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The Goatman & Torajan Death Rituals
15 Plays2 years ago
On this week’s episode, Felicia’s urban legend might be the Greatest Of All Time while Lauren’s cultural tale might be the weirdest of all time!
First, Felicia explores the urban legend of the Goatman of Maryland - a half goat / half human hybrid cryptid who is rumored to reside in the woods of Prince George's County and reportedly responsible for countless unexplained dog disappearances & deaths over the decades since the 1970s. There are several theories on this Greek mythology-inspired urban legend with how the Goatman may have come to be…but is truth stranger than fiction?
Next, Lauren documents the funeral rituals of the Torajan people on Sulawesi Island. Every 3 years, for more than 900 years, the people of the Lembang Paton Village perform the Ma'nene death ritual aka "The Ceremony of Cleaning Corpses" in which natives of this Indonesian island dig up the bodies of their dead mummified relatives to clean them, dry them, and nicely dress them to spend time with them before burying them again. If you thought your family get-togethers were awkward…
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Transcript
Introduction to Sinister Sisters Podcast
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to the Sinister Sisters podcast. I'm Felicia. I'm Lauren. We're best friends. And we like spooky stuff. And I still sound like this, so just leave me alone.
Weekly Recommendation Enthusiasm
00:00:24
Speaker
I'm sorry. She's building her immune system, everyone. Oh, God. The germs of the children. It's just crazy. I just can't imagine if you were like in a kindergarten class. I bet there was just like no hope for you. No, no, no.
Movie Review: Mia Goth's Performance
00:00:41
Speaker
But for recommendations, we realized we have the same recommendation this week, so we can talk about it together. Yes. Just so good. I had the best time. It was amazing. Like, my favorite thing
00:00:56
Speaker
Obviously, like Mia Goth is so good. But also just like all the Wizard of Oz references. Oh my gosh. Yes. I was obsessed with that. Yeah. I know. That scarecrow. The scarecrow. It's so amazing. And just like her on the bicycle and like she's like,
00:01:13
Speaker
I don't know. There's just something about it that like he just kept Ty West just like captured this like style of like old movies that are also like about an older time in America. It's like movies from the 1950s that are like about the 1910s. Yeah, it's just like I don't know. It's just genius.
00:01:33
Speaker
and all the performances. And it was like, I feel like I don't wanna give too many spoilers, but there's not a lot of movies that can be like unsettling and still kind of fun in that way. I don't know if that makes sense. But it was like, it was really dark and not like a fun slasher comedy thing. Like it's just unsettling, but it's still fun. So enjoyable.
00:02:01
Speaker
Yes, definitely. And I always love movies that are like about movies or about showbiz or about like, they're so fun. And like, Ty West and Jordan Peele have like a lot in common and like, when they're just like, what is the word, cinephiles, like they're just like obsessed with movies. And so their movies are always about movies in some
New York Weather & Halloween Excitement
00:02:21
Speaker
ways. Yes, yes. It's cool. Definitely. And her I mean, her performance was so great. And I loved the like, is it her cousin?
00:02:31
Speaker
I thought she was hilarious. Oh, you're the blonde girl. I know. When she's just reacting. Yeah, this whole monologue and this little blonde girl's just like, what the fuck?
00:02:44
Speaker
What is happening? It's great. It's awesome. I love Dick. I always love those girls that it's like, you know, I don't know. She's like a very all-American, you know, could be just like a basic performance. And she's so good. Yeah. She's awesome. Awesome.
00:03:02
Speaker
But yeah, that's that's our recommendation for the week. And yeah, yeah. And also, I guess we can just mention that. So this is a normal episode this week and the next week is October, which is crazy.
Introduction to Goatman Legend
00:03:16
Speaker
We actually I'm sure it's not not this way in Texas. But yesterday and today we've had like the first fall weather in New York. And I feel like alive again. It's like I feel like I can exist once more.
00:03:29
Speaker
I am so painfully jealous. No, it's like 100 degrees. 98 degrees today.
00:03:36
Speaker
Damn, but that is, oh, man, that's so hot. You could just be falling in your apartment. I mean, our AC is blasting, I will tell you that. Oh, yeah. But we did this medieval party. I was telling Felicia last night, it was outside in 90-degree weather. It was outside? It was long, velvet, thick, theatrical medieval costume. Oh, God.
00:04:04
Speaker
Thank God there's already. Yes, absolutely. Yes. Bring on those cold temps and spooky time. Oh my God, I'm so excited.
00:04:15
Speaker
In October, we're going to do, I can't, we did something sort of like this last year, but our October episodes are going to be a little bit more like deep dives on things that feel Halloween-y or spooky in some way. So we're really excited about those. But for today, for today, I'm doing The Goatman, which is actually an urban legend from Maryland, which is my home state. I grew up in Frederick.
00:04:41
Speaker
Yes, I grew up in Frederick, Maryland and the goat man legend is from PG County or Prince George's County in Maryland.
00:04:49
Speaker
And it's exactly what it sounds like. Had you heard of it before? Had you heard of it from your marriage? No. Okay. Just wanted to check. I've never heard of it. But I did see there's been a lot of research that has been done on it at the University of Maryland, which is where my brother went to college. So I should probably ask him about it. Yeah. But no, this is not something I grew up with at all.
00:05:14
Speaker
But I was just looking into Maryland, you know, urban legends and this one, this one came up so.
00:05:21
Speaker
It's unclear when the legend itself started just by word of mouth, but the first time it's mentioned in any sort of media is in the Prince George's Counting News on October 27th, 1971. And the writer, her name was Karen Holstler, did a deep dive on the Goatman and the history of it in the Maryland folklore.
00:05:51
Speaker
urban legend scene, I guess. So the article was called Residence, Fear, Goat, Man, Lives. Dog found... Decapitated in old Bowie. So this is sad. I love dogs, so does Lauren.
00:06:08
Speaker
But
Goatman Origin Stories: Fact or Fiction?
00:06:09
Speaker
this is a creature that apparently is like known for killing dogs was just makes me sad. Oh, no. We're going to really have to strap in for this episode. I know. I'm sorry, everybody. We should have a warning trigger warning. So the article talks about the Edwards family who is was looking for their missing puppy named Ginger and they found Ginger decapitated, sorry, near Fletchtown Road. I know it's just terrible.
00:06:38
Speaker
And this has kind of been like a rumor about the goat man is that he he's like kills dogs. I don't know why. So there's there's a lot of different ways that. Oh, oh, sorry. And after that, so that was in October and November of that same year, the Washington Post did an article about the goat man as well. So that's like bigger stuff going on.
00:07:04
Speaker
Yeah. So in terms of what the goat man looks like, I mean, it's pretty pretty much what you would expect. The top half is man with some goat ears and the bottom half is more goat like very much like a fawn theory language in the wardrobe except very evil and scary version where the fawn what's his name? Thomas. Yeah, or Tom. Tom. Yes, that's right. That's right.
00:07:32
Speaker
is very sweet. This one is very, very evil.
00:07:37
Speaker
So the way in which people believe the goat man came to be, the main story that I found mostly is this idea that there's this place called the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. And they say that there was a scientist there, and there's two versions of this, but it's sort of this like mad scientist, I think like the fly kind of thing going on that he was doing an experiment on goats.
00:08:06
Speaker
and accidentally mutated himself into a half man, half goat creature, like just like the fly. Who then starts attacking people and animals and whatever in that area.
Goatman in Movies: Monster or Myth?
00:08:21
Speaker
And the other version of that, and this one, we have names. I don't know what these names are. I didn't research them, but a variation on this is that there was a doctor at the Beltsville Arc, oh God.
00:08:31
Speaker
Agricultural Research Center that was mixing DNA of a goat and his assistant's DNA named William Lotsford and put them together and then created this monster called the Goat Man.
00:08:47
Speaker
Oh, wow. Yeah, so that's what the mad scientist version. There's another version of the goat man, just kind of being this like hermit that lives in the woods. But other than dogs, the goat man is, and this is, you know, very classic urban legend known to attack teenage lovers in cars, that kind of thing. Oh, you got to get a classic lovers lane.
00:09:08
Speaker
Yeah, just why would anyone go anymore to Lovers Lane? Like I feel like at a certain point you would stop going if everyone was just dead. Yeah, just go to like the Walmart parking lot. I mean, yes. Or the Waffle House parking lot. I mean, God has some class. Yeah. So there's also in the 90s, the goat man, there's this guy's last name is Op Sisnik.
00:09:37
Speaker
that he had written some articles
Cultural Impact of the Goatman Legend
00:09:39
Speaker
and ended up writing a book about a bunch of different legends. And he talks about on the trail of the goat man and tracked down the family, the Edwards family who famously in that article had lost their dog in ginger. And so the family said that basically
00:09:59
Speaker
They had seen this animal walking around in the night. And this is where the imagery gets pretty scary, which is fun. It was about six feet tall, walked on two feet and was hairy. And they also noted it and made a high pitched sound like a squeal. And oh, yeah, yeah. And he says there's a quote here from April Edwards and it says, people came here
00:10:25
Speaker
and called it folklore, and the papers made us out to be ignorant hillbillies who didn't know any better. But what I saw was real, and I know I'm not crazy, whatever it was, I believe it killed my dog. I was like, dang. I'm sad. I feel like when people get warped in the media or like, you know, they have to see what the media says about them. I feel like that's terrible.
00:10:50
Speaker
Absolutely. And especially with these sort of urban legends that kind of take place. And this is before. So Prince George's County now is different than it once was. But this is this folklore and this urban legend comes from when it was a much more rural area. So then like, and I feel like that always happens.
00:11:09
Speaker
with stories that take place kind of in the middle of no wiz, if you will. And there's always this kind of like, you know, hillbilly, hermit in the woods, whatever judgment of like a group of people that live in these kind of areas. And yeah, I don't know.
00:11:29
Speaker
So what else here? So like I said, this kind of started in the 1970s, but there's been a lot of sightings ever since. I think there's even a Goatman movie.
00:11:48
Speaker
So it's called, oh, it's a short, I guess, from 2017. And I will say the poster is hilarious. Okay, there's actually a few. So there's the Goatman Murders, which says, you know, based on the legendary Maryland Murders. And there's not a lot of like,
00:12:10
Speaker
legitimate murders that I can find that are like placed to the goat man specifically. Yeah, there are. Yeah, it seems more legend, but there are like some things of like people playing like serial killers or people are deaths in the area on the goat man. But I'm not finding a lot of specifics on that. But the goat man murders the poster is a very muscular goat man that is just a man that is more like the top half is goat and the bottom half is
00:12:39
Speaker
human on this particular one, holding an axe and wearing some sort of denim vest, which I think is really fun and hilarious. Oh, my God. That's really good. And we also have the legend of the goat man, horrifying monsters, cryptids and ghosts, which may or may not be a documentary of sorts. But goat man takes the cover. He's got red eyes and he is wearing
00:13:05
Speaker
a shirt that it seems that he transformed into the Goatman and is bursting out of it with his Goatman muscles.
Introduction to Manene Death Ritual
00:13:12
Speaker
Oh my God. I'm not super kind of sexy. I'm not super clear on why they're making the Goatman a sex symbol in all of these movies because I didn't find that in my research, but I am intrigued.
00:13:25
Speaker
And there's also deadly detour, which is the goat man murders. And this I will say is is probably my favorite. It looks like the poster like a classic slasher or something goat man standing over a dead body. The dead body looks like a real person. The goat man looks like a cartoon but is once again shirtless, extremely muscular with just a goat head thing on holding some sort of
00:13:53
Speaker
weapon, which is interesting to me because I feel like if I was a goat man, I wouldn't need a weapon. I guess I'm thinking more like werewolves, but the goat man likes to apparently hold an ax or a... Yeah, I don't know. It's very interesting. Strong moves. Yeah. And then this last one I'll mention to you. I just found this on... I don't know what this is. This is a bloody disgusting article.
00:14:17
Speaker
that says soundtrack to the lost film, the Goatman release. So apparently there was some UK film called the Goatman, which may have nothing to do with the Marilyn Goatman stories, but they released a, like they released the album to it. And in this one, the Goatman has like his fingers or like foot, long fingers. Oh my gosh. And I can't possibly imagine why that would be because that's or human like to me.
00:14:43
Speaker
But, you know, so that's it. The goat man from Maryland, you know, it's not a long story, but it did inspire what I'm going to do for one of our October episodes, which is Baphomet or like the history of the goat as devil in for the Halloween spooks of it. So excited to learn more about that too. But I love the goat man.
00:15:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Good job, Goatman. Sexy muscle man, murderer, mad scientist, dog killer, et cetera. Extraordinary. Incredible. That's it. I love that.
00:15:33
Speaker
So my episode or my topic this week, I'm covering Manene, which is basically this elaborate death ritual that is carried out by the Taraja people of Southern Sulawesi, which is one of Indonesia's largest islands.
00:15:54
Speaker
So this is crazy James sent this like the the topic to me and the pictures are really intense So I'm actually I think we'll still probably share them on our
00:16:05
Speaker
Instagram. Are they too intense for Instagram? I don't know. It's again, it's like we talked about this before where we were like, is it okay to like post dead bodies on Instagram? Oh, it's hard to say. It's very hard to say. I know. How do we do this podcast without it? But I know it's dark. So these funerals and all the events following are very expensive, time consuming and really like the most extreme that I've ever heard.
00:16:35
Speaker
basically the Taraja people, kind of similar to, I guess, like, you know, Day of the Dead or, you know, I guess like,
00:16:45
Speaker
I don't know what I'm trying to say. Basically just making death this reverent, beautiful thing, not necessarily our sad, quick, bleak funeral process. I feel like this is a much more elaborate one. Is it more like celebration of?
00:17:08
Speaker
Yes, it is more celebration of. The biggest difference to me that will lead to why we have to post all these pictures is that these people believe that death is a gradual process and very social. So they believe that the spirits of the dead remain on earth until a death ceremony is held. So people will keep the bodies of their loved ones who have recently died.
00:17:35
Speaker
in their homes, preserved sometimes for weeks, months, or even years until the family has enough money to be able to afford this elaborate funeral basically.
Preservation and Beliefs of the Taraja
00:17:49
Speaker
So. Well, that's brutal. Yes. I mean, we did post the picture of that lady that the man kept in his house for like forever. So I feel like if we could post that, we could post this. I don't know. Right? I know. It's dark. So they will keep this body wrapped up like a mummy in this special room. They feed it. They tend to it as if the person is just sick or sleeping.
00:18:17
Speaker
And they sometimes even speak to them in family meetings. And then after the death ceremony, then the soul will leave the body and begin its journey to Puia, which is the land of the spirits that they believe in. So basically the longer they are able to keep this body, the more the family can save for the funeral, the bigger, more expensive it is. And sometimes these funerals can last for as long as 12 days.
00:18:45
Speaker
and they can cost as much as hundreds of thousands of dollars. So it kind of feels like a wedding to me too, like this huge event. So they also include the sacrificing of a water buffalo. The more powerful the person who died, the more buffalo are slaughtered.
00:19:07
Speaker
So right. So buffalo carcasses, including their heads, are usually lined up on a field waiting for their owner who is in this sleeping stage. They believe that this dead person will need the buffalo to make the journey to the land of spirits. And so the more buffalo they have, the quicker the trip.
00:19:31
Speaker
So this slaughtering of all these buffalo, and it can be sometimes dozens of buffaloes, hundreds of pigs are normally killed at kind of the climax of the funeral, which just feels wild. So there's dancing and music and sometimes even these like young boys will catch the blood, like part of this ritual is they will catch the spurting blood from these buffalo being slaughtered.
00:20:00
Speaker
in these long bamboo tubes. And then there's also traditionally a cock fight that requires the sacrifice of at least three chickens. However, it is also common to have at least 25 pairs of chickens fighting against each other to get to three dying, I guess. And then on rare occasions where the person dies away from their home,
00:20:30
Speaker
family members often venture to the location and carry the body home. So these funerals are, you know, there's flute music and funeral chants and songs and poems and crying and wailing and all kinds of, you know, expressions of grief. But they also in a very beautiful way do not believe that death is, you know, an ending or a goodbye.
Manene Ritual: Cultural Significance
00:20:54
Speaker
They believe that the spirits of the dead continue protecting their family, that they never really leave you.
00:21:01
Speaker
So I love that part. Yeah, yeah, that's nice. Right? But interestingly enough, I think this is kind of odd to me. So tarragians are largely Christian now from people either coming into their country and converting them or whatever. But it has not stopped them from continuing these very traditional funeral processes.
00:21:25
Speaker
So Manene, I should have said this earlier, I was kind of doing more like general tarrage and funeral stuff, but Manene is one of the rights, which is carried out every one, two or three years, depending on what the family's traditions are. And this is the part that gets a little weird. So I mean, I guess I shouldn't say weird. This is the part that kind of creeps me out.
00:21:52
Speaker
So it translates to care of the ancestors or the ceremony of cleaning corpses. And different websites kind of translate it as one or the other. But it's basically a way to honor these deceased relatives and to keep their ancestors' spirits happy so that they'll have better harvest, more good fortune in the next year.
00:22:15
Speaker
So long after the funerals were held and family members were buried, this ritual begins. And the family members come to Patane, I guess it's maybe Patani, which is a building that kind of looks like a house that has room to store several bodies. So they go to this place, they exhume the bodies of their deceased family members,
00:22:43
Speaker
And then they clean them, they leave them in the sun to dry, and then they dress them in new clothes. So it's kind of a... Like jerky. Like jerky, it does feel that way.
00:23:02
Speaker
Go ahead. So they dress them in these new clothes and it's considered this time to bond with the dead. So it's very interesting. It's a time that they can also tend to the coffins, they repair, they replace broken parts of the coffins. And then the bodies are paraded around the community where they once lived. So they take these dead bodies of their family members throughout the community.
00:23:34
Speaker
So this parade also sometimes involves taking pictures with the dead body, even popping lit cigarettes into their mouths. They might take time to speak to the corpses. They even consider it like kind of quality time or they might even feed them. And it normally ends with the family sharing this, you know, big tarragian food meal or the family worshiping in
00:24:02
Speaker
and it's worshipping at the Tong Kanan traditional house after they return the coffin and bury it again. So there's normally some sort of celebration at the end. But I just think this is like one of the coolest and weirdest, I mean, kind of both parts that it's like they keep the body in the house,
00:24:20
Speaker
until they can afford this huge funeral. And then after that, they still go and get the body every couple of years, clean it off, have it like meet their children.
Tourism and Tradition in Taraja
00:24:32
Speaker
Is this a thing that still is part of their tradition? Does this still happen?
00:24:36
Speaker
Yes, so they're very welcoming of tourists and even considers like they consider Westerners kind of adding to the prestige of the family. So the area is really remote and difficult to get to. So it really wasn't, you know, there weren't really missionaries or any of that until the early 1900s. And then a bunch of Dutch missionaries came over and converted them all.
00:25:03
Speaker
But there is kind of like this weird, like half Tarajan people are really excited about tourists coming in and seeing it. Half of them are more like, you know, we want to keep this a private thing for, you know, mostly our culture, our community. And so there are some of them that rely on that tourism industry to survive, even just like selling souvenirs or giving tours.
00:25:28
Speaker
But I do think, I mean, it is something that they do to this day, so I think hypothetically people can visit and see this ritual. Yes, it's just a, it's a crazy long and meaningful ceremony throughout like from the start, as I said, to the end.
00:25:50
Speaker
but it's this way that the younger family members can be literally introduced to their ancestors. I do like the idea too of death being this gradual process or I imagine that's easier in coping in some ways that it's not just a sudden stop. Yeah, because here it's like if someone dies, you try to make it happen as quickly as possible. It's like the funeral ideally is in a few days.
00:26:19
Speaker
Right. Like everything is very fast and I always thought maybe that was I don't know like I guess maybe I'm thinking like back to like plagues and stuff but like a hygienic
00:26:31
Speaker
thing. I'm like getting dead bodies like out of the space of the living quickly. Right. But I don't know. This is a very interesting. I've never heard of anything like this. It's fascinating. It does sound like very meaningful and cool in certain ways. And then other ways like it's just so different than what we do here. It's like mind boggling.
00:26:52
Speaker
And it's also the idea that you would kill all of these buffalo or do all these extravagant things when it's like they're not coming from a place that that's an easy sacrifice, I'm sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And the dead person.
00:27:09
Speaker
doesn't really get to, wait, I mean, I don't know. It doesn't really get to enjoy the fruit of that. No, except in their beliefs. They're like, they need this buffalo to ride for the next place, but it is intense. It is a reason. Yeah.
00:27:26
Speaker
Yes, but it is. I mean, it's really interesting. And they like there's there's more you can do so much research. Like I feel like I just kind of skimmed the surface. I guess maybe I can I did look up the kind of like why it started or where the ritual began. And there is a local legend that there was this hunter named Pong Rumasek who hundreds of years ago found an abandoned corpse in the Tarjan jungle.
00:27:53
Speaker
And then he was moved by this stranger's unfortunate end, having no one around, and took care of the dead body and dressed it up in his clothes. And from then on, he was said to have all this good luck and bountiful harvest.
00:28:09
Speaker
you know, why they do it or what they, I guess, how it kind of started. But, you know, it's mostly sort of lore at this point. And you know, they're not, I'm not sure that that's a true story necessarily, but that's kind of what they cite as
00:28:26
Speaker
why they do it and where it began, which is also pretty cool. But there's a lot you can look into on the science side too, I was looking at of like how they preserve the bodies, what they do to keep them in their house for months or a year before they bury them, what they do to clean them after they bring them back from being buried. So there's a lot of stuff you can look into if that's
00:28:53
Speaker
interesting to you or if you would like to learn more. But it is, I think it's a really cool and different and long and unique kind of death right. So I really thought it was a cool topic to research for sure.
Episode Wrap-Up and Listener Engagement
00:29:08
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. Well done. Yeah, that's very interesting. Amazing.
00:29:13
Speaker
Well, thank you all for listening. As Felicia said, next week we'll start our themed October episode, so we're very excited. And you might be able to send us ideas in Instagram if you have any that you really want us to cover. Maybe we'll even do some in November if we get good ideas. So thank you again for listening. And we hope you have some sweet, sweet nightmares. Bye.