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Episode 10 - Queen of Tentacles
12 Plays5 months ago
After a hectic holiday season, Nym and Nylene savor their time in the cottage to relax and talk about nightmares. Nym talks about the spooky urban legend of the arcade game Polybius. Nylene creeps us out with some unsettling natural phenomena, both explained and unexplained.
Enter the Nightmare for transcripts, show notes, sources, and more!
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Nim and Nyleen's Nightmare Cottage'
00:00:29
Speaker
Welcome to Nim and Nyleen's Nightmare Cottage, where we discuss dark locations, sinister media, and other tales of the macabre. I'm Nim. And I'm Nyleen. Let the nightmare begin.
Holiday Experiences and Family Time
00:00:46
Speaker
Happy Holidays. Happy Holidays indeed. How was yours? I'm a little sickly, so baby, call him a baby, he's three, was home from daycare, so plenty of time to fully infect me and just spread his little germy germs. So that's been fun. It really sucks when you're two weeks off and then you're like,
00:01:07
Speaker
oh But I'm sick the whole time and I like I literally spent all day yesterday just on the couch watching movies I could live I Ordered food that was I was like I can't I can't I can't deal but besides that like Christmas great You know spent with the family. I'm kind of very happy to be over the stress of it all Yeah, you know like I almost want to take my Christmas tree down But it looks so pretty and it's effort that I'm just not willing to put forth right now yeah but you know just ready for the holiday to be over but i wish i had more time off you know i definitely get that i definitely get that how are you i'm only a little sad when we get to this part where it's like oh so this is coming out after new year so happy new year happy new year but i'm still we're as we're recording we're not quite there yet so i'm i never take my stuff down until it's usually new year's day that i take it down because i'm off work that day oh that's a good idea yeah but yeah the holiday was great christmas was great spent it with monkey and my mom and my cat and her dog and it was cute it was a lot of fun we ate a lot of yummy food we watched movies we we always keep it really chill nightmare puppy's making some noise i'll take this out he says release me sorry i got really confused i was like what day is it right now okay
00:02:31
Speaker
another part of the holiday bullshit is you're trying to figure out what day it is exactly yes and even i like i'm not i haven't been off of work i mean we get you know the holidays proper off but it's like a way more chill time you know some leaving early and stuff like that so it's very disorienting i never know what day it is but it's okay i'm kind of wrapping up the end of all of the things and getting ready to kind of look fresh on a new year kind of excited about it that I don't really know what else to say about that. Did you get anything
Gifts and the Joy of Giving
00:03:04
Speaker
really cool? Any good gifts? I had a lot, a lot of really cool stuff. Too much, too much to name. A lot of projects that I really need to do.
00:03:13
Speaker
work for christmas yeah but like it's fun stuff i did order myself like a little craft table that i can like fold away because that's my biggest problem is i don't want to start a craft because then i have to put it away because i have a toddler who's gonna like get into everything exactly so it's really it's a lot better when i can like have something in the corner of my room or you know that i can play with so i got got a lot of really great stuff and ace did such a good job with the stocking this year because we decided to do have bash do stockings with like each of us for each of us yeah and you know like
00:03:47
Speaker
I did the traditional stuff, but he got so creative with it and took him shopping and had him pick out stuff. And it was so cute, all the cute little things that got me together. And he was so excited to watch me open it, bash wise. So it was great. It was really good. What about you? I love that. Oh, I got spoiled in general. I just got spoiled. I got lots of really fun stuff. New laptop for the podcast and maybe I should have It's got the 32 gigs of RAM. I was wondering about that. I didn't think about it till just this moment, which is the whole reason I specified that. But yeah, you know, garden stuff and oh, my mom got me this badass Dutch oven that I'm really excited about because I'm... Is it pumpkin shaped? It's not. I've been wanting to get that one for you forever. I was like, I don't know if she's really doing stuff in it yet. I did get a new, it's like a shelf thing for plants, but it has like grow lights on it. I have been looking at those for ages. Let me know how they deal. I will. Yeah. That's so great. I'm so excited to put it together. Yeah. Where you can put it. Yeah. I don't know yet because there's just so many dark areas in my house. I'm trying to figure out where I want to put it. Fair. Fair. That's cool. Yeah. Well, yay. That's awesome. And then I ended up getting Amazon money so I could buy all the other shit I need. So you can buy Amazon. Well, you know, I have all of these
00:05:06
Speaker
plants in my office that have been in the same pots for two years and they're getting root bound and they've been angry and I have it like pots, planters are expensive. They're very expensive. And I even like, I found the cheapest ones I could stomach, you know, like the ones that would like look good anyways, but I'm excited about plants. Plants. Plants.
Urban Legend: The Polybius Game
00:05:34
Speaker
So shall we get started? Yes. You know that arcades and arcade games, video games in general, have played a big role in my life and career, actually. There's an urban legend I've actually been wanting to cover since we started this. Are you familiar with Polybius? Polybius? Polybius. No. And actually in some of the videos I saw they were saying Polybius? Sounds like something great.
00:05:56
Speaker
We will get to that! So as the story goes, in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon in the early 80s, some strange arcade cabinets were popping up in local arcades. The cab was solid black and contained the game Polybius. The game was said to be highly addictive and there would be long lines to play it. It was said that people who would play the game would get nauseated, suffer hallucinations, seizures, then attempted suicides, you know, wake up in the middle of the night screaming. Wait, kind of has this game been confirmed or it's just an urban legend?
00:06:24
Speaker
Okay, I'm sorry. I have questions. I know. I understand. We'll get there. We'll get there. Long after playing the game, people would remember that this game would be serviced frequently, not by the regular arcade text, but by Men in Black.
00:06:38
Speaker
They would open the cab and review the game data, not caring about the coins at all. Um, they just wanted to see, you know, the stats and stuff of what people were doing and how they were being affected. The cabinets were only around for a few months before they disappeared altogether. It was believed that Polybius was a game created by the CIA to test behavior modification technology. And then the, but the first story, the the first time this actually became like a known thing, the first, the first might actually be real, the first traces of the story at all, beyond word of mouth, was on an article on a website called coinop dot.org, which I will link in the show notes. Wait, the internet didn't even like exist that hardcore. in this city Right. This was released in August of 1998. Okay. So this was like after the fact. Got it. Right. Yeah. Many, many years after. I mean, it circulated on the internet. and Eventually it was mentioned in GamePro magazine in 2003, which brought it to a a wider audience. But did it exist?
00:07:34
Speaker
almost completely assuredly no. okay There's no evidence, physical or digital, to support the existence of the game. As an example, the US military contracted Atari to make a version of Battlezone that they could use to train soldiers. It was called the Bradley Trainer after the tank that they were trying to train them to use. And only two of these cabinets were even made. One of them is supposedly circulating among collectors and the other one supposedly is still in possession of the military.
00:08:01
Speaker
But a ROM of the game exists, like there's proof that the game exists and you can actually find, because there's a ROM, people can emulate it and yeah you can find gameplay of it online. Even though there was only two of them ever, and it was kind of a secret-ish thing, there's evidence that, you know, you can find it. I don't know, but I feel like if the military was doing military, if the government was doing something like, you know, like there's been other projects that like have been that are known to be real but the government's like no not us. This is why I say almost assuredly no and and and kind of the reasons for that will kind of come up for me still believing that it's very unlikely that this has actually happened. Yeah.
00:08:43
Speaker
Another thing is that those who claim to have played Polybius in Portland, the descriptions of how the gameplay is are all different. Yeah, you know, people kind of want to be part of something special, right? So they might make up their own little stories. But another thing, the title screen that's most widely used in every piece of media I could find on it is this right here. It stylized in a way that really would have been out of range for most developers in 1981. So everything was eight bit.
00:09:08
Speaker
is before that. We're talking vector graphics, which is similar to like Tempest, Atari Star Wars, ah Black Widow, there's others. And then raster graphics that are like Space Invaders and Pac-Man. Like that was like the peak of technology at the time, right? For games. Making this, it's kind of like a bubbly looking, big font on it. And that would have required so much like game space.
00:09:32
Speaker
even at that time it just it it would have been kind of out of the realm of possibility. Yeah it would have been out of range for most developers aside from like maybe Atari and and some of the other bigger ones at the time. Now while gameplay descriptions have kind of differed it was generally described of having a combination of vector graphics like I said like Tempest or or raster graphics like Space Invaders, which I'll put images so people can see the differences there. And that that also wasn't really attainable at that time, um especially for such a test. In the title screen, you'll see that the copyright is held by Sennelschlossen.
00:10:06
Speaker
which if broken apart in German is cine or senses and lotion or delete. So sense delete or sensory deprivation in German. The way that it is, the words wouldn't actually pair that way. It's like somebody looked into like an English to German dictionary and picked words they wanted and put them together, which I do when I name characters in video games. That's good to know.
00:10:27
Speaker
So it's not, it doesn't seem like an actually German thing. And then also for funsies, here's where we're going to talk about Polybius sounding Greek. Polybius was an ancient Greek philosopher. known to love puzzles and cryptography, but most known for his belief that historians should only report what can be verified with hard evidence and eyewitness reports. Which makes the whole thing feel like a troll. And he was he was an ancient Greek philosopher from Arcadia also. So it's just like all it's very on the nose. Exactly. It's so on the nose and it's kind of like a a little wink.
00:10:58
Speaker
the whole thing just kind of feels that way. In a BBC video I watched, they talked to this guy who found his muse in early internet by kind of creating stories and twisting them and spreading them, like basically creating urban legends and and telling those stories, like pretty creepy pasta days, not necessarily a mark that it's
MKUltra Connection and Media Appearances
00:11:15
Speaker
satire or anything like that. So they're like kind of creating and developing these lore, this urban legend stuff on the early days of the internet. He was doing an interview with these people and he didn't say he didn't make up Polybius. He did say that it's the kind of thing he would do.
00:11:29
Speaker
And he's not the only person who took on that medium for storytelling like people used that as a storytelling medium And I'm actually really curious to find out if there's other urban legends like this that like kind of just started in the form of like creepypasta where you just like tell a story and people think it's true. But there's a lot of interesting puzzle pieces that show how this urban legend blossomed. From the 50s to the 70s, the CIA had a human experiment called MKUltra to study the effects of drugs for brainwashing, torture, and other horrible shit. And most of the participants did not know they were participating. So there's a real life situation where government was conducting experiments from random people.
00:12:04
Speaker
There's also precedence for the men in black inspecting the games. In the early 80s, there was a lot of illegal gambling and other tampering that did happen in arcades, so FBI and even local police would occasionally inspect the various arcades for evidence of that. On November 21, 1981, at the Malibu Grand Prix in Portland, Oregon, 12-year-old Brian Morrow was attempting to break the asteroid's world record. 28 hours and 14 minutes in, he got a bad stomach ache and took off. He had started yeah a boot.
00:12:34
Speaker
He did have to poop. There's actually I feel so bad about this kid like he's and all of the that like the news article I found like basically just said that he had a tummy ache from drinking too many cokes. And but I found this whole article that was like this poor kid is known for having to poop.
00:12:51
Speaker
His run for that world record attempt started on Thanksgiving and ended on Friday, and his mom even brought Thanksgiving dinner to the arcade. I thought that was cute. But adding to that exact experience, on the same day, in the same arcade, 14-year-old Michael Lopez had been playing Tempest, which is, one, it's the game most compared to potential Polybius gameplay, and is also perhaps my favorite arcade game. So yeah, so Michael Lopez was playing that and collapsed with a migraine.
00:13:19
Speaker
I found a newspaper article where he was quoted as saying, you said you found a noodle. I found a noodle with a quote from Michael Lopez saying, I began to feel a weird sensation in the back of my head. Then my vision started going out. Little flashing lights recalls Lopez. Suddenly I got sick and stumbled outside where I threw up all over the parking lot. Sounds like a mini seizure. Sounds like a migraine. One of my friends walked me back home, but we didn't make it all the way there. My head hurt so bad.
00:13:49
Speaker
I got to where I couldn't speak. I couldn't walk anymore. I collapsed on someone's lawn four blocks from my house, rolling and screaming in pain. It felt like my head was cracking open. Someone called the cops. That was the first migraine headache I ever had. I've had them on and off my whole life, but it it was freaky because I did not know what was happening at the time. Because we had these two incidences that happened at the same arcade on the same day, that kind of news conglomeration there, it's going to make a lot of parents think, oh, well, arcade games are are dangerous to kids. It's going to make them all sick. So that definitely kind of created, you know, not quite the, you know, satanic panic type of rhymes. Who's about to say? But, it you know, it it kind of added that.
00:14:26
Speaker
The worst thing's gonna happen when your kid goes for an arcade is that they really have to take a shit or they get a really bad headache. I think you're okay. Yes, but the conspiracy. They're dangerous, these arcade games. But yeah, I made it seem like getting sick from video games was more common than it was. And then this last bit about things that could contribute to what caught what started the legend. It's a bit of a stretch because the timing was a little bit later and it was in East Germany.
00:14:52
Speaker
There was a game released, an arcade game released called Polly Play, which was basically, it had like eight games in it, not that. It sounds like. not Not a sexy game. That was a bit far for the early 80s. I don't think they were quite that open minded. But it was made in East Germany in 1985 and about a thousand were distributed across Eastern Europe. The games were recalled and almost entirely destroyed a few years later. So it was likely due to the game being hard to maintain and expensive to maintain,
00:15:19
Speaker
But it also some copyright issues were exposed when the Berlin Wall came down. One of the games that was one of the eight games very strongly resembled Pac-Man. So yeah, it seems pretty easy to see knowing how folklore and urban legends form and grow, you know, word of mouth, people telling each other and then, it you know, game of telephone, it gets worse as you go. It's easy to see how the stories continue to lurk and inspire people.
00:15:40
Speaker
There's actually been several film projects that have been started, but scrapped. None of them have actually come to fruition yet. You can see Polybius Cabinets in the background of various TV shows, including an episode of Loki and an episode of The Simpsons. Sounds funny.
00:15:53
Speaker
the movie The Last Starfighter from 1984 is about a dude who gets tapped by the government to save the world because he was super duper good at their secret experiment game. There's a book called Armada written by Ernest Cline who he's the author who wrote Ready Player One, where something similar happens and Polybius is actually part of the story. And then also my absolute favorite band in the world, Nine Inch Nails, even featured a reimagined PlayStation came out with a a reimagined version of Polybius. And so that game is featured in his music video for or Intrant Reznor's video for less than I have a question for you. Yeah. This is completely unrelated. Okay. Can Nine Inch Nails be considered a band since it's mostly just Trent Reznor doing everything on his own? He's not doing everything on his own. There's always other musicians and now it's... I thought it was mostly just him like doing...
00:16:41
Speaker
Generally for the most part yes, but there's been other contributors and there's been regular members and now Atticus Ross and his wife and like I don't know who else but there's a few other people involved I think when they still do Nine Inch Nails music but for the most part right now Trent's doing scores with Atticus Ross. He's doing movie music.
00:17:00
Speaker
Got it. Okay, sorry. Anyways. Cool. I'm always happy to inform about my new channels. But yeah, um and then the last thing is that some arcades across the country, like present-day arcades, have actually fabricated their own versions of Polyvias, usually featuring the PlayStation version of the game, which is I think is kind of cool because it kind of keeps the legend alive. So theory.
00:17:18
Speaker
put my little tin foil hat on. Do it. Okay. It was the Russians and the Germans working together. And they put it in Oregon because they were like, they're all weird anyways. Nobody will believe them. And so they just put them in there. And that's what the men in black were. They were the the guys from from Russia. But then they were like, oh, people are getting real sick. Oh, this is is is's too hot. It's too hot. We got to take it. That's what happened. Oh, that is certainly a theory. Isn't it? is It is.
00:17:49
Speaker
All right. Well, that was a very good story. It reminds me of a, um, I think it's American dad episode. Um, I don't know how much American dad you've seen, some yeah but it's really funny cause he finds this TV and it's one of the old big box TVs with like the projector lights inside. You know what I'm talking about? I used to have one of those, but yeah, so it.
00:18:08
Speaker
he basically finds it on on the side of the road takes it to his basement gets like really obsessed with it and ends up like going into this alternate universe inside of the tv and yeah he's trying to find a way to escape it just reminded me of that because it comes it almost sounds like the same thing where like it almost like engulfs everything that your mind is. Right, right. Yeah, that was a note I saw in some of the sources I was looking at is that it there's something that video game designers refer to as flow, and that's the ability for the game to just suck you into the point where it's just you in the game and your outside senses are not there. Yeah.
00:18:45
Speaker
And that that's a real thing that can happen. And you know I found myself really engrossed in some video games. day yeah So it's really pretty interesting stuff. hey
00:18:57
Speaker
So what do you got? So open up your share scares. yeah You're not going to need it immediately, but you will. So this week,
00:19:09
Speaker
with me being sickly and unable to talk for too long. I thought it'd be a good idea to pick out just like a few nightmarish, weird phenomena things.
Mysterious Fairy Circles in Namibia
00:19:20
Speaker
Phenomena, sorry, around the world. dooooo man um um that like happen around the world that you know maybe some of them are explained by science, but it's still like a little odd that it only happens in certain areas. Or some of them, they just they have theories, but they aren't fully vetted and explained. right So firstly, have you heard of fairy circles or death rings? Yeah. And I don't mean fairy rings. Okay. Well, then maybe not. Okay. So fairy circles
00:19:51
Speaker
are like, and you can look at the the pictures that I have for the first two. They're like a cheetah-like pattern. that fields of grass will grow in the Namib Desert in Namibia, Africa, and some have been found in Australia too. So they're round patches of grass with bare clearing in the middle, anywhere between five to 130 feet in the middle of each patch, making almost a perfect circle of bare. So that those are like, there's a bunch of vegetation, but then there's just circles that are just bare and empty. Like this is what it looks like on a big scale. What the hell?
00:20:25
Speaker
Yeah. So have you heard of these? I haven't. Yeah. So very interesting. Like I said, I quit. No. ah and So like I said, like the bear area can be anywhere from five to 130 feet. And then a single circle can survive about 75 years. Yeah. And it's like ah it's a desert, right? So it's kind of weird. So The Himba people of Namibia they believe the circles are footprints of their gods or the divine beings marking the land. Another myth describes the marks as the result of dragons' poisonous breath killing the vegetation in the area. and so There's been a lot of research in these areas, right like obviously looking into what the Namib people say. like
00:21:06
Speaker
no one really believes that you know that is what's happening scientifically but you know they did look and see if like maybe if it was like poisonous gas or something in the center so research has been dating back in the 1970s and one thing to note is that the inside of each circle has a low level of magnetism to it more so than the outer edges of each circle This led researchers to believe that there could be some type of like metallic or chemical compounds in the soil. That was proven to be incorrect. Another theory was that these could be the feeding grounds of living termites or maybe fossil termites that have like you know destroyed the feral soil over time due to the perfect circular shaping of them you know. This theory was also disproved. Theories went as far to try to test for naturally occurring radiation. Gas seepage for natural gas all were disproven. And then of course as all theories tend to lead to UFOs. Sure. the most current theory which has yet to be fully reviewed and proven is that these rings are caused by immense drought and that the vegetation on the outer parts of the ring suck up all the nutrients and water from the center before anything else can grow. And then basically the center just bakes dry into like a clay. I'm sorry again can you remind me how big these are again? Anywhere from five to 130 feet wide. I agree yeah I haven't seen anything like that shows
00:22:24
Speaker
Like how are they perfect circles right that this is happening to? And like in all fairness, they're saying like the vegetation on the outer edges has really deep roots. And so basically it can, you know, take soil, take water from deeper than, you know, the center or something new growing wood, which makes sense. But why would it be a perfect circle? And remind me, did we have information about how long these have existed? As far as, as far as people know, like, right. So like,
00:22:49
Speaker
the Namib people have been passing down these legends for you know as long as they their tribes have it existed. yeah so Yeah. That is very, I don't know, man, that feels concerning. I agree. Yeah, so it's something really weird. If I wasn't afraid of lions or cheetahs or being eaten alive, I would almost like want to camp out in the center. They're kiddies. They're fine. Okay. Well, I'll tell you about some nightmares I've had there. so So that's the first one. The next nightmarish topic is called Milky Sea. Have you heard of that? I don't think so. And you won't. I'm sorry. Well, shit.
00:23:25
Speaker
Moving on. So
Phenomena of the Milky Sea and Moving Rocks
00:23:27
Speaker
most accounts of bioluminescence on land or sea describe blue-green flashes and gleams, ah typically stimulated by disturbance in the water. So you've you've heard of that, right? Where there's usually like bioluminescent algae or something that can be touched to the water and they get all crazy. They just get excited. But these reports of Milky Seas suggest the water is saturated with a steady white glow for miles, not small areas of blue or green bursts. There are actually a few historical reports of this phenomenon.
00:23:55
Speaker
In 1864, the Confederate warship CCS Alabama sailed along the southwest border of Africa into what they described as, quote, a remarkable patch of sea. It was a pretty long quote from the reports. It was just, I liked the way that it was written, so.
00:24:13
Speaker
At about 8pm, there being no moon, but the sky being clear, and the stars shining brightly, we suddenly passed from the deep blue water in which we had been sailing, into a patch of water so white it startled me. Around the horizon, there was a subdued glare, or flesh, as though there were a distant illumination going on. Whilst overhead, there was a lurid dark sky. The whole face of nature seemed to change. With but little stretch of the imagination, the Alabama might have been conceived,
00:24:41
Speaker
to be a phantom ship, lighted up by the sickly and unearthly glare of the phantom sea." and So they apparently sailed through the area for several hours and even attempted to drop a weighted line to see if maybe they were close to a submerged ridge.
00:24:55
Speaker
Their weight sank for 600 feet and never hit the bottom. So it's not like, you know, there was something glowing at the bottom. Well, this is one real life case where this phenomenon was recorded. We can find milky white seas mentioned in literature as well. So Herman Melville, 1851, Moby Dick. wrote about bad omens and entering a, quote, midnight sea of milky whiteness as if shoals of combed white bears were swimming around him, end quote. In 1870, Jules Verne wrote 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea yeah and mentions milky seas in the Bay of Bengal, describing it as, quote, the whiteness which surprises you is caused only by the presence of myriads of infusoria, a sort of a luminous little worm, gelatinous and without color.
00:25:38
Speaker
In 1985, a US Navy research vessel encountered a mochi sea off the Arabian Peninsula. They collected samples to study, and while they did find bioluminescent creatures responsible for flashing displays, they also found bioluminescent bacteria. Their theory is that the mochi seas may occur after algae colonies on the water surface bloom and die, and then bacteria eat them, multiply, and so they end up glowing and cause a mochi sea display.
00:26:06
Speaker
This theory is widely accepted as accurate but still it's not understood as where when and why it's happening and in such huge quantities that it takes hours for someone to go through. There's also a satellite image of a Milky Sea that was captured which is amazing because it can be seen from space. So this is the middle of the ocean and this is the Milky Sea.
00:26:27
Speaker
wow yeah so it's it's pretty cool and it's a little bit different than like bioluminescence where it's just like little parts are glowing and kind of like a firefly right on and off it's just a steady and milky glow so our next creepy happening wait oh so but okay it's just the bacteria that they think is they think they think it's bacteria that's eating algae after it's bloomed and died and basically taking on its bioluminescent properties but just it's bacteria so it just glows such a large amount though yeah and so they think the bacteria is just like stirred up and yeah multiplying basically
00:27:05
Speaker
That's nuts. Yeah. So like it just, the problem with the research behind it is that like one, the ocean is massive. Sure. And two, they don't know when it's going to happen. They don't know why it happens. And so it's tough to study. Yeah. It's tough to study because they have to just happen upon it or find it in time to be able to test it.
00:27:26
Speaker
It's crazy. So our next creepy happening takes place on land and is Death Valley's racetrack playa. I am aware of these. Yes. have you So you've heard of the sailing rocks, sailing stones of Death Valley.
00:27:39
Speaker
In this area, rocks drift across the flat desert seemingly without any outside force. The rocks vary in sizes from a few ounces to 100 pounds, hundreds of pounds, excuse me. Apparently no one has seen them move in person because they move so slowly, but they do leave trails behind when they move from one area to the next. These rocks fall from surrounding mountains and then they start making their way around the Playa, leaving some trails as long as 1500 feet.
00:28:06
Speaker
Rocks with rough bottoms tend to leave straight tracks, and ones with smooth bottoms tend to wander around the playa. Timelapse video of the movement was first captured in 2014. The video that was captured suggests that the stones are moving due to water freezing under them, turning to ice, and then being propelled to move by the wind, which slowly moves them around.
00:28:26
Speaker
When I first heard about that, it was before they had figured it out. And i it was just really, really cool that to hear when they were like, Oh, this, we figured it out. I was really hope you were going to have that answer for the other two. but Okay. I had theories. Sure. Sure. Close enough. Yeah. Same thing. I remember watching a video in science class when I was maybe in eighth grade or something like that.
00:28:51
Speaker
So that had to be a long time ago. But yeah, they didn't have answers either then. But I was like, oh, that's so cool. They remember they were like, testing for like magnetism and they couldn't find anything like that. But it's pretty cool. So my final nightmarish phenomena takes place in a region of Venezuela known as Tralampago. I'm
Catatumbo Lightning in Venezuela
00:29:14
Speaker
Hispanic.
00:29:17
Speaker
Tralampago del Catatumbo. where they have everlasting lightning. Have you heard of this? No. So there's a few other areas where it has happened sporadically, but this is the one area where it's constant. So almost 300 nights a year in the area where the Catatumbo River flows into Lake Maracaibo, I say very widely. Warm air from the Caribbean meets the cold air from the mountains.
00:29:46
Speaker
This effect causes everlasting lightning with thousands of bolts at an average of 28 flashes per minute, lasting about 9 hours a night, but typically without any thunder It also produces a great amount of ozone, so sure, a little problematic. and This is typically seen about an hour after dusk and has been dubbed the River of Fire by locals. Apparently this is something that has been happening for long records of history. In 1595, Sir Francis Drake's sneak attack on the city was foiled by the storm lighting up the sky.
00:30:20
Speaker
NASA has designated this as the lightning capital of the world. And while it's understood why this happens, I can't imagine growing up there living anywhere near the area. yeah It would be cool to see for like the first 10 minutes. I think after that, it'd get a little aggravating. Plus thunder and rain are like the fun part of storms. So this is what it looks like lit up on satellite. Oh, wow. And this is what it looks like. Wow. How cool. So it's just like, and and that's not a time lapse. That's,
00:30:48
Speaker
It's just... That's really amazing. Yeah. 300 days of the year. And it's, it's into the water. Is that why there's that thunder? Yes. It's like, yeah, it's in the, it's in just in the water, like right where the river meets the mountains, I believe. Right. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. It's pretty crazy. but That is really neat. Yeah. So again, short little tidbits. Yeah, but this time of year, it's really hard to get our shit together. So. ah Agreed. You're welcome. We have an episode.
00:31:19
Speaker
So um I don't know if you want to do nightmare fuel or not. So I don't really specifically have a nightmare fuel this time, because again, I just don't have my shit together. But I do have a recommendation. OK. I was kind of organizing my book shit this morning. And that's nasty. i And a girl, I follow on Instagram's mother horror. Horror. Horror. Horror. Mother horror. That's what I heard. My ears are very clogged.
00:31:44
Speaker
ah She always has really great recommendations and stuff, but she had, she posted, oh, well, we're good. I'm going to start this book club on Fable. Fable is an app okay on iOS and Android, and it's It's a book tracker like Goodreads, but it has a lot more and you can interact. Like there's the book clubs, you can do a chapter by chapter. you You jump into the conversation based on the chapter. So that way you can avoid spoilers for where you're not at. And so you could have conversations with people about whatever books you want. And the really cool thing is that it imported my Goodreads thing. Cause I was not about to repopulate all of my book shit into another app. But if you like tracking your books and finding a way to have conversation about books that you like.
00:32:25
Speaker
And it's really kind of neat. I just started it today. So if it actually really sucks, I'll let you know later, but I'm pretty excited about it. And if we, you know, get any people that are interested in reading along, I might maybe start at Nightmare Cottage Book Club at some point.
Victorian Christmas Cards and Proto-LSD
00:32:40
Speaker
If you want to find me on there, I'm Nightmare Nim. And yeah, I just thought it was neat. Awesome. I love that. Oh, it also has TV shows. Oh, cool. Yeah. So books and TV shows and you can, you have discussions for whatever on anything.
00:32:54
Speaker
nice yeah so mine again i didn't really have nightmare fuel mine was more like just something kind of weird and silly that i found apparently during the time of queen victoria in britain have you heard of the hallucinogenic christmas cards i guess not okay so it they had an ergot mold to have arrived proto lsd on them known as sauce Okay, it would cause users to feel warm and happy, which is why a lot of the Christmas cards during that time talked about being warm and happy. And they also were just really dark because the Victorian times were very dark and Christmas was apparently a very spooky time yeah filled with death and and all that. But they were also really bizarre. So if you look at some of the Christmas cards, oh,
00:33:48
Speaker
here like they're just really weird like you know they have like oh yeah devil and yeah they were they were really weird or like just you know the i think the biggest one is like yeah clown for no reason yeah like i i don't know what why this is happening but yeah so this is a quote a barely known fact is that many of these cards were in fact acid blotters meant to be cut up and consumed In some Victorian household in Massachusetts and Southern England in particular, it was traditional for the entire family, including the serpents, to drop sauce every day for the month of December, leading to a massive dryout on New Year's Eve, with the purpose of awakening renewed and sane on January 1st." End quote. I feel a little horrified by the idea of that.
00:34:36
Speaker
It's just like just too much. Children and servants and every everyone. Let's just all get trashed until the new year and then clean up. So yeah, just a little, little tidbit. I saw it and come across on one of the social media platforms and I was like, this can't be real. And I started looking it up. And apparently it was only during Queen Victoria's era. Once I think the next one was Edward came along, it faith faded out um quite a bit and became the reverse where you know we now get extremely trashed on new year's eve and then dry out on new year's day with massive hanger burst yeah but to be fair a lot of people get trashed in the month of december anyway still so many parties and yeah but i hope they're not like not with lsd i feel like that's a little bit excessive i feel the same but you know i don't know
00:35:32
Speaker
Speaking of the new year, we're looking at 2025. We can pretend or hope that it's going to be great. And I don't know, I'm kind of looking, you know, inward, right? Like not thinking about how, you know, the world's on fire and stuff and and just kind of existing in my existence. ah how how
Hopes for Personal Growth and New Projects
00:35:54
Speaker
do How are you feeling about the new year to come? I mean, as usual, I'm hopeful, but I am one of those people who Hopes and plans for a lot of things that don't tend to come to fruition because I get very overwhelmed by the chaos But yeah, like I am looking forward to in 2025, you know, I did start my new job a few months ago. Yeah
00:36:16
Speaker
Um, and it's my first new job in 10 years. So I am looking forward to seeing what this new chapter brings and hoping that, you know, I can incite some real change and good change, positive change there, but also like, you know, just in my daily life, I'm i'm hoping, you know, now.
00:36:33
Speaker
Bash is three, he's talking, he's active, he's- He's a real person. Yeah, he's he's he has his motivations and- An agency and such. Exactly. And so I'm hoping you know that I can be more present with this new position that it allows me to be more present in a way that I can i can make some good fun memories with him that aren't just you know self-induced, I guess you could say. And I'm excited to play in my garden. you know I finally planted stuff outside, and So I'm happy to see what that ends up looking like and, you know, maybe getting some art projects done. Awesome. Yeah. What about you? You know, I have the same general, you know, not necessarily like, I don't, most of my life I have resisted the word resolution. I always thought it was like, okay, so you're just like picking this one day to like start over. And in my advancing years, I've i've a calmed my tits a bit and
00:37:28
Speaker
i can just appreciate things for what they are. and and you know it's It's a good starting, but you know it's it's it's it's a moment to start to look at things anew. and i Aside from like the normal self-improvement health stuff and what all of that crap, I am looking forward to doing some fun things in my garden. i've recently like you know For years, i've done like I've attempted vegetable gardens and stuff like that, and I've had mild to low success. and Over the years, I'm starting to learn what works in my garden and what doesn't. and i've i've I've got plans this year and I think that it's gonna really work out so I'm really excited to see how the garden goes this year over a year ago my mom gave me candle making supplies like everything I need like everything I need not even just at the beginner level like you get your beginner level and then you're like you level up and you're able to do more things I have the stuff for all of that and I haven't
00:38:13
Speaker
fucking touched it. So my goal is this year to learn how to make candles. And just I'm looking forward to possibilities, I guess. And and i'm another is I'm hoping that this podcast continues. i'm I've been having a lot of fun with it. I have ideas for stories and I'm excited to get into the research. And yeah. I agree with all of
00:38:43
Speaker
so now that you've told me about your hopes for please don't like you're gonna end up ruining everything it's gonna be like your next year is gonna be shit absolute garbage i don't think that's the case okay would you prefer not to no he already pulled him out So we're using my 1970s Aquarian tarot deck given to me by my mother. So do you want this to be for the year to come for you? Let's say podcast. Let's say podcast. Okay, well shuffle these three times and think about the podcast and what you want it to be.
Tarot Reading for the Podcast's Future
00:39:25
Speaker
Okay, three times.
00:39:26
Speaker
So we're just going to pull the one card for the outlook of the podcast, and that's, oh, look, it's the Queen of Pentacles, because that's the backbone of what we're doing. That card references mature, grounded female, businesswoman, high social status, generous, loyal, prosperity, success, financially independent,
00:39:48
Speaker
Organize sensible, practical, no-nonsense, kind, welcome, nurturing, witch, healer, and wonderful mother. So I'm the witch, and you're the wonderful mother. Or the other way around. Let's see, okay. it Approach issues in a sensible, practical, no-nonsense manner, and you will be successful. No-nonsense. I mean, we're kind of full of nonsense. I was about to say. ah So that the the Queen of Pentacles will be our our card for the year.
00:40:18
Speaker
Yes, the quintet tentacles. You'll have a great new year and sweet dreams. Goodnight. If you have topic suggestions, movie or book recommendations, questions for the cottage, or just want to say hi, you can email us at nightmarecottage at gmail dot.com. You can find us on Instagram at nightmarecottage and on our website at nightmarecottage.com. Sleep tight if you dare.