May 12, 2023 • 54 mins
For decades, residents of Dumbarton, Scotland have been convinced something's deeply wrong with the Overtoun Bridge. According to local lore, something about this bridge causes dogs to take their own lives. In tonight's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel investigate.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noel.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul, Mission control decand most importantly, you are you.
You are here and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. This one is for our
fellow dog lovers in the audience today. Yes, the dog
man's best friend and one of humanity's most successful eugenics
(00:49):
experiments ever, whether you're talking the chihuahua or the cane corso,
the domesticated K nine just connects with the human being
the way so few other living things do. I mean,
dogs are super intelligent and this leads a lot of people,
especially dog owners, to say, Hey, my pooch friend, my
(01:09):
doggo sibling, kid, family member is capable of everything a
human mind can experience, unfortunately, up to and including very
dark things like grief, the sense of loss, jealousy or
technically envy, and suicide. In tonight's episode, we're exploring a
bizarre localized phenomenon, one you may not have heard of
(01:30):
in Scotland. It seems dogs overwhelmingly choose to end their
lives at one particular bridge. Now, had you guys heard
about this before we embarked on this episode just a
little bit.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Yeah, And I have to say, Ben, I love the
idea of this being a night episode. This is a
nighttime episode, now, Yeah, I mean, like just kind of
the basics that there is this particular bridge that's very
popular dog walking location that potentially causes dogs to do
some pretty dark stuff like you said, or you know,
or does it, but potentially.
Speaker 5 (02:04):
I think for me, it's whether or not they choose
to end their lives or something. For one reason or another,
they're jumping off of a bridge, right, So like for me,
it's the phrasing of choosing to end their lives. I
think we're gonna explore that in this episode because it
certainly seems that way if we're if we're applying those
(02:25):
potential you know, the ability to make that choice right
or or is it something that they're just that's causing
them to jump off that bridge for one reason.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
It's sudden overwhelming compulsion.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Well, I mean, I have to say I would never
really fancied myself a dog person until you know. I've
been with my partner now for a couple of years,
and she had a wonderful dog named Jude, who she'd
had since a puppy for like thirteen years, and I
grew to really love that dog and really experience that love,
like realizing how similar it is to the love of
a human. So I think with that in mind, it's
(03:00):
easy for us to think that that goes both ways,
you know, and that it feels like it goes both ways.
And I think to a degree, there is awareness from
the dog's perspective of their masters and certain behavior that's
very easy to ascribe meaning to, you know, and much
of it likely does, but some of it might also
just be like I want to get fed, and this
is how I go about doing that.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
And I didn't include a lot of the compelling studies.
If somebody wants to reach out on email conspiracydyheartradio dot com,
I'm glad to send along studies that do speak to
the idea or the exploration of the idea that dogs
experience emotions similar to those of humans. For now, here
(03:43):
are the facts there's a place called Dumbarton, Scotland. You
probably haven't heard of it unless you're familiar with this story,
or you live in the United Kingdom, or if you
live in Glasgow, you've definitely heard of it. Because Dumbarton's
about thirteen miles is the core of It flies northwest
of Glasgow, and like a lot of places near a
(04:04):
city the size of Glasgow, this has become kind of
an exurb or suburb, if you will. It's a commuter town,
so a lot of people will have a job in
Glasgow and they'll live somewhere that's a little more affordable, right,
even if it's a bit more of a commute. It's
on the banks of the River Clyde. And that the
(04:26):
River Clyde's a weird name. Etymology fans, you'll enjoy that later.
It's home to a lot of history. Once upon a
time it was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Strathclyde.
Get it astride the Clyde I mean I mean basically
means valley of the Clyde, and etymologically, Clyde can be
traced back to a word that means a river. So
(04:48):
the River Clyde is like the river River as far
as we can tell. But okay, so it's old, old
old humans have been hanging out there and peoplings at
least back in the days of the Iron Age. And
that's kind of normal in Europe, in Western Europe, because
you know, in Europe two hundred miles long way in
(05:09):
the US two undred years a long time. You go there,
you'll have a wonderful time. There's a lot of beautiful scenery,
there's a wonderful castle, there's a lot of old buildings.
But these days the town is not famous for its
views of various locks. It's famous for one unfortunate structure,
(05:29):
the overtuned bridge or Overton bridge. We'll just call it.
That spelled o v e r t o un.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
It's not to be confused with the Overton window. That's
something very different. This is a bridge, and it's also
spelled differently.
Speaker 5 (05:41):
It's very weird to take a look at this bridge
for the first time if you've only read about what
this bridge is and what it's purported to do. It
is in the Gothic style, and when you look at it,
it's pretty striking. It For me, it's very castle like,
which you know, harkens back to some of the Gothic
building of the time that you were just speaking about there, Ben,
(06:03):
And it had a really cool designer, right.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Yeah, it's designed by this landscape architect named H. E. Milner,
and Milner created this well, it takes a while to
assemble these things. Obviously it was designed by him, but
it was completed in eighteen ninety five as essentially an
incredibly fancy driveway. And to your point, Matt, about the
(06:30):
description of things versus how they actually look pictures of them,
it does remind me of the first time I saw
the Tower of London and I thought impressive, old, I
get it's a big deal. Is it a tower? And
I was like, it must just take fewer stories back
then to be a tower, you know what I mean.
(06:50):
They were like over three stories. Woo, give this guy
a blue ribbon.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
But it's a narrow thing that protrudes skyward, I guess.
But you're right, the barrier to entry for towership was
a little bit lower back then. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, you're still not going to like this bridge if
you're afraid of heights.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Though, Oh no, oh no, yeah, oh no.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Because it goes up. It's not super duper long. It's
a walkable bridge. But if you look over the edge,
or if you see it from above and you look down,
you'll see that it's three arches basically, and the main
arch in the middle goes over a huge steep drop.
(07:29):
It's fifty feet straight down to something called the Overton Burn,
another confusing name. The Overton Burn is a small river.
Burn is a weird thing to call it river. But
you know, we don't make the rules for Scotland, nor
should we, and you might get that, you know, sort
of vertigenous vertigo feeling when you look over and see
(07:53):
the drop. But if you were to exit the bridge
yourself over the edge, you would you would have to
make an attempt. It's not like a swingy rope bridge.
It's very stable and as far as anyone can tell,
multiple folks have examined over the years, it's made of
normal stone. There are no specific anomalies in its construction
(08:16):
or chemistry. We can spend a little time on the
acoustics later as well. But it's a bridge. It's a
nice bridge. It's a regular bridge. People walk their dogs there,
tourists go there all the time. It looks really.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Nice, it does it does have that you know, it's
sort of covered in some lichen type of growth over growth,
so I guess so it does have kind of an
old timey look to it because you know, it is
around surrounding it, it is quite beautiful, very lush green spaces,
and this, you know, all tracks for being a pleasant
(08:49):
dog walking situation. You know, a lot of times the
dogs aren't aren't even leashed, and they're you know, sometimes
able to kind of frolic around in some of the
adjacent areas and maybe hopefully if they're doing their business
on the bridge, their owners are kind enough to pick
it up. But you know, they could also go down
into the woods and so they're wild oats. That's not
(09:10):
the expression, but you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Mm hmmm mm hmm.
Speaker 5 (09:13):
Yeah, and walking a dog off leash, now, knowing what
we know, is a really bad idea. So if you
ever plan on going out there, please leash your dog.
We're going to get in that too, that a little
later about leash law in that particular area, but yeah,
just be careful.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Uh yeah, in general, if you're in an area with
a lot of humans honestly a lot of other animals,
or you're in an area that that's unfamiliar territory to
you and your you and your pooch, you should have
your dog on a leash. As a matter of fact.
If unless you have a working dog or a farm
(09:52):
a farm dog of some sort, then't have the dog
on a leash. Here's here's the issue. According to the legend,
which is kind of recent. Since the nineteen fifties, locals
have been referring to this not by the name the
Overton Bridge, but by a couple of more distressing street names,
the Bridge of Death or the Dog's Suicide Bridge, because again,
according to the story, canines in particular have difficulty with
(10:16):
this crossing. For the better part of a century, they've
been purposely jumping from the bridge, often to their deaths,
with no rational explanation. So what is going on here?
Is a bridge driving man's best friend to quote unquote suicide.
We'll dive into it after word from our sponsor. Here's
(10:42):
where it gets crazy, all right, First we have to
look at the sources. We know that local legends sometimes
don't have the same rigorous scholarship you might expect from
from other stories. Right, because people are communicating this orally
and becomes part of folklore. In this case, we see
(11:02):
that a lot of local historians and researchers estimate hundreds
of dogs i've jumped from the bridge. And if you
read the more extreme reports like tabloid reports and thinking
of Daily Mail, The Sun and so on, they'll say
as many as six hundred or more dogs have dropped
off the bridge. At least fifty are said to have died.
(11:26):
But the deal is there are multiple confirmed incidents of
jumps and deaths like it has happened multiple times. It
has been reported in multiple outlets. There's one full length
book about it, called The Barren of Rainbow Bridge by
a local author named Paul Owen. So far, that's the
(11:49):
only book that is fully centered on this, but you'll
see it pop up in a lot of anthologies about
you know, unexplained mysteries, time life, books of the Unknown,
and so on. So we don't know how many dogs
have jumped, but we do know they have.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Had you guys heard of this idea of Rainbow Bridge
being associated with dogs passing into the afterlife? Yes, I
had not until very very recently. I'm obviously this isn't
the Rainbow Bridge also something of Norse mythology, or it
certainly at least is in the The Thorn movies.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
M Yeah, the idea of a rainbow bridge in I
guess in legends. It can change across culture, but you
can you can see that it's been taken up in
a lot of a lot of pet literature, like when
a it's it's just this side of heaven a place
(12:43):
called the rainbow bridge. When a very beloved pet dies,
the pet goes to that rainbow bridge.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
And it was.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Inspired from a Norse poem to help Danish people more
in the loss of animals.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
Got it.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
That's that's my understanding.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
No, that sounds right. I mean not to get too
morose about it. But the dog I was referring to
earlier we recently had to have put down due to
some some serious cancer that it's bread and gotten just
completely to the point of, you know, causing quality of
life to go seriously downhill. And a really great organization
called Lap of Love that I think is national. They'll
(13:21):
come to your home and you know, help transition your
animal and as peaceful and you know, I guess comfortable
away as possible. And the lovely doctor who did the
procedure for us for Jude wrote us the loveliest letter,
a handwritten letter, and referred to you know, Jude finding
her way across the Rainbow bridge. And I had never
(13:43):
heard that before.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
That's why I highly recommend Lap of Love whenever anybody
asked me about putting having to help a pet move on,
it's just much less scary for them when they're in
a familiar place, probably taken to a veterinary now.
Speaker 4 (14:01):
And actually, I've been talking with you as part of
what made me really realize how important that was, because
just the stress and trauma, especially with the dog who
has maybe lost the use of her legs or whatever
it might be, having painful you know things that you know,
moving just becomes really really difficult and painful. And this
was we were able to kind of have her in
our favorite spot, like on a sunny day, with like
(14:21):
light coming through, with actual rainbows shining through some of
these little rainbow things we have in our house, and
it was really lovely. For lovely being a tricky term,
but for what it was, we really were able to
make it a peaceful, you know, family kind of you know,
nice situation. So second, that really wonderful organization, you know.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
The quality of life thing has Unfortunately that that dilemma
has come up for a lot of dog owners who
have encountered this phenomenon at Overton Bridge, because we know
that sometimes dogs do survive this plunge, but many of
them suffer terrible, terrible injuries such that their quality of
life is just not worth it. So to put the
(15:07):
animal out of pain, they have to be euthanized. Others
struggled to survive and perish soon after their injuries. In
at least one instance, a dog apparently jumped from the bridge,
survived and ran all the way back up the slope
and then jumped off again. So that dog, that dog
(15:28):
hads vinegar to them. Interestingly enough, there's not another spot
like this in Dumbarton. There's not another spot like this
in Scotland as far as we could tell. There's not
another place like this in Europe, at least with this
specific threat to dogs. It seems to be unique. And
we'll get to the theories, but before we do, there's a
(15:51):
very important timeline question. I believe a lot of our
astute fellow conspiracy realist probably clocked it's this all right.
The bridge is finished in late eighteen hundreds eighteen ninety five.
We said, the legends say that the dog suicides began
in the nineteen fifties. However, reports of these dog jump
incidents and let's call him that. Let's call him dog
(16:13):
jump incidents to stay away from the S word. Really,
they didn't really hit the news until the early two thousands,
like two thousand and three or four. So I mean,
and we've got an example of what happened there with
poor Hendrix.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
Yeah, it's at least a story coming to us from
the Daily Mail from October two thousand and six about
a woman named Donna Cooper and her collie named Ben.
By the way, they jumped off of this bridge.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
And that article cites an earlier example in two thousand
and four when a guy named Kenneth Meekley and his family,
along with their pooch golden retriever named Hendricks, were walking
on the bridge. And this story has a lot of
the same commonalities. We'll see multiple instances of this. The
dog is fine and suddenly bolts on the bridge, jumps
(17:07):
off the edge. Apparently they favor a a couple of
certain spots in the bridge. Hendricks survive, but spent the
rest of his life, absolutely fearing and hating that bridge
as you do it.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Yeah, we're talking fifty ft drop, yeah, fifty feet straight yeah,
and you know to what to like a rock, wooded rocks.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Yeah, Like the Burn is a small river, so there's
not enough there's not enough water there to cushing an impact.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
And just to give a little more of the number
of dogs here, as we're estimating some of these according
to that article from two thousand and six, they said,
quote during one six month period of last year, so
two thousand and five, five dogs jumped to their deaths.
If that's you know, half a year, five dogs, there's
(18:06):
a good chance that there are way more than maybe
or even reported. Uh, but that's and that's those are
the ones who died, right, who jumped to their deaths.
So there may have been many more that jumped and
hurt themselves.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
And it continues. I mean, if we fast forward to
twenty fourteen, then we see Alice trevorro or trevorro who
was walking with her dog, a cute little Springer Spaniel
named Cassie. She reported a similar experience. And we've got
a full quote here that comes from one of the
anthology books. I mentioned Unsolved Enigmas, which was written by
(18:41):
Sam Pilger and Leo moynihan. Now I'm not sure if
he's related to Bobby moynihan from Saturday at Life. I
don't know why I said that, Like that's the first
detail people are gonna.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Ask me about. Well, too many other moynihans. You know
what is Bobby? That's not a super common Nay, there
is job rule. We need him away in. We need
him to give us his wisdom to bestow it upon us.
So in twenty fourteen, Alice Trevoro is walking her Springer
Spaniel Cassie, and had her own report of a strange
(19:14):
incident on Overton Bridge. She had this to say. I
had parked up, and as she is so obedient, I
didn't put her lead on me and my son walked
toward Cassie, who was staring at something above the bridge.
She definitely saw something that made her jump. There is
something sinister going on. It was so out of character
(19:35):
for her. And this is from that book that you mentioned,
been Unsalted Enigmas. I think the telling part here coming
from a dog owner who maybe has no skin in
the game per se, to like, you know, make a
case for something sinister, a play is just the fact
that this was out of character for the dog. You know,
like owners know their dog's behavior and know what spooks them,
(19:57):
and you know, probably what I ever would have done
something like this to elicit such a reaction, you'd think
would be noticeable.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Right, Yeah, Okay, So that's the problem with the timeline too.
The larger the macro issue where dogs who have an
immensely long history in Scotland immediately jumping off this bridge
as early as you know, eighteen ninety six and people,
to your point, Matt, just weren't reporting it. Did something
(20:26):
change between eighteen ninety five and the early nineteen fifties
that prompted dogs to start jumping to seek this untimely end.
That's an unfair way to put it. We'll get to
the anthropomorphization later, but it doesn't stop here. The timeline
issue leads us straight to the world of theory, and sadly,
(20:47):
there is one incident in particular that must be cited.
It does not concern dogs. This is an official disclaimer, folks.
This is you're about to hear a pretty graphic description
of human violence and unspeakable tragedy. So this may not
(21:07):
be appropriate for all listeners. Go ahead and just fast
forward about four or five minutes. Give you a time
to push the fast forward all right. For everyone who's
still with us, you need to know the story of
a man named Kevin Moy. Kevin Moy was thirty two.
He suffered from both paranoid schizophrenia, and he'd later be
(21:30):
diagnosed with it, but he was known to suffer from
depression since he had contracted myalgic encephalopathy eight years before.
In nineteen ninety four, he began to be convinced that
he was the devil and that his newborn son, was
two weeks old at the time, was the Antichrist due
(21:52):
to a birthmark on the child's head. On the first
outing he had with his son, he threw the child
over the bridge.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Wow, it is hard to hear.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
In court, according to the testimony, it came out that
he believed that he and his infant were to blame
for the Gulf War, and that he and his son
would destroy the world by infecting mankind with a virus
if he did not immediately end both their lives. Of note,
(22:30):
he also attempted to take his own life unsuccessfully before
being apprehended by authorities, and he had told police he
was doing this to save the world. At the trial,
which took place on January thirtieth, nineteen ninety five, he
was found not guilty due to insanity and remanded to
(22:50):
the care of the state. This was based was a
jury trial. It was based on the statements of four
different psychiatrists. Or asking why did he choose this bridge?
Moy believed that the location had a dark, ancient history,
dating back to the age of the Druids, and this
(23:14):
tragic incident leads us to the first theory, which is
actually surprisingly popular among the locals. It's the concept of
the thin place. Have you guys ever heard of thin places?
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (23:26):
No, it's where spooky. Well, imagine the rainbow bridge that
we were talking about between Midguard and Asgard, right between
the spiritual plane or the godly plane and our earthly
realm Imagine that rainbow bridge, except it's really short, and
that would be a thin place. In my opinion, at least,
you only got to take a few steps and then
(23:48):
you've crossed the entire rainbow bridge.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Yeah, a thin place. You can see this in Stephen
King novels. You can see this in so many works
of fiction, the idea that there is a certain place
they can function as a nexus between the unseen world
and the world of the day. This is why so
many folkloric depictions of encounters with other worldly forces take
(24:12):
place at like a crossroads at midnight, right where at
a certain glade when the stars and the moon or right.
The concept of the thin place going across cultures is
still It's something that's very strong in Celtic myth as well.
There was one old Celtic saying that was weirdly enough
out its way into New York Times that says Heaven
(24:35):
and Earth are only three feet apart, but in thin
places that distance is even shorter. So in this theory, one,
thin places are real, and a lot of people still
believe some version of that. We'd love to hear your
personal experience with this. And two, dogs, by nature of
their superpowers of sensation, are somehow more sensitive to these
(24:57):
than the average person. So this would lead us to three.
The idea that in an attempt to cross over that
very short rainbow bridge like you're talking about, Matt, to
the other side of the thin place, dogs are leaping
toward what they perceives the other side. No evidence exists
to prove anything anomalous about this location as far as
(25:18):
scientists are concerned, but it's still it's still a belief
that people are having. And doubtlessly, if hundreds of dogs
haven't died as a result of this over the years,
then doubtlessly, at least a few times somebody told their kids,
you know, Buster Buster's body may be here, but he
(25:40):
crossed the rainbow bridge, you know, because you want to
do what you can to help your kids navigate that
kind of grief. This is a doubter episode. Now, obviously,
not everybody agrees with this concept of a thin place
existing in the first place. I guess they would say
the places are generally of the same spiritual thickness. Uh,
(26:04):
But that's not the only explanation. One guy who disagrees
with the thin place concept is that author we mentioned earlier,
Paul Owen. In his work Paul and later interviews as well,
Paul doesn't agree that a thin place is responsible. Now,
he believes that there are thin places, you know, old
(26:25):
standing stones and things of that sort, but he doesn't
think the bridge is one of them. Instead, he believes
the bridge is haunted, and he believes that this apparition
is the prime mover of this tragic phenomenon.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
That's right, the spirit of Lady Overton, who is said
to have you know, walked around this bridge after her
husband passed in nineteen oh eight, referred to colloquially as
the White Lady of Overton. There's an interview in the
Huffington Post where Ohen acknowledge the following the thing that
(27:01):
he observed. I was up there one summer's day and
I felt a very strong jab, like a phantom finger,
twice in my back. It was the sensation you get
when you fear someone might push you over the edge
of a train platform. It's a very strange place. One
of the things peculiar to the location is that it
can seem very peaceful and tranquil, but it can turn
(27:25):
at a moment's notice. So weird vibe and felt like
someone poked him in the back. Of course, that could
also be one hundred other things, right.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
It could be a perceived sensation, It could be a
twinge of a back muscle. But in Owen's defense, I
think anybody with long term back problems will know that
you recognize, you know, You know your own body, so
if you have back spasms or twinges or back pain,
you know what it feels like, and you wouldn't mistake
(27:57):
it for a stranger giving you the poke hope Facebook style,
the hokey poke missed it too late.
Speaker 5 (28:04):
Move on, all right, we talked about a little bit
at the beginning. Let's go back to just how close
this bridge is to the Overton House, the large ornate
again like Gothic style mansion, let's call it. That's sitting
right there. And it's literally if we're talking about how
(28:25):
short the Ramow Bridge is, that it's a crazy short
walk from the front door of that house or I
guess the main entrance of that house to where this
bridge is.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
It's a really fancy driveway.
Speaker 5 (28:36):
You're right, No, you described it perfectly, Ben. It's just
it's strange to me when I'm imagining the white lady
of Overton, you know, mourning the death of her husband.
This would be a place where she would walk and contemplate,
you know, death and everything, and where you would just
feel all of those things. And if you know, we've
(28:57):
talked about it before. We just talked about it in
Fortnite and Robo about residual energy. If that exists, right,
if someone's intense energy experience in one physical place could
possibly remain there in some way, and if it can,
then this would definitely be a physical location.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Where that kind of energy would linger.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Let's say, yeah, okay, So I may not be the
best person to unpack this with everyone, because I do
despite all the science I've read about this, I do
inherently have a predisposition that causes me to believe there
(29:44):
can be vibes left. I do believe that, and maybe
science will ultimately disprove that, or maybe it will prove it,
But right now the question remains out because science doesn't
know how to answer it. So here, with all all
that caveat, just to be fair to everybody about where
I'm calling from, shout out Raymond Carver. There's something interesting
(30:07):
they don't see brought up a lot in these conversations.
So if there is a ghostly entity, and this ghostly
entity is somehow causing, through its existence or through its intention,
these deaths or these jumps, then why haven't any of
the other countless thousands of people who doubtlessly died in
(30:32):
that area over centuries had the same effect Why is
it just the one? I argue it's because that one
makes for a good story, does that? I mean, it's
just a question of numbers at that point too. And
then also the timeline. If she's mourning this death in
nineteen oh eight, what gives why didn't it go into
(30:56):
the Why was it only in the nineteen fifties? Is
that when she passed away herself? You know, I don't
know's it's.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Being widely reported on.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Is that when it's being wildly.
Speaker 5 (31:10):
Maybe people who lived in the area did have dogs
or humans or whatever that jumped off the bridge before that,
It's just nobody heard about it. It was a sad
thing that happened in town, you know.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
And then also another thing about the ghost angle is
if you are listening when this pot comes cast comes
out in twenty twenty three, if you're alive in the
modern day, you have walked over countless graves. A lot
of people died before you got here, you know what
I mean? The world is full of ghosts and that
(31:45):
in that sense, I don't know, it's just maybe it's
a little bit posthumously unfair dependent on one ghostly entity.
But there's another issue too with the reporting in this sense,
in a lot of reporting out of England. I'll say,
you can see these comments that I don't. I'll defer
(32:09):
to you guys, I don't think they're meant to be
dismissive or derogatory, because they're always very careful to pull
quotes from people living in Scotland when they say stuff
like this. But you will almost inevitably see some sideline
thing that says there are a lot of superstitions, paranormal
(32:31):
belief the people, these people in Scotland, they've a step
closer to the supernatural than the rest of us.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
And I don't know, it feels like it's a way
of kind of othering a culture, if that makes sense.
Speaker 5 (32:48):
Yeah, but look at pictures of the Overton House. If
you grow up playing around that place and you look
up at some of those second story windows, third story windows,
they've got the drapes like half closed. They're open, right,
but they're just creeping in on these old, old, old
window panes. It doesn't matter if there's somebody in there
(33:08):
just hanging out reading. It's gonna give you creeped out
vibes just from the Gothic architecture and the way those
curtains look telling.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
You, yeah, you've probably been mistaken for a ghost at
some point in your life. Folks, depending on where you
hang out, right, we're all someone else's ghosts at some point.
But yeah, that's a really good point too, Matt. And
we've got a quote that came from The Independent from
Alistair Dutton, who is a local taxi driver at the
time of this interview, and Alistair says, people in Dunbarton
(33:40):
are very superstitious. We grew up playing in the Overton
grounds and we believe in ghosts here because we've all
seen or felt spirits up here. And you see this
in other cultures too, you know, you go, like we're
talking about this in la Urna. You know, if you
go into someone else's house culturally speaking, if you're in
their neck of the woods and they tell you, hey,
(34:01):
that lake is haunted. It doesn't matter if you believe
in ghosts or not. Just don't be that guy in
the horror movie. Just don't go to the lake. They're
trying to help you, or they're running some kind of
weird criminal operation and that's how they keep people out
of the lake. We've all seen Scooby Doo I don't
know how.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
The Scooby Doo gang is never wise to the fact
that they're being had every time. And then of course
then you get the the what is it the thirteen
Ghosts of Scooby Doo where ghosts are now real? Yeah,
also I believe in in a pup named Scooby Doo.
There's some real spooks as well, but in the original series,
always a creepy old man or some grifter trying to
(34:42):
pull a scam.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Because they were all just high. That's how they guess,
particularly follow Velma. Velma's on the straight narrow, and she's functional.
She's functional, but.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
She parties fair enough, fair enough.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
So so now that we've cast dispersion upon the moral
standing Scooby dow uh, we we should probably answer one
of the questions that we imagine naturally came to you,
our fellow listeners here, What about the people who actually
live in the Overton House? You know, Like, to your point, Matt,
is it some like really creepy guy who who just
(35:16):
vaguely says means stuff about dogs? Is he like, is
there a gargamele in there with dogs as the Smurfs? Not?
Not really, it's a guy from Texas.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yeah, isn't he part of the church or something?
Speaker 3 (35:31):
He runs? Uh? He runs a charity to help women
in unfortunate situations from the Overton House. Well, that's where
he lives. He and his family lived there. But his
job at he said time at the interviews, was running
this charity.
Speaker 5 (35:49):
Wow, charity must be going really well.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
Uh wow?
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Where did he make his money?
Speaker 5 (35:56):
M Okay, anyway, that's just a really expensive looking house, y'all.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
That's all it is.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
It's a definitely it's definitely something that the only way
most podcasters could buy it is if they teamed up
and made like an Instagram HiPE house and had fifteen roommates.
Speaker 5 (36:14):
No, if they verboed it for a day and a half.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
That's how. That's how you get it.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
What is verbo?
Speaker 4 (36:21):
What is VERBOI?
Speaker 5 (36:23):
Oh, I'm renting the house for whatever? What what's the
really popular one? I'm an Airbnb like right, that's how
you get it?
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Okay, okay for a day.
Speaker 4 (36:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (36:35):
But his response, you know, is, hey, Scotland's weird man golf.
Speaker 4 (36:44):
I mean, come on, what kind of people do that?
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Yeah, Bob Hill says exactly that. He says, there's a
lot of the supernatural here, it's very common in people's lives.
And then he says Overton, the Overton area in particular
is quote more spiritual than other parts. That's Texan Pastor
Bob Hill. But he doesn't necessarily buy it as the explanation.
(37:06):
He has one that requires neither superstition nor belief in
the divine or the infernal or alternate dimensions. He's like
Dennis Reynolds and it's always sunny in Philadelphia. He's basically saying,
what about the smell? You haven't thought about the smell?
Which leads to our next possibility.
Speaker 4 (37:25):
Gotta say, I like the idea that Texas Pastor Bob
Hill is Bobby Hill from King of the Hill, all
grown up and then having found God. And also, you know,
it kind of jives with his whole showmanship in the
character God'm sorry, guys, I was getting excited about the
new King of the Hill series coming out. No, you
haven't thought about the smell, have you you?
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Which leads to our people, Yeah, which leads to our
next possibility. We're gonna pause here for word from our sponsors,
and then we'll go to the last big theory, which
has we'll find may not still explain what's going on
at overton Bridge. Okay, I'm getting the realm of science,
(38:08):
the scientific take. To answer this, we have to go
back to the question we posed at the beginning, which
is this, do dogs, like some human beings, commit suicide?
Would they purposely take their own lives? Do animals at
all do this thing that the human animal does? To
answer that, we're going to lean on a great house
(38:29):
stuff works article by our old pal Jessica Toothman. Hey Jessica,
and Hey Matt, do you remember Jessica.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
I do.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Yeah, No, it might have been a little before your time, nol.
She might have moved on.
Speaker 5 (38:44):
Ye.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
I don't think we cross paths, but this article is
definitely on point.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Yeah, and shout out to Jessica's former co worker now
husband Andrew because they actually they are a workplace romance
gone right, and congratulations to you to so. In Jessica's
article do animals commit suicide? She points out that experts
(39:08):
largely don't believe that most animals are capable of what
of suicide in the human sense. We know that animals
can and do die on purpose, right, but it may
not have the same emotional motivating factors, Like, think about
(39:30):
the octopus. Unless it gets a very specific kind of
exciting brain surgery that's still on the fringe of science
and I think is being actively repressed, then reproducing will
trigger a hormonal kill switch in the octopus. Reproduction is
a death sentence. Or think of all the self sacrificial
(39:51):
tactics that different insects will take, right like when bees
will swarm around a wasp to increase the body temperature
of the wasp and they're sacrificed themselves to cook it.
Or how you know, speaking of bees, how they've got
one sting and then they're out. I can't imagine that's
that's a that's a real kick in the pants biologic.
Speaker 4 (40:14):
To die on such an aggressive note, you know, and
such a state of of duress just doesn't seem like
a good way to go.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
Imagine if you could punch people once.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
Once and then you're dead. Everybody got to make that
punch count.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Everybody's like one punch man. Well, sad thing is gets
way more intense. Oh.
Speaker 4 (40:34):
The sad thing though, is that the bee. It's it's
not like they have to do it on purpose either, right,
Like if someone like touches a bee, they could get
stung or like grabs a bee or something, or maybe
they do do it on purpose. But my point is,
do they know it's going to kill them? Probably not.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
Well, it's for the good of it's for the good
or the hive.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
Right, Well, that goes back to the whole question of animals.
Do they know? What do they know? When? Do they
know it? You know, do the dogs know if they
throw themselves off this bridge is going to do them harm?
Probably not, certainly not in the way that we're describing
it or talking about ideas of suicide. Right.
Speaker 5 (41:10):
I want to posit that I do not believe that
any of these dogs that have jumped off of this
bridge believe or think in the moment that whatever action
they're taking is going to cause them any harm whatsoever.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Same, And I.
Speaker 5 (41:27):
Only know this because of the motivation factors that I've
identified in my two dogs. And and it's there's like
three or four things, right. It's they were outside and
they smell something, and they will go crazy trying to
identify where that scent is coming from. They see something
(41:47):
in the woods and they're trying to track it with
their eyes and as they move and they'll run along
the fence to watch it and move with it. If
they hear something like if they're in the house and
they hear, like one of my dogs, if she hears thunder,
even far in the distance that I can't detect, she
gets nervous. Or if they hear the raccoons that are
(42:09):
on my porch, apparently they go nuts. And what was
the other one?
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Oh? Food?
Speaker 4 (42:15):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Yeah, food, And then maybe some fear motivation like well,
thunder would cover the fear motivation as well as the
auditory motivation. Yeah, I agree with you. And also, of course,
just to add this in here, yes, some higher order
animals that's not the most fair term, but some higher
order animals do appear to die of grief or heartbreak.
(42:36):
That also happens, but none of those things are the
same as when the human primate contemplates or commits the
act of taking its own life. And in all the
documented cases of canine death or injury on this unfortunate bridge,
not a single doggo exhibited signs of distress or malaise
(42:58):
in the days or hours leading up to their incident.
If one to explain this lean on zoology, If you're
a zoologists, you want to look at a couple things
to understand these behaviors, similar to what mattch just wonderfully
broke down the nature of the animal, the organism in question,
as well as the nature of the environment in which
(43:18):
the animal exhibits that behavior. And this is we're going
to cut some stuff out of here real quick. So
one of the questions we would have to have is
what about the sounds. What if there is a sound
that is outside of human hearing range, but as a
siren call to dogs that's very easy to measure. It
does not appear to be the case. People have also said,
(43:41):
well there's a nearby nuclear plant, perhaps that could explain it.
That doesn't seem to be the case. In twenty ten,
this animal behaviorist named doctor David Sands teamed up with
some folks and gave the first real scientific investigation of
this phenomenon. His can cclain illusion really informs our conclusion
(44:03):
on the show. He says, look, these canines are not
purposely taking their own lives. They're chasing something and as
not a rainbow bridge. Look at the dogs who've jumped
from the limited demographic data we have, a lot of
them are long nosed hunting breeds, the kinds that are
drawn to scents, and what kind of animals tend to
live in these small rivers in the forest. Mammals of
(44:26):
some sort. And then he also said, think about how
tall a dog is, think about their chase instinct, especially
if they're hunting or working dog. They don't have the
visual perspective to see that the ground has dropped. Right,
the last time they remember the ground, it was entering
the bridge and there's this slope. So to them, from
(44:49):
their perspective, the bridge is over level ground. They're just
on a weird part of the ground that happens to
have these two walls on either side, so they don't
clock that there's a fifty foot drop and these smells
are coming up from the river, you know, thinking of
things like minks that one gets brought up a lot
(45:10):
minks or pine martins right, or I don't know, field mice.
You know, insert any large prey mammal here. What would
you do. You're walking by and you smell it, and
as far as you know, it's just over the side
of the wall.
Speaker 5 (45:25):
I think this is extremely valid. Again, if you look
at pictures of this bridge and consider how short it
is in length. And then also look at what the
bridge looks like as you're entering onto it. If you
are at a dog's height, doesn't matter how tall your
dog is, like a little Scottish Terrier to a Dalmatian
(45:47):
at that height walking along, it doesn't look like there's
a drop off at all. So you know, if you
can just imagine the dog would have no sense. As
you said, Ben, that there's a fifty foot drop after that.
No matter which side you enter that bridge from, it
doesn't look like there's a huge drop there, and that's
because of how relatively far out onto the land that
(46:11):
bridge stretches.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Yeah, and again it's a short bridge. As you pointed out,
there were some hunters, I believe, who originally said, well,
I've been here for quite some time, there's no mink
in the area, but that was disputed by a guy
named David Sexton, who joined doctor Sands in this investigation.
And Sexton said, Hey, one end of this bridge in
particular has nest of minks and squirrels and mice, and
(46:38):
they all produce smells. So this seems to be, at
least for my money, this seems to be the most
likely theory because it requires us to prove the smallest
amount of things. The first two theories rely on cultural
interpretation and frankly a couple things modern science can't measure yet,
(46:59):
let alone prove. But the third still needs some additional testing,
you know, to be water tight or to pass the
stiff test.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Oh, very nice, man.
Speaker 5 (47:10):
Water is really important as well, because who is the
I watched a short documentary on this from a long
a little while ago.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
A guy named David Sands.
Speaker 3 (47:21):
Yeah, that's doctor David Sands did the investigation.
Speaker 5 (47:23):
Okay, so he's the one who even notes when he's
standing on top of that bridge that you can constantly
hear running water. But if you look down, the water
isn't very deep at all. It's not a dry creek
bed by any means, but there's not a ton of
water flowing. But it sounds like there's a lot of
water moving as well. So I'm also imagining that if
(47:44):
the dog even understands in some way that there's a
drop there, the sound may trick them into believing that
there's deep enough water for them to jump into water
the way they maybe.
Speaker 4 (47:57):
Have in the past splash around. Good old time.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
Totally makes sense. I mean, this is the thing. In
the meantime, people are learning to be more careful with
their canines around this area, more careful with their pets.
Overton Bridge is not a bad place. It doesn't have
a bad vibe. It's a beautiful piece of local history. Tourist,
pedestrians and canines go there all the time. It's just
(48:24):
you know, keep your dog on a leash, especially around
that part, around any drop like this, because if the
scientific causes are the explanation, and again they seem the
most likely, then it would mean that logically this place
is probably not unique just because of the geography. Well,
(48:45):
and you know, I'm talking about smells.
Speaker 4 (48:48):
I mean things around bodies of water or as you know,
like after it rains, like smells kind of carry further.
So if you're in a very like moist climax, you know,
like Scotland, you're surrounded by running water and all of
this greenery, those smells for certain types of dogs, you know,
(49:08):
are gonna be very tempting.
Speaker 5 (49:11):
Guys, I think I may have found it, and you're right, nol.
The American mink is an invasive species in.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
Scotland, Okay.
Speaker 5 (49:21):
It arrived in or late nineteen twenties so early nineteen thirties. Hmmm,
I like this go on right, there were deliberate releases
of mink and breeding that were occurring in nineteen fifty six. Okay,
the mink population. This is according to Invasive Species dot
(49:44):
Scott so Scottish invasive species. What guys, it's right around.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
The British number one and the mink number two right
as invasive species.
Speaker 5 (49:55):
I'm just pointing this out to say maybe this was
an invasive species around that time when we started hearing
about things jumping off that bridge.
Speaker 4 (50:04):
Right.
Speaker 5 (50:05):
Oh, and there's another really interesting thing. In two thousand
and four there was one of the first mink control
projects that was in Aberdeenshire. Aberdeenshire, guys, what if the
dogs like just started picking up on this mink smell
(50:25):
for the first time right around the early windows.
Speaker 4 (50:28):
It's great. It's really helpful with the timeline for sure.
And you know what else. Minks are known for their musk. Oh,
mink musk is actually a profitable product. If you type
in mink musk you get all kinds of entries for
(50:48):
like websites, Minnesota trapline products, you know, for attracting other minks.
Mink musk, mink glands, you know, for sale and all
of that stuff. They are known for excreting a very
potent aroma.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
Which is how they come up as usual suspects. So
this is our this is what we think is the
most likely explanation. It doesn't exactly have to be minx,
but there's some compelling, circumstantial evidence that they can be.
They could be the culprit here unwittingly. So with that
(51:24):
in mind, we want to hear your stories. Do you
think this explains it? Do you think there's something else
out there? And most importantly, does your neck of the
Global woods have any other similar unusual places. If so,
let us know. We can't wait to hear from you.
We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 4 (51:41):
We are. You can find it the handle conspiracy Stuff
on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. Also check us out on
Instagram and we're doing all kinds of fun content also,
some of which ends up on YouTube, but you can
find this on Instagram with the handle conspiracy Stuff Show,
as well as on TikTok. We also find some of
those fun little breadcrumbs of content.
Speaker 5 (52:00):
Absolutely, guys can add one more mink thing before I
tell people how to call us please, I'm sorry to
keep going.
Speaker 4 (52:06):
On this with love God, please no make it up.
Speaker 5 (52:08):
Going back to doctor Sands who tested the sense of
three different animals, Ben that you mentioned what was a
was mink, squirrels, and mice.
Speaker 2 (52:18):
I think uh.
Speaker 5 (52:20):
In the way he admits it's unscientific testing, it's not
controlled testing. But in his tests with ten dogs where
he released them their three different scents, the dogs could
go to mice, squirrels, or mink, seven out of the
ten dogs went directly to the mink scent, which just
is an unscientific way of showing that these dogs of
(52:43):
all different breeds tend to at least be most interested
in the mink versus the other two cents just put
it out.
Speaker 4 (52:53):
Cracked it. But Matt, if anyone else has anything to
add to this theory, what are some other ways they
can reach out to us if they don't want to
do the whole social media regamarole, The rumors are correct.
Speaker 3 (53:03):
You can reach us any time of night or day.
If you're one of those at our phone number one
eight three three std WYTK, you'll hear a beep after
a familiar voice, or we hope it's familiar. At this point,
after which you'll have three minutes. Those three minutes of
yours go nuts. Give yourself a street name and aka
a moniker that you always wanted. Tell us what's on
(53:25):
your mind. Tell us whether we can use your name
and or message on the air. Most importantly, if you
have ancillary links, if you have pictures you want to show,
if you want to go into more detail than three
minutes gives you, then you can contact us at our
favorite way to be contacted, our good old fashioned email address.
All you have to do is drop us a line.
Speaker 4 (53:45):
Where we are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 5 (54:06):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
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production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noel.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Paul, Mission control decand most importantly, you are you.
You are here and that makes this the stuff they
don't want you to know. This one is for our
fellow dog lovers in the audience today. Yes, the dog
man's best friend and one of humanity's most successful eugenics
(00:49):
experiments ever, whether you're talking the chihuahua or the cane corso,
the domesticated K nine just connects with the human being
the way so few other living things do. I mean,
dogs are super intelligent and this leads a lot of people,
especially dog owners, to say, Hey, my pooch friend, my
(01:09):
doggo sibling, kid, family member is capable of everything a
human mind can experience, unfortunately, up to and including very
dark things like grief, the sense of loss, jealousy or
technically envy, and suicide. In tonight's episode, we're exploring a
bizarre localized phenomenon, one you may not have heard of
(01:30):
in Scotland. It seems dogs overwhelmingly choose to end their
lives at one particular bridge. Now, had you guys heard
about this before we embarked on this episode just a
little bit.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Yeah, And I have to say, Ben, I love the
idea of this being a night episode. This is a
nighttime episode, now, Yeah, I mean, like just kind of
the basics that there is this particular bridge that's very
popular dog walking location that potentially causes dogs to do
some pretty dark stuff like you said, or you know,
or does it, but potentially.
Speaker 5 (02:04):
I think for me, it's whether or not they choose
to end their lives or something. For one reason or another,
they're jumping off of a bridge, right, So like for me,
it's the phrasing of choosing to end their lives. I
think we're gonna explore that in this episode because it
certainly seems that way if we're if we're applying those
(02:25):
potential you know, the ability to make that choice right
or or is it something that they're just that's causing
them to jump off that bridge for one reason.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
It's sudden overwhelming compulsion.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Well, I mean, I have to say I would never
really fancied myself a dog person until you know. I've
been with my partner now for a couple of years,
and she had a wonderful dog named Jude, who she'd
had since a puppy for like thirteen years, and I
grew to really love that dog and really experience that love,
like realizing how similar it is to the love of
a human. So I think with that in mind, it's
(03:00):
easy for us to think that that goes both ways,
you know, and that it feels like it goes both ways.
And I think to a degree, there is awareness from
the dog's perspective of their masters and certain behavior that's
very easy to ascribe meaning to, you know, and much
of it likely does, but some of it might also
just be like I want to get fed, and this
is how I go about doing that.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
And I didn't include a lot of the compelling studies.
If somebody wants to reach out on email conspiracydyheartradio dot com,
I'm glad to send along studies that do speak to
the idea or the exploration of the idea that dogs
experience emotions similar to those of humans. For now, here
(03:43):
are the facts there's a place called Dumbarton, Scotland. You
probably haven't heard of it unless you're familiar with this story,
or you live in the United Kingdom, or if you
live in Glasgow, you've definitely heard of it. Because Dumbarton's
about thirteen miles is the core of It flies northwest
of Glasgow, and like a lot of places near a
(04:04):
city the size of Glasgow, this has become kind of
an exurb or suburb, if you will. It's a commuter town,
so a lot of people will have a job in
Glasgow and they'll live somewhere that's a little more affordable, right,
even if it's a bit more of a commute. It's
on the banks of the River Clyde. And that the
(04:26):
River Clyde's a weird name. Etymology fans, you'll enjoy that later.
It's home to a lot of history. Once upon a
time it was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Strathclyde.
Get it astride the Clyde I mean I mean basically
means valley of the Clyde, and etymologically, Clyde can be
traced back to a word that means a river. So
(04:48):
the River Clyde is like the river River as far
as we can tell. But okay, so it's old, old
old humans have been hanging out there and peoplings at
least back in the days of the Iron Age. And
that's kind of normal in Europe, in Western Europe, because
you know, in Europe two hundred miles long way in
(05:09):
the US two undred years a long time. You go there,
you'll have a wonderful time. There's a lot of beautiful scenery,
there's a wonderful castle, there's a lot of old buildings.
But these days the town is not famous for its
views of various locks. It's famous for one unfortunate structure,
(05:29):
the overtuned bridge or Overton bridge. We'll just call it.
That spelled o v e r t o un.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
It's not to be confused with the Overton window. That's
something very different. This is a bridge, and it's also
spelled differently.
Speaker 5 (05:41):
It's very weird to take a look at this bridge
for the first time if you've only read about what
this bridge is and what it's purported to do. It
is in the Gothic style, and when you look at it,
it's pretty striking. It For me, it's very castle like,
which you know, harkens back to some of the Gothic
building of the time that you were just speaking about there, Ben,
(06:03):
And it had a really cool designer, right.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Yeah, it's designed by this landscape architect named H. E. Milner,
and Milner created this well, it takes a while to
assemble these things. Obviously it was designed by him, but
it was completed in eighteen ninety five as essentially an
incredibly fancy driveway. And to your point, Matt, about the
(06:30):
description of things versus how they actually look pictures of them,
it does remind me of the first time I saw
the Tower of London and I thought impressive, old, I
get it's a big deal. Is it a tower? And
I was like, it must just take fewer stories back
then to be a tower, you know what I mean.
(06:50):
They were like over three stories. Woo, give this guy
a blue ribbon.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
But it's a narrow thing that protrudes skyward, I guess.
But you're right, the barrier to entry for towership was
a little bit lower back then. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, you're still not going to like this bridge if
you're afraid of heights.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Though, Oh no, oh no, yeah, oh no.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Because it goes up. It's not super duper long. It's
a walkable bridge. But if you look over the edge,
or if you see it from above and you look down,
you'll see that it's three arches basically, and the main
arch in the middle goes over a huge steep drop.
(07:29):
It's fifty feet straight down to something called the Overton Burn,
another confusing name. The Overton Burn is a small river.
Burn is a weird thing to call it river. But
you know, we don't make the rules for Scotland, nor
should we, and you might get that, you know, sort
of vertigenous vertigo feeling when you look over and see
(07:53):
the drop. But if you were to exit the bridge
yourself over the edge, you would you would have to
make an attempt. It's not like a swingy rope bridge.
It's very stable and as far as anyone can tell,
multiple folks have examined over the years, it's made of
normal stone. There are no specific anomalies in its construction
(08:16):
or chemistry. We can spend a little time on the
acoustics later as well. But it's a bridge. It's a
nice bridge. It's a regular bridge. People walk their dogs there,
tourists go there all the time. It looks really.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Nice, it does it does have that you know, it's
sort of covered in some lichen type of growth over growth,
so I guess so it does have kind of an
old timey look to it because you know, it is
around surrounding it, it is quite beautiful, very lush green spaces,
and this, you know, all tracks for being a pleasant
(08:49):
dog walking situation. You know, a lot of times the
dogs aren't aren't even leashed, and they're you know, sometimes
able to kind of frolic around in some of the
adjacent areas and maybe hopefully if they're doing their business
on the bridge, their owners are kind enough to pick
it up. But you know, they could also go down
into the woods and so they're wild oats. That's not
(09:10):
the expression, but you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Mm hmmm mm hmm.
Speaker 5 (09:13):
Yeah, and walking a dog off leash, now, knowing what
we know, is a really bad idea. So if you
ever plan on going out there, please leash your dog.
We're going to get in that too, that a little
later about leash law in that particular area, but yeah,
just be careful.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Uh yeah, in general, if you're in an area with
a lot of humans honestly a lot of other animals,
or you're in an area that that's unfamiliar territory to
you and your you and your pooch, you should have
your dog on a leash. As a matter of fact.
If unless you have a working dog or a farm
(09:52):
a farm dog of some sort, then't have the dog
on a leash. Here's here's the issue. According to the legend,
which is kind of recent. Since the nineteen fifties, locals
have been referring to this not by the name the
Overton Bridge, but by a couple of more distressing street names,
the Bridge of Death or the Dog's Suicide Bridge, because again,
according to the story, canines in particular have difficulty with
(10:16):
this crossing. For the better part of a century, they've
been purposely jumping from the bridge, often to their deaths,
with no rational explanation. So what is going on here?
Is a bridge driving man's best friend to quote unquote suicide.
We'll dive into it after word from our sponsor. Here's
(10:42):
where it gets crazy, all right, First we have to
look at the sources. We know that local legends sometimes
don't have the same rigorous scholarship you might expect from
from other stories. Right, because people are communicating this orally
and becomes part of folklore. In this case, we see
(11:02):
that a lot of local historians and researchers estimate hundreds
of dogs i've jumped from the bridge. And if you
read the more extreme reports like tabloid reports and thinking
of Daily Mail, The Sun and so on, they'll say
as many as six hundred or more dogs have dropped
off the bridge. At least fifty are said to have died.
(11:26):
But the deal is there are multiple confirmed incidents of
jumps and deaths like it has happened multiple times. It
has been reported in multiple outlets. There's one full length
book about it, called The Barren of Rainbow Bridge by
a local author named Paul Owen. So far, that's the
(11:49):
only book that is fully centered on this, but you'll
see it pop up in a lot of anthologies about
you know, unexplained mysteries, time life, books of the Unknown,
and so on. So we don't know how many dogs
have jumped, but we do know they have.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Had you guys heard of this idea of Rainbow Bridge
being associated with dogs passing into the afterlife? Yes, I
had not until very very recently. I'm obviously this isn't
the Rainbow Bridge also something of Norse mythology, or it
certainly at least is in the The Thorn movies.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
M Yeah, the idea of a rainbow bridge in I
guess in legends. It can change across culture, but you
can you can see that it's been taken up in
a lot of a lot of pet literature, like when
a it's it's just this side of heaven a place
(12:43):
called the rainbow bridge. When a very beloved pet dies,
the pet goes to that rainbow bridge.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
And it was.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
Inspired from a Norse poem to help Danish people more
in the loss of animals.
Speaker 4 (12:58):
Got it.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
That's that's my understanding.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
No, that sounds right. I mean not to get too
morose about it. But the dog I was referring to
earlier we recently had to have put down due to
some some serious cancer that it's bread and gotten just
completely to the point of, you know, causing quality of
life to go seriously downhill. And a really great organization
called Lap of Love that I think is national. They'll
(13:21):
come to your home and you know, help transition your
animal and as peaceful and you know, I guess comfortable
away as possible. And the lovely doctor who did the
procedure for us for Jude wrote us the loveliest letter,
a handwritten letter, and referred to you know, Jude finding
her way across the Rainbow bridge. And I had never
(13:43):
heard that before.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
That's why I highly recommend Lap of Love whenever anybody
asked me about putting having to help a pet move on,
it's just much less scary for them when they're in
a familiar place, probably taken to a veterinary now.
Speaker 4 (14:01):
And actually, I've been talking with you as part of
what made me really realize how important that was, because
just the stress and trauma, especially with the dog who
has maybe lost the use of her legs or whatever
it might be, having painful you know things that you know,
moving just becomes really really difficult and painful. And this
was we were able to kind of have her in
our favorite spot, like on a sunny day, with like
(14:21):
light coming through, with actual rainbows shining through some of
these little rainbow things we have in our house, and
it was really lovely. For lovely being a tricky term,
but for what it was, we really were able to
make it a peaceful, you know, family kind of you know,
nice situation. So second, that really wonderful organization, you know.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
The quality of life thing has Unfortunately that that dilemma
has come up for a lot of dog owners who
have encountered this phenomenon at Overton Bridge, because we know
that sometimes dogs do survive this plunge, but many of
them suffer terrible, terrible injuries such that their quality of
life is just not worth it. So to put the
(15:07):
animal out of pain, they have to be euthanized. Others
struggled to survive and perish soon after their injuries. In
at least one instance, a dog apparently jumped from the bridge,
survived and ran all the way back up the slope
and then jumped off again. So that dog, that dog
(15:28):
hads vinegar to them. Interestingly enough, there's not another spot
like this in Dumbarton. There's not another spot like this
in Scotland as far as we could tell. There's not
another place like this in Europe, at least with this
specific threat to dogs. It seems to be unique. And
we'll get to the theories, but before we do, there's a
(15:51):
very important timeline question. I believe a lot of our
astute fellow conspiracy realist probably clocked it's this all right.
The bridge is finished in late eighteen hundreds eighteen ninety five.
We said, the legends say that the dog suicides began
in the nineteen fifties. However, reports of these dog jump
incidents and let's call him that. Let's call him dog
(16:13):
jump incidents to stay away from the S word. Really,
they didn't really hit the news until the early two thousands,
like two thousand and three or four. So I mean,
and we've got an example of what happened there with
poor Hendrix.
Speaker 5 (16:28):
Yeah, it's at least a story coming to us from
the Daily Mail from October two thousand and six about
a woman named Donna Cooper and her collie named Ben.
By the way, they jumped off of this bridge.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
And that article cites an earlier example in two thousand
and four when a guy named Kenneth Meekley and his family,
along with their pooch golden retriever named Hendricks, were walking
on the bridge. And this story has a lot of
the same commonalities. We'll see multiple instances of this. The
dog is fine and suddenly bolts on the bridge, jumps
(17:07):
off the edge. Apparently they favor a a couple of
certain spots in the bridge. Hendricks survive, but spent the
rest of his life, absolutely fearing and hating that bridge
as you do it.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Yeah, we're talking fifty ft drop, yeah, fifty feet straight yeah,
and you know to what to like a rock, wooded rocks.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Yeah, Like the Burn is a small river, so there's
not enough there's not enough water there to cushing an impact.
Speaker 5 (17:41):
And just to give a little more of the number
of dogs here, as we're estimating some of these according
to that article from two thousand and six, they said,
quote during one six month period of last year, so
two thousand and five, five dogs jumped to their deaths.
If that's you know, half a year, five dogs, there's
(18:06):
a good chance that there are way more than maybe
or even reported. Uh, but that's and that's those are
the ones who died, right, who jumped to their deaths.
So there may have been many more that jumped and
hurt themselves.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
And it continues. I mean, if we fast forward to
twenty fourteen, then we see Alice trevorro or trevorro who
was walking with her dog, a cute little Springer Spaniel
named Cassie. She reported a similar experience. And we've got
a full quote here that comes from one of the
anthology books. I mentioned Unsolved Enigmas, which was written by
(18:41):
Sam Pilger and Leo moynihan. Now I'm not sure if
he's related to Bobby moynihan from Saturday at Life. I
don't know why I said that, Like that's the first
detail people are gonna.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Ask me about. Well, too many other moynihans. You know
what is Bobby? That's not a super common Nay, there
is job rule. We need him away in. We need
him to give us his wisdom to bestow it upon us.
So in twenty fourteen, Alice Trevoro is walking her Springer
Spaniel Cassie, and had her own report of a strange
(19:14):
incident on Overton Bridge. She had this to say. I
had parked up, and as she is so obedient, I
didn't put her lead on me and my son walked
toward Cassie, who was staring at something above the bridge.
She definitely saw something that made her jump. There is
something sinister going on. It was so out of character
(19:35):
for her. And this is from that book that you mentioned,
been Unsalted Enigmas. I think the telling part here coming
from a dog owner who maybe has no skin in
the game per se, to like, you know, make a
case for something sinister, a play is just the fact
that this was out of character for the dog. You know,
like owners know their dog's behavior and know what spooks them,
(19:57):
and you know, probably what I ever would have done
something like this to elicit such a reaction, you'd think
would be noticeable.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
Right, Yeah, Okay, So that's the problem with the timeline too.
The larger the macro issue where dogs who have an
immensely long history in Scotland immediately jumping off this bridge
as early as you know, eighteen ninety six and people,
to your point, Matt, just weren't reporting it. Did something
(20:26):
change between eighteen ninety five and the early nineteen fifties
that prompted dogs to start jumping to seek this untimely end.
That's an unfair way to put it. We'll get to
the anthropomorphization later, but it doesn't stop here. The timeline
issue leads us straight to the world of theory, and sadly,
(20:47):
there is one incident in particular that must be cited.
It does not concern dogs. This is an official disclaimer, folks.
This is you're about to hear a pretty graphic description
of human violence and unspeakable tragedy. So this may not
(21:07):
be appropriate for all listeners. Go ahead and just fast
forward about four or five minutes. Give you a time
to push the fast forward all right. For everyone who's
still with us, you need to know the story of
a man named Kevin Moy. Kevin Moy was thirty two.
He suffered from both paranoid schizophrenia, and he'd later be
(21:30):
diagnosed with it, but he was known to suffer from
depression since he had contracted myalgic encephalopathy eight years before.
In nineteen ninety four, he began to be convinced that
he was the devil and that his newborn son, was
two weeks old at the time, was the Antichrist due
(21:52):
to a birthmark on the child's head. On the first
outing he had with his son, he threw the child
over the bridge.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Wow, it is hard to hear.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
In court, according to the testimony, it came out that
he believed that he and his infant were to blame
for the Gulf War, and that he and his son
would destroy the world by infecting mankind with a virus
if he did not immediately end both their lives. Of note,
(22:30):
he also attempted to take his own life unsuccessfully before
being apprehended by authorities, and he had told police he
was doing this to save the world. At the trial,
which took place on January thirtieth, nineteen ninety five, he
was found not guilty due to insanity and remanded to
(22:50):
the care of the state. This was based was a
jury trial. It was based on the statements of four
different psychiatrists. Or asking why did he choose this bridge?
Moy believed that the location had a dark, ancient history,
dating back to the age of the Druids, and this
(23:14):
tragic incident leads us to the first theory, which is
actually surprisingly popular among the locals. It's the concept of
the thin place. Have you guys ever heard of thin places?
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (23:26):
No, it's where spooky. Well, imagine the rainbow bridge that
we were talking about between Midguard and Asgard, right between
the spiritual plane or the godly plane and our earthly
realm Imagine that rainbow bridge, except it's really short, and
that would be a thin place. In my opinion, at least,
you only got to take a few steps and then
(23:48):
you've crossed the entire rainbow bridge.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Yeah, a thin place. You can see this in Stephen
King novels. You can see this in so many works
of fiction, the idea that there is a certain place
they can function as a nexus between the unseen world
and the world of the day. This is why so
many folkloric depictions of encounters with other worldly forces take
(24:12):
place at like a crossroads at midnight, right where at
a certain glade when the stars and the moon or right.
The concept of the thin place going across cultures is
still It's something that's very strong in Celtic myth as well.
There was one old Celtic saying that was weirdly enough
out its way into New York Times that says Heaven
(24:35):
and Earth are only three feet apart, but in thin
places that distance is even shorter. So in this theory, one,
thin places are real, and a lot of people still
believe some version of that. We'd love to hear your
personal experience with this. And two, dogs, by nature of
their superpowers of sensation, are somehow more sensitive to these
(24:57):
than the average person. So this would lead us to three.
The idea that in an attempt to cross over that
very short rainbow bridge like you're talking about, Matt, to
the other side of the thin place, dogs are leaping
toward what they perceives the other side. No evidence exists
to prove anything anomalous about this location as far as
(25:18):
scientists are concerned, but it's still it's still a belief
that people are having. And doubtlessly, if hundreds of dogs
haven't died as a result of this over the years,
then doubtlessly, at least a few times somebody told their kids,
you know, Buster Buster's body may be here, but he
(25:40):
crossed the rainbow bridge, you know, because you want to
do what you can to help your kids navigate that
kind of grief. This is a doubter episode. Now, obviously,
not everybody agrees with this concept of a thin place
existing in the first place. I guess they would say
the places are generally of the same spiritual thickness. Uh,
(26:04):
But that's not the only explanation. One guy who disagrees
with the thin place concept is that author we mentioned earlier,
Paul Owen. In his work Paul and later interviews as well,
Paul doesn't agree that a thin place is responsible. Now,
he believes that there are thin places, you know, old
(26:25):
standing stones and things of that sort, but he doesn't
think the bridge is one of them. Instead, he believes
the bridge is haunted, and he believes that this apparition
is the prime mover of this tragic phenomenon.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
That's right, the spirit of Lady Overton, who is said
to have you know, walked around this bridge after her
husband passed in nineteen oh eight, referred to colloquially as
the White Lady of Overton. There's an interview in the
Huffington Post where Ohen acknowledge the following the thing that
(27:01):
he observed. I was up there one summer's day and
I felt a very strong jab, like a phantom finger,
twice in my back. It was the sensation you get
when you fear someone might push you over the edge
of a train platform. It's a very strange place. One
of the things peculiar to the location is that it
can seem very peaceful and tranquil, but it can turn
(27:25):
at a moment's notice. So weird vibe and felt like
someone poked him in the back. Of course, that could
also be one hundred other things, right.
Speaker 3 (27:36):
It could be a perceived sensation, It could be a
twinge of a back muscle. But in Owen's defense, I
think anybody with long term back problems will know that
you recognize, you know, You know your own body, so
if you have back spasms or twinges or back pain,
you know what it feels like, and you wouldn't mistake
(27:57):
it for a stranger giving you the poke hope Facebook style,
the hokey poke missed it too late.
Speaker 5 (28:04):
Move on, all right, we talked about a little bit
at the beginning. Let's go back to just how close
this bridge is to the Overton House, the large ornate
again like Gothic style mansion, let's call it. That's sitting
right there. And it's literally if we're talking about how
(28:25):
short the Ramow Bridge is, that it's a crazy short
walk from the front door of that house or I
guess the main entrance of that house to where this
bridge is.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
It's a really fancy driveway.
Speaker 5 (28:36):
You're right, No, you described it perfectly, Ben. It's just
it's strange to me when I'm imagining the white lady
of Overton, you know, mourning the death of her husband.
This would be a place where she would walk and contemplate,
you know, death and everything, and where you would just
feel all of those things. And if you know, we've
(28:57):
talked about it before. We just talked about it in
Fortnite and Robo about residual energy. If that exists, right,
if someone's intense energy experience in one physical place could
possibly remain there in some way, and if it can,
then this would definitely be a physical location.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Where that kind of energy would linger.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
Let's say, yeah, okay, So I may not be the
best person to unpack this with everyone, because I do
despite all the science I've read about this, I do
inherently have a predisposition that causes me to believe there
(29:44):
can be vibes left. I do believe that, and maybe
science will ultimately disprove that, or maybe it will prove it,
But right now the question remains out because science doesn't
know how to answer it. So here, with all all
that caveat, just to be fair to everybody about where
I'm calling from, shout out Raymond Carver. There's something interesting
(30:07):
they don't see brought up a lot in these conversations.
So if there is a ghostly entity, and this ghostly
entity is somehow causing, through its existence or through its intention,
these deaths or these jumps, then why haven't any of
the other countless thousands of people who doubtlessly died in
(30:32):
that area over centuries had the same effect Why is
it just the one? I argue it's because that one
makes for a good story, does that? I mean, it's
just a question of numbers at that point too. And
then also the timeline. If she's mourning this death in
nineteen oh eight, what gives why didn't it go into
(30:56):
the Why was it only in the nineteen fifties? Is
that when she passed away herself? You know, I don't
know's it's.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
Being widely reported on.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Is that when it's being wildly.
Speaker 5 (31:10):
Maybe people who lived in the area did have dogs
or humans or whatever that jumped off the bridge before that,
It's just nobody heard about it. It was a sad
thing that happened in town, you know.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
And then also another thing about the ghost angle is
if you are listening when this pot comes cast comes
out in twenty twenty three, if you're alive in the
modern day, you have walked over countless graves. A lot
of people died before you got here, you know what
I mean? The world is full of ghosts and that
(31:45):
in that sense, I don't know, it's just maybe it's
a little bit posthumously unfair dependent on one ghostly entity.
But there's another issue too with the reporting in this sense,
in a lot of reporting out of England. I'll say,
you can see these comments that I don't. I'll defer
(32:09):
to you guys, I don't think they're meant to be
dismissive or derogatory, because they're always very careful to pull
quotes from people living in Scotland when they say stuff
like this. But you will almost inevitably see some sideline
thing that says there are a lot of superstitions, paranormal
(32:31):
belief the people, these people in Scotland, they've a step
closer to the supernatural than the rest of us.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
And I don't know, it feels like it's a way
of kind of othering a culture, if that makes sense.
Speaker 5 (32:48):
Yeah, but look at pictures of the Overton House. If
you grow up playing around that place and you look
up at some of those second story windows, third story windows,
they've got the drapes like half closed. They're open, right,
but they're just creeping in on these old, old, old
window panes. It doesn't matter if there's somebody in there
(33:08):
just hanging out reading. It's gonna give you creeped out
vibes just from the Gothic architecture and the way those
curtains look telling.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
You, yeah, you've probably been mistaken for a ghost at
some point in your life. Folks, depending on where you
hang out, right, we're all someone else's ghosts at some point.
But yeah, that's a really good point too, Matt. And
we've got a quote that came from The Independent from
Alistair Dutton, who is a local taxi driver at the
time of this interview, and Alistair says, people in Dunbarton
(33:40):
are very superstitious. We grew up playing in the Overton
grounds and we believe in ghosts here because we've all
seen or felt spirits up here. And you see this
in other cultures too, you know, you go, like we're
talking about this in la Urna. You know, if you
go into someone else's house culturally speaking, if you're in
their neck of the woods and they tell you, hey,
(34:01):
that lake is haunted. It doesn't matter if you believe
in ghosts or not. Just don't be that guy in
the horror movie. Just don't go to the lake. They're
trying to help you, or they're running some kind of
weird criminal operation and that's how they keep people out
of the lake. We've all seen Scooby Doo I don't
know how.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
The Scooby Doo gang is never wise to the fact
that they're being had every time. And then of course
then you get the the what is it the thirteen
Ghosts of Scooby Doo where ghosts are now real? Yeah,
also I believe in in a pup named Scooby Doo.
There's some real spooks as well, but in the original series,
always a creepy old man or some grifter trying to
(34:42):
pull a scam.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
Because they were all just high. That's how they guess,
particularly follow Velma. Velma's on the straight narrow, and she's functional.
She's functional, but.
Speaker 4 (34:53):
She parties fair enough, fair enough.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
So so now that we've cast dispersion upon the moral
standing Scooby dow uh, we we should probably answer one
of the questions that we imagine naturally came to you,
our fellow listeners here, What about the people who actually
live in the Overton House? You know, Like, to your point, Matt,
is it some like really creepy guy who who just
(35:16):
vaguely says means stuff about dogs? Is he like, is
there a gargamele in there with dogs as the Smurfs? Not?
Not really, it's a guy from Texas.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
Yeah, isn't he part of the church or something?
Speaker 3 (35:31):
He runs? Uh? He runs a charity to help women
in unfortunate situations from the Overton House. Well, that's where
he lives. He and his family lived there. But his
job at he said time at the interviews, was running
this charity.
Speaker 5 (35:49):
Wow, charity must be going really well.
Speaker 4 (35:52):
Uh wow?
Speaker 2 (35:54):
Where did he make his money?
Speaker 5 (35:56):
M Okay, anyway, that's just a really expensive looking house, y'all.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
That's all it is.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
It's a definitely it's definitely something that the only way
most podcasters could buy it is if they teamed up
and made like an Instagram HiPE house and had fifteen roommates.
Speaker 5 (36:14):
No, if they verboed it for a day and a half.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
That's how. That's how you get it.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
What is verbo?
Speaker 4 (36:21):
What is VERBOI?
Speaker 5 (36:23):
Oh, I'm renting the house for whatever? What what's the
really popular one? I'm an Airbnb like right, that's how
you get it?
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Okay, okay for a day.
Speaker 4 (36:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (36:35):
But his response, you know, is, hey, Scotland's weird man golf.
Speaker 4 (36:44):
I mean, come on, what kind of people do that?
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Yeah, Bob Hill says exactly that. He says, there's a
lot of the supernatural here, it's very common in people's lives.
And then he says Overton, the Overton area in particular
is quote more spiritual than other parts. That's Texan Pastor
Bob Hill. But he doesn't necessarily buy it as the explanation.
(37:06):
He has one that requires neither superstition nor belief in
the divine or the infernal or alternate dimensions. He's like
Dennis Reynolds and it's always sunny in Philadelphia. He's basically saying,
what about the smell? You haven't thought about the smell?
Which leads to our next possibility.
Speaker 4 (37:25):
Gotta say, I like the idea that Texas Pastor Bob
Hill is Bobby Hill from King of the Hill, all
grown up and then having found God. And also, you know,
it kind of jives with his whole showmanship in the
character God'm sorry, guys, I was getting excited about the
new King of the Hill series coming out. No, you
haven't thought about the smell, have you you?
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Which leads to our people, Yeah, which leads to our
next possibility. We're gonna pause here for word from our sponsors,
and then we'll go to the last big theory, which
has we'll find may not still explain what's going on
at overton Bridge. Okay, I'm getting the realm of science,
(38:08):
the scientific take. To answer this, we have to go
back to the question we posed at the beginning, which
is this, do dogs, like some human beings, commit suicide?
Would they purposely take their own lives? Do animals at
all do this thing that the human animal does? To
answer that, we're going to lean on a great house
(38:29):
stuff works article by our old pal Jessica Toothman. Hey Jessica,
and Hey Matt, do you remember Jessica.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
I do.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Yeah, No, it might have been a little before your time, nol.
She might have moved on.
Speaker 5 (38:44):
Ye.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
I don't think we cross paths, but this article is
definitely on point.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Yeah, and shout out to Jessica's former co worker now
husband Andrew because they actually they are a workplace romance
gone right, and congratulations to you to so. In Jessica's
article do animals commit suicide? She points out that experts
(39:08):
largely don't believe that most animals are capable of what
of suicide in the human sense. We know that animals
can and do die on purpose, right, but it may
not have the same emotional motivating factors, Like, think about
(39:30):
the octopus. Unless it gets a very specific kind of
exciting brain surgery that's still on the fringe of science
and I think is being actively repressed, then reproducing will
trigger a hormonal kill switch in the octopus. Reproduction is
a death sentence. Or think of all the self sacrificial
(39:51):
tactics that different insects will take, right like when bees
will swarm around a wasp to increase the body temperature
of the wasp and they're sacrificed themselves to cook it.
Or how you know, speaking of bees, how they've got
one sting and then they're out. I can't imagine that's
that's a that's a real kick in the pants biologic.
Speaker 4 (40:14):
To die on such an aggressive note, you know, and
such a state of of duress just doesn't seem like
a good way to go.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
Imagine if you could punch people once.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
Once and then you're dead. Everybody got to make that
punch count.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Everybody's like one punch man. Well, sad thing is gets
way more intense. Oh.
Speaker 4 (40:34):
The sad thing though, is that the bee. It's it's
not like they have to do it on purpose either, right,
Like if someone like touches a bee, they could get
stung or like grabs a bee or something, or maybe
they do do it on purpose. But my point is,
do they know it's going to kill them? Probably not.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
Well, it's for the good of it's for the good
or the hive.
Speaker 4 (40:51):
Right, Well, that goes back to the whole question of animals.
Do they know? What do they know? When? Do they
know it? You know, do the dogs know if they
throw themselves off this bridge is going to do them harm?
Probably not, certainly not in the way that we're describing
it or talking about ideas of suicide. Right.
Speaker 5 (41:10):
I want to posit that I do not believe that
any of these dogs that have jumped off of this
bridge believe or think in the moment that whatever action
they're taking is going to cause them any harm whatsoever.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Same, And I.
Speaker 5 (41:27):
Only know this because of the motivation factors that I've
identified in my two dogs. And and it's there's like
three or four things, right. It's they were outside and
they smell something, and they will go crazy trying to
identify where that scent is coming from. They see something
(41:47):
in the woods and they're trying to track it with
their eyes and as they move and they'll run along
the fence to watch it and move with it. If
they hear something like if they're in the house and
they hear, like one of my dogs, if she hears thunder,
even far in the distance that I can't detect, she
gets nervous. Or if they hear the raccoons that are
(42:09):
on my porch, apparently they go nuts. And what was
the other one?
Speaker 2 (42:14):
Oh? Food?
Speaker 4 (42:15):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Yeah, food, And then maybe some fear motivation like well,
thunder would cover the fear motivation as well as the
auditory motivation. Yeah, I agree with you. And also, of course,
just to add this in here, yes, some higher order
animals that's not the most fair term, but some higher
order animals do appear to die of grief or heartbreak.
(42:36):
That also happens, but none of those things are the
same as when the human primate contemplates or commits the
act of taking its own life. And in all the
documented cases of canine death or injury on this unfortunate bridge,
not a single doggo exhibited signs of distress or malaise
(42:58):
in the days or hours leading up to their incident.
If one to explain this lean on zoology, If you're
a zoologists, you want to look at a couple things
to understand these behaviors, similar to what mattch just wonderfully
broke down the nature of the animal, the organism in question,
as well as the nature of the environment in which
(43:18):
the animal exhibits that behavior. And this is we're going
to cut some stuff out of here real quick. So
one of the questions we would have to have is
what about the sounds. What if there is a sound
that is outside of human hearing range, but as a
siren call to dogs that's very easy to measure. It
does not appear to be the case. People have also said,
(43:41):
well there's a nearby nuclear plant, perhaps that could explain it.
That doesn't seem to be the case. In twenty ten,
this animal behaviorist named doctor David Sands teamed up with
some folks and gave the first real scientific investigation of
this phenomenon. His can cclain illusion really informs our conclusion
(44:03):
on the show. He says, look, these canines are not
purposely taking their own lives. They're chasing something and as
not a rainbow bridge. Look at the dogs who've jumped
from the limited demographic data we have, a lot of
them are long nosed hunting breeds, the kinds that are
drawn to scents, and what kind of animals tend to
live in these small rivers in the forest. Mammals of
(44:26):
some sort. And then he also said, think about how
tall a dog is, think about their chase instinct, especially
if they're hunting or working dog. They don't have the
visual perspective to see that the ground has dropped. Right,
the last time they remember the ground, it was entering
the bridge and there's this slope. So to them, from
(44:49):
their perspective, the bridge is over level ground. They're just
on a weird part of the ground that happens to
have these two walls on either side, so they don't
clock that there's a fifty foot drop and these smells
are coming up from the river, you know, thinking of
things like minks that one gets brought up a lot
(45:10):
minks or pine martins right, or I don't know, field mice.
You know, insert any large prey mammal here. What would
you do. You're walking by and you smell it, and
as far as you know, it's just over the side
of the wall.
Speaker 5 (45:25):
I think this is extremely valid. Again, if you look
at pictures of this bridge and consider how short it
is in length. And then also look at what the
bridge looks like as you're entering onto it. If you
are at a dog's height, doesn't matter how tall your
dog is, like a little Scottish Terrier to a Dalmatian
(45:47):
at that height walking along, it doesn't look like there's
a drop off at all. So you know, if you
can just imagine the dog would have no sense. As
you said, Ben, that there's a fifty foot drop after that.
No matter which side you enter that bridge from, it
doesn't look like there's a huge drop there, and that's
because of how relatively far out onto the land that
(46:11):
bridge stretches.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Yeah, and again it's a short bridge. As you pointed out,
there were some hunters, I believe, who originally said, well,
I've been here for quite some time, there's no mink
in the area, but that was disputed by a guy
named David Sexton, who joined doctor Sands in this investigation.
And Sexton said, Hey, one end of this bridge in
particular has nest of minks and squirrels and mice, and
(46:38):
they all produce smells. So this seems to be, at
least for my money, this seems to be the most
likely theory because it requires us to prove the smallest
amount of things. The first two theories rely on cultural
interpretation and frankly a couple things modern science can't measure yet,
(46:59):
let alone prove. But the third still needs some additional testing,
you know, to be water tight or to pass the
stiff test.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Oh, very nice, man.
Speaker 5 (47:10):
Water is really important as well, because who is the
I watched a short documentary on this from a long
a little while ago.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
A guy named David Sands.
Speaker 3 (47:21):
Yeah, that's doctor David Sands did the investigation.
Speaker 5 (47:23):
Okay, so he's the one who even notes when he's
standing on top of that bridge that you can constantly
hear running water. But if you look down, the water
isn't very deep at all. It's not a dry creek
bed by any means, but there's not a ton of
water flowing. But it sounds like there's a lot of
water moving as well. So I'm also imagining that if
(47:44):
the dog even understands in some way that there's a
drop there, the sound may trick them into believing that
there's deep enough water for them to jump into water
the way they maybe.
Speaker 4 (47:57):
Have in the past splash around. Good old time.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
Totally makes sense. I mean, this is the thing. In
the meantime, people are learning to be more careful with
their canines around this area, more careful with their pets.
Overton Bridge is not a bad place. It doesn't have
a bad vibe. It's a beautiful piece of local history. Tourist,
pedestrians and canines go there all the time. It's just
(48:24):
you know, keep your dog on a leash, especially around
that part, around any drop like this, because if the
scientific causes are the explanation, and again they seem the
most likely, then it would mean that logically this place
is probably not unique just because of the geography. Well,
(48:45):
and you know, I'm talking about smells.
Speaker 4 (48:48):
I mean things around bodies of water or as you know,
like after it rains, like smells kind of carry further.
So if you're in a very like moist climax, you know,
like Scotland, you're surrounded by running water and all of
this greenery, those smells for certain types of dogs, you know,
(49:08):
are gonna be very tempting.
Speaker 5 (49:11):
Guys, I think I may have found it, and you're right, nol.
The American mink is an invasive species in.
Speaker 2 (49:18):
Scotland, Okay.
Speaker 5 (49:21):
It arrived in or late nineteen twenties so early nineteen thirties. Hmmm,
I like this go on right, there were deliberate releases
of mink and breeding that were occurring in nineteen fifty six. Okay,
the mink population. This is according to Invasive Species dot
(49:44):
Scott so Scottish invasive species. What guys, it's right around.
Speaker 3 (49:50):
The British number one and the mink number two right
as invasive species.
Speaker 5 (49:55):
I'm just pointing this out to say maybe this was
an invasive species around that time when we started hearing
about things jumping off that bridge.
Speaker 4 (50:04):
Right.
Speaker 5 (50:05):
Oh, and there's another really interesting thing. In two thousand
and four there was one of the first mink control
projects that was in Aberdeenshire. Aberdeenshire, guys, what if the
dogs like just started picking up on this mink smell
(50:25):
for the first time right around the early windows.
Speaker 4 (50:28):
It's great. It's really helpful with the timeline for sure.
And you know what else. Minks are known for their musk. Oh,
mink musk is actually a profitable product. If you type
in mink musk you get all kinds of entries for
(50:48):
like websites, Minnesota trapline products, you know, for attracting other minks.
Mink musk, mink glands, you know, for sale and all
of that stuff. They are known for excreting a very
potent aroma.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
Which is how they come up as usual suspects. So
this is our this is what we think is the
most likely explanation. It doesn't exactly have to be minx,
but there's some compelling, circumstantial evidence that they can be.
They could be the culprit here unwittingly. So with that
(51:24):
in mind, we want to hear your stories. Do you
think this explains it? Do you think there's something else
out there? And most importantly, does your neck of the
Global woods have any other similar unusual places. If so,
let us know. We can't wait to hear from you.
We try to be easy to find online.
Speaker 4 (51:41):
We are. You can find it the handle conspiracy Stuff
on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. Also check us out on
Instagram and we're doing all kinds of fun content also,
some of which ends up on YouTube, but you can
find this on Instagram with the handle conspiracy Stuff Show,
as well as on TikTok. We also find some of
those fun little breadcrumbs of content.
Speaker 5 (52:00):
Absolutely, guys can add one more mink thing before I
tell people how to call us please, I'm sorry to
keep going.
Speaker 4 (52:06):
On this with love God, please no make it up.
Speaker 5 (52:08):
Going back to doctor Sands who tested the sense of
three different animals, Ben that you mentioned what was a
was mink, squirrels, and mice.
Speaker 2 (52:18):
I think uh.
Speaker 5 (52:20):
In the way he admits it's unscientific testing, it's not
controlled testing. But in his tests with ten dogs where
he released them their three different scents, the dogs could
go to mice, squirrels, or mink, seven out of the
ten dogs went directly to the mink scent, which just
is an unscientific way of showing that these dogs of
(52:43):
all different breeds tend to at least be most interested
in the mink versus the other two cents just put
it out.
Speaker 4 (52:53):
Cracked it. But Matt, if anyone else has anything to
add to this theory, what are some other ways they
can reach out to us if they don't want to
do the whole social media regamarole, The rumors are correct.
Speaker 3 (53:03):
You can reach us any time of night or day.
If you're one of those at our phone number one
eight three three std WYTK, you'll hear a beep after
a familiar voice, or we hope it's familiar. At this point,
after which you'll have three minutes. Those three minutes of
yours go nuts. Give yourself a street name and aka
a moniker that you always wanted. Tell us what's on
(53:25):
your mind. Tell us whether we can use your name
and or message on the air. Most importantly, if you
have ancillary links, if you have pictures you want to show,
if you want to go into more detail than three
minutes gives you, then you can contact us at our
favorite way to be contacted, our good old fashioned email address.
All you have to do is drop us a line.
Speaker 4 (53:45):
Where we are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 5 (54:06):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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