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Bonus Episode - Fallout 76 Monsters Megasode
175 Plays21 days ago
A re-look at our popular Fallout 76 Monsters mini-series, with all five episodes combined for one megasode!
Hear about how the Mothman, the Flatwoods Monster, the Grafton Monster, the Wendingo, and the Snallygaster, are all portrayed in the popular video game, as well as the real-life influence behind the characters with some of the famous folklore from West Virginia and beyond!
Enjoy ;)
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Transcript
Dramatic Opening and Fallout 76 Introduction
00:00:24
Speaker
Attention citizens. Nuclear strike imminent. Please exit the area at your earliest convenience. Thank you for your cooperation.
00:00:37
Speaker
Wow. That's an intro. Is an intro. That is an intro. um Yeah, so welcome along to our new monthly feature. This is Monsters of Fallout 76 and each episode we are going to be talking about a different monster that's in the computer game, Fallout 76, which is based on creatures that we've talked about before or that we haven't talked about before as well. And this first episode revolves around Mothman. So Mothman is a character in the Fallout 76 game. And we'll talk about this each episode and the different monster that's in this game. Yeah,
Fallout 76 Monsters and Real-life Inspirations
00:01:25
Speaker
exactly. So Fallout 76 particularly is one of my all-time favorite games. You've got quite a lot of shtick.
00:01:33
Speaker
And it came out, and it still does, but, oh yeah, fuck the haters. I haven't even played it. I've seen it, but I've never played it. It's amazing. It's amazing. And like like Greg said, theres it's based in West Virginia, in the Appalachia, where we know there's lots of famous, sort of, how-n-all cases, like the mock man, you wanna talk about? Yeah. Huge episode, we're gonna be talking about the Grafton Monster.
00:02:02
Speaker
A case that was featured in Project Blue Book as well. The Flatwoods Monster. All sort of real cases from around West Virginia and surrounding states in Appalachia. And these are monsters that are featured in Fallout 76. There's enemies, sometimes there's friends, but they're all featured. And the game's quite peculiar to sort of talk about the monster and how it's portrayed in the game.
00:02:28
Speaker
and then so then look at the actual story behind each of these. I thought that would be a pretty cool thing to do. Definitely. So we actually talked about Mothman in our second ever episode. the second It was the second ever episode. I remember it was an early one. Wow. So it's time to revisit. Definitely. Overdue, in fact. I still have it two years ago.
Alien Themes in Fallout
00:02:55
Speaker
Mental.
00:02:56
Speaker
There are aliens in the Fallout games, and all the games are in some sort of alien or UFO feature. That's why I like it as well, because UFOs and aliens. But they're not based on anything like actual advantage, just like, well, in general. So we'll talk about them in this series, but we will be talking about the other monsters. So let's crack on. The first episode is Mothman. Super. So in the game, there are a number of different versions of Mothman, you'll have different names that the you can come across. Okay.
The Wise Mothman and Cultural Comparisons
00:03:33
Speaker
There's the Wise Mothman, which is a friendly Mothman, and he imparts his wisdom into your character, giving your character like a bit of both, a bit of intelligence, some more benefits in game.
00:03:46
Speaker
and you have to summon him by, this is interesting as well, by lighting up the landlocked lighthouse based on the real Somerville Lake lighthouse. Oh wow. Which is a landlocked lighthouse, so it's nowhere near water. It's a lighthouse. It's weird. It's when the game is literally like on the side of the mountain. It's like obviously similar to where it is in real life.
00:04:11
Speaker
based on the real Somerville Lake lighthouse which was built kind of a bit of a result of a joke where there was this couple and he had a friend that was building wind turbines and he said like oh it turns up it turns a wind turbine and yeah and he did end up sort of using the base of a wind turbine and built it so like basically and it sort of came like a bit of a community project where people sort of chipped in light things, local light fitters came and put the light in. So it's kind of rotating like a light house does, so it's like a real working light house, but... No, we're near the water.
00:04:49
Speaker
oh anyway what like a bit of like that's always attract We've got a thing like that in Oxford, ah the shark. I don't know if you if you've seen that. So there's a house in the centre of Oxford.
00:05:03
Speaker
and ah you can Google it. And there is a shark in the top of the house like pointing down. So it's heads in the top of the house. So nowhere near anywhere where a shark would be. And it's randomly in the roof. but Yeah, so you have to light up this light on this light house and that summons this wise Rothman.
00:05:30
Speaker
And it gives you his sort of wisdom. Yeah.
Mothman Sightings and Cultural Impact
00:05:35
Speaker
Okay. That's cool. That's cool. And we've got the stalking muff man, obviously vengeful muff man and a glowing muff man. So obviously new clear war is basis of the fallout games. Yes. Fallout 76 is set. Oh my God. I'm going to get this wrong now so I can noob 25 years after the bombs went off.
00:06:00
Speaker
It's still relatively because the other game was set like after. So I think it's still quite fresh and yeah green. So like sort of new, whereas in the other games, it's quite like bland. There's no vegetation or anything. It's all bi so gone. But 26 is quite modern. So a lot of creatures are like glowing because they're irradiated.
00:06:28
Speaker
or the radiation stuff, that gives them different powers and stuff as well. So what I'll commit to, Ash, because as we talked about offline, I've not actually played this game at all. I know nothing about Fallout 76, so my commitment is that by the next episode that we do, I'll be playing it. I'll give it a go. Xbox rules. Good, good. Most of the variants of the Mothman are quite aggressive.
00:06:58
Speaker
Stocking off mankind just follows you. So it's it's that creepy because you just like sort of see these glowing eyes sort of in the distance or you hear them knowing you think there's someone there and they just try to start just watching you.
00:07:11
Speaker
When you attack him, he will like defend thank you but ah yeah and Yeah, I'm just pulling it up as well. So here I can see that he's not aggressive, but he'll defend himself when he's attacked. And it looks bloody creepy, as I say. He uses kind of like shockwaves from his thy vibrations to sort of send like a shockwave at you and that's like And he like zips.
00:07:40
Speaker
like that teleports almost like from part to part. So this is based on areas and it? Yeah. And in the game, yes most of the players in the game are based on real, real places. And it's mad because people have obviously gone to West Virginia and took photos of the actual towns, what towns in the game is based on. Okay. Yeah. I've seen them in real. And there's a place in the game called Point Pleasant.
00:08:10
Speaker
Which we'll come on to a bit later. Yeah. Yeah. And that's where sort of that has the Mothman Museum, which is then the Mothman Statues, identical to the one that's in the real Point Pleasant. And so on the people that, well, the sort of characters that live in that Point Pleasant are called cultists. They're like Mothman cultists that obviously all believe in the Mothman shrine to him.
00:08:35
Speaker
um I came when it comes into Point Pleasant because I don't want anyone else coming into their space. How have I not played this game before? I've seen it. I've c seen the game, but yeah. So especially 76, we're all the sort of paranormal stories and stuff. It really, really does a good job of, and which we'll find out over the next few months when we talk about each one. Yeah, definitely. So that's kind of, it's not really a main character in the game, but it's quite a,
00:09:05
Speaker
prominent characters, it seems to always be there, pops up there and thereabouts, that's kind of how it's portrayed in the game. yeah So I guess now we'll talk about the legend, the real stories behind the Mothman. Yeah, so Mothman is is something that I had heard of a long time ago.
00:09:30
Speaker
um because sort of my, like as we've talked about previous, like my journey into paranormal and all that kind of stuff started quite a long time ago and then I sort of fell out of, not interest, but other things, get life gets in a way and then I've sort of revisited it. So Mothman was actually a story or a legend or whatever you want to call it that I'd heard of
00:10:02
Speaker
and culminated in me reading the book, The Mothman Prophecies, which is a great book, actually. I really enjoyed
Mothman Legends and Conspiracy Theories
00:10:11
Speaker
reading that. And then I watched the film, um which was of the same name and starred Richard Gere in 2002. Not so great. The book was definitely better than the film.
00:10:29
Speaker
um but it's all good, it's all good. So as as he said, the Mothman comes from Point Pleasant in West Virginia um and it's like a folklore of this humanoid creature. It's got wings, it's got glowing red eyes and glowing red eyes seem to be the sort of the main calling card as it were um of the Mothman and um basically there was some grave diggers that reported sighting when they were digging some graves and
00:11:17
Speaker
in November 66. They were, they thought they spotted something, they glanced up, something that was sort of flying overhead. um And it appeared to be a massive figure that was moving rapidly from tree to tree. And the the gravediggers later described it as like a brown human being, so real dark.
00:11:39
Speaker
um ah and They were the first or major sort of sighting of it. It would become known as a Mothman because it looked like a winged human. um But it was always something that remained elusive. There was never really any sort of There's no video of it. There's no cameras. And back in the 60s, you didn't really have, people didn't carry around cameras. And it only sort of, it was only for a sort of certain time. It was like over the course of about a year or so between 66 and 67 that the Mothman really sort of the sightings intensified. um And it was all around Point Pleasant.
00:12:30
Speaker
um after these guys had their initial report um there was a two couples that noticed a white winged creature which was about six or seven feet tall standing in front of the car that they're all sitting in um bit freaky but they again said that the beast had about ah like red eyes about six inches apart and a huge wingspan of about 10 feet um and the apparent urge to avoid the bright headlights of the car which is where this sort of dark fear comes from because nobody had really seen it with any kind of lighting on it. So according to other witnesses
00:13:15
Speaker
The creature was able to fly at incredible speeds, some say up to about 100mph, and all of them agreed that the beast was quite clumsy when it was running on the ground. So it was always sort of seen up in the air and was a bit clunky.
00:13:32
Speaker
walking around. And if you see sort some of the pictures and the the size of this thing, this thing walking around with huge wings on its back, is it's going to be quite top-heavy, I would imagine. Yes, I saw one description of it. It's like a slender, muscular man, about seven feet tall, with large white wings. who Imagine just seeing that. and yeah ah Absolutely, it depends on you. Oh, it would. And the statue, if you see the statue and you can you can Google the statue, ah so you say in Point Pleasant, there is actually, they've they've sort of embraced Mothman. And it looks horrific if that's what people are seeing. It's horrible, horrible thing.
00:14:23
Speaker
um ah But more and more sightings were reported in the Point Pleasant area over the's sort of the year between 1966 and 1967. And that's when this legend took a bit more shape. um They reckon there was eight additional sightings in the short space of three days after the first claims.
00:14:44
Speaker
including two firefighters who said that they saw very large bird with large red eyes. And if you look at, again, if you Google the picture and Google the image, there's like a classic image of Mothman, this big black winged creature with glowing red eyes, and you could mistake it for like a huge bird, but the things like a pterodactyl sized thing is huge, absolutely huge.
00:15:12
Speaker
yeah And the people having sort of dreams and premonitions of an impending... Impending doom, yeah. Strange. And also believe... Well, some people claim to have had, like, strange phone calls and visits from the men in black. Yep. And things like that.
00:15:38
Speaker
Nice. I never thought I'd let them see an update together.
00:15:43
Speaker
So basically the this became legend very quickly um and locals became convinced that they were seeing the Mothman in birds and other large animals even long after there was like this prankster that they thought was was pulling out the jokes.
00:16:05
Speaker
um But it's worth knowing that the Mothman legend bears a resemblance to several demon archetypes found among those who experience sleep paralysis. And like you mentioned, people have been been um dreaming about air and having visions. um So some people have sort of suggested that Mothman is actually just like a human fear. And this legend's born out of the fact that somebody thinks they sin something.
00:16:35
Speaker
and as you know in certain places we've we've had cases that we've talked about where people have like a mass hysteria and I'm not saying this is mass hysteria but people can almost be talked into seeing something that's not there and they convince themselves that what they're seeing is Mothmans. They see two red eyes and it could be a deer or or something potentially I'm not saying that's what it was, but in the dark of night and you've seen these red eyes glow in, it could be a wolf, it could be anything. And people are like, shit, there's Mothman. And then they'll go, oh, we saw Mothman last night. And then the next night somebody else has seen it. And then over the course of a short period of time, this legend has developed
00:17:29
Speaker
um So who knows if it if it's really properly up there and and true. However, um there was an issue with the silver bridge. So the silver bridge was constructed in 1928 and connected Point Pleasant and Kanuga in Ohio. um And the name was credited to it, aluminum.
00:18:00
Speaker
for the American references out there, colored paint that was used. um Now, on the 15th of December 1967, during rush hour, the bridge collapsed and the bridge resulted in 31 vehicles falling into the river, killing 46 people and injuring nine, which is unusual for a bridge to collapse, but people believe that it was Mothman who caused the disaster. So it's one of those enduring mysteries now, which is there's a sign up that says that the the Silver Bridge collapsed.
00:18:40
Speaker
um And people were saying that is basically the only thing that could have happened because there was this foreboding was that Mothman had actually caused the bridge collapse because there was Mothman sightings in the preceding days. So the bridge collapse followed ah sightings of the Mothman and it wasn't long before people started to connect both Mothman sightings and the bridge collapse ah and put two and two together and come up with five potentially.
00:19:17
Speaker
um but John Keel, the author of Muffin Prophecies, conflated that the muffin science and the bridge disaster were connected.
Cultural Celebrations of Mothman
00:19:28
Speaker
He also incorporated UFO activity and his story took hold and the town soon became iconic amongst many conspiracy theorists, ufologists and fans of the paranormal.
00:19:42
Speaker
um Point Pleasant now is known for the Mothman legend um and decades later it's still like an ongoing and enduring kind of um sort of homage to to what happened back in the 60s and as we mentioned right at the start in 2002 the film based on the book called Mothman Prophecies. Richard Gere plays a reporter basically who seems to have witnessed the Mothman shortly before, um sorry, whose wife seems to have ah witnessed the Mothman shortly before her death and he gets all sucked into it um and tries to figure out what the Mothman is. Now I've watched the film, I've read the book and
00:20:34
Speaker
the book was so much better than the film. The film was not great, I'll be honest with you. um But yeah, it's it's it's one of those ones, it's like we talked about um Moment of Contact and down in ah South America in the town, it's all dedicated, they've got UFO statue up.
00:21:00
Speaker
and they've really embraced it. Now Point Pleasant have fully embraced Mothman, which is crazy. They've got, like you mentioned, they've got a museum. They have like Mothman days and parades and all that kind of stuff. And it's like the weirdest thing I can't even imagine in the UK unless I've missed something. I can't imagine us doing something like that.
00:21:25
Speaker
is rollland Oh, we do have cheese rolling down the hill. That's, that's fairly cloak close to me in Gloucester. That's fucking mental. Have you seen them? and clever its just People their legs and all sorts and they win the cheese. That's it. It's like, you've done all of that to win some cheese. But yeah, mean we don't, we don't sort of celebrate ah an urban and legend, do we? Even like the big cases, like i when I went to Rendlesham.
00:21:56
Speaker
That's putting nothing. I went to like the town of Wendersham. I went to the shops, I was asking people, I was like, nothing. Apart from the little trail, it's just this basically little signpost that you follow around the forest. That's it, there's nothing at all to say we've got one of the biggest well-known cases in the world. Yeah. It was really good, like the Roswell Festival. Everything that goes on over there. Wendersham, putting not quite on the same scale, but still one of the top cases like Roswell, where everyone knows about it. And we have nothing. It's literally nothing. It's insane. And where we've done the episode on Rendlesham and like the history that's there. So it's not as even if it was just like those few nights in 1980, it's like going back 900,000 years in that particular area and there's still, maybe that's just a British thing.
00:22:52
Speaker
mean know very of sal my thing It's like, no, we don't talk about that kind of stuff here. We don't talk about that. But yeah, so it's good to see that they embrace it and it obviously attracts people um to go to the festivals and and even seen the statues. So yeah. And up in video games. Yeah, and ended up in video games. You know, you've made it when you become a character in a video game.
00:23:19
Speaker
like I did find, okay, because I was working with sort of anything more sort of recently, laughing at obviously some sightings in 2000, so there's a couple of grainy photographs that you can't really tell. Yeah. I did find one from Georgia in the Middle East, I guess. Isn't that the Middle East? No, Russia. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And their newspaper.
00:23:47
Speaker
I'm going to butcher the names in Russian, I think. I've heard of it, yeah local yeahvelait yeah. And claim that Mothman sightings in Moscow foreshadowed 1999 Russian apartment bombings, which killed more than 300 people. Well, so it's that kind of see sightings around and then something, some tragic event happens. Yeah, ah that's weird. ah is where That There's a book in 1970, before John Gill's book, from a grey marker called The Silver Bridge. And that mentions, amongst other things, that the Mothman or Birdman who visited the area around Point Pleasant and stuff in 1966.
00:24:41
Speaker
And he, like most of the others, sort of the psychological side of it where he sort of talks to local residents and how they sort of dealt with it before and after the bridge collapse and sort of why people felt the way they did and why they sort of put it onto them off. I guess when things happen, people do try and look for answers. And if that's sort of what you come to, that's something that people would grab onto.
00:25:10
Speaker
Yeah, I suppose it gives some kind of... especially if it's just like a tragic accident and there is no explanation and there's been this kind of urban legend around before. I can imagine it's quite... I don't know what the right word is but it's kind of like...
00:25:34
Speaker
It's easier to say that something's caused it than to not know why it's been caused at all and not have any answer. So you kind of you kind of get in some kind of, I say closure, that's not the right word, but to be able to blame something for a tragic accident. Yeah, it's definitely, you always, when there's accidents, you're always looking for somebody to blame or something must have happened to cause this rather than it just be a tragic accident. And and um what better than Mothman, this mysterious creature that nobody's really got solid evidence of
00:26:21
Speaker
um and it fits the bill quite nicely and you would shit your pants oh christ yeah yeah absolutely especially if i just see these glowing red eyes that'd be enough to freak me out anyway and then just sort of see him going up in the air i'd be like fucking in jesus christ but cool so yeah we hope you enjoyed the first episode of the monsters of fallout 76 see you next time bye
00:27:25
Speaker
Attention citizens, nuclear strike imminent Please exit the area at your earliest convenience Thank you for your cooperation Welcome to the second episode of Fallout 76 Monsters from the suit of the power normal. Welcome back Greg. Hello Ash. How are we? I'm looking forward to this one. I am. I am real quite popular the first episode was when we talked about the math man. Yes. And I think this is going to be even better.
00:27:59
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I like this story as well. I've, um, researching and watching videos and all sorts. So excited about this one. And sorry I've played the game. Awesome. Cause we spoke last time, but over to you. We'll talk about what happened in the next episode. You played it a bit more and we can, uh, talk about the game, the game itself a bit more next, next one.
00:28:27
Speaker
So this episode, we are going to be talking about a very famous case, a case that was investigated by Project Blue Book, officially, the American US Air Force UFO investigation project. And it's the Flatwoods Monster.
00:28:50
Speaker
yes so again another sort of legendary monster that is featured in the game Fallout 76 based on a real life alien and encounter yes like last time i'll talk about sort of how the monster is portrayed in the game And then we'll then talk about the actual story behind the whole legend of what happened sounds good back in 1950. In the game, the Flatwoods Monster, and this is from Fallout Wiki website, Flatwoods Monsters are aliens described as a hovering creature.
00:29:32
Speaker
with glowing purple eyes capable of abducting wastelanders. Wastelanders are the name for the playable and non-playable characters in the game. like You are a wastelander. We're in a nuclear wasteland. Yes. Yes, we are in the game. As part of the storyline, you're told about the creature warned that its mere presence can warp the mind of all but the most iron world.
00:29:58
Speaker
In pre-nuclear war West Virginia, near the town of Flatwoods, the real town, many claimed to see a mischievous creature with glowing eyes. Colton Pickens, in the game, claimed that he was taken onto his spaceship and subjected to experimentation, but the police dismissed his account. After the war, there are accounts of wastelanders being taken,
00:30:21
Speaker
only being able to recall a blinding light afterwards. Okay. In game, the Flatwood monster's head is encased in a purple helmet which obscures most of its face. The rest of the body is sealed in a protective suit and there are no visible legs. It's got three fingers and green blood which can be seen when you fight the Flatwoods monster which is a tough battle and talking about that you encounter the flatwoods monster in random sort of spawn random encounters all over the the map usually at night they spawn but they can't last until daytime as they don't get killed and the monster will teleport around during a battle making it difficult to get him and he's quite a tough enemy and even more spookily
00:31:09
Speaker
is when the Flatwoods monsters nearby the area becomes bathed in this creepy purple light just around so you can be like sort of going back near your base and you just see sort of like your buildings or whatever in this purple sort of tinge you know the Flatwoods monsters somewhere nearby so it's sort of like walking around like is there somewhere I know is and I know is here and this purple light This purple glow also lets the monster take control of other animals, enemies, and even like your own base, your defenses and rocket launches and stuff on your base. It can take control of them to start shooting you rather than... of course shooting i usually don't need to shoot the enemies but they can sort of take over these the base defenses yeah and even other monsters like the mothman he can control so he could get attacked by the mothman and the flatwoods monster at the same time oh wow so it's quite a
00:32:09
Speaker
quite a yeah ah tough opponent. is Yeah, it's quite cool. There's quite a few different variations like with the Mothman. Some of them are stronger and they can be quite aggressive. you can So if we turn back to your your base, your home me bill um you and you can just find that the turrets are already shooting like other parts of your base because you think, what the hell's going on? and You see it in purple, you're like ash.
00:32:34
Speaker
there's a flatwoods monster and then he got a try and finally we start shooting him and then he'll just disappear and be a pain behind you and stuff so it's well it's pretty cool and like say the spawn all over the map so you can kill him and then another one will spawn it's uh not that common but you know you know when they're there okay i look forward to ah reaching that point in the game Yeah, so that's sort of how it's portrayed in in the game. Do you want to introduce the yeah real story behind it? Yeah, so legend has it. So the Flatwoods monster is also known as a Braxton County monster, Braxy, or Phantom of Flatwoods. It's interesting that you mentioned about the
00:33:23
Speaker
the eyes being purple because some of the depictions show like red eyes as well, which is very much like um how the Mothman was portrayed. Yeah. um In legend. So and it's strange again that Virginia and West Virginia have got these these are lots of these creatures and I wonder if they they potentially could be the same thing I suppose and depending where you are in West Virginia that's your version of I've like a Mothma
00:33:55
Speaker
um ah similar time nineteen fifty two as well isn't it a yeah month yeah So it's um part of the the folklore there now um and on the evening of September 12th 1952 a bright object crossed the night sky um So what happened was there's a group of people they spotted. So it was two brothers Edward and Fred May and their friend Tommy said that they saw a bright object across the sky and land on the property of a local farmer G Bailey Fisher. The boys went to the home of Kathleen May where they told their story.
00:34:35
Speaker
and May accompanied by the three boys, um local children Neil Nunley and Ronnie Shaver and a West Virginia National Guardsman. oh yeah So went to a farm in an effort to locate what they thought might have been a meteor or or what crashed craft at that point they reached the top of a hill ah where one of the boys then said he saw a pulsing red light um the guardsman then flashed his flashlight in the direction a momentarily saw a tall man-like figure with a round red face surrounded by a pointed hood like shape spooky
00:35:21
Speaker
Spooky. So descriptions varied, but in an article for Fate Magazine based on tape recorded interviews, ah UFO writer Gray Barker described the figure as approximately 10 feet tall. So three meters. That's a big. That's tall. That's very tall. Yeah. That's sort of what you think. That's one and a half times a tall human at sort of six feet-ish.
00:35:49
Speaker
ah With a round blood red face, a large pointed hood-like shape around the face, eye-like shapes which emitted greenish orange light and a dark black or green body. They described the figure as having small claw-like hands.
00:36:06
Speaker
clothing like folds and a head that resembled the ace of spades so the the picture is got if you can imagine the the ace of like the the spades logo on a pack of cards that was sort of like either behind its head or part of its head's shape um and created this sort of round pointed, I don't know what you would call it, um then they basically dropped, obviously it was panic at that point because you see something ten foot tall looking like this weird thing out of Doctor Who. think like You saw this thing crash and
00:36:45
Speaker
yeah this thing's come out of it and you've got to think the late 40s and 50s were a time where um saucer fever saucer fever et's um there was like ah all the different films the old school films um came out where it was like the nuclear era everything was happening in America at that point and if you saw something strange that's immediately what you would do think was happening it's like some alien invasion um so apparently this figure started to make a hissing sound and glided towards the group the guardsman screamed dropped his flashlight and everybody legged it
00:37:33
Speaker
The group then said that they smelled a pungent mist and some later said that they were nauseated. So that ties in with the purple mist that you're talking about in the game. yeah and The local sheriff and a deputy have been investigating reports for crashed aircraft in the area. They searched the site of the reported monster but saw, heard and smelled nothing.
00:37:53
Speaker
And according to Gray Barker's account, um the next day, one of the Brexit Democrats claimed to have discovered skid marks in the field and an odd gummy deposit, which was subsequently attributed by UFO enthusiast groups as evidence of a source of landing.
00:38:12
Speaker
Um, so a bit of a bit of an odd one and then newspaper stories are carried out throughout the country. Obviously this thing went wild. There's a large networks, hundreds of phone calls are received from all over the country. Um, the national press services rated the story number 11.
00:38:30
Speaker
for the year, which is which is pretty cool. A minister from Brooklyn came to mention ah question the family. Pittsburgh paper came and sent a special reporter. UFO and Fortean writers like Gray Barker and Ivan Sanderson also arrived to investigate. So there was a lot of furore around this particular story and like we just said you've got this sort of alien um frenzy in America at that point you'd had Roswell five years before
00:39:07
Speaker
So people were still talking about Roswell um and it was the claim that some of the aliens were based for about five years and it all sort of came out a bit later about Roswell. So you've got people you've got like the atomic bombs, you've got everything going pretty wild in America at that time. um I've watched a lot of films that are like from the 50s and 60s where people, it's all about alien invasions and they come in to take over the earth. So you can see why people have got this heightened sense of panic when they're seeing objects in the sky. um So I get it. Yeah. And I believe one of the boys read himself in panic. Oh, really?
00:39:54
Speaker
and he's running away, yeah. I think it would be pretty, pretty scary. And like the image that you sort of see associated with the Flatwoods Monster is similar to how it's portrayed in the game as well, which is, but he is dressed more like, like that shape and figure, but in like a space suit. More like an alien type. Yeah, so he made it into like a true, a true alien. under The TV series Project Blue Book did an episode on The Flatwoods Monster and it's brilliant. It's really, really well done. And they go tight into the woods where they think this thing crashed and the woods were on fire and they see this creature. yeah okay And then obviously J. Alan Hinek
00:40:42
Speaker
yeah He was brought in by the Air Force to kind of debunk all of these cases. He as you went to and Flatwoods to investigate it. And there's quite a few, obviously, skeptics. Yes. You get some quite a few theories as to explain the different aspects of the story. And the main one being what they saw in the sky was a meteor. Yeah. So it was reported that night across a number of states that could be seen. And similar to cases that we've investigated, you have identified
00:41:19
Speaker
where someone's seeing a light coming down and what and in then they're going to where they think it's landed and then seeing something in the woods, very similar to this. yeah We did a case in in Bolton in Manchester, England, they very similar.
00:41:35
Speaker
and But at the exact same time that they saw this thing coming out the sky and landed, at the exact same time, there was a meteor recorded by the UK Meteor Watch. This was recorded from all over the UK. yeah At the exact same time they saw it, so that sort of half of the story can't be explained away by it being a meteor. It's very similar to this, where they saw something land out the sky or come down. They'd gone to where they think it landed.
00:42:04
Speaker
and obviously seeing something and associated the two parts of the story, you know, they're not related. yeah So they could have seen this alien creature, could have been convinced that this meteor was at the exact same time. It could have been an alien, yeah but the meteor wasn't related to to to that, it just happened at the same time. Or it could have come on the meteor, or it could have been a spaceship crashing. It could have been, yeah. Right, it's a low-ranking meteor in the sky.
00:42:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I suppose all those theories. But it's interesting that the two separate incidents, if there were separate incidents, would coincide at exactly the same time. Yeah, it does happen. Like you've R1.
00:42:50
Speaker
She went to the woods where she thought the light came down and saw a glowing light in the woods at one o'clock in the morning. Like a ball of light. She thought it was the same object. We proved that it wasn't but it could have been. In her mind it was the same thing. So that's kind of the the object.
00:43:13
Speaker
side of it and obviously there's been quite a few theories as to what the alien was quite a few different ones yeah the the main one seems to be a large barn owl um perched on a tree limb and i saw a photo unconnected of a particular owl um in America and this thing was massive this guy was sat next to it and this thing's huge yeah and they've got like eyes that light up in it well they don't light up in the dark obviously but when there's a like a flashlight the reflection on the back of the retina same with like dogs and people when you have your your photo taken old school cameras we've got the red eye
00:43:59
Speaker
um it's possible I suppose um that was definitely one of the main sort of explanations ah about this barn owl and that the foliage beneath the owl could have created the illusion of the lower portions of the creature um described by some as being a pleated green skirt um
00:44:29
Speaker
so yeah yeah i mean that is the favorite yeah and i think that's what budget blue book concluded right i think i might be wrong but i'm sure that's what they conclude that it was uh an owl creature Yeah, because I suppose if you've got a barn owl sat on a tree limb and you've got this apron of what appears to be cloven below, the feet of the barn owl would be claws on a tree and would be halfway up the body of the ah creature that you're seeing. So it could potentially like have these talons, I suppose. Convenient. I mean, it it ticks a lot of boxes, but
00:45:18
Speaker
Does it say like it has the small claw like hands? Is that just a feet halfway up a tree? Yeah, yeah. And the rest of the body is the foliage. Yeah. Again though, unless, unless you're there, it's very difficult because eyewitness testimony at best of times is rubbish. And you're remembering the last time you remembered it. And then you've got all these people remembering different bits. And this almost like a Chinese whisper becomes quite and this is a group of kids mainly and young young kids and they're feeding to each other sort of
00:45:57
Speaker
excitement and scarediness and sort of bounce off each other like that must be some sort of alien because they're in like sort of heightened state of sort of alert or panic. Yeah, there's also saying that the the nausea that was experienced by people is also a side effect of like mass hysteria or hysteria.
00:46:19
Speaker
so that could tie in as well and if the little boy weed himself, um obviously there was a lot of adrenaline hyping up of each other's emotions because yeah I would imagine you see something like that and you're walking into a forest and seeing this thing at first glance you're and you're you're ready like mentally alert scared your brain's working over time and like with pareidalia that you see something and your brain tries to make a pattern of what it is
00:47:01
Speaker
it's like when you wake up in the middle of the night and sort of you look up and it's like it's just like a light light in your room you think it's like a so unstud in your room which it was actually was like your coat hanging up on the back of the door yeah because it's in that shape and you're not fully where what's going on looks like the outline of someone stood at the front of your bed. You have that brief moment where you absolutely shit yourself. You're like fuck and then you realise it's a cover hanging up or whatever on the door. Yeah but that moment just before you realise what it is, there is panic in you isn't there? Yeah, I did a few times.
00:47:36
Speaker
I've done it and thought I witnessed the UFO. I don't know if I told you that story. I was looking at where I used to live when I was about 15 and out of the windows I could look over some of the hills and I could see these lights going up and down this hill in the distance.
00:47:56
Speaker
and I was trying to figure out what it was and I couldn't figure out what it was and I thought wow god it's got it's got to be something I can't see that there's any roads there because it's like on the Ridgeway which is quite an unmotorized part of the sort of the hillside around here and um so I went to bed and obviously I was quite hyped up ah emotionally just thinking shit have I just seen UFOs Anyway, I woke up in the middle of the night, I looked out there the window and there was this large glowing white object.
00:48:34
Speaker
ah could see through the curtains I was thinking oh fuck they're coming in for me I genuinely thought that wow and I was thinking oh my god oh my god oh my god and I was panicking I pulled the curtain back just to try and peek through it was the fucking moon wasn't it full moon quite low in the sky and I literally I was literally thought I was about to be abducted. A file's gonna be taken. But that was around the time when the X-Files was big.
00:49:08
Speaker
the exposers out. So I was already expecting something bad to be out. So these kids are going through this mass hysteria of being hoped out. They've seen a crashed spacecraft because back then they didn't, it was all spacecraft alien invaders, wasn't it? Back then it was always us versus them. So yeah, I can get why their brains have sort of gone, what that but the hell are we looking at?
00:49:35
Speaker
Definitely. I've just been looking as I'm looking earlier as well. It's obviously with the Mothman. There's like lots of different sightings from lots of different people and all this other stuff. But with Flatwoods, I wasn't able to find any other deposits. It's just this one. This one now, this one case.
00:49:54
Speaker
yeah yeah and that's one thing that struck me like you say with Mothman it was reported at the time quite a lot and people still claim to see it whereas the flatwoods monster was that night only and that that seemed to be it so my in my mind i think the barn owl thing seems to fit a lot of it but you don't know you don't know so yeah that is the flatwoods monster second episode of fallout 76 and monsters join us next month when we will be talking about the Grafton monster
00:51:02
Speaker
trees Attention citizens, nuclear strike imminent Please exit the area at your earliest convenience um Thank you for your cooperation. Good evening Greg, how are you doing? Oh good thanks Ash, how are you? Very well, very you well. So this is the third episode of our Fallout Monsters series. I'm going to ask you the question.
00:51:29
Speaker
no because it's the answer that's the answer have you played the game since yeah since you bought it i've only played it the first bit where i've got out of the mountain bunker thing right at the start and because yeah because i was expecting it to be a little bit more like cooler duty and it wasn't. I kind of stopped at the moment. by I intend to play it. but So that's as far as I got. I've got out of the vault and then I don't really know where I've got to go. I'm very disappointed. but
00:52:07
Speaker
I'll take that as a spelling off. I thought you'd be like Mr. Fallout Knowledge like Encyclopedia by now. we could um some over
00:52:22
Speaker
Maybe for the next one I'm gonna hold you that one. You got you got a month at least get to like because the one super talk about so far like near the start of the game so you can at least find come across at least one of them and then I'll let you after that one I take a picture of it when you once you find it in the game and yeah Yeah, I'll do that. Cool. So this week we are talking about another monster from the Fallout 76 video game and this month is going to be the Grafton monster. Yes. So like the previous episodes, I'll talk about the monster in the game.
00:53:07
Speaker
how it's portrayed, a bit of origin story for it. And then Greg will comment and sort of talk about the real life stories, what actually happens with the Grafton Monster and how it came to be. yes So the Grafton Monster, it's a powerful enemy creature in the game. And it's based around sightings that we come onto in the Grafton area.
00:53:35
Speaker
Hence Grafton and Monster. In the game it's a big hulking creature. It attacks on sight so you can't really sort of be friendly with it. Like so many others have sort of friendly versions but this one doesn't it will attack on sight.
00:53:52
Speaker
It attacks by throwing large rocks and has like a toxic gas as well to attack you with. It's a basically depicted as a mutated version of the legend day of Grafton Monster. Grayish green skin and sharp claws.
00:54:12
Speaker
And it came about after West Tech, so West Tech, I guess it's similar to the Umbrella Corporation in the Resident Evil series. They're like the sort of, sort of controlling everything. They're carrying out experiments called FEV, FEV, which is the Forced Evolutionary Virus, and this was priwar pre pre-the nuclear apocalypse.
00:54:36
Speaker
yeah doing experiments on people and stop using it this virus which sort of altered DNA and the genetics so that's how this monster and other monsters in the game other creatures like super mutants came about because of these experiments bye Westheck. So the Gathun monster, the resulting monster, is a headless, hairless, with a leathery texture. It stands at around two and a half meters with an oversized chest. You can see in the pictures with our fully show art, it looks yeah like pretty, pretty scary. Very weird. Very weird. And it can maneuver in the tight spaces. And like I said, it is very, very hostile. Very, very big chest and arms. When you first come across it,
00:55:24
Speaker
because it's so big you literally like what the things is the bigger thing and it's loud and it just comes marching towards you and throwing rocks and this black gas thing oil that's more like an oil that it just throws at you especially quite new you're not very powerful it can just run off because it's not the fastest so you can it can be quite fast but you can just run off and So I'll get out of the area and then come back when you're a bit stronger to fight him. There's different versions of the Grafton Monster game, like with the Flatwoods Monster and the Mothman. Sort of different ones that you can come across. You've got the glowing Grafton Monster. Again, covered in radiation because of the nuclear fallout, the nuclear war that's been going on. And the diseased Grafton Monster.
00:56:19
Speaker
Which is more aggressive, so even more scarier. And it can give your player, your character, a disease. So you can catch the disease, I think that can obviously hampen your abilities and stuff like that. Obviously because it is quite a strong character, the rewards you get for killing it are pretty good. It's classed as more like a boss than and other creatures but they tend to be kind of in the same place you sort of know where they are and you can go and find that you want to try and try and kill it and here's a boss in one of their missions missions as well okay he doesn't really seem to have a head which is makes it look creepy does have a head ah but because the chest is like so big it sort of comes up so sort it sort of hides the head a little bit
00:57:08
Speaker
So when you first see it, it looks like this big grey moving rock. It's sort of how it looks like. Yeah, it's a weird looking thing. Yeah. it's And it's very, very much like the um descriptions in real life, as it were. Because when I first started looking at it, it just looks like this weird like Hulk thing with that head.
00:57:35
Speaker
but yeah, is it has a head, but non-distinct, but... Yeah, yeah, that's it. And I'd say it is very, very creepy to look at. Yeah, nice when I was looking at the YouTube stuff on it, it was, and it showed the game and why it looks like it again, because I haven't got that far yet. Yeah, very weird looking character, very weird. So moving on to...
00:58:05
Speaker
the real life so as I indicated the the descriptions compare to the game very well and it does look like some kind of weird hulk creature without a head even though it does have a head. um So ah claim to be a humanoid bipedal creature um and It was originally said they had white seal-like skin,
00:58:35
Speaker
um but in an article in the Grafton Sentinel published on June 18, 1964, an anonymous teenager claimed the creature was nine feet tall and about four feet wide.
00:58:49
Speaker
which ties in with what it looks like in the game for definite. It was on June, it was on June the 16th in 1964 around 11 o'clock at night. Robert Cockrell, a reporter for the Grafton Centre newspaper, was driving along the Tigard River on Route 119, known as Riverside Drive, on his way in from work. There he suddenly encountered a large white creature on the right-hand side of the road which was the side that the Tigard River was located. And according to Robert's account, the creature was lumbering around on the side of the road while a low whistling noise was being emanated from further away in the direction of the river. Cockwell at the time had no explanation for the noise, but later on ufologist Gray Barker, believing to be
00:59:39
Speaker
ah believing that the creature had extra-terrestrial origin, he suggested that noise was being emitted from the creature's spaceship. So with that, it's like very similar time again to the Muff Man and the other thing that seems to be within that sort of few years where all this was sort of happening.
01:00:00
Speaker
yeah yeah definitely definitely and it's it's all around the time when there's quite a heightened thing about the space race so we had the the race to get to the moon there was lots of films about aliens taking over it's quite a it's like post-war um it's that sort of new sort of up and coming age in the world where um People are like space monsters are a big thing and all that kind of stuff. um But surprised by the encounter, Robert Cockrell initially slowed down um as he was able to see that the creature was very large and appeared to be made entirely of muscle.
01:00:43
Speaker
Um, it also had white seal like fur and disturbingly didn't have a visible head. So some of the pictures that the artists drawings of, of this particular creature, it looks like if you've ever seen like a monkey or a gorilla where they've got some, sometimes you see them and they've got no fur, like completely bald and they look like these superhuman type muscley things. That is the kind of impression I got.
01:01:13
Speaker
were that this thing little looked a bit like. The creature moved quickly out of view and upon realising that the white obstruction was a living creature, Robert quickly accelerated down the road until he reached home, as I would.
01:01:29
Speaker
Get out of there. Yeah, bye-bye. See you later, y'all. Cockrell called two of his friends, Jerry Mawson, Jim Mauser. Cockrell explained the sighting to them and then asked them to come to a location of the sighting in order to investigate further. They did agree, which... But when they returned to the site, um all they were able to find was trampled grass and a low whistling sound that seemed to follow them around the site.
01:01:57
Speaker
The next day at work, Robert mentioned this to the editor of the the Grafton Sentinel, or what he'd seen, but the editor did not take the sighting seriously. um Robert assumed that nothing more would come of his sighting after that point. His friends, however, were fascinated with the idea of a monster on the loose and went around town telling as many people as they could, ideal.
01:02:19
Speaker
In a very short time, monster hunting parties had formed, predominantly made up of local teens armed with baseball bats, whatever they could find, they'd get out to lynch the thing. These roving groups of teens scoured Riverside Drive near where the cockroach had initially seen the creature.
01:02:36
Speaker
and soon new sightings were being reported spurred by the commotion and by the new sighting. The Grafton Sentinel interviewed some of the teenagers and produced an article about the creature on June the 18th, so two days later, called Teenage Monster-Hunting Party's latest activity on Grafton's scene. So that's a, that's a head point. It sounds quite, but when we say about like, it sounds a bit like a lynching party, it reminds me a bit of like the monster from Frankenstein where he's kind of like miss on the sun could just be like obviously a friendly something going wrong somewhere but it's friendly he just wants to make friends and then they come out with him at baseball bats looking for him and stuff it's yeah miss on the sub monster so misunderstood more than 20 sightings were reported from this monster hunt weirdly ah with Robert interviewed them all in detail
01:03:31
Speaker
um One of them said, I saw the monster near the river early in the morning. It saw me and instantly froze. It did not move. I was fishing at the time and left all my gear there and started to run away as I would. As I ran, I turned and saw that it too turned away and started running off. As I got near my truck and began opening the door, I heard a whooshing sound and a bright light appear above the tree line. I drove off and got my gear two days later.
01:03:58
Speaker
So it's definitely like a UFO. So I've kind of underlined it. But again, the hysteria, people were talking about the whistling noise being part of a view of a spaceship, that kind of thing. It's amazing. So and the interesting bit about it, there's something that I came across in multiple places that the the authorities um we're trying to sort of settle this down a bit because there was people who turned monster hunters bringing loaded guns into the area with tensions rising yeah the police had to get involved and undertook their own investigation so that's a positive thing
01:04:43
Speaker
and the next day on June the 19th the Grafton Sentinel printed another article on the other subject dismissing the monster as simply a result of spring fever as bored locals wildly managed a creature which was instead a hand cart piled high with boxes but again that goes to like the mass hysteria again that people are seeing stuff and somebody's had a sight and everybody's a bit hyped up and everybody starts seeing these things. I suppose because like these little towns in sort of.
01:05:17
Speaker
yeah West Virginia, these little towns, there's probably not much going on. Something exciting, something happening, let's all get involved. let's you know that Especially with the sort of teens involved and younger people, they may be a bit more likely to maybe fabricate something. They're out hunting and they see something and stuff. so could be a bit more elaboration and stretching the truth a little bit. yeah um So the hand cut was the most likely cause for the story.
01:05:50
Speaker
um and the sightings according to the paper the paper then stated it's fairly certain the monsters don't go around pushing hand carts loaded with boxes so they kind of dismissed it really um and it was depicted in the Fallout game which does look like a white muscly character um but there's also other sightings more recently um So there was a sighting in 1991 where a group of teenagers claimed to have seen a large black creature this time walking on two legs near the railroad tracks. The creature reportedly had red eyes. Kind of sound like a bear.
01:06:35
Speaker
yeah welcome and then 2006 yeah it could be because they're in the woods and all sorts of yeah he could have a bear just on his back legs and they're quite big when bears stand up aren't they 2016 yeah and very scary 2016 a man claimed to have seen the Grafton monster while hiking in the woods he reported seeing a large ape bite creature that stood on two legs um And in 2018, a woman reported seeing a large bipedal creature in her backyard. She described it as being approximately seven feet tall with a muscular build. So, yeah. It kind of, if I mean, it sounds a bit similar to big science as well. Sort of the build and obviously not quite as wide as the original sort of Grafton. Correct. It's exciting. And I came i found one from 2014 with a photo
01:07:29
Speaker
Okay. We've got this photo. from He's on Destination America as well. I don't think that must be a TV show. Yeah. And there's a photo called possibly a trail cam. A photo. And it looks like me it kind of looks like it does in the game. A big. Okay. Gray. Man's just a camera. But again, it could be a bear. Yeah. And it is sort of a black and white photo as well.
01:07:57
Speaker
so it looks grey, maybe that's why it looks grey. Yeah, and on the trail cam they always look, it's almost black and white on the trail cam, isn't it? Well it's an interesting photo, and it looks, whatever it is, is big. It definitely is something, you can tell it's not like a fake picture, they have got something and it is big. It looks scary, and I don't know if it ever was properly debunked, it was maybe a bear or something. It just says Grafton Monster, Taylor County.
01:08:25
Speaker
yeah i couldn't find anywhere where they sort of definitely ruled it out but apart from like in the 60s where they were like i was just doing mass hysteria and the kids going wild and that was it really um Very interesting, and very Bigfoot like, very Bigfoot like, but the shape of it is quite distinctive. And that comes across in the great, in the game as well as a very weird looking creature. That's very scary. Very scary.
01:08:58
Speaker
And that is after monster. Yep. Join us next episode when we will be looking at another famous cryptid that features in the game and in real life. And that is the Wendy go or the Wendy go, whatever you want to pronounce it. So yeah, learn about that one. We shall see you all later.
01:09:48
Speaker
which you taste easy to see in no insides first convenience Thank you for your cooperation.
01:10:03
Speaker
Hello, hello. Good evening, Greg. How are you doing?
01:10:11
Speaker
Oh, good thanks. How are you, Matt? Very good. Very good. We are in for another episode of Fallout Monsters episode four, I want to say. I think so, yep. I just think so.
01:10:29
Speaker
So who, was what, yeah, what cryptid creature monster are we talking about this time? So we've had a little discussion about how to pronounce this one. And yeah I do believe both pronunciations are correct. However, I also found the third one, but I'll just leave that one. So it's the Wendigo or the Wendigo. Wendigo, okay. Wendigo, a scary, scary Wendigo legend.
01:11:01
Speaker
So, like previous episodes, I'll talk about how this creature is portrayed in Fallout 76, and then we'll talk about the actual stories behind the real version of the video. Yes. Yes. Creepy. Very creepy. I don't know too much about the real story, so I'm looking forward to that, but the in-game version is pretty mad so if it's having like the game sort of folklore around it the game lore then yeah it's very very creepy it would sit right in a computer game as a monster let's just say that cool so in the game the wendigo is depicted as a tall thin humanoid with long arms and legs giving it an unsettling almost spider-like appearance
01:11:57
Speaker
It's grey skin is covered in bony spikes and ridges and it's glowing yellow eyes and sharp claws giving a menacing look. One of the most distinctive features of the Wendigo in Fallout 76 is its ability to emit a high-pitched shriek that can stun and disorient players. So what happens is one of the versions of it is like a boss type version of it.
01:12:24
Speaker
And when it does this shriek, basically, you lose control of, you can't control your character anymore. And like, your player ah runs away, like, scared, like, runs away in this big cave. This is going, ah, the player's all went off in the counterfight, because you've like, got too scared, because of this shriek, but, well. In addition to your physical attacks, the Wendigo's ability to regenerate quickly makes it a tough opponent to defeat.
01:12:53
Speaker
and it's recommended that players bring heavy weapons and plenty of ammunition when facing the Wendigo. What is hard to beat and the rewards and experience from killing, especially the high level ones, are good fair for in-game. Cool. So the lore around the Wendigo in the game So getting this from thenerdstash.com, he's got a bit of a bit of the Fallout lore, which says that the creature was once a human called Maurice Stevens, who was once the leader of a raider tribe of cannibals called the Ghermans, which once terrorized the savage divide region in the game, which is like kind of the middle of the map in Fallout 76. The day came when this group,
01:13:47
Speaker
May the troubling discovery that in fact their leader had broken the cards no rule of do not eat other members of the gang. The one who's supposed to eat other people, not their own. A wolf does not eat a wolf, that type of thing. yeah yeah Lupus no more, they loop him for a bit of Latin.
01:14:10
Speaker
Oh. Lupus non-mordae lupin, which is a wolf does not eat a wolf. I've never heard that. I've got a tattoo on my arm, that's one of his ways. Have you? I know it, yeah. That's quite, I like that.
01:14:23
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't say that. Is there the motto for the Warrington Wolves will be league team? No, I probably would have guessed him as either that or a rock band or something. Yeah, so a wolf does not eat a wolf. Just kidding, I was like, yeah, very similar. Don't eat your own gang. Correct. Eat other people does not eat your own. So they kicked him out and in exile, Maurice and his wife found refuge in a cave in a cave that will ironically be later known in the game as the Wendigo cave. The couple made the cave home and for a while things were not too bad. Morris would go out hunting and bring back huge bounties of human meat for himself and his wife but surely we see it a little bit of it here most of it. But
01:15:15
Speaker
Mr. Stevens kept getting greedier and hungier as if all the meat he was getting couldn't satiate himself, he was just getting hungier and hungier all the time. And the two started changing, like physically. But it was more apparent with Mr. Stevens and already rout with a hunger that nothing could satiate, Mr. Stevens finally gave in to the hunger, murdered his wife and ate her.
01:15:44
Speaker
was that home well wow What happened afterwards is still shrouded within the myth but it's believed that after he'd done this he changed forever, he was no longer human and he became the father of all Mendigos. He then started hunting his former tribe mates, eating and killing all them.
01:16:06
Speaker
And now all Wendigos come from him. He's like the original progenitor. And then every other Wendigo is like a descendant of this original human turned Wendigo creature. So that's the fall out law. I look forward to hearing the true version, but just the different types of Wendigos in the game. You got the normal one. So the normal one, obviously. The normal one, quite a basic one.
01:16:36
Speaker
and like the other crypties we talked about there's a glowing version obviously this is in the aftermath of nuclear war and all the radiation and shit and ravenous wendigo obviously more hunger and a bit harder to defeat than the other wendigos scorched wendigo which is a wendigo infected with the scorched plague which is kind of get into sort of the game itself. The scorched are mainly its human type creatures and these scorched beasts come out and they infect and they spray this plague that infects people. Nice. The scorched are kind of like zombies a little bit. Maybe. And they're still like talking human a little bit. So they're like they whisper. So they're like okay. So it's a little bit creepy.
01:17:29
Speaker
And you have the Wendigo Colossus, which is like a free-headed endgame boss. It's just one that makes you run away and interfere. It's actually quite difficult to defeat and you definitely need a groupier to go into the cave and try and defeat this Wendigo Colossus. And that's a big... In fact, we use that one for the for the for the art, for this but this episode. okay We can use that one as a cool picture. We can use for for that one.
01:17:57
Speaker
nice so yeah that is the wendigo in the game very gruesome backstory with with that one yeah yeah so some of the things that you've been describing are not too dissimilar to the lore surrounding the the real Wendigo or I say the real Wendigo is it real or is it folklore or is it um is it just an animal that gets miss um misdescribed um misidentified but a lot of these creatures and cryptids that we talk about not just in this game but other ones they they've all got a basis that they've
01:18:45
Speaker
there definitely is something has happened to at least one person. So I will talk about Wendigo. So the original Wendigo is from northern Native American tribes. So not saying that this West Virginia one is the same,
01:19:05
Speaker
but they do share many characteristics of the original Native American wind ego. From what I understand, the creature's physiology is between five foot and seven foot tall, very gone and six sickly thing. So it looks rather real. And in some descriptions, not bulky at all, like a bear, werewolf or bigfoot or any other normal stroke paranormal species, because usually they're quite big.
01:19:32
Speaker
big things aren't they quite scary and we yeah some of the other monsters in this game that we've spoken about are quite big muscly type creatures um it's supposed to have pale gray skin or pale gray fur canine teeth showing red or black eyes bipedal dog-like legs but long lanky arms humanoid hands with claws and a head that can be like a twisted fanged man or animalistic usually canine like so i think it's a bit like a werewolfy kind of kind of character if you've watched american werewolf in london the picture that i've seen of
01:20:12
Speaker
or the the artist's impression of the Wendigo is a bit like like, almost like a wolf-type head, fangs, but looks very human-like, so that sort of law and um lends itself to what you were just talking about in the game. So the beast is a carnivore, and like you mentioned, it's got an unending hunger for flesh.
01:20:37
Speaker
feeds on man, animals, any living creature, could be solitary or in a small pack, often said to growl, grunt, moan and have a blood curdling scream like a banshee.
01:20:51
Speaker
which ties in with what what you said in the game. Yeah, shriek. Yeah, shriek. Lives in a dark, damp, isolated area, like a cave, abandoned mines, or forest reclaimed structures, so houses in the woods, and those kind of things, which, if I saw one of them coming out of like a Blair Witch kind of bell witch house, I think that freaked me out. So the beast is a spirit of gluttony greed and wrath,
01:21:21
Speaker
associated with cannibalism. Hence why it's got this unnerving thirst for flesh. And according to Native American folklore, the Wendigo is literally a spirit of malice that possesses man and creatures, distorting them and driving them mad to kill and feed, which is exactly how you described it. And he ended up killing and eating his wife, didn't he? Only seen from dust till dawn while the sun is down.
01:21:48
Speaker
which suggests it's not torn nocturnal or intolerant of lights can invade dreams and cause night terrors clock so sounds like a horrible thing and may be able to speak human tongue which ties in with that sort of whispering that you were you were talking about um though I doubt anybody would wish to be so close to the said creature to try and listen to it and whilst it does share characteristic RB Imagine in your dream, you see something like that. Whilst it does share characteristics with werewolves, keep in mind this creature is supposed to be a different in form and action. So it it ties in with, if you looked at American Werewolf in London, that film, there the character where he transforms into the the werewolf, that's the kind of vision I get him ahead of of what I think it describes.
01:22:43
Speaker
I was that not long ago and it does not hold up. It doesn't, does it? It doesn't. I don't remember it being this. ah you This shit. There's loads of horror films. A lot of horror films don't hold up. Do they? And just say, oh, it's a shit. But the one bit that gets me in that film, I haven't seen it for years, but they go into the pub.
01:23:05
Speaker
and it's called the slaughtered lamb. It's just like, why would you go into a pub as a traveler in the middle of nowhere to the slaughtered lamb? And then they all look at him as he walks in. Oh, yeah, it's perfect. Yeah, it's all fucked away. And all the men just, just like him just walk in. It's just like, what the fuck? And then they're like, stay on the road. Stay on downer eight So yeah, I can imagine that it's something like, so I've actually got,
01:23:34
Speaker
um ah an experience from a guy called Brandon Ronk from writing in 2014 and his story around Wendigo. So I will just tell you his experiences right now.
01:23:53
Speaker
um His only experiences with the creature are very brief but happened on a couple of occasions. The first he was around 10 or so playing in the woods around his home in honour of Cabo county. There were several expanses of thick woods, tall hills and deep valleys.
01:24:14
Speaker
The sun just started going down below the hills and he was walking back on one of the trails. He got a feeling he was being followed the whole way back and about the time he was just about to cross a creek and into an open field where the house was, he heard crashing in the woods behind him. He ran to the house, slammed the door behind him, looked out the window and remembers seeing a tall, thin, pale, bipedal dog-like thing peeking out from behind a tree on the opposite side of the creek before vanishing into nothing.
01:24:44
Speaker
and because he was so young he put it up as his own imagination so I mean I think being that young I think you probably would certainly your parents would say that was you're just being a bit crazy
01:25:03
Speaker
second encounter was during high school so he sort of mid mid teens at that time while out bow hunting late in the evening near dark once more he was walking out of the same woods heard a blood curdling scream that echoed from a couple of hills over he assumed it was some kind of animal that he wasn't familiar with and just walked home calm but curious and now that was his experience that night but the third and last time they had a possible experience was during rifle season when he was about 20 years old in 2011. It was out in Salt Rock, West Virginia in a deep dark holler. After hunting all day, he didn't see a single animal, nothing, no squirrels, no deer, a few birds, but nothing. Dark was approaching and he was said that he was frustrated and just hiking out of the hollow and about three quarters of the way back to his vehicle.
01:25:57
Speaker
he heard movement behind him up on the ridge he stopped looked around and listened looked through the scope and saw nothing kept on walking about five minutes later with about 10 to 15 minutes worth of sunlight left he heard something on the ridge again he looked over and saw what he thought was a pack of four or five coyotes following him about 70 yards up the hill and about 100 yards back just peeking over the ridge he had a 270 gauge with him shot them made sure it was loaded and took a safety cap off and aimed up to the animals to see if they were coyote dog deer or what he said these were not coyote nor dogs nor man not even wolf which are not even in west virginia anymore
01:26:47
Speaker
what he saw instantly flashed back to when he was younger and he saw a ah pale bipedal dog creature pale grey skin fur lanky arms and a dog-like head with canine teeth showing he fired fired again and he kept loading his gun with his hands and climbed up and out of the woods as quick but safe space at safe pace whilst listening behind him the whole time as he reached the car he heard something coming towards him and he was just in the car so he turned it on and fired again as a warning shot. He got in the car, left, pumped him with adrenaline um and after he got home calmed down his hunter instinct sort of kicked in and he said he felt bad for shooting at the unknown creature but it was hard to accept what he saw. um His brain wanted to say it was a wild dog or a deer but it was not.
01:27:39
Speaker
However, he couldn't just let a wounded animal or wherever it was lay there. So the next day he went back to look for it. He found no blood, no tracks, no sign of any movement at all. The squirrels and everything were all back that day. So he counted it as a freak moment and let it be until we started reading up on this creature later on. He said, definitely strange things are out there.
01:28:07
Speaker
but he guesses it was a when they go type creature. So this guy's had three experiences. Yeah, that's mad. Yeah, so yeah, interestingly, there's no wolves in West Virginia anymore. So it couldn't have been something big like that. um So yeah. You sometimes think of, as you see in the pictures of like,
01:28:32
Speaker
bears when what's the word i'm thinking of when they're like got no hair and they're like mannerist oh yeah i've seen yeah i've seen yeah yeah yeah creepy creature we cannot expect them obviously not expecting to see like a bear like that obviously you don't know what it is it doesn't look like a bear it's Yeah, it just looks like something totally, like, just scary. Completely alien. Yeah. And they're, like, tend to be grey and, like, sort of torn because obviously the man knows and stuff and kind of what the word is. They're crazy to say. Well, that's, yeah, that's some mad, mad stories. I found one from sort of the going back to sort of First Nations. There's a story from the Chippewas of Rama.
01:29:28
Speaker
First Nation in Ontario, in Canada, so we're sort of moving up north a little bit. Yeah. And this story is from the early 20th century. And it's a collection of sort of folk stories that have been told over the years. And this time, a big Wendigo stole an Indian boy, but the boy was too thin, so the Wendigo didn't eat him up right away. He travelled with him, waiting for him till he'd get fat.
01:29:59
Speaker
the wendigo had a knife and then they cut the boy to see if he was fat enough but the boy didn't get a fat One day they came to an Indian village in native North Americans and the Mandigo sent the boy to the Indian village to get something to eat. It sounds a bit mad. It's like, go go get something to eat and come back. ah but answer It's a bit like Hansel and Gretel. In fact, this reminds me, this is this is completely digressing off a different, actual different topic now. And we're watching, I think it's a program called
01:30:40
Speaker
hangar 49 or something, something like this and it's like UFO files that are like, apparently government UFO files and there's like episodes based around each file. And hangar 49 or hangar 9 or something. and it Like hangar 18? Might be hangar 18. Because hangar 18 is the hangar in area 51 where UFOs are supposedly kept.
01:31:04
Speaker
Big shout out to Dave Mustaine for the song Hangar 18 on Megadeth album. Nice. Hangar 1, the UFO files it's called. Okay. And it's based on Ufand files. They're not government files. They're on like some random TV channel. I used to watch one. Anyway, some of them are totally out there. And there was one where this couple in like rural, mid America somewhere, they were just driving.
01:31:33
Speaker
driving along in the truck and they see an alien at the side of the road so they stop they put him in the truck they take it back to the house They give it its tea and then put it to bed. So they fed it, put it in, tucked it up in bed. They then ran the sheriff's office and said, we've got this alien, i it's in a house, we fed it. And the sheriff said to him, all right, we'll come in the morning and have a look.
01:32:07
Speaker
not even like coming right away they said that just come the next day and come see him so they fed it put it to bed and then they all but the odds went to bed just like it's a normal everyday occurrence and when they woke up the next day the alien had gone oh weirdly and that's the end of the story i like just pick up this alien and then just feed it and put it to bed and just casually win the sheriff and be like, yeah, I've got an alien. And the sheriff's even more casual. Yeah, I'll come around tomorrow. I can't be bothered coming around now. I'll come in the morning. Yeah, too late for that. That bit where he just saw the wind, when he got sent into the shops to get some food in the village, it just reminded me of that. For some reason. Yeah, let's go and get some food.
01:32:57
Speaker
anyway so this boy told the villagers that the wendy ego captured him in his nearby so they went to try and find him so they found the wendy ego cut off his legs and that sort of injured him came back he wasn't dead he was eating the marrow from inside the bone so his own legs would have cut off fucking hell okay they then killed him and cut him to pieces And then that was the end of that, Mandigo. So instead of dying, he decided to eat his own meat.
01:33:38
Speaker
I'll tell you, we've spoken about it quite a bit that some people have these really radical experiences, like completely, for want of a better phrase, alien experiences to anything that happens normally.
01:33:53
Speaker
And then they go about their day. Like we spoke to um Sasha Christie and her own experience and like just went back into the house afterwards and just sort of carried on as normal. And I don't know. I don't know what that's all about. this
01:34:11
Speaker
and smart crazy It's Crazy. I just want to read this bit just because I want to try and pronounce this word. Go on then. I don't know why I'm going to try and pronounce this because
01:34:25
Speaker
So among a lot of the First Nations that sort of have this Wendigo folklore, they performed a satirical ceremonial dance during join times of famine to reinforce the seriousness of the Wendigo taboo. So like you mentioned, it's kind of about greed and yeah so ive not sorry of having to resort to canvas and stuff to to survive. Don't get overpowered by greed, that sort of whole thing. So they do this sort of ceremony to remind people about the whole greed thing. We're in the famine. We're all in it together. i Share the wealth. Don't just try and look out for yourself. And the ceremony is known as
01:35:17
Speaker
Let's go. Let's try and say this in one attempt.
01:35:22
Speaker
Windigo Okanzi Himawin. I think I'll go with that. Yeah, I think after that I don't know what it is. that one ah So this this involves wearing masks and dancing backwards around the drum. The last known Wendigo ceremony conducted in the USA was at Lake Wendigo.
01:35:44
Speaker
in the Leech Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota. well don't say when but apparently that's where they used to do the ceremony one of the places they used to to do it yeah i um i can imagine that dance where they're doing it backwards with the mask on round a fire and it when i was looking for some um the history of the wendigo you mentioned it at the start about canada canada of it took me to canada as well so it appears that the whole of north america seems to
01:36:17
Speaker
seems to have sort of some kind of rich history with with this particular cryptid. A very weird looking character. and yeah Fascinating though. and I just think if there is something like that out there, and there quite possibly could be because there's so much untouched forestry in in the US and caves I mean in caves and in the UK we've we've got a smaller amount of that but you could almost see like when we've been to Canik Chase you could you could see that something could live in there and evade people a little bit but out there that's like hundreds and thousands of acres of like nobody's ever goes to so I'd like to think
01:37:07
Speaker
that creatures that we haven't found yet exist. And definitely creatures of this kind of supernatural kind of history, because the Native Americans talk about skin walkers, for example, and and those kind of, they all sort of tie in ah similar type of creatures. So there's gotta be something to it. There has to be.
01:37:34
Speaker
I'm sure. Definitely. But yeah, the Wendy going crazy, crazy, crazy sort of creature. Horrible. Wouldn't want to encounter that at all. Some mad, some bad backstories too as well. Yeah. So that was this month's episode of Fallout 76 and Monsters. Thank you for listening. And next month, I think might be the last one I'll have to I've made sure I'm not missing any but next month will be the Sonadagasta so yeah join us next month for for that same six and monsters bye
01:39:00
Speaker
the the area at your earliest convenience. Thank you for your cooperation.
01:39:10
Speaker
I'm very disappointed that it's going to be the last time we get to play that intro. It makes me laugh every time, especially when we're both dancing and people can't sing. It's a great song. It is a great song. It's a great night out song when you're in a club and country horse comes on and everyone just starts dancing to it. Oh, okay. i is an i and There's an Irish club in Blackpool called shenanigans and they always play this and they do like a slosh, like a vodka slosh, which is green. It was obviously Ireland, don't know what the fuck's in it, but it is so nice. And that's how you gotta go black people just to go to this pub and to have this slosh. And they always play Irish jigs and they always play country roads and everyone's dancing to it this year. I love it. So I'm gonna miss having that as an intro. We can use it somewhere else.
01:40:09
Speaker
haunted country roads yeah why not why not so yeah as you may gather this is the last episode of our fallout 76 monsters series based on our encrypted start feature in the fallout 76 video game um out on playstation xbox team whatever we come to the end of the series so Greg, I know you downloaded the game and you did the first bit where you come out of the vault. You've played it since. oh No. Very disappointing. The thing is,
01:40:52
Speaker
I can't, the controller's not very good for me. I'm not very good at the controller. um I can't, oh, it's just like, oh. I give up. I'm really sorry. I do i did download it though. But it's there, ready to play.
Final Episode and Fallout 76 Cryptids
01:41:19
Speaker
So never say never. I've got to go round and play, boys night and we'll play Fallout. Yeah. Yeah. And you'll see just how far I'm at.
01:41:33
Speaker
So yeah, this is final episode. There are six kind of cryptic creatures in Fallout 76, but one is called the Sheep Squatch. I couldn't find any reference to a real life relation to that. So obviously we just not done an episode on that. But the final one we are going to do an episode on, joining Mothman, Flatwoods Monster, Grafton Monster, and the Wendigo.
Snallygaster in Fallout 76 and Folklore
01:42:00
Speaker
So the last one we're going to talk about is the Snallygaster, a very lovely named Snallygaster. Yes. Yeah. Interesting story behind this, which I'll come on to a bit later.
01:42:13
Speaker
can't wait to hear more but as always I'll talk about how the creature the cryptid is represented in game and then Greg will talk about how it's well the true life story behind yep the Snallygaster So the snalagaster, like most of the others in the game, is a mutated creature that was used with the experimental FEV, also known as the Forced Evolutionary Virus, causing it to turn into a dragon-like demon with dozens of eyes.
01:42:48
Speaker
Due to its mutations, this hostile monster prefers to inhabit highly toxic or irradiated areas, as they are innately immune to radiation damage. Therefore, players must be well equipped before searching the habitats of these beasts. Looking at its appearance, the Stadagasta is a fearsome, quadruped over chilean-like creature. It has two arms with three claws each, of which one is an opposable form.
01:43:18
Speaker
and two small limbs on the back of its body. It has no proper face but has a mouth with a long, tentacle-like tongue covered in acid and has multiple eyes along its back.
01:43:34
Speaker
Not quite as long as Greg's tongue. Its appearance is similar to a mutated reptile or dinosaur and is known for its agility and ferocity in combat.
01:43:45
Speaker
The Stadagaster uses its tongue like a whip when it's up close. When it's at a distance it is spit balls of corrosive acid at its enemy. It has at least 40 eyes, 2 rows of teeth and 4 on its back.
01:44:02
Speaker
It has been described as being a dragon-like demon that haunts an area ah outside of neighbouring DC. They are easily recognisable from a distance due to their signature clicking noises and the thick, pungent odour they emit. When provoked, they will split a ball of toxic slime from the mouth which deals poison damage to the player.
01:44:24
Speaker
and it'll either then run up to the character and either scratch it or use its tongue, dealing more damage to the creature, to the to the enemy. Like many other creatures in the Fallout universe, the Sladegast in Fallout 76 has been affected by radiation and genetic mutations caused by the nuclear war that devastated the world. so And like all the other creatures there are multiple different variations and versions and mutations of Snalagasta. And namely, these are the bloody Snalagasta.
01:45:02
Speaker
This has a dark red hide, given that the parents are being covered in blood. Nice. A feated snalagasta, which is kind of like a baby type version.
01:45:20
Speaker
A glowing snalagasta, which glows green, following exposure to high levels of radiation. and the scorched snalagasta which is a charred fleshy snalagasta infected with the scorched plague if you listen to the previous episode we talked about this is kind of the whole story behind the game is these scorched beasts have this plague that infects different creatures and makes them go a bit crazy seeing that in the game yeah
01:45:52
Speaker
scorch bees like the main scorch bees queen is like the main kind of end boss that you have to launch a nuke on her nest and then she comes out and then you have to all team up and try and kill it you usually get like 20 odd people all together trying to kill let's say it the queen so the name sallygaster is Very cool name. Alan Greg, give me a look at this and say you're taking this away from me. Yeah, I was. I was waiting for you to... That's fine. No, I'll leave that to Greg. I won't steal. This is interesting. Yeah, it depends if it's the same person that I've got. I imagine it is.
01:46:43
Speaker
i I'll leave it. I like Greg going to the name. and It was different. I'll save it by a different story that I found.
01:46:52
Speaker
and So yeah, I'll leave the name of it for now. Okay. The Salygaster appearance, the concept art in the game, it was an approach to just a very mutated creature instead of a mythical horrifying beast. So it's not too, like,
01:47:09
Speaker
not is It's based on the original story, but the design of it in the game isn't. Some of the others are very similar to so how the description is from real life. This is more concept art rather than being based on a creature. So that being said, now pass on to Greg to give us the name and the history behind the Stanagaster. Yes, thank you Ash. So um beginning in the 1730s, the Blue Ridge Mountains area was settled by German immigrants.
01:47:48
Speaker
Early accounts describe the community being terrorised by a monster called the Schnellergeist, meaning quick spirit in German. But obviously quick spirit doesn't really make it as ah scary and Schnellergaster was formed from Schnellergeist. I think f'ing sounds a bit more...
01:48:13
Speaker
rough in german yes like schnell geister a bit harder yeah and you're saying it didn't quite schneller geist doesn't really it's not as americanized as schneller geister so it's sort of kind i think just over time just schneller geister became the the way of saying schneller geist and because it was Also you've got poltergeist, which is noisy spirit, so we've got the geist bit there. It's been suggested that the legend was resurrected in the 19th century to frighten freed slaves and reports of a strange flying beast known as the Snallagast that first appeared in Frederick County in early February 1909.
01:49:04
Speaker
story was carried prominently in Middletons Valley Register, a weekly newspaper for about a month ah when the story just mysteriously died. In the early issues of Well, yeah, conspiracy theory. um But as you'll see, the how high this got up in terms of um publicity, um it was it got to the highest levels, as I'll come on to. But in the early issues of this newspaper, the flying beast seemed to be everywhere at once. New Jersey, West Virginia.
01:49:45
Speaker
Ohio and headed this way. um It was reported to have created quite a stir in New Jersey where its footprints were first discovered in the snow. The first person to see it, James Hardin, described it as having enormous wings, a long sharp beak, claws like steel and one eye in the middle of its forehead. He said it made a shrill screeching noise and looked like a cross between a tiger and a vampire.
01:50:13
Speaker
Wow. That's a mad combo. Yeah. um So obviously there's a little bit of a difference between the eyes. You said it had 40 eyes, but this person seems to have only had one, like a cyclops. A vampire may have been a good description for it was reported to have killed a man, Bill Gifferson, by piercing his neck with a sharp bill and slowly sucking his blood. It was also seen in West Virginia.
01:50:40
Speaker
Country Roads, where it almost caught a woman near Scrabble, roosted in Alex Crow's barn and laid an egg near Sharpsburg, where it was reported some men had rigged up an incubator to try and hatch it. Wow. T. C. Habra of Castown, Ohio wrote a letter to the Valley Register in early 1909 telling of a strange beast that flew over his area making terrible screeching noises.
01:51:09
Speaker
Habra described it as having two huge wings, a large horny head, a tail 20 feet long. He said it looked as though it was headed his way. Sure enough the Snalagaster was first spotted in Maryland by a man who fired a brick burning kiln near Cumberland. Strange beasts were seen calling its wings over the outlet of the kiln and when the beast's sleep was disturbed by the man it admitted the blood curdling scream and angrily flew away.
01:51:39
Speaker
It was also shot at, sighted in Middletown at Loversleap and seen flying over the mountains between Gappland and Birketsville, where it was reported to have laid another egg big enough to hatch an elephant. Wow. Yeah. That's a big egg.
01:51:55
Speaker
It is a big egg. Slight into the Sinalagasta were creating such a commotion that at one point it was reported that President Theodore Roosevelt might postpone a trip to Europe so he could lead an expedition to capture it. Wow, that's the first time we've had where President has been involved.
01:52:17
Speaker
Absolutely, and apparently the Smithsonian Institute was also interested in the beast. ah From the description provided by a sighting in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, they determined the strange beast was in fact the Snelagusta.
01:52:31
Speaker
The last sighting in Frederick County in 1909 occurred near Emmitsburg in early March. ah Three men fought the terrible creature outside a railroad station for nearly an hour and a half before chasing it into the woods. 90 minutes, you're fighting some weird beast. There must be a big beast of eggs, could hatch an elephant.
01:52:54
Speaker
But what gets me is like each of these reports mentioned about screeching sounds and there's no internet or anything back then. It was all if you were in different towns and cities or whatever, I think it was quite hard to get information, I s suppose, that you could be sort of um influenced by maybe but I don't know. ah The beast was often seen back and forth flying over the area and described as large and large as a dirigible with arms resembling the tentacles of an octopus. The creature appeared to be able to change its size, shape and colour at will.
01:53:37
Speaker
That's pretty insane. Although the creature made no attempt to harm any of the residents of the valley, most people sought safety in their homes when it flew overhead.
01:53:49
Speaker
All descriptions seem to indicate, again, there was a Snellagusta, last reported in these parts in Maryland on March 5th 1909. As a life expectancy of a Snalagaster is only about 20 years. I don't know where that information has come from. The most logical explanation seemed to be that the latest sighting was an offspring of the 1909 creature, possibly hatching from one of the eggs it was laid near Birkinsville.
01:54:18
Speaker
ah Since the Snalagasta appears so rarely, the Middletown Valley Register requested that local where ah residents sighting the creature provide as accurate and detailed description as possible for scientific purposes. Two such residents, Charles F. Martin and Edward M. Lighter, were able to provide the necessary information while driving in a truck on the national pike just east of Braddock's Heights. They spotted a Snalagasta flying about 25 feet overhead. They thoroughly confirmed the descriptions published the previous week. So maybe they just read the previous paper. goes Yeah, that's what we saw as well. So there was a bit of a sad end to this, that the Snalagasta finally met its end in a way some
01:55:04
Speaker
My envy. The creature was flying near Frog Hallo in Washington County when it was attracted by the aroma of a two and a half thousand gallon vat of moonshine. Oh Jesus. As the beast flew overhead it was overcome by the fumes, as you would be, and dropped into the boiling mash. You got pissed. A short time later he got pissed.
01:55:25
Speaker
A short time later, revenue agents um arrived on scene. They had received information about the still, but were rather startled as sort of a dead monster in the back. Two agents exploded 500 pounds of dynamite under the still, destroying the remnants of Snalagasta and the guys workshop.
01:55:47
Speaker
A great deal has been written about the Snalagasta since 1909. It's appeared in countless articles, Fredericks News Post, other area newspapers. It has also appeared in the Baltimore Sun, National Geographic, and Time magazine. And in 1976, the Washington Post sponsored an unsuccessful search for the Snalagasta, as well as other strange Maryland creatures.
Snallygaster's Cultural Influence
01:56:14
Speaker
So, upon my researching, it doesn't just appear to be in Fallout 76. So shooting off slightly, Harry Potter ah clean had a dragon-like magical beast known to exist in the New World. It had been featured in many muggle newspapers as well and was as well known that it competed with the Loch Ness Monster.
01:56:43
Speaker
and it was also called Snalagasta. It wasn't originally in the original books, but it was in the Fantastic Beasts, there's mentions of it, and also in the fandom of Hopar. Also, Snalagasta was mentioned on GitHub, and it is a tool to scan for secret files on HTTP servers.
01:57:11
Speaker
But of interest to scholars is the nature of the various tales likely to be invented and not true. Those which were purported and patterned after dragon law, the absence of Native American influence um and its connection to Pennsylvania Dutch law, that's why They believe it's all made up because there's no Native American influence because the the region was once inhabited by Cherokee Indians, Northeast tribe, ah Native Americans. So who knows?
01:57:51
Speaker
but ah frightening creature nonetheless and one that seemed to appear for a bit, come back and ends gone.
01:58:02
Speaker
sir Yeah, I mean, it seems to get, like I say, a lot of attention, like, more so than a lot of the other ones. Maybe not the Mothman, but I think all of the others. You got the newspapers, the Smithsonian, yeah President Roosevelt. Yeah. That's a lot of attention being gone onto some video. The description's obviously a lot different from how it's in the game. Yeah. got Completely different. and And that doesn't attack humans, but it's quite interesting.
01:58:34
Speaker
but it did attack that guy and it looked like a bit of a tiger and a vampire. So who knows? But that was the only sort of report of anybody. But I also read elsewhere that some of the stories that were in the newspapers were from rival newspapers and they see they suggested that it could just be a way of getting clickbait. Yeah, basically. Old school clickbait.
01:59:00
Speaker
um by say Yeah, but the problem is, because it's all all back before cameras, all back before like proper forensic evidence. It's, it's a different world back then. And I think stories could probably be embellished a bit. Yeah. people in like But the description has got so many different sort of features, like I said, the tiger, vampire, octopus, like tentacles. One eye. One eye.
01:59:34
Speaker
bird obviously like with the wings and the beak and stuff and sharp teeth and a long tail as well which not sure what creature that would come off but some kind of dragon stuff i suppose yeah but yeah it is it's it almost like there's so many different reports that they were just trying to sort of make up what I look like. So, so although it's got quite a lot of publicity and a lot of write up to the president, you don't know if it's just it almost doesn't seem as credible as say the Mothman or some of the others that have had more specific like police presence and people other people involved. It's just very rare cases with this one.
02:00:27
Speaker
so as lastly because ah there is the Washington DC's biggest outdoor beer festival is called Snallyaster there is a beer festival yeah yeah that's why it comes with the German influence as well because you get like this sort of German beer festival don't you yeah that's the German like the other name came from the German
02:00:47
Speaker
which is interesting yeah so it's it's one of those stories that appears to it's got original sort of roots and origins back in the the german settlers but on and off really incidentally the harry potter one it was back in the 1600s or something so it's even it was alleged like the story is that they It was before the Snalagaster was actually a real thing, so. ah interesting Interesting. Cool. Cool. That was great. So yeah, we guess we'll be signing off our sponsors, the Fallout 76.
02:01:33
Speaker
yeah for and Enjoyed my favorite video game. So it's been fun digging a little bit of a dive into some of them creatures.
02:01:44
Speaker
Yeah, definitely no, it's been interesting and although I haven't played the game properly, I've thoroughly enjoyed learning a bit more about the game and the cryptids and how a lot of them are quite close to the real thing and the real story. So. And it does highlight because like the game is just set in West Virginia. So how, I mean, this is only like a few of the many different cryptids, creatures, folklore, that just comes from West Virginia and the surrounding area. It's just mad how just one region has so many weird shit going on. Yeah. Yeah. Very weird. Very weird. And yeah, maybe I won't go there then.
Closing Reflections and Future Topics
02:02:31
Speaker
Cool, so what's coming next? We don't know yet. We will keep everyone informed. Let us know if you like this series. This this is something we like to do something similar with. Any ideas for maybe other games or any other culture? sort of It utilizes the tales, but uses its own take on it and then we can have a dive into the real stories behind. Yeah. Behind them. Yeah. It's been fun. It has. So we shall catch you next time.
02:03:17
Speaker
Thanks for listening to Pursuit of the Paranormal, title music created by Steve Yarwood and Ambienfinity. If you like the show, please follow us on Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, X, and Instagram. And if you really like the show, please rate and review the show wherever you are listening. It really does help. See you next time, and until then, stay weird.