NUSKA
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Formerly Practical Growth with E.B. Johnson...NUSKA is a light in the darkness. A place where we can all come together to remember the human thread that unites us. Art. History. Mythology. Oddities. If it's interesting, if it's human, you'll find it here.
Welcome to NUSKA. Positive dissociation.
NUSKA
Folklore in the Flesh: Cryptids, Cryptids, and more Cryptids
In this episode, we journey across continents in search of the creatures that haunt our maps and imaginations.
From the misty lochs of Scotland to the dense swamps of the American South, and the shadowed mountains of Korea, we uncover the legends of the world’s most intriguing cryptids. Join us as we explore the stories, sightings, and cultural roots behind these mysterious beings that blur the line between myth and reality.
Whether it’s a scaly serpent, a swamp monster, or a shape-shifting spirit, each tale reveals something deeper about our fascination with the unknown.
The Podcast Inside Your HouseWeird Horror. Created by Kevin Schrock and Annie Marie Morgan.
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
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Welcome to New Sky. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to New Ska. Did it just for you? Um, we are back. It is me, E B, and I'm here with Connie.
SPEAKER_02:Hello!
SPEAKER_00:And we have another fun episode to you for you today. It's not as bad as last week. It's not another casual fit, but it is fun, and it is in the Halloween spirit, which I'm super stoked about because Halloween is shock, surprise, gasp. My favorite holiday. Don't even I'm gonna start singing that Tim Robbins song. So we're gonna we're gonna start today talking about cryptids. Cryptids, cryptids, cryptids. The perfect crossroad of spooky and weird, the the Bigfoot in your backyard, the Mothman in your cupboard. That's what we're gonna be talking today. Lots of spooky spooks from around the world. I don't really know where we should start because we've got so many. Connie actually like did actual proper work once again. I'm the I'm the I'm the slice.
SPEAKER_02:With one, I did not do proper work. It always feels like I've done proper work, but I have not done proper work. I have done the half-based attendance.
SPEAKER_00:Just wait, folks. You're gonna you're gonna be able to tell the difference because I scribbled mine list down probably 15 minutes before we did this, and she's gonna she's gonna have for sure.
SPEAKER_02:I have okay, I have been looking. Yeah, but look.
SPEAKER_00:I am the school slacker. I have more 80s since I'm gonna do it.
SPEAKER_03:I like to learn.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I do like to learn. I love that actually. I'm happy to be the I'm happy to be the learner. But yeah, cryptids, cryptids, cryptids, cryptids. Where I grew up, there was actually quite a few little cryptid stories in ye old Tennessee. It's the South, right? So the the South is kind of unique in America. All of America has has got history, right?
SPEAKER_02:But the South is like Appalachian, or Appalachian, or Appalachia.
SPEAKER_00:I say Appalachia.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I mean, I want to say it with that the accent of the Appalachia.
SPEAKER_00:Appalachia. This is what I was like Appalachia, Appalachian, Appalachian Mountains, Appalachian. You can say both.
SPEAKER_02:And that goes did you know there's is it there's like a whole portion of it that technically goes into another country.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's so the Appalachian Mountains would are from Scotland, essentially. They broke apart. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Which is interesting because that's then also where a lot of immigrants settled. And yeah, that like a lot of Appalachian people have Scottish ancestry. But yeah, it's it's the literal, it's the mountains from the highlands here in Scotland.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very cool. Very, very cool. And lots of spooky history. I kind of I almost I know that like the Northeast is technically America's Europe, but I kind of think as the of the South as America's Europe, as far as it's got like just long, long, long, long history, way before the Mayflower and all that kind of stuff. I mean, the Spaniards were landing in Florida in the 1400s, way before anyone from England or France or anyone else was there. And it just kind of went on from there. I mean, obviously, Louisiana has incredible, incredible history. I mean, a lot of it's very, very dark, and slavery and all of those things, those horrible parts, but it's got just you you can't deny the richness of the history because of all of the cultures and just literal centuries of human existence that has happened in there. But I grew up in Tennessee, which is not Louisiana, but we still had cryptids of our own, and we had a lot of indigenous-based cryptids because Tennessee was essentially like the heart of the Cherokee Nation. And one of those that we had was the Wampus cat, which was Oh my god, I would already love it. Wampus cat, which was this, it was supposed to be this big stinking, it was basically like a panther, like a big, stinky, crazy looking panther with glowing eyes. That would like haunt the woods and it would come out and attack you, and yada yada yada. It's a different story depending on the region that you go to and the white people you're talking to that are telling the story. We used to talk about it a lot when I was in college, and we would go camping, and we would like go out to this really remote place that you had to hike in about a mile and a half, and we cleared ourselves in the middle of the woods on this river, and we would always talk about that when you hear weird noises. There's lots of coyotes and different things. But originally, the wampus cat was an indigenous story, it was a Cherokee story. And there's two variations of the story, and what I think is so interesting is because they're both female-centered, they're both women-centered, but they're opposite ends of the spectrum. So, one kind of tale of this from the indigenous people is that the wampus cat was this woman and she distrusted her husband. She was suspicious, she was convinced that her husband was cheating on her. So he went out to go and hunt with some of the other men, and he was this great warrior and he was well respected, but she was like, Nope, don't believe it. I'm gonna go follow him. And she put this animal skin on, I believe it was a bear skin, which is kind of weird because we don't have a lot of bears in Tennessee. We have some bears in East Tennessee, but anyway, she puts on the skin and she goes to follow him, and she's like hiding herself with the skin. Well, she gets found out, she gets discovered, and the medicine man then curses her for being distrustful of her honorable husband, and she has to wear this skin forever. So that's one that's one story, right? Not not not a great view of women in that story.
SPEAKER_02:So I'm a bit like if you want to have like a brighter side to that, not to the brighter side, that would be like the the whole like it's important to learn to trust people and like actually like you know, like understand that there is trust that is built in in keeping that and not like you know, like if you like need to have that conversation, have the conversation. Don't be like making a fool of yourself.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it kind of it kind of the I've I've kind of shortened it a bit, but it it I think they most I think that version mostly smacks of like like whiny, naggy, suspicious wife. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:There's a second version of that story, which I tend to believe a little bit more because this one has like names tied to it. So I tend to believe that this is the actual story from the Cherokee and other indigenous people. So the other story is that there was this couple who were very, very, very much in love, and it was running deer and her husband, Standing Bear. And Standing Bear was this great, great warrior. He was like the greatest warrior in the land. So their village starts getting attacked. I can't pronounce the name of the spirit. E W A H uh Uah, Uah, something like that. It's this evil spirit. It's attacking the village. Her husband goes and he wages this war to defend the village. He finally comes back from fighting the spirit and he's basically destroyed. He's he's crazy, he's gone crazy, and he's just a husk of himself. He's completely ruined. So his wife Running Deer. Yeah. So his wife, Running Deer, goes and prays and begs for the gods to give her the power to avenge her husband. And one of their gods comes and cloaks her with the face of a bobcat, basically cloaks her as a bobcat, which allows her to sneak up on the evil spirit that destroyed her husband. And when she jumps out and reveals herself as this fearsome bobcat, it actually makes the spirit banish itself. It kind of collapses into itself and banished. And then now she roams and protects her village. She stays in the skin, or her spirit remains in the skin of these large cats that protect her village and her people. That's the other version of the story. She's actually a fierce protector. So that's that's the version that I tend to like. And it has.
SPEAKER_02:I like that. Yeah, like that's some real love. Like, you broke you broke my person to a degree that I can't even be with them or enjoy them anymore. I will literally destroy you and myself and live on through the animals to keep the rest of my people safe from you. That's insanely cool.
SPEAKER_00:It's very, very cool. It kind of fits with us. I still want the pet.
SPEAKER_02:I still would like the kitty. Sorry about it. I'm like, ooh, pretty fearsome kitty.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's that's I think that that verse is a pretty cool story. It also kind of fits in with other kinds of gods and mythologies. Like it very much is reminiscent to me of the story of Sekhmet in ancient Egypt, who was, I believe she was the daughter of Ra. And yeah, she was the daughter of Ra because I believe Horus was anyway. Uh, Sekmet was this lion headed goddess. And when she she basically was brought out to smite people because humans had just gotten out of control, they no longer worship the gods, they were destroying each other, they were destroying the land. So Ra sent her down to destroy them. And so for like two or three days, she ravaged everywhere, destroyed everything, and the people went, Oh my god, this has to stop. And so they brought out tons and tons of wine and they poured tons of wine into the Nile River, and she thought it was blood, so she drank and drank and drank and got drunk and fell asleep. And that's how they got her to stop destroying things. So, in their belief system, this wasn't a bad thing, she was a good thing. She was destruction for creation. She destroyed the bad so that they could rebuild the good, and they believed that women had both of those sides to them. We were actually a force of rage and destruction as well as creation. And in ancient Egypt, Sekum was also the rights of doctors. They they she was the patron of physicians. So it kind of almost reminds that that it's that trail of that like feminine, righteous, feminine rage and destruction, which I find fascinating. Fascinating. It's in every culture.
SPEAKER_02:They don't they don't they don't like us to know that, but it's see this is where this is where I step in because the one that I've been learning about has is like ties into this beautifully because and now I'm not gonna be able to pronounce this very correctly because I am not fluent in Korean.
SPEAKER_00:We have white tongues.
SPEAKER_02:I try my best. I I do make an effort to learn the indigenous language here, but you're way better at it. So I think it's the the Yoonban. Wait, no, I'm gonna go back. I'm gonna go back and look because if I don't, I will forget. Um, no, it's Yung Yung Yung Go. Yun Yung Yo Yungo. Oh my gosh, I'm not gonna keep trying. I'm gonna spell it so everyone can go look it up themselves. It's Y-E-O-N-G-N-O. Now, there's two versions for this thing, and it's uh like in some of the shamanism over in Korea, um, it is a spirit that is up in the heavens, but the one that I'm specifically speaking of, because I I saw it on on my feed the other day, and I was like, I have to know everything about this thing. And so essentially, in like the plays and things like that that are done over there and were done over there like way back, essentially, this character is a spirit that has been cast out of heaven for being a dick, basically. And the only way that he can get back into heaven is if he eats a thousand souls. Now, this thing looks like a dragon and wears like a yellow coat that looks like scales, and it has like multiple, like I would say like dead human hands. Like it just is creepy, it's creepy and scary. And essentially, though, this thing couldn't return until it had eaten a thousand corrupt and evil aristocrats, the youngban. See, that's where I was getting it from. The youngban class, which is in in Korea, it's the the upper class up echelons, it's just society. So essentially, this thing was an eat the rich animal.
SPEAKER_00:That's insane. That's so cool.
SPEAKER_02:Obsessed because, like, like and my my thing is like, man, if this thing was real, like is he already back in heaven? Like, did he already eat as many riches these two? Or is he the one that took Ocean Gate?
SPEAKER_00:Do you know what I mean? Oh, he's he's speaking to the orcas, he's the one that's got the orcas going. That's what's happened. He's organizing the orcas, he's he's but I found it in some cleaners.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it was I found it really cool because it was very much on that, like, it's not that typical like dragon formalities that a lot of people attribute. It's it's very creepy and like in the plays and stuff like that, you know, like they depict this this creature like devouring like people through throughout the whole play and stuff. And I just think that's so wonderful.
SPEAKER_01:That is really cool.
SPEAKER_02:I love that massive costumes and stuff. I don't know. I don't know. Can we find Korean?
SPEAKER_00:Can we find some Korean Etsy practitioners to help? You know what, though?
SPEAKER_02:I there will be there is a crochet pattern out there because I did find some teddies that were crocheted and it's the cutest. I'm like, oh, I want a baby cryptid.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that would be cute.
SPEAKER_02:That would be and people have gotten like tattoos and stuff of this creature as well, so it's quite like well known. That's neat.
SPEAKER_00:I've never heard of that. That's super cool.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. Um I was very proud of myself. I was like, I found the best cryptid.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, well, I've put pictures of it on the Patreon so people can see.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'll send some through for you.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, very, very cool. Well, you know, that's actually kind of a perfect place because that that retribution type of spirit fits perfectly with my next Tennessee Cryptid, which I consider cryptid. I saw it on some cryptid lists, but I haven't seen it on all the cryptid lists, and that is the Bell Witch, which I would really argue that's the only authentic Tennessee Cryptid, to be honest. I I think that's the only real Tennessee Cryptid. For those who don't know, Bell Witch, very, very famous. They've made a couple movies on it. I think that, like An American Haunting, I believe that film was based on it loosely. But the Bell Witch, essentially, middle Tennessee, early 1800s, it was about 1817 to 1821, is when it happened. John Bell Sr., he's he's got a farm in Tennessee. There's been some questionable stories about maybe there was a woman who got displaced, maybe there were slaves involved, all this kind of stuff. But essentially, he buys a farm, he's got his family on this farm, and something starts haunting them. It was it was a poltergeist of sorts. It would scratch them, attack them, they would hear disembodied voices, it supposedly shape shifted and did all these horrible things, but it was really, really, really, really, really focused on John Bell Sr. specifically, who was no shocker, a piece of shit according to the historical record, if I'm not mistaken. Like he not not well liked at all.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Shock surprise, it was it was uh, you know, a white farmer in the 1800s in Tennessee. No, no shocker there. But what's really, really interesting is that there was people outside of the family who saw this. Like at first, people thought it was just the family, they were just making stuff up. But there were several people who actually came to the farm, and there was a guy who wrote a book on it who was a total skeptic who came out to the farm and allegedly saw things, heard things, uh, saw attacks, disembodied voices, like had gone outside of the house, had things thrown at him from outside from inside of the house. Um, just really, really notorious stuff. And supposedly, this is where it's kind of fun. This went on for centuries. When I was in college in the mid-early 2000s to mid-2000s, 2007, 2008, that cave had been closed. There's a cave on the property, the house is gone. But there's a cave that supposedly was the cave that this witch lived in that they called old Kate, who was this crazy woman that lived in town that got blamed on everything. She was also hard to deal with. But even when I was in college in the early 2000s, people would go and try to sneak into that cave and stuff would happen to them. That's why they had to close the cave. It wasn't just because they didn't need the legality of people going into this cave.
SPEAKER_02:Um white behavior. It is some going into the scary cave. Let's go. I understand maybe inspecting old buildings, right? I can I can kind of be okay with that. But a cave.
SPEAKER_00:A whole cave. No man.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. What do you fucking mean?
SPEAKER_00:But yeah, there was people got attacked in there all the time to the point that they they did have they used to have events where they'd open up the cave a couple times a year and you could pay money and you could go to the Bellwitch cave, right?
SPEAKER_02:It's not like a pay money to go get messed up.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's not it's not like a it's not a cave I would go into, but it's not like an intense cave where you would like go spelunking in or anything like that.
SPEAKER_02:My my understanding is it's like I don't even like the idea of spelunking. You could not pay me enough money to ever spelunk. Never do never.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm glad I was not born. Yes, yeah, absolutely. But you people would go and there were stories all the time of people going in there and getting attacks, scratched, running out in the middle of the night because of like shadows holding them down and all kinds of stuff. So it's hard to say because I I tend to believe that if there is something out there happening, it's probably because of indigenous people or slaves who were harmed on that land, because that is how Tennessee, that is like Tennessee itself, its history from tip to tail, the history of that state is soaked in indigenous blood. I mean, I grew up less than a block away from a mass Indian burial grave, you know, and there was also a mass slave grave at the like nearest church around the corner from the house.
SPEAKER_02:That like they have someone living in a house that like has direct line sight of the whole area of the beach that's protected because bones still wash up from the the wars from like muldy wars and stuff like that, and like from like colonization and stuff. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So that's I kind of tend to believe that that's there's you can feel it when you go to some of these places, some of these old houses, these old plantation houses and stuff. The energy is just off. It's heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy. So who knows? And there was you can go and dig into this case. We're not gonna spend a bunch of time because the last podcast on the left did a whole series on this that was like three parts. So it's probably like three or four, I think it's three parts, maybe it's two.
SPEAKER_02:Like ours. I'm almost like wondering if I've missed any of their episodes, and then you tell me something. I'm like, I don't remember this episode. What do you mean? It's really, really good.
SPEAKER_00:They they talk about a lot of the weird stuff that happened, but yeah, there was a lot of people that experienced it. But but this John Bell senior, he had a sketchy past, and he definitely had run-ins with this this old Kate who lived in the area. This Kate, I can't remember what her last name was, Kate something. Kate Bats, Kate Bats, but yeah, it's it's a very convoluted story. I think Jack even ended up getting John Bell got kicked out of the church over this, their local church, which was like a big crazy thing. An American haunting, not a very good representation of it, but this is probably, I think, the most famous Tennessee cryptid and the only one we have that's like properly Tennessee, Tennessee, and not co-opted from like an indigenous an indigenous person. But it's yeah, it's spooky, it's scary. I think the cave's still closed. I think they've got it completely shut off now so that people can't break into it.
SPEAKER_02:See, I don't ever want to go to America, but like if call like if if it stops being an absolute shit show, maybe because I would go to all of those places.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that for it, it is fun for that.
SPEAKER_02:Just like New Orleans from a distance, yeah, yeah. The house where that crazy lady did all that crazy stuff to those poor freaking slaves. Oh my god, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That place is yeah, yeah. New Orleans is amazing, it's so much cooler than Tennessee. But yeah, we also have in Tennessee we've got the not deer. It's probably the only other one. There's a lot of little copycats of like Mothman and stuff that we have, but the not deer is probably the other one that people would know because it's because a TikTok trend of all things. But the not deer is, I believe, a co-opting of the skinwalker. It's essentially a deer that doesn't look right that people see in Appalachia all the time. And as they creep up on it, they realize, oh wait, there's something wrong. It's got weird joints. Oh, kitty. It's got weird joints, or its eyes are on the front of its head, or it stands up on its back legs and chases them up a tree, like that kind of a thing. So it's very creepy and kind of it's kind of like it almost reminds me of like a linenal space kind of thing.
SPEAKER_02:My logic though, my logic brain is like, isn't that like what deers do when they get that like wasting disease, the like the prion disease?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Because they do messed up stuff, and like it's like it's that whole like they will walk around with their brain half hanging out, and it's yeah, like also bucks stand up on their back legs sometimes when they charge. So, you know, if you're a crazy guy in the middle of the day, they do, they like to like get momentum when they start to charge at each other, they'll go on their hind legs and then start like plummeting forward to each other.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly, exactly. So I tend to not there's again, it was a TikTok trend recently of people out in the woods and Appalachian. You know, I mean they're seeing like some of the creepy drawings, and they'd like the the deer would like take his little hooves off and he'd have fingers underneath. Just it's just absolutely silly. They're they're Tennessee cryptids are weird. We we didn't really get we didn't have the luck of Bigfoot or Mothman or anything like that. So it's not really great. It's not really great. And I refuse to talk about Bigfoot because I that to me, I'm I'm sorry. Bigfoot is just it's ridiculous to me. The whole thing's ridiculous. The whole Bigfoot thing's absurd. I I think everything about it's fake. I don't I don't buy it, I don't buy it.
SPEAKER_02:To me, I mean like Yetis would be more I would I would believe a Yeti would potentially exist more than Bigfoot. Yeah do you know what I mean? Yeah like because it seems more cr like credibly and not like not credible as in like provable, but like it seems more believable that like a big like a a big fluffy ape exists in in the the like in the mountains. Do you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00:Like 100%.
SPEAKER_02:It's like it's like almost as if like a gorilla got extra fluffy and was like, I'm gonna venture up this way, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00:Like it's way more believable than a big stinky man ape who's living in your backyard in Seattle.
SPEAKER_02:Sorry, but to me, Bigfoot just gives like crusty old white guys with guns a reason to like go me to go me to in the bush.
SPEAKER_00:It's it is that's exactly what it is to me. And the I think the nail in the coffin is that on one of the new 90-day fiance series, they're sending them on a Bigfoot hunt. They've gone on a vacation. Three of these couples have gone on a vacation together from 90-day fiance. The most like white, and I I'm allowed to say this because I was white raised white trash, but the most white trash, bottom of the barrel reality television show, right? Like, if you're watching 90-day fiance, you've run out of everything else to watch, right? That's that's that's what we're talking about here, the quality production value. And they're they've now sent three of these 90-day fiance couples together on a vacation to go and hunt Bigfoot. And I went, yeah, it's fake. That's it. That there is literally if 90-day fiance is doing it, it's all bullshit. So I just don't buy Bigfoot.
SPEAKER_02:I can't buy aliens more than that.
SPEAKER_00:I just I don't buy.
SPEAKER_02:I think for me, what like yeah, like what yeah, I'd love I cool. Give me a Chewbacca from another cut from another planet, right? From another place. Cause like, but like I think for me, it what kind of was my nail in the coffin was the amount of times anytime someone asked for like why there's never been like visual proof, yeah. Um, it's that whole like, well, Bigfoot's an interdimensional creature, so he can just be invisible to you if he wants to be. And I'm like, what so he's got invisibility powers? No, he doesn't have invisibility powers. Well then what do you mean?
SPEAKER_00:Like Yeah, that I uh a lot last podcast on the left did a whole episode on the Bigfoot invasion, the Philadelphia Bigfoot invasion, which was supposedly a bunch of spacecraft landed in Philadelphia in the 1970s, and a bunch of Bigfoot started terrorizing the town, and there's even still a number up because supposedly they still get attacked by these Bigfoot and like oh big feet, whatever. I don't know, I don't even care. I just can't, I don't know. I'm just I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:It's giving like little kids being vandals and the old people not having like a way to explain it.
SPEAKER_00:And apparently it's just this one poor little weird sad man that the police department has put in charge of it, and they just have his home phone number on the website that's like if you see a bigfoot, call Stan, and this guy just records all this stuff himself, which is everybody's gotta have an interest and a passion. And I'd that's fine. I I would rather someone go out and Bigfoot hunt than go to a Trump rally.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Lisa's got a hobby. Yeah, than have chip on your shoulder, you know. I just don't want to go hunting Bigfoot, go hard. Yeah, I'd rather you out in the bush.
SPEAKER_00:I think more than Bigfoot. I tend to believe that more, even though I still think Mothman sounds pretty ridiculous. But the idea I have government messed with something or opened something.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I have my reserves about Mothman, but then also from what I remember, Mothman's been around since the days where when you took a photo with a camera, everyone's eyes went red.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's so like so.
SPEAKER_02:My my inclined to be like, it's potentially true, but like not in the same way that we might perceive it to be true.
SPEAKER_00:I think there's a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of the stories about Mothman are made up, but I do think there's some compelling stories. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I want to get a crochet pattern of Mothman for sure. Now it'd be so cute.
SPEAKER_03:A little Mothman would be so cute.
SPEAKER_02:I know, I know. Well, you can get them, you can get Mothman at that what's that American thing? Builderbear? They don't need Mothman titties. Yeah, I saw a video. This chick got a giant Mothman titty and it was like so massive. I was like, oh my god, it's so cute.
SPEAKER_00:There's a builder bear here. Well, there used to be a builder bear here where I live. I don't know if it still is.
SPEAKER_02:I wonder if they've got you're like, oh, I wonder if I can order one in.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my god, I'm gonna have to go get it. I'm gonna have to go get it. I was gonna buy a stroller for my dog, but I think I need a Mothman plushie instead. A nap teddy. Oh my god, that would be so cute. I definitely need that. Yeah, that's I like I like the Mothman stories. I like I like the idea of the you know, because I love the mist, the movie The Mist, which is like one of my favorite endings. I love getting that movie in front of people who've never seen it before. So the ending.
SPEAKER_02:I have not seen it, so now I'm gonna have to go watch it, aren't I?
SPEAKER_00:Enjoy the ending. It will traumatize you. It's brilliant.
SPEAKER_02:I am I am, I was that kid that wasn't allowed to watch TV growing up. So I'm still playing catch up as an adult. The mist finding time to watch movies. Like when I first watched Donnie Darko, I was like, it was I've watched it a couple times, I never took it, and then when I finally fully watched it, I was like, oh my god, like I was crying by the end of this.
SPEAKER_00:It's dark, it's sad, yeah, yeah. So sick. That was the Requiem for a Dream age when they were just they were like, What have all the kids who've been traumatized by homeward bound and the land before time really need? Oh, Requiem for a Dream and Donnie Darko. Let's give them that. That's what they need for their mentality.
SPEAKER_01:The first time I watched Requiem for a Dream, and I was sitting here looking at my brother, like, why are you making me watch this? What am I watching? Fantastic.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Horrible. I watched that one time and went, this soundtrack is phenomenal. I will never watch this again. And I'll never speak to the person who told me to watch this ever again.
SPEAKER_02:Oh my god. Oh brutal. Absolutely brutal. All right. I will try and I will try and miss this.
SPEAKER_00:It's not the show. It's gotta be. I'll look up the verse. It's the movie version of this. And the the whole premise is this guy wakes up one day and their town just gets sucked up into this mist while he's in the grocery store with his son. And there's crazy aliens coming out of the mist, like monsters and aliens just killing everybody who goes outside of the grocery store, and they're trying to get into the grocery store.
SPEAKER_02:Like Silent Hell.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yes, yes, yes. With the most movie.
SPEAKER_02:The ending to Silent Hell missed me up. I was like, This is the same vein.
SPEAKER_00:This is the same vein. So you will enjoy it. It's horrifying. It's amazing. Amazing. It's another one that I it was another one of those that I forced Dan to watch, and then at the end he was like, Why did you make me watch this? He liked the movie, but he was like feelings. He was like, just so frustrating.
SPEAKER_02:I love when the endings of the movie don't give you room for a sequel, but end it in such a catastrophic way that you're like mad that you even spent the time.
SPEAKER_00:That makes me so those are the only movies I show to my friends. Those are the movies. I do the same with the descent. I make everybody force watch the descent, um, which Dan still is not forgiving me for either. He hates it. He still brings up how much he hates it occasionally. But yeah, cryptids. Cryptids.
unknown:Cryptids.
SPEAKER_00:That is actually kind of a good segue. Kind of sort of the dark and the the horror and the like sheer uh doom and pointlessness of it. Because the next one that I got for us to talk about was the Kelpies, the dangerous water was that sucks you down into the abyss.
SPEAKER_02:Obsessed. Obsessed the way I had to tell my kid, like Bubba, if you ever say never go near the water. Never go near it. Just don't even get in the water, just stop and turn around.
SPEAKER_00:So for those who don't know, the Kelpies is a Scottish cryptid, which we could do Scottish cryptids for a whole freaking episode, but it's essentially a water spirit that takes the form of a horse. And legend has it that it will come near the shore, and when there's children on the shore, it'll be like, hello, children, come and ride onto my back. Don't you want to have a ride? We're gonna have such a fun time together. We're gonna go and ride through this river or this lock. And then when the kid gets on the crazy yes, and then the kid gets on the horse and they grab onto the man and they realize, uh-oh, this is actually a glue trap. It's sticky. Oh no, my hands are being sucked into the mane of this horse. Oh no, we're now in the middle of the lock, and the horse is dragging me down into the depths to my death. It is dark, it is twisted. I think in some versions of it.
SPEAKER_02:And is it like the whole thing where the horse changes when it goes into the water as well? Like it doesn't stay a horse.
SPEAKER_00:It's not a horse anymore. Yeah, it's like a water, like a water demon, essentially. Yeah, and the whole, I guess the idea is it's a cautionary tale for kids because we don't listen to our parents. So, you know, when our parents say, Don't go near the water, we're like, fuck you, I'm going in the water. So they have to tell us, don't go near the water because there is a horse demon in there who will suck you down to your death. Do you hear me?
SPEAKER_02:That's a little a little bit of a like a like a sidestep angle, though. I think it still comes from that whole like us not knowing enough about things, right? And so Like people might have drowned from like getting kelp wrecked around their feet and not being able to untangle themselves and then feeling like they're being pulled down. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Because there is tons of stuff. There's like uh my understanding is I believe in Loch Ness we went I went with a friend to the the boat ride on Loch Ness and they do the whole tour and all that. Oh but I believe there's basically like like a forest under there, like it's quite dangerous. There's tons of stuff and the visibility is very, very, very low.
SPEAKER_02:Scary.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:It's unlike water you can't see into. Oh no, absolutely. That's like a that's it is black when you're out there.
SPEAKER_00:You can't see. And it's it's not like dirty or anything, but it's just black.
SPEAKER_02:No, no, I know what you mean though. Water that is dark like that is scary. I'm like, no, I'm not going near that.
SPEAKER_00:There's lots of I I should have taken more time to write more because when I went on a tour around the highlands, they drove us through, and there was one that's like lock blue or something like that, and it's it had like a really dark, there was like a woman that haunted it that was just straight up just a demon that just tried to kill anybody who came in the water, kind of a thing. There's lots of these, there's lots of stories of things living in the locks up north, uh, and in the rivers and stuff as well. But the rivers here are kind of shallow for the most part. You can mostly see the bottom as they're not as scary.
SPEAKER_02:It kind of makes me understand when my nana was always like, make sure you learn how to swim.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, probably. Probably. And that they're also freezing, like freezing, freezing, freezing. If you went out and swam in that and you weren't prepared, you would lock up easily. You would your your muscles would freeze up and you would just sink right down into them. They're very intense. They're very I wouldn't go swimming out in them. I'm not a good enough swimmer to be doing all that. But yeah, the kelpies, they're very, very famous. Horse demon! Can't beat a horse demon. Can't beat a horse demon. No, there's statues. If you go, they're like one of the big sites of Scotland. It's not it's about 30 minutes, I think, north of Edinburgh. There's this huge kelpie statue that's just amazing. It's like the two horse heads coming out of the water, made out of the kind of coming out of a moat, made out of silver panels. It's absolutely beautiful. It's very, very, very, very pretty.
SPEAKER_01:Awesome.
SPEAKER_00:But they have a lot, they have a lot. That that's just the one I could pronounce. So there was one called the Gilly Doo, and I can't remember what region of Scotland he was from, but he is basically he's not really a cryptid because he's more of like a believe that he's like a fay or like a pixie type nature spirit that supposedly lived out in these woods and would help children when they came when they were in trouble and stuff, but then some people said he would also like go after you. So it's it's it's just lots of stuff.
SPEAKER_02:I've just got like I've just got that like in my head with the thickest Scottish accent. Oh Gilly Doo.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, Gilly Doo. Yeah, it is like the most Scottish word ever. It's also it's a pretty nice pub. Uh in in Edinburgh, they do nice Kaylee. It looks like hogwarts inside. So if you're in Edinburgh, go see the Gilly Doo. Expensive for a pint, but it's a it's a fun sightseeing expedition. If you want to do Harry Potter without giving Joanne Rowling any money. I refuse to call her JK, I just call her Joanne. I can't, I won't do she's Joanne until she learns how to act right.
SPEAKER_02:Because that's such a Scottish thing to do. Joanne. When your like elders are mad at you, they will give you your full name. My full name, I won't I won't go into detail, but like essentially, like, I've shortened my name is shortened from the elongated. And when people mad at me, they'll lengthen the whole ass name to the full proper formal. And I'm like, damn, I'm in trouble.
SPEAKER_00:No, I've been saying that. People have been like, what who are you talking about? I'm like Joanne Rowling. You know who I'm talking about. Joanne K. Rowling, Joanne Catherine, whatever her name is. Yeah. Yeah. I refuse to call her JK. She she can't she she doesn't deserve it. She doesn't deserve abbreviations at this point.
SPEAKER_02:She's dying of something now, finally.
SPEAKER_00:I heard that she had cancer, but I haven't been able to find a story on that.
SPEAKER_02:I wonder what cryptid did that for us.
SPEAKER_00:It might be your your what is it, young young oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, it might be my one. Sleeping up insider.
SPEAKER_00:Sleeping up insider with the hitter.
SPEAKER_02:We love that.
SPEAKER_00:But yeah, that's it. I don't know. I'm I'm cryptids are a bit meh overall for me. I mean, I I absolutely uh the indigenous stories, totally get it, totally understand. So many of them are like laced with morals and all that, just like we said the wampus cat and the woman like avenging her husband and all that stuff. But it's it's it's nice to get into the Halloween spirit. It's nice to think about the possibility that there is other stuff and the mystery of the world because there is still so much in this world that you can do. Yeah, I also think cryptids are good because if you can think about these kinds of things and expand your thinking into including in your reality the possibility that a Bigfoot exists, then you can certainly, certainly make room for other human beings in your life. That's that's so Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I'm a big believer too of like not calling like other cultures because you hear like mythology or legend, and it's like a lot of the time it's just it's storytelling was how things were passed on, and because of that, like in the way that colonization wants to like picture everyone else, they've given them specific wordings so that they can essentially like ignore any of the things, but there's so much learning that we can do, even from cryptids in the stories, like you know, the kelpie being you know, people needing to learn to be safe around the water, like it's these simple things.
SPEAKER_00:There are definitely messages from our ancestors and warnings from our ancestors that can absolutely still apply today, like you're Korean cryptid, you know. That was ancestors at some point say beware the rich man, okay? Because the ultra wealthy, these rich can't take advantage of you, and somebody needs to avenge you when they do that. Like somebody needs to take them down.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, make sure there's a lot of you and they all go.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so it it in that way, these stories are important. That's why I think the stories of the cryptids are actually the fun part for me, more than like out in the woods with a couple of stinky dudes who who are like slinging out deer piss and calling it Bigfooty, you know. I think the stories themselves are fun.
SPEAKER_02:All I can think of is the trailer park boys and how bubbles calls it ham square.
SPEAKER_00:Those are the people, those are the people hunting Bigfoot, trailer park boys, 100%. It's Bubbles and Ricky's. I mean, that's the that's the demographic. That's the demographic.
SPEAKER_02:It's so funny too because there's that whole episode where like the caveman for fucking guys like in the woods because he's got nowhere to live, and they find his massive log of shit, and they're like, it's Sam Squant shit.
SPEAKER_00:Sam Squant. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, that's basically that is how I that all of that is how I feel about Bigfoot hunting. That's 100% it. 100% it. 100% it. I just even on that 90-day fiance thing, they've got the they've shown the clip of them out Bigfoot hunting, and this guy takes them to a tree and he's like, see, right there, that's a Bigfoot cut, and you can literally tell that it's a human being went out there and carved the three Wolverine claw marks from X-Men. It they literally look like the claw marks from X-Men carved into this tree. And this guy's like, it's real. And these dumb idiots on 90 Day Fiance are like, Yeah, look. Oh my god, what kind of animal could have made those? No one, no animal made those. Wolverine did. He came out of the comic books. Absurd. I can't, I can't do it with the Bigfoot. I've had it, I've had it, had enough. I think anti- I actually I'm gonna take back everything I said. I think I think Bigfoot is anti-intellectualism.
SPEAKER_02:I'm gonna take it back. It's the cryptid of anti-intellectualism, it's the warning to intellectuals of the rise of an anti-intellectualism and everything. Oh, we know that Bigfoot's popular. If you start seeing how popular Bigfoot's getting, he's the thermometer for crazy.
SPEAKER_00:Oh god, we're gonna stop looking at wheat and gold prices and start looking at Bigfoot popularity. When it rises, bad shit's coming. That's gonna be the new indicator, the new economic indicator of coming collapse. Bigfoot popularity. Oh yeah, cryptids. That's our cryptids episode. Um, hopefully that was a little fun for you. I would love to hear about your cryptids if you have cryptids where you're from. Uh, because we've probably we've talked about doing maybe like a similar to last podcast on the left, like their March Madness. We want to get some like weird to battle each other out.
SPEAKER_02:I would like, I would like that because it's like D D but for fighting.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Oh, we should do a D D episode.
SPEAKER_02:Oh my god. We oh have to have one of my friends on with us for that because she plays DD like every freaking week.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I've never played and I want to play. We should do we should I've never played, and I I want to, so we should maybe think about something like that. But yeah, cryptids, moral stories, lessons, and weird stuff. Love it, hate it. Uh they're never going away. So yeah, get into it. Cryptids, cryptids, cryptids, cryptid. It's Connie already.
SPEAKER_02:Eat the rich, yeah, eat all of them.
SPEAKER_00:That was the best lesson. And avenge your husbands. If if someone makes your husband go crazy, call on the gods to avenge him by destroying your family.
SPEAKER_02:I just want to add actually that that whole story is like a is a thing for shell shock. Like we should we should take lesson about shell shock and how much that actually impacts the people that these people come back home to. That is actually and how like they have righteous anger that they should be allowed to express.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, 100%. Wow, that was way better than my analysis of it. I gotta I gotta take my own advice and get back into school. Fucking get my brain cracking again. But yeah, that's that's it. Cryptids, thank you so much for being here this week. Hope you hopefully you enjoy the episode. We'll be back next week with another one. Not gonna make any promises on what it's about because then I'll screw that up. So you're gonna get one of the things that we're gonna talk about, and hopefully we will see you there for that. You can follow us on Instagram and you can also support us on Patreon. We're on patreon.com slash newska, help us grow the podcast, help us keep this going, and we also put some goodies and some extras, and you get the episodes early and you get them ad-free. So if you would like to help us grow this, head over to patreon.com slash newska. Uh, and other than that, we will see you next week everywhere you stream your favorite podcasts. Bye bye.
