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Victorian Zeppelins
29 Plays5 years ago
Join Josh and M as they take to the skies - Victorian stylez - and investigate mysterious zeppelin sightings from the late 19th and early 20th Century!
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Josh is @monkeyfluids and M is @conspiracism on Twitter
You can also contact us at: podcastconspiracy@gmail.com
Watch M’s series “Conspiracism” here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJEp7xTcFU3hc2W0kfdSvAQ
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Transcript
Introduction and Scheduling Banter
00:00:09
Speaker
The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. M. Denton.
00:00:19
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. My name is Josh Addison and oh look who's decided to join us today. It's Dr Em, did you have time in your busy schedule of swanning off with other people's podcasts to show up here? Did you?
00:00:34
Speaker
Did you? You're just using this as a deflection from the fact that you couldn't record on our normal podcasting day. Don't try to change the subject. You, sir, were on the Scholars Circle podcast last week with young Pat What's His Name from What's His Thing University,
Dr. Denton's Podcast Experience
00:00:51
Speaker
Deakin. I listen to it. I'm not making stuff up off the top of my head in half-remembering facts. Don't deny it. It's written all over your face. Pat who?
00:01:00
Speaker
So if I'd actually written the information on my face, that would have been funny. I suppose it would have. But no, actually, well, so you're on another podcast this week. Quite interesting, actually. Fun little conversation. Who is Scholar's Circle? Is it an Auckland University one? So the Scholar's Circle is part of the Big Question series that the University of Auckland runs. The Scholar's Circle is actually older. So an American academic who came to Auckland brought the series with her.
00:01:27
Speaker
scholars circle broadcasts in ten U.S. cities in the U.S. Strangely enough, I know. Broadcasting in U.S. cities in the U.S. is amazing. And it broadcasts on a weekend. So basically we actually recorded the piece about three weeks ago. They had to wait for some reason to get the transcription done before they were going to release it to the world.
00:01:51
Speaker
So now there's a version of it out which has got my dot at terms or if you don't like listening to me you can read my words as transcribed. I actually read the transcription first because I think that's what you linked to originally and then found the recording.
00:02:06
Speaker
And I see that they've edited it down just a little, but mostly just taking out digressions and a few arms and arms. I actually haven't listened to it. I actually never listen to things I'm in. I don't watch things back. I don't listen to them. I plan to learn nothing from my media appearances over time.
00:02:24
Speaker
Nevertheless, if you feel like looking up the scholar's circle, I found it an interesting little chat, really. Just some more sort of general terms about conspiracy theories and the philosophy thereof. Indeed, with Pat Stokes from Deakin University. Not Pat something, something from something, something Deakin, I think. Yes, there we go. So I was essentially right.
00:02:46
Speaker
Essentially, it got to the ultimate truth of the matter. I still think it would have been funnier if you had told me that you had forgotten his last name for me to put on a post-it note Pat Stokes from Deakin University. It's written all over your face and you could have ripped the post-it note off of my face.
00:03:02
Speaker
and then read it. Probably could have. Visual gag for the YouTube viewers. A potential visual gag for the YouTube viewers, except that you didn't think of it. Why do I have to think of the visual gags when you are in charge of the visual content? Well, yes, that's true. Largely caused by the fact that I didn't realise I'd forgotten Pat Stikes's name until I actually went to say Pat Stikes's name and suddenly found a hole in my memory where a name should have been.
00:03:28
Speaker
It's all that drinking, isn't it? So much drinking. All the hooch. Get it down every day. Constantly guzzling hooch. Constantly guzzling it down. She's famous for being drunk all the time. I'm drunk right now.
00:03:39
Speaker
Good. Should we do a podcast? You can tell. We probably should, yeah.
Josh's Game Development
00:03:43
Speaker
Oh, actually, if we're going to plug things, I should say I made that game. You did? I made a game. It's called Stay in the Box. It's about a box, and you have to stay in it. You can go to GameJolt.com and search for Stay in the Box, and you can find it, play it. Should your game really last a couple of minutes? You might find it fun.
00:03:59
Speaker
So I've lasted about a minute and a half playing Stay in the Box. Does anything more happen as time goes by? Oh, it does. Yes, it gets more and more. Things happen. Three minutes 12, I think is my best, but I should practice. It's hard making a game, and it's like calibrating how tricky you should make it. And I'm thinking, well, I'm having trouble doing this. And I did make it.
00:04:23
Speaker
But on the other hand, I am 43 years old and have the reflexes of a 43-year-old, possibly the younger generation. Except that you have the reflexes of a 43-year-old who's used to playing games with a joystick with a single input button. We play games differently than young people. God, we sound like old people talking about the youth today. But in our day, your joystick only had one button. At least you were a console gamer, at which point you at least had four. But you weren't a console gamer.
00:04:50
Speaker
No, because we couldn't afford consoles in the country. Nintendo was never really a big... Nintendo did exist in New Zealand, but it wasn't a big thing. It was always very rare to know someone who had an 8-bit Nintendo machine. You were more likely to find a Master System. It wasn't really until the PlayStation.
00:05:07
Speaker
came around and really started getting... Oh, you had a bit of the old Sega, a bit of your Mega Drives and whatever they were. But anyway, that is not what we're
Victorian Zeppelin Sightings and Conspiracies
00:05:15
Speaker
here to talk about today. We're here to talk about a different kind of technology, an older technology, and yet new for the time. We're here to talk about zeppelins. So let's do that.
00:05:29
Speaker
We all know about UFOs, sorry yes, unidentified aerial phenomena, and the associated conspiracy theories surrounding why governments, corporations and your mum deny their existence. But before we had tales of flying saucers or experimental aircraft, indeed before we even knew what flying saucers or aircraft even were, there were mysterious dirigibles or zeppelins being spotted in the night sky.
00:05:55
Speaker
Today we're going to talk about Victorian Zeppelin sightings. Not just that, but mysterious Victorian Zeppelin sightings. See, sometimes people saw Zeppelin where no Zeppelin should be, and sometimes people saw Zeppelins before Zeppelins even existed. So,
00:06:15
Speaker
Were there heavily mustachioed steampunk-esque Victorian inventors racing through our skies over a century ago? Are these just misinterpreted flying saucer sightings, or is it just a case of the 1880s and just a flock of seagulls?
00:06:30
Speaker
That was a nice reference to get in there. Yeah, I'm actually very, very pleased with that. And the fact there's probably only going to be three people who get it made it all the worthwhile. Or even all the more worthwhile. Same thing. Yeah. So yeah, we've talked about UFOs before and the attendant conspiracy theories, but and I'm sure we have mentioned, at least in passing, the idea that before there were little green men coming out of flying saucers, there were... Or women.
00:06:56
Speaker
Indeed. Little green beans. Let's not assume gender for extraterrestrial life forms. That is entirely correct. But before we had space aliens and mysterious rockets and spaceships and what have you, we had mysterious, well, actually, the history of UFOs
00:07:19
Speaker
Prior to a couple of hundred years ago, they tended to be sort of have a bit of a biblical bent, didn't they? They were sort of weird divine lights in the sky and so on. Well, yes. I mean, it was often a supernatural phenomena related to whatever religious practice you had at any particular point in time. And then there's a huge history of modern day Ufologists
00:07:40
Speaker
trying to reinterpret lights in the sky as recorded in historical texts, or quasi-historical texts like the Bible. And they go, oh, that's evidence that in Ezekiel, what Ezekiel is reporting is in fact a UFO, epsi-factor, an alien spacecraft, or we've got evidence that ancient gods were in fact astronauts, or things of that particular type.
00:08:04
Speaker
But then as the world became more industrialized and technology marched on, we started to see the rise of mysterious objects in the sky being thought of as being technological artifacts, human-made things. And so around the time, I mean, certainly hot air balloons have been around for several centuries. You're a hot air balloon.
00:08:31
Speaker
I don't actually have a response to that. That was just a little bit too far out of it. So the idea of human beings becoming airborne, you've been getting into the your mum sauce again, haven't you? I really probably should stop.
00:08:50
Speaker
Especially because I forgot what I was saying. Yes, no. So the idea of human beings becoming aloft due to human-made contrivances was sort of becoming a thing. And so we get the idea of the, you know, people are still seeing mysterious things in the sky, not knowing what they are, but they start being looked at as some sort of actual flying craft, often not with alien beings in them, but with human beings in them.
00:09:16
Speaker
Yes, I mean, it is a huge history of the sociology of interpretation of lights in the sky, which actually comes out quite nicely in the literature on abduction experiences. So along with UFOs, the middle of the 20th century was rather replete with stories of people being abducted at night by grey space aliens, green space aliens, Nordic space aliens and the like, which actually talks quite nicely to the fact that where you are in the world,
00:09:46
Speaker
your interpretation of who these figures are changes quite dramatically. America is mostly the Greys, Northern Europe are the kind of Nord or Viking-esque like creatures. And people quickly discovered that abduction experiences as reported in the middle of the 20th century really do resemble quite closely which abduction experiences as reported in earlier centuries.
00:10:14
Speaker
which then led people to go, well, maybe it's the same phenomena, but the threat of the other, the thing which we think is the mysterious thing out there causing it, has gone from being witches, which we're afraid of, to extraterrestrial life forms, which then leads to the question, so what's the actual root phenomena? Was it always witches? And people just misinterpret alien abduction experiences, which are actually which ones? Or were UFOs abducting people back in the day?
00:10:44
Speaker
Or is there some other cause which culture and society interpret as witches at one point and aliens at another? And then you have the interesting period kind of in between, which is what we're looking at today, where most of these sightings are either sort of mysterious, we don't know what it was ones, or ones where they give a very sort of
00:11:08
Speaker
down-to-earth is the exact wrong phrase to use, but that sort of prosaic explanation where it's human beings and the fear seems to be more of a foreign military power than of any sort of supernatural phenomenon. So, particularly at this time
Historical Context of UFOs and Zeppelins
00:11:24
Speaker
of the year, it is the Germans.
00:11:26
Speaker
Or the Zeprussians. Well, Zeprussians, yeah. I mean, obviously, slightly different political landscape. But in the end of the 1800s, in the start of the 1900s, Germany was developing these dirigibles. What's the difference between a dirigible and a Zeppelin? I think Zeppelin is actually named after the person who invented that particular form of the dirigible. And of course, now I'm just thinking about that wonderful line from Frisco County Junior.
00:11:52
Speaker
Not a Led Zeppelin. Yeah, I think he's building a stairway to heaven. Great show. Yeah, go watch Briscoe County Junior after you've finished listening to this podcast. That's your homework for this week. Yeah, so I mean, people were worried about Germany's growing military power and whether they might start causing trouble. And they would eventually be proved right when along came World War One, which we've talked about in the past as well. And obviously, it's a lot more complicated than just Germany would be index, but they kind of were and that was kind of part of it.
00:12:22
Speaker
Um...
00:12:24
Speaker
So we start getting these weird sightings. So in the 1850s and 60s, in the US, we have more than one instance of these quote unquote luminous serpents. So things, these sort of elongated shapes, this appeared to be glowing, appeared to be metallic. The phrase scales comes up more than once. I'm having metallic scales flying through the sky. And no one ever, from what I read, no one really seemed to come up with much of an explanation. It was just, hey, we saw this weird thing.
00:12:54
Speaker
Isn't that weird? Yes, and the problem is because this is also an era before photography, although it's a kind of interesting aspect that as the growth of cameras we hold in our pockets and video cameras which we also are also our cameras we hold in our pockets have become popular, UFO sightings have become less well documented with time.
00:13:20
Speaker
But of course, in this particular point in time, we're talking at a point where there is no way to instantly capture an image at all. So we've got no real idea of what people were seeing other than, in many cases, third or fourth hand accounts. So Joe, across the county, he was talking with Luan and Luan had been talking with Jeremiah and Jeremiah saw the snake in the sky. And I don't know what accent I'm doing, but it's good.
00:13:47
Speaker
Batman voice. Sure, yeah, go for Batman. Yeah, I think there was one case where supposedly like a class full of school children had seen one this thing and there were there were sort of sketches and drawings and stuff, some of which looked vaguely sort of Zeppelin-esque.
00:14:03
Speaker
And then sort of moving later into the 1800s and going into the early 1900s, you had more of these sightings of things that people did seem to be identifying as actual Zeppelins. Now, I had to look this up myself because I wasn't quite sure. The Wright brothers apparently first flew in 1903.
00:14:20
Speaker
in Kitty Hawk. I had a fight with someone on Twitter this morning about whether our own Richard Peirce flew before 1903 and the argument is that Richard Peirce himself said he didn't fly before the Wright Brothers and he would probably know. You'd think so. Yes, I mean that's a completely different issue from what we're talking about today but there are, I mean, powered flight isn't something the Wright Brothers imagined completely out of the blue
00:14:45
Speaker
Oh there was a huge competition going on for at least a decade prior with the kind of things that we now call planes but actually fought decades prior with things that would turn out not to work as aircraft at all.
00:15:02
Speaker
Yeah, and so here in New Zealand we had an inventor by the name of Richard Pearce who was working on stuff around the same time as the Wright Brothers, did actually achieve powered flight, but by all accounts achieved it slightly after the Wright Brothers did, but then there's always been the stories of all, did he actually, you know, records back then people weren't quite sure, did he actually beat the Wright Brothers to it, but it kind of doesn't look like he did. Well, I mean he said he didn't, and you'd think that if he had he probably would have said something.
00:15:29
Speaker
I mean, that said, it's not like he saw the Wright brothers playing and took down designs, what have you. He meant his own thing entirely by himself. And I mean, there are reports that in about 1902, he was able to make short hops. But the whole point about flight is you need a sustained flight. And Pierce didn't achieve that before the Wright brothers did.
00:15:51
Speaker
At any rate, but before the Wright Brothers, 1896 was the year I saw in a few different sources of saying that sort of when the Zeppelin craze first kind of started, that's when you had the first sort of rash of sightings of these mysterious airships. So they tended to be at night. People would sort of hear strange sounds, see flashing lights from coming up above.
00:16:15
Speaker
And then there would be the occasional sightings during the day, usually of sort of a downed craft, which where you would see people sort of, you know, repairing it before taking off again. And I believe in war, or at least most of these cases, if crew members could be seen aboard these mysterious airships, they were very definitely human beings, and often foreign human beings.
00:16:41
Speaker
Yes, and by foreign either from a foreign nation or not from around these parts. And I guess the point is that much as with UFO sightings that continue even today, you sort of get the idea that it's technology that's kind of understandable, it's like comprehensible and yet nevertheless in advance of what is around today. So there was even talk of supposedly some of these things having electric motors.
00:17:08
Speaker
and you know people could kind of see for them for what they were and yet what they were was something that shouldn't quite have existed at that time. Yes I mean so the first Zeppelin as we know them flew on the 2nd of July in the year of our Lord, 19 Ha
00:17:28
Speaker
And they were not used in military service until about nine years later. So the sightings we're talking about are either sightings which predate the first Zeppelin
00:17:42
Speaker
Or, in one exciting case, post-date the first Zeppelin, but occur in a location where there were no Zeppelins. Are you talking about this location that we're in right now? Yes, this living room. There were no Zeppelins in this living room in historic memory.
00:18:01
Speaker
No, that's entirely true. But yes, no, New Zealand, Aotearoa has its own history of Zeppelin sightings. Of lights in the sky. Well, actually before that, did you want to talk about the Arkansas one? Yes, so this is a delightful American case.
00:18:16
Speaker
This occurs back on May 6th of 1897 in the Ochika Mountains where Constable John J.
Arkansas Zeppelin Sighting Story
00:18:25
Speaker
Sumpter Jr and Deputy Sheriff John McLemore were investigating reports of cattle rustling. And so they go out one night because cattle rustlers tend to do their work after dark because they want to do things in a way which people don't see.
00:18:40
Speaker
and they see a bright light on the horizon which disappears behind the hilltops and so they kind of ride after it because at the stage probably assuming that's going to be the cattle rustlers with their lights and they keep on chasing this light and then eventually their horses start to refuse to move because of the weird air around the environment and they start seeing people moving around with lights
00:19:09
Speaker
and then they got to these people demanding to know what they're doing, at which point a bearded man announced that he and two companions were travelling the country in an airship. Now once again, this is 1897. This is before the accepted account of Zeppelin's being in use has occurred.
00:19:31
Speaker
Their craft was cigar shaped and about 60 feet long. The mysterious man tried to coax both Sumpter and McLemore aboard the craft, but they refused to go. When they returned to the site later on in the night, there was no evidence of the men or the craft having ever been there. Dun, dun, dun. Indeed.
00:19:56
Speaker
So, I mean, it's a little bit difficult to know what to make of that. I think one suggestion, and this is where things get into conspiracy territory, is that what you have is sort of secret technology that was experimental prototypes being worked on in secret.
00:20:14
Speaker
We believe that these things didn't come into use until sort of 10 or so years later. In actuality, there was a conspiracy to hide the fact that this new technology was being developed in advance of it becoming public knowledge. So I mean, that's one thing, the idea, or I mean, maybe it wasn't a foreign power doing things. Maybe it was some wacky professor, what was his name? Wickwire?
00:20:39
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Of Briscoe County Junior, some wacky inventor on his own steam, quite literally in some cases, perfecting some mysterious new technology that the world wasn't quite ready to know about yet. But I mean, yeah, what more can you say about that one? Some guys have a quite detailed account of mysterious things that they saw, but given that it's 1897,
00:21:07
Speaker
there's not really much else we can know about it. Although I must admit, if I was, say, a constable and the deputy share of board at night chasing after cattle rustlers, and I found myself a nice moonshine still out in the mountains, and I downed a few jugs of that, and God knows what the quality of that moonshine actually is, I might hallucinate a zeppelin. You might. But I mean, yeah, I mean, so there is the question,
00:21:34
Speaker
Do they make up the story entirely? Do they misinterpret something that they saw? This is actually a case of an inventor who made a Zeppelin before the accepted date, which is within the realms of possibility. Within a few years of the first Zeppelin being produced, people were trying to build aircraft at that particular point in time.
00:21:58
Speaker
So it's actually not beyond the realms of possibility that someone actually did invent a dirigible that worked before the officially accepted ones actually did occur. So I mean they do largely work on the same principle as a hot air balloon. So you can imagine variations of that being worked upon and one being successful and maybe only successful in a really limited way. Maybe it didn't work for particularly long, the person gave up, the person died. There's an entire literature based on
00:22:27
Speaker
cases where someone might invent something before the accepted date but for reasons unknown the invention just doesn't go anywhere or ever get heard about. But what's also interesting is it has a lot of features of abduction narratives we get in the 20th century.
00:22:46
Speaker
where you have people trying to entice you on board their ship. That's kind of interesting. It is. I, on a slight tangent here, I read an article a while ago about the whole abduction narrative and how it all appeared to come from a single case. There was that one case of a couple in the States who
00:23:07
Speaker
while driving home one night saw this mysterious light moving around the sky and then many years later under hypnosis recounted this weird abduction experience which then sort of became the template for the whole abduction thing. I remember I believe one person's
00:23:25
Speaker
reckon that he drove the road they drove, and there's a light, I can't remember what it was on, and given the way it's forested and the way the road twists and turns and goes up and down, it's kind of easy to become disoriented, and so even though the light is actually remaining in the same spot, it looks, you could be mistaken, you could be forgiven for thinking that it's actually moving around.
00:23:50
Speaker
But the actual genesis of the abduction narrative was a weird one. And as people pointed out, that particular couple, they were an interracial couple in the 60s in America.
Origins of UFO Abduction Narratives
00:24:01
Speaker
So keeping a low profile was pretty much their number one concern a lot of the time. So it's not like they were there for fame and attention. I know the case you're talking about, and I can't remember the name of that. It's Bessie
00:24:16
Speaker
I've forgotten completely the name of the husband in the particular case. It is a very famous case and it is kind of taken to be the kind of urtext for abduction experiences as we understand them now. It's probably one of the most well studied abduction experiences and opinions by the people who study it seem to be all over the place.
00:24:39
Speaker
as to whether they made it up, whether they sincerely believed what they said without passing judgement on whether the event occurred, etcetera, etcetera. Yes, not as if any of it. Here we see some weird bearded inventor time just sort of casually asking people, hey, would you like to take a ride on my airship? Now admittedly, the thing which does strike me, which is odd, is that they don't take up the offer of being able to fly on an airship.
00:25:07
Speaker
In 1897, if I was wandering around the mountains and someone offered me a trip on their magical flying machine, I would take it. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, entirely new technologies, like things that we grew up with that existed long before we were born. I know my grandmother who died back in the
00:25:29
Speaker
mid-90s, I think it was. I remember at her funeral during the eulogy, they mentioned that when she was a girl in the early 1900s, the first time she encountered a traction engine, she ran and hid behind a hill from it, because this weird technological thing that she'd never seen before was so old and alien. So who knows, maybe encountering a genuinely, it's a sort of technology that you genuinely have no reference for, would give one the willies.
00:25:56
Speaker
Wouldn't give me the Willys. Well, who knows. Maybe your Williams are of a hardier brand. But anyway, let's get to the New Zealand one. Because like all international crazes, New Zealand just loves to jump on board.
00:26:10
Speaker
Now, this is a sighting from the early 20th century. So we're talking 1908 and the sightings continued into 1909. It's important to note this is after the invention of the Zeppelin. So when people are reporting mysterious lights in the sky and ascribing them to Zeppelins, they're not ascribing them to a mysterious technology that is yet to come into being. They are describing something they know about. But what's interesting in the Aotearoa New Zealand case
00:26:40
Speaker
is we didn't have zeppelins. No, we didn't have any zeppelins plying our skies. We didn't have any travel by zeppelin from one part of the country to another, let alone from, say, Aotearoa New Zealand to Australia. There were no zeppelins that we know of in the country. Josh, hit me with our local zeppelin story. Right. Well, as you say, they started in 1908 with mysterious lights in the sky and strange noises and so on.
00:27:09
Speaker
But according to the Otago Daily Times in July of 1909, several residents in Kaitangata saw a zeppelin for 30 minutes over the Wangalua Hills. The Evening Star newspaper reported this as an aircraft launch from the German vessel Sichten.
00:27:28
Speaker
So I don't know if this was a German vessel that was known to be in the area at the time or not. I didn't see any more detail on exactly what this German boat was. And then for the next two months, there were apparently thousands of reports from across the country of sightings of German airships. And so, yes, here is the case I was thinking of in the town of Kelso. 23 schoolchildren and their adult minder claimed to have seen a craft swooping over the town.
00:27:55
Speaker
which led to the police and a search party tramping through the nearby mountains to find it. It was not found as far as I'm aware. At Kaka Point, I'm not sure where that actually is, several boys reported seeing an illuminating object that seemed about to land on the beach and they ran away.
00:28:13
Speaker
There was even a rumour that an airship had crashed near Waikato, killing two or three of the German craft who were aboard. And then other ones, sort of around the same time, the Geraldine Guardie. Where's Geraldine? Now that is a town I have heard of. That's also in the south. Yeah, I think they started in the south, didn't they? And the sighting sort of moved north. Yeah, so a lot of these are around Christchurch.
00:28:37
Speaker
So in Geraldine apparently a crowd saw a mysterious orb in the sky, although that apparently turned out to be a prank, where some young boys had placed a candle inside a hollowed out turnip and put it on a flagpole.
00:28:50
Speaker
Good for them, that's malarkey, wacky turn of the century hygienists. Well it's important to note that if it's so easy to fool the populace at this particular point in time with a candle in a turnip on a flagpole, it does make you think how easy it was to fool people in other respects about zeppelins flying in the skies.
00:29:12
Speaker
Indeed. So July the 19th, there was a wave of reports coming in from around Omoru with more flickering lights in the sky. Some people claim to have heard a
00:29:28
Speaker
words being shouted in a guttural harsh language by a helmeted figure aboard one of the airships. I assume that what they're getting at there is not English. And also helmeted figure guttural language, that is, that's German again. Yep. So we've had a long history of racism in this country. Oh yes, yes we have.
00:29:48
Speaker
and pretty much everywhere else in the world also but sometimes people seem to think that we're a kind of utopic paradise we're bad although actually after March 15th people don't believe this at all but prior to March 15th everyone thought we were kind of a place of racial harmony and no we really weren't or aren't so
00:30:11
Speaker
Only one airship was ever seen at a time, and the sightings did tend to move around the country from south to north, which led some to speculate that this was a single airship, just doing the rounds above New Zealand.
00:30:27
Speaker
And there was a leading towards your flock of seagulls, quote, there was one final sighting much later by late August, a dark cigar shaped object near the Tapanui Hills. But apparently that was repeated flights of thousands of starlings. So it was one of those big you've seen the videos on YouTube where you get a giant sort of flock of birds all moving as one in a strange shape can be quite an impressive sight, actually.
00:30:54
Speaker
And actually, given the lighting conditions, the way that light will reflect off them, at a distance it can look like a solid object, because the light reflects off in a way where it kind of blinds you, so that it's a massive moving part, becomes a single focal point. And so you can get an object which appears to move in a really, really erratic way.
00:31:15
Speaker
And so that's that that was I think we were we were a little bit late to the game I suppose as you say Zeppelin's were actually existing technology by this time but it's interesting to see from a from a conspiracy theory sort of angle the fact that it's not it's not supernatural it's not aliens it's the the the these some sort of secret hidden things going on are put down to possibly actions by a hosta or a foreign military power yes because it's important to note this has never been
00:31:45
Speaker
resolved. So it's never been reported elsewhere that a foreign power had a zeppelin flying above the country. Now of course the allegation was a German machine.
00:32:00
Speaker
is based very largely on circumstantial evidence, including what appears to be a completely erroneous report about finding three dead Germans that's never followed up or backed up by any other evidence. And so it is possible it could have been someone who bought a kit-set Zeppelin of some particular kind, thought it might be fun to joyride around the country, but if they did, they never talked about it.
00:32:25
Speaker
So it never comes up that, oh yeah, my grandfather, he rode around as Epplin back in the South Island back in the day. There's just no history of anyone ever admitting to being responsible for these sightings, which then leads to the question, was there a mysterious Epplin plying the skies of the South Island of Aotearoa, New Zealand, or
00:32:51
Speaker
Are we seeing here a bunch of reports of light in the sky, which is then turned into a narrative about Zeppelin?
Terminology: UFOs and UAPs
00:33:02
Speaker
Yes, sort of a bit of a craze, a bit of the, I guess, mass hysteria is the term they like to use.
00:33:10
Speaker
an idea that's just been picked up and it's an interesting idea and there is a story behind it and so people want to join in on the fun or as soon as they see something unexplained, think of this very interesting narrative they've heard about. That sighting just a few miles south of here, it's probably the same thing and then it becomes a narrative. Here are two points, oh there's been another sighting up here, it must be the same vessel again moving up and down the island.
00:33:39
Speaker
So there you go, really. UFO sightings are certainly nothing new. Or what are we calling them now? UAP sightings. Is that a military thing? Who calls them unidentified aerial phenomena these days? So it is the new term. It's a new term for the sheer fact that UFO kind of implies flying saucer.
00:33:59
Speaker
Right. And so scholars who work on this are going, well, we don't necessarily mean flying saucer when we talk about an unidentified flying object in the sky. Sometimes we are simply talking about people misinterpreting natural phenomena, or people not realizing there are planes or helicopters in their vicinity. Sometimes we're talking about
00:34:21
Speaker
covert military operations, including the development of stealth aircraft that various military powers aren't willing to admit to at this particular point in time. So when we want to talk about unidentified aerial phenomena, we don't want something that makes people immediately go, oh, flying saucer, that's nonsense. We want a term which is content neutral. And then we can investigate those things more thoroughly to work out which particular aerial phenomena
00:34:51
Speaker
which was previously unidentified, actually happens to be. Yes, I suppose it presupposes less, doesn't it? Flying implies that it's moving under its own power, whereas we could be talking about weird cloud formations, or who the hell knows what, Ariel just means in disguise. Or, in many cases, a Chinese lantern. Indeed. Yes, you do get a bit of them around, don't you? Find them washed off on beaches.
00:35:12
Speaker
after any particular sort of event where those things... Yes, actually, I mean, there's a whole literature in the annals of ufology, because unfortunately, uap... uapology? So ufology works, is the word. Yeah.
00:35:27
Speaker
about the problems of Chinese lanterns for discerning good UFO sightings from bad ones. Because so often, a UFO sighting turns out to be a Chinese lantern because a Chinese lantern in the wind will act in a very erratic fashion. But then you discover that the sighting that person had X in Bristol is related to a wedding that was going on across the river.
00:35:54
Speaker
Interesting. In reading up for this, I've came across two different accounts of where the term flying saucer comes from. I read one of these things talked about it was a guy who was very much describing saucer shaped spaceships. And yet I've also heard that the term came from a guy who described them as like saucers skipping across a pond or something and that the actual craft, the UFOs he described weren't saucer shaped at all. And the saucer referred to the emotion. So frankly, I'm confused now.
00:36:23
Speaker
as are we all. So I believe that's it for this episode. Interesting to see that UFO, some of the stuff differs and some of the stuff stays the same. And while there are conspiracy theories around secret stuff going on that certain powers don't want you to know about, the nature of them and the specific identities of the powers can differ with time. So you're saying the lyrics may change but the song remains the same. That is exactly what I'm saying and what I'll continue to say until my dying day.
00:36:54
Speaker
Although not for the foreseeable future, because for the foreseeable future, we're going to have bonus content for our patrons.
Preview of Upcoming Content
00:37:01
Speaker
Ah, yes, our lovely, lovely patrons. The people we love the most. And you could be one of the people we love the most by simply freeing us a few dollars a month. I mean, we still love you plenty right now, but we'd love you a little bit more.
00:37:14
Speaker
Yeah, so go to our Patreon page, just look up the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, and put a little bit of money our way. And you can also listen to exciting bonus content, and oh, the bonus content, the bonus content, bonus content. That's how fancy it is. We put a wee accent on it. We have for you last week.
00:37:32
Speaker
We shall be talking about Chernobyl, the series, and I guess Chernobyl, the actual incident. We'll be talking about Jordan Peterson. What's that wacky scamp been up to? He's inventing GAB 2.0. And I suppose we have to mention what's been going on in the Gulf of Oman at the moment.
00:37:51
Speaker
And there'll be a very slight update on what's happening with the trial for our own local Christchurch terrorist. So patrons, stick around for that. Non patrons, come back in a week and we'll have more stuff for you anyway. And next week is Newsweek. Oh it is, it is, yes. It'll be our first chance at trying out this brand new format, so yes. Going to be a lot of news, an awful lot of news. So, good. Yeah.
00:38:19
Speaker
Until then, keep watching the skies. All the skies.
00:38:33
Speaker
You've been listening to the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy, starring Josh Addison and Dr. M.R. Extended, which is written, researched, recorded, and produced by Josh and Em. You can support the podcast by becoming a patron via its Podbean or Patreon campaigns. And if you need to get in contact with either Josh or Em, you can email them at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com or check their Twitter accounts, Mikey Fluids and Conspiracism.
00:39:35
Speaker
And remember, Soylent Green is Meeples.