspiracy theories, in that,
Speaker 2: you know, when you believe very much in sort of
Speaker 2: a story about something that recurs in the world or
Speaker 2: a way the world is, you don't just believe in
Speaker 2: the instances of it that you already know about. You
Speaker 2: want to like show new instances of that event as
Speaker 2: exemplars of the fact that the overall arc, the overall
Speaker 2: narrative really does take place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's kind of it's kind of difficult to
Speaker 1: think about this because it's you know, I kind of
Speaker 1: waiver on interpreting it as like how much of it
Speaker 1: is is sort of subconscious, how much of it is conscious,
Speaker 1: Not to say that it's entirely subconscious, but like, how
Speaker 1: much of it is the conscious dimension of the act,
Speaker 1: and how much is the subconscious. So to explain things better,
Speaker 1: Ellis brings up examples of folkloric ostensive actions such as
Speaker 1: legend tripping, so going to or engaging in acts that
Speaker 1: are said to elicit a supernatural response. So going out
Speaker 1: and setting on railroad tracks at night. By the way,
Speaker 1: do not do that generally. I think it's in many
Speaker 1: of not most cases, it may be illegal to set
Speaker 1: on those railroad tracks in addition to being dangerous. So,
Speaker 1: but doing things like that, hanking three times, looking for cryptid's,
Speaker 1: going on a Bigfoot search, these are all potentially examples
Speaker 1: of legend tripping. They're all essentially benign acts. For the
Speaker 1: most part. No one is going to get hurt because
Speaker 1: you went out and searched for Bigfoot. And doing this
Speaker 1: search doesn't rule out the monster, but fuels the legend.
Speaker 1: Like nobody has ever gone out searching for Bigfoot and
Speaker 1: then said, well, we didn't find him. I just don't
Speaker 1: believe in it anymore.
Speaker 2: And to be fair though, of course, I'm not advocating
Speaker 2: the existence of squatch here. But you know, you need
Speaker 2: to take you need to keep in mind search spaces
Speaker 2: like if you went out looking for Bigfoot, even if
Speaker 2: Bigfoot really existed, would you expect to find him on
Speaker 2: one trip into the woods. Probably not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So this is where things get to do like
Speaker 1: darker shades of folklore, and Ellis discusses such things as
Speaker 1: food tampering and ritual murder, but he also brings up
Speaker 1: the cattle mutilation of phenomenon or of cattle mutilation panic
Speaker 1: at one point in the article, focusing on cult interpretations
Speaker 1: of the crime, which we already discussed, of those that
Speaker 1: were brought up in the other sources, as well as
Speaker 1: some really out there statements from a couple of Texas
Speaker 1: inmates at the time who said that it was an
Speaker 1: elaborate satanic undertaking by cultis. He also points to other
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six reports of animal mutilations cattle and other animals,
Speaker 1: some of which involved reports of black robe figures and
Speaker 1: all the usual bells and whistles of cult activity. There were,
Speaker 1: of course, no first hand accounts of any of this,
Speaker 1: but these were the stories that were circulating.
Speaker 2: Was there a sacred bejeweled dagger?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So Ellis stresses that these rumors and legends reflect
Speaker 1: a quote complex assortment of deliberate acts, misinterpreted evidence, and exaggeration,
Speaker 1: and he writes the while logic neatly handles all the
Speaker 1: challenges of the mystery, quasi a stension plays the key
Speaker 1: role here. Quote the observer's interpretation of puzzling evidence in
Speaker 1: terms of a narrative tradition. So if you're prepared to
Speaker 1: find evidence of X, then you will find evidence of X.
Speaker 1: If you go out looking for Bigfoot, yeah you may
Speaker 1: you're not going to see him, but you're probably going
Speaker 1: to there's a good chance you'll find something. Right, if
Speaker 1: you find some hair, well that might be bigfoot hair.
Speaker 1: There's some bigfoot for right there. You know, some other
Speaker 1: strange mark. If you go looking for star jelly in
Speaker 1: the woods, you'll find star jelly. But then human actors,
Speaker 1: he writes, can insert themselves into a given script by
Speaker 1: engaging in acts of a stension, like legend tripping, which
Speaker 1: sounds like a potential way to understand those few incidents
Speaker 1: of cattle mutilation in which human activity may have been involved.
Speaker 1: And there's I want to read one last quote from
Speaker 1: Alice here that I thought was particularly creepy and very
Speaker 1: seasonal quote. In contemporary times, too, legends about satanic murder
Speaker 1: and cattle mutilation are not just expressions of fictive horror.
Speaker 1: They are paradigms for making the world more horrifying. The
Speaker 1: haunted house and the outside world are always in danger
Speaker 1: of merging.
Speaker 2: I guess that's true. It is up to humans not
Speaker 2: to decide to make them merge by acting out a
Speaker 2: legend or dangerous fiction in reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I mean, we have to remind ourselves that
Speaker 1: a lot of these dangerous fictions, they're not just idle
Speaker 1: fascinations or the word, they're not necessarily idle fascinations. Like, certainly,
Speaker 1: you can have an idle fascination with any number of
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories, certainly, But where these things seem to have
Speaker 1: more traction is where like one's you know, personal identity
Speaker 1: or view of the entire world becomes wrapped up in
Speaker 1: that thing. That seems to be the area where you
Speaker 1: get some real potential for danger. That's where the haunted
Speaker 1: house in their outside world can potentially emerge. All right, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to go ahead and close out the episode
Speaker 1: right here, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Obviously,
Speaker 1: this is a topic of much rumination in some circles,
Speaker 1: and some of you might have read some other sources
Speaker 1: that you know, you might have some examples of faulty
Speaker 1: logic on this that would be interesting to share. You
Speaker 1: might have some examples of some very strong points or
Speaker 1: a counter arguments. Also just other theories, because some of
Speaker 1: them the material out there. We looked at a particular
Speaker 1: recent documentary in which another idea was brought up that
Speaker 1: large ranches were the cause of this, like big ranchers
Speaker 1: were targeting the small ranches, and I had not heard that.
Speaker 1: I didn't see that. That wasn't mentioned as a possibility
Speaker 1: in the sources I was looking at, And I certainly
Speaker 1: don't think that was the case, but I did think
Speaker 1: it was interesting because it does fit in with the
Speaker 1: sort of socioeconomic setting of the time of the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. You know, the idea that again it is
Speaker 1: the struggling, smaller rancher that is feeling the pain and
Speaker 1: is reporting these incidents. So it would make sense that
Speaker 1: at least some of them might say, well, I think
Speaker 1: it's these big ranchers that are doing it. Like you
Speaker 1: can see why that script would gain traction, is what
Speaker 1: I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting premise. Unfortunately, that document in particular,
Speaker 2: I think is the result of a government conspiracy. It
Speaker 2: was designed in a lab in order to reduce people's
Speaker 2: critical thinking faculties.
Speaker 1: All right, well, we'd love to hear from everyone out
Speaker 1: there if you haven't have some critical analysis, or if
Speaker 1: anyone out there. Had if you have ties to the
Speaker 1: ranching world and have some insight, we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from you. You know, everything's val it's so feel free
Speaker 1: to write in. In the meantime. Core episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind publish on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and
Speaker 1: the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed on Mondays,
Speaker 1: we do Listen your mail. On Wednesdays we do a
Speaker 1: short form Monster Factor artifact, and on Fridays we do
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema. That's our time to set aside most concerns,
Speaker 1: serious concerns and just talk about a weird film. And
Speaker 1: this Friday we have a weird one that is also
Speaker 1: a cattle mutilation film. I think it'll be a fun episode.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Speaker 2: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 2: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 2: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 2: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow your Mind dot com.
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