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00:01:37
Hey, everybody. This is Nick Terry, guest hosting My Favorite Murder, which is very exciting.
00:01:44
If you don't know who I am, I'm the creator of MFM Animated. If you don't know what that is, you should go to Exactly Right Media's YouTube channel and check it out.
00:01:53
I've been doing these animations officially in an official capacity for MFM just for a couple months now
00:02:01
But I've been doing them overall for about three years Basically since I started listening to the podcast, which I've been a big fan of since that time
00:02:10
I'm super excited to be here, so let's get into it the first story we're going to hear is from georgia it's from episode 186
00:02:35
sprankers and it's all about stories of people buried alive i picked this one because i don't
00:02:42
know. This is one of those fears that I think we all have. There's actually a part during this
00:02:47
story where Karen says something like, taphophobia is the fear of being buried alive, but I would
00:02:53
call it just being a human being. And I agree with that. I don't consider myself claustrophobic,
00:02:58
but sometimes I just think about what it would be like to wake up buried in a coffin and I get
00:03:03
panicky. So let's get panicky together and hear Georgia talk about the weird Victorian panic that
00:03:12
that led to safety coffins and all the weird nonsense around that. Enjoy. But wait.
00:03:19
But wait, there's more? Here's the weird thing. What? You did the same story? No.
00:03:25
I'm doing stories of people being accidentally buried alive. No, you're not. Swear to fucking God.
00:03:33
What? How crazy is it? That's why I was so freaked out. We should have saved this for Halloween.
00:03:38
do you think after a while we have the same brain like we these won't be this is just how it's going
00:03:47
to be where it's like well then i also well i really love that we open this up a little this
00:03:51
new after the break to like weird tales and and stuff that's outside the realm of just
00:03:56
straight-up murder this is literally buried alive in a grave how fucking great i love it
00:04:02
okay so sorry this whole time you've just been sitting over there with your little sit that's
00:04:06
Oh, you had that smile on your face. I was like, this is unbelievable. Okay. I specifically got this when I was just searching for weird shit and found a Ranker article called Scary Stories of People Who Are Buried Alive.
00:04:20
I was like, great, I'm doing this. God bless you, Ranker. Also got a story from Reuters about a dead man who wakes up under the autopsy knife.
00:04:28
Spoiler alert. Autopsy. Okay. Yeah. No, we'll get there. We'll get there. History Collection, Amusing Planet, PopSci.com, AllThat'sInteresting.com, Wikipedia, of course.
00:04:40
Of course. So Wikipedia and then research was from Lily Bellinghausen, who's been helping me with research.
00:04:46
God bless. Okay. Amen. A fucking man. All right. So, Karen. Yes. Cases of being buried alive have been recorded as far back as the 14th century.
00:04:56
Jesus. And I don't think they recorded shit before that. Yeah, there was no ability to record.
00:05:01
No. So ink got invented right around that. They had a what is the thing we recorded on the beginning of this podcast when we first
00:05:07
started? They didn't have zooms before the 1400s. So it wasn't recorded. In 1308.
00:05:13
It took too long to chisel it into a big piece of stone. Right. Like forget it. And then you got to have the headphones like so you look like Stephen and they have the
00:05:20
mustache and that takes forever. So in 1308, the vault of Franciscan philosopher John Dunn's SCOTUS is open and his body is
00:05:28
reportedly found outside of his coffin with bloodied hands no a lot of bloodied hands and
00:05:34
nails in this story i just want to let everyone know of all the things i hate and there are many
00:05:38
things i hate about being buried alive the smallness of a waking up in a casket the smallness
00:05:45
of the space that you then have to suffer in yeah i think that's the fear that everyone has like when
00:05:50
i was reading through this and you'll hear like the like panic that everyone has about the idea
00:05:54
of being buried alive I think has a lot to do with the idea that you fucking stuck once you awake Stuck in a tiny place and that scratching your way out is pretty much your only hope Yeah Horrifying
00:06:05
Here we go. Great. Happy Halloween, everybody. Well, this story is considered a myth.
00:06:11
The fear of being buried alive became a pandemic during the Victorian era. Yes. Those fucking crazy Victorians.
00:06:17
Everything great and the creepiest of all creepy things happened during then. Fogs that would come upon the city and...
00:06:24
Bogs and bustles. And pandemics. Pandemics and lots of child death. Right. Listen to this podcast will kill you for more information.
00:06:33
Yes. In the 18th and 19th centuries, there was widespread bacterial infections and cholera outbreaks.
00:06:39
And in addition to the popular literature like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Edgar Allan Poe's 1844 premature burial, there's also reports from doctors about people supposedly coming back from the dead.
00:06:50
But tapophobia, I think, is the fear of being buried alive. And that spreads across Europe and the U.S. and leads to the invention.
00:06:59
And I've always been obsessed with this idea. Safety coffins. Love it. Okay. Safety coffins or security coffins are a coffin fitted with a mechanism to prevent premature burial or allow the occupant to signal that they have been buried alive.
00:07:12
A large number of designs for safety coffins were patented during the 18th and 19th centuries.
00:07:18
And variations on the idea are still available today. Is that true? I guess that's what Lily said it is.
00:07:24
And I believe her. Believe Lily. You know, what's funny is that tapophobia is the name for the fear of being buried alive.
00:07:29
I would call it being a human being. Like, yeah, it's not claustrophobia. It's not tapophobia.
00:07:36
It's just if you are alive now, you have that fear. You're like, guess what would suck?
00:07:41
Peeing my pants. being buried alive and then what's another one? Choking. Biting into an old sandwich?
00:07:49
Ew, yeah, exactly. Eating a salad and finding a cockroach at the bottom of it? Ugh, at the bottom once you're
00:07:55
all done? A live cockroach? A live cockroach, you ate the, first of all, who eats the entire
00:07:59
salad? Usually you only get about two thirds of the way down. Are you okay? This time you finished your salad and writers
00:08:05
are like, ooh, one last crouton. No, no it isn't. Oh god, I'm gonna barf. Okay. The most popular designs use some type of device for communication to the outside world, like a cord attached to a bell that the buried person could just ring in case they woke up.
00:08:24
That idea. I think you talked about this in another live show one time. Yes. I get to what I talked about.
00:08:31
Oh, okay. No, no, no. Keep talking. But I just want to say that it's like a person who makes sets and props for a horrible play.
00:08:40
Yeah. Was like, what would be the creepiest thing this coffin could do? Ring. It's so awful.
00:08:49
You're the grave digger and you're standing in the cemetery in the middle of early morning.
00:08:54
Whistling. What's the creepiest thing you could hear? How about a bell? Ding, ding, ding, ding.
00:08:59
Also, how do those bells not go off when just the wind? Oh, sorry, sorry. No, no, no.
00:09:03
You're right. And in addition to that, shit, I should have let you finish. No, no, no.
00:09:09
Okay, so. I should let you actually tell your story instead of guessing. That's not this podcast.
00:09:14
Okay, you're right. Remember, we are buried alive in a grave. That's true. Other variations of the bell include flags and pyrotechnics.
00:09:22
What? I don't know. That's all Lily fucking told me. And I was like, this could be a whole episode of its own.
00:09:27
You wake up in your coffin and a matey goes off above four. And then a firework show.
00:09:33
And then the gravedigger there is like, ooh, ah, and then walks away. It doesn't help you.
00:09:38
Some burial designs include ladders, escape hatches, and even feeding tubes. But most of them lacked a method to provide air.
00:09:47
Remember air? Remember air? Also, yeah, you're buried alive. You don't want a snack.
00:09:56
No. Don't worry about the feeding tube. Yeah, you don't want to live longer. Send me down an apple, would you?
00:10:03
No. Or just a mush apple. Okay. Applesauce. Is that what you mean? Wait, they invented a thing?
00:10:10
Yes. That's just a mushed apple? You don't just have to mush your apples anymore.
00:10:13
Wait, what? Yeah. The time and expense I have been going to. There's a family, name a mot, and they figured out how to mush up your favorite apples.
00:10:21
God bless them. Amen. Amen. In 1791, Robert Robinson, I doubt that, a man from Manchester, creates the first safety coffin prototype.
00:10:32
He was laid to rest in a mausoleum fitted with a special door that could be opened from the outside by the watchman on duty.
00:10:38
So inside would be his coffin and there'd be a removable glass panel. And he instructed his family to periodically check on the glass inserted in the coffin basically to see if he was breathing, if there was condensation.
00:10:50
Sure, Dad. We will. No, Dad will be there every day. Oh, my God. Can you imagine what his living life was like?
00:10:56
It was very stressful for all the family. Such a pain in the ass. Am I dead? Did I die?
00:11:01
No, you're sitting here at dinner. It's fine. Yes, we can. Can you stop breathing in my face?
00:11:07
You were breathing. Yes, you were breathing. The first true recorded safety coffin was made on the orders of Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick before his death in 1792.
00:11:16
He had a window installed to allow light in, an air tube that provided the supply of fresh air.
00:11:23
And instead of having the lid nailed down, he had a lock fitted. And in a pocket of his shroud, when he was buried in, he had the keys for them.
00:11:32
Perfect. You got it. Figured it out. And a really cute keychain. Yeah. With like dolphin magic.
00:11:38
Yeah. That said, here you go. Keep JK living. And when you turn it this way, the dolphin has a bathing suit on.
00:11:44
When you're in it that way, the dolphin's bathing suit comes off. The dolphin has a humongous erect penis.
00:11:49
And it attacks you because dolphins are rapists. Does the penis have a bathing suit on it?
00:11:55
And its bathing suit after a bathing suit falls off The pen is very thick It complicated It was actually the pen that killed him It crushed him to death
00:12:05
He invented it. It crushed him. Okay. So a German priest named P.J. Pessler suggested in 1798 that all coffins have a tube inserted
00:12:15
so that a cord could run to the church bells. And if an individual had... What's that you say?
00:12:22
An individual. Had been buried. I've only had one can of wine, I swear to God. Why are there two sitting there?
00:12:28
Because I'm drinking the other one. It just hasn't been drank yet. Girl. Girl, I've been my head.
00:12:35
Check my wine. Okay. They could draw attention to themselves by ringing the bell inside.
00:12:42
They'd be like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You're ringing the church bells now.
00:12:45
You want the whole town to come. I guess so. Yeah. So this led to signaling systems that came around.
00:12:51
But unfortunately, the coffins. Oh, wait. So then his bro, a colleague of his, was like, well, we should put trumpet-like tubes instead.
00:12:59
So a trumpet instead of bells. Yes. Which is more annoying. And more haunting. Each day the local priest...
00:13:05
I'm alive. Still alive. Each day the local priest could check the state of... Oh, okay, wait.
00:13:12
Okay. The other thing is that they would have a small trumpet-like tube attached.
00:13:16
And the point of that is not so you can blow your fucking trumpet when you realize you've
00:13:20
been buried alive. Okay. But so that local priest would go to the cemetery and smell each of the trumpet funnels and make sure that there was decomposition happening.
00:13:33
That the smell of the odors emanating from the tube would be that of decomp, not of a live person just shitting their pants or whatever.
00:13:40
The priests are like, have we not given up enough by never marrying, taking a vow of poverty?
00:13:46
I wrote, above my pay grade. They don't get paid, though, do they? No. Well, I don't know.
00:13:52
They get paid by going straight to heaven. That's right. First in line, bitches.
00:13:57
Unless. Uh-oh. It's you or me. Dr. Adolf Gutzmuth was buried alive several times to demonstrate a safety coffin of his design.
00:14:08
And in 1822, he stayed underground for several hours and ate a whole meal. What?
00:14:12
Which I'm like, whatever. What's this eating in the coffin situation? Delivered to him through the coffin's feeding tube.
00:14:18
No. You people are fools. Get up and go to a restaurant. It's a really lovely experience.
00:14:23
So nice. In 1829, Dr. Johann Gottfried Taburger created a more elaborate bell signaling system.
00:14:33
So bells housed above ground connected to strings attached to the body's head, head, only one, hands and feet.
00:14:41
And it prevented rainwater from going into the tube, blah, blah, blah. if the bell rang, the cemetery watchman would insert a tube into the coffin and pump air in
00:14:51
using bellows until the casket could be dug up so they'd have fresh air. That's the most, I like that one the best so far.
00:14:57
Here's the problem. And this is the anecdote I must have fucking told because it's one of my absolute favorites
00:15:01
that I must have read it as a child and loved so much. Well, when a corpse is decomposing and swelling and losing mass and all this shit, everything
00:15:13
moves. And so the bells would start going off. Oh, that's right. Nope. It's not someone alive.
00:15:19
And so like all the bells going off at once. Can you imagine? The first time that happened, whoever was nearby died of a heart attack.
00:15:26
There's no way they didn't. That's right. This is insanity. Uh-huh. So they would all activate the bell system, which led to false positives.
00:15:34
The worst false positive in the world. Well. I don't know. I can think of a couple.
00:15:40
Not really. Franz Vester's 1868 burial case overcame this problem by adding a tube through which the corpse the face of the corpse could be viewed.
00:15:49
Oh, I remember that one. Really? Yeah. If the buried person woke up, they could ring the bell like they wanted to.
00:15:55
And then the watchman could check to see if the person had actually returned to life or was just movement of the corpse.
00:16:00
So that was basically the the 2.0 version. Once they realized the bells were ringing, then they're like, OK, well, then go look at it.
00:16:07
Yeah. And enough priests had quit because they're like, I'm not sniffing these fucking tubes anymore.
00:16:10
Not going to smell those dead bodies anymore. Because they were always smelling a dead body.
00:16:15
Yeah. There was no time they weren't. Right. Because it's still going to pass. In 1995, a modern safety coffin was patented by Fabrizio Caselli.
00:16:29
His design included an emergency alarm, intercom system, a flashlight, a breathing apparatus,
00:16:35
and both a heart monitor and stimulator. A corkscrew and a nail file. Despite the fear of burial while still alive, there's no documented cases of anybody being saved by a safety coffin.
00:16:49
Oh, man. What a great life lesson. They just should keep inventing them. They've gotten better and better.
00:16:54
I mean, it's like I have this fear. And instead of dealing with the fear that I have, I'm going to continually invent things to make me feel like anything can be done if a bad thing happens.
00:17:06
Yeah. Or maybe like add one more check to the at the morgue to just double check that the person's dead.
00:17:12
How about you stab him right in one of the air? Would that wake you up? That would wake you right up.
00:17:18
A poke in the ear, maybe? Ow. With a feather? A tickle. How about smelling salts? I guess it doesn't have to be violent.
00:17:25
A tickle. A tickle. I'd wake up. Okay. But the practice of modern day embalming has, for the most part, eliminated the fear of premature burial.
00:17:35
burial. That's pretty much gonna solve it. Thanks. Because no one has ever survived that process
00:17:41
once completed. Oh, I wonder how many people got embalmed when they were still alive.
00:17:44
Well, I still have my spleen. Yeah. Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring. That's all I need.
00:17:49
It's been thought that phrases like saved by the bell, dead ringer, and graveyard shift come
00:17:55
from the use of safety coftains Why do I keep doing that Coftains Uh Like you singing a caftan Or attic an attic Yeah In the Victorian era but these have been dispelled as an urban myth
00:18:07
attributed to a linguistic email hoax that was said that saved by the bell is actually from boxing.
00:18:16
So shut up. But that's interesting because it really does apply. But it does sound like Dead Ringer could be from that.
00:18:23
Yeah. Yeah. I would love to be on any kind of a hoax email chain involving linguists.
00:18:29
Remember all those email chains that used to be a thing? Send this to five people or you're going to get smushed.
00:18:36
Also, there was one where it was like, fill out this thing. Yeah. Did you ever do that one where it was like you basically you get the name of a person, you fill out all these things about them and then send it to them and then they do it for somebody else?
00:18:47
No. We did it in our family. It was I can't really explain that process logically.
00:18:52
But basically, I got one, like, all my cousins and all these people did it. And then it came around and my dad sent me mine.
00:19:01
And then, and the one thing he was like, it was something like, you had to say like nice things about these people and what they're like and whatever.
00:19:07
And like, I think he said my best attribute. And he said smart. He just put smart.
00:19:13
And I was like. Does he hate you? He does a lot. But it was really exciting because all my life he'd always been like, hey, easy, smart ass.
00:19:21
It was always kind of like a negative. And suddenly I was like, you liked it this whole time.
00:19:26
You were egging me on. He was like not trying to get you to stop. That's right. That's sweet.
00:19:31
Do you still have it? The email? I bet you could find it. I printed it up. I put it in a frame.
00:19:39
Okay. Okay. So here's some cases of people being buried alive. Ready? I am. In November 1656.
00:19:47
Oh, wait. So it really did happen. It's just that they weren't saved by those coffins.
00:19:50
Oh, yeah. Spoiler alert. But these are also like they didn't these people weren't buried in these coffins either.
00:19:56
But these are people who were. You'll find out. OK, here we go. In November 1656, Alice Davies is married to William Blunder of the Basking of Baxingstoke.
00:20:06
And then from a well established local family. They're like they're like nobles and shit like that.
00:20:11
Sure. What country does it say? England, probably. Yes, probably. OK. William Blunder was a malt maker and his wife, quote, had accustomed herself to many times to drink brandy.
00:20:23
So she drank a lot. She had accustomed herself to it. Yeah, me too. One evening she drank a large quantity of poppy water and fell into a deep sleep that no one could wake her from.
00:20:34
Opium. Oh, right. Right? Oh, yeah. Just like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. uh it was concluded that she had died and william being the amazing sweet wonderful husband he is
00:20:44
was like hey i have to go to london really quick keep her body there i swear i'll come right back
00:20:49
for the funeral what was he doing i don't know but it was really important i guess um but her
00:20:55
her family was like fuck that shit it's hot out we're not leaving her body out to rot like like
00:21:01
i got tickets to go see big ben i'm stoked i'm gonna go see the book of mormon and i can't or
00:21:08
The new Fleabag screen live show. So they were like, fuck that shit. We're going to bury her.
00:21:15
So then a few days after the burial, a few of some boys who had been playing nearby reported hearing a voice from the grave.
00:21:23
They didn't think it was real, but the grave was open and her body was found. It looked like she was beaten, but in actuality, it was injuries inflicted by herself on her body in her confinement.
00:21:35
Yeah. Yeah. So so being unable to detect any continuing signs of life, those present at the scene, they put Alice back in the grave overnight and the coroner some of the next day.
00:21:47
And they had found that she tore off a great part of her winding sheet, scratched herself in several places, beaten her mouth so long it was filled with blood.
00:21:57
And she was now definitely dead. Sorry. Are you saying she was buried alive twice?
00:22:03
The second time she was dead. great that's a huge relief to me i think and hope i think they would have left her out just to make
00:22:10
sure you know you you would hope that they would make double sure but you know most of the stories
00:22:14
on the show don't go that well yeah exactly um no one's convicted or like gets in trouble for this
00:22:21
although the town had a considerable fine that they had to pay because of this the whole town
00:22:26
i guess the whole town we're all going down together yeah like this sucks on all of our
00:22:30
parts. Yeah. So in 1880, here's another one, 1884, Kentucky's Hickman Currier reported that a young
00:22:37
woman by the name of Anna Hochwalt is dressing for her brother's wedding. She sits down to rest
00:22:42
in the kitchen, as we all do. And then someone checks on her and she's just laying there with
00:22:48
her head against the wall and appears lifeless. Medical aid arrives and the doctor thought she
00:22:54
was dead. He couldn't revive her. And she had a nervous nature. And the fact that she suffered
00:22:59
from heart palpitations was the cause of death, they said. But Anna's friends were like, this doesn't seem fucking real.
00:23:06
And her ears look pink still, her friend said. So they figured blood was still flowing through them.
00:23:12
Her friends must have just gotten drunk at the fucking funeral, though, because they didn't
00:23:16
tell her family about this and their assumption until after she's buried. Great friends.
00:23:21
No. Parents. You know what I was thinking? Remember when her ears were pink? I just think she's still alive.
00:23:27
her parents are like what the fuck they dig her back up and they find Anna's body she's lying on
00:23:34
her side her fingers are not almost to the bone yeah and her hair is torn out by the handful of
00:23:41
course I mean yeah all bets are off no you wake up in that situation you're like can I just kill me
00:23:49
yeah yeah in 1889 a woman named Octavia Smith married a wealthy Kentuckian named James Hatcher
00:23:56
They had a son named Jacob at the informatologist. The mortality rate was so high back then that Jacob died in infancy.
00:24:05
And Octavia goes into a deep depression. She's bedridden, and she shows signs of a mysterious illness.
00:24:11
And eventually, she enters a coma-like state, and no one can wake her up. She's pronounced dead in May of 1891, just four months after her infant son died.
00:24:22
It was super hot that year, so Octavia's buried quickly, and embalming wasn't a common practice yet.
00:24:27
But a few days later, other people in the town began falling into a similar coma-like state that she had with shallow breathing patterns.
00:24:36
And they wake up a few days later, though. They discover it is an illness caused by the bite of the set sea fly.
00:24:42
Tee-t-see. Thank you. Tee-t-see fly. Figuring that she had been buried alive, her husband James panics, has her exhumed.
00:24:50
And she had been buried alive. Oh. But James was too late. Oh, no. Her coffin was airtight.
00:24:58
He found the coffin lining had been shredded and Octavia's fingernails were bloody.
00:25:02
Yes. Yes. So many bloody fingernails. And her face was frozen in a shriek of terror.
00:25:09
Yes. I believe that. James is traumatized as fuck. I mean. He reburies his wife, erects a lifelike monument of her that sits in the cemetery that she's still buried in.
00:25:20
I know. Ooh. Does it say where? I think Kentucky was where they're from. Kentucky. Yeah. I mean, there's a
00:25:28
mausoleum you want to go visit. Oh my god. At midnight on Halloween. No. Should we do it? Let's record. Let's record on Halloween
00:25:34
from a fucking cemetery. Inside a mausoleum. Why no? As many people as can fit. So it'll be like
00:25:39
an 11 person live show. And we'll all be screaming at the top of our lungs the entire time. What was that?
00:25:46
Okay. Eleanor Markham is an American woman who became one of the most prominent cases of
00:25:51
averted premature burial in the 19th century. According to news reports, 22-year-old Markham, Eleanor Markham, was pronounced dead in Sprankers, New York.
00:26:04
Which is like, what? How have I not known about that? You know what I would love?
00:26:09
If Lily misspelled Yonkers. Sprankers. If Sprankers is real, we're doing an only Sprankers hometown mini episode next week.
00:26:23
Sprankers. Stephen do you mind Wikipedia he's already doing it when George of course he is
00:26:29
when George is done we can do a quick update on what Sprankers is all about oh my god
00:26:34
it's real oh Lily you're off the hook yeah Sprankers is a hamlet in the town of Root Montgomery
00:26:40
New York wow Sprankers notable people George A. Mitchell founder of Cadillac oh is from Sprankers
00:26:49
from Sprankers fuck and that's why every Cadillac has the trademarked Sprankers handle on the driver's address.
00:26:58
Please send us Sprankers hometown and put in the subject line Sprankers hometown.
00:27:02
Please write Sprankers bitch in the subject line. Please let us keep saying the word Sprankers.
00:27:07
It's our favorite word. Wow. Okay. This is July 8th, 1894. How am I 50 and I've never heard the town name of Sprankers, New York?
00:27:19
They're fiercely private. I'm so tired of people keeping things from me. It does feel like people are always keeping shit from us.
00:27:28
It feels like people are talking behind our back about Sprankers. Like everyone knows about us.
00:27:33
They refuse to tell us. Should we go to Sprankers? This is the only podcast that doesn't know about Sprankers.
00:27:38
It's so sad when they talk and they don't know about Sprankers. And they don't mention Sprankers every five minutes.
00:27:44
Okay. She's dead, they say. It's warm. They're going to bury her quickly. Her coffin is closed and fastened.
00:27:50
After the family members say goodbye in the church and on the way to the graveyard, the hearse is stopped after a noise is heard coming from the coffin.
00:27:59
Oh, thank God. She doesn't go underground. No. The lid is unfastened and she says, you're burying me alive.
00:28:08
I love her. I'm in Sprankers and you're burying me alive. Holy Sprankers, you're going to bury me alive?
00:28:15
You fucking Sprankers. and then the doctor who had fucking done this was like hush child
00:28:21
you're alright it's a mistake easily rectified step off bitch she says that soon after
00:28:29
she had fainted which is when they thought she was dead she had recovered after being administered some stimulants
00:28:35
cocaine yes cocaine for their every ailment except for getting alive she said that she had been conscious the entire
00:28:44
time of the preparations for burial but she couldn't cry out and she thought she was going to be buried alive
00:28:50
the whole way and finally she was like move your fucking body, sprankers and she was able to make a noise
00:28:56
that's the worst thing knowing you're going to be oh my god I don't think I usually
00:29:03
have these feelings when we talk about terrible, terrible things to each other this one's getting to me
00:29:09
I do not like it well guess what, you're going to be buried alive tonight I will sprank you so hard.
00:29:19
Her case is among those included in the book Premature Burial and How It May Be Prevented by William Tebb and Edward Vollum.
00:29:28
So in 19... Tebb and Vollum. Tebb and Vollum. They wrote the best books. Yeah. So another one is in 1937, a 19-year-old from France named Angelo Hayes.
00:29:38
He goes for a fucking motorcycle ride, hits a fucking wall, fucking head first into a brick wall.
00:29:45
His head is mangled. He has no pulse. He's so terrible to look at that they're like, to his family, you can't see him.
00:29:52
Yeah. You know, it just sucks. He declared dead and buried three days later Oh no But the insurance company was like we don buy it Exhume the body Because they insurance companies
00:30:05
They're like, we won't pay. Yeah, until we see. They discover that his body is still warm.
00:30:10
No. And in the aftermath of the accident, his body had put him into a deep coma.
00:30:16
Yes. And didn't need a lot of oxygen. So he's still fucking alive. After being buried alive, he received proper medical care and went on to make a full recovery.
00:30:26
No way. What's his name? Angelo? Angelo Hayes. Wow, Angelo. He invented a type of security coffin after this.
00:30:37
Why do I keep saying coffin? You're saying caftan with a weird accent. I am just like dying to be in my caftan.
00:30:44
A coffin. Caftan. He tours across France showing off his security coffin. And in it is a small oven, a refrigerator, and a hi-fi cassette player.
00:30:55
No. Yeah. That's what it says. So this was like in the 60s? Like of later on? No.
00:31:02
This was in 37, 1937. Hi-fi cassette. Did you say cassette player? Did I hear that wrong?
00:31:09
Is that what I meant? Cassette player. Hi-fi cassette player. Well, those are in quotes.
00:31:15
So I didn't, yeah. Lily is quoting herself now. It's so funny. I'm questioning everything.
00:31:20
You already said Lily's name. And I'm like, is that this? How the fuck would I know?
00:31:26
Lily's like, record can't be right. She's like 22, too. So she wouldn't know. She's like, cassettes are from 1843, right?
00:31:34
They're vintage. OK. In 2007, a Venezuelan man named Carlos Camejo, he's 33. He's declared dead after an accident, a highway accident, taken to the morgue.
00:31:46
Examiners begin their autopsy. oh then he starts bleeding which you know guess what guys dead bodies don't bleed yeah right
00:31:55
that's day one of medical school yeah remember that day one of autopsy school he starts bleeding
00:32:01
and then he wakes up and he's in excruciating pain and the autopsy yeah i bet because he's still
00:32:08
alive and that table's so cold oh god they quickly stitch him up and his grieving wife had just
00:32:15
turned up to ID him and then finds him in the hallway alive, which is so sweet. Oh, that's yeah.
00:32:22
Good for her. Right. Then as recently as 2014. So sweet. Like to be so bummed to be like, I have to do this.
00:32:28
Oh, you're alive. Oh, I have to do this. I love you. You have that huge scar. See, that's a romance story.
00:32:33
Not your fucking. That's right. Shitty. Not. You did great. I didn't mean you. There was also in 2014, a case of a woman being buried alive in Greece.
00:32:44
she had succumbed to cancer and her children heard her screams coming from her grave no not
00:32:50
long after burial she's exhumed and it was discovered that she actually died of cardiac
00:32:53
arrest after she was buried no i know you said did you say 2014 yeah i did oh man yeah yeah
00:33:01
oh yeah yeah i promise never mind i don't want to jinx i will i'll come and check your grave
00:33:07
and sniff your trumpet or whatever it was. Poke me with a safety pin or something.
00:33:14
I'll make sure that the fireworks haven't gone off. Thank you. Yeah, no problem.
00:33:19
Most of these modern cases are because of unforeseen circumstances and just plain bad luck.
00:33:25
The possibility of being buried alive today is virtually impossible because of embalming.
00:33:35
However, if by some... 2014 was five years ago. I know, but it's Greece. I'm just kidding.
00:33:40
I don't know what that means. Some scientists say that you can survive up to 36 hours if you've been buried alive with
00:33:46
the oxygen. So like keep knocking. Keep knocking. Keep knocking. Shallow breaths.
00:33:51
Make sure you get buried with like a tasty cakes in your pocket or something. That's why I always have a protein bar.
00:33:58
That's right. And a cell phone. Yeah. Right. It all depends on how much air is in the coffin.
00:34:02
And those are stories of buried alive in a grave. Unbelievable. In a coffin. In a coffin.
00:34:10
Oh, in a coffin in a coffin. There's I love that because I really was getting upset.
00:34:15
Really getting upset. That's you know, there's a Ryan Reynolds movie where he is buried alive.
00:34:20
No. And it's him in a lighter. It's very frustrating. It's not the whole movie, but it's a lot of the movie.
00:34:26
It's called insanity. Buried alive in a coffin. In a grave. In a grave. In a grave.
00:34:30
In a grave. Wow. That was amazing. Well, welcome to basically fall. We're welcoming in fall.
00:34:37
That's what we're doing. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. It's exciting. Get your shirts with bats on them.
00:34:43
Yeah. We're get ready to transition out of summertime. What are you going to be for Halloween this year?
00:34:49
I'm probably going to be buried alive in a grave. I think the film, the lead in the film.
00:34:57
Let's make it. Let's make it as a student film. OK. Let's go back to school. But the whole thing is, it's much more like, it's like, what's that movie?
00:35:07
It's like My Dinner with Andre, where it's the discussion about being very alive and great.
00:35:12
No one has to go into a coffin. But it gets like St. Elsewhere kind of-y, where it's like, is that the one?
00:35:18
Or it's like... St. Elmo's Fire. Yes! Yeah. Or like someone that is like, well, I'm going to try it.
00:35:23
Yeah. I'll try it. Robbie, you're so wild. Oh my God, you're crazy. Melio Estimus.
00:35:28
Rob Lowe starts playing the saxophone. a lot of amazing cocaine use in that movie i fucking bet oh i love it demi moore like does
00:35:38
way too much cocaine and she opens all the windows in her room and then there's this insanely 80s shot
00:35:44
of her i'm sure i've described this before because it's truly one of my favorite memories from my
00:35:49
teen years yeah and and this is how everyone in my family should have known that i was a drug addict
00:35:53
waiting to happen because that scene was like i was like yeah like she just doing cocaine She did a ton of coke by herself and then was in her room holding her knees I think she was wearing like a shirt and no pants
00:36:05
Holding her knees. All the windows were open and these long white curtains were blowing.
00:36:10
And you were like, great. That looks fun. I was like, I love this. I want to do this.
00:36:14
That looks lonely and cold. Her room, I think it's because she had high ceilings and the walls were painted a cool color.
00:36:20
From what I remember. Romanticizing cocaine. I mean, it's one of the more romantic.
00:36:25
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That's K-N-I-X dot com. Code FLOW15. What a collection of delightful stories. I think that collection is just prime MFM because it was equal parts joking around and riffing and discussion about a terrifying, horrible thing,
00:38:47
which is really isn't that why we're all here in the first place uh for karen's story we're going
00:38:52
to go to episode 183 here we back are uh where she talks about the mothman legend and the silver
00:38:59
bridge collapse i have obvious connections to this one just through animation i'm with georgia
00:39:05
also in that i had never heard of mothman before this even though i'm a big fan of urban legends
00:39:09
and here in the pacific northwest where i'm at we've got bigfoot you know we've got some of the
00:39:13
big ones but this one i've always loved urban legends and the idea that that there's this spooky
00:39:18
moth man creature that appears and then vanishes in the wake of a disastrous bridge collapse is just
00:39:25
just the the coolest worst best awful great thing so uh enjoy and with that i'm going to change
00:39:34
gears on you great as uh as i want to do only because for me it's still summer uh yes i don't
00:39:41
want to let go of that endless summer feeling yet. No. And so my story this week is
00:39:47
going to be partly it's actually partly a disaster story but then it's also partly
00:39:53
a cryptozoology legend. That's right. I'm doing the Mothman story. That's right.
00:40:02
Tell me everything. Now how much do you think you know about the Mothman? Literally
00:40:06
zero. Is that true? I don't think so. You haven't even watched the Mothman Prophecies, the movie
00:40:10
I've told you to watch about 20 times. I have not watched a single movie you told me to watch ever.
00:40:16
I keep meaning to have a night and just watch all Karen's movie recommendations.
00:40:21
I'm going to make you a list. Oh, I have something for you. Oh, my friend Doug Jones, who's going to be DJing the night who I write about in the book Stay Sexy, Don't Get Murdered as being someone who likes to share weird, obscure things like Mr. Show.
00:40:32
Oh. And Largo with. Yes. made us a movie from the TV, Murder in Texas, the 1981 TV movie about the murder that you'd covered.
00:40:42
Yes. What was it? Oh, God. This could be the one about the rich woman and her shitty husband.
00:40:49
Yes. The father. The husband killed her. She was into horses. What episode was that?
00:40:54
And the father killed him. Yes. This was a live show that we did. I don't know if we've posted it.
00:40:58
We must have posted it if he knows about it. I think it wasn't a live, Steven. What were we talking about?
00:41:03
Yeah, I know it was because we did it in... Oh, that's right. It was like Texas?
00:41:08
Yes, Texas. You did? Good. Oh, and it's called Murder in Texas. Oh, my God. I shouldn't have taken that eighth shot.
00:41:19
This is amazing. I know. Doug Jones, thank you. Thank you, Doug Jones. What? Joan Robinson Hill.
00:41:25
Yeah, Joan Robinson Hill. Yes. And her father had a Texas guy's nickname. Bucky.
00:41:32
Bud. Bud. Bud. It was dude. Hat. Hat? Ash. Ash. Ash Robinson. Ash Robinson. Oh, I was close.
00:41:43
You were close with Hat. Hat Robinson. I want my nickname to be Hat from now on. Okay. Promise?
00:41:49
Because you wear hats so much. I do. Thank you, Doug. Thank you, Doug. I'm so excited. Wait a second.
00:41:55
I think this might star either Farrah Fawcett Farrah Fawcett That right And maybe a Tommy Lee Jones is in there I think so And I think we posted this No it was the guy who should have a mustache all the time
00:42:05
Sam Neill. No, no. Sam. Sam. Elliot. Elliot. Elliot. We got there. We got there.
00:42:11
And it wasn't a live episode. Was not? Shit. What episode was it, Stephen? 172. Okay.
00:42:19
Was it, we had just come back from Texas and it was one I hadn't done there? Correct.
00:42:24
Thank you. You can have that. Okay, thank you. I'll give you that. I appreciate it.
00:42:27
I'm going to get that one on a technicality. Okay, so we're talking now about one of my favorite stories.
00:42:34
And I have referenced on this show that to me, of all things that are scary, the scariest one is people talking too fast on the phone.
00:42:44
My sister and I talk about this all the time. And there's a part in The Mothman Prophecies where Richard Gere, the star of The Mothman Prophecies, which is basically an amalgamation of all of the witness stories put together in one.
00:42:56
Creepy. So they kind of made it. And it's based on a book by an author named, hold on front back.
00:43:04
Simply named. Simply named, and I quote John Keel. He wrote the book The Mothman Prophecies in 1975.
00:43:10
And then they made this movie in 22. And Richard Gere is like, I'm on board. Richard Gere is like, this is my jam.
00:43:18
Yeah, I'm going to. This is my vehicle. So these creepy things are happening to him as a reporter.
00:43:23
It's completely this version of it is not real. But at one point, he's staying in this weird little hotel and he picks up the phone and there's weird feedback and electrical noises.
00:43:34
And then there's a voice that goes, like that fast, creepy talking. Yeah. And my sister and I decided one day because I did it to her on the phone just to be funny.
00:43:43
Never do that again. And she got so mad. And we decided that way too fast talking is the scariest thing.
00:43:50
It's so scary. Yeah. And otherworldly. So anyway. Yeah. If you haven't seen the Mothman Prophecies starring Richard Gere.
00:43:57
We're all going to watch it together. Please stream it on your local streaming services.
00:44:01
Also, I got most of my information from an article on Ranker, the website that works so hard and gets almost no credit.
00:44:08
Such a good website. God bless you, Ranker. And then they're like, oh, you like this article?
00:44:12
Well, here's 10 other ones you're going to fucking stay up all night reading. Yes, you're going to like all the rest of these articles as much, if not more.
00:44:17
So good. So God bless Ranker. Rabbit hole. And also the website, which I'm starting to use more and more, Weird US, which basically
00:44:27
there's a book series that I used to read in the 90s called Weird Los Angeles, Weird San
00:44:32
Francisco. And it would have all the haunted places, creepy places, murder sites, whatever.
00:44:38
Kind of creepy of interest areas. So now they're all on one website called Weird US.
00:44:44
Love it. And then, of course, the Mothman prophecies. Okay. So this story took place in and around the cities of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and
00:44:54
Gallipolis, Ohio, which I can't believe that's the way it's pronounced when it looks exactly
00:45:00
like Gallipoli. Unacceptable. It really made me really mad when Stephen looked it up for me.
00:45:06
from November of 1966 through December of 1967. So this started happening November of 1966 and went on for a year.
00:45:17
And these two cities sit directly across from each other, across the Ohio River,
00:45:23
or the northern part of Gallopolis. It sits directly across from Point Pleasant, West Virginia.
00:45:30
Got it. So the West Virginia side is best known for Mothman sightings, But it actually also happened over on the Ohio side as well.
00:45:39
OK. The Ohio River is between and it also kind of acts as the state line between West Virginia and Ohio.
00:45:46
My mind just blanked out. Geography. Don't resist geography because here's the thing.
00:45:50
This is how we're learning about our great nation. The thing we know nothing about.
00:45:54
And also, did you even know West Virginia and Ohio were next to each other? No. I didn't either.
00:45:59
Of course I didn't. I failed that class. I stared at this map for so long. OK. So the story begins November 12th, 1966, 80 miles southeast of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in a little town.
00:46:14
Oh, I didn't look up the name. OK, I'll just pronounce this how I feel. Let's hear it.
00:46:18
Clendenin. That's right. C-L-E-N-D-E-N-I-N. Clendenin. Or it could be Clendenin.
00:46:24
Or it could be Clendenin. But this is a little sleepy bird of about 1,500 people in Wikipedia says in 2010.
00:46:32
OK. Over 1,200 people. Probably tripled since then. I would like to think. Okay.
00:46:37
So this is what happens. Cut to. We're in a cemetery. Five grave diggers are digging a grave.
00:46:44
Why are we here? Cut that out. No, leave it. So gross. It's like a weird thing coming out of my throat.
00:46:51
I belched in the microphone, so it's only fair. Five grave diggers digging a grave.
00:47:00
They look up. They hear noise in the trees overhead. They look up to see a man-sized black bird with huge glowing red eyes fly out of the treetops and then down low to the ground near them and away.
00:47:13
Okay, so it's not a man. It's just the size of one and it's a giant bird. Yes. I think the word man being thrown in there is confusing.
00:47:21
Man-sized. It was a hyphenate. Okay, got it. A man-sized bird. Got it. So he didn't have like hands and arms.
00:47:28
No. He didn't have like weird eyebrows that need to get trimmed. No, it was just size wise.
00:47:35
Got it, got it, got it. You know, birds are usually the size of your arm or smaller.
00:47:38
Sure. Or fist. Not my man. Not Vince sized. OK, so for me immediately kicking this off, my cynic mind goes, when have there ever been
00:47:48
five grave diggers anywhere? Sure. Unless this was a unionized cemetery from the late 60s.
00:47:53
Yeah. Two max. Totally. Three maybe. What is this, fucking family annihilator? How do you get five?
00:48:01
Why are you all together? And they're probably also kind of freaked out a little because they're in a fucking grave yard digging.
00:48:08
They might be used to it if it's their job. That's true. Unless they're just digging a grave and they're not professionals.
00:48:13
Ooh. We don't know. It was the late 60s. Speculation. Anything could have happened back then.
00:48:18
But then the fact that five. So I was saying con that it's five because I'm not buying it.
00:48:23
Con that it's grave diggers because, oh, it starts on a dark and spooky night or whatever.
00:48:27
But then pro is the fact that five individuals came forward. So that's meaningful.
00:48:34
Yes. Although I'm sure they were ignored and humiliated by the authorities. But three days later, on November 15th, two young couples in Point Pleasant, West Virginia.
00:48:43
Their names are Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Millett. They report seeing a, quote, large flying man with 10 foot wings.
00:48:53
Now, that's different than a man sized bird. That's right. This is a man that flies with huge wings.
00:48:59
I think someone wrote that down wrong. But this huge man-sized bird was following their car.
00:49:05
Wait, man bird, though. Yeah. Okay, was following their car. Was following their car in an area known as the TNT area, which was the site of a former World War II munitions plant near Point Pleasant.
00:49:17
They said his eyes glowed red when the car's headlights shone on him. Like a big man-sized deer in night vision.
00:49:29
But a moth man. Got it. I'm here for this. That didn't help. Okay. You just said a bunch of words.
00:49:35
Right. Then more sightings start coming in. On November 17th, so that's two days later, a teenage boy is driving down Route 7 near Cheshire, Ohio, and he sees a gray man-shaped 10-foot tall creature with red eyes.
00:49:49
based on the pictures I think the reason they're saying man shaped and man sized is because
00:49:55
it's got wings but two legs and also the head stops mid wing and doesn't go up above it
00:50:05
so it doesn't look like a man wearing wings like a hawk who's got a head yes the head's down low
00:50:11
almost like below the wingspan but it's a bird head not a man head the head part is a question mark
00:50:17
Okay. Okay. Oh, Stephen has a bunch of pictures. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me take a look.
00:50:22
Oh, God, I just closed it. Stephen, what's your password? I'll say it on air. C-A-T-Z.
00:50:29
Cat. Oh, it's like an owl who has eyes in his chest. Yeah, we'll come back to that part.
00:50:36
Okay, that's creepy as fuck. We'll post that on- It's very upsetting. My favorite murder on Instagram.
00:50:42
All our socials. Go on. Okay, so this teenage boy driving down Route 7 sees this tall gray man-shaped 10-foot tall creature.
00:50:52
That's bad enough. But then he tells the authorities that as he sped away, it followed his car.
00:50:59
Yeah. So very creepy and spooky. Then about two weeks later, we're back over in Ohio at the Gallopolis Airport and or Gallopolis.
00:51:11
Sorry. Gallopolis Airport. Thank you. Five pilots. Five. Mm-hmm. Circle in red and put a question mark above.
00:51:19
Five pilots see what at first they believe to be a weird airplane flying at 70 miles an hour.
00:51:24
Then they realize is some sort of large bird with a long neck. Why are there five pilots on one plane?
00:51:31
Well, we don't know if they were separate and it was five reports. Okay. If they just loaded a plane filled with pilots of like, we have to get this thing where it's going.
00:51:43
Everyone's a little sleepy. So if everyone takes a turn, it'll be great. One awake co-pilot equals four sleepy co-pilots.
00:51:51
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, back then, did all men spend time in groups of five? And is that why things are so fucked up now?
00:51:58
I trust pilots. I do, too. Do you? I do. Except when you find out, like, one of them, they get arrested because they're drunk trying to fly a plane.
00:52:05
Yeah, but that never happens. Almost hardly yet. I'm joking, JK. Okay. So then it is credible because they see a lot of stuff.
00:52:17
Sorry, gravediggers. I trust you, too. We absolutely trust you. Yes. But you see creepy stuff. You're creeped out a lot.
00:52:23
There's a Scooby-Doo element to being a gravedigger that when you're a pilot, you're just like, I've got everything on lock.
00:52:29
Yeah. And I must. I'm from the Air Force. So then on December 7th, four adult women, because it's women, so it has to be one less,
00:52:38
four adult women are driving up Route 30. I'm saying these roads like we know them at all.
00:52:43
Oh, sure. Route 30. You know Route 30. It's all windy. I take it to the 110 to the Route 30.
00:52:48
To the Route 30. Okay. So they're driving up Route 30, and they see what they report to be a brownish, silver,
00:52:54
man-shaped creature with glowing red eyes. Kirby. So you can rely on the woman to get accurate about that color.
00:53:00
Yeah. Maybe the sun was setting. Crimson. They're like crimson. There's like he was either super tan.
00:53:06
Big apple red. That's what I paint my toenails. So. OK. So authorities are baffled, probably very scared because they keep on hearing these stories of people.
00:53:16
Crazy. Creepy shit. Yeah. So the Mason County, West Virginia sheriff comes up with a totally logical answer to this mystery.
00:53:23
he claims that everyone's seeing an unusually large heron that has gone off of its normal
00:53:32
migration route and he refers to the bird whether it's a term local terminology or he's just mad
00:53:40
he calls it a shit shite poke shite poke what's that i don't know uh i know it might be slang okay
00:53:48
um then a wildlife biologist at west virginia university tells reporters that the descriptions
00:53:53
of the Mothman all fit the Sandhill Crane which is a large American crane with a seven foot wingspan that as tall as a grown man with reddish circles around the eyes
00:54:06
And that it could be just this type of crane that's somehow lost. Say you're taking a fucking shortcut down an alley.
00:54:13
Steven is showing me this crane. That is a fucked up crane. Let me see. I haven't looked.
00:54:19
What if you run into that crane in an alley? Holy fuck. That's a fucking ugly creepy.
00:54:23
I don't like the shite poke. the sandhill crane's pretty serious they're big big and he has like an eye
00:54:31
it looks like an eye mask like a sleep mask that's red that's bright red frightening
00:54:36
here's my problem this bird is white as are many cranes these are white, gray, a little bit
00:54:45
brown I'm not buying it maybe everyone was on acid I mean this was definitely when acid started
00:54:53
getting popular so i would not argue you maybe it's like the salem witch trials where there was
00:54:57
mold on the grain that they were that made their head did you hear about that is that why that's
00:55:03
one of the theories and i fucking love it because i'm obsessed with mold aka what hence fucking uh
00:55:09
this podcast will kill you being on our network it's amazing um that there was mold this mold on
00:55:14
the grain that they used to make the bread and everyone went fucking hallucinogenic psycho
00:55:20
psilocybin style exactly yes hell yeah read about it okay people um not now right no please listen
00:55:27
to this podcast okay so essentially now we've got the crane theory in the mix and people are like
00:55:33
phew it's just a crane right it's just a huge man-sized crane yeah calm down okay but none of
00:55:38
the witnesses who hear this say they saw a crane they're like no it's it's simply not i know what
00:55:44
fucking crane is yeah don't you dare condescend to me professor so including a man who's a
00:55:50
contractor named neil newell partridge and he argues that the theory doesn't explain all these
00:55:56
weird electrical um interferences that he's been getting at his house since he spotted the moth man
00:56:03
in a field on his property and he basically saw it in a field and put up a flashlight saw the
00:56:11
glowing red eyes and was like that was no crane and here's how i know because since i saw the
00:56:16
mothman my german shepherd has disappeared what that doesn't mean anything yeah it ate it ate the
00:56:23
dog oh god i gotta cut it or did it run away and join the mothman join that crane and they became
00:56:31
a fucking dynamic duo the crane carries the german shepherd like a little baby a newborn baby
00:56:38
And they're like, fuck migration patterns. We're going wherever we want in West Virginia.
00:56:44
We're going to do it. Let's do it. OK. Noel Partridge is like, no, something weird is going on.
00:56:52
I know it. My dog knew it. Do something about it. So now there's a reporter named Mary Heyer, who is a correspondent for the Athens, Ohio
00:57:01
newspaper. A woman. The Messenger. In the 60s. In the 60s. She wore the highest of heels.
00:57:06
So she begins writing about all these strange sightings that she's seeing coming over the telegraph.
00:57:13
I don't know if that's what it's called. Is that the telegraph? What? A Mothman, you say?
00:57:18
Why? Why? There hasn't been a Mothman around here in about 25 years. A really short amount of time.
00:57:26
People start calling. So she starts writing about it in the messenger, the Athens messenger.
00:57:32
Then people start calling her and telling her when they see UFOs, experiencing odd electrical interferences like Newell did.
00:57:41
They also start hearing weird humming sounds coming up out of nowhere. On one particularly busy weekend, she got over 500 calls from people in the area saying that they had been seeing strange lights in the sky.
00:57:55
500? 500 calls in one weekend. Holy shit. She was like, leave me alone. I'm trying to sleep.
00:58:01
How'd you get this number? She's like, I'm just trying to report the news. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile.
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01:00:10
That's K-N-I-X.com. Code FLOW15. So here's, this is John Keel, who I already told you is the author
01:00:18
of the book The Mothman Prophecies from 1975, upon which the classic Richard Gere film is loosely
01:00:23
based loosely. And he is basically considered to be the foremost authority on these Mothman stories.
01:00:31
He claims that between November of 1966 and November of 1967, at least 100 people personally
01:00:38
witnessed the Mothman in the Ohio and West Virginia area. Now, on the Wikipedia page, it goes on to when it gets into the debunking stage, talk
01:00:49
about how none of these people nobody could to track them down but i just told you people's names
01:00:56
because they were like there's no real names and nobody and you can't track them down but it's like
01:01:00
just because people have died since 1967 doesn't mean they didn't have the experience they had
01:01:04
right so fuck you professor why are we mad at this the scientists always take the most shit
01:01:11
okay and this the sightings of uh strange creatures in the sky is not new for this area
01:01:19
In the early 1900s, that area was known for reports of thunderbirds, which in cryptozoology are known as their giant birds with 12 foot wingspans that were spotted flying up and down the Ohio River Valley.
01:01:35
Stephen, you want to look up thunderbirds? Because this is a real thing. Now, the pictures that you find on the Internet, they could very well be hoaxes.
01:01:43
But thunderbirds are kind of legendary. Tell me what they are again. They're humongous birds.
01:01:48
A lot of people think that are somehow holdovers kind of Loch Ness Monster style.
01:01:53
Or like pterodactyls. Exactly. They're like leftover dinosaur birds that come in and are just like, what's that, a toddler?
01:02:01
Goodbye. Oh, no. And it happened to like the pioneers and stuff. Oh, shit. Yeah.
01:02:05
So this is a story that's been going on for a while. There's also stories of similar types of creatures that would ascend from the sky that Native
01:02:14
Americans and First Nation people have always told where if a certain type of cloud would come in
01:02:20
they'd be like, get all the kids inside because those evil things, now I can't remember what they're called
01:02:26
those evil Thunderbird type animals are coming so this isn't new in any way is my point
01:02:32
Steven, let me see like a drawing? there was some cars showing up you can't tell the size, but it was real ugly
01:02:42
majestic ugly and majestic in an ugly way this looks like if your high school mascot is the falcon yeah it
01:02:49
does there's nothing steven there was actually a picture i was talking about wait is it the science
01:02:55
picture with the scientist with the giant yes oh yeah yeah you know what read his text seriously
01:03:00
yeah steven can you bring up that picture he brings up a pencil drawn there might as well
01:03:05
it might as well say alex p underneath it or like or have like that's the one i was looking for
01:03:10
Look at that big ass bird. Holy shit. Steven, will you post this picture also? And also, Steven, will you find out if that picture is a hoax?
01:03:18
Yes. That's insane. Oh, if it's a hoax, they'll tell us. That's a hoax. There's no way there's that big of a bird.
01:03:24
This is the fun part of the show where we're going to say something's real and it's your
01:03:27
job to tell us if it's a hoax. But say it angrily. Yes. Make sure that you act like we are always supposed to get everything right.
01:03:33
That's right. We should do better. We're your primary source of news. Okay, so what we're saying is just that big, huge, bird-like things in the sky is not new for this Ohio Valley area.
01:03:46
Get with it. Ohio River Valley area. I don't know if it's a valley. That's how I go wrong is adding in words like that.
01:03:53
Okay, so all of the witnesses. Here's the difference, though. In this period between 1966 and 1967, all the witnesses who reported seeing the Mothman gave similar descriptions.
01:04:04
It was whiter than a man but had human-like legs. That its eyes were set near the top of the shoulders, which is the creepiest aspect of it.
01:04:13
Yeah. And that it had bat-like wings that glided rather than flapped when it flew.
01:04:19
And when it flew away, it ascended straight up into the air like a helicopter. And it flipped you off on the way out.
01:04:27
And said, bye, bitches. Bye, bitch. Every time it said, bye, bitches. Which is rude.
01:04:32
It's a, well, they didn't know at the time what it meant, but hashtag, bye, bitch.
01:04:36
Bye, bitch. And I'm like, what's a hashtag? It said it really fast. Touch, touch, touch, touch.
01:04:40
Scary. So scary. Witnesses also described the murky skin as either being gray or brown and that it emitted a humming sound when it flew.
01:04:50
Like that? Like it was nervous in the grocery store? Again, and I probably said this before, if you're ever near a person who just starts whistling or humming, you're getting your pocket picked.
01:05:04
And you need to keep your eyes open. you need to get put that head just start punching I think is the answer but first start by punching
01:05:12
behind yeah you be the weird one if someone's humming near you become the weird one and just
01:05:16
start punching yeah because you can just you can always stop and walk away they're still the weird
01:05:20
one that's humming we are so back baby okay can you feel it can you feel the energy of it okay so
01:05:28
oh this is my favorite sentence of this of all of this research the humming sound when it flew
01:05:33
And then it says it was also incapable of speech. It communicated with a screeching sound.
01:05:39
Me too. So thank God it didn't land in front of your car with its red eyes. I was like, what's up, Jerry?
01:05:47
I'm here to freak the fuck out of you. It's never like that. You mean it talked like a bird?
01:05:54
But I thought it hummed Anyway what up in your car Okay so all this is fun and creepy and weird and cryptozoological which is kind of my favorite as we know
01:06:08
And maybe not true, as also my favorite. I believe it. But here's the part that's interesting and factual.
01:06:15
These sightings continue for a year up until disaster strikes. The evening of December 15th, 1967.
01:06:23
and uh there all these commuters are sitting in their cars in traffic waiting to cross the silver
01:06:31
bridge which connects point pleasant west virginia and say it gallopolis gallopolis
01:06:39
it's gallopolis yeah and gallopolis ohio which are on either side of the ohio got it so the
01:06:47
Silver Bridge is a span bridge. It was built in 1928. And about 4,000 cars a day cross it.
01:06:55
Wow. And that is very different since the 40 years ago when it was built. I wrote since its erection.
01:07:05
Shut up. But the bridge has never been updated or rebuilt to accommodate the increasing drive time congestion.
01:07:12
So here's the way it happened. And I found this story. story, these stories from a website called timeline.com because I just put in Silver
01:07:21
Bridge disaster timeline. And then there's a website called timeline.com. God bless it.
01:07:26
And it had these stories on it. OK, so around 5 p.m., there's a woman named Charlene Wood who's on the getting on the
01:07:33
bridge to get home from her job at a hair salon. She's pregnant. She's been working all day.
01:07:38
She just wants to get home. Fucking feet. All around her, there's trucks, there's commuters and there's people shopping for Christmas.
01:07:45
Because it's almost Christmas. Okay. Beginning in December. Suddenly she feels the bridge shake.
01:07:51
Now, apparently, because this is a span bridge. What does that mean? A span bridge is kind of, it's like built similarly to, it's one where it goes over a river, over a body of water.
01:08:00
So it has to suspend itself. But I guess a span bridge, I'm not going to be able to explain this correctly, but like the Golden Gate Bridge is technically a span bridge, but it's the cables on it that hold it up and keep it out.
01:08:14
And it's not like pillars. Instead, it's like holding itself up with tension. Exactly.
01:08:20
But these the way this bridge was built was flat pieces of metal that were a foot wide and like two inches thick.
01:08:27
As opposed to, you know, the Golden Gate Bridge is just all those cables. Yeah. So there is a tiny and I think they in the end they found out that it was like a three millimeter wide flaw in the steel on one of the spans.
01:08:42
But it had been there for so long. There was no way to inspect it unless they would have to look at every single inch of the bridge.
01:08:49
But nothing had ever been checked or updated or whatever. So over the years and the way this bridge, it would move with the cars and with whatever.
01:08:59
So people said it was very common to be on the Silver Bridge and have the whole thing move and shake and do stuff.
01:09:04
And it was just kind of people were used to it. But over the years, this thing kind of wore away and wore away until this day.
01:09:13
So Charlene is sitting there and she feels the bridge shake really hard. So she real quick decides to throw her car into reverse and back up as far as she can.
01:09:26
And luckily she can because one minute later, 60 seconds later, the cars in front of her begin sliding down off the bridge and into the river.
01:09:36
The bridge had collapsed and the cars were just going in. Holy shit. And she had somehow miraculously been able to back up to solid ground and get off the part that had collapsed.
01:09:48
Oh, my God. Yeah. And she said, and the water, of course, it's December. It's freezing.
01:09:53
The water's 40 degrees. She said, it was like someone had lined up dominoes. I could see cars' lights flashing as they went tumbling into the water.
01:10:02
The car in front of me went in and then there was silence. So she was the last car that before they stopped going into the water.
01:10:12
A truck driver named Bill Needham is midway across the bridge when it collapses.
01:10:17
He's thrown into the water, but he's able to escape because he has a half rolled down window.
01:10:22
Oh, my God. And he was quoted as saying, I didn't know how far I had to go up when he means like swim back up.
01:10:28
Yeah. And he says, but I could tell that the water, I could tell the water kept getting lighter.
01:10:34
So that's basically how he knew what direction to swim. He used a box that was floating in the water because basically there's all these trucks and all these cars.
01:10:42
So there's just stuff in the water. Yeah. So the people that were able to get out of their cars and get to the surface were grabbing things to hold on to because he, Bill didn't get rescued out of the water for 15 minutes.
01:10:54
Oh, my God. He was in 40, I think they said it was 40 degree water for 15 minutes.
01:11:00
His partner, Robert Toe, did not make it out of the truck. He died in that truck.
01:11:05
And so did 18-year-old Marjorie Boggs, who was driving her husband Howard and their 17-month-old child across the bridge when it collapsed.
01:11:15
Howard was pulled to safety by a rescue boat. And the first thing he said to the crew when he got on board was, I just hope to God Marjorie and the kid got out okay.
01:11:23
Marjorie and her baby and Howard's baby's bodies were found six weeks later in the car in the river.
01:11:32
State trooper Rudy Odell, who was 31 years old at the time, was one of the first officers to respond to the disaster.
01:11:39
And he said, quote, I could hear them hollering for help. I didn't know how many there were at the time.
01:11:45
There was absolutely nothing I could do. It was a long way out into the water. So he's basically on one side of the river looking out at these people.
01:11:53
What is he going to jump into 40 degree water and try to sleep? Yeah. And that's not the way you save people when they're, when they're drowning.
01:11:59
No. Um. So in all, 31 cars went into the Ohio River that day, sending 64 people into its 44 degree waters.
01:12:08
Oh, so it's 44 degrees. Of the 64 people who went in, 46 of them died. Holy shit.
01:12:14
The Silver Bridge collapse remains the deadliest bridge disaster in United States history.
01:12:20
President Lyndon Johnson released a statement saying all Americans were shocked by the cruel tragedy and loss of life
01:12:26
and assembled a task force, the task force on bridge safety to mount an investigation.
01:12:33
And forensic analysis traced the problem to a small stress crack inside the bearing loop of I-bar 330.
01:12:40
So the I-bars were the things holding it up. No sightings of the Mothman were reported again in the Point Pleasant area after that day.
01:12:49
Yeah. So that's why people connect. The theory is that the Mothman appeared trying to warn people about this tragedy that was coming.
01:12:59
If that is the case, he did not do a good job of it. I mean, it must have been the only I can screech part.
01:13:06
Write something down. Yeah. Speak in human tongue. Yeah. Sorry, Mothman. It's just the truth.
01:13:12
Whatever you did, all you did was freak people out and you were not on message. Look a try.
01:13:17
In 1969, the Silver Bridge was replaced by the Silver Memorial Bridge, which was a mile downstream of the original.
01:13:25
And there is a memorial installed in Point Pleasant to commemorate the 46 bridge collapse victims.
01:13:31
That's so sad. It's horrible. But and I think I think the reason that legends like this pop up because a lot of you know the theories are that there always been this legend in like these stories and that it comes it comes up after the fact Right Because people want to lace some kind of of that there would be help or something out of this just senseless tragedy where in the middle of the day at Christmas time all these people just got dumped in the river and died
01:14:02
So it's this there is a lore and a legend around it, like something was there and it could have helped.
01:14:08
But also, I think it's that idea that like that maybe some somebody's watching us could help us prevent these tragedies in the future.
01:14:17
We just knew how to pay attention to them correctly. Right. Understood screeching.
01:14:22
Yeah, exactly. Now, on an up note, Point Pleasant held its first annual Mothman Festival in 2002.
01:14:29
Oh, really? And a 12 foot tall metallic statue of the creature created by artist and sculptor Bob Roach was unveiled in 2003.
01:14:38
Yes, there are pictures. And it's much more silver and beautiful than any of the drawings or illustrations and also much, much taller than the way people described it.
01:14:50
The Mothman Festival is a weekend long event held on the third weekend of every September.
01:14:57
And there are a variety of events that go on during the festival, such as guest speakers, vendor exhibits, a Mothman pancake eating contest.
01:15:05
Yes. Can we go? Could we please? Can we be the speakers? I mean, we have to hit the Circleville Pumpkin Festival first.
01:15:13
Right. I think this should be number two. Yeah. Oh, and then also the Cheese Festival in Wisconsin.
01:15:18
Yes, that's right. in Athens, Wisconsin? I think so. Isn't it some kind of other foreign city name?
01:15:25
You're so smart, Stephen. Thank you. I just love that it's a Mothman pancake eating contest.
01:15:32
Like, moths love pancakes. If you going to have a legit You have a wool suit eating contest because that the real deal My vintage dress eating contest Exactly It be way harder way longer but much more accurate
01:15:48
There's also hayride tours focusing on the notable areas of Point Pleasant. And there's now a Mothman Museum and Research Center that opened in 2005 run by someone named Jeff Wamsley.
01:16:01
Good job, Jeff. Jeff, if that's still open, God bless you. It'd be amazing to go look at that.
01:16:06
That's right. And that's the legend of the Mothman and the tragedy of the Silver Bridge collapse of 1967.
01:16:12
Wow. That was not what I was expecting. Great job. Right? Yeah. I didn't feel like getting fully back into the full tragedy.
01:16:19
No, I get it. That was a good one. Just a touch of it at the end. I feel like, you know, we can do stuff like that now.
01:16:25
And we do this at live shows a lot of times, too, of like urban legends and stuff like that.
01:16:30
Yeah. I feel like let's now that we're back. It's storytelling. It's storytelling.
01:16:34
This is new. We don't need to find the world's worst murder every week. It can also be stories like this.
01:16:42
And I like that. Spooky. So that was the story of Mothman. Like I had mentioned beforehand, my connection to that is there is an animation I did of a portion of that story where they talk about the description of Mothman.
01:16:57
Hashtag by bitches and all that good stuff. If you want to check that out, head to the Exactly Right Media YouTube channel and you can give that a watch.
01:17:04
This has been a delight to join you all on this episode of My Favorite Murder as a guest host.
01:17:10
And now I get to end it with the iconic phrase, stay sexy and don't get murdered.
01:17:16
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