The Dover Demon and Ghost Stories with Paul Bestall by Mission Spooky

[00:00:00] Listener discretion is advised. Hello and welcome to Scary Time, the podcast that helps you find new, emerging and undiscovered scary and paranormal podcasts. I'm Greg, the host and curator of Scary Time. Congratulations we have made it to 2023!

[00:00:19] Thank you so much for being such a critical component of the success of Scary Time in 2022. I know that together we found lots of great indie, scary and paranormal creators. And I hope 2022 was just as good for you as it was for Scary Time.

[00:00:36] Now as we go into 2023 I have a special favor to ask you. Only 40% of Scary Time listeners actually hit that follow button. So if you could take a second right now and just hit that follow button.

[00:00:49] That way every week you get an independent scary and paranormal episode right in your playlist. Alright, let's get on with today's episode. Today's episode is from Mission Spooky. Mission Spooky is a bi-weekly podcast where history meets the peculiar and the paranormal.

[00:01:09] Mission Spooky has been on Scary Time a few times. We love them. They always get great response from being featured so if you haven't followed them yet now's a great time. This episode is called The Dover Demon and Ghost Stories with Paul Bestall.

[00:01:23] If you liked today's episode make sure to check out the episode description for links to subscribe. Alright, let's get this show started.

[00:02:09] Fantastic host JC with me today as per usual the queen of everything herself Kiki and our local cryptic enthusiast Corde. And is that a British flag I see? Haha! This is where you take a look at it. They're finally coming to take us back. Thanks God. Again.

[00:02:32] Alright, so today we have the brilliant, the one, the only, the quote, Johnny Carson of the paranormal, Mr. Paul Bestall from Mysteries and Monsters Podcast. Welcome sir. Thank you for inviting me. I'm delighted to be here with you.

[00:02:48] We are so excited because I, well, I am a huge fan of Mysteries and Monsters. I have did a binge. Might have seen the numbers go up just slightly there. I think I listened to 36 episodes in a row was yeah. Yeah, Zooks.

[00:03:05] Yeah, it was a lot of hours. Yeah, I do go on a bit. I went, well, I went back. I went back in time. I went back in time in my DeLorean. He's like, I didn't think I rambled that much. Geez. No, I do.

[00:03:21] Being self aware is a very important trait, you know? Admitting is the first step. Yes. Yes, it is. It is acceptance always helps. Today we are going to be talking about something cool we have not talked about yet.

[00:03:41] And this was requested by Paul, which is the Dover demon in case our listeners don't know which Dover we're talking about because there are many. This is going to be Dover, Massachusetts because I honestly thought it was going to be Dover Delaware, but it wasn't.

[00:03:55] That took a hot minute to, you know, geography. Yay. And then I had a special request because as I've said many, many times before on this podcast, my family is originally from the Bradford area. I'm from the United States of England.

[00:04:08] And so you have a couple stories you're going to tell, which I'm very excited about. Go ahead guys. Who wants to go first? We're going to talk about Dover demon first or. I would like to talk about Dover demon first.

[00:04:20] Yeah, I actually did research about the Dover demon, which is more than I can literally any other episode we have ever recorded. I am so proud of you, JC. I'm going to give you a star. I get a star. It's my first one.

[00:04:35] I've been recording for three years. If I didn't give that last puppy treat to frickin Reggie, I would have given it to you right now. I don't want a puppy treat. It's Turducken flavored. Oh, OK. I'm interested. All right guys. So Dover demon. Come on.

[00:04:56] Who's going to start? You guys. Is it Dover but not hear me out a demon in any way, shape or form? That you know of. Oh, no. I 100% know it's not a demon. I'd be willing to stake my career in the paranormal as big as it is that

[00:05:13] it's not an actual demon. What a blow to society. Facing leaving the paranormal community. I'm going to go cry in a corner for 12 minutes. You're just as big as I am. All right, come on. Let's go. J.C. What was the sightings like?

[00:05:39] Do you know about the sightings? How many years ago was it? What year was it? Well, it was when you were about 23 back in the 70s. Incorrect. What do you mean incorrect? I was not 20 in the 70s. Oh, but it did happen in the 70s. Yes.

[00:05:58] I'm like, did I get the decade wrong? Just starting out decades off. I thought you were going to impress me. In the first and 22nd of 1977. No, I'm not that good. She's like, I did research immediately outclassed. Who was the chief researcher? Very famous cryptozoologist.

[00:06:22] I don't remember names. Come on, you guys know I'm not good at this. Lauren Coleman. There it is. Very good. Okay, good for you. I'm not used to doing research. So like, having to go back and forth and organize it. Oh, this is rough.

[00:06:41] Kiki, how do you do it? I write it out. Yeah, I wrote some things like Dover demon, not a demon. Oh my God. Not a moose either. Why don't you go? I'm done. I'm going to face crime. I'm done being shamed. No, I'm never done being shamed.

[00:07:11] I'm just, I need a break. Well, I like stories like the Dover demon because there's always some strange things that go on in certain small towns in the US. There have always been really attracted to these really odd little creatures that turn up for no reason.

[00:07:27] And Dover demons, definitely one of them. It's like the Enfield horror or the Fresno nightcrawlers. They're just these really odd creatures that turn up. Some are real and allegedly real and some clearly aren't. But the Dover demons are very odd ones.

[00:07:43] And like JC says, it's probably most famous for being one of Lauren Coleman's first ever cases which he covered in his mysterious America book. It's an odd one because it's one of those that just happens over two or three days. And that's it. Done. Finished.

[00:07:58] It's all over and enough to say no. Right. And I think that's what is so weird about it for me. I did, man, I'm going to start off like on a really bad foot here because I listened to a couple other podcasters talking about Dover demon

[00:08:11] because I always do that too. Read the stuff, listen to what other people have to say. And I won't throw anybody in the bus but there was one podcast that wanted to talk about the possibilities of Dover demons somewhere else. So I was really intrigued by that.

[00:08:23] I was like, oh, because that made sense. I mean, we'll kind of get into a little bit about the sightings. But one of the things at the end of it is that it seems like everyone saw them

[00:08:32] like in a line, like if you looked on a map, it was like one after another as if it was traveling. And then you have this shows up in Rochester, New York then a little bit of ways away from Dover, Massachusetts. But, you know, it's possible.

[00:08:47] And I don't know if you heard about this one, Paul, but it's the Beast of Purple Trail. No, I've not heard of that. That's probably a good thing. Yeah, this work, Yuki is just going to get out the gate and be like

[00:09:04] we're going to talk about the demon, but let's just let's get this out of the way because Beast of Purple Trail is not real guys. I hate to say it. It seems as though somebody made a creepypasta and put it up on the cryptozoology wiki.

[00:09:19] I've did a lot of research on this, tried to find more information about it because I thought it was very intriguing that it miraculously looked very similar to the Dover demon. And that is because someone took a picture of the Dover demon

[00:09:32] and put it on the website as the Beast of the Purple Trail. But at least they had enough sense to be like someone kind of questioned that on Reddit and then the person was like, oh yeah, I couldn't find a picture of what it looks like

[00:09:48] though I just used this as reference. Okay. Are no pictures at all, not even drawn out nothing. It's described as an alien lake creature that quote resembles the Dover demon. But the only true thing I got out of this is that

[00:10:10] it says that in 2017 there's a storm that comes and that there's supposedly this archway that leads you through the opening of the Purple Trail. Purple Trail is supposed to be a walking trail in the Durand Eastman Park and it says Rochester, New York, that's true.

[00:10:27] Only there is no purple trail in the Durand Eastman Park guys. It's actually in a different park that's a 13 minute drive away from the other one so that also makes me a little suspect that they couldn't even get the actual location right.

[00:10:42] Couldn't find any pictures of this archway, whether it was there prior to the storm or after. Then there's a claim that some mysterious hands remade the archway. Yeah, I don't have any pictures of the remade archway either. There's no witness statements. There's I got nothing. Yeah.

[00:11:01] So I'm going to say in my mind that if the Dover demon sightings are correct, then yeah, I think they just disappeared. I think whatever it was just disappeared. I don't think it went anywhere else, which makes it even more mysterious to me because, you know,

[00:11:16] somebody was trying to connect some dots there with a fake cryptid and I... Oh no, someone would do that. Who does Anke? Yeah. No one makes fake TikTok cryptid videos either. Never seen one. I haven't done that even as a joke. Bigfoot sign.

[00:11:47] I don't even have to search them out. People send me them and go, Have you seen this? Nope. That's what JC does to us. Oh, it's you is it? So right out the bat before we even like get into what happened with these sightings, do you think...

[00:12:02] Do you guys think that these like one-timer cryptid appearances and stuff like this one and Flatwoods Monster and stuff, do you think that's more like a kind of getting into Henry Zabrowski territory here like psychic phenomena since they're like never seen again? You know what I mean?

[00:12:21] Like is this like multiple people having the same psychic phenomena or do you think this might be a real entity, I guess? For me, I'll go first because it's on the least educated.

[00:12:33] So I'll set the bar very low and then E.T. and Paul can give their opinions. I don't know if I'd consider it psychic phenomenon. I would say it's probably in my opinion probably fey or extraterrestrial.

[00:12:47] So I'm not saying it's a gray because I don't think it fits certain characteristics of a gray alien. But for the Dover demon, I would vote that it's some kind of fey and or Native American folklore creature. I'll get into that stuff later. But yeah, I'm sorry. What?

[00:13:05] What do you mean what? You actually... Wow. Okay. Because because we did that whole episode on Puck Wedges and you were very like anti-Puck Wedge. No, but then I had a Puck Wedge encounter that next fucking night. Okay. And I changed my tune. Kiki.

[00:13:23] You learned this last episode. We had a whole episode about how I learned my lesson and I'll never talk that kind of shit again. Now he takes the subject extremely seriously.

[00:13:34] Yeah, so I drove three hours north into some crazy wooded area and didn't realize what I was doing. Listen to that episode somewhere down below. Don't remember the episode number. It's down there somewhere. You just got listen to all them till you find it.

[00:13:52] Yeah, just search for the Puck Wedge. It's that one. Well, okay. I'm actually interested in what Paul thinks. I'm going to hold mine for later. I think JC's hit on something there because I think along with as called mentioned the Flatwoods monster.

[00:14:09] I tend to think because of its uniqueness, I feel it would be more explainable as some kind of extraterrestrial visitor personally. Right. I would tend to agree.

[00:14:22] I think because it's so odd and because it's not reappeared anywhere really because this is the often as you mentioned about diving into these strange purple trail stories that have no basis in any fact or witnesses or anything.

[00:14:37] That because it's so odd, it tends to because even when you talk about psychic phenomena or the fair or whatever, they tend to have a trend or they will be certain types of creatures that are seen over and over again all around the world or wherever people have these belief structures.

[00:14:54] And so because of this creature and its description of looking, I think once again it's one of those that people say, well, it looks a bit like this. Yeah, but it doesn't look just like it. It's different enough to be unique.

[00:15:07] And I think that's what always stood out to me about this particular case is the fact that it is rather unusual.

[00:15:14] Yes, it looks a bit like a couple of other things, but what other people report don't act or move in the way this creature did, especially as Bartlett, well Bartlett the first guy that saw it climbing over that wall.

[00:15:27] Yeah, who also is one of those amazing witnesses that you have who seems to be quite good at drawing, which I've always been very annoyed about these witnesses. Not only have they seen a cryptid, they're very talented artists, which is a double whammy for people like me.

[00:15:41] So maybe that's why he saw it because he knew it would be able to render it so beautifully. I mean, fair. I guess to explain for listeners who haven't seen the picture yet that he's referring to, it's a very good drawing.

[00:16:00] It looks very close to a gray alien, but it's on all fours and it has these big spindly frickin fingers and it's like wrapping its fingers around everything instead of just like walking on stuff.

[00:16:11] It almost looks like it has four hands instead of two feet and two hands the way you drew it. I also feel like the head is a little different than a gray alien. It looks more like a light bulb than just like a oval.

[00:16:22] It looks more bottom heavy than- Yeah, and I'll put links to those photographs too since you have to really see it. So Bartlett's sighting, when he sees this he's kind of seeing it in headlights and he thought it originally was a cat or a dog,

[00:16:38] but then it was the spindly fingers that seemed to be holding on to a rock like that it was on top of and that's what definitely set it apart. It wasn't to him, this is not a dog, this is not a cat, this is some weird thing.

[00:16:51] And he was with other people and I thought this was the one where the friends turned around and went back or is that- I heard that somewhere else and I didn't write it down after. No they did. They went back and it went back.

[00:17:05] Okay, so that's the first one right because I know there's like multiple sightings. I thought the first one was the one where they actually turned around and went back but they didn't get out of the car. That was the thing.

[00:17:16] He said a sandpaper-y like skin texture in that it was a peach color. Yeah just really super weird looking and that elongated shape of the face which you'll see when I share the drawing of it. So yeah just super weird looking.

[00:17:33] But yeah you do think alien in nature and that's what set everybody- well it set him off especially was this is not normal. This is not supposed to look this way. It also had big eyes, very round lidless eyes that were supposedly like a orange color.

[00:17:49] No green eyes. I thought it was green eyes. He said it was orange. Other people said green. You'll get a different take on the eyes from different people. His was orange so I thought I'll get into that later.

[00:18:04] Did they think it was a cat because of like eye shine or did they mention anything about that? I think it was because the size was about like a cat to small dog and they just saw something moving in the dark as they were driving

[00:18:19] and so they just assumed it was one of those two things and then as the light shone on it they're like that's not- Got you. At least that's how I took it. I'll get into at the end for the explanations of what other people thought it might be.

[00:18:35] Oh Paulie, you and I- yeah you're gonna laugh because I'm sure you know you've seen the quote explanations of what it might be and it's always the same job over and over again. I think it's a win to go actually. Oh you're right. It's a skinwalker guys.

[00:18:57] Don't get me started. Just calm down. If this happened now people would say it'd be a chew camera. Yes. I was trying to make that joke earlier too. He was. Yeah, right before you came on Paulie that literally made that joke about the show.

[00:19:16] The picture does have a bit of a resemblance like smaller eyes and less spiky but you know- Now what you see here is the northern American achupacabra. Massachusetts genus. Right. Hey, actually don't knock it that's sort of funny in a way you know because what if-

[00:19:41] I'm just you know you gotta think about it. So this first sighting this is April 21st, 1977. I was not 23 JC. I was a kid. Thank you. Bill Bartlett's 17 at the time that he sees this.

[00:19:56] It's about 10 30 at night too just so we get the feel for what's going on here because the next one is John Baxter and he's going to be seeing this about two hours after Bartlett's sighting around midnight and he's walking on a road.

[00:20:14] Shoot the first one I forgot to tell you guys that was on Farm Street in Dover and then he sees it on Miller Hill Road. A lot of people that have talked about this have sort of made fun of it a little bit

[00:20:27] but I don't know anything about Dover. I can only tell you what would happen here. I live out in the woods so there's no way that a 15 year old is going to be walking on this road at midnight. Oh my gosh, no not even in 77.

[00:20:41] Okay, but it's a small town right? So he's apparently walking home from his girlfriend's house 15 years old at midnight. He thinks he sees a shadowy figure at first and this is the kid who thinks that it's actually a friend of his.

[00:20:58] Yeah, because you got a funny shape dead or something didn't he? Yeah, he was a smaller kid with a funny shaped head. Yeah, he's like that's gotta be that big headed asshole. But that's 100% true.

[00:21:15] He claimed that his head was bigger than normal and he thought it was MJ so he calls out, Hey MJ is that you? Of course he gets no response. He keeps walking until he's pretty close to it. He figures between like about 15 feet or so.

[00:21:30] He calls out again and nothing happens but then he starts seeing this creature and it's got a really big head. Again, we see the spindly fingers this time it's got his fingers around a tree trunk. He could see that the eyes were glowing.

[00:21:43] He did not mention any specific color though but that it was just a glow to it. He did not make a drawing of it. Then we've got Abby. Oh my gosh, I should have looked up how to say her last name. Brabham.

[00:21:57] Brabham, yeah I was gonna go with Brabham. I was like I think that's how we say it. Oh boy, she again was under 15 year olds. Yeah, there's a lot of teenagers wandering around this town. Yeah man. This was the 70s of America, okay?

[00:22:12] Oh, I have to go back to the first one again real quickly to Bartlett because there was also the mention that oh well these were kids driving around at night. It was the late 70s.

[00:22:24] I guess they were just high on marijuana and that's why they saw all this stuff. That damn hooch. Oh boy, I have yet to have that good of marijuana that I would start seeing stuff like that. Yeah let me tell you now.

[00:22:38] I'm a medical card carrier here so I'm legal and so I buy medical grade stuff and nope, I haven't seen nothing like this yet. Plus if anything, marijuana has probably used more now than it was in the 70s.

[00:22:59] So surely more people would be seeing strange things but they're not. If that explanation works which obviously marijuana doesn't really cause hallucinations in the vast majority of users. Yeah, it's super rare. It's used more and it's chemically stronger now.

[00:23:15] Yes, it's probably not actually knocked off Pope Warrie that they bought from Dodgy Kid at the local arcade in 1977. All getting high on time. Right?

[00:23:29] Yeah a little bit of Reginald, a little bit of thyme, rosemary in there and then you're like, shoot I suppose we're making chicken not smoking it. Yeah I wonder why they're like, I've got munchies for pasta. Right, yeah.

[00:23:48] Oh goodness, yeah so I just also a long long time ago this is not a recommendation for doing drugs of any kind in particular. I'm just saying I have had hallucinogenics things that are supposed to actually make you see stuff and I still didn't see anything.

[00:24:08] So I'm disappointed that you know apparently I should have been seeing Dover demons and I haven't, I want my money back from 30 years ago. It's like the explanation that people are drunk if they see UFOs which yeah I've run bars and nightclubs.

[00:24:30] None of my regulars ever said oh I got absolutely hammered last night or seen UFOs everywhere. People always go straight to the alcohol when it comes to bigfoot stories too. Well how much booze were they drinking in that trailer in the woods?

[00:24:43] A lot but that doesn't mean something wasn't throwing rocks at them. Alcohol doesn't make you hallucinate like that man, you just gotta pass out. Yeah absolutely well they always, that's one of the excuses a very famous skeptic puts forward about the Hopkinsville incident.

[00:24:58] That everybody was that drunk including the children. Yes, they were hallucinating these alleged bulletproof owls that were attacking them for several hours.

[00:25:09] I can't attest to how much there is to do in Hopkinsville because I've never been there but I can't imagine that they just allow all the children to get that fucked up too.

[00:25:20] It's not true because the woman who was the head of the family was completely teetotal and refused to have alcohol in the house. So none of them had had a drink. Yup. Oh there you go.

[00:25:32] My god I lost my, I lost it when you said bulletproof owls though. Because you know they shot at him. You know they shot at him. They must have been owls. Everything is an owl. Oh my gosh. Okay so speaking of owls.

[00:25:51] So Abby, Abby Brabham she was again 15 years old and she's in the car with her boyfriend.

[00:25:58] They're on Springdale Avenue the next night and she sees a creature that she thinks it looks a lot like a monkey to her but without hair and has a tannish beige color to it

[00:26:11] and she does not see a nose ears or a tail though which I think is actually pretty important as well. And again at the end here when we talk about some of the quote debunking yeah it's you know what an actual monkey looks like

[00:26:29] and you know like her for her to be like yeah it was monkey like but again I'm imagining those long spindly looking legs maybe you know and she's not seeing the ears nose or tail which I think is sort of important.

[00:26:44] She's the one where the eyes for her are glowing green. Seems to have a color change maybe but the investigation of course it's Lauren Coleman that does it.

[00:26:53] I don't know I mean I'm definitely one of those people that I totally believe that they all saw something you know like what it is I don't know but I can tell you the explanations that were given from the muggles if you will.

[00:27:10] I don't know what it was doesn't make any sense either. That doesn't matter. Wait albino moose baby that just happened to be in somebody's private collection in the town of Dover where no one had a private collection of albino moose babies just happened to get loose.

[00:27:34] You don't you don't know how many weird eccentric rednecks they have out there they could have albino moose. They didn't blame it on a circus train crash. Yes the rare case that that wasn't blamed.

[00:27:55] I was going to say the one time that someone literally is like it might have been a hairless monkey but there's no train crash full of monkeys. So there you go. The first one I absolutely love this one that it's a horse foal.

[00:28:11] Yeah we mix that up long fingers right. Yeah yeah here's my take on horse foals so there are about 10 today. There's like 10 large horse farms within the range of where the sightings took place. Apparently Dover a small community at the time was about 5,000 folks ish.

[00:28:31] The joke was that there was actually more horses than people. Okay that's fair except that nobody was missing a foal. Yeah and like horses aren't cheap. It's a whole ass horse thank you. It's a whole ass horse that's missing guys.

[00:28:49] There's no one that's going to let their baby horse out and be like oh shit we lost the baby horse please call the cops and let them know that it's missing.

[00:28:56] That's a big deal also in the United States a horse is pretty much like I don't know the third or second animal that we learn about as a child. Yeah we got a whole game for that called speak and spell.

[00:29:09] Yeah so like when you talk about it being a baby horse when you look at the head I can see it. But when you get to the hands.

[00:29:20] Yeah I don't know like they specifically talk about the long fingers that wrap around things like right well cord what you don't know is baby horses all horses are actually born with hands and it's us that chopped the hands off and put on hooves. Oh thanks.

[00:29:37] They probably just had a gotten that process. Thank you so much for that nightmare tonight JG. That's what I needed. You're welcome. Yeah they're not putting horseshoes on them they're putting hooves on them. Oh my god. Yeah. That's what the nails are for.

[00:29:56] Well the horseshoes they actually keep the fingers from growing back. They nail the shoes onto the fingertips it's terrible. How do you not know that? Yeah that's common horse knowledge. Well I guess I gotta go back to being three now thanks.

[00:30:16] Also I would say like a baby horse is a drastically different size than a cat so I don't know how they would like. It was a main coon it was a real big cat. I love me a main coon.

[00:30:30] Okay so the next one we touched on which is the baby moose. Yes the even larger four legged hooved animal.

[00:30:41] Okay so this one is if you're looking at just the face baby moose the moose in general they do have like a long gated face right and they got kind of big eyes.

[00:30:53] And I thought about okay what does a baby moose look like if it has mange for example would the skin color be that peach color? No it is not.

[00:31:03] Also you can clearly see ears on it even with the mange if you're going to go down that particular route and also they don't often appear in Massachusetts. So kind of you'd actually see a horse before you'd see a baby moose or a moose at all in Massachusetts.

[00:31:21] That's why it was like somebody owned a moose farm. I don't know if that's a thing but that's why I said it's a private collection because they don't range in that area.

[00:31:33] And I mean moose even as baby moose have that big hunch behind their shoulders like you'd think that would probably stand out if somebody is looking at the thing. And again they don't have long fingers. And that too yeah.

[00:31:49] So the other animals that were mentioned were a fox, a bobcat or a dog. And again if you sticking with the mange idea too you can look at any of these animals online and no matter what happens they don't have this skin color that we're seeing.

[00:32:07] You can still see their tails. You can still see their ears. And their nose. Yeah and their nose yes. So and the folks who saw them were saying that the animal was bigger than those right but smaller than a moose or a horse.

[00:32:23] So it was like that in between thing. Also like mange doesn't for the most part mange doesn't completely make an animal hairless they're still going to have patches. Sometimes I've seen the ones with the bear bears get it and they actually are totally completely hairless.

[00:32:40] I shine though this is kind of interesting because I hadn't looked this up before until this now. So the animal that has the orange glow to it though are either bear or owls. Hey well here we go. It's always goddamn owls. I was like son of a bitch.

[00:33:04] And owls famously have fingers. Oh boy. More so than a moose. Fair. A deer does have light green white or yellow eye shine. Thought that was kind of interesting.

[00:33:29] Raccoons have the bright yellow and a coyote wolf or dog is going to have like that white just a white glow or possibly you know one that's it doesn't really look like anything just looks like kind of like a glow to it.

[00:33:43] So that's why I picked a lot of those. Oh and the bobcat has a yellowish white eye shine to it.

[00:33:50] So I'm just like well even if you were just doing the eye color alone none of those animals fit the description of what anybody saw as far as I'm concerned. I mean deer don't have fingers either.

[00:34:05] I mean granted raccoons do but not like that and I got nothing although fun fact moths also have orange red glowing eyes. That's creepy. And wolf spiders have a glittery white if you shine light on them. What if this is like a baby moth man.

[00:34:26] See I knew we were going to go there if I told you that. I was like there we go. But before he went into the cocoon so he doesn't have his wings yet. To be honest that's more plausible than a pony. Strangely enough I'm not going to disagree.

[00:34:53] Yeah well when you get into cryptids one of the things you don't realize you're going to end up learning about his eye shine in different animals. I didn't think 10 years ago I'd know the difference. Right.

[00:35:03] I was like huh now I did know that alligators glow red because yeah. I've watched a lot of crocodile hunter. I just lived in North Carolina for 20 years. I did my thing. I know kangaroos have the same eye shine as humans. Get out. I didn't know that.

[00:35:27] That's cool. Yeah which can be quite surprising in the outback when you think it's Steve. It's not. It's a seven foot rule coming to kick your ass. Yes that is actually pretty dangerous. Literally. Yeah.

[00:35:42] Yeah as the videos of Roger the famous one will often demonstrate his terrifying strength. You've never seen that just Google Roger the kangaroo and watch him crush a tin bucket. Yeah that's a frightening video.

[00:35:58] So that is it as far as the like mundane explanations that don't make any sense as far as I'm concerned with this one. Is it time for weird shit now? Time for the weird shit.

[00:36:10] One thing that's always struck me about this is Bartlett was convinced that it was an earthly animal. He categorically said he didn't think it was an alien.

[00:36:19] He said I know it's of this earth but I don't know what it is which I've always found a very effinite statement from somebody who's seen something so peculiar. Did he ever say why you thought that? I think it was the way it moved.

[00:36:31] I don't know does he know how aliens move. I mean it's just one of those things. That's why I was thinking like is he an alien expert? He's like I've seen an alien before. I grew up in Kecksburg. Oh my gosh Jess.

[00:36:51] It's nearly killed by the acorn from space. Yeah I just want to say since we said that I saw a freaking meteor explode in the atmosphere last night. That shit was cool as hell. Nice. Anyway I never get to see anything explode in the atmosphere.

[00:37:07] It's the second time I've seen one now. There's just a huge freaking green explosion in the sky. I was like whoa! Yeah we had the Perseids the other week.

[00:37:19] You could see them really well about six or seven weeks ago and that was pretty good watching those come in. I think it was about 20 in about an hour which was fab. Alright so the weird shit is you could say Pukwajie.

[00:37:35] It's the area and then the Manegishi is the Kree folklore equivalent. It's a trickster race. So I want to read the description of that creature because they're described as being child size. That fits. They have a large hair or they have a large head sorry.

[00:37:55] I was like what? There's one large head. They're described as being very hairy. So is this the Manegishi but with mange? Like... Shut up Jasey.

[00:38:16] Well no but if you do look at the Native American legend it is described as a hairy creature so I don't think that's necessarily what it is. Same thing with Pukwajie they're not known to be furless or hairless.

[00:38:32] But you could play Devil's Advocate and say that if we are to believe that some of these creatures are biological in their origins then surely some of them may suffer from alopecia of some description. True true yeah.

[00:38:44] The Kree say that they have a long narrow face that don't have a nose. Oh yeah it fits like everything else except the hairy part. That's what... Their name comes from hairy. Well there's some conjecture about that but yes like that's one Ojibwa word for hairy is Mamiya.

[00:39:10] But then again it's also possibly the word for butterfly in Ojibwa. Yeah so maybe they are just miniature mothmen. Pew pie. We just go right back. We're significantly more interested now. Yeah let's go find this thing now. I will have my own baby mothman.

[00:39:31] Could be a shaved albatwitch or whatever they're called. Yeah could be an albatwitch we did a whole... We did several episodes about albatwitch now. Yeah they're one of PA's most famous encrypted... They are. What if it's an albatwitch with mange? Those little apples boy.

[00:39:50] How many times can we say mange in this episode? A lot. I ain't done yet. Did it throw an apple at you? Yeah I was gonna say you should have tried to tempt it with some apples. I got nothing. I feel like I believe them.

[00:40:07] I absolutely 100% think that they saw some weird shit and we don't know what it is. The thing about their witness statements is if you ignore the fact that they're describing a creature that is baffling none of them describe it doing anything ridiculous or unbelievable.

[00:40:32] They all describe it moving or running off or getting out there. They don't say it flew off into the sky straight up or it screamed at them or it tried to attack them or it had enormous talons. There's no exaggeration or anything that would make you think

[00:40:49] well that's just silly. If you take away the fact that they're describing a creature that nobody knows what they've seen they're very mundane. Yeah. True. I would think if it's a bunch of teenagers making up some crap for funsies it would be an alien story, you know.

[00:41:04] A ship came down and there was a beam of light or something not like I saw it off on the side of the road and it ran away. Yeah, yeah. It ran off and hugged a tree and then disappeared.

[00:41:15] It's the little things that often stick out with stories like that. I think when people don't go too far then you think well it's a very simple story other than the fact that it's a very odd creature.

[00:41:27] Yeah, it's one of the more interesting things about this cryptid is it's just walking and it walks in like a straight line too which is interesting. All the sightings kind of happen in a straight line. They're like a mile and a half from each other. Yeah, yeah.

[00:41:44] Was that straight line pointing anywhere specific? I think where was it at? I think it was all by a body of water or like... Oh yes. Something around there because there's some myths. I think that's why another reason why people think it's like a Native American creature

[00:42:00] is because it was always near the water and I think one of them is related to water. Was it the Manegishi? Yeah, the Manegishi is a trickster that usually does play tricks on people on water. There's stories about people getting their canoes tipped over, stuff like that.

[00:42:15] Not necessarily like they're trying to drown you but... They're just having a good old time. So my question that I've been thinking of from the beginning, right? These are all teenagers who are obviously close to each other. Do these kids all know each other?

[00:42:34] Dover is a small town. I would say that they probably all knew each other from school but just because you know of each other in school doesn't mean you're... Right. I'm not gonna... ...come up with a hoax that has lasted 50 years.

[00:42:48] I'm not gonna come up with an alien story with the kid that's sitting next to me in social studies. I was just like... No, that's math class. Actually, yeah. I figured the first question that's gonna come up is this is a bunch of teenagers

[00:43:04] in a small town like are they just doing this for shits and giggles? Oh, I believe that's what the police came out and said. There was a school vacation hoax. Yeah. See, there you go.

[00:43:16] But yeah, I think they knew of each other but I don't think any of them would consider them to be friends. Right. Axter and Bartlett knew each other from school but they were not close friends

[00:43:29] and they had not spoken to each other at all about their sightings but yet they both... One drew it and the other one explained it and it looked exactly like what Baxter had drawn. So, or drone, yeah. Oh boy. Drone. Drone. Drone. Drone. Yeah, because Bartlett was 17. Baxter's 15.

[00:43:53] And Abby is 15 as well. 15. Yeah. And I don't think she knew either one of them. I didn't see anything. But like, so what's the... You know, I was in high school. I didn't have friends that were below me, like in grade or age.

[00:44:10] Actually, I did, but it was a year. Yeah. One year, two years down, it's like, I don't know. You never have a chance to talk to each other half the time. Because you're in completely different classes. Yeah.

[00:44:26] And I was in a much smaller school, like, Palmerdon is not a big school at all. No. A couple hundred kids, Max, like 200, 300. So, you know... Coleman actually did say that they did not know each other well. None of them did. So... Yeah. That checks out.

[00:44:43] I know for any skeptic that would be listening to this story, that's probably going to be the first thing they thought, who's a bunch of teenagers? Yeah. They talked about it in school and made this a weekend, you know.

[00:44:54] But Coleman had actually pointed out and said that, yes, this happened on quote, a vacation week, but they actually didn't talk to each other. Whereas if they were in school, they may have had the opportunity to tell their

[00:45:06] stories to each other or at least have it go around. See? See? So, it's the opposite. They're away from each other. They're not at school this whole entire week. Yeah. It's not like this is when you could just post it on TikTok or so. Right.

[00:45:20] Post-bots this site was two hours after Bartlett's. Right. That is very close. Yeah, I don't know. And you know what, Paul? That's probably why I feel like the one thing that makes it genuine to me that

[00:45:31] they're not lying about anything is there isn't anything like super weird about it. It's like they're not trying to make this, you know, some kind of news media, you know, whatever. It's just like, hey man, I saw this weird ass thing. Yeah.

[00:45:47] It was just sitting there doing whatever. Yeah. Because if it is a tall tale, often people who tell tall tales can't stop it growing. It just gets sillier and sillier and sillier. And this has remained pretty as it was 45 years ago. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:46:06] That is the 45th anniversary this year. And plus as well, it's a small town as you guys have mentioned. You're not going to stick your neck out and say, oh, I've seen this really weird thing. These are the kind of places where, oh look, here's his weird bill.

[00:46:20] He's that guy that's sort of a weird creature the other week. Yeah. He'd be putting a target on your back. They tend to keep their cards closer to their chest when it comes to the small town people.

[00:46:31] They don't want to like talk about a lot of stuff like that too because of that. Absolutely. All right. I want to hear some stories about Bradford. Storytime. Okay. So everybody knows who Bram Stoker is. Thank you. So Bram Stoker was a manager, worked in the theatre.

[00:46:51] And he looked after the most celebrated actor of the late Victorian period, which was a gentleman called Sir Henry Irving, who to say was difficult would be an understatement. And there's a lot of Irving in Count Dracula.

[00:47:11] Stoker certainly used him as part of the template of his creation, which is quite funny. As I'm discussing this, I've just looked up and realised that Dracula is staring at me from the bookshelf. Nice.

[00:47:22] As Stoker continued to work for Irving, he wrote Dracula, but they still continued having a professional relationship. So Irving would tour the UK doing performances and enacting all around. And his final run was at the Midland Hotel, where they were performing.

[00:47:44] And he gave his last performance and he finished his speech at the end of the play, had a stroke and was carried off into the foyer of the Midland Hotel where he passed away after an hour.

[00:47:58] And so Irving's ghost now resides at the Midland Hotel in Bradford to this very moment, scaring the patrons as it's now a fully functioning hotel which has embraced its spookiness ever since. So a lot of people think that the Midlands are the most haunted location in Bradford.

[00:48:17] You've got the usual people being disturbed, knocking on doors, people claiming they see something walking up and down the stairs or around the foyer. Lots of weird things disturb the guests. So it's a very popular location like I say, it's one of those places that's

[00:48:33] embraced its haunted history and enjoys people coming to check it out. One of Bradford's other notorious haunted locations is the wonderfully named Bowling Hall or Boiling Hall as some people like to call it, which is a property that someone has lived there for nearly a thousand years now.

[00:48:54] There's always been a large property there. I think the hall itself was built in the 17th century and this is a beautiful manor house which has had a history of paranormal incidents that cover everything from poltergeists to ghosts, to strange noises, crying, a ports, people being

[00:49:18] woken in the night, people hearing footsteps. And it's also wonderfully got a smelly ghost that everybody says when they see it, it gives off a very pungent odor that makes them feel nauseous. You don't hear a lot about a stinky ghost. No, not at all.

[00:49:36] And also people have claimed to have caught photos of it. Interesting. I say the only time that I had an experience where there was any kind of smell with a ghost at all was my grandparents' house. It wasn't really the house that was haunted.

[00:49:49] It was more likely the property. They started having, I mean well after the house was built, they started having some issues. You could hear or feel someone walking behind you and you'd often smell pipe smoke, like a sweet smelling, not your normal cigarette.

[00:50:08] And so they did some research and found out that the property, well they bought it from a widow. They kind of asked about, well can you tell us anything about the property? What was going on is she claimed that it was supposed to be where her husband

[00:50:23] and her were going to build their quote dream house. But he was a fisherman off of New Jersey and then he drowned. My grandmother would always tell us that she felt like he was tied to the property somehow

[00:50:36] because this was where he wanted to be in his retirement that he never got to take. And so he just kind of would hang out at the house. And believe it or not, I smelled that as a child, that distinctive sweet odor of tobacco,

[00:50:50] not a cigarette, something that's definitely in a pipe. And you knew when he was around, I'll just say he, because maybe it was wrong, now that you get into paranormal investigations and stuff, you're like well it doesn't necessarily have to mean that that's that guy.

[00:51:05] But he was always just hanging out. That spirit was never violent. I think that's something we've lost in the modern paranormal that unfortunately everything is either extremely violent or it's a demon, which I don't understand having read about ghosts for the best part of almost 50 years.

[00:51:25] This seems to be a modern thing. So whether even the paranormal is pissed off at the way the world's going these days, I'm not really sure but there never used to be this grumpy. And I think it's also like if you see it inside,

[00:51:39] it's a demon and or poltergeist. If you see it outside, it's the wind ago or in Walker. That's just how it is. We figured it out, we pinpointed it, yeah. Oh that's it, we can all go home now. Well done. Yeah, well we're down with the podcast.

[00:51:58] This is our last episode. But I know when you emailed me, you mentioned a particular subject that I don't like to talk about unless I'm just laughing about it. I said I'd rather talk about a couple of strange hauntings here in the UK

[00:52:16] which might be something that you and your listeners will enjoy, which is these ghostly apes. Oh yes. I want to know about the ghostly apes. So we've got two very different types of hauntings here in the UK. One's in Wales and one's in Devon, I think it is,

[00:52:37] both are allegedly haunted by the ghosts of one is a Barbary ape and the other is a chimpanzee. That's a frightening ghost. A chimpanzee ghost. Well I'll get to the chimpanzee second because that's probably the oddest one.

[00:53:01] So the one in Wales is a documented fact that it was owned by a gentleman who lived at Kerou Castle, Sir Roland Reese. And Sir Roland Reese was known as not being a very nice chap.

[00:53:13] And he had a pet Barbary ape that he had bought off some merchants and kept it on a chain to essentially harass people who came to his house. Wow. Why else would you get a monkey?

[00:53:29] Yes, precisely. And it turned out that he ended up getting into a very heated argument with a local merchant called Horowitz, whose daughter had been seduced by Sir Roland's son. And so Sir Roland could be bothered with this conversation and set the ape on him

[00:53:45] and he was viciously attacked. And as the merchant managed to escape he cursed Sir Roland and said that I hope the ape kills you. And by morning the servants arrived to discover that Sir Roland had indeed had his throat ripped out by his pet Barbary ape

[00:54:06] who had absconded into the Welsh Hills surrounding the castle. And now the ape is still allegedly sighted occasionally, usually on the staircase or I think the north-western tower. Usually as a fits a ghost story on a dark and stormy night.

[00:54:25] But more often than not people don't see the ghost but they hear its horrific shrieking that causes people to awake in the middle of the night as the ape runs around the castle letting everybody know it's still there.

[00:54:40] We're going to have to add the shrieking apes to the investigation techniques. We started doing little side things of like this is what a donkey actually sounds like. It does sound like it's opening the seventh layer of hell. But it's a donkey.

[00:54:58] But it's just a donkey, we promise. I think I'd probably lose my shade if I heard a macaque which is basically what a Barbary ape is in case anybody was trying to picture it. They call it a Barbary macaque. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

[00:55:18] So if you're trying to picture what it looks like in your head, they're really loud and obnoxious. No thank you. They look pretty cute as far as monkeys go. But I just saw a picture of one with their mouth open and they got some teeth bud. Holy cow.

[00:55:34] Yes, you should never underestimate how the majority of the apes of the animal kingdom can kill you. Yeah, we're top of the food chain because we use tools because we don't have tools like built into us like other animals do.

[00:55:56] Why don't tigers need knives? They have claws and really sharp teeth. That's why. Okay, but chimpanzees use tools JC so they not only could rip your face off. You know, I'm not getting into this right now. I don't want to get into that either.

[00:56:16] Have you guys looked up what William Barlett has been up to since the sighting? He's a painter. Yeah, he's a really good painter. I kept looking up Dover Demon shit and I found like an interview he did in 2006 and then he's like, oh yeah, I do art.

[00:56:35] So are you saying that you weren't listening to the incredibly nasty story about OSABES man or your multitasking? We both know that I can barely do one thing at a time. Oh goodness. Okay.

[00:56:51] Well, you're in luck because the next monkey story is a bit more up your street. Nice. Okay. I will listen to this one. I won't look up continue looking up Dover Demon stuff. It's like the worst. I am absolutely garbage.

[00:57:06] So the other famous ghost of a chimp that we have here is at Alfampton Hall, which is the traditional seat of the Martin family who are one of those strange things that we have here that their coat of arms has a monkey on it to be odd.

[00:57:23] And also their motto is if the Martin monkey looks at you, the Martin monkey sees you. Which is quite creepy anyway. What? Oh my God. So this one they had a pet chimp that lived in their house and sadly one of the daughters was heartbroken

[00:57:46] and decided to wander off into the castle grounds, into the hall grounds rather and found an abandoned room away from everybody and hadn't noticed that the chimp allegedly, I don't know how they know this,

[00:57:59] but apparently the chimp had allegedly got a feeling that she was feeling very sad. So it started following her around. I don't know how anybody knows this bit as the ending of this story will explain.

[00:58:12] So she went off to this room and decided to take her own life and didn't realise that the chimp had followed her into the room where she'd locked the door. She took her own life and they weren't discovered for nearly a week by which time she had died

[00:58:24] and the chimp had died. From that point on people began to see the chimp now. People see this chimp and he seems rather excitable, shall we say and likes to demonstrate how excitable he is by showing people his genitals

[00:58:42] and he likes to rub them vigorously as people watch him. Well we all have our things you know. So yes, a lot of people have claimed to have seen a chimp acting rather rudely in front of them who just vanishes into thin air.

[00:59:02] I like how you told me this was being more up my alley a chimp pleasing himself. You know me so well and I appreciate it. I'm just saying I've not come to this interview cold, JC. Oh yeah, he did his research. Love it. Wow.

[00:59:30] So yeah that's one of the weirder ghosts we've got in this country anyway in my opinion anyway. I would agree with your opinion on that. Yeah, because I've got a real soft spot for animal ghosts and I just find them quite peculiar because

[00:59:45] there's just something very sweet about most of them because a lot of them are pets or things and I often wonder how many people see animal ghosts and it's only when it's a creature that appears somewhere it shouldn't that people might think well that's a bit odd.

[01:00:02] I never even thought about that and I hate it. How many cats have I seen? How many dogs have I seen roaming the streets that were ghosts? I used to have a friend of mine who lived in a block of flats and he occasionally would find it.

[01:00:15] He would see a cat in his flat and nobody knew who the cat was. Nobody ever saw it leave, nobody ever saw it arrive. It was just there and then it would just disappear and you'd just go well that's a cat and then he just started asking people

[01:00:28] and nobody knew where this cat was coming from but it was appearing in three or four flats and they were on the third floor. Cats are crazy though. Well yeah. I could kind of see a cat doing that. Well I can as well as...

[01:00:40] This is the apartment I've decided to lay in today. Deal with it. Yes, yes. We've got a cat that comes around every morning at 9am for some biscuits. Yeah, they know how to live life. It sits on my back wall staring at us

[01:00:56] and we don't know where it's called but it's big and it's fluffy so we call it fluffy. That's a good name for him. It looks like a furry triangle. Are you sure it's not a windigo though? Definitely not here. We've got some strange things in Sheffield

[01:01:14] but I don't think even windigos have made it here yet. Soon. It was probably a skin walker out on vacation to England. Yeah. Skin walker with mange is a... There's enough people claiming to see strange things here that I don't wish to give anymore airtime to. That's fair.

[01:01:34] Oh, but I'm gonna do it Paul. No comment. So I... Okay, I did promise you because I said if you shared in case you hadn't heard it yet which is the candle shop in the Poconos and we did a whole episode on kind of ghost animals

[01:01:52] of Pennsylvania which sort of led us down in a path that was a lot more dogs for some reason. Yeah. But this one was really interesting because they had done the research and found out that there was a doctor who lived on the property, William Redwood Fisher

[01:02:08] and he was a scientist. He was trying to find a cure for... I wanna say it's yellow fever. That one I remember. Yellow fever sounds right. Yeah, it's been... Oh God that was last year so I'm like, oh I feel like it was yellow fever.

[01:02:24] Almost positive it was yellow fever. And it was because his own... One of his family members had died of it so he was trying to discover the cure for it. He went to Columbia College and so a lot of this information was from the website

[01:02:40] right from the college. So I was like, oh cool, so we could corroborate all the stories and everything else and that he had monkeys that he was testing and apparently he lost some of them, they died. So it went from the original story that we found

[01:02:55] was that these monkeys were out in... The ghost monkeys mind you were out in the Poconos so you could walk around the Poconos and see, quote, ghost monkeys. But then kind of narrowed it down to it's really this basement in this candle shop

[01:03:10] which the family that bought it they turned it into this beautiful candle shop in town but they went down the basement they kept hearing scratching noises and cage rattling and screeching like a monkey. And this turns out to be on... In newspaper and I believe...

[01:03:28] Yes there was a TV show like one of our local TV stations had run it for Halloween the first time that it was kind of aired. She did go down in the basement and find a secret passage that it was kind of just boarded up

[01:03:43] and she opens the door and it led to a laboratory. Wow! And there were still cages there there was still some equipment no notes or anything like that and that's what led them to do the investigation on the house and find out who owned it before

[01:03:56] and then corroborate all that evidence that yes absolutely he was a government funded scientist he chose to work out of his home and yes it was Yellow Fever and Smallpox he was working on both and he had done these experiments and that possibly what they were hearing

[01:04:12] was ghost monkeys in the basement. So what era was this then? Was this sort of the beginning of the 20th century? Yeah it was 1890... actually I think it was 18... between somewhere between 1870s to 1891. There was a lot of scientists running about

[01:04:34] in that period who were doing strange things with monkeys because you got that Russian guy, haven't you? Ilya Ivanov who was trying to create a monkey human hybrid. Have you heard about him? That guy. Oh yeah! I'm interested for sure. Wait, was that...

[01:04:49] I thought that was for the Soviets. Yeah, yeah. He was trying to insuminate female chimps with human sperm. Oh! Yeah because they wanted an army of these hybrids to help the Soviets win wars against... Yes, anyone. Everyone! Yeah, that's fair. Yes the orangutan nation

[01:05:14] that's what they wanted to do. Wow. They wanted to take the Pacific. What was their name? I'll have a look at it. Ilya Ivanov They did it a few times. There was a few of them. I know they did it in the 50s some really weird animal experiments

[01:05:31] grafting dog heads onto other dogs so dogs have two heads and things. Then there is footage and documents to support this. It's not just one of those things you read about and there's no evidence. It's... It was a big thing at the end of that era.

[01:05:46] At the end of the 19th century, people trying to inject people to give them the elixir of eternal youth and things like that. There's a Sherlock Holmes story about that very subject. Yes. That's so weird. Oh my gosh. I'm going down a rabbit hole right now.

[01:06:08] Here we go. Well, they're also finding mummies and grinding them up and then eating them for eternal life as well. So, yum. That's great. Yeah, that seems like it's very healthy. Just in case anybody wants to know further we did it.

[01:06:29] I did a whole thing on the King Tutankhamen quote curse. Ironically, it's the anniversary of the tomb's discovery today, isn't it? Tutankhamen's tomb is discovered today. It is. Yes. Probably one of the most famous alleged curses in the supernatural history, I would imagine. For sure. Yeah.

[01:06:51] Though Kiki doesn't think it's a curse, sometimes people just die. Well, yeah, I don't particularly think there's anything to all that. Just because it's one of those where it happens over like 30 years and that seems to be people getting old. Yeah. Right.

[01:07:11] You wait long enough you're bound to find some, Miss Fortune. But what is that movie, The Men Who Stare at Goats? Yes. Where the dude walks up to another dude and he touches him on the nose and then everyone's like, oh my gosh, he just killed you.

[01:07:27] And he's like, no, he didn't. I'm still alive. No, you're going to die one day. And then it breaks the dude. And of course we're humans so of course we're going to die. But as we found out though, boys, it was not the curse of King Tut.

[01:07:44] It was actually Alistair Crowley the whole time. Always Alistair. As soon as you get into magic stuff, so ghosting poltergeist and demons indoors, skin walkers and window goes are outside and then anything magic is Crowley. These are the five things of the paranormal.

[01:08:10] Man, we're on a tangent today aren't we? If it doesn't have hair, it has mange. Well, then Crowley was bald so make that what you will. Oh, human with mange. That's fair, that's fair. Strangely enough, on Monday I nipped to the famous witchcraft

[01:08:32] bookshop in London called The Atlantis Witches where Crowley used to buy his books from. Oh, nice. Synchronicity. Yeah, it's also the birthplace of the modern pagan movement here in the UK there. Coven was based there. Lovely, really nice. A nice chat with the owner.

[01:08:48] That's on my list of two visit. Fabulous, beautiful but lovely people. Really I could have spent hundreds of pounds in there but spent enough. And left so it was. Wait, pounds of what? Well, pounds, the English currency. I know. I know you just ignored it.

[01:09:11] That's what we do too. He's listened to other episodes. The currency you should have. Mind you at the minute, it's probably better to have a dollar in your pocket than a pound but never mind. Thanks, Liz. That's Liz Truss again. We brought it back around. Full circle.

[01:09:36] Congratulations gentlemen, we did it. I mean one of the other things about your relative's old stomping ground as well Kiki is obviously the black shook giant dogs. Yes. I just that they have round here because obviously a lot of people in the US might think

[01:09:58] that they're just called black shucks or the black dog but in Yorkshire there are actually three different names for them depending on which part of Yorkshire you live in. I heard that actually. Gy trash, padfoot or bargeist. I like bargeist.

[01:10:13] It's my favourite name of the three for sure. I like Padme too but I think that's because of Harry Potter. Yeah well yeah there's quite a few that have been sort of absorbed into popular culture and that's where Rowling got that from because that's our particular one.

[01:10:32] Padfoot's more sort of North Yorkshire. Round Bradford is bargeist and they're not really sure where it comes from. There's three sort of origin stories for it. None of which make much sense because they all kind of talk about them being based in the Germanic language

[01:10:47] which Bradford doesn't really have a history of a large German immigrant population so I'm not really sure why people say that but yeah there's loads. Some are called skrikas as well and trash so there's loads. The first time I ever heard of black shuck at all

[01:11:10] was from the very first ghost story book that I ever read. I actually just talked about this a couple episodes ago for spooky season which is the ghost in the valley book and that's around ghost stories from New Hope, Pennsylvania and the surrounding area.

[01:11:29] And if I remember the story correctly the girl is walking home and she keeps seeing a big black dog walking with her like it'll just come out of nowhere and then like follow her. Her first instinct was that she was a little afraid of it

[01:11:44] and then one day she's trying to cross a road and she isn't really paying attention and the dog bolts out in front of her and basically stops her from getting hit by a car and she goes home and she tells her parents this

[01:11:58] and it turns out her grandfather was from England and he's like oh that's actually the black shuck but maybe it followed us over here kind of attitude towards it which we get that a lot here with like and I had no idea that that was an actual thing

[01:12:17] but I always thought it was just like a legend from here and then I was like oh no I'll be darned that's really cool of course I was like 10 when I'm reading that There are two distinct type of shuck stories

[01:12:27] there are either the guardian protective ones like that one or there's the ones where people are chased but they're never caught, they're just chased Having fun with them, just ah gonna get you We get that a lot in alleged dogman encounters don't ya

[01:12:42] I've yet to hear of a witness that says it cult and a lot of people seem to think that they're being toyed with don't they? Yes We had one, this place called Hawk Mountain where it's like a difference between like saying again when to go um

[01:13:00] oh there we go but the description of it definitely fits more of a dogman and I think it was two different encounters that we talked about on that particular mountain path and both instances are one of ya you feel like they're messing with you

[01:13:16] not gonna harm you in any way uh except that the one guy did have a dog with him at the time like I think it was his German Shepherd if I remember correctly I think so and yeah he felt a little uh threatened but he felt like

[01:13:30] it could also be the dog himself like his dog being protective so if the haunch is up and it sees it which I always like those stories because you've got your pet there who is clearly attempting to protect you from something that it may see before you

[01:13:47] then you see said thing and then now we're in it you know Pennsylvania's one of those strange states as well cause you've got dogman stories but you've also I mean you've got a werewolf cemetery allegedly as well in your stuff Oh yeah Oh yeah

[01:14:04] yep we're gonna uh I threatened to send J.C. there and do the thing wait is that where you're supposed to walk around yes three times and yeah yeah I'll do it I don't care I mean I'll watch him do it that's what you said last time too

[01:14:20] you're like I'm just gonna go and I'm gonna watch him I'm gonna be the one going come on just do it he's like I don't wanna do it no I'll definitely I'll do it I'll do it there will be I will have so many flashlights

[01:14:34] that like they'll be able to see me from the International Space Station but I'll do it you're gonna bring all the flashlights and I'm gonna cut all the power to them the batteries make sure you film it and send it to Chad Lewis

[01:14:53] cause he loves that kind of thing if you've got how ironic because Chad's gonna be joining us in two weeks ah fabulous yeah he's got a new winter themed collection coming out Anthony yes and that's what we're gonna talk about and I already pre-ordered it

[01:15:12] so well we'll talk a little bit about that coming out and then I was actually again see I'm just I get inspired by Paul a lot guys seriously cause um I read his book on um the lumberjack story and I was like I'm gonna go on um

[01:15:30] the lumberjack stories yeah the hide behind from your I love that one that's one of my favorites the hide behind pre-b a f yeah yeah I hate that's actually like terrifying story I don't like the hide behind yeah it's it's gonna be an interesting

[01:15:54] collection this new one of Chad's cause and I don't know the illustrations for it as well oh that's awesome I actually didn't catch that yeah she did a couple in the lumberjack book I love those another sickingly talented multi-talented person in the paranormal Morgan's amazing she's fab

[01:16:14] yes and you've had her on your show so I highly suggest well I mean I highly suggest watching watching your show yeah sure listening to your show anyway but yeah Morgan's been on there Chad's been on too and I love every time he's been on has been

[01:16:26] hysterically funny and very informative so yeah Chad's a great guy so getting back real quick to the Hans Graf cemetery not even buried there he's interred somewhere else I love that like so you the cemetery is named after you and you decided to be buried somewhere else

[01:16:48] he's very humble okay wow that'd just be weird if he was buried all the other ghosts would think that he's special so he just decided to go somewhere else but it's a very old cemetery and it's one that you can visit it but you have to be

[01:17:06] kind of aware that there's people's houses around it too so they just ask you to be like be kind don't go out there and be dumb because some people do that if you ever go to a cemetery be kind of respect right but there's only 31 headstones there

[01:17:24] and the oldest one is 1797 wow it's a very old family cemetery that doesn't have the dude buried in it I do like a good I mean probably because I grew up I lived in a converted vicarage across the road from a cemetery so

[01:17:40] I've always found them deeply fascinating places I like to if I go anywhere I always have to and there's one in close proximity because I can just walk into him here in the UK apart from a few notorious ones like Highgate Cemetery with the vampire yeah

[01:18:00] yes once I get mine started maybe you'll have to come visit that's actually not a threat no like legitimately looking to start a business in doing cemetery work guaranteed money like taxes death is one of the only guarantees in life sadly

[01:18:22] yeah that was quite funny because when I was in London I was watching Telly Sunday night and they had a documentary about the whole Highgate vampire cemetery Kefuffal which is a crazy story if you don't know much about it I recommend

[01:18:34] diving into it and then you'll just shake your head and think Jesus Christ the hell was going on there wizards fighting in the streets what? I was going down all these rabbit holes while I'm up tonight looking up Russian scientists and British vampires and wizards

[01:18:52] all I'll say to you is the reverence your Manchester isn't a reverend so take everything else he says with a very large pinch of salt I'm just gonna I'm just gonna ask you one question Bigfoot in the UK yes or no no that's it anyway so alright

[01:19:14] asked and answered I have a follow up question no there's no follow up what is your favorite cryptid oh that's actually a decent question ooh and I would have to say I absolutely love the Yahweh ah you have a great episode about the Yahweh yeah I've done it

[01:19:46] I've done three on the Yahweh and kind of touched on it when I spoke with Tony Healy as well but yeah I did a recent one with Yahweh Dan done three with him and one with, oh what was he called a chap called Nick

[01:19:58] one of my early episodes but the one with Yahweh Dan I think was about 165 episode 165 because they've just done a brilliant new film called Track which is a documentary about them going out into the Blue Mountains which is a real Yahweh hotspot down there

[01:20:10] so yeah I love the stories of the Yahweh because Ozzie's a very salt with the earth people and if a big butch trucker tells you that they've seen an 8 foot creature run across the road in front of him I tend to think, mmm they probably have

[01:20:22] Yahweh's not one you hear a lot no it's not I love that episode with Yahweh Dan yeah I was fun great guy and they've got a new they're about to release their follow up to Track so keep your eye out that should be out this side of Christmas

[01:20:36] I hope oh sweet alright we are going to take our break for our featured music today which comes from, this is going to be interesting guys because alright so it's Fleischkrieg which is technically a German band but they are based here in Los Angeles so not exactly local

[01:20:56] close enough but listen the song is called Owl Light I thought it was appropriate hahahahahah it's also really freaking cool so if you're into German industrial have a listen and when we come back we will talk to Paul about mysteries and monsters and that's about it really

[01:21:16] because I'm not going to talk about us you guys hear about us all the time

[01:21:52] I'm not sure why is our reconiving worried what to do the light nothing to see outside the roads have gone away by sight a steel cage a light a dark a fire a heart to open the radio a light a light welcome back

[01:22:40] the keys are not fight and just go for it we almost did it in unison that's a problem stereo right cut that into mono and have one ear, one in the other some weird ASMR going on there anyway the boys are laughing at that

[01:23:04] come on Jason get us out of the go so you'll go do that yep I feel like she says things to get me in cord to go into the gutter it's like she's poking a bear she knows what she's doing but does the bear have mange

[01:23:24] it caught off an owl this has been like three hours of tangent and very with some stories in between welcome to my normal world how can you explain everything away as it's an animal with mange like just through the cracks of our rant

[01:23:50] we do have an episode here I think it's important to be skeptical about stuff but when you're I just can't understand that it's more plausible to me that it is an alien being and it is a baby albino moose with mange in massachusetts

[01:24:12] I mean if it was in Ontario that we had different story probably but I mean then you get fingers right I think you should always be skeptical about anything however just because you're skeptical doesn't mean that any old nonsense is a plausible explanation of it true

[01:24:34] yeah it's the same thing the other way skeptics shouldn't accept just the first answer because it's the first answer you still see it all the time it's like people talk stories about people dropping great white sharks into lakes around the US

[01:24:48] and you point out to them that's biologically impossible and the shark would die and then you point out that maybe could have been a bull shark because they can actually survive in fresh water and then they go oh no it was a great white

[01:25:00] and you say well that's nonsense then it's not true we can't be true like 100% I've given you a way out and you've still stuck to the nonsense so good luck with that because you've got the incident that Jaws is based on that's in the New England area

[01:25:14] isn't it yes and they were two bull sharks that was a bull shark that came up a river and killed those teenagers that was actually New Jersey yeah Jersey will say that they're not part of New England well it's named after a part of the UK exactly

[01:25:32] you and your Jersey conspiracy that's a whole thing basically we live like 30 minutes from New Jersey and I refuse to acknowledge it's existed sorry I once witnessed somebody have an argument that Australia was in Europe and after about an hour

[01:25:52] they realised that they would argue in about Austria Austria I was like they don't even speak English in Austria they speak German and he was going about Australians and I was like well they speak English and then his point was why do they

[01:26:08] speak English if they don't live in Europe I said where's France what what does that even mean exactly I was very confused you and me both oh my god but believe it or not that same argument was made by someone who my sister worked with

[01:26:32] she was insistent that she found out that her relatives were actually Australian and she went on forever and ever and ever until finally she started talking about food and my sister was like you're not Australian you're Austrian schnitzels no they don't need schnitzel

[01:26:48] in Perth what are you talking about I'm less it's a German restaurant the Perth delicacy schnitzel hold on let me text my friend who lives in Perth I swear to god I'll be like you guys eat schnitzel we love it over here another schnitzel on the balbank

[01:27:14] I'm gonna send that audio clip to my friend he's gonna die I'm gonna pass out dude we were doing an Australia like kind of episode thing so I texted him and I was like hey Dan I'm like can you go visit this place like how far away

[01:27:32] is this hotel from where you live I'm just because I had I didn't google it 3000 miles knowing Australia dude yeah he was like um I'd go but it would take me 5 and a half hours to drive one way yeah I realized that

[01:27:50] after I texted you and then I googled it and was like yeah no he can't he can't go visit that for us a lot of people do forget just how bloody big Australia is it's massive yeah huge there's a joke there but I'm not gonna say anything

[01:28:08] anyway so Paul where can we find your amazing talent well thank you very much and thank you so much for a wonderful couple of hours of random tangents that I've fully embraced and gone along with so thank you very much for going up with me

[01:28:24] thank you for coming on I really appreciate it yes my pleasure thank you so much so you can find mysteries and monsters across all podcast platforms and across all social media networks so just look for mysteries and monsters and you will find all 210 episodes so far it's impressive

[01:28:42] we aren't at 100 yet but we're getting there baby so close not everybody's a glutton for punishment like me even Covid couldn't get me off I've had I've had a Victorian disease and still managed to do it when I got Quincy I've had Covid frozen shoulder still not Mr.

[01:29:02] weak so no excuses out there losers Covid brought me into the game true if you listen strangely as you were mentioned about Anna earlier if you listen to I think it was her last appearance no it wasn't her last appearance the appearance before last if you listen

[01:29:18] to my intro you will hear me like this week on mysteries and monsters because that had to do the intro for it and I was five days into Covid so I'd only just been able to start talking properly again sounds like I'm a troll or something so yeah

[01:29:34] that's why you should always have back up episodes recorded because you never know what's about to bite you on the backside which is what happened when I when I did my first interview with Morgan Daimler and then three days later I was in hospital with Quincy oh gosh

[01:29:50] which is a feeling and that strangely enough they gave me such powerful painkillers that some fairies came to visit me at five o'clock before I passed out in conscious smiling that's what fairies do you know yes I think they gave me the magic to be honest

[01:30:08] came to check on me that was a fun night that and you also are most of our listeners probably know by now that you're also one half of the ghost story guys yes yeah almost two years now I know that's crazy

[01:30:24] I know so yeah do that as well with Brian and obviously help him as pull all kinds of crazy stories together we get some lovely correspondence from listeners and things I really do enjoy that it lets me lighten up and and I don't

[01:30:40] have to sort of beat myself up to do research I can just kind of dive into the scripts and stuff so Brenda's all the heavy lifting on that bit so it's great fun and as you may have gathered today the show may last an hour and a half

[01:30:54] but usually we talk for four hours so yeah dude I think when I started on the show Ben was usually doing our long episodes and now we tend to be nearer too because we just disappear down many a rabbit hole and tangent so it's great fun

[01:31:14] and obviously it's been a wonderful relationship Ben's been very supportive since I started podcasting and helped me out a lot and obviously deeply humbled to have written the four word for his new book the re-release and updated version of a strange little place

[01:31:26] it's on its way to me right now so yeah it was very humbled to be asked to do that so that was rather nice and then I've had several other things in the pipeline so Ben offered a column in a paranormal publication and we'll see

[01:31:42] what happens with that as well and my first live invitation as well next year I've been asked to speak at a paranormal conference here in the UK for my first one as well so yeah it's a very nice end to the year so that's for 2023 September 2023

[01:32:00] so I'm just going to wait until I get invited to a Bigfoot conference hahahahha what do you mean ah yeah we have a Bigfoot I am going to do it I am going to make you come to Albert Witch Day Albert Witch Day at least

[01:32:18] oh there's so many things I'm insanely I often think I was born in the wrong country these days because where I live and my obsession with American cryptids as well so I've got no excuse because I've got family not far from you guys over the border in London

[01:32:36] in Canada so it's all pretty close really and I've got invitations to go Bigfooting the Pacific Northwest and down in Texas and Florida and stuff so I'm going to have to come back to the States because I've not been for nearly 20 years now

[01:32:54] yeah you know we got you covered if you come down to Philly so I will definitely come I've got to try a proper cheesesteak right yes not not at Pat and Geno's yeah don't go to those tourists tourists we'll get you a real cheesesteak

[01:33:10] yeah we'll steer you in the right direction right yeah I'll do rookie steps cheesesteak but the best is when you have like a hot pretzel like kind of in your wrap around your finger in one hand and then you got the cheesesteak in the other

[01:33:26] and you're on the art the other steps then yeah you're golden yeah take a photo boom say I'm one of those weird English people that loves pretzels see I love a good hot pretzel mmm I'm good I love me a pretzel so who's coming up

[01:33:44] so my next episode will be with the author Carol Scott talking about the cryptids of Oceana which is a subject I've not really touched on outside of Australia so I'm looking forward to that and then the following week Lyle Blackburn is returning to talk about his latest

[01:34:00] book Bigfoot in Texas oh nice Lyle's awesome alright so taking us out today again is going to be Fleischkrieg with their song Owl Light and you can find all their music on Bandcamp and they're on Spotify and as always stay spooky and don't die but if you do

[01:34:18] contact us and I would recommend scrolling a message in owl blood on a naked cryptid you can't explain nobody likes to be afraid on the road after savers all our lives are way behind the wheel our fate so insane you're the right castle of light

[01:35:13] now on to feel shine party but if I was away I'd have to open the radio no money tonight nobody likes to be afraid I would just feel your life tonight oh I decide makes a believer but if I was away I'd have to open the radio

[01:36:19] no money nobody likes to be afraid no money tonight but if I was away I would just feel your life tonight nobody likes to be afraid I would just feel your life tonight nobody likes to be afraid I would just

[01:37:21] If you look at the very bottom of the episode description, you will see a link to make it easy. Indie Drop-In also has many other shows you might like. Just go to IndieDrop-In dot com. See you next week!