Top 8 Cryptids You’ve Probably Never Heard Of

[00:00:01] Astonishing Legends Network.

[00:00:04] Disclaimer, this episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here.

[00:00:10] But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me.

[00:00:14] Welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Kalari.

[00:00:18] And I was drinking.

[00:00:19] And for the last episode of Season 4, we wanted to return to our Fear of the Unknown series that we launched at the end of last season.

[00:00:27] We had a great response to that episode. Y'all loved it.

[00:00:30] And we had a blast putting it together.

[00:00:32] So we thought this time, instead of returning to cover a well-known monster like Nessie, as we did at the end of Season 3,

[00:00:40] we thought, why not go in the opposite direction?

[00:00:43] Why not dive deep down the cryptid iceberg and find some creatures that don't usually get the spotlight?

[00:00:49] Yeah, and what's the opposite of popular? Not popular.

[00:00:52] Yeah.

[00:00:52] And what's the opposite of one? A bunch.

[00:00:55] Yep.

[00:00:55] So we did it. We went full opposite.

[00:00:58] Full opposite. A bunch of unpopular cryptids.

[00:01:03] Coming your way.

[00:01:04] And ooh boy, did we find some freaks in this collection.

[00:01:08] Real duds.

[00:01:10] So strap on a safari hat, load up both your hand cannons, and follow us deep into the unknown.

[00:01:18] What are we?

[00:01:19] Scared.

[00:01:20] When are we?

[00:01:21] All the time.

[00:01:23] Join us.

[00:01:23] Join us.

[00:01:24] Join us.

[00:01:25] Now it is time for...

[00:01:26] Time for...

[00:01:28] Scandal the time.

[00:01:30] Hey, everybody.

[00:01:31] Thanks for joining us for this grand finale of Season 4.

[00:01:36] We're...

[00:01:37] We've got a...

[00:01:37] What is it, Ed?

[00:01:38] What are we clocking in at?

[00:01:39] Two hours and 40-something minutes?

[00:01:42] I don't...

[00:01:42] It's over two and a half hours for sure.

[00:01:44] This is a mega finale.

[00:01:46] Mega finale of...

[00:01:48] A bunch of cryptids.

[00:01:51] This was really fun.

[00:01:52] I mean, we'll see how you guys like it.

[00:01:54] We'll see how you feel about it not being messy and stuff.

[00:01:57] But like, I don't know.

[00:01:58] I had a blast researching these things.

[00:02:00] Yeah, this was a fun episode.

[00:02:01] It was goofy as shit.

[00:02:02] So, yeah.

[00:02:03] I guess just for housekeeping, we just wanted to say happy Thanksgiving.

[00:02:07] Hope you and yours are doing well.

[00:02:09] We are very thankful for you guys for listening to this show, for continuing to support us

[00:02:15] through this first year and change.

[00:02:18] And we will be back in just a couple of weeks with Season 5.

[00:02:23] It's also very confusing to me that we did four seasons in one year.

[00:02:28] Yeah, podcasting is weird.

[00:02:30] Yeah.

[00:02:30] But yeah, we'll be back in Season 5 in a couple weeks.

[00:02:33] So, we'll be with you guys for Christmas and the winter holidays.

[00:02:37] Yeah.

[00:02:38] And I think we'll also keep your eyeballs on our socials and stuff because we'll definitely

[00:02:43] have one or two surprises in the meantime when we don't have EPS out.

[00:02:46] Yeah, we'll be going live on Discord or watching a movie or something.

[00:02:50] Or possibly opening the merch store.

[00:02:52] People have been secretly buying merch from our Instagram because the merch store is not

[00:02:56] finished.

[00:02:57] Well, but the merch store is almost finished, but it's so complicated.

[00:03:01] I feel like...

[00:03:01] The last step of taxes.

[00:03:03] If anybody really knows Shopify well, reach out to me because I'm definitely confused

[00:03:08] all the time.

[00:03:09] I also think we should just...

[00:03:10] I mean, I don't know how many people are going to want merch.

[00:03:13] It seems like a lot, but maybe people should just keep emailing us if they want merch and

[00:03:17] it'll be like the Silk Road for shirts that say,

[00:03:21] they scare it all the time on them.

[00:03:22] That's true.

[00:03:22] As long as we keep making the stuff ourselves, we don't really need anybody else.

[00:03:27] We're like an independent band.

[00:03:29] We're like a small band.

[00:03:30] Like, yes, you need Shopify and all that if you've got drop shipping and this and all this

[00:03:35] other crap.

[00:03:35] But since it's just like me making things with my hands, it kind of doesn't need any of that

[00:03:41] infrastructure until we need that infrastructure.

[00:03:44] Yeah.

[00:03:44] So I don't know.

[00:03:45] Email scared all the time podcast at gmail.com.

[00:03:48] To inquire.

[00:03:49] To inquire.

[00:03:51] And we'll hook you up in the meantime as we get this stuff figured out.

[00:03:55] But yeah, what a year it's been.

[00:03:57] What a finale this is.

[00:03:59] And we will see you guys soon.

[00:04:02] Until then.

[00:04:02] No final five star reviews.

[00:04:05] Should we do a final five star review for season four?

[00:04:09] I have one that either it's broken or it's the best review we've ever got.

[00:04:14] There's one.

[00:04:14] The one up here that's just a period.

[00:04:16] Yes.

[00:04:18] So, okay.

[00:04:19] So this is a I'll just give a five star review.

[00:04:21] Fuck it.

[00:04:21] So this comes from hail CSM 101.

[00:04:25] The topic of the review is just the name of our show.

[00:04:28] Scared all the time.

[00:04:29] So they fulfilled that part of the bargain.

[00:04:32] And the whole review is just a single period.

[00:04:35] Just a solitary period.

[00:04:37] Period.

[00:04:38] There's nothing else.

[00:04:39] So thanks.

[00:04:40] That's awesome.

[00:04:41] Hail CSM 101.

[00:04:43] And I'm trying to like I'm like trying to like hover over it and highlight it.

[00:04:47] Like in case there's like a secret, you know, like it's written in the same color as the background.

[00:04:50] But nope.

[00:04:51] It's just.

[00:04:51] Nope.

[00:04:52] It's just one beautiful dot of appreciation.

[00:04:56] So thank you so much.

[00:04:58] We're here and I'll read the latest, the latest five star review from Slaytanic Butt.

[00:05:05] Five stars.

[00:05:06] Not my chair.

[00:05:07] Not my problem.

[00:05:09] And they packed this review with references to the name of the show, Scared All the Time.

[00:05:14] Like we said, that is a bonus to get read at five star review corner.

[00:05:18] So this review says, are you like me?

[00:05:20] I am scared all the time.

[00:05:22] Are you scared all the time too?

[00:05:24] If you are scared all the time as much as I am scared all the time, there is a podcast you should check out.

[00:05:28] But even if you are only scared some of the time, you should listen to this show.

[00:05:33] Maybe if you are not currently scared all the time, you could binge listen to this show.

[00:05:37] So you too can be scared all the time of things you were not previously scared all the time about.

[00:05:43] Wow.

[00:05:43] It's a really great podcast, but I forget what the name of it is.

[00:05:46] Oh, great.

[00:05:47] Now I'm going to be scared all the time about forgetting the name of podcasts I like.

[00:05:51] Huge.

[00:05:52] Fantastic.

[00:05:53] Thank you, Slaytanic Butt.

[00:05:54] What a way to go out on five star reviews for this season.

[00:05:57] And in the meantime, over the next couple of weeks, leave five star reviews.

[00:06:02] I know you guys are sitting at home.

[00:06:03] You're probably talking to your family for a few hours and then being like, I wish I had something to do that wasn't talking to my family.

[00:06:09] You can go leave us a review and then you might hear it read when we come back in season five.

[00:06:14] And tell us about any fights you get in for people being like, I said, put the phones away at the table.

[00:06:19] And then you're like, I'm writing a five star review.

[00:06:21] Leave me alone.

[00:06:21] Just let us know to like introduce your families to scared all the time.

[00:06:26] I think we're a very family friendly show, depending on how fucked up your family is.

[00:06:30] That's true.

[00:06:31] And, you know, put it on at the table.

[00:06:33] If you guys are all, if you're all arguing about politics, throw on amusement park accidents or dying in space.

[00:06:41] You know, something light, something that you don't have to face each other.

[00:06:45] You can also be when, you know, I never know what to say around the table when people are like, OK, it's time to say what you're thankful for or whatever.

[00:06:54] Now I have 41 episodes plus some specials and a couple of crossovers of ammunition of like, well, I'm thankful I don't.

[00:07:02] I haven't woken up during surgery.

[00:07:03] Yeah, I'm thankful I don't have a flesh eating bacteria.

[00:07:05] There you go.

[00:07:06] I'm thankful the Yellowstone sub volcano or whatever hasn't gone off.

[00:07:10] That's huge.

[00:07:10] And that is something that you can be thankful all the time for this Thanksgiving.

[00:07:16] Oh, shit.

[00:07:16] I guess I should make some Thanksgiving art about being thankful all the time or something.

[00:07:19] We should.

[00:07:20] Oh, dude, let's for the for Thanksgiving post.

[00:07:23] We'll trace our hands.

[00:07:24] We'll do turkeys and we'll put thankful all the time.

[00:07:27] All right, you turkeys.

[00:07:28] Love you guys.

[00:07:29] Enjoy the episode and we will see you in a couple of weeks.

[00:07:32] Bye bye.

[00:07:32] Well, you'll hear us in a second.

[00:07:33] This is just bye bye from housekeeping.

[00:07:35] Hey, everybody.

[00:07:36] Welcome back to the show.

[00:07:38] I thought we should take this season out on a bang.

[00:07:41] Do something big like nuclear war or assassinations.

[00:07:45] But given the general state of things in the world, Ed was very worried about getting put

[00:07:51] on a list.

[00:07:52] He has more to worry about than I do.

[00:07:54] I'm knee deep in research on snuff films, so I'm already on a list.

[00:07:57] Probably multiple lists.

[00:07:58] That's true.

[00:07:59] Yeah.

[00:08:00] It's all part of the job as America's number one chronicler of fears.

[00:08:04] We're going to end up doing this podcast from prison or hell.

[00:08:08] There's a quote they can use in the Netflix documentary about how this podcast ended someday.

[00:08:14] Yeah.

[00:08:14] Anyway, maybe it's for the best that we try to keep things light here at the end of the

[00:08:20] season as we head into Thanksgiving and the holidays.

[00:08:23] So we thought we would do something that's a little bit more fun, something that we can

[00:08:27] touch on with a little bit of wonder.

[00:08:29] We can explore the world of the bizarre and the strange.

[00:08:33] So we're doing eight cryptids you've probably never heard of, which makes me wonder, Ed,

[00:08:38] what is the most obscure cryptid that you know about?

[00:08:41] The Melonheads?

[00:08:43] Oh, obscure?

[00:08:44] That's not obscure for me.

[00:08:45] Well, not for you, but for some people, they might not.

[00:08:48] The Melonheads are very localized cryptid, I feel like.

[00:08:51] Now, do ghosts count as...

[00:08:53] They don't count as cryptid.

[00:08:54] So if there's like, oh, I know there's a haunted ghost that always haunts this one cemetery by

[00:08:58] my house.

[00:08:59] No ghosts.

[00:09:00] We're talking things like Bridgewater Triangle monsters, Hockamock Swamp that Kyle Morrison

[00:09:06] always used to tell me about.

[00:09:07] Sure.

[00:09:08] That kind of thing.

[00:09:09] Monsters.

[00:09:09] Yeah.

[00:09:10] I guess the Melonheads, if people don't know the Melonheads, then I guess that would be...

[00:09:13] I think that's the only cryptid prop.

[00:09:16] I don't know what's cryptid.

[00:09:17] I think it's just like incestual groups of people, maybe.

[00:09:19] When you say people don't know the Melonheads, I almost wanted to ask what record they should

[00:09:23] start with.

[00:09:23] They should start with their first?

[00:09:25] Their first.

[00:09:26] I think Go to Sleep or Else, I think it was a hit on that record.

[00:09:31] Yeah.

[00:09:32] I Misunderstood, But No One Will Listen was the B-side.

[00:09:36] Mm-hmm.

[00:09:36] Yeah.

[00:09:37] So I don't know.

[00:09:37] People, I don't know how far reaching they are, but I guess so.

[00:09:41] Yeah.

[00:09:41] Because I don't really know.

[00:09:42] I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of cryptids.

[00:09:45] So I definitely can't pull anything out right now.

[00:09:47] Yeah.

[00:09:47] I know some weird ones, some of which we're going to talk about in a minute, but I tried

[00:09:51] to go even deeper than ones that I thought were weird.

[00:09:55] I tried to educate myself on some new cryptids.

[00:09:58] So in these top five, depending on your experience with the world of cryptids, you may think three

[00:10:04] of them, you're like, oh, come on, pussy.

[00:10:07] I've heard of this one.

[00:10:09] You might not think I went deep enough on the cryptid iceberg.

[00:10:12] Some of you probably, hopefully, won't have ever heard of any of these.

[00:10:16] That's me.

[00:10:17] Yeah.

[00:10:18] Ed's never heard of any of them.

[00:10:19] I didn't know what Hat Man was in episode one.

[00:10:22] That's true.

[00:10:22] We started this podcast and Ed was completely unaware of probably the most popular urban

[00:10:27] legend since Slenderman.

[00:10:30] So Slenderman.

[00:10:31] Slenderman.

[00:10:31] Slenderman.

[00:10:32] Jesus.

[00:10:32] What are you doing?

[00:10:33] His taxes?

[00:10:34] No, I was doing a show, an animated show that you know about, Ed, that almost happened

[00:10:40] with some incredible people that I was pitching and it never ended up happening, but it was an

[00:10:45] animated show about a town full of monsters and the next door neighbors of the main character

[00:10:50] were the Slendermans.

[00:10:51] Oh, okay.

[00:10:52] A little backdoor pilot.

[00:10:53] But that's, I mean, I was a great show that I wish had happened and I was working on with

[00:10:56] you.

[00:10:57] Might still.

[00:10:57] Who knows?

[00:10:58] Yeah.

[00:10:58] Yeah.

[00:10:59] Maybe, maybe someday.

[00:11:01] Anyway, taking this deep dive reminded me of why I wanted to be a cryptozoologist when

[00:11:07] I was a kid.

[00:11:07] I think I might've shared this on the show before.

[00:11:09] I can't remember, but amongst my cryptozoology books that I wrote in first grade that we've

[00:11:15] shared in piecemeal on the show before.

[00:11:18] I also remember I wrote a dare essay for the just say no to drugs people about how I needed

[00:11:25] to be drug free when I grew up because you can't be a cryptozoologist if you're high all

[00:11:30] the time.

[00:11:31] You did mention that.

[00:11:32] Yeah.

[00:11:32] But now I kind of feel like most cryptozoologists are probably high most of the time.

[00:11:38] I mean, that's how you see that, man.

[00:11:39] That's true.

[00:11:40] You should rewrite.

[00:11:41] You should do like a 30 years later revision one where it's like you revisit that and now

[00:11:46] it's called How Dare You?

[00:11:48] And that's the title.

[00:11:49] And it starts with like, you fucking lied to me.

[00:11:53] But cryptozoology was one of my first loves because it combines the sense of wonder that

[00:11:58] I felt about paleontology with a sense of mythology and storytelling and humanity that

[00:12:03] I don't know that I was even able to put my finger on as a kid.

[00:12:06] Not that paleontology doesn't have a sense of humanity about it.

[00:12:09] I mean, it's an exploration of the history of the planet we all share and the creatures

[00:12:13] that we could have shared it with if things had gone a little differently.

[00:12:17] And I'll say right now, it's my paleontologists out there.

[00:12:20] I love what you do.

[00:12:21] And if you listen to the show and you ever want to come on the show and talk about dinosaurs,

[00:12:25] we will find a fear to make that work.

[00:12:28] And it does seem like a boring profession in the sense that like, it's a lot of brushing

[00:12:32] off dirt from bones or like doing stuff.

[00:12:34] So you probably have time to listen to podcasts.

[00:12:37] Yeah.

[00:12:37] I mean, you probably listen.

[00:12:38] Well, I don't know.

[00:12:39] I don't know how like sensory dependent paleontologists are and like the sound of the brush scraping

[00:12:45] the sand off the bone.

[00:12:47] That's true.

[00:12:47] And I should say that it's boring.

[00:12:48] It's kind of like, you know, being a detective where day to day might be boring.

[00:12:51] Like the stakeout of your life is boring.

[00:12:53] But then there's probably a lot of excitement when you're like, I found a bone that's not

[00:12:57] a human.

[00:12:58] Oh, for sure.

[00:12:58] Yeah.

[00:12:59] I mean, like there's got to be a even even I mean, never mind discovery of new species,

[00:13:04] which I bet is a whole other level of like, yeah, I am going in the history.

[00:13:08] Well, the science books now, like we got it.

[00:13:11] That's got to be exciting.

[00:13:13] But yeah, I mean, if I found like a shark tooth in like a pile of shale, I would treat

[00:13:19] it like gold for the rest of my life.

[00:13:21] So but wait, what fear could we do to have a paleontologist on fear of extinction?

[00:13:26] Well, I mean, I don't want to do time travel, but we could probably do a series of time travel

[00:13:31] based fears that were like fears of going back to the 30s.

[00:13:34] Fears of going back to the fucking Jurassic period, fears of going to medieval times.

[00:13:38] And then you could have people who are experts in those fields, those times in history.

[00:13:42] Here's one.

[00:13:43] Listeners, tell me if you would listen to this.

[00:13:45] What if we did eaten alive part two dinosaurs and we discuss different ways that different

[00:13:52] dinosaurs would probably kill you because like raptors would hunt you.

[00:13:56] T-Rex would just like munch you.

[00:13:58] Yeah.

[00:13:59] Or maybe he wouldn't.

[00:13:59] I guess he was maybe a scavenger.

[00:14:01] This is why we need the fucking experts on.

[00:14:03] Tell all your expert friends that what we're doing and that we want them on.

[00:14:07] Come on, paleontologists.

[00:14:08] We got an email from a mythologist or a folklorist or a folklorist.

[00:14:15] A folklorist.

[00:14:16] Yeah.

[00:14:16] And we might have her on.

[00:14:18] She sent an email that very politely ended with like, P.S.

[00:14:22] If you ever need someone to help you with the pronunciation of Greco-Roman names, we'd

[00:14:26] all love to chip in or something.

[00:14:28] Oh, wow.

[00:14:29] That's a real dig.

[00:14:30] It's a dig on you.

[00:14:31] Yeah.

[00:14:32] But we appreciate it.

[00:14:34] We appreciate it.

[00:14:34] And we might actually have you on because I think that would be fun.

[00:14:37] So anyway, cryptozoology has the appeal that the creatures being studied might actually be

[00:14:43] alive.

[00:14:44] Whereas dinosaurs, unless they're cryptids like Pokiliumembe, you know, we know dinosaurs

[00:14:49] aren't alive.

[00:14:50] But cryptids might be out there in the shadows.

[00:14:52] There may not be any bones or much in the way of any physical evidence at all, really.

[00:14:56] But that's not the point.

[00:14:57] For me, the allure of cryptids is really the same allure behind like unsolved mysteries

[00:15:02] because the world of cryptids, it's about.

[00:15:05] And if you're talking unsolved mysteries, I guess sometimes even recreated by normal people

[00:15:09] who experience extraordinary things.

[00:15:12] Like that's the allure of a cryptid is you might see something you can't explain cross

[00:15:16] the road in the middle of the night.

[00:15:17] And it might feel, you know, like this presence, this monster that most people never get a chance

[00:15:23] to witness.

[00:15:24] And that human level is what hooks me as much as the monsters themselves.

[00:15:28] The stories of the people who are going to school, driving home from the factory,

[00:15:33] playing with their kids, cooking dinner, watching football, whatever.

[00:15:36] And all of a sudden their world gets turned upside down.

[00:15:38] In a way that seems like irreversible where it's like, well, now I can't unsee.

[00:15:42] If I see a UFO now, it's like, I want to always be looking up.

[00:15:45] Yeah.

[00:15:46] It's like, it sucks.

[00:15:46] I just feel like a lot of stories of cryptid UFO, what have you sightings.

[00:15:51] It's always like a person alone and it must be so annoying.

[00:15:53] I saw a bird one time.

[00:15:55] There's a regular bird, not a cryptid, but I was walking.

[00:15:59] Not a Thunderbird.

[00:16:00] Wasn't a Thunderbird.

[00:16:01] I've drank Thunderbird, drank a lot of Thunderbird in college.

[00:16:03] So I was so fucking broke.

[00:16:05] Anyway, I saw this bird.

[00:16:07] I was walking on the top floor of a parking garage where the top floor was outdoors.

[00:16:10] It's like, well, this is the only spots because we're sitting in the sun.

[00:16:14] And a bird flew by and slammed directly into the side of a car.

[00:16:19] And then it fell to the ground.

[00:16:21] And I was like, holy shit.

[00:16:22] And then it got up.

[00:16:24] It shook itself off.

[00:16:25] It looked at me and then flew away.

[00:16:27] And I just remember turning 360 degrees to be like, did anybody see this fucking crazy thing?

[00:16:33] It just happened?

[00:16:34] It was like a bird?

[00:16:35] The bird's like, oh, thank God.

[00:16:37] Nobody saw that.

[00:16:38] Yeah.

[00:16:38] Well, I guess except you.

[00:16:40] He's looking up at the other birds like, nobody saw that, right?

[00:16:43] I'm good.

[00:16:44] So the fact that I was that upset, I was that burned by seeing a drunk bird.

[00:16:49] And then I have to now explain the story poorly.

[00:16:52] And it's not even that exciting of a story.

[00:16:54] But I just feel like I had this moment where, man, I wish someone else saw this.

[00:16:57] And I feel like the ultimate version of that is seeing a cryptid.

[00:17:00] Yes, I think absolutely.

[00:17:02] And I mean, some cryptids have been cited in groups.

[00:17:05] It's possible.

[00:17:06] I don't think it's as common.

[00:17:08] But those experiences of seeing cryptids, experiences at the fringes of reality are really what keep me up at night thinking and dreaming and wondering about what could be.

[00:17:18] Because as we've discussed on this show many times, there's enough evidence for a world we don't understand to suggest that either our brains hallucinate way more than we want to think they do and create these monsters out of thin air.

[00:17:31] Or maybe they're referencing some weird genetic memories of things that humans once were around somehow.

[00:17:38] Either that or there is a layer of reality that eludes us.

[00:17:42] Yeah.

[00:17:43] That layer might be spiritual.

[00:17:44] It might be physical.

[00:17:45] It might be something else entirely.

[00:17:46] Might be simulated.

[00:17:47] It could be simulated.

[00:17:49] Hopefully we'll all get to meet Neo one day.

[00:17:52] That would be pretty cool, huh?

[00:17:55] It turns out that Ed did in fact think that would be pretty cool and spends the next five minutes talking about it.

[00:18:00] Feel free to skip ahead if you do not share his enthusiasm for the Matrix.

[00:18:05] Well, yeah, that's why I brought it up because that's my favorite version of cryptids.

[00:18:09] I love the Matrix.

[00:18:10] Everyone who knows me knows I love the Matrix.

[00:18:12] Not as much as Top Gun, but I do love the Matrix.

[00:18:14] And the Matrix 2, the second Matrix, I love that little thing where they're like vampires and werewolves are just programs that were set for deletion and wouldn't leave.

[00:18:24] Yeah.

[00:18:25] That's what you see.

[00:18:26] Like that's...

[00:18:26] Yeah.

[00:18:27] And I think that's my favorite version of cryptids is like the things that aren't supposed to be here.

[00:18:33] They were programs that were deleted.

[00:18:35] Yeah.

[00:18:35] But they didn't leave.

[00:18:36] And now they're always on the run because they want to not be deleted.

[00:18:39] But when we see them, we run into them.

[00:18:42] I just...

[00:18:43] I love everything in the Matrix.

[00:18:44] I love...

[00:18:45] I would say the second and third and definitely fourth movies are not as good as the first.

[00:18:49] But there's a lot in the second one that I love.

[00:18:52] Love.

[00:18:53] Yeah.

[00:18:53] I have a lot of ideas in the second one.

[00:18:54] Yeah.

[00:18:55] There's still a lot of good ideas chugging along in the second one.

[00:18:57] And the burly brawl, I wish I could erase from my memory.

[00:19:03] But the car chase, the truck chase, holy God.

[00:19:06] I like...

[00:19:06] Car chase sequence rules.

[00:19:08] It might be my favorite action scene of all time.

[00:19:10] It's up there.

[00:19:11] The car chase sequence with the Firebird and the Ducati motorcycle and the fucking...

[00:19:16] All those Cadillacs.

[00:19:18] Like all that shit rules.

[00:19:19] The fucking Chateau fight.

[00:19:21] Unbelievable.

[00:19:22] Before he goes flying out there.

[00:19:24] It just rules.

[00:19:26] Like that movie rules.

[00:19:27] Yeah.

[00:19:27] You know what?

[00:19:27] I'm even like...

[00:19:28] I'm even fine with like him talking to the architect for like super long.

[00:19:31] Yeah.

[00:19:31] Because I was just young enough to be like, this is amazing.

[00:19:34] Well, now that I'm older, I'm like, this is kind of hack.

[00:19:36] But like it was amazing at the time.

[00:19:38] Yeah.

[00:19:38] But yes.

[00:19:39] When you say the burly fight, do you mean that's like when Neo has a...

[00:19:41] Like clearly CG Neo has to fight clearly CG?

[00:19:44] Like a million.

[00:19:44] Yeah.

[00:19:45] I think...

[00:19:46] I don't know why, but I think it's called the burly brawl.

[00:19:49] I think that's like the term for the scene.

[00:19:51] I'm not sure if that was something the Wachowskis came up with or if that's like what the internet

[00:19:55] named it.

[00:19:56] But I think that's...

[00:19:56] Or the VFX team that just had a file called that.

[00:20:00] Yeah.

[00:20:00] This is the last thing I'll say about The Matrix.

[00:20:02] I remember...

[00:20:03] So when I was young, like part of my movie knowledge or movie education, I didn't know what Variety

[00:20:09] or Hollywood Reporter was or anything.

[00:20:11] But I made my parents get me a subscription to Entertainment Weekly.

[00:20:15] And so I read Entertainment Weekly every fucking week or whatever.

[00:20:20] I'm assuming it came weekly.

[00:20:21] Be ridiculous if it didn't.

[00:20:23] But that said, I remember like it was yesterday.

[00:20:26] There was an interview with one of the Wachowskis.

[00:20:28] They were talking about the car chase sequence that they had just done for the movie, which

[00:20:32] is not out yet.

[00:20:32] And it was like the most asshole amazing comment ever.

[00:20:37] But I'm also like, yeah, you kind of...

[00:20:39] This is 100% right too.

[00:20:41] I remember they said...

[00:20:42] They either said, we just finished shooting or they're like, we have in this movie a car

[00:20:46] chase scene.

[00:20:46] And this is where the quote kicks in.

[00:20:48] We have a car chase scene in this movie that makes the car chase in Ronin look like it was

[00:20:53] shot on the back of a Honda Civic with a handy cam.

[00:20:56] And I am like, holy shit.

[00:20:59] What a fucking asshole thing to say because that car chase sequence in Ronin does rule.

[00:21:03] It does borrow a lot from that filmmaker's much earlier movie Grand Prix from the 60s.

[00:21:09] And it kind of just redoes like almost verbatim a lot of the shots.

[00:21:12] But like what a gauntlet thrown thing.

[00:21:14] And then I saw it in theaters and I was like, you know what?

[00:21:17] You're fucking kind of right, dude.

[00:21:18] Like that rules.

[00:21:19] It does rule.

[00:21:20] And it's as good as you're saying.

[00:21:21] Yeah.

[00:21:21] So anywho, we really derailed the episode earlier, but the Matrix does rule.

[00:21:25] If anybody wants to hear me talk about the Matrix for a fucking full episode, we'll do it on

[00:21:30] Patreon.

[00:21:30] I'm fine.

[00:21:31] Do it.

[00:21:32] All right.

[00:21:32] So this is top nine cryptids you've never heard of.

[00:21:35] And we're going to pencil Asian Smith in at the top here.

[00:21:38] You've heard of him, but you didn't know he was a cryptid.

[00:21:41] Well, the Oracle cryptid.

[00:21:43] Yeah.

[00:21:43] Yeah.

[00:21:44] Yeah.

[00:21:44] They're all they're all cryptids.

[00:21:46] It's a film of cryptids.

[00:21:47] So I had a bunch of other stuff I was going to say about the world around us,

[00:21:51] but I feel like we just spent so much time talking about the Matrix.

[00:21:54] I'm not sure I should dive into any of that.

[00:21:57] No, people love hearing us talk.

[00:22:00] Just do it.

[00:22:00] Okay.

[00:22:01] All right.

[00:22:01] All right.

[00:22:01] I'll ask the audience right now.

[00:22:02] You guys want to hear Chris do what he's supposed to do?

[00:22:06] No, I don't believe in Lucifer.

[00:22:09] I really don't.

[00:22:11] All right.

[00:22:11] I feel like I heard a couple of yeahs out there.

[00:22:13] So you just go ahead.

[00:22:13] All right.

[00:22:14] Well, okay.

[00:22:15] So the point I was trying to make was that cryptids could be evidence of the fact that there

[00:22:20] is a world around us, a reality around us that eludes us.

[00:22:24] That layer might be spiritual.

[00:22:25] It might be physical, or it might be something else entirely.

[00:22:29] As a materialist, I'm inclined to think that strange world is very physical and very real,

[00:22:34] but one that is for whatever reason filtered out by our senses.

[00:22:38] Because we know enough about the brain to know that what we experience is just an approximation

[00:22:43] of the world around us, and our reaction time is a few hundredths of a second behind what

[00:22:49] you would consider, I guess, like real time.

[00:22:52] Which, as an interesting aside that would fit right in the matrix, has created a lot of

[00:22:57] discussions around whether or not we have free will.

[00:23:00] And not even in the spiritual sense, but just in the technically, physically, our brains

[00:23:05] have to make decisions before we actually process those decisions.

[00:23:10] Huh.

[00:23:11] In other words, the theory is that our experience of reality is actually just a continuous justification

[00:23:17] of what's already happening around us.

[00:23:20] It's the story that we are telling ourselves about what is happening, and not actually what

[00:23:25] we are choosing to do.

[00:23:26] I don't love that.

[00:23:27] I don't love it because I don't understand it, and that's fine.

[00:23:30] I'm big enough to say that.

[00:23:32] I'm big enough to say that.

[00:23:33] All this to say, there are many, many monsters out there cruising through our reality that are

[00:23:38] much weirder and much harder to explain than Bigfoot and Nessie.

[00:23:42] I'm going to present these in no particular order other than what I think is interesting.

[00:23:46] And so with that, number one on our top eight cryptids you may have never heard of before,

[00:23:51] a monster that might literally be an iceberg, the Bloop.

[00:23:56] Ed, have you heard of the Bloop?

[00:23:58] No.

[00:23:58] First, I'm hearing of this thing.

[00:24:00] It's just an onomatopoeia at this point.

[00:24:01] To me.

[00:24:02] Bloop.

[00:24:02] Oh my God.

[00:24:03] I love it.

[00:24:03] How can you get mad at that?

[00:24:04] That's basically what it sounds like.

[00:24:06] I'm starting with the Bloop because it is a cryptid that, as far as we know, has never

[00:24:10] actually been seen.

[00:24:12] It's only ever been heard, and even then, only once.

[00:24:15] Is it an underwater fart?

[00:24:16] Was that a pool party?

[00:24:18] Yes.

[00:24:19] It is a 500-foot-long Homer Simpson sitting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

[00:24:25] He let out one big fart.

[00:24:26] Love it.

[00:24:27] But the story goes that in 1997, NOAA, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,

[00:24:34] detected an ultra-low frequency, high-amplitude underwater sound on the equatorial Pacific Ocean

[00:24:41] Autonomous Hydrophone Array.

[00:24:43] And did they get this reading on their ARC?

[00:24:45] What does ARC stand for?

[00:24:46] Well, NOAA.

[00:24:47] Oh.

[00:24:48] And they're on the water.

[00:24:50] Yes.

[00:24:50] People can't see.

[00:24:51] Chris was drinking like a drunk when I asked that question.

[00:24:54] So he didn't, he had to say, oh man, where am I?

[00:24:56] So he didn't, he wasn't able to.

[00:24:59] No, I gotcha.

[00:25:00] The ARC.

[00:25:00] No, they, I hope they did.

[00:25:02] I hope they were that clever.

[00:25:03] That feels like some real kind of like Michael Bay abbreviations that would be great in a

[00:25:09] trailer or something.

[00:25:10] Yeah, if the boat was named like Aquatic Research Center, so it would be NOAA's ARC.

[00:25:15] Yeah.

[00:25:17] Well, it's ARC with a C. His is with a K.

[00:25:18] So I guess it would be Aquatic Research Kaleidoscope Knife.

[00:25:22] I don't know.

[00:25:23] Yeah, that's tougher.

[00:25:23] But I like yours.

[00:25:25] Yours would work in a movie.

[00:25:26] Yeah, mine was, mine fucking slapped, dude.

[00:25:28] Slaps.

[00:25:28] These hydrophones are primarily used to monitor undersea seismicity, ice noise, and marine

[00:25:35] mammal population and migration.

[00:25:37] So it's all, it's just a bunch of underwater microphones that NOAA is hanging off the ARC

[00:25:42] and using to record the sounds of the sea.

[00:25:46] And they're like, did you hear that?

[00:25:46] I think it was a fart.

[00:25:49] According to the NOAA's.

[00:25:50] Back it up, boys and girls.

[00:25:50] We're going home.

[00:25:51] We got a bloop.

[00:25:52] We got a bloop on record.

[00:25:54] According to the NOAA description, this sound, this bloop rose in frequency over about a minute

[00:26:02] and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors that ranged about 3,000

[00:26:09] miles apart.

[00:26:11] So it's an underwater sound with a 3,000 mile range.

[00:26:16] So I've included a link in the show notes where you can actually listen to the bloop, what it sounds like.

[00:26:21] But the bloop, the version you hear is actually played back 16 times the original speed that it was recorded at.

[00:26:28] Well, Chris, I'll look and see what the legality of us just playing it here is.

[00:26:32] And if it seems clear, we'll just play it here.

[00:26:33] Play it right here for the people to hear.

[00:26:35] The following recording was officially posted by NOAA and is played back at 16x speed.

[00:26:51] All right.

[00:26:51] So if you guys heard a bloop noise, it was fine.

[00:26:54] If you didn't, then go to the show notes.

[00:26:55] If you didn't, get out your ultra low frequency, high amplitude underwater autonomous hydrophone array and listen again.

[00:27:02] Go hunting.

[00:27:03] Go fucking hunting.

[00:27:04] You know what this reminds me of real quick?

[00:27:06] You know what this explanation reminds me of?

[00:27:07] Just like that great line in Poltergeist where it's like, oh, have you experienced many moving objects or ghosts?

[00:27:14] And it was like, yeah, we recorded like a whatever move from here to here.

[00:27:18] But it's a time lapse.

[00:27:19] It took like 13 hours.

[00:27:20] And then they just show that like the fucking chair moves across the whole kitchen or whatever.

[00:27:25] Like that's awesome.

[00:27:26] That's how I feel about this.

[00:27:27] It's like, yeah, well, it's a noise.

[00:27:28] It's a bloop.

[00:27:29] But, you know, we had to slow it down and speed it up or whatever.

[00:27:32] But part of what was so interesting about it, the fact that it was slower, I think, is part of what made it more mysterious.

[00:27:38] You know, if it was just a quick sound, I think there may have been more explanations for it.

[00:27:45] But it was this long, low, rumbling, super low end explosion type sound that no one could figure out.

[00:27:53] And the other reason I love the bloop is a cryptid is I will say this is one of the few pieces of cryptid evidence that is not up for debate.

[00:28:01] You know, this isn't a is it real or isn't it?

[00:28:03] It is a real noise recorded by real government censors and they have talked about it publicly.

[00:28:09] So, you know, that's kind of exciting.

[00:28:11] I think it is.

[00:28:13] It's nice to have that.

[00:28:14] Yeah.

[00:28:14] The dispute here isn't if the noise is real.

[00:28:17] It's what the noise represents, because even Noah admitted that the sound was not man made.

[00:28:22] And Noah knows his animals.

[00:28:24] I'm going to be making Noah jokes.

[00:28:27] That was great.

[00:28:28] I'm sure the missing unicorns and shit will pop up soon.

[00:28:32] Yeah.

[00:28:32] I guess any cryptid, if you think about it, like any cryptid could be explained as shit that didn't get on the Ark on time.

[00:28:38] That's a good origin myth.

[00:28:39] Like the Ark left without unicorns.

[00:28:41] It left without big feet.

[00:28:42] It left without fucking bloops.

[00:28:45] Yeah.

[00:28:45] Without the pair of bloops that it needed to produce more bloops.

[00:28:49] Yeah.

[00:28:50] There's only one bloop left.

[00:28:51] It's in the San Diego Zoo.

[00:28:53] Can't can't breed it.

[00:28:55] Now I'm thinking about bloops breeding and you've you've distracted me, you bastard.

[00:28:59] You have a recording of it.

[00:29:00] Why are you thinking you already have a recording of bloops breeding?

[00:29:03] We just played it.

[00:29:14] Noah itself admitted the sound was not man made.

[00:29:18] They said it wasn't a ship or an oil drill.

[00:29:21] They reported that it was possibly biological.

[00:29:24] The problem with that theory being that the sound was so loud and detected from so far away that the low end estimates of how large the creature making it would have to be.

[00:29:36] They sit around 250 feet long.

[00:29:40] And for comparison, I checked the largest blue whale, which is the largest animal known to ever exist on Earth, is about 98 feet long.

[00:29:48] Really?

[00:29:49] They seem so much longer at like whenever they have them on display somewhere.

[00:29:52] They're I mean, I think just 90 feet.

[00:29:54] I mean, that's almost a football field, right?

[00:29:56] No, football field's 100 yards.

[00:29:58] That would be 300 feet.

[00:30:00] You can lay three big ass whales on a football field begging for water.

[00:30:06] Yeah, three blue whales on a football field sounds like a shot from a movie that they used to introduce the idea that global warming has become a very serious problem.

[00:30:18] But anyway, so this would be a big fucking animal and animals that large obviously start to get into fantasy territory, which is why bloop is considered a cryptid.

[00:30:27] Yeah, but if there's any place on the fucking planet Earth where I would believe more than anything else that we just haven't found it, it's like the deep ocean.

[00:30:36] And the ocean's like a fucking 75% of our planet or something.

[00:30:40] Well, if you tell me there's something that's only fucking a third of a football field chilling in like the Mariana Trench.

[00:30:47] Yeah.

[00:30:47] I'd be like, yeah, he's down there blasting ass.

[00:30:49] Yeah.

[00:30:50] I mean, I agree with you.

[00:30:52] That's where we're likely to find new animals.

[00:30:55] But the bloop, the mysterious noise, the government admission that they found something but it didn't know what, it all kind of conjures fantasies of like Cthulhu rising from the deep or Godzilla.

[00:31:07] Or some people have speculated it's a prehistoric shark or a giant squid to dwarf all giant squids.

[00:31:16] Yeah, squids do keep getting bigger, huh?

[00:31:17] It's like every couple years I feel like we found a new more giant squid.

[00:31:21] Well, we've known about giant squids for a long time and giant squids are one of the few cryptids that have moved from the category of cryptid to classified species.

[00:31:31] But I think that we've only recorded I think like two or three.

[00:31:36] This might be one of those facts where everyone's like shut the fuck up.

[00:31:39] You don't know what you're talking about.

[00:31:40] I'm pretty sure we've only ever recorded a living giant squid like two times, three times maybe.

[00:31:46] And so all those stories of like giant squids that look like a hundred feet long washing up on beaches or appearing next to a ship.

[00:31:55] Krakens.

[00:31:56] Yeah, Krakens and all that.

[00:31:57] During the whaling days where there were more people out on the sea and these giant squid would have been hunting the whales that the people were hunting.

[00:32:04] I feel like, yeah, they must have seen some giant fucking shit that we can't even, you know.

[00:32:10] Yeah.

[00:32:11] There could be some big boys out there.

[00:32:12] And they talked about it.

[00:32:13] That's why we have legends of Krakens and stuff and like pirate novels and shit.

[00:32:17] Like it's probably because they did see some crazy shit.

[00:32:20] Yeah.

[00:32:21] That have since like ran away.

[00:32:22] I like to think that the bloop is some kind of creature that is so ancient and so big.

[00:32:30] It's having a conversation on a time scale that we can't comprehend, you know.

[00:32:35] So it's like we just heard like one word in a conversation that's been going on for hundreds of thousands of years back and forth across the ocean between two bloops.

[00:32:46] Oh, that's interesting.

[00:32:48] Or it just woke up for a minute.

[00:32:49] It's like a hibernating cryptid and it just like got up, jostled, farted, rolled over, went back to sleep.

[00:32:56] Another theory I find really interesting, although a little less mythic maybe, is that the sound was produced by a small animal with a previously unknown mechanism of sound generation.

[00:33:07] Noisy cricket.

[00:33:08] Yes.

[00:33:09] Well, so the noisy cricket I think may have been sort of based on a real animal that I learned about as I was researching.

[00:33:16] Is it that tiny shrimp?

[00:33:18] Yes.

[00:33:18] The pistol shrimp.

[00:33:19] I'd never heard of this.

[00:33:20] Yeah.

[00:33:20] Look at this.

[00:33:20] I'm the idiot for not knowing cryptids.

[00:33:22] But when it comes to a real thing, I was like, yeah, it's got like more punch power in its little body than like anything on the planet.

[00:33:29] Well, sort of.

[00:33:30] I mean, I'm making that.

[00:33:31] I mean, like I overstepped my knowledge there.

[00:33:34] But I know it's got, it's a kind of a wild ratio animals I'm getting at.

[00:33:37] Yes.

[00:33:37] It is a crustacean, a shrimp that is only about two inches in length, but it's capable of creating sound waves that are on par with that of a modern day jet engine through the use of its tiny little pinchers.

[00:33:51] So basically they're tiny shrimp.

[00:33:53] They have one large claw, which they apparently like if they lose that claw, then the other one will grow into the big claw and the claw that they lost will grow back into a small claw.

[00:34:03] Okay.

[00:34:03] So they're, it's pretty nice.

[00:34:04] It's pretty nice situation.

[00:34:05] Yeah.

[00:34:06] And basically what they do, they use their claws to create these bubbles that are louder than a gun and generate massive amounts of heat.

[00:34:16] According to animals.howstuffworks.com, as the shrimp open their large snapper claw, water fills the crook.

[00:34:26] Upon closing the claw with impressive force, a plunger like Pierce shoots the water out at speeds as fast as a car traveling down the highway.

[00:34:35] They didn't want to say 70 miles an hour.

[00:34:36] Just give us like between 60 and 80 miles an hour.

[00:34:39] Like who were they trying to improve?

[00:34:40] Like, you know what I mean?

[00:34:41] They could have just written that.

[00:34:42] Sure.

[00:34:42] But however fast that car is traveling, this creates a powerful bubble that not only kills what's in its path, but creates a ridiculously loud sound when it pops.

[00:34:51] It's been measured at 218 decibels, which is louder than a speeding bullet.

[00:34:56] To humans, apparently the sound isn't really all that loud, but it's only because it lasts a tiny fraction of a second.

[00:35:03] So I think it's sort of like a sneeze when they're like, hey, you know, when you sneeze, you create like a hurricane force wind, but it doesn't wreck your shit because it just comes out real fast and then it's done.

[00:35:13] But when the bubble pops, it generates heat and that heat reaches 8000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is four times hotter than lava.

[00:35:22] Sure.

[00:35:23] The only reason that heat doesn't like boil the oceans is because it is created and dissipates so quickly that there's no lasting effects unless you were a piece of prey that may have been in its path.

[00:35:35] In which case that shrimp is cooked.

[00:35:38] Thank you.

[00:35:39] Oh, my God.

[00:35:39] Thank you very much.

[00:35:41] Why do I always think it's a punch?

[00:35:42] Why do I think it's got punch powers?

[00:35:44] No punch.

[00:35:44] Well, the the little plunger like Pierce is, I guess, kind of a tiny, tiny punch power.

[00:35:51] All right.

[00:35:51] Well, I'll look it up.

[00:35:53] I'll put it in the show.

[00:35:53] Everyone check the show notes.

[00:35:55] I think it might be punch stuff that he's leaving out.

[00:35:58] Incredibly, scientists are not only studying if I'm leaving punch stuff out, but they are studying the shrimp as they look to create fusion here on Earth.

[00:36:08] Fusion power needs a high velocity projectile to create a shockwave and collapse a plasma filled cavity.

[00:36:15] That's how the energy is generated.

[00:36:16] And apparently I didn't know this.

[00:36:19] The pistol shrimp are the only creatures on Earth who naturally create that high velocity projectile shockwave that could, I guess, theoretically, if hot enough, collapse the plasma and create fusion.

[00:36:32] So not to be a fuck yeah science guy, but that's pretty fucking cool.

[00:36:37] Yeah.

[00:36:37] Well, we'll see how they use it.

[00:36:38] Doesn't sound like you're making a lot of medicine from that.

[00:36:40] But yeah, I know.

[00:36:42] I think the first thing they do with a super punt shrimp, they're either going to make pills that they think will make you smart, but end up turning you into a collapsed star.

[00:36:51] Or just sucks your brain.

[00:36:53] They're going to make up.

[00:36:54] They're going to make a bomb out of these fucking shrimp.

[00:36:55] Yeah.

[00:36:56] Despite all this theorizing and all the fun we've had discussing the bloop, the government, the government would have you believe.

[00:37:05] Project bloop book.

[00:37:07] Yes.

[00:37:08] Yes.

[00:37:09] Very good.

[00:37:11] The government would have you believe that they've actually solved the mystery of the bloop.

[00:37:16] But of course, the government would say that, wouldn't they?

[00:37:19] In 2012, NOAA released the results of a study that they had conducted in 2005.

[00:37:26] So it took them seven years to release this study.

[00:37:29] It sounds doctor to me.

[00:37:31] I don't know that I believe this.

[00:37:32] Seven taxpayer years.

[00:37:34] They examined rumbles detected close to the tip of Antarctica.

[00:37:38] And what they determined was that the sonic characteristics of the bloop were consistent with the sound of what they deemed an ice quake or an iceberg cracking and breaking away from an Antarctic glacier.

[00:37:51] Oh, and they can be very big.

[00:37:52] That can be really big.

[00:37:53] So that's what science and the government, and I'm doing scare quotes for those who can't see me, would tell you the bloop is.

[00:38:03] Because I still hold out hope of the cryptids on this list.

[00:38:08] I think the bloop is one of those, like, I don't know.

[00:38:11] There might be something there.

[00:38:13] And if there's not, there's definitely something else there that we just have not discovered yet.

[00:38:19] Well, I mean, Antarctica has like, it's like a no fly zone, right?

[00:38:21] I think so.

[00:38:22] Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is.

[00:38:23] And so maybe, you know, that's not all, you know, it's not that surprising.

[00:38:25] You're like, oh, you know, the bloop.

[00:38:27] The bloop is actually not an animal.

[00:38:28] It's like an ice shell falling.

[00:38:31] There's a lot of ice in Antarctica.

[00:38:32] Yeah.

[00:38:33] We can't go there.

[00:38:34] So it's got like a nice cover up aspect to it.

[00:38:37] But it also seems pretty plausible that that could be the thing.

[00:38:40] So I'm not.

[00:38:41] Yeah, I mean, it's like.

[00:38:42] I have two minds on it.

[00:38:43] It's just boring and technical enough that it's like, oh, yeah, obviously it must be an ice quake.

[00:38:48] Well, the thing is, there's probably people working on it if they didn't like lose their funding when they turn that in.

[00:38:53] Because the nice thing about nerds is.

[00:38:55] They just can't stop.

[00:38:57] Well, the thing they can't stop.

[00:38:58] It's just because they're nerds, they don't go on dates.

[00:39:01] So by virtue of being nerds, you're not going on dates.

[00:39:03] And if you're not going on dates, there's nobody that you have to like let down by being like, sorry, I can't make dinner.

[00:39:08] And I have to observe yet another rumble.

[00:39:11] So since that never enters your fucking vocabulary, you're just there fucking looking at rumbles 24-7, baby.

[00:39:17] So we're definitely going to get more rumble information.

[00:39:20] You don't have to tell anyone that you're spending the night recording your farts in a bathtub to figure out what the bloop is.

[00:39:27] You can just do that.

[00:39:28] I'm not doing that.

[00:39:29] I don't have a bathtub.

[00:39:30] Although I do wonder at what point of this type of research is that a thought?

[00:39:34] Like at what point are you like, man, I've taken all this research grant money.

[00:39:39] I've got no new bloop stuff.

[00:39:41] It's been like fucking 700 days.

[00:39:43] Anyways, I'm going to lose this research money if I don't have some something that says we have.

[00:39:48] We're closer to bloops.

[00:39:49] And it's like, yeah, I think that's how you end up in a bathtub farting.

[00:39:52] Yeah.

[00:39:53] Being like, I got to turn in some new bloop shit.

[00:39:55] I mean, we ran into that a little bit with Loch Ness, right?

[00:39:57] Where it's like you have to throw out a new picture.

[00:40:00] Yeah.

[00:40:00] Which is not about government funding, but you got to keep it alive in some way.

[00:40:04] Yeah.

[00:40:08] Well, nobody was keeping our next cryptid alive.

[00:40:13] Our next cryptid is maybe the least likely to exist cryptid on this list, but I had never heard of it before.

[00:40:23] And there is some documentation that it has been part of folklore in the past.

[00:40:28] So I thought I would include it.

[00:40:30] It's called the Slide Rock Bolter.

[00:40:33] And I'm going to assume that you have never heard of the Slide Rock Bolter.

[00:40:37] No, never in my life.

[00:40:38] This is first I'm hearing of it.

[00:40:39] The Slide Rock Bolter sounds like something that when that guy who fucking free solo climbs all the time, when he finally dies, it sounds like something they're going to say is what if he had only had that, he'd still be alive.

[00:40:53] I hope they do.

[00:40:54] And I hope, Ed, we can invest our vast proceeds from this podcast into creating Slide Rock Bolter Inc. to create that device.

[00:41:03] And then we will make sure that the story put out to the media is that if only he'd had one of these.

[00:41:08] And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we make our first million dollars.

[00:41:11] Yeah, maybe.

[00:41:12] So this was a new one to me.

[00:41:14] The story, the original story of the Slide Rock Bolter, as far as we know, comes to us from William Thomas Cox, the state forester of Minnesota, who sounds like a great time at a party and also authored fearsome critters of the lumber woods with a few desert and mountain beasts in 1910.

[00:41:34] I'll tell you right now.

[00:41:35] Wow.

[00:41:35] I don't know how he is at a party, but he's probably the fucking best guy at a search party.

[00:41:39] Well, I think I mean, yes, he's clearly on the prowl for these things, but I think it's also hilariously unsure title for a book like you named it.

[00:41:50] And then we're like, well, but there's also some other shit in here, too, that you might find interesting.

[00:41:54] So I don't know.

[00:41:55] Please buy me.

[00:41:56] Yeah.

[00:41:58] And the other things as well.

[00:41:59] Yeah, I mean, it may have been the point like this might have been one of those like haha funny jokes in the 1910s that is not really funny anymore because the book was probably meant to be read as a parody of field guides being produced at the time.

[00:42:14] Whether or not it was meant to be a parody, it was said to be a compendium of creatures cataloged by lumberjacks across the American Midwest.

[00:42:23] According to website morbid curiosity with a K dot com, the book reflects the brief period of logging's dominance in the history of southwestern Colorado caught between the decline of mining and the emergence of national parks.

[00:42:38] In fact, Cox, the author, was inspired to write down the stories by their fleeting nature.

[00:42:43] He said, quote, regions that produce lumber are shrinking long stretches of woodland that seem to run on forever are all but gone.

[00:42:51] And many streams that used to be brimming with logs and echoing with the singing of the river derives are now quiet.

[00:42:58] Some claim that the traditional logger is going extinct.

[00:43:02] Wait, based on what he said prior, it's funny.

[00:43:03] That's like, does he mean they're gone from deforestation?

[00:43:06] I think realistically, he's like they're gone because the government says we can't cut this down anymore to make a national park.

[00:43:12] Yeah.

[00:43:12] And so I'm like, fuck this guy.

[00:43:14] National parks are like America's best idea.

[00:43:16] Well, this guy was bros with the lumberjacks.

[00:43:18] I agree with you.

[00:43:18] National parks are one of America's best ideas.

[00:43:21] But I also totally see the thing where it's like it's fucking up the economy there.

[00:43:25] If you had like a lot of lumberjack, you got to go up to like Pacific Northwest now.

[00:43:29] Yeah.

[00:43:29] Well, I don't know how worried about the economy William Thomas Cox was, but he was definitely worried that the traditional logger was going extinct.

[00:43:38] And he said, quote, I want to retain at least a description of some of the intriguing animals he, the traditional American logger, created in this small book.

[00:43:48] So it's unclear if the loggers actually ever reported seeing any of this stuff or if this is just sort of a compendium of tales that they told.

[00:43:57] I don't know.

[00:43:58] We should we should see.

[00:43:59] We should ask him about his his follow up books about oil drillers and his coal miner book, the cryptids of the coal mines, because that he just goes to a place where like a vibrant industry is collapsing because of regulation.

[00:44:14] And then he is able to write a book that's both interesting and like a weird political dig.

[00:44:22] Yeah.

[00:44:22] I you know, this guy maybe should have sold more of these books.

[00:44:25] Actually, when you put it that way, it sounds pretty good.

[00:44:27] No, I don't know where he was like.

[00:44:28] He could have done like cryptids of the automotive industry, you know, the rust belt cryptids.

[00:44:34] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:44:35] William Thomas Cox said this in his book.

[00:44:39] This is the story as told in fearsome critters of the lumber woods with a few desert and mountain beasts.

[00:44:46] There has been much unease produced by the existence of the slide rock bolter in the mountains of Colorado, where in the summer, the woods are becoming overrun with tourists.

[00:44:57] Only on the highest mountains with slopes more than 45 degrees does this terrifying animal reside.

[00:45:03] It has a huge head, small eyes and a mouth that extends back over its ears, resembling that of a sculpin in some ways.

[00:45:12] A sculpin is a kind of fish, although the creature in this story is the size of a whale.

[00:45:18] The tail comprises a divided flipper with large grab hooks that fasten around the mountain or ridge peak.

[00:45:24] It frequently stays there immobile for days, keeping an eye out for tourists or other unfortunate creatures that might fall into the gulch.

[00:45:32] The boulder comes down like a toboggan, scooping in its victim as it goes.

[00:45:36] Its momentum carries it up the next slope where it slaps its tail over the ridge and waits.

[00:45:41] At the perfect moment, after spotting a tourist, it will lift its tail, loosening its hold on the mountain.

[00:45:47] Its small eyes will be fixed on the unfortunate tourist, and it will drool thin skid grease from the corners of its mouth, which greatly accelerate it.

[00:45:57] Oh, like it drops a little grease to get it moving faster down the hill.

[00:46:01] Yeah.

[00:46:01] It makes its own slip and slide.

[00:46:03] Yes, yes, it does.

[00:46:04] On the mountains of Colorado.

[00:46:06] And like you astutely pointed out, it seems like the lumberjacks who were observing this creature really had it out for the tourists

[00:46:15] that were getting in the way of harvesting the wood that paid their bills.

[00:46:19] Yeah, yeah, because there wouldn't be tourists where you cut down trees unless it became a park.

[00:46:24] Yeah.

[00:46:24] Unless they're talking about John Muir for some reason, just like he keeps getting in the way.

[00:46:28] Yeah, there wouldn't really be anyone else out there.

[00:46:30] The story continues that there are reports of taking groups of tourists quite far back into the hills

[00:46:35] where entire groups of travelers were downed at one scoop.

[00:46:39] The animal poses a threat to the woodlands as well as to tourists,

[00:46:43] many a draw through spruce covered slopes has been reduced to rubble with the trees being uprooted or cut down

[00:46:49] as by a scythe when the bolter has crashed through from the peaks above.

[00:46:53] I love that.

[00:46:54] It's like they're national parks now and these guys are still trying to like make a little lumber money

[00:46:57] and it was like, what the fuck happened here?

[00:46:59] We said no cutting and it was like that.

[00:47:00] Oh man, it fucking it looks like it's cut by a scythe or a saw, but really it's it's a fucking it's a bolter, man.

[00:47:07] You see a perfect path leading down the side of the mountain.

[00:47:10] But did you know that this thing can grease its own body?

[00:47:12] Yeah, it's it just right down.

[00:47:15] All that grease is not from our well greased saws and stuff that we've been we've been fucking using out here.

[00:47:22] This is like union busting stuff.

[00:47:24] Like this guy probably wrote a bunch of union busting pieces.

[00:47:27] I mean, it's sort of like part of what's going on here is both a struggle between the lumberjacks and the tourists.

[00:47:35] And I also from some of what I read, the lumberjacks and the miners, because a lot of these I think you can kind of imagine a slide rock bolters environment as one of those big mountains or hills where there's just like kind of broken rock down the side and a lot of missing trees.

[00:47:53] And it looks like a mountain that's been beat to shit by human beings.

[00:47:57] Right. Like and I think that's kind of part of what was going on here is not only were tourists taking the ability of foresters to do their work or lumberjacks to do their work, but miners were destroying a lot of the mountains that they were working on.

[00:48:12] And in my research, it seems that there was kind of a back and forth, like a chicken or the egg thing that was plaguing Colorado at the time where lumberjacks were blaming over mining of the hills for all the landslides and lack of trees.

[00:48:26] When in reality, it was the overforesting that was causing unstable hill slides that would collapse into landslides that I imagine were probably made worse.

[00:48:35] Killed miners.

[00:48:36] Miners.

[00:48:37] Yeah.

[00:48:37] So it was it was an unfortunate cycle of environmental destruction that resulted in the tale of the slide rock bolter.

[00:48:46] I think it goes without saying there's not much or any hard cryptozoological evidence for this creature.

[00:48:53] It's never been videotaped.

[00:48:55] There are no sounds.

[00:48:57] We only have the words of the lumberjacks from the 1910 pages of William Thomas Cox's Fearsome Critters of the Lumberwoods.

[00:49:07] With a few desert mountain beasts to tell us about this thing.

[00:49:11] So I wouldn't be too afraid of it, but it's an interesting combination of giant land animal and whale or sculpin, I guess.

[00:49:20] Yeah, it's a cartoon character for sure.

[00:49:22] It is.

[00:49:23] But I don't know.

[00:49:24] I like it.

[00:49:24] I like it.

[00:49:25] I like the historical aspect of it.

[00:49:27] I actually am now intrigued to look more into.

[00:49:30] I like anything where someone's presumably like battling against the displacement of something.

[00:49:37] And so they start making up stories and.

[00:49:39] Well, it's like a Fern Gully situation, but like opposite of Fern Gully.

[00:49:42] But just like, yeah, just anything.

[00:49:43] It's funny.

[00:49:44] You can look at something like this as being almost satirical.

[00:49:48] Mm hmm.

[00:49:49] But then also could have the effect of like, you don't want to go in these woods because there's a beast in here.

[00:49:55] So like, why would you protect woods that are filled with fucking things that will eat your tourists?

[00:50:00] Just let us have the woods and we'll we'll clear it out and we'll let you know for sure there's no beast back here.

[00:50:06] Yeah.

[00:50:06] I don't know.

[00:50:07] It's all pretty interesting.

[00:50:08] Well, it reminds me.

[00:50:09] There's a documentary on Hulu called.

[00:50:11] I think it might just be called Bigfoot or might be called the Bigfoot murders, but it's a really interesting documentary about these guys who were killed up in kind of like Northern California.

[00:50:23] And the bodies were like torn to pieces and spread across this sort of construction site area or near near some kind of like lumber machinery.

[00:50:33] Because I remember them talking about like, oh, well, at first they thought maybe some guy had fallen into the machinery or something.

[00:50:39] But what it ended up being was guys growing weed in the woods who were using the idea, the story of Bigfoot that would attack and kill people and rip you to pieces if you went up into these mountains.

[00:50:52] And so they staged this horrific crime scene to bolster that.

[00:50:57] Keep anybody out of that area.

[00:50:58] So that way they also don't find their weed growing operation.

[00:51:01] Yeah.

[00:51:01] Yeah.

[00:51:01] Because they're too afraid of a galookagoo fucking coming at you.

[00:51:04] And the slide rock bolter might be the largest galookagoo of all time.

[00:51:08] Yeah.

[00:51:08] That's the thing is they overshot it.

[00:51:10] You know what I mean?

[00:51:10] You got to be smarter than that.

[00:51:11] You can't be like, well, I guess 1910, right?

[00:51:14] It's not like something's going to fly over really.

[00:51:16] Yeah.

[00:51:16] You can get as big as you want with it.

[00:51:19] Well, our next cryptid on the list, the Sandown Clown is-

[00:51:24] Stop it.

[00:51:24] What?

[00:51:25] Is sort of connected to things that flew over at one period of time.

[00:51:30] The Sandown Clown is-

[00:51:33] Is a Chinese weather balloon.

[00:51:35] He's swamp gas.

[00:51:37] He's Venus.

[00:51:38] He's very much a person-shaped cryptid.

[00:51:41] Although we aren't sure if the Sandown Clown is really a person at all.

[00:51:46] I think the Sandown Clown-

[00:51:49] So I'd heard the name Sandown Clown before, but I couldn't picture it the way that I can

[00:51:53] picture like the Hopkinsville Goblins or the Van Meter Monster or the Jersey Devil or something.

[00:52:02] I just heard the name.

[00:52:03] And when I looked it up, I got to say Sandown Clown is up there with Mothman for one of

[00:52:07] the most bizarre cryptids ever reported.

[00:52:10] It may kind of even have Mothman beat if we're considering it a cryptid at all, which

[00:52:15] as we've discussed on the show, these lines are sometimes pretty fuzzy.

[00:52:19] The Sandown Clown is reported in connection to UFO sightings, which we're going to get

[00:52:26] to in a second.

[00:52:26] But it is also often considered a cryptid on lists of cryptids.

[00:52:30] So I dug deep and I actually found, and for anyone who's interested, I put this in the

[00:52:36] show links-

[00:52:36] This clown better be unbelievable because you've already thrown the gauntlet of everyone's favorite

[00:52:40] cryptid is Mothman.

[00:52:41] You're like, you know what?

[00:52:42] Mothman might be a piece of shit compared to Sandown Clown.

[00:52:46] Listen, I got this report directly from the British UFO Research Journal published January

[00:52:54] 1978.

[00:52:54] And I have linked a scan or a photocopy of the actual journal in the show notes.

[00:53:00] So you can read this, read along if you want.

[00:53:04] The British UFO Research Journal published a report from a man requesting anonymity due

[00:53:09] to his daughter's involvement in the story.

[00:53:11] This man goes by Mr. Y.

[00:53:14] And on Tuesday, October 20th, he had a bizarre extended UFO sighting.

[00:53:19] Quote, Mr. Y was driving from Shanklin to ride via Seaview.

[00:53:24] Oh, how very British.

[00:53:27] To see a friend.

[00:53:29] Passing through the village of Braiding, he turned right to St. Helens and then became

[00:53:34] aware of a large multi-lit aircraft, in quotes, to his right about halfway between the road

[00:53:41] and Bembridge Downs.

[00:53:43] The craft looked enormous as it flew low over swampy terrain.

[00:53:47] He, Mr. Y, stopped the car and watched as the object hovered apparently aimlessly over the

[00:53:53] swampy margins of the river.

[00:53:54] He saw a wide ring of seven or more lights, each of them large and clearly defined in a sphere shape

[00:54:01] like a, quote, bright red cherry and interspersed with a turquoise and a white light and no sound could be heard.

[00:54:09] So lots of colors, lots of lights, no sound, weird behavior in the sky.

[00:54:14] Mr. Y drove on and the object flew parallel to his car.

[00:54:18] Once outside St. Helens, it cut across about 300 yards behind him and dropped slowly, meandering

[00:54:24] above distant hedges, now appearing smaller with the number of red lights reduced to four,

[00:54:29] which seemed to rotate slowly.

[00:54:31] Mr. Y again stopped and used his torch, or what us American dogs might call a flashlight,

[00:54:38] flashlight, to signal for 10 minutes, during which time the object weaved back and forth without settling.

[00:54:46] Which I feel like I've heard of in modern UFO reports that you can, some people feel like you can signal to them

[00:54:51] if you blink like a flashlight or a laser that they'll like dance in the sky.

[00:54:56] They'll dance?

[00:54:56] Well, yeah, they'll move, that they seem to react to your interactions.

[00:55:01] Interesting.

[00:55:01] They're epileptic.

[00:55:02] Yeah, I mean, I feel like you're also way too high up to be seeing a flashlight on the ground

[00:55:08] and being like, look, if I wiggle my hips, you'll know what I'm saying.

[00:55:12] Maybe it's Duracell they're using.

[00:55:14] It's a powerful flashlight.

[00:55:15] So Mr. Y used his flashlight and then continued on to his appointment,

[00:55:18] and when he reached his destination at his friend's place, he looked back,

[00:55:22] the red lights were still there, and he left his own rear lights on to face the object.

[00:55:27] Then later, coming out of the house, Mr. Y's friend could also see the thing playing hide and seek

[00:55:34] between the treetops, as he called it.

[00:55:36] I don't, I guess just kind of darting between the trees.

[00:55:39] Yeah, going up and down, yeah.

[00:55:39] Yeah, as Mr. Y got back in his car and continued on to ride the location, not the verb.

[00:55:46] Oh, okay.

[00:55:47] Thank you.

[00:55:47] Glad you said something I never would have known.

[00:55:48] The lights were lost to view, and our witness saw them no more.

[00:55:52] On several subsequent occasions, he noticed single balls of red light in the sky,

[00:55:55] which would hang stationary or follow him along as though checking his movements.

[00:55:59] But on March 1st, 1972, a considerably more frightening incident occurred.

[00:56:05] It was between 9 and 10 p.m., and Mr. Y was perched on the cliffside at Compton By,

[00:56:10] having been driven there by an unexpected tidal surge seemingly caused, in part at least,

[00:56:15] by some form of droning underwater craft,

[00:56:18] which we hear a lot about with the Nimitz encounter and a lot of USOs, unidentified submersible objects.

[00:56:27] This is not the first or last time we would hear of these underwater craft.

[00:56:31] Do you know what, do you want to know what USO I just heard about tonight?

[00:56:35] Yes, sir.

[00:56:35] Fucking bloop, dude.

[00:56:37] The bloop could be categorized.

[00:56:39] Bloop's a USO?

[00:56:40] As a USO.

[00:56:41] Technically, yeah.

[00:56:41] That's true.

[00:56:42] Mr. Y observed two points of light yellow peering up at me like the eyes of some horrible sea monster.

[00:56:48] He guessed the eyes, quote, eyes, they weren't really eyes, they were these lights,

[00:56:53] were not much more than 40 feet away and were just below the surface of the sea like a sort of periscope.

[00:56:59] They disappeared, and as the tide gradually subsided,

[00:57:02] Mr. Y was able to get back into his car and drive home.

[00:57:05] Now, here's where the clown comes in.

[00:57:08] At no point did he tell his young daughter of anything he had experienced,

[00:57:12] but at the beginning of May 1973, when Mr. Y's daughter was seven years old,

[00:57:17] she claimed to have had a very weird encounter indeed.

[00:57:20] Faye, or so we shall call her, was near Lake Common Sandown on a Tuesday afternoon about four o'clock

[00:57:26] with a boy her own age where they both heard a weird wailing noise, not unlike an ambulance siren.

[00:57:32] They followed this noise across the golf links and through a hedge leading to a swampy meadow

[00:57:38] adjacent to little-used Sandown Airport.

[00:57:42] When they arrived, the noise ceased.

[00:57:44] Which, I don't know, a siren-like noise coming from an airport?

[00:57:48] Yeah.

[00:57:49] Not impossible.

[00:57:50] Yeah.

[00:57:51] It's not the 1870s.

[00:57:52] Yeah.

[00:57:53] They say that as they were crossing a wooden footbridge over a narrow brook,

[00:57:58] a blue-gloved hand appeared from under the bridge and a strange figure emerged.

[00:58:03] Oh my god.

[00:58:04] The figure fumbled with a book, dropped it in the water, then splashed about to retrieve it.

[00:58:09] Oh my god.

[00:58:10] The two then watched the figure enter a metallic hut,

[00:58:13] similar to those used on building sites, except that it had no windows.

[00:58:17] It moved along with a strange hopping motion with knees raised high.

[00:58:23] So the building itself was like hopping on legs, I guess.

[00:58:28] Oh my god.

[00:58:28] And also just, guy, this thing, like pulls itself up out of the water on the bridge.

[00:58:33] It's just fucking Mr. Magooing and like a befuddled idiot dropping things, splashing,

[00:58:37] being like, oh, like it's fucking got a concussion.

[00:58:40] And then it's like, oh, let me get in my fucking killer clowns from outer space spaceship.

[00:58:46] Yeah.

[00:58:46] Yeah.

[00:58:46] Well, that was just the first part of this encounter.

[00:58:49] The children wandered off, which I would love to have interviewed these kids,

[00:58:53] because I'd be like, you saw this and you, quote, wandered off?

[00:58:58] What else?

[00:58:59] Did you see a bird?

[00:59:00] What was so interesting on the other side of the bridge that you were like, ah, fuck that guy?

[00:59:04] I mean, other than the ship, the little house ship bouncing around,

[00:59:08] I feel like they could have just seen that same thing a hundred times of like blue gloved factory workers stumbling out of a pub,

[00:59:16] drunk, dropping books, falling in the water.

[00:59:18] And they're just like, oh, shit.

[00:59:20] Looks like one of our dads is out of the fucking, is out of work.

[00:59:22] Yeah.

[00:59:23] Actually, wait a second.

[00:59:24] Here's the question.

[00:59:25] Do golfers wear blue gloves?

[00:59:27] Like, do they ever golf?

[00:59:28] No, they wear white gloves and just one on the left.

[00:59:30] But could you wear a blue one?

[00:59:32] Yeah, it'd be weird.

[00:59:33] Because it could be a drunk golfer.

[00:59:35] I think it could just be a drunk British person collapsing.

[00:59:38] And these kids are like, you know, this is a latchkey 70s kids.

[00:59:42] Yeah.

[00:59:42] So they're just like, oh, man, you know, it's stranger danger.

[00:59:45] Oh, nope.

[00:59:46] He's getting in a bouncy house.

[00:59:48] So don't worry about it.

[00:59:50] Let's just keep going where we're going.

[00:59:51] Well, they did.

[00:59:52] They wandered off and the children were over 50 yards away with the figure,

[00:59:56] which the article from now on will refer to as a he.

[00:59:59] Wait, they said yards in this?

[01:00:00] This is British.

[01:00:01] Wouldn't it be like meters?

[01:00:02] This is a quote.

[01:00:03] I guess they have yards too.

[01:00:04] Yeah.

[01:00:05] He reappeared carrying a black knobbed microphone with a white flex,

[01:00:10] which I think they mean a cord, attached.

[01:00:13] The wailing noise immediately returned, this time being so loud,

[01:00:17] the boy was scared and began to run away.

[01:00:20] The noise ceased and he, the clown, spoke into the microphone.

[01:00:25] And although so far off, the children could hear his voice as clearly as though he were right near them.

[01:00:30] Hello?

[01:00:31] Are you still there?

[01:00:33] He asked.

[01:00:34] And in response to what sounded a friendly tone,

[01:00:37] they ventured close enough to speak to the oddly attired person.

[01:00:41] Oh my God.

[01:00:41] Fucking Nardwar came out to fucking interview him.

[01:00:44] Give him some records.

[01:00:45] Oh my God.

[01:00:45] It is.

[01:00:46] Listen, listen to this description.

[01:00:48] He was nearly seven feet tall.

[01:00:50] Okay.

[01:00:51] Nardwar is not that tall.

[01:00:53] He had no neck for his head appeared to be wedged straight onto his shoulders.

[01:00:58] He wore a yellow pointed hat, which interlocked with the red collar of a green tunic.

[01:01:04] A round black knob was affixed to the top of his hat and quote,

[01:01:09] wooden antenna were attached on either side.

[01:01:12] The face had triangular markings for eyes, a brown square of a nose and motionless yellow lips.

[01:01:19] Other round markings were on his paper white cheeks and a fringe of red hair fell onto his forehead.

[01:01:26] Wooden slats, in quotes, protruded from his sleeves and from below his white trousers.

[01:01:33] His first communication was in writing.

[01:01:36] He wrote in a notebook page in a large hand, and this is a direct quote,

[01:01:41] Hello, and I am all colors, comma Sam.

[01:01:45] So he has the ability to speak because he's talked from far away, but now he's switched to like love actually cards?

[01:01:52] Yeah.

[01:01:54] And indecipherable ones.

[01:01:57] Hello, and I am all colors, Sam.

[01:01:59] The boy was hesitant, but Faye read each word as it was pointed to.

[01:02:04] This was necessary as the words were not laid out in conventional sequence.

[01:02:09] Well, no, when you're made of popsicle sticks.

[01:02:11] Yeah, you might be a little dyslexic.

[01:02:14] Yeah, I mean, he's made of popsicle sticks according to like the slats coming out of his sleeves and pant bottoms.

[01:02:19] The children ventured closer and discovered that the creature could talk without the aid of a microphone,

[01:02:24] though his lips did not move and speech was unclear,

[01:02:28] rather like that of a person who does not open his mouth properly.

[01:02:32] He asked the children about themselves, so they ventured to ask questions too.

[01:02:37] They asked about his clothes, which were all ripped, and he told them he only had one set, so he could only wear those.

[01:02:44] Well, yeah, since he was turned into a real boy.

[01:02:46] Golf.

[01:02:46] And he only had that like one set Geppetto gave him.

[01:02:49] Or a poor man, a poor drunk who can only afford one set of golfing outfits.

[01:02:55] But with stick arms?

[01:02:56] True.

[01:02:57] He's got stick arms and stick legs.

[01:02:59] Well, because of the creature's strange white features, they asked if he was really a man.

[01:03:04] The answer was a chuckled no.

[01:03:06] Oh, yeah.

[01:03:07] At least he's honest.

[01:03:07] He's honest.

[01:03:08] They also asked if he was a ghost.

[01:03:10] The vague reply to that was a very intriguing, well, not really, but I am in an odd sort of way.

[01:03:18] Okay, here's what happened.

[01:03:18] I'm going to stop you here.

[01:03:19] What happened is a Geppetto type made a stick man.

[01:03:22] It was to bring his wife back to life.

[01:03:25] And he's like, I ran out of time.

[01:03:28] Your soul only hangs around my house for like, I don't know, six days.

[01:03:31] I'm sorry.

[01:03:32] I wish I made a better vessel for you.

[01:03:34] Get your soul into this stick man.

[01:03:36] The wife was like, I'm hideous.

[01:03:38] I'm a stick man.

[01:03:39] Lost their mind.

[01:03:41] Killed Geppetto.

[01:03:42] Has taken to the forest.

[01:03:43] Found these kids.

[01:03:44] But they've already battled a slide rock bolter, which is why their clothes are ripped.

[01:03:49] I haven't seen a single flaw in what I've laid out so far.

[01:03:53] Here's, okay, I raise you.

[01:03:55] This was a Sacha Baron Cohen from the future.

[01:03:59] And he was too recognized in the present to do any more character shtick.

[01:04:04] Sure.

[01:04:05] But this is far enough in the future that he had access to a time machine.

[01:04:08] And he said, you know what?

[01:04:09] Fuck it.

[01:04:10] Let's take my new character, the Sandown Clown.

[01:04:14] And we're going to take him into the 70s and we'll just do him straight.

[01:04:19] But then when he got there, the time machine exploded and all the pieces got stuck up under

[01:04:24] his clothes.

[01:04:25] But Sacha Baron Cohen is such, he's so committed to the bit that he was just like the first

[01:04:30] people I see, I'm doing Sandown Clown.

[01:04:32] I've been practicing.

[01:04:33] I've built this character for four years.

[01:04:35] I don't give a shit.

[01:04:36] I've got a cameraman and I'm doing Sandown Clown to whoever I find.

[01:04:41] How about that?

[01:04:42] I know it so well.

[01:04:43] I can do it when I'm 90% debris and can barely open my mouth like a fucking ventriloquist

[01:04:49] dummy operator.

[01:04:50] Let's get out there.

[01:04:51] Yeah.

[01:04:51] We've lost the audience.

[01:04:52] It's fine.

[01:04:53] All right.

[01:04:53] Well, he was maybe a ghost or maybe not, or maybe a robot or maybe not.

[01:04:58] The kids asked, what are you then?

[01:05:00] And the only answer they got back was, you know.

[01:05:04] He also said he had no name.

[01:05:06] There were others like himself and he drew a rough sketch of one of them.

[01:05:11] He also confided that he was frightened of people and scared they might hurt him.

[01:05:15] Apparently, if attacked, he would not fight back.

[01:05:18] Oh.

[01:05:18] All right.

[01:05:19] Well, I'm not hearing anything else that makes me think this was not Sacha Baron Cohen.

[01:05:22] Yeah.

[01:05:24] Yeah.

[01:05:25] Yeah, you're right.

[01:05:25] I mean, I don't know.

[01:05:27] We opened this episode talking about potentially doing time travel fears.

[01:05:30] We should get him on the show.

[01:05:31] Ask him about this experience.

[01:05:33] Yeah.

[01:05:34] At the clown's invitation, the children crawled through a flap into his hut.

[01:05:39] Do not do this.

[01:05:40] No.

[01:05:41] These kids.

[01:05:41] These kids got to fucking learn.

[01:05:43] Do not do this.

[01:05:44] Have you ever heard of Hansel and Gretel?

[01:05:46] You just need to hear that story once.

[01:05:48] Do not crawl into any man's flaps or his hut.

[01:05:52] A hut that you've witnessed can move.

[01:05:54] There's a moving hut.

[01:05:56] Like, you can be like, oh, what do you got in here?

[01:05:57] This is a nice hut.

[01:05:58] And then when you come out, you can be in fucking Leicester.

[01:06:01] You know what I mean?

[01:06:02] You can be somewhere else entirely.

[01:06:03] The hut hopped off.

[01:06:04] You don't know where the fuck you are.

[01:06:06] It's hopped to fucking Wales, bro.

[01:06:08] Now you're in Wales.

[01:06:09] You don't know anybody there.

[01:06:09] So this hut had two levels.

[01:06:11] The lower level had plenty of headroom and was wallpapered in blue green and covered with

[01:06:17] a pattern of dials.

[01:06:18] It also had an electric heater and simple wooden furniture.

[01:06:22] The upper level was less spacious and the floor was metallic.

[01:06:25] The clown told the children that he fed upon berries, which he collected in the late afternoon.

[01:06:31] He didn't say where he got the berries, but he did indicate that he had a camp on the

[01:06:35] mainland he could go to.

[01:06:37] He also showed us a picture of berries and it wasn't berries.

[01:06:40] It was children.

[01:06:41] And they were missing.

[01:06:42] He just thought that kids were called berries.

[01:06:46] He also said that the water from the river could be drunk once he had cleaned it.

[01:06:50] So now I'm just back on.

[01:06:52] This is like some weird bum.

[01:06:54] They got to boil it.

[01:06:56] Once inside the hut, he removed his hat to reveal round white ears and sparse brown hair

[01:07:02] before eating a berry.

[01:07:04] One of these collected berries from the nether worlds.

[01:07:08] He performed an odd what the kids called conjuring trick.

[01:07:12] He placed the berry in his ear, thrust his head forward and caused the berry to disappear

[01:07:17] and reappear at one of his odd eyes.

[01:07:21] So I guess like in one of his eyes and then repeating the process, the berry traveled to

[01:07:27] his mouth.

[01:07:27] He's David Blaine.

[01:07:28] The article says a possible explanation could be that he was wearing some kind of protective

[01:07:33] mask and analyzing the berry to check that it wasn't poisonous.

[01:07:37] I think this could just be a pedophile trying to be like, hey kids, look at this.

[01:07:42] It's like, yeah, you know what gets, you know what draws people in magic.

[01:07:45] So yeah, exactly.

[01:07:47] I'm on your, I'm on your, this is giving lovely votes.

[01:07:51] If Stanley Tucci knew like a couple of card tricks, it's just that.

[01:07:55] That could be a good button.

[01:07:57] Stanley Tucci is the sand down clown in a couple of card tricks.

[01:08:01] How big do you think these buttons are?

[01:08:03] I can't possibly.

[01:08:04] It's like writing.

[01:08:05] It's like drawing his face on a grain of rice.

[01:08:08] Yeah, exactly, man.

[01:08:08] I can't do it.

[01:08:09] The children talked to this strange being for a half an hour more.

[01:08:12] Then after saying goodbye, they rushed across the golf links to tell the first man they met

[01:08:17] that they'd seen a ghost.

[01:08:19] He merely laughed.

[01:08:20] Who was like, ghost?

[01:08:21] You saw a berry toting pedophile.

[01:08:23] Yeah.

[01:08:24] These kids clearly had no problem talking to whatever strange adults they ran into.

[01:08:29] Must be nice.

[01:08:30] The children were convinced of their experience though, and that the being was either a ghost

[01:08:34] or someone dressed up.

[01:08:36] Mr. Y, for his part, spoke to both kids.

[01:08:39] Remember, one's Mr. Y's daughter and the other was her friend.

[01:08:43] Yeah.

[01:08:43] And found that they never wavered in the details of the story and felt that it was too strange

[01:08:47] to have been made up.

[01:08:49] He also pointed to the children's insistence that the creature clearly had only three fingers

[01:08:54] on each blue gloved hand and three toes on his bare white feet, making a deliberate hoax

[01:08:59] on behalf of a very, very strange man somewhat difficult.

[01:09:03] Although, listen, man, if you're a World War II vet who's left with only three toes on each

[01:09:08] of your feet, you might be a strange individual as well.

[01:09:12] So it could be that.

[01:09:13] Yeah.

[01:09:13] Yeah.

[01:09:14] There's a couple wars at this point that could do that to you.

[01:09:17] Yeah.

[01:09:17] I mean, at this point in history, I'm saying.

[01:09:19] As far as we know, this is the only sighting of the Sandown Clown to ever have taken place.

[01:09:24] It's because Agent Orange took him not long after.

[01:09:27] But there was something tickling my brain.

[01:09:30] I was like, this sounds so familiar, but I don't-

[01:09:33] It sounds like killer clowns from outer space.

[01:09:35] Well, I went back to make sure we hadn't covered the Sandown Clown.

[01:09:39] But then what I found was something from the Alien Abductions Part 3 episode.

[01:09:45] It was a Frenchman who encountered a humanoid creature by the river.

[01:09:49] And so this is-

[01:09:50] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:09:52] That thing also had like a boat.

[01:09:53] Yes.

[01:09:54] So Mr. GB, this is what we said in that episode.

[01:09:57] Mr. GB of Marseille recounted how as a boy, he had been walking along the bank of the North

[01:10:03] Canal when he was seized by two men from behind bushes.

[01:10:06] They were tall, slender, and dressed in what looked like flexible metal diving suits.

[01:10:11] They carried him into a strange object which had square or rectangular portholes.

[01:10:17] Inside was a flexible couch on which he sat.

[01:10:20] The boy began to weep and some minutes later an opening appeared in the ceiling of the cabin

[01:10:24] and he was on the ground again.

[01:10:25] He found he had to walk for most of the afternoon to get back to where he had been taken from,

[01:10:29] though he had only been in the craft for about five minutes.

[01:10:32] Yeah, this could be the same fucking- some variation of the same alien.

[01:10:35] Yeah, it is- it's weird.

[01:10:37] The difference is that the kid in France was a little bitch.

[01:10:40] And he was like, oh, and they're like, get this thing the fuck out of here.

[01:10:44] And then the kids in England were like, they were revived.

[01:10:46] They were like, how long you've lived here?

[01:10:48] We can hang out.

[01:10:49] This is a- this is cool.

[01:10:51] Yeah.

[01:10:51] So that's the difference.

[01:10:52] That first guy could have had a great day.

[01:10:55] Well-

[01:10:55] You know, with his assailants like the British kids did.

[01:10:59] It's- yeah, I mean, the fact that there's these creatures with these huts,

[01:11:04] they're both kind of by the water.

[01:11:06] It does- there's some similarities.

[01:11:07] They're not really described all that similarly.

[01:11:11] Well, they're both tall and thin.

[01:11:12] Well, even the- even the hut that the Sandown Clown had,

[01:11:16] the kids said it had no windows.

[01:11:18] And this hut had conspicuous windows in- in France.

[01:11:22] So- but it does feel weirdly similar to be these made-up stories.

[01:11:28] Although I guess if you're telling stories about weird creature alien abductions in the-

[01:11:34] well, the first one's the 30s and the second one's the 70s.

[01:11:37] By the 70s, you'd definitely be talking about spacecraft though, not huts.

[01:11:41] Because there would be enough pop culture stuff that would influence you.

[01:11:45] Yeah.

[01:11:46] I mean, it's probably- I'd like to think it's the same-

[01:11:48] some variation of the same kind of creature who was like, you know what?

[01:11:51] Lose the windows.

[01:11:52] Lose the aquatic shit.

[01:11:54] Kids, they just cry when they see it.

[01:11:56] We gotta go clown.

[01:11:58] We gotta go magic tricks.

[01:11:59] Look, we need the kids.

[01:12:01] Their youth gives us- I don't know.

[01:12:02] It powers our spacecraft.

[01:12:05] And so we need them to hang out for at least 30 minutes to recharge our spacecraft batteries.

[01:12:09] And then you can boot them off.

[01:12:10] But I thought this was gonna go because the dad was like,

[01:12:12] oh, I wasn't sure about what I saw until I talked to my daughter.

[01:12:15] So I thought there was gonna be more stuff about how like it was a scarlet craft with a turquoise light.

[01:12:19] And then he was gonna be like, oh my god, that's what I saw.

[01:12:23] No, that would have been cool.

[01:12:24] But that's not at least nothing of the sort was reported.

[01:12:28] No, it was just he saw a Zeppelin or a Chinese fucking weather balloon.

[01:12:31] And the kid was fucking miraculously not abducted.

[01:12:35] And it's not the same at all.

[01:12:36] Yeah, this is really just a picture of Britain in the early 1970s.

[01:12:41] Yeah, it was just latchkey kids.

[01:12:44] Yeah.

[01:12:44] And Jimmy Savile on TV and maybe dressed up and watering the swamps of Sandown.

[01:12:50] Yeah.

[01:12:56] So these two events aren't necessarily, they're not similar enough to say that they are related necessarily.

[01:13:04] But it is interesting that, you know, these two kids both ran into weird people with strange huts near the river.

[01:13:15] I don't know exactly how to categorize that.

[01:13:17] Maybe they're pedophiles from the future.

[01:13:20] Just like going into the past to see what trouble they can get into.

[01:13:24] But it's odd.

[01:13:26] It's just odd.

[01:13:27] That's all I can say.

[01:13:29] Yep.

[01:13:29] But one creature that I will not hear any pedophile slander about is the Loveland Frogman, a friend to all.

[01:13:37] And as far as we know, an upstanding citizen because he is literally a frog who stands on his hind legs.

[01:13:44] And he's also four to five feet tall.

[01:13:47] Obviously, I've heard of the Loveland Frogman before.

[01:13:51] I don't know if you have, audience.

[01:13:52] Ed, have you ever heard of the Loveland Frogman?

[01:13:54] Weirdly, I think I did at Monsterfest.

[01:13:57] There was an artist next to us who did like cryptid illustrations.

[01:14:01] And I feel like that was one of them that was prominently on display.

[01:14:05] Is it an Ohio thing?

[01:14:06] Yes, it's an Ohio thing.

[01:14:08] Oh, that's probably why.

[01:14:09] The Little Miami River in Loveland, Ohio is where the Loveland Frogman is from.

[01:14:14] And I believe that a found footage Loveland Frogman movie made its way to streaming, I want to say last year or maybe the year before.

[01:14:24] Fairly recently.

[01:14:25] And I've heard good things about it.

[01:14:27] I haven't watched it, but I have heard that people really liked it.

[01:14:31] Ed looked up the Loveland Frogman movie Chris was talking about, and it turns out that the guy he saw at Monsterfest is who did the cover art for it.

[01:14:39] What a fun, small world.

[01:14:40] We'll have links in the show notes.

[01:14:43] The Loveland Frogman is a weird one.

[01:14:46] Obviously, he's a frogman, so we had to cover him on this show.

[01:14:51] And I'll take this opportunity to remind listeners who love frogs as much as I do that this is the perfect story to listen to with Frog Plus mode enabled.

[01:15:00] So you can hear the melodious sounds of my poison dart frogs chirping in the background to help set the mood.

[01:15:07] God help us.

[01:15:07] That's available over at Patreon for five bucks a month.

[01:15:10] And I'll give you all a second to get settled over there before we dive in.

[01:15:14] Yeah.

[01:15:16] This Frogman character, he kind of sounds like the drawing that the Escorza brothers did for you from Comic-Con, actually, of the frog Ninja Turtle.

[01:15:24] Actually, yeah.

[01:15:26] I mean, if you put the, this is not something that we're going to do because it would take probably too long to be worth it for the three people who would look at it.

[01:15:34] But if you put the images of the Loveland Frogman side by side with that incredible comic image that I am definitely getting framed and hanging in my new place as soon as I get a chance, they'd look kind of similar.

[01:15:49] But again, that might be just because if you have a frog stand on his hind legs, it's only so many ways he's going to look.

[01:15:55] That's true.

[01:15:56] But that's a super great drawing.

[01:15:57] And thanks again to Arturo for setting that up and getting it for us at Comic-Con this year.

[01:16:02] That was very, very cool of you.

[01:16:03] And to Comic-Steve for getting out there and making the exchange, which is also very cool.

[01:16:07] Yeah.

[01:16:07] Cool beyond belief.

[01:16:08] That is, we've gotten some nice emails and stuff from fans, but that drawing is definitely, sorry, those of you who are fans who did not illustrate the classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic, The Last Ronin.

[01:16:23] But one of you did and you drew pictures for us and it's amazing.

[01:16:27] Two of them, technically.

[01:16:28] They're brothers.

[01:16:28] Yes.

[01:16:29] But back to the Frogman.

[01:16:30] The first stories of the Frogman or Frogmen began in the 1950s when a businessman, an unnamed businessman, claimed to have seen multiple large bipedal frogs along the Little Miami River in Loveland, Ohio.

[01:16:45] Little Miami has a big frog problem.

[01:16:48] Now there is an exploitation movie I would watch.

[01:16:51] That is a great pull quote for a hand-painted exploitation poster.

[01:16:56] Little Miami has a big frog problem.

[01:16:59] Yeah, I'll get Drew Struzan on the horn.

[01:17:00] Please.

[01:17:01] Please do.

[01:17:02] Allthingsinteresting.com tells us that, according to local legend, a traveling businessman was driving down a dark road in Loveland, Ohio late one night in 1955 when he came upon a terrifying sight.

[01:17:14] As he crossed the Little Miami River, he purportedly observed three humanoid figures near the bridge, each standing about three to four feet tall.

[01:17:24] When he got closer, he realized they weren't human at all.

[01:17:27] They had leathery skin, frog-like faces, webbed feet, and they emitted a bizarre smell like almonds and alfalfa.

[01:17:37] Huh.

[01:17:37] Which I can't even think of something that smells like a baby fart maybe smells like almonds and alfalfa.

[01:17:44] I feel like it's really not going to, and you're going to find that out in a couple months.

[01:17:48] I feel like it's going to smell like fucking shit, a baby's fart.

[01:17:53] The creatures appeared to be conversing, and as the man watched, one of them suddenly brandished a wand that released a shower of sparks.

[01:18:03] Oh, shit, dude.

[01:18:04] The frog did it?

[01:18:05] The frog man is a wizard, apparently.

[01:18:07] They weren't wearing wizard hats.

[01:18:09] Or the frog man's a server at one of those douchebag clubs where they can bring you a bottle of champagne with sparklers coming off of it or whatever.

[01:18:16] Yeah.

[01:18:16] Here's your gray goose, sir.

[01:18:18] Yeah.

[01:18:18] Straight from the Little Miami River.

[01:18:20] Yeah, in 1955, this traveling businessman is like, I heard the pumping bass of a song that was nothing like I'd ever heard.

[01:18:27] It was no Sinatra.

[01:18:28] It was oonts, oonts, oonts, oonts.

[01:18:31] It was Sandstorm.

[01:18:33] Yeah.

[01:18:36] That's what's so epic.

[01:18:38] I mean, that song came out, and then it was like, I hope you guys are ready for a thing called ringtones one day.

[01:18:44] Yeah.

[01:18:44] We're going to charge you $5 for one of these.

[01:18:48] Do you remember Crazy Frog?

[01:18:49] Mm-hmm.

[01:18:50] Yeah, Crazy Frog ringtones.

[01:18:51] Crazy Frog's a frog man.

[01:18:53] Oh, shit.

[01:18:53] Crazy Frog is a frog man.

[01:18:55] Holy smokes.

[01:18:55] It's all coming back.

[01:18:56] It's all coming together.

[01:18:58] Fuck.

[01:18:58] We got to put Crazy Frog on the next installment of this.

[01:19:00] Yeah.

[01:19:01] Although I've never seen...

[01:19:02] Crazy Frog had those like aviator goggles.

[01:19:05] So I assumed he was some sort of like a World War II pilot.

[01:19:09] Yeah.

[01:19:09] I don't know.

[01:19:09] Or just like a mole man welder.

[01:19:11] It's unclear.

[01:19:12] It's unclear.

[01:19:13] Well, and that's actually...

[01:19:14] So we'll get to that in a second.

[01:19:15] But so this tale of the frog man with the shower of sparks has circulated for decades.

[01:19:20] No one's ever been able to procure any evidence that this tale at least actually occurred.

[01:19:25] Or even any record of who this mysterious businessman might have been.

[01:19:29] So before we dig into the businessman's story, one thing I wanted to say is that our fans have been great at digging up cool stories.

[01:19:37] And if you've been listening, you know that we have just started replying to them.

[01:19:41] So if you want to hear back from us or be featured on the show, let us know if you have a grandfather or even maybe a great-grandfather at this point who was a traveling salesman who was very into hard drugs around 1955.

[01:19:58] Because I think we might...

[01:20:01] I want to know who our man here was.

[01:20:03] I want to know who set this off.

[01:20:05] Because there's two details about this story that makes me think that there may be a record of this story somewhere out there and that it's not just completely an urban legend.

[01:20:15] Because if it was just like a guy saw...

[01:20:18] Well, let me back up.

[01:20:19] I guess the thing that flags this for me is not an urban legend is that there's only one Loveland frogman.

[01:20:25] Most other urban legends like Hookman or Baby in the Microwave, they get reported all over the country, if not all over the world.

[01:20:33] And, you know, this story is not a, oh, my cousin saw the frogman.

[01:20:38] This is one story of a guy who saw this weird thing.

[01:20:42] Yeah.

[01:20:42] And he told somebody.

[01:20:43] He told somebody.

[01:20:44] Yeah.

[01:20:44] And this story also, unlike traditional urban legends, I think has a bit firmer of a shape.

[01:20:50] It has like a beginning, middle and kind of an end.

[01:20:53] Well, what part did I start interrupting you at?

[01:20:55] Was it the beginning, the middle?

[01:20:56] How far into the Loveland frog did we get before I was like, remember ringtones?

[01:21:00] Well, that's, I mean, that's the whole story.

[01:21:03] But it's not, or I guess, you know, maybe it's this.

[01:21:05] It's the fact that this story doesn't have an element that feels like a weird moral.

[01:21:11] Maybe what I'm really feeling is that urban legends tend to have that sort of don't go out on lover's lane.

[01:21:17] Don't do drugs.

[01:21:20] Don't, you know, like there's an underlying story to it or an underlying message to it.

[01:21:24] Whereas this is just like a guy saw a thing and it was weird.

[01:21:28] Yeah.

[01:21:28] And then I would say the other thing that flags it for me as not an urban legend is the very specific wand element.

[01:21:37] Yeah.

[01:21:37] Well, it's just weird.

[01:21:38] It's like, I guess one question I have about the wand and the frogs.

[01:21:41] I feel like you're sleeping in your car.

[01:21:44] I don't know the life of a 1950s salesman.

[01:21:47] Like if you're not doing well, if you're not making a lot of sales.

[01:21:50] Yeah.

[01:21:50] Yeah.

[01:21:50] I don't know if it's like, oh, I can't afford a motel.

[01:21:52] I'll just pull off to the side of this little river and get some shut eye.

[01:21:56] And it's like all these little fucking party animals come out with their Roman candles.

[01:22:01] And does he try and sell them what he's selling?

[01:22:04] Or does he try and interact with them?

[01:22:07] Or is it just like I saw these army of frogs who seem like a fucking great time.

[01:22:12] And then I went to the diner and told them.

[01:22:15] And now we've heard of it.

[01:22:16] Like, yeah, it's weird.

[01:22:17] I don't understand how this story came to be.

[01:22:19] Like, who was the second person who passed this on?

[01:22:22] Well, there's an answer to that coming up.

[01:22:24] But before we get to that answer, you hinted at something that is kind of my personal theory on this.

[01:22:30] And we're probably not the first two people to have landed on this.

[01:22:34] But that sparkling wand also makes me think this was on a bridge over a river.

[01:22:40] And three guys who would be conversing on a bridge might be repairmen or welders who would have wands with sparks.

[01:22:50] Sure.

[01:22:50] It looks like that.

[01:22:51] It can.

[01:22:51] I don't know what welding smells like.

[01:22:53] I do.

[01:22:54] But it might smell funny.

[01:22:55] It does.

[01:22:56] I mean, it can.

[01:22:56] Does it smell like almonds and alfalfa?

[01:22:59] No, it smells like shit.

[01:23:00] Okay.

[01:23:01] I mean, it doesn't smell like shit like a baby's poop.

[01:23:03] I mean, it just smells like acrid metal on metal crime.

[01:23:09] Right.

[01:23:09] It's more acrid and metallic.

[01:23:11] Yeah.

[01:23:11] Not almond and alfalfa.

[01:23:13] It's not almond and alfalfa.

[01:23:14] I don't even know what alfalfa smells like.

[01:23:16] Almond I can get.

[01:23:17] I can tell you right now.

[01:23:18] But I don't know what alfalfa smells like.

[01:23:21] Well, it's greens, right?

[01:23:22] So it's kind of, I'd imagine kind of like spinachy or earthy.

[01:23:26] Earthy.

[01:23:27] Yeah.

[01:23:27] I don't know.

[01:23:27] But also people, maybe their wires are crossed weird.

[01:23:30] Maybe that guy welding smells like fucking marshmallows.

[01:23:33] Maybe they got a fucked up brain.

[01:23:34] Well, yeah.

[01:23:36] I mean, look, is it a stretch that there'd be three welders in masks and some sort of

[01:23:42] weird body suits that make them look like frogs on a bridge over the little Miami River in

[01:23:47] the middle of the night in 1955?

[01:23:49] Yeah.

[01:23:50] I don't know.

[01:23:50] Maybe it's a union job and they're forced them to use three welders on a job that fucking

[01:23:54] probably could have just taken one.

[01:23:56] Pretty unlikely.

[01:23:56] But it is more likely than an entire clan of frog folk that have never been seen before.

[01:24:05] And I would say since, but that's not true because there was a second famous sighting of

[01:24:12] the Loveland frog man in 1972.

[01:24:15] And this one was witnessed by OSHA.

[01:24:19] Two policemen.

[01:24:20] Oh.

[01:24:21] This description comes to us from Listverse.

[01:24:25] Officer Ray Shockey first saw the creature on March 3rd, 1972 at one in the morning.

[01:24:31] Officer Shockey was driving to Loveland, Ohio when he saw what he thought was a dog in a

[01:24:36] field next to the road.

[01:24:38] However, when it stood up, its eyes were illuminated by his car lights and he could see that it

[01:24:43] appeared to be a giant bipedal frog.

[01:24:47] There's a lot for him to take in at that moment, which is like, I think that's a dog.

[01:24:51] No way.

[01:24:52] It's standing up.

[01:24:53] That can't.

[01:24:53] That's actually a fucking frog.

[01:24:55] Like everything, like just the fucking Rube Goldberg machine of things falling over in

[01:25:00] his mind at that moment.

[01:25:02] It's unbelievable.

[01:25:03] He stepped on like three rakes at once.

[01:25:06] And yeah.

[01:25:06] Yeah.

[01:25:08] Shockey, buddy.

[01:25:09] Yeah.

[01:25:10] The cryptid jumped over a guardrail and slid down the hill into the Little Miami River.

[01:25:15] It does not say if it slid on its stomach or its ass, but either is very funny to imagine.

[01:25:20] The officer got such a good look at the creature.

[01:25:24] He could describe it well enough that his sister could draw it.

[01:25:27] Oh, she got the artistic genes in the family.

[01:25:30] Yeah.

[01:25:31] Also, it's just, it's funny to me that the way that this was written makes it sound like

[01:25:35] he could describe it well enough that his sister could draw it is almost like a old turn

[01:25:40] of phrase because nowhere in here does it say that his sister did draw it.

[01:25:44] It's not like, and she presented that to the fellow police officers.

[01:25:47] Like he knew.

[01:25:48] He just, she could describe it well enough.

[01:25:50] His dang sister could draw it.

[01:25:51] Yeah.

[01:25:52] And you know, if anyone knows their family, she's fucking stupid.

[01:25:55] That's like a thing about like, even his sister can do it.

[01:25:58] Yeah.

[01:25:59] It's just like, everyone knows the Shockey Girl.

[01:26:01] Yeah.

[01:26:02] Yeah.

[01:26:02] She's not working for the eyewitness sketch testimony department.

[01:26:07] No.

[01:26:08] They all look like frogs.

[01:26:09] Everything she draws looks like a frog.

[01:26:10] Here's her one day as a courtroom sketch artist.

[01:26:15] It's a whole court full of frogs.

[01:26:17] As you can see, everybody's frogs.

[01:26:19] It's just like, what the fuck is our deal, man?

[01:26:21] Look, I never said I could draw.

[01:26:23] I said I could draw frogs.

[01:26:24] I never said I could draw people.

[01:26:26] Shockey, we've got to let her go, man.

[01:26:27] She's turning our entire court system into amphibians.

[01:26:30] Yeah, well.

[01:26:30] This is not going to fly.

[01:26:33] Shit, dude.

[01:26:34] So stupid.

[01:26:35] So Officer Shockey went back to the station that night and brought another officer, Mark

[01:26:40] Matthews, to the scene.

[01:26:42] The only evidence they found was the skid marks on the embankment where the creature slid

[01:26:46] down into the river.

[01:26:48] Again, we don't know if this was on its ass and it got a giant muddy frog ass or if it

[01:26:53] was on its stomach.

[01:26:54] But either way, I encourage you to imagine a man-sized frog sliding down a muddy embankment

[01:27:00] into a river.

[01:27:01] That's really funny.

[01:27:02] Do you think Mark was like, what are we looking for?

[01:27:05] And Shockey was like, handed him the drawing his sister did.

[01:27:08] We're looking for one of these.

[01:27:10] Well, it doesn't matter what Shockey told him because a few weeks later on March 17th,

[01:27:15] 1972, Officer Matthews had his own experience with the frog man.

[01:27:20] He was driving and he saw what he thought was an animal in the middle of the road.

[01:27:25] He stopped his car, got out, and the creature got up, crouched in the middle of the road,

[01:27:29] and then stood up, climbed over the guardrail again while keeping its eyes on Officer Matthews

[01:27:36] the entire time.

[01:27:37] Which now I'm imagining it's standing very slowly and staring at him.

[01:27:41] That's what I'm thinking too.

[01:27:42] Yeah.

[01:27:42] Yeah.

[01:27:43] Like, that's so funny.

[01:27:44] I'm just like, nothing to see here.

[01:27:47] I'm leaving.

[01:27:48] I'm leaving.

[01:27:48] I'm leaving.

[01:27:49] You don't even have to say it.

[01:27:50] You don't even have to say it.

[01:27:51] I'm on my way.

[01:27:52] I'm going.

[01:27:52] You know what I mean?

[01:27:53] Just like, it's got like a bottle in a brown bag.

[01:27:57] Officer Matthews was too scared to respond to this calming eye contact, and he decided to

[01:28:03] draw his gun and shoot at the cryptid, but he missed, or so he claimed at the time.

[01:28:08] Oh, no.

[01:28:09] That's, it's just, is that the 50s?

[01:28:12] This is the 70s this time.

[01:28:14] 70s.

[01:28:14] This is 20 years later.

[01:28:15] I have to imagine, even in the 70s, you have to like fill out paperwork if you discharge

[01:28:20] your firearm.

[01:28:21] So it's like, what fucked up shit did Mark get into that night where he was like, just

[01:28:25] put down that a shot at a frog on the paperwork.

[01:28:28] And it was like, that's actually better for me than what really happened.

[01:28:31] Yeah.

[01:28:32] Yeah.

[01:28:32] Yeah.

[01:28:32] Yeah.

[01:28:32] I'll deal with whatever snickers and stuff like mockery I get at the station.

[01:28:36] It's just better for me if you put that a shot at a frog.

[01:28:38] Yeah.

[01:28:38] We could be pretty sure that the Loveland frog man, whatever he is, does not have a strong

[01:28:43] civil rights case.

[01:28:44] No.

[01:28:46] No.

[01:28:47] But here's where this all starts to fall apart.

[01:28:50] Because in 2016, Officer Matthews came forward to confess that his story, at least, was a hoax.

[01:28:57] His report had been blown out of proportion as the story was retold over time.

[01:29:03] He admitted the creature that he'd seen was an iguana without a tail, probably someone's

[01:29:10] lost or abandoned pet.

[01:29:11] And after he shot it, because he did shoot it, he recovered his body and showed it to Officer

[01:29:18] Shockey, who confirmed that this was the same creature he'd seen.

[01:29:23] So...

[01:29:23] Smells like a cover-up, dude.

[01:29:24] Smells like a fucking cover-up.

[01:29:26] It might be a cover-up.

[01:29:27] I like the way that it says, Shockey confirmed this was the same creature he'd seen.

[01:29:31] It was an iguana.

[01:29:32] Yeah.

[01:29:32] Yeah.

[01:29:33] Yeah.

[01:29:33] It's not like...

[01:29:34] He's like, my God, this is it.

[01:29:36] Matthews, where did you find this?

[01:29:37] Like...

[01:29:37] In iguana in Florida, where they are around.

[01:29:40] They're like a problem.

[01:29:41] There's so many...

[01:29:41] Ohio.

[01:29:42] Ohio.

[01:29:43] Well, that is actually rare.

[01:29:44] So a little unusual.

[01:29:44] That's rare.

[01:29:45] Why the fuck are they naming it Little Miami River then?

[01:29:47] I don't know.

[01:29:47] That's the weirdest part of this story, honestly.

[01:29:50] Maybe it's where they brought all the coke up.

[01:29:52] Yeah, maybe.

[01:29:52] They, like, navigated up the river.

[01:29:56] Well, they had to...

[01:29:56] They stuffed the cocaine in iguana tails, and then when the iguanas got to Ohio, they had

[01:30:00] to cut the tails off and distribute it.

[01:30:03] So it seems like their stories were bullshit, but that same year in 2016, a man named Sam Jacobs

[01:30:11] claimed to have spotted the Loveland Frogman while out playing Pokemon Go in mid-August.

[01:30:17] Like, God.

[01:30:18] Honestly?

[01:30:19] We gotta bring it back.

[01:30:20] It keeps people honest, because it's like, you just never know when some idiot from the

[01:30:23] suburbs is gonna, like, stumble onto your crime scene looking for a Pokemon or something.

[01:30:28] Pokemon Go cryptid hunting in your own backyard.

[01:30:31] Yeah, exactly.

[01:30:32] What is Pokemon Go if not cryptid hunting?

[01:30:35] They're fucking hunting for cryptids.

[01:30:37] I mean, I play a game called Jurassic World Alive that is pretty much Pokemon Go, but Jurassic

[01:30:42] Park version, and that's even more kind of...

[01:30:45] Well, no, I guess Pokemon's more cryptid, even though some of the dinosaurs are, like,

[01:30:49] fake hybrids.

[01:30:50] Pokemon Go is much more, like, strange monkey squirrel.

[01:30:54] Have you ever had an experience where you are like, oh, I'm looking for a raptor?

[01:30:58] And then you look up and realize that you're, like, in a crime scene or in, like, a fucking

[01:31:03] drug den?

[01:31:04] Or you're like, oh, don't mind me.

[01:31:05] I'm just trying to catch them all.

[01:31:07] Yeah.

[01:31:07] Oh, you a cop man?

[01:31:09] You gotta catch them all?

[01:31:10] Oh, no.

[01:31:11] Kill this motherfucker.

[01:31:12] This is a horrible time to be trying to get a Pokemon called Wearing a Wire.

[01:31:19] No, I don't think I've ever...

[01:31:21] I mean, I will say it does get me out on walks, embarrassingly.

[01:31:24] Jurassic World Alive, sometimes I'll open it and I'm like, shit, this dinosaur is, like,

[01:31:29] you know, a couple blocks over.

[01:31:31] Ah, I'll just get up and go get it.

[01:31:32] It's not bad for that.

[01:31:34] I don't think I've ever seen or found anything playing the game that is all that interesting.

[01:31:42] You never found a dead body when you were looking for a fucking Stegosaurus?

[01:31:46] No.

[01:31:47] Although there was...

[01:31:47] Do you remember?

[01:31:48] There was an app that came out probably, I don't know if this was maybe five years ago.

[01:31:54] There was an app that came out that, like, it was some sort of, like, geocaching app

[01:32:00] or...

[01:32:00] I don't remember exactly.

[01:32:01] It was some kind of game thing that involved the app giving you coordinates.

[01:32:07] And I don't remember if it was for you to put, like, a little, like, card there for other

[01:32:11] people to find or what.

[01:32:13] I hate this.

[01:32:14] This sounds like a psyop.

[01:32:15] But this group of kids was using it and they were on Snapchat, I think, or maybe whatever

[01:32:20] other video app they were using at the time.

[01:32:24] And they went to those coordinates and they found a body in a suitcase.

[01:32:29] Oh, my God.

[01:32:30] Washed up on the shore.

[01:32:32] Jesus.

[01:32:32] And there's...

[01:32:33] I'll have to look it up.

[01:32:34] This is when you and I riff like this.

[01:32:36] I don't have the information in front of me.

[01:32:38] True.

[01:32:38] But I'm 98% sure if you go look this up, listener, this happened.

[01:32:43] This is a real thing.

[01:32:45] I know my details are a little fuzzy.

[01:32:47] I mean, and that's the day that Dead Drop stopped being available in the App Store.

[01:32:53] Someone took it a little too literally.

[01:32:56] Yep.

[01:32:56] So go look that up.

[01:32:58] If you want to find an activity to never do, that could shoot right to the top of your list.

[01:33:04] But this man, or let's be real, a boy, a boyish man, if he's out playing Pokemon Go, although I'm almost 40, so what the fuck am I talking about?

[01:33:15] Sam says,

[01:33:16] We saw a huge frog near the water, he told Cincinnati local station WLWT at the time.

[01:33:23] Not in the game.

[01:33:24] This was an actual giant frog.

[01:33:27] He estimated the creature was about four feet tall and that it stood up and walked away on its hind legs.

[01:33:33] He also claims to have taken a photo of this creature, which also made it to the local news.

[01:33:39] And I have linked this photo in the show notes.

[01:33:42] And Ed, I am going to show it to you now.

[01:33:45] Okay, I am ready.

[01:33:46] Better not be a screamer.

[01:33:47] Oh, what?

[01:33:48] That looks like me earlier when we were doing that thing.

[01:33:51] Yeah.

[01:33:51] Actually, when I was coming in the room and my glasses were all lit up.

[01:33:55] Yeah.

[01:33:55] So what I'm looking at, listener, is kind of what you think.

[01:33:59] It's like a little frog man, like kind of coming out of the water and his eyes.

[01:34:04] Imagine if you replaced a frog's eyes with like two spotlights.

[01:34:08] And it's just kind of like an adorable.

[01:34:10] There's no sense of scale here.

[01:34:12] It's not next to anything.

[01:34:13] It could actually just be a miniature frog that, you know, its eyes glowed from the camera reflection or the flash or whatever.

[01:34:20] It's also very grainy.

[01:34:22] It's very hard to see.

[01:34:23] Yeah.

[01:34:24] Any kind of detail.

[01:34:25] I don't see that thing being four feet tall.

[01:34:28] Not from this picture.

[01:34:29] So this is what I see.

[01:34:30] I don't know if you see this, Ed.

[01:34:31] To me, it looks like we're seeing some sort of a man standing in about waist deep water with his arms out to his sides.

[01:34:38] Yeah.

[01:34:38] And wearing some sort of reflective or lit up bulbs on his head.

[01:34:44] Yeah.

[01:34:45] Bulbs is a good word.

[01:34:46] Yeah.

[01:34:46] He's got some bulb head.

[01:34:48] Yeah.

[01:34:49] I can see that.

[01:34:49] But I can also just see it being a frog, like a Budweiser frog, just like sitting on a lily pad.

[01:34:54] And the way that we get red eyes when flashes are taken, it could just be, you know, they just like pumped up the saturation on those eyeballs.

[01:35:02] I'm going to throw the expert card here.

[01:35:04] Its eyes are way too close together to be a real frog.

[01:35:07] Okay.

[01:35:08] Like frogs have their eyes on the sides of their heads.

[01:35:11] Okay.

[01:35:11] So I don't think you could get them both facing forward like this unless it's an extremely cross-eyed frog, which maybe exists.

[01:35:19] I don't know.

[01:35:20] I mean, the thing it's got, like, it has, like, a nice reflection on the water of, like, it has, like, an accurate reflection on the water of, like, what light would reflect that way, which makes it a little bit more not believable.

[01:35:30] But, you know, it adds, it's a nice touch.

[01:35:33] Yeah.

[01:35:33] I mean, it's a physical, it's not, he didn't paint it on the negative.

[01:35:38] It's something in the water, whether it's a frog man or a frog or a person dressed as a frog man.

[01:35:44] It is there.

[01:35:45] Yeah.

[01:35:45] I mean, hey, look, I love a modern cryptid photo.

[01:35:48] You know, a lot of our modern cryptid photos aren't particularly iconic.

[01:35:52] This one is, in its own way, I think pretty iconic as far as cryptid photos go.

[01:35:58] It's pretty recognizable.

[01:35:59] Yeah, it's pretty good.

[01:36:01] I don't hate it.

[01:36:02] I don't see a fucking sparkler in its hand.

[01:36:04] No, I don't see a portal.

[01:36:05] I don't see a sparkler.

[01:36:07] I see no evidence of Doctor Strange at this location.

[01:36:10] No, I see a guy who's like, can I help you?

[01:36:12] I'm working on this sewer main over here.

[01:36:15] So, yeah, I, look, of many of the cryptids on this list, because our next one's actually maybe the one I want to believe the most, but this is up there with the cryptids that I would like to believe in the most.

[01:36:26] A four foot tall frogman sounds awesome.

[01:36:29] He's probably a good hang.

[01:36:31] Yeah.

[01:36:31] I mean, it's fun.

[01:36:32] This is a fun little creature.

[01:36:34] I don't hate it.

[01:36:35] It doesn't sound like it's, there's not one story that you've told me about where it's like, the Loveland frogman, he just kept hitting me until I died.

[01:36:43] Like, he seems chill.

[01:36:45] Like, he seems like he's sliding.

[01:36:47] He's throwing up some fucking sparklers.

[01:36:51] He's gingerly stepping over a guardrail being like, I don't want any trouble.

[01:36:54] Yeah, this is.

[01:36:55] So, I like this guy.

[01:36:56] This is the guy you'd go to a rave with and feel good about it.

[01:36:59] I'd take drugs that this gave me.

[01:37:01] His eyes will get so wide.

[01:37:04] His big bulbous frog eyes.

[01:37:06] I don't know.

[01:37:06] I don't know.

[01:37:07] Maybe they're always lit up.

[01:37:07] Maybe they're not always lit up.

[01:37:09] Maybe it's lit up when they're horny or angry.

[01:37:11] You don't know.

[01:37:12] That's dangerous.

[01:37:13] That's definitely something you want to know.

[01:37:15] Yeah, there's a distinction you'd like to be made there.

[01:37:18] So, the next cryptid is actually the cryptid on this list that I would most like to believe in.

[01:37:24] Although, as we go here, you're going to see I have some more photographically based qualms with this one.

[01:37:31] Oh, I'm excited for more photos, though.

[01:37:33] Man, what a story.

[01:37:34] Yeah, there's a photo coming up for this one.

[01:37:36] Love a photo.

[01:37:37] So, this cryptid is called Kasi Rex, a cryptid of the living dinosaur variety, which you know is my favorite and best kind of cryptid that I would do anything to have be real.

[01:37:48] I mean, you're already doing anything to go find fake ones, it sounds like.

[01:37:51] That's true.

[01:37:52] That's true.

[01:37:53] I'm driving out to Loveland.

[01:37:55] I'm driving out to Point Pleasant.

[01:37:57] You're going to miss the birth of your first child because you're going to be out looking for fucking raptors on an app.

[01:38:02] The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena.

[01:38:05] Yep.

[01:38:05] To name a Goosebumps book.

[01:38:07] So, the story of Kasi Rex is this.

[01:38:10] In 1932, a Swedish hunter named John Johnson or Johansson, unclear from the sources that I found, but he was a hunter, John Johnson or John Johansson.

[01:38:23] I assume he had a cool pith helmet and a killer mustache because this was 1932 and that is what you look like as a hunter.

[01:38:31] Yeah.

[01:38:31] That was the law.

[01:38:32] He was in Cape Town and he was there on safari.

[01:38:37] He set up from his camp with a servant in tow.

[01:38:40] That sounds, all this sounds accurate.

[01:38:41] Yeah.

[01:38:42] Now, John Johnson hunting elephants.

[01:38:44] I don't like this man already.

[01:38:46] No one should hunt elephants.

[01:38:48] Yeah.

[01:38:48] Fuck this clown.

[01:38:49] So, fuck this guy.

[01:38:50] Babar in the bones of grief, dude.

[01:38:51] But it was 1932.

[01:38:53] Maybe there was something they really importantly needed tusks for besides piano keys.

[01:38:59] I doubt it.

[01:39:00] Probably not.

[01:39:02] Yeah, I'm giving this guy too much credit.

[01:39:03] He and his servant crossed through a big swamp and made it to the Kasi Valley Savannah where things immediately felt off to him because the Savannah was deserted.

[01:39:14] There were no animals as far as the eye could see, which my only experience with the African Savannah is the Lion King.

[01:39:21] But there's a lot of animals in that.

[01:39:24] Sure.

[01:39:24] So, I don't know how deserted the Savannah is, but...

[01:39:27] And in the 1930s, you'd think there would be more.

[01:39:30] It wasn't like the population growth had gotten out into the Savannah or whatever.

[01:39:34] They'd be out there just having the best time ever.

[01:39:36] Yeah, John at least felt this was unusual and his servant eventually did spot two elephants, got very excited.

[01:39:43] Oh, thank God for that servant because, you know, John was probably not taking the news well that there was no animals on his trip.

[01:39:49] Yeah, this guy was like, oh, fuck, I'm not going to eat tonight.

[01:39:53] Yeah.

[01:39:53] So, he spots two servants, gets really excited, but Johnson...

[01:39:57] He spotted two servants, like fellow servants?

[01:39:59] No, the servant spotted two elephants and got excited.

[01:40:02] Oh, my God, because if it's just like two other servants, he's like, do me solid.

[01:40:05] Dress up like a fucking gazelle right now.

[01:40:07] I don't care which of you is the back half.

[01:40:09] Yeah.

[01:40:10] All servants keep a gazelle costume just in case this happens with a client.

[01:40:14] They got to keep those thighs in shape because they're going to have to jump.

[01:40:18] They're going to have to hop along the Savannah.

[01:40:20] Yeah.

[01:40:20] Johnson, being an experienced hunter, knew that only two elephants meant something wasn't right because elephants are herd animals and two of them alone is the indication that something is pretty wrong here.

[01:40:34] So, he estimated that about 44 meters away, feels very specific to me, but...

[01:40:40] Sure.

[01:40:41] 44 meters away, Johnson and his servants spotted something in the underbrush stalking elephants.

[01:40:46] They couldn't make out what it was, but I assume it was big enough to be hunting elephants, so they were concerned.

[01:40:54] And this thing jumps out.

[01:40:56] The servant dove into the undergrowth, which in the story is portrayed as cowardly, but...

[01:41:02] No, that's the correct...

[01:41:03] You're not paying me enough, bro.

[01:41:05] Yeah.

[01:41:05] Yeah.

[01:41:05] Johnson got off three shots and said one of them hit the creature in the back and it took off.

[01:41:10] They turned tail, Johnson and the servant, crossed back across the swamp and this is a little bit later.

[01:41:17] They see the same creature again, about twice as close.

[01:41:21] And this time, this creature is casually tearing the hump off a rhinoceros.

[01:41:27] Oh my God.

[01:41:28] And rhinos are like...

[01:41:29] Yeah.

[01:41:29] Holy shit, dude.

[01:41:30] And then with a second bite, Johnson said it ripped off one of the rhino's legs.

[01:41:35] Yeah.

[01:41:35] You want to shoot it again?

[01:41:37] Yeah.

[01:41:37] I mean, if you could rip off a rhino's leg, I mean, that's got to be a horse kick times 10.

[01:41:43] That's a strong beast.

[01:41:45] That's a strong beast.

[01:41:47] The servant, again, ran for his life and accidentally took Johnson's gun with him, which is a big no-no.

[01:41:56] You don't want to do that.

[01:41:58] But Johnson, this absolute madman, realizing he was rifle-less, snapped a picture instead.

[01:42:05] The story goes that the creature heard the camera click and disappeared into the lake.

[01:42:09] So that's all it took, just a soft little...

[01:42:12] To scare this thing off.

[01:42:14] Yeah.

[01:42:14] Gets shot in the back.

[01:42:15] It's like, what was that?

[01:42:16] A mosquito?

[01:42:17] Yeah.

[01:42:17] But it hears a fucking, you know, camera click and it knows that that's more dangerous than any bullet.

[01:42:22] Yeah.

[01:42:22] It disappears into the lake and just left the rhino's body floating behind in a pool of blood.

[01:42:28] Quoting now from fandom.cryptids.com,

[01:42:32] Upon returning to camp, John walked shivering and shaking with his camera, collapsed, and the men in there picked him up.

[01:42:39] He said that this creature was reddish in color with blackish colored stripes in an interview with the newspaper Rhodesia Herald.

[01:42:48] It had a long snout and numerous teeth.

[01:42:51] He decided that the creature, which he said was about 13 meters or 43 feet long, was a Tyrannosaurus rex and said,

[01:42:59] The legs were thick.

[01:43:00] It reminded me of a lion built for speed.

[01:43:03] Which, look, man, not an inaccurate description of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

[01:43:08] 43 feet long, I think, is roughly the right length.

[01:43:12] Thick legs, sure.

[01:43:14] I don't know if they're built for speed.

[01:43:15] Well, yeah, they were more scavengers, I think, is sort of the consensus now.

[01:43:20] So, probably not made for speed.

[01:43:22] And also not disappearing into a lake anytime soon, unless it's dead.

[01:43:27] Yeah, I don't know if they're known for breathing underwater.

[01:43:29] But yeah, he claimed this thing was a Tyrannosaurus rex, and that kind of set off a buzz.

[01:43:33] Other hunters wanted a shot at this thing.

[01:43:36] And in 1933, another group of five hunters, among them a recognized ivory trafficker, which might actually come into play later,

[01:43:46] went to the Kassai Valley to hunt the creature that was now dubbed Kassai Rex by the Rhodesia Herald.

[01:43:52] These hunters actually thought the creature was a giant crocodile and that they could sell its skin for a lot of money.

[01:43:58] So, they didn't even think they were going to find a dinosaur.

[01:44:00] They were just happy with a crocodile, and they'd be rich men.

[01:44:04] Get a couple of shoes made.

[01:44:06] Yeah, they arrived in the Kassai Valley and passed through the same swamp where Johnson had passed the previous year.

[01:44:12] And it was there that one of the hunters was scared to see a reddish tail sink into the lake.

[01:44:17] At first, there was a lot of commotion.

[01:44:19] Some of the hunters thought it was maybe an anaconda.

[01:44:21] But then the water rose up.

[01:44:25] A giant wave fell on them from what they said was their left side.

[01:44:29] The reddish tail shot violently out from the marsh and hit one of the hunters who fell into the water.

[01:44:34] The other four hunters in the party began shooting at this reddish mass that had submerged, and then they lost it in the waves of water that it left behind.

[01:44:45] The fallen man, now with a freshly broken arm, got up and tried to reach his companions.

[01:44:50] A roar sounded from under the water, and his path was hindered by a giant creature that came out on the right side and was submerged on the left side.

[01:44:59] I don't know what to make of that.

[01:45:00] The hunters all hid in a rocky cave, and in the end, they left the area.

[01:45:04] So those are the first two stories we have of Kasi Rex.

[01:45:08] Not a lot of evidence to me yet that this is a T-Rex, based on all the water living it seems to be doing.

[01:45:17] Yeah, I don't know if that's one of their special skills or not.

[01:45:19] And the fact that the only consistent thing is that it's reddish in color.

[01:45:23] And I feel like a T-Rex would be, there'd be a lot more detail that you would have if you saw that.

[01:45:28] Well, he was shot in the back one time in this story.

[01:45:31] Yeah.

[01:45:31] So, you know, maybe they're bleeders.

[01:45:33] Could be.

[01:45:34] Could be bleeders.

[01:45:35] I would love to think that someone found a dinosaur in 1932.

[01:45:39] I mean, Ed, do you have any theories on this so far based on what we've heard?

[01:45:42] I doubt they found a dinosaur.

[01:45:44] But they were still killing stuff into extinction then.

[01:45:47] So I wouldn't be surprised if they did.

[01:45:49] Like, there is stuff that we have, like, photographic evidence of animals in the 1930s that were like, check out this animal that definitely exists.

[01:45:55] Yeah.

[01:45:55] And it was like, oh, that thing?

[01:45:56] Let me shoot it with my fucking gun.

[01:45:58] And then it dies.

[01:46:00] Actually, one of the most famous examples of that, I think, is there's a fairly famous cryptid called the Thylacine, which is extinct.

[01:46:08] I think, like, it kind of looks like a little foxy wolf thing with stripes like a tiger.

[01:46:13] Yeah.

[01:46:14] It got turned into a coat.

[01:46:15] Now we have no more of them.

[01:46:16] Yeah.

[01:46:16] But I'm pretty sure they died out in the 1930s.

[01:46:21] And they're like a famous, you know, cryptozoologists are always, like, looking for the living thylacine because it's a fairly recent extinct creature.

[01:46:28] But, yeah, that might have gone the way of Kazirex in the 1930s.

[01:46:33] That's what I'm thinking.

[01:46:40] So then in 1950, Robert Henderson, a great hunter and expert zoologist who had over 100 animal heads that he himself had hunted during his safaris, asshole, thought about making a trip to the jungles of the Congo to hunt exotic, never discovered species.

[01:46:58] Due to the death of his beloved wife, the trip was delayed until 1951.

[01:47:03] And by then it was said the very idea of hunting was the only thing that could bring a smile to his face.

[01:47:08] So I don't know if Robert Henderson here was, I'm pretty sure he was just on safari.

[01:47:13] I don't think he was actually hunting the Kazirex in this case.

[01:47:17] You don't think he heard about it and he was like, yo, bro, you got to get out of here, man.

[01:47:20] We saw some wild shit that it won't bring your wife back to life, but you'll forget about that shit.

[01:47:27] Imagine you're going to have like an umbrella stand that's a T-Rex foot.

[01:47:31] How cool is that, bro?

[01:47:34] So, yeah, he was just going hunting.

[01:47:37] He hired five natives and he made his way to just beyond the Kazai River in a jeep where he planned to hunt for six days.

[01:47:44] After the sixth day, though, he didn't return.

[01:47:48] And at first that was chalked up.

[01:47:50] It had rained a bunch and people thought maybe the river got swollen and, you know, maybe made it hard to traverse back.

[01:47:56] But after a few more days when Robert Henderson and his people still hadn't returned, a party from a nearby village and five people from a military regiment were sent to find him.

[01:48:08] All they found were traces of a camp, which they thought was the initial base that Robert and his group had established.

[01:48:16] The rescue group estimated that Robert and his people were there for about two days.

[01:48:21] And they hypothesized that Henderson had gone deeper into the Kazai Valley to hunt something else since they found gazelle skin and viscera near the camp that they found, which to them indicated that there had been a successful, if relatively uneventful hunt.

[01:48:37] So the rescue group continued their search the next morning.

[01:48:41] And after passing through several more kilometers of the strangely desolate valley, once again, the animals not there.

[01:48:49] They found Robert and his group or what was left of them.

[01:48:54] The temporary camp they discovered was completely destroyed.

[01:48:58] Several pieces of Robert's companions, a mix of limbs and heads, were strewn about 10 meters away.

[01:49:05] Some crushed and others with flesh torn from the bone.

[01:49:09] Oh, that's probably why he left them because we know he's an avid collector of heads.

[01:49:13] They said earlier over 100.

[01:49:14] Yeah.

[01:49:15] So God doesn't leave heads unless they're trash heads.

[01:49:17] Well, unfortunately, I don't think Robert actually got anywhere because they did find his forearm in his hand, which were found in what they described as, quote, bad condition.

[01:49:29] If they found just those, then yeah.

[01:49:32] Yeah.

[01:49:33] Yeah.

[01:49:33] Usually once the forearm and hand leave your body, then that's classified as not great condition.

[01:49:38] Yeah.

[01:49:39] You have to label that used if you're selling it at that point.

[01:49:41] Yeah.

[01:49:43] It's just so funny to me that they'd be like, this is, yeah, I think this is looking bad for him.

[01:49:49] Just missing limbs.

[01:49:51] This is like Timothy Treadwell levels of this guy is fucked.

[01:49:56] Yeah.

[01:49:56] And you know, there's like a probably a me type guy there who's like, let's just go home.

[01:50:00] Like, this is why are we still searching?

[01:50:02] Like, what are we going to bring a guy back with who's going to he's got no wife and one arm now?

[01:50:06] Like his life sucks.

[01:50:07] Yeah.

[01:50:08] Like, let's just fucking leave him to the woods.

[01:50:10] After an investigation, the official version of events suggested one of two things.

[01:50:15] The first was that possibly that this was something that that was caused by illegal hunters or ivory traffickers, because remember, one of the members of this party was an ivory trafficker.

[01:50:26] There's no I couldn't find any stated connection for what might have gone down.

[01:50:30] But just the the connection alone was enough for people to think this could have had something to do with ivory trafficking.

[01:50:36] But the marks on the bodies didn't match up with any kinds of bullets or knives.

[01:50:41] It seemed very much natural and done by force, by jaw.

[01:50:47] Gotcha.

[01:50:47] Kalooka goose or or T-rexes.

[01:50:49] Yes.

[01:50:50] The second hypothesis was that some animal killed Robert in his group, which did not take a detective to suggest that one.

[01:51:00] But the question there was why the remains seem to have been chewed up, but then spat out instead of consumed.

[01:51:07] Because who wants to eat a piece of shit like Robert?

[01:51:09] That's true.

[01:51:10] He's got 100 heads on his wall.

[01:51:12] He's a bad guy.

[01:51:13] Yeah, exactly.

[01:51:13] Every head he collects makes his blood taste more sour.

[01:51:17] Yeah.

[01:51:17] Yeah.

[01:51:18] So, I mean, look, not that unusual that some kind of animal could have torn them apart and not consumed much of them.

[01:51:26] Although I would again point to the previous police work of only finding Robert's arm and hand, which would suggest that the rest of him was then eaten.

[01:51:36] Yeah.

[01:51:37] Or taken somewhere else.

[01:51:38] So people also point out that there were a lot of spent shells on the ground.

[01:51:43] Oh, like Predator.

[01:51:44] Like there was a thing here.

[01:51:45] Remember in Predator?

[01:51:46] Yeah.

[01:51:46] Where he's like, there's shells all over the place.

[01:51:48] And it shows that it was like the big dude was shooting everywhere, everywhere direction.

[01:51:51] But right.

[01:51:51] Yes, yes, yes.

[01:51:52] But in this case, there wasn't a lot of evidence that any of those shells had actually hit anything.

[01:51:57] Well, no, nothing hits anything in that movie either because he's just shooting into the jungle.

[01:52:01] True.

[01:52:01] But people who were investigating the aftermath of the Predator disaster may have asked the same question.

[01:52:06] If these guys are such experienced shooters and marksmen, could they have really missed their targets at such close range?

[01:52:13] Or did something else happen here?

[01:52:16] Or were they besieged by something that they did not expect?

[01:52:19] Or something that's impervious to bullets?

[01:52:21] Like they may have hit it every single time.

[01:52:23] And it's just like, this is stupid.

[01:52:25] You throw a piece of paper at me?

[01:52:26] He doesn't give a shit.

[01:52:26] I don't know that T-Rexes were impervious to bullets.

[01:52:30] Another thing in the column of this probably wasn't a T-Rex.

[01:52:33] I don't know.

[01:52:34] They got thick ass skin, maybe.

[01:52:36] We don't know.

[01:52:37] True.

[01:52:37] No, that's true.

[01:52:38] But I don't know about impervious.

[01:52:40] Because, I mean, we have like a quote elephant gun.

[01:52:42] Remember in Tremors?

[01:52:43] It's like, give me the elephant gun.

[01:52:44] Yeah, yeah.

[01:52:45] Reba's got the elephant gun.

[01:52:46] And so it's like, there are like guns that are like stronger, I guess.

[01:52:50] And so maybe an elephant gun is still not even strong enough.

[01:52:53] And this guy is hunting elephants.

[01:52:54] It might not be enough for it.

[01:52:55] He didn't bring the T-Rex gun.

[01:52:57] True.

[01:52:58] So, and I don't know about these natives he hired.

[01:53:00] I don't know what the fuck they got.

[01:53:01] They probably didn't let them have guns.

[01:53:02] Because it's like, there's five of them at 1 a.m.

[01:53:04] At 1 a.m., yeah.

[01:53:05] So they're probably like, under supervision, they get to use a gun, you know, an hour a

[01:53:09] day or something.

[01:53:10] So I don't know.

[01:53:11] I could see it, the T-Rex just being like these bullets ain't shit to me.

[01:53:14] Yeah, true.

[01:53:15] That's fair.

[01:53:16] I also think it's really funny that you refer to it as the predator disaster.

[01:53:21] Like it was, like they're still talking about how only Dutch survived the

[01:53:24] predator disaster.

[01:53:25] Yeah.

[01:53:26] In this story, the case was closed without any definite conclusion.

[01:53:30] So they didn't find him.

[01:53:31] They did turn around and it's like, fuck it.

[01:53:33] This guy's gone.

[01:53:33] No, they didn't.

[01:53:34] That was it.

[01:53:35] They didn't find anything else of him.

[01:53:36] Okay.

[01:53:37] So basically they did have a bunch of me's there being like, we've walked for this

[01:53:40] socks.

[01:53:40] I hate it.

[01:53:41] Walked for days.

[01:53:41] Yeah.

[01:53:41] This guy's a scumbag.

[01:53:43] Wherever he is now, he's fucking RIP.

[01:53:45] God bless.

[01:53:45] And they just walked back to their homes.

[01:53:47] Yes.

[01:53:47] That does seem to be basically what happened.

[01:53:50] But I want to bring this creature case to a close with a brief mention of that photo that

[01:53:56] was taken in 1932.

[01:53:58] Or at least a photo that they claim was taken in 1932 that's been circulating for decades.

[01:54:04] Because you would think, man, if this guy took a photo of the Kasi Rex, does that mean that

[01:54:10] we have photographic proof of a living dinosaur as late as the 1930s?

[01:54:16] Ed, the answer to that question is sitting in your private chat box right now.

[01:54:20] How about you click that link?

[01:54:22] All right.

[01:54:22] I can't wait.

[01:54:23] I can't wait to see what the one-armed bandit got for us here.

[01:54:27] Oh my God.

[01:54:28] What?

[01:54:28] That's a snake?

[01:54:29] No, that's like a...

[01:54:30] Okay.

[01:54:30] So it looks like a black and white, potentially inverted photo of a Komodo dragon or kind of

[01:54:39] like a big lizard.

[01:54:40] Yes.

[01:54:41] I have no chain of custody for this photo.

[01:54:43] It's just the photo that most people link to as the original Kasi Rex photo.

[01:54:49] I mean, look at its back.

[01:54:51] It's so...

[01:54:51] It seems objectively like it's got stubby arms that are definitely pressed on the ground.

[01:54:57] Yeah.

[01:54:57] Very likely two more feet behind it.

[01:54:59] It looks like a Komodo dragon doing yoga.

[01:55:02] Yeah.

[01:55:02] You can't even see that much of it to say what it's doing, really.

[01:55:06] It's definitely not a T-Rex.

[01:55:08] I don't know.

[01:55:09] Maybe it's like a giant monitor lizard.

[01:55:10] I'm not sure.

[01:55:11] I think Komodo dragons are only in a very specific part of the world.

[01:55:15] Well, I just meant like a large lizard.

[01:55:18] Yes.

[01:55:18] But it seems like even without seeing its whole body, though, it seems like it has mass and

[01:55:23] that mass is kind of on the ground.

[01:55:26] It doesn't seem like it's standing on hind legs in this photo.

[01:55:30] Which this is one of those photos that if this is in fact a photo that's been circulating

[01:55:35] since the 1930s, and even that I doubt, because it does seem like the...

[01:55:40] It looks like it is a scan of a negative.

[01:55:44] That makes sense for why it looks inverted.

[01:55:46] Yeah.

[01:55:46] And it's also...

[01:55:47] This is the largest size I could find it in, and it's like 132 pixels by 42 pixels or something.

[01:55:54] No, this is like a forum avatar.

[01:55:57] Yeah.

[01:55:57] But also it's not in...

[01:55:59] It's square.

[01:56:00] Unless they're shooting large format, weird square photography.

[01:56:05] Yeah.

[01:56:06] Like they've clearly cropped out the part that this is sitting three inches off the ground.

[01:56:10] Yes.

[01:56:10] And look, at the time, maybe, you know, I know we portrayed T-Rexes as dragging their

[01:56:17] tails on the ground as recently as like...

[01:56:20] I think they'd kind of started changing the idea in the 1990s, but I certainly had books

[01:56:26] growing up in the 1990s that showed T-Rex dragging its tail on the ground.

[01:56:29] So to your average hunter in 1932, you know, maybe a particularly large Komodo dragon or

[01:56:37] monitor lizard type thing, maybe you would have honestly described it as a Tyrannosaurus

[01:56:41] Rex because you didn't really know what a Tyrannosaurus Rex looked like.

[01:56:44] Yeah, but if I don't see a journal entry that's like, today I saw a baby Tyrannosaurus Rex,

[01:56:49] then I don't...

[01:56:50] You know what I mean?

[01:56:51] Right.

[01:56:51] And then also like, okay, great.

[01:56:52] So you're just hunting babies now?

[01:56:54] Like, what the fuck?

[01:56:55] Well, also this guy, I mean, this thing, he said the T-Rex that he saw was like 43 feet

[01:57:00] long or something.

[01:57:01] Not in this photo.

[01:57:02] No, not...

[01:57:02] I mean, there's no scale really, but it doesn't seem huge.

[01:57:06] It looks like bushes in the background, so...

[01:57:09] So this disappointing photo will be in the show notes.

[01:57:11] Yes, this disappointing photo is accessible to you all.

[01:57:14] So yeah, to me, the Kazai Rex has more in common with the Loveland Frogman in the sense

[01:57:20] that that somebody was like, yeah, it was an iguana and I got scared.

[01:57:25] And this guy seems like maybe it was a hunter who was like, yeah, it was a Komodo dragon,

[01:57:29] but it was pretty scary still.

[01:57:32] Well, did you see that video?

[01:57:33] There's like a viral video I just saw last week or whatever, the guy like running from

[01:57:37] a fucking big iguana thing that's like running after him.

[01:57:39] Yeah.

[01:57:40] It's so funny.

[01:57:40] All of these cryptids were stories started by guys who needed a good reason for why their

[01:57:46] pants were filled with shit when they got home.

[01:57:49] Yeah.

[01:57:49] Like...

[01:57:49] I'll tell you right now, I mean, I moved a piece of patio furniture earlier and a fucking

[01:57:55] lizard, like a little salamander.

[01:57:57] Yeah.

[01:57:57] Kind of went like zipping and flipping out from under the cushion thing.

[01:58:01] And I was like, I was ready to end my life, man.

[01:58:03] So I get it.

[01:58:04] And that was a little salamander-y type one.

[01:58:06] So if you had like a big, maybe like three foot, four foot long kind of coming at you lizard,

[01:58:12] I can totally see being like really freaked out.

[01:58:15] But I don't think I would be like, now we hunt it for four days through the fucking Sahara

[01:58:20] or whatever.

[01:58:20] Yeah.

[01:58:21] I would just be like, man, you guys see that?

[01:58:22] I didn't jump.

[01:58:23] You jumped.

[01:58:24] And then we would just move on.

[01:58:26] Yeah.

[01:58:26] So yeah, I mean, look, I'm going to do some more research on Kazirex because I really want

[01:58:31] there to be some sort of like unidentified theropod crashing through the savannas of Africa,

[01:58:37] but unlikely.

[01:58:38] And again, immediately my brain goes to no breeding population, no cryptid, no physical

[01:58:44] cryptid at least.

[01:58:45] You know, if you want to talk ghost cryptids or interdimensional cryptids, fine.

[01:58:49] I do want to talk about those things.

[01:58:51] Fine.

[01:58:52] Maybe we'd get some more listeners.

[01:58:54] Ready whenever.

[01:58:54] If we talked about those things.

[01:58:57] Yeah, dude.

[01:58:58] But this next cryptid has made the news more than once.

[01:59:02] Unlike the Kazirex, it actually does have a body count.

[01:59:05] Is it Hillary Clinton?

[01:59:07] Yeah.

[01:59:08] Yeah.

[01:59:10] RIP Vince Foster.

[01:59:11] RIP God bless.

[01:59:12] Yeah.

[01:59:12] Just messing around, having a bit of fun over here.

[01:59:14] This creature is called the Pope Lick Goat Man.

[01:59:18] A part man, part goat, part sheep, part axe murderer named after its home.

[01:59:24] The trestle bridge on the Norfolk Southern Railway, which passes over the Pope Lick Creek in the

[01:59:30] Fisherville neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky.

[01:59:32] This is like our third bridge.

[01:59:34] They love bridges.

[01:59:35] They do love bridges.

[01:59:36] Maybe this is like a taps back into some sort of deep rooted something in humanity.

[01:59:41] But like bridges are famously haunted places.

[01:59:44] There's always trolls and monsters and things living under the bridge.

[01:59:48] Yeah, you're not wrong.

[01:59:49] The bridge is about 100 feet high and 772 feet long.

[01:59:54] So this is a big bridge.

[01:59:56] Oh, yeah.

[01:59:57] This is not a over a stream kind of thing.

[01:59:59] It's not our bridges in Madison County.

[02:00:01] It's like a real bridge, maybe.

[02:00:03] Yeah, yeah.

[02:00:03] This is a bridge built as a public works program in a period where our country was struggling.

[02:00:09] Oh, hell yeah.

[02:00:09] It's a big one.

[02:00:10] We got to get back to that.

[02:00:11] We do.

[02:00:12] Bring back the Ohio Valley-

[02:00:15] The New Deal?

[02:00:16] Ohio Valley New Deal?

[02:00:17] Yeah, I don't remember what it was.

[02:00:19] So of all the cryptids on this list so far, this cryptid, the Popelic Goatman, I think is the one that falls closest to the realm of urban legend.

[02:00:28] But in a really interesting way that we'll get to at the very end of this segment.

[02:00:33] Unlike even the Loveland Frogman, which shockingly has at least one photo of it, as we just discussed.

[02:00:40] Yeah.

[02:00:41] There are no photos of the Popelic Goatman.

[02:00:44] No audio recordings.

[02:00:46] As far as I can tell, no organized cryptozoological study of the Goatman at all.

[02:00:53] Okay.

[02:00:53] Most of the tales about the Popelic Goatman, like many good urban legends, are the anonymous friend of a friend variety.

[02:01:01] But according to these stories, the creature uses either hypnosis or voice mimicry to lure trespassers onto the train trestle to meet their death before an oncoming train.

[02:01:13] Oh, so it doesn't even do the dirty work.

[02:01:15] It's just like, hey, buddy, there's a Pokemon over here.

[02:01:18] Yeah.

[02:01:18] And then they come onto the tracks and get fucking obliterated.

[02:01:22] The Popelic Goatman is very good at going, pika pika.

[02:01:25] Yeah.

[02:01:27] Well, that version of the Popelic Goatman doesn't do the dirty work.

[02:01:31] Other versions, other stories claim that the monster jumps down from the trestle onto the roofs of passing cars.

[02:01:37] And other legends say that it attacks its victims with a bloodstained axe.

[02:01:42] And the very sight of the creature is so unsettling that those who see it while walking across the high bridge are driven to leap off of it.

[02:01:50] Oh, wow.

[02:01:51] This thing's got like multiple fail safes.

[02:01:54] Yeah.

[02:01:54] To make sure you die.

[02:01:56] Yep.

[02:01:56] Yep.

[02:01:56] It won't stop until you are.

[02:01:58] Then there's the version of the story that claims the Goatman was a mistreated circus freak.

[02:02:03] I don't know if we're using that term anymore, but in the story, a mistreated circus freak who escaped after a train derailed on the trestle.

[02:02:14] Or the version where the monster is really the twisted reincarnated form of a farmer who sacrificed goats in exchange for satanic powers, which that particular story on Wikipedia was noted as citation needed.

[02:02:29] So no surprise there.

[02:02:32] But in whatever version of the Popelik Goatman you like, one thing that I find very interesting about this cryptid is that multiple people have died searching for it, which most monsters, that's not a claim they can make.

[02:02:47] I found reports noting stories of this creature going back to the 1960s.

[02:02:52] The first death that I found was from 1987 when a boy named Jack Charles Baum II was killed by a train while crossing the bridge with his friends and reportedly looking for the monster after hearing about it on TV.

[02:03:08] In 1988, a 19-year-old girl named Jacqueline Catherine Hayes was killed by a train while crossing the bridge with her boyfriend, and they were reportedly filming a video about the legend for a school project.

[02:03:20] So can you imagine the 80s?

[02:03:22] This was a bad time to be a teenager interested in the Popelik Goatman.

[02:03:27] Oh my God, with like satanic panic going on.

[02:03:30] Yeah, if the train didn't get you, the local sheriff would.

[02:03:33] We got local sheriffs.

[02:03:34] We got Popelik Goatman.

[02:03:35] We've got the Atlanta child murderer.

[02:03:38] That is why we have fucking do-you-know-where-your-kids-are-at time.

[02:03:42] Yeah.

[02:03:42] We have missing kids on the side of milk cartons.

[02:03:45] The 80s was just a hell of a time to be a kid, like not doing a project on a fucking-

[02:03:50] Devil Goatman.

[02:03:51] I mean, to be fair, one of the reasons that stories about this creature might be hard to come by is because most people die from the more common malady of falling off a bridge.

[02:04:04] So I don't know how many of those were necessarily pinned on this weird satanic creature before the 80s.

[02:04:12] No, it's nice.

[02:04:13] Honestly, it's pretty nice to have that kind of security where you're just like, you can lure them, you can scare them to death.

[02:04:20] Yeah, like it seems like a lot, like the heavy lifting is done by the person.

[02:04:22] It's like, oh, I whistled and they walked under the tracks that got hit.

[02:04:26] Yeah.

[02:04:26] They saw me.

[02:04:27] He jumped off a bridge.

[02:04:28] Yeah.

[02:04:29] Like his numbers are high, but you have to take him at his word for it because he could just be claiming suicide victims.

[02:04:34] His numbers are high, but his hands are clean.

[02:04:36] That's true, dude, because there's nothing to fucking attach him to these.

[02:04:39] The Teflon Don.

[02:04:40] It's true.

[02:04:40] The Teflon Don of the Popelik Bridge.

[02:04:44] Of the fucking cryptid community.

[02:04:45] Yeah.

[02:04:46] Yeah.

[02:04:46] So I looked for more information about these two who died and I couldn't find very much other than somebody apparently has sprayed JC.

[02:04:54] We love you and miss you on the side of the tracks in honor of Jesus Christ.

[02:04:59] Jack Charles.

[02:04:59] Oh.

[02:05:01] I did also find what appears to be a piece of, I don't know if you'd want to call it lost media, found media, rare media.

[02:05:09] But Ed, as a student of film, you probably would find this interesting.

[02:05:14] Yeah.

[02:05:14] There's a 15 minute black and white short film that was made and premiered in the Louisville area in 1988 called The Legend of the Popelik Monster.

[02:05:24] We have it?

[02:05:24] We have a copy of it?

[02:05:25] Yeah.

[02:05:25] I put a link in the show notes.

[02:05:27] It's on YouTube.

[02:05:28] Fuck yeah.

[02:05:28] And it's worth a watch.

[02:05:29] I mean, it's not very scary.

[02:05:31] I don't think it's really meant to be scary.

[02:05:33] It's not super remarkable, but it is interesting.

[02:05:37] A, just as if you're interested in film at all, like, I don't know, I couldn't name many independent short films made in the South in the 1980s.

[02:05:47] So it's just kind of interesting to, you know, somebody was doing that.

[02:05:51] It was just like right as Sundance was probably being born.

[02:05:55] So just as a piece of indie film, it is kind of interesting.

[02:05:58] Yeah.

[02:05:58] I also think it's interesting because most local legends don't get contemporaneous media made about them.

[02:06:04] Yeah, that's true.

[02:06:05] Because this was happening in the late 70s, early 80s, right?

[02:06:08] Yeah.

[02:06:08] So like where the initial deaths are happening, I'm saying?

[02:06:10] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[02:06:11] So yeah, it's weird that we'd have like a couple of, I don't know, the gumption of these kids to be like, I got a fucking video recorder from the AV department at school.

[02:06:20] We got to go.

[02:06:20] Like if anything, they're not even doing about a legend at that point.

[02:06:23] They're just being, this is a true crime.

[02:06:25] Yeah.

[02:06:25] Yeah.

[02:06:26] True crime podcast they're making.

[02:06:28] Calling up Netflix.

[02:06:29] Yeah.

[02:06:29] Kids are going missing and we're going to take to the woods with our fucking camera.

[02:06:34] No, no, no.

[02:06:34] It's much more explicitly about the Popelik monster.

[02:06:38] But yeah, because, you know, so many towns have their local hook man or Popelik goat man or whatever.

[02:06:45] Maryland?

[02:06:45] I think Maryland has a goat man.

[02:06:47] And, you know, but they don't have little films made about them.

[02:06:50] So it's just, it's just interesting.

[02:06:52] True.

[02:06:52] This is like a proto small town monsters.

[02:06:55] Yeah.

[02:06:55] Just a couple of kids making stuff.

[02:06:56] Because I was always making like music videos all the time with my cousin and friends and stuff.

[02:07:00] But I never thought to like go make something about the melon heads.

[02:07:03] Yeah, that's true.

[02:07:04] You should have.

[02:07:05] You could have been a piece of film history.

[02:07:07] Yep.

[02:07:08] Only if I died.

[02:07:08] Some people also blame this film for continuing to popularize the legend and sending more people out on the tracks to look for it.

[02:07:17] I, you know, I don't know about that.

[02:07:20] That's fucking bullshit.

[02:07:21] Oh, all the people who rushed to see the 15 minute black and white movie.

[02:07:25] I don't even know where you would get it.

[02:07:27] All 12 people who saw this.

[02:07:28] Yeah.

[02:07:28] But, you know, I'm sure I guess it probably made news in the area.

[02:07:32] So, you know, in the 80s in a small southern town, you see that someone's making a movie about the local legend.

[02:07:39] And, you know, you hear someone's making a movie.

[02:07:41] You don't think a cheap local indie thing.

[02:07:45] I literally have a new I still have the newspaper from Hershey when we were making the subtle music video there.

[02:07:51] Yeah, exactly.

[02:07:51] It's that.

[02:07:52] It's that kind of thing.

[02:07:54] You know, so that would be like if old people read the subtle music video Hershey Chronicle article and they were like Hollywood's in town.

[02:08:00] Yeah.

[02:08:01] And then they blamed Hollywood for gunmen taking over local buildings or something.

[02:08:07] Like men who took like somebody hostage and were quoted as saying, like, we won't settle.

[02:08:11] Like they blamed us for like a unionization of a of a fucking local chocolate factory.

[02:08:17] Yeah.

[02:08:17] So people continue to die, though.

[02:08:20] In 19.

[02:08:20] I mean, every fucking day people die.

[02:08:22] Chris, don't be ridiculous.

[02:08:24] Don't be daft.

[02:08:24] On the Popelick train tracks, the bodies started to pile up or continued to pile up.

[02:08:29] OK, they keep piling up.

[02:08:30] Got you.

[02:08:31] You haven't seen this many bodies on a train track since damsels in distress was a viable option for a villain.

[02:08:38] In 1994, a man was killed by a train after his ATV overturned on the trestle, trapping him on the tracks.

[02:08:45] In November 2000, Nicholas Jewell of Mount Washington died after falling from the trestle.

[02:08:51] And four friends who were with him told police that Jewell had attempted to cross the trestle.

[02:08:56] He was about halfway across from the freight train approach.

[02:08:58] He had moved to the side and attempted to hold on to the railroad tie.

[02:09:03] Lost Boys style, I guess.

[02:09:05] But the train's vibration eventually shook him off and he fell nine stories to his death.

[02:09:11] Oh, my God.

[02:09:12] According to the Louisville Courier Journal.

[02:09:15] They didn't know which one to go with, huh?

[02:09:17] They decided to go with both Courier and Journal.

[02:09:19] That's a real belt in suspenders of newspaper naming.

[02:09:22] It's very trustworthy, though.

[02:09:23] I trust, if someone asked me if I had high trust in the stories printed in the Louisville Courier Journal, I would say yes and yes.

[02:09:31] Absolutely.

[02:09:32] You can't spell trussell without trust.

[02:09:34] That's true, too.

[02:09:37] But it's not true.

[02:09:39] Trestle is spelled T-R-E-S-T-L-E.

[02:09:41] There's no you in there.

[02:09:42] These two dummies think they're so smart, but they can't even spell.

[02:09:45] It's probably why they need me so much.

[02:09:49] According to the Louisville Courier Journal, the latest victims of the Popelik Goatman, or perhaps just curiosity, were two young Ohio tourists, Raquel Bain, 26, and her boyfriend, who wasn't named in the reports that I found.

[02:10:04] And I wrote a note down here, Joey Z. Goatman?

[02:10:09] And I think maybe I was suggesting to myself that her boyfriend's name was, in fact, Joey Z. Goatman.

[02:10:16] And so they took it out just for clarity's sake.

[02:10:18] Yeah, for clarity.

[02:10:19] They didn't want people to be confused.

[02:10:22] We're talking about a Goatman.

[02:10:23] We're not talking about Mr. Goatman.

[02:10:25] Yeah.

[02:10:25] We're talking about the Goatman.

[02:10:27] Yes.

[02:10:27] Do you know what?

[02:10:28] Who gives a shit with her boyfriend's name?

[02:10:29] Just say she dated a guy.

[02:10:32] We have to have this printed.

[02:10:33] Next edition's due in 40 minutes.

[02:10:35] Yeah.

[02:10:35] In any case, the boyfriend, the anonymous boyfriend, told officials that he and Raquel had come down from Dayton, Ohio, for a paranormal tour scheduled from 10 p.m. to midnight Saturday.

[02:10:48] Brandon Barnes, a security guard at Waverly Hills Sanatorium, said Bain had purchased two tickets online for $25 each for Saturday night's guided tour, which was attended by 45 ghost hunters.

[02:11:00] I don't know what business these people had charging $25 each because it's a small enough number of people attending this that the security guard apparently not only knew them by name, but knew their ticket orders.

[02:11:15] Oh, wow.

[02:11:16] That's true.

[02:11:16] Although we have both been on ghost tours led by security guards before.

[02:11:20] That's true.

[02:11:21] That's true.

[02:11:22] This sounds like it's a normal secondary job for them.

[02:11:25] Yeah.

[02:11:25] And ours was much safer, I will say.

[02:11:28] And the price was right.

[02:11:29] Well, actually, that's slander.

[02:11:30] This ghost hunt was actually very safe.

[02:11:33] The problem was that Raquel and her boyfriend decided to spend time before the ghost hunt looking for the Popelik monster, which is when the train bore down on them at around 32 miles an hour.

[02:11:45] Safety was about 40 feet away, and that was not enough time for the couple to escape.

[02:11:50] The boyfriend hung from the trestle until the train passed.

[02:11:54] Raquel wasn't so lucky.

[02:11:56] She was hit by the train.

[02:11:58] During the investigation of this, a local deputy said he learned that the area is popular with teens and young adults, especially on New Year's, which is the first mention of New Year's being the goat man's holiday.

[02:12:10] I love New Year's.

[02:12:11] We should go down there for this.

[02:12:12] We should.

[02:12:13] Hang from the trestles.

[02:12:14] I'm not going to hang from the trestles, but I will have popcorn and watch if anyone does hang from the trestle.

[02:12:19] Oh, dude, you're going to be clanging and banging again by then.

[02:12:21] Oh, my God.

[02:12:22] You're going to be up in the Iron Jungle getting your muscles on.

[02:12:26] But I don't have enough time between now and New Year's to get fucking ripped, dude.

[02:12:29] I'm not going to be ripped enough to hang from trestles.

[02:12:31] Again, I'll have to just sit in my rental car and beep with enthusiasm as they get hit by the train.

[02:12:37] Yeah.

[02:12:38] Look at all those young, noobel kids having a great time on New Year's.

[02:12:43] Yeah.

[02:12:43] Honk, honk.

[02:12:44] Beep, beep.

[02:12:45] The article closes by noting the existence of an Instagram photo from 2014, which got 188 likes.

[02:12:52] That's pretty good.

[02:12:53] It's pretty good.

[02:12:54] Those are numbers, my friend.

[02:12:56] The photo shows an Eastern High School graduate and a friend with their legs dangling off the trestle and proclaiming,

[02:13:02] The Popelik monster didn't get us, but a train almost did.

[02:13:07] That's pretty funny.

[02:13:08] I should go give it a like.

[02:13:10] These teens don't give a fuck down here in Popelik.

[02:13:13] Or I guess Louisville, Popelik's not a place.

[02:13:15] It's a river, but.

[02:13:16] Louisville teens, they don't give a shit.

[02:13:18] They got to walk by that giant bat outside of the Louisville Slugger fucking factory every day and be like,

[02:13:24] this is our life.

[02:13:25] Guess we should go out to Popelik.

[02:13:27] I will say Louisville teens.

[02:13:29] I'm pretty sure I passed through Louisville.

[02:13:32] I was on a road trip with my wife a few years ago, and I had one of the best meals I have ever had on the road.

[02:13:38] I'm pretty sure it was Louisville.

[02:13:40] I was floored at the quality of the food at this little, it wasn't like a diner.

[02:13:46] It was like, you know, it portrayed itself as like a nice restaurant, but it was a very small place.

[02:13:51] And we kind of stopped not knowing what to expect.

[02:13:54] And holy shit, it was so good.

[02:13:56] So Louisville teens, study your salt, fat, acid, heat.

[02:14:00] Don't give up.

[02:14:01] Don't go jump off the Popelik bridge.

[02:14:03] Open a bistro.

[02:14:04] You're going to be great.

[02:14:06] You're going to do great.

[02:14:06] So I wanted to fully close out the chapter on the Goatman by noting something interesting,

[02:14:12] kind of, I think, in light of our Boogeyman episode.

[02:14:15] And part of the reason I said at the beginning of this section that I find the Goatman legend kind of interesting,

[02:14:22] is that there is some speculation online that these deaths of people hunting for the Popelik Goatman are actually the result of a Boogeyman legend backfiring.

[02:14:34] The idea being that some people think the Goatman story was invented or encouraged by nervous parents who sought to keep their kids away from the train tracks,

[02:14:45] only to give them a reason to explore them as the years went on.

[02:14:50] Fools.

[02:14:51] Which I think is kind of interesting, the idea of a Boogeyman that, you know, you're like, well, don't, we'll tell the kids not to go over there because this thing will get them.

[02:14:59] And the kids are like, oh, fuck yeah.

[02:15:01] What's over there?

[02:15:03] I want to go where the thing is.

[02:15:04] Yeah.

[02:15:05] You guys should make more shit in your town for the kids to do.

[02:15:07] Bowling alley, something like that, maybe.

[02:15:09] Yeah.

[02:15:15] Coming in at cryptid number seven that you may have never heard of, we have Old Ned.

[02:15:22] Now, I've never heard of Old Ned until I started researching lesser known cryptids, but I was drawn to it because of his simple name.

[02:15:29] I thought maybe Old Ned would be a cave dwelling Bigfoot type creature or a mountain man or one of the guys who used to live under my apartment type guys.

[02:15:41] Sure.

[02:15:41] Just an old Ned.

[02:15:43] You're not sure what to make of him.

[02:15:45] Yeah.

[02:15:45] But Old Ned is not a man at all.

[02:15:48] He is, in fact, a lake monster from Canada who was already well documented amongst the natives before the 1700s when the Europeans arrived.

[02:15:57] Locals from the Mi'kmaq tribe passed on the story of a group of native hunters being chased in their canoes by a gigantic lake creature on what is now Lake Utopia in West St. John, New Brunswick.

[02:16:10] The lake itself is certainly big enough to hide a creature or breeding population of creatures.

[02:16:16] It's approximately seven kilometers long or about four and a half miles and between 0.8 and 2.8 kilometers in width or kind of a mile and a half ish.

[02:16:26] The depth of the lake changes throughout the years as more or less water is allowed through the hydroelectric dam that has been placed on the Mojadavik River in St. George.

[02:16:38] According to BackyardHistory.ca, the story of Old Ned goes that in 1867, as the fledgling nation of Canada bickered over their confederation, a group of sawmill workers on Lake Utopia claimed they saw an enormous beast thrashing about on the lake, measuring something like 30 feet long and 10 feet wide.

[02:17:00] Over the next few days, several other people saw very similar creatures in the lake and then things went quiet.

[02:17:06] But not for long.

[02:17:07] The next year, a reporter for the St. Croix Courier claimed that when he and a friend were out fishing, they saw the monster.

[02:17:15] And then in October of that year, which would be 1868 at this point, Harper's Weekly ran a story saying that the monster, or as they called it, the quote, wonderful fish, was killed in Passamaquoddy Bay, linking it with Lake Utopia.

[02:17:33] While it was described in the article as a mysterious sea serpent, it was also described as having a dorsal fin and a flat tail, both of which sharks have.

[02:17:42] The Harper's article included a picture, an artist's illustration of the sea monster, which looks much like a man-sized shark with dog-sized legs.

[02:17:50] What?

[02:17:50] I've included this photo in the show notes.

[02:17:52] I can't wait to see it.

[02:17:53] Can't wait to fucking see it.

[02:17:55] Let's see it.

[02:17:55] I'll show it to you here.

[02:17:56] Let me pull it up.

[02:17:57] I feel like you rarely give me photos, so this is exciting.

[02:18:00] A lot of the episodes, you don't want to see the photos.

[02:18:01] Well, that's true.

[02:18:02] I don't want to see the fucking grossness.

[02:18:05] Okay.

[02:18:05] All right.

[02:18:06] I'm looking at a picture of a shark with dog legs, but it's an etching or a drawing, and there's men in the frame.

[02:18:14] And the men, I mean, was this Clifford's fucking leg?

[02:18:18] Like, the dog legs are as big as the guy's.

[02:18:20] So...

[02:18:21] Yeah.

[02:18:21] When the article said it was a man-sized shark, their illustration overestimated that.

[02:18:26] It is a multiple man-sized shark.

[02:18:28] You would have to lay, I mean, just going off of my image here.

[02:18:31] On the scale of this image.

[02:18:33] Yeah.

[02:18:33] Yeah.

[02:18:34] You'd have to lay fucking, like, 13 guys down head to foot to get the length of this thing, and then at least one or two men could, like, try and grapple one leg, and it'd still be like, oh, we're not getting it down.

[02:18:48] Like, this is fucking huge.

[02:18:49] Well, Backyard History speculates that this may have actually been a wayward basking shark, and that the two so-called legs were actually these two penis-like appendages that basking sharks use during mating.

[02:19:03] All right.

[02:19:03] Everyone, stop grappling the leg, please.

[02:19:05] Turns out it's a dick.

[02:19:06] Everyone, please stop grappling the leg for the photo.

[02:19:08] Please take the leg out of your mouth, sir.

[02:19:11] It's unbecoming.

[02:19:12] It was funny at first, and now it's just going to be, we're going to talk.

[02:19:14] We're going to talk.

[02:19:15] So, this body that they found may have just been a basking shark.

[02:19:19] Sightings then died down for another five years until another group of natives claimed to have seen a monster with a large head and bloody jaws following their canoe.

[02:19:27] In the days and weeks after that sighting, several other people saw massive creatures in the waters of Lake Utopia, and it seems like the monster had returned.

[02:19:36] But then, after a second summer of thrashing around and frightening people, sightings of the monster appeared to taper off again.

[02:19:43] Then, another 20 years later, a legendary botanist, historian, and cartographer named William Francis Ganong interviewed people who saw the monster that summer.

[02:19:54] Since he was a child, Ganong had been taken with the natural world and eschewed his family's desire that he take over their famous chocolate business.

[02:20:01] Oh my god, it keeps coming up!

[02:20:03] In favor of studying plants and animals.

[02:20:06] Oh, how fucking pissed are they?

[02:20:07] They're like, listen, chocolate's a plant.

[02:20:09] Get in here.

[02:20:09] Well, the Ganong chocolates, I've never heard of, so I think he may have doomed his family's business by turning them down.

[02:20:18] Yeah, they were like, you know what?

[02:20:19] If he won't take over, just shut it down.

[02:20:21] Yeah.

[02:20:21] Just shut it down.

[02:20:22] It can't be that good if our own son doesn't want anything to do with these chocolates.

[02:20:26] He chose plants and animals over it.

[02:20:29] He chose plants and animals.

[02:20:31] Well, he did go on to speak at Harvard, or to teach at Harvard, and he also spoke five languages,

[02:20:37] including, helpfully for this story, the local Mi'kmaq dialect.

[02:20:41] And he interviewed the Mi'kmaqs who had witnessed the Lake Utopia monster and recorded this description of it from their eyewitness account.

[02:20:49] Quote,

[02:20:50] It was dark red in color.

[02:20:52] The part showing above the water was 20 feet long and as big around as a small hog's head.

[02:20:57] It was much like a large eel.

[02:21:00] And, the article says, perhaps it was a large eel or a basking shark.

[02:21:04] But, we may never know because the place where this creature was most commonly sighted is near an island in Lake Utopia that is now referred to as Cannonball Island for very good reason.

[02:21:17] Okay, I'm ready.

[02:21:18] All ears.

[02:21:18] During the darkest days of the Second World War, this article tells us, the Canadian government developed a plan to train 103,000 pilots from all over the Commonwealth of Canada before sending them to Britain.

[02:21:30] Hundreds of buildings and dozens of military bases were constructed to train these pilots, and one of them was close to Lake Utopia.

[02:21:37] The Air Force Base, RCAF Station Penfield Ridge, had 40 different buildings and was specifically for training bomber pilots.

[02:21:45] And their chosen target for practicing bombing was Lake Utopia's Cannonball Island.

[02:21:50] Oh, no.

[02:21:51] So, if there ever was an enormous eel or a sizable shark or some other kind of wonderful fish in Lake Utopia, it seems that four years of being consistently bombed by the entire Commonwealth would have been the end of Old Ned.

[02:22:06] Oh, just Old Ned with two suitcases being like, I'm fucking out of here.

[02:22:10] Like, this place sucks now.

[02:22:12] I can't get a fucking lick of sleep.

[02:22:14] I lived in a building once where the landlord was redoing the driveway and I was ready to fucking bail.

[02:22:20] So, I can't imagine.

[02:22:21] I'm house-sitting right now, but when I go back to my apartment, they're, like, building another, like, garage with a livable unit above it.

[02:22:28] Some fucking greedy bullshit.

[02:22:29] And, yeah, before I left to come here, it was very inconvenient for me.

[02:22:33] Especially trying to record this fucking show.

[02:22:36] Yeah, it's not been an easy couple of weeks recording.

[02:22:41] So, the article suggests that if Old Ned ever did exist, he's dead now.

[02:22:46] But I found an article from a 2005 New Brunswick Reader cover story that called for a, quote, monster summer.

[02:22:56] Oh, shit, dude.

[02:22:57] They're fucking right.

[02:22:58] They're DTF, this fucking newspaper.

[02:23:01] They're bringing it back.

[02:23:02] They reached back into the past and they said, what's old is new again.

[02:23:05] Let's get, literally, Old Ned.

[02:23:08] We'll brush him up and it'll be New Ned.

[02:23:10] By the way, you may be wondering why on earth this creature is called Old Ned.

[02:23:15] And I don't want to spoil anything for you, but we never find out.

[02:23:20] Oh, shit.

[02:23:21] Old Ned?

[02:23:21] Old Ned is the reason I was like, man, what?

[02:23:24] There's got to be a story behind whatever that monster is that it's named, like, a person.

[02:23:29] I could not find the origin of Old Ned.

[02:23:32] In fact, I found a number of articles saying that no one's sure of the origin of Old Ned, the name.

[02:23:37] Maybe Neds are, well, I know what Neds are in, like, Scotland.

[02:23:40] But maybe, like, Ned in Canada is, like, a term you use for people who walk out on people where it's like, oh, you know, Old Ned left her high and dry.

[02:23:49] Or maybe it's an acronym for Nessie-esque deceivers.

[02:23:53] Oh, maybe.

[02:23:54] Or never ever.

[02:23:57] Never ever dinosaurs, unfortunately.

[02:23:59] These are never ever dinosaurs.

[02:24:02] Yeah, there you go.

[02:24:03] Maybe that's that.

[02:24:03] They're always eels or basking sharks.

[02:24:06] But this New Brunswick Reader cover story from 2005 interviewed local cryptozoologist Norma Stewart, who is not nearly as pessimistic about the survival of Old Ned as the Backyard History article was.

[02:24:20] This article says, quote,

[02:24:22] Dipping a toe in the cool water, Norma Stewart easily conjures images of a deep secret in the lake's darkest waters.

[02:24:29] Somewhere down there, a creature stirs.

[02:24:31] Its huge serpent body glides in rhythmic ripples like a living wave.

[02:24:36] After five years at sea, the Lake Utopia Sea Monster is on the move.

[02:24:40] It is coming home.

[02:24:42] Stewart, a cryptozoologist or student of unknown creatures, is the leading authority on the Lake Utopia Sea Monster.

[02:24:49] She says, if you look at the pattern, you're looking at about every three to five years, there will be a sighting.

[02:24:54] The last sighting reported to the papers was in 1996.

[02:24:57] The last one reported to Stewart was in 2000.

[02:25:00] Most people who have seen Utopia's mysterious creature keep their stories quiet for fear that naysayers will chalk up strange tales to demon rum or an otherwise addled mind, Stewart said.

[02:25:12] I have people that have contacted me with their stories and they don't go to the papers, Stewart said.

[02:25:17] People oftentimes won't go public, but they will contact someone like me.

[02:25:20] They do it for peace of mind.

[02:25:22] They want to tell Stewart what they saw and they want her to tell them they aren't crazy.

[02:25:27] They've remembered every detail.

[02:25:29] It might have happened when they were a kid or it might have happened when they were an adult, but they didn't tell anybody for 10 years, Stewart said.

[02:25:35] One of her favorite reports, which she's keeping anonymous, came via a long distance phone call from a businessman.

[02:25:42] I wonder if this is our Loveland Frogman businessman.

[02:25:45] He's got another tall tale to tell.

[02:25:48] Oh, he's still around?

[02:25:50] What year is this?

[02:25:51] No, this was 2005, so.

[02:25:53] Oh, he'd be very old.

[02:25:54] That rush wore off from creating the Loveland Frogman.

[02:25:57] He wanted some old Ned action.

[02:26:00] But it says he tracked down Stewart to share his story and his story was this.

[02:26:05] He used to fish at Lake Utopia every year and the last time he was there, he was canoeing near dust when he bumped a log.

[02:26:11] He pushed off and the log rolled.

[02:26:13] A few paddles later, he hit the log again.

[02:26:15] He pushed himself off again and learned he wasn't pushing a log.

[02:26:19] It didn't just roll, he said.

[02:26:21] It moved upward and got one of the humps coming up.

[02:26:24] It almost swamped the canoe and then just swam away.

[02:26:28] Stewart's been studying the monster for a quarter of a century and has firm ideas about what the creature is and isn't.

[02:26:34] And I, needless to say, don't love this next part.

[02:26:37] Stewart says the monster is not a dinosaur with flippers.

[02:26:41] Never Ever Dinosaurs.

[02:26:42] There it is.

[02:26:43] Never Ever Dinosaurs.

[02:26:44] It's more serpentine and it is amphibious.

[02:26:45] It has lungs.

[02:26:46] It takes in air and can stay underwater for long periods of time.

[02:26:50] Other than a native legend about a monster chasing a canoe with jaws snapping and a stranger tale about a creature busting up through the lake's ice,

[02:26:57] most reports describe a docile beast lazing and lolling in the late summer sun or floating in the evening calm water.

[02:27:04] That's very similar to our Nessie episode where the guy was like, oh, he would chill outside of the water and just like soak up the sun when they saw it sometimes.

[02:27:12] Yeah.

[02:27:12] It loves to bask.

[02:27:14] It loves to come up on a day like this and just roll in the water, Stewart said.

[02:27:17] It's never vicious either.

[02:27:19] It doesn't attack people.

[02:27:20] I think it's one of those it's more afraid of you than you are of it, which I think is the perfect fear arrangement when it comes to wild animals with presumably extremely sharp teeth.

[02:27:32] Yeah.

[02:27:32] I prefer them more afraid of me.

[02:27:35] Yeah.

[02:27:35] You get out of here, creep.

[02:27:36] Sometimes you got to be a little mean to it just so it knows.

[02:27:39] Yeah.

[02:27:39] It's kind of interesting that a lot of those Loch Ness Monster stories of it basking come from a time when people probably thought of dinosaurs as more reptile like and reptiles do bask a lot.

[02:27:51] So people be like, oh, I saw it basking if that has anything to do with the dinosaur component.

[02:27:57] Yeah.

[02:27:57] I mean, they have to draw on just something, you know, what you read.

[02:28:00] True.

[02:28:01] True.

[02:28:01] And what, you know, what else are you going to draw on?

[02:28:04] 1920s, 30s.

[02:28:05] What else are you doing?

[02:28:05] Are you going to wait for Lord of the Rings to come out or something?

[02:28:07] Like, what the?

[02:28:09] I don't even know what year that came out, but that must have been a fucking wild book to get on the day.

[02:28:13] I think it was earlier than that.

[02:28:15] John Carter's first appearance was in 1911 or 1912.

[02:28:19] So they were already writing fan fiction about the Civil War in 1911, huh?

[02:28:23] Yeah.

[02:28:24] Pretty sure John Carter is like a Civil War veteran who gets sucked up to Mars or whatever.

[02:28:28] No, I think he was like an active soldier, which is why I was thinking it was kind of fan fiction.

[02:28:33] Like if I was, I'd show them, I'd go straight to Mars.

[02:28:36] Oh, I don't know.

[02:28:37] Doesn't matter.

[02:28:37] None of this matters.

[02:28:38] What does matter is that from what I could tell, it seems like old Ned is often confused with the Uggwug.

[02:28:45] Which we'll call number eight.

[02:28:46] Another lake monster also from New Brunswick, but this one lurking in nearby Reversing Falls, which Reversing Falls is an area that's kind of strange on its own.

[02:28:57] Well, it should be with a name like that.

[02:28:58] Well, so yes, obviously it conjures waterfalls like playing in reverse in your head.

[02:29:03] Going up.

[02:29:04] Yeah.

[02:29:04] And I don't know that there's anything that dramatic, but every day, I never heard of this place, but every day water from the St. John River rushes through the narrow rock gorge and into the Bay of Fundy at 100,000 tons per second, only to be pushed back up the gorge at high tide.

[02:29:20] So I think it kind of creates the effect of waterfalls going in reverse.

[02:29:26] I see.

[02:29:26] According to CBC, a number of strange tales are related in a typewritten essay by David D. Archibald circa the 1950s, tucked away in the vertical files of the St. John Free Public Library.

[02:29:38] Archibald relates a lovecraftian yarn about a diver who died of fright after exploring the falls.

[02:29:44] The quote from the story is,

[02:29:56] Wow.

[02:29:58] So basically, this guy was you or me if we'd seen like a weird fish too far under the water.

[02:30:04] It touched me.

[02:30:05] Oh shit.

[02:30:06] It came out of water.

[02:30:06] I stepped on some seaweed.

[02:30:09] I stepped on seaweed.

[02:30:10] I, well, my hair has been turning white pretty gradually.

[02:30:12] I think I'm just, cause I'm a little bit afraid every day for the last 10 years and I get a little bit of shock white every week.

[02:30:19] Yeah.

[02:30:19] I'm getting some in my, in my beard.

[02:30:22] The other day, someone was looking at an old photo of me.

[02:30:24] I was probably talking about like being thin or something.

[02:30:26] And so that picture came up and they were like, oh, you had a lot, you have a lot more white in your beard now.

[02:30:31] And I'm like, all right, well, thanks for that.

[02:30:33] I didn't think about it at all until you just said it.

[02:30:35] So very good.

[02:30:42] Real fears and, and fictional fears.

[02:30:45] Another story describes how a man drowned in Lawlor Lake, a body of water reported to be bottomless.

[02:30:51] So we're really sticking to the science here, apparently.

[02:30:54] Yeah.

[02:30:55] Along, along present day Rothesay Road.

[02:30:58] And his body was found weeks later on the ledge over the limestone gorge, the falls.

[02:31:04] Archibald theorized that there are underwater caverns which extend for many miles from one place to another, which would have made this drowning and reappearance possible.

[02:31:15] The caves, he claims, are also home to a, quote, strange amphibian creature first recorded by hunters who noticed it following in the wake of the fish.

[02:31:23] Strange because of its resemblance to both a salmon and a seal.

[02:31:27] And amphibious because becoming quite friendly with them, it would occasionally venture from its ocean lair and sit on the banks of the river basin.

[02:31:35] Because of this affinity for both land and humans, the Eskimo christened the equinoxical visitor Uggwug, meaning the friendly animal.

[02:31:45] Oh, love that.

[02:31:46] Yeah.

[02:31:47] We're venturing into children's television territory here, but, you know, it's cute.

[02:31:53] Uggwug, the friendly animal.

[02:31:54] I love it.

[02:31:55] I love it.

[02:31:56] But Archibald writes, Uggwug is still found in the lower basin below the whirlpools and will appear during certain times of the year if one employs the following definite method.

[02:32:05] So, folks, we would never tell you to do anything, but if you were to do this, it would be definite.

[02:32:12] It would work for sure.

[02:32:14] I mean, we'll go.

[02:32:15] We'll go.

[02:32:15] We'll put it on the show.

[02:32:17] We can't suggest other people go legally, but we can go.

[02:32:20] Oh, that's true.

[02:32:20] Where is this?

[02:32:21] Alaska?

[02:32:22] Oh, this is no one.

[02:32:22] New Brunswick.

[02:32:22] Yeah, New Brunswick.

[02:32:23] Cute place.

[02:32:24] So, this is the definite method.

[02:32:26] The time must be early in the spring during the shad run.

[02:32:30] Yeah, but how many buckets have come?

[02:32:32] I'm just kidding.

[02:32:33] That's obviously this is not.

[02:32:34] That's me pulling up out front of your place to go on a road trip.

[02:32:39] The backseat is full.

[02:32:41] You're going to have to sit in the front.

[02:32:42] Yeah, what's all that?

[02:32:43] Is that buckets of come?

[02:32:44] Too many buckets of come.

[02:32:45] What, are we making a homunculus?

[02:32:47] And you're like, no, homunculus is not definite enough.

[02:32:49] I wouldn't collect this much come unless I knew for sure I was getting what I was after.

[02:32:53] I'm glad we made the homunculus drop because for anyone who's never listened to the homunculus episode, that was a very strange minute and a half we just did.

[02:33:02] Yeah.

[02:33:03] Yeah.

[02:33:03] No, it was much less than that.

[02:33:04] I'll cut it down even more.

[02:33:06] It's important that everyone start with homunculus.

[02:33:08] Yeah.

[02:33:09] If the show is going to make sense for them pretty much ever now.

[02:33:12] So the time of this definite method must be early in the spring during the shad run.

[02:33:18] The tide must be on the ebb.

[02:33:21] Remember that time and tide wait for no man, it says in this description.

[02:33:25] And there are two other essential ingredients, an evening full of moonlight and a quart full of moonshine.

[02:33:33] Oh my God.

[02:33:34] After all necessities have been given proper attention, the Uggwug will appear.

[02:33:39] So, you know, at this point I'm already going, I think Donald Duke Archibald or whatever this guy's name was, Daisy Dukes, David D. Archibald.

[02:33:49] That's better than David Duke.

[02:33:51] Yeah.

[02:33:52] You know, that sounds like he's either winking at his reader or encouraging suicide.

[02:33:58] And I have no reason to cast aspersions upon Mr. Archibald.

[02:34:03] So I think he's winking at us by saying, if you go out boozing when the tide is on the ebb and stare out to the sea, the Uggwug will appear.

[02:34:13] The only problem with this story, besides this guy's wink, wink, nudge, nudge, is that there's no evidence that St. John was ever populated by the Inuit.

[02:34:22] Oh no.

[02:34:23] Or that Uggwug means friendly animal in any language.

[02:34:28] Wait, so didn't we open this whole thing with like, this guy speaks five languages.

[02:34:33] He knows everything about the outdoors.

[02:34:35] He doesn't want to make chocolate.

[02:34:36] Well, no.

[02:34:37] So that's, you're not the only one who's confused by this.

[02:34:40] So you're referencing old Ned, who was being studied by a man named William Francis Ganong.

[02:34:47] Sure.

[02:34:47] Okay.

[02:34:48] And old Ned and Uggwug, part of the reason I got into Uggwug is because.

[02:34:53] Because there's a neighboring lake that had other shit.

[02:34:56] Yes.

[02:34:57] And so I was finding information was claiming to be about old Ned, but was actually about the Uggwug.

[02:35:02] Okay.

[02:35:02] My whole thing was, I was just going to say, this guy claims to speak five languages.

[02:35:06] And now he's just making up fucking Inuit words.

[02:35:08] But I was just a totally different guy.

[02:35:10] Totally different guy.

[02:35:10] Totally different guy.

[02:35:11] Who's a fucking shyster.

[02:35:13] But confused for old Ned nonetheless.

[02:35:16] That said, one St. John storyteller named David Goss does tell us that Samuel de Champlain collected a legend about the Gogo, or the Gugu, G-O-U, G-O-U, a creature found in the warm water in the north of the province that could swallow a ship in one bite.

[02:35:34] But there's no link between the Gogo and reversing falls.

[02:35:38] And in fact, there is no evidence to suggest that the story of the Uggwug existed prior to the 1950s when John Morris Robinson, the operator of the reversing falls trading post, told the story to David D. Archibald.

[02:35:52] So I think there's some evidence for old Ned, even though he is never, ever a dinosaur.

[02:35:57] I think the Uggwug is pretty much just a tourist trap kind of thing that you don't even need, honestly, to go to what sounds like a pretty cool natural place.

[02:36:07] Yeah.

[02:36:08] But it's also, if you're going to have a tourist trap, it's nice that it's like a little cutie pie.

[02:36:13] It's not like a mean one.

[02:36:14] Yeah.

[02:36:15] It's like, hey, buy some of this moonshine from our trading post and then go out to the ebbed out fucking lake here and see if you can find yourself an Uggwug or whatever.

[02:36:25] And it's like, that's way nicer than, you know, eight kids a year eaten by a fucking beast.

[02:36:30] Fell off the Popelik bridge.

[02:36:31] Yeah.

[02:36:32] Yeah.

[02:36:32] Yeah.

[02:36:33] It's better than the bridge stuff.

[02:36:34] Not better.

[02:36:36] It's the same.

[02:36:37] Yes, better.

[02:36:37] Fuck those kids.

[02:36:39] Yeah.

[02:36:40] Fuck those kids.

[02:36:41] So that brings us to the end of eight cryptids that you may never have heard of.

[02:36:47] Now, this is a fear of the unknown.

[02:36:48] So Ed and I won't be doing a fear tier because ultimately this is not something that we are all that afraid of.

[02:36:56] And if you're someone who's like, because I do get annoyed myself when I see a list.

[02:37:00] You know, we said probably, but I'm saying you see a list where it's like six things about Jurassic Park you didn't know.

[02:37:05] It was like I knew all of them.

[02:37:06] I knew fucking all of them.

[02:37:07] Why didn't you at least give me the like things you probably didn't know?

[02:37:11] But that said, I don't know anything about any fucking cryptid.

[02:37:14] So however we title these, it's always going to be for me.

[02:37:18] So this is really just Chris telling Ed things he probably doesn't know.

[02:37:21] So even if you're like, I knew about Uggwug.

[02:37:24] It's like, sorry, pal.

[02:37:25] Ed didn't.

[02:37:26] And that's who's getting told the story.

[02:37:27] And in many ways, you're all just along for the ride.

[02:37:30] So I think this is a perfectly good series we have going.

[02:37:33] I'm excited to do some more deep dive cryptids on the next one.

[02:37:37] And honestly, some of these just scratch the surface.

[02:37:41] There's some deep dives of other cryptids that are even more rare or unbelievable that they ever existed or hopefully, you know, stories you never heard.

[02:37:51] So we have many, many left on the list.

[02:37:53] But until next time, I'm Chris Kalari.

[02:37:56] And I'm Ed Vecola.

[02:37:57] And this has been Silly as Shit.

[02:37:59] And this has been Scared All the Time.

[02:38:01] We'll see you next week.

[02:38:03] Bye bye.

[02:38:04] Scared All the Time is co-produced by Chris Kalari and Ed Vecola.

[02:38:07] Written by Chris Kalari.

[02:38:08] Edited by Ed Vecola.

[02:38:10] Additional support and keeper of sanity is Tess Feifel.

[02:38:13] Our theme song is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew.

[02:38:17] And Mr. Disclaimer is...

[02:38:19] And just a reminder, you can now support the podcast on Patreon.

[02:38:22] You can get all kinds of cool shit in return.

[02:38:24] Depending on the tier you choose, we'll be offering everything from ad-free episodes, producer credits, exclusive access, and inclusive merch.

[02:38:30] So go sign up for our Patreon at scaredallthetimepodcast.com.

[02:38:34] Don't worry, all scaredy cats welcome.

[02:38:37] No part of this show can be reproduced anywhere without permission.

[02:38:40] Copyright Astonishing Legends Productions.

[02:38:42] Night.

[02:38:42] We are in this together.

[02:38:44] Together.

[02:38:44] Together.

[02:38:45] Together.