Pressie: The Serpentine Cryptid of Lake Superior

Everybody's heard of Nessie, the infamous cryptid alleged to reside in Scotland's Loch Ness -- but did you know Lake Superior may be home to a mysterious creature all its own? In tonight's episode, Ben, Matt and Noel dive deep into the millennia-old legends of something strange in the lake water. Indigenous tradition calls it the Mishipeshu. Today, locals refer to it as 'Pressie'.

They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

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 the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nol.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here that makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. And tonight, fellow conspiracy realist,
we are going fishing in a cryptozoological way, but also
as potentially practice for our upcoming adventure with virgin voyages.

(00:55):
We can't wait for you to join us.

Speaker 4 (00:57):
Yeah, join us along with our fellows Stuff Bros from
the olden days, including Josh and Chuck from Stuff. You
should know who we love. And they're like way more
famous than us. So come for us, stay for them,
come for them, stay for us, whichever.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Way We're gonna do so many awesome things on the ship.
Off the ship in Bermuda. Oh my god, you better
be there, You better be.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
There beside and look at us. Now we're on a
boat and we want you to be on that.

Speaker 4 (01:26):
Boat to yeah, participating in a Broadway musical themed cruise.
That's not true. It's a stuff podcast themed cruise.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
So get over to Virgin Voyages today, folks, get your tickets.
We won't just be doing shows or events. We'll also
be hanging out with you in person on the boat
in early October. Do let us know if we can
expect you, and we love to expect you, so don't
lay book your tickets now. We're looking at October tewond

(01:57):
through the seventh and we would love to hang with you,
especially if you're a fan of cryptids, because guys, the
oceans are big, and we've talked a lot in the
past about how the best chance humanity has of finding
a cryptid in the modern day is probably not on
the land, but under the waves. And this doesn't take

(02:20):
us to the Pacific. We're not talking about Point Nemo tonight.
We're talking about a very humbly named lake in the
top part of the US.

Speaker 4 (02:29):
One of those big lakes over there.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
With a tip of our cryptid caps, folks were diving
deep into a surprisingly old legend that haunts the humbly
named Lake Superior even in the modern day. So for centuries,
even before the US was a thing that people called
the US, locals in the area had been convinced that
this massive freshwater ecosystem was home to America's own version

(02:56):
of Scotland's NeSSI. It's a creature that is known to
as Pressy. Now, before we've behead research of this or Naga,
had you had any of us heard of this?

Speaker 4 (03:07):
I don't know about Pressy man not an advantage now.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Yeah, I think it should be called Supressy for superior
or because it's been.

Speaker 4 (03:15):
Suppressed because I haven't heard it.

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Yeah, like both of those.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
But the ones that I've heard been were not. It
was not because Pressy is obviously a take on NeSSI, right, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
One would happen from the nineteen seventy really is when
they it's that name.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
In the past. I think we've encountered some of the
art that exists around these areas when we were studying
some other cryptids, and it is really interesting to know
that there are NeSSI like creatures maybe we could say,
but very different that we're gonna get into today.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Yeah, ness annoids. We could call them like humanoids. So yeah,
let's get into it right now. Why delay hop in
the water with us. We'll be right back after a
word from our spots. Here are the facts. Okay, if

(04:09):
you have visited the Great Lakes of Canada and the
United States they are along the border, then you already
know the term lake might be a little misleading. Now,
I've been to several of these lakes. Have you guys,
had had the pleasure to visit any of the five
Great Lakes?

Speaker 4 (04:27):
Yes, one that is off of that you can access
from Duluth, Minnesota. Whichever one that is, it's very cold.
Seems to remember both the weather and the water.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
And that's the one we're talking about. That's superior.

Speaker 4 (04:41):
Hell yeah, that was me.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
I was there, right, But.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Deluf Minnesota is awesome. I've also been there.

Speaker 4 (04:47):
Yeah that rocks had a lovely time. Went to a
music festival called the green Man Festival. Shout out to
uh always Sonny in Philadelphia, unrelated more referring to the
mythical creature of the woods, the green Man.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
Also having traveled to the lakes myself, I agree they
are cold, and I would say it is incredibly misleading
to hear the name lake because here in our metropolis
in Georgia, which actually is a state with no natural lakes.
Fun fact for your next party. We associate things like

(05:21):
when we see a body of fresh water, what we
call a lake might be more described as a pond
my other people.

Speaker 4 (05:28):
Or a place where they just bulldozed over the homes
and dug it out and filled it with water and
called it Lake Ocone and let people jet ski on it.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
Guys, just because I live out here by Lake Lanier
in Georgia, which if there's a road called Buford Dam
Road that literally goes over a dam that creates the
lake that they call Lake Lanear, and when you look
out it seems like this massive lake, this huge body
of water. Then if you go somewhere to even the

(05:59):
smallest of the great lakes, Lake Erie, which is one
I've spent most time on because of Ohio, when that's
my family is Ohio. There, you don't understand sometimes what
you're looking at. And if you told a child that's
the ocean, I guarantee you they would go, oh, yeah, oh,
that's the ocean.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
Yeah. They're sometimes collectively called inland seas. We're talking about
a power rangers group of five different things weirdly called lakes.
Technically they are lake Michigan, Huron Erie, Ontario, and of
course our humble boy Lake Superior. Lake Superior is called
Lake Superior, not in an ironic little John way. It

(06:42):
is the largest of the lakes. It's like three hundred
and fifty miles long from east to west. Its greatest
with is one hundred and sixty miles. That doesn't sound
like a Georgia lake. It is in fact one of
the largest lakes on the planet in terms of surface air.
Its maximum depth is one thousand and three hundred and

(07:05):
thirty three something feet. Together, this supergroup, these aquatic power rangers,
for lack of a better term, they are the largest
fresh water system on the planet, so second to those
oceans that we mentioned like Point Nemo and so on.
This is where humans might still discover new, undocumented forms

(07:28):
of life, because these lakes aren't new either, like kind
of new, their new under grand scheme of things.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Well, there have been human beings living around them for
a long long time, as you said, but way before
Europeans trotted to cross you know what is now Minnesota
and the stuff over there, and people have been seeing
things and I was gonna say making up stories, but
mythology mean that is what people religion well, But a

(07:59):
lot of the human beings that lived around here created
beings and concepts of methiog things that existed in this body.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
Of water because the water was already there when as
far as we know, the ancient themselves cryptic human civilizations arrived.
The boffins that you speak to are going to confirm
that the Great Lakes form more than twenty thousand years ago,
because these big, very slow, very awesome things called glaciers

(08:31):
were also very heavy, and as they moved around during
the Ice Age, they carved the land beneath them, creating
basins that filled up with all that melted ice water.
And they didn't The reason I said, I don't know
if we should call them old or new is because
they didn't settle into the shapes that you would recognize
on a map today until about three thousand years ago.

(08:55):
And they are connected to the oceans. They do, actually,
you know, they feed into rivers that reached the oceans.
They also one of them, Lake Michigan, feeds into the Mississippi.
So shout out to Cancer Alley.

Speaker 4 (09:07):
Oh wow, yeah, good tie in. I believe most of
them feed into the Saint Lawrence River and as you mentioned,
ultimately into the Atlantic Ocean as well as, in addition
to the Misissippi River, the Illinois River, which then you know,
they all coalesce and arrive in the Gulf of the
Gulf of America, because that's what it's call it.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
The Gulf of Mexico. Yeah, that was a little snarky
by it, but yes, you're absolutely right Noland.

Speaker 4 (09:31):
This area anyone, we're.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
On the same page. We're also talking about some really
serious and inspiring biodiversity black bears, gray wolves, moose, lynx, salmon, perch, walleye,
the notorious lamb prey. I forgot to put the picture
in here, but it reminded me of our Remora conversation.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
Have you ever people to use the term walleye or
refer to someone that has like a lazy eye?

Speaker 3 (09:59):
Yeah, HB. Lovecraft called at the insmith looks Okay.

Speaker 4 (10:02):
I just think I didn't realize maybe it had to
do with the fish. I am not familiar with the
walleye fish.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
The fish is quite tasty. I want to say, I
want to say I've eaten walls. Yeah, fished out.

Speaker 4 (10:14):
Of the lake.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
Well, we know, of course that just given the size
of this area. Even with human encroachment, there are a
lot of dangerous life forms as well, snapping turtles a
sleeper hit. As far as a danger to humans is algae.

Speaker 4 (10:33):
Right.

Speaker 3 (10:34):
The algae is super bad for toxic.

Speaker 4 (10:37):
I believe produces cyanotoxins that can cause skin irritation as
far as blisters and even respiratory upper respiratory difficulties. Oh,
not to mention, I believe they can affect your kidneys
and get into your indocrine system as well as cause
gut biome issues.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Something really unfortunate about a lot of algae that grows
on both fresh water and in ocean. Water helps a
lot with providing oxygen for the planet. So kind of
an annoyance a.

Speaker 4 (11:09):
Blooms can cause issues, Right, isn't the deal with alga
blooms that they can cause an imbalance in the force.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
Yes, it's it's kind of a greater good argument. It's
one of the few we agree with the humans and
the other oxygen breathers do need algae. There are a
lot of There are weird cryptid like reports of bull
sharks making it all the way up the Mississippi to
hang out in the Great Lakes, but it's probably too
cold for them. There are a lot of endangered species.

(11:39):
There's the goofy looking and goofily named long air sunfish.
There's the blue pike. There's the lake sturgeon. Everybody remember
that one. That's going to be a returning character in
our story. And as you.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
Let's recall our discussions about some of these older creatures
when we were taking what was the one that was
discovered been the f the celicamp celacamp. This is one
of the sturgeons. And there are specific versions of sturgeon
that are They are very old and if you look
at them, just taking a look at a sturgeon, you go, oh,

(12:15):
that's that's not a regular fish.

Speaker 3 (12:17):
It looks like God's first drawing of a fish where
he said something like this, and then the angels came
by and said, we got a couple of notes. I mean,
you're great at this, but it's been a crazy week. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (12:28):
I propose a SpongeBob version of that excellent alt country singer.
We call him Sturgeon Simpson.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
There we go. I love it. Sturgeon spongepants Simpson. To
your earlier point, there, Matt, as we're indicating humans have
been a part of the wildlife here. For a long time,
they were hunting caribou in the area, and caribou are
now no longer there, but they were hunting these creatures
as far back it's almost ten thousand years ago, so

(12:58):
again that's before the Great Lakes attained their current shape.
And even as we record today Friday, May twenty second,
twenty twenty six, there are some phenomenally talented archaeologists who
are still discovering ruins of ancient civilizations beneath the waves.
They've even found tools again under the water, under these

(13:22):
invasive beds of mussels and centuries millennia of dirt. They
found these tools that had to have been created more
than two thy five hundred miles away in what we
call Oregon today.

Speaker 4 (13:36):
And as the.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
Water rose over these civilizations, as the lakes and large
attaining their current shape, a lot of people just had
to run away so that they didn't drown, and they
left their stuff and it got covered up by these
rising waters. It's largely untouched and it's a huge mystery
we probably don't have time to get to tonight. Science

(13:58):
is still trying to figure out exactly who these ancient
people were and what they were doing. They didn't just
leave behind physical stuff. They left behind most importantly complex
spiritual beliefs and the original human technology of stories.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
And there are a bunch of indigenous tribes that have
been studied and there is, you know, stuff known in
the modern day about many of these tribes because there
are existing human beings who have survived to tell some
of these stories we're talking about. Yeah, one of the
primary tribes groups of people is the Ajibwe. And you know,

(14:36):
if you if you go into some of their history
and at least the the mythology of some of their
history about you know, coming across west moving into the
Great Lakes area, specifically for the wild rice that was
you know, the legend was that the wild rice or
there was food that would grow on the water, and
they moved that way and they settle right in these

(14:58):
areas where if you were going to find something in
the lake, these would be the folks that would find it.

Speaker 3 (15:05):
Yeah, they would find there and find something they felt
they did. They called it the Mishi Peshu or underwater
panther spelled m I s h I p e s h.

Speaker 4 (15:17):
I just say sea panther. Uniquely terrifying, like like it's
like if a short if a shark also had arms,
had like forearms and legs and deadly claws, but if.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
A giant octopus could walk around man breathe oxygen.

Speaker 4 (15:35):
I don't like it, and I'm sorry I didn't mean
the sea panther is more of a lake panther at
this point.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
For me, it's the imagery of something that moves as
stealthily and quickly as a panther, right, but in the water, right,
and with the ferocity of a panther. It's just it
is pretty. It's intimidating.

Speaker 4 (15:57):
Does it breathe underwater? Can it just hold its breath
for a really long time?

Speaker 3 (16:01):
Supposed to be amphibious with the traditional Ojibwe beliefs. It's
also a shape changer, which is going to come into
play later.

Speaker 4 (16:09):
It could be a shark if it wanted to.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
Yeah, it's got. It could be a scary lake octopus,
which is not really a thinking more your scary uncle,
right right, You never know. Never trust your uncles. That's
the key takeaway of this entire up.

Speaker 4 (16:24):
Except for the fun. Yeah, you can trust the fun.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
You could trusted with stuff and not your car keys.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
Before we go too deep into this, and we'll probably
get to it inside a little further, but just knowing
that this word Mishupeshu Mishipeshu means the great Links. As
you said, Ben, there's there are other tribes that call
it different names, but it's very similar, which is very
interesting to me. Another name is the Menominee me e

(16:55):
n o m i n e e, which means the
true Links, which again and we're talking about aquatic cat
like creatures.

Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yeah. Also another street game would be the missabishu or
the part of my pronunciation. They are not a native
Ojibis speaker. We know to that point that the descriptions
from the indigenous stories, from the oral traditions tend to
have a lot in common with each other. That this thing,

(17:27):
the underwater cat might sound weird and terrifying to a
lot of us because a it is, but b it's
because a creature like that doesn't really seem to exist.
So we know that Misshapeshu or whatever you want to
call it, the Great Links. It is described as having
the head and the paws similar to those of a
gigantic scaled cat because it doesn't have fur, it has

(17:50):
copper scales. It has spines protruding from its back and
dagger like shapes, and it also has a sick pair
of copper horns, depending on pod whom you ask. And
as you can tell from that description in the lore,
it is super duper into copper. It is very protective
of copper, and it will become aggressive if you don't

(18:13):
if you come at it sideways.

Speaker 4 (18:14):
Well, a little interesting tidbit, Matt, you mentioned the wild
rice indigenous to this region, manominee or manominee or monomonee
with an eye comes from the algonquin root or a
Jibwe manu men meaning wild rice, and those are cities.
There's multiple spellings of it in Wisconsin and in Michigan.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
Yes, and we need to mention that this creature that
we're describing here is not just a creature that exists.
There is lore and there are tails around why this
creature exists what it does. As we're saying, right Ben
territorial over the copper that is potentially around the lake

(19:00):
underneath the lake. But there's also this concept that it's
a potentially a bringer of things like a good harvest
or if you were going fishing let's say, and trying
to get food for your group, you offer this thing
some stuff like let's say, some meat or some rice
or whatever, and it can gift you with things.

Speaker 3 (19:21):
Yes, a bringer of fortune and a bringer a bringer
of life and death. This is actually this was inspired
by our research into the legend of the Naga. Please
check out that episode of You Can Folks, because there's
so many strange similarities between two cultures that, as far
as we know, never met each other, or two groups

(19:43):
of cultures. Because this indigenous lore also says the Mishipeshu
can bring you fortune and it can kill you because
it is the most powerful being in the underworld. It
is the master of all snakes, all creatures that swim.

Speaker 4 (20:01):
Snakes get into the picture here because they were just,
you know, they were like snakelike features. Are they what
are we talking about?

Speaker 3 (20:11):
They're sinuous when they swim.

Speaker 4 (20:12):
Okay, that's fair, so they're sort of yeah, I got you,
and then maybe they tuck their little arms and legs
to their side.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
Different swims.

Speaker 4 (20:19):
And I know we've already mentioned it, but the lizard
the reptile gods that we talked about in the previous
episode feels very aligned with this sort of myth making.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
Well, and if you imagine, if this thing, let's just
imagine it's real and it is in a lake area,
just in a small area of the lake, this is
definitely the apex creature.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
Right.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
It doesn't matter how big of a snake you are,
how big of whatever other creature you are. If you
are this thing, you are the king.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
Yeah, especially if we're talking about fresses old school hangout
or mischie Peshu's old school hangout. Mitchie Pickleton Island, which
is in the northeast part of Lake Superior on the
Canadian side. Do check it out. It looks like a
beautiful place to be honest. And to that point about

(21:09):
seeing something literally and trying to explain it, we know
that folklore is often a way of framing reality through
an understandable cultural perspective. Right, so you see something crazy,
it looks like a godlike thing. It's definitely an apex
predator to you. You survive to tell the tale and

(21:32):
the story you share with your cohort sounds very much
like a religious myth. I mean, that's why for most
of the modern, increasingly secular world, these stories of ancient
cultures are like artifacts. You know, you admire them, you
record them, you analyze them, you revere them. But fewer

(21:54):
and fewer people take them literally. Biologists don't look at
ojibli stories and say, oh, they definitely met a relic
population of dinosaurs. Academics in the general public see this
stuff as metaphor right. This is another way, a valid
way of explaining the world. But it doesn't mean there's
a sea monster still with the stuff we just set up. Guys,

(22:20):
we know the age, we know the vastness of the
Great Lakes, we know that multiple human civilizations time and
time again got to this area and said there was
something like a lake monster. And then we know a
ton of people, even in the modern day post European colonization,
they were reporting seeing strange stuff in the water. So

(22:42):
maybe there's a kerdle of truth to it. What about
all these people who say the mission Peshu is real
and we just call it pressy. Now, are we close
to identifying and actual cryptid?

Speaker 4 (22:54):
I hope so, Sadly I doubt it, not to be
a doubting Tom R. Thomas, but you know.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
Yeah, all three of us definitely want to figure out
the truth about Mishu Peshu, and we all three of
us definitely want cryptids to be proven to exist. Our
fourth compatriot, Dylan Fagan, is the only one who doesn't
want us to discover cryptids. Tennessee, you said that some

(23:26):
things should remain mysteries, or you didn't and I'm.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Paraphrasing, when did you say that?

Speaker 3 (23:32):
He didn't actually say it. It was okay, well, we'll
be right back. Here's where it gets crazy.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
It gets crazy because I'm looking at the island that
you mentioned, Michell Piccoton m I c h I p
I c O t I n Island, which is in
Lake Superior, which is an island there. But I'm looking
at it ben and it appears to be completely uninhabited.
I can't find any sign of civilization on there besides
a lighthouse on Devereaux Island or Devereaux Island. And I'm

(24:12):
just imagining because when I'm looking at on this picture
here on Google Maps, it doesn't look that big, but
then you zoom out a little bit and you realize,
oh my god, that's like that's the size of a city,
of a very large city, and there are no humans
on there, and there's marshlands that you can see and forests,

(24:33):
and I'm just imagining all the possible things that could
be in there that are literally hiding because nobody's checking
in on it.

Speaker 3 (24:42):
Yeah, it's like a nature conservatory at this point. People visit,
but you're not going to find a small town in
the area, and probably not for a while because it
is protected land.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
And so nobody hangs out at night.

Speaker 4 (24:56):
Ben, I bet there.

Speaker 3 (24:58):
Were a couple of copper pri apparently learned a lesson.

Speaker 4 (25:02):
They always be over here, and that they shouldn't. Those
copper prospectors just hang around panning and then all of
a sudden they see the sheriff do a murder, you know,
and then I have to be taken out. This is.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
Exactly We had a great prospector character in the third
season of Thirteen Days of Halloween, which was directed and
largely produced by our own Alex Williams along with you,
Matt and along with Aaron Manke and Nick Takowski. And
in that in that episode I think it's called socialization,

(25:37):
you'll hear the best old timey prospector voice. Ever, he's
technically a dowser. I don't want to ruin it, but
do check that one out, it'd be cool to be
a prospector maybe we could be cryptied prospectors, guys, because
Pressy is prime territory for this. Not to be confused
with Plessi from Super Mario three D or very plugged

(25:59):
it that.

Speaker 4 (26:00):
Does a deep cut.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
pressI is, as we said, pretty similar to NeSSI of
the Lockness in Scotland, and people who believe that the
Mishu Pishu stories are based on an actual organism will
cite what they see as shocking similarities between ancient carvings
or depictions of the Great Links and more recent reports

(26:24):
of what we now call pressI. Now, are they doing
it because the similarities are that shocking, or are they
doing it in kind of an Eric von Danakin thing
where you're sort of looking for connections and forcing them
even if they're not there. Ah, I don't know. We
know the okay, so we know the Ojibwei legends, we

(26:47):
know the lore of the native peoples. When the Europeans
begin invading and colonizing the Americas, we see that the
earliest purported European reports of running into something like Pressy
are in like the sixteen hundreds. A guy's a governor
of New France named Samuel de Champlain. He sends some

(27:10):
explorers out and he says, all right, just you know,
go west, figure out what's happening over there, you know
what I mean, how far away can we go? And
they apparently returned and told old Sammy boy the governor,
that they saw one or more gigantic aquatic snakes moving
around and Lake Superior in particular. And more and more

(27:32):
people European colonizers had stories about strange stuff in the water,
and those Europeans who spoke with indigenous communities often would
have their story seemingly confirmed because someone like the discovery
of the celicaf that we mentioned earlier, you've got these
outsiders coming in and they're saying, whoa, I saw something crazy,

(27:56):
And then everybody who actually lives in the area goes, yeah, no, man,
that's the that's the ugly fish. It's it's been here forever.
It loves copper, it hates people. If you're going to
go fishing, distract it with food or prey or something.
I don't know, why don't you guys go back to Europe.
By the way, that's kind of how those conversations went.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
I'm imagining the ugly fish as a sturgeon on the bottom.

Speaker 4 (28:23):
Of the lake.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
You know, it's like sucker, think any kinds of stuff
down there, But then associating that with potentially copper that
can be seen, you know, at the bottom or found
at towards the bottom of the lake. You know, I'm
just seeing all of that already primed.

Speaker 3 (28:43):
We are very primed. Thank goodness, Dylan's here, so we
know that as far as our research is indicated, nobody
returned with physical evidence of this creature. From the sixteen
hundreds all the way up to twenty twenty six, there
are no bodies, no live specimens, no poop, which is
weirdly important for finding cryptids, et cetera, et cetera. There

(29:07):
is one interesting Jibwei legend about a young man who
is on a boat and gets accosted by the Mishu pessue,
beats it up with a broken ore and then manages
to smack it essentially right on the butt and breaks
away a copper piece of its tail in the process,

(29:30):
and this becomes a valuable artifact because it's solid copper,
so it's worth a lot of money in the trade network.
But it also gives him to that earlier supernatural point.
It gives him great fortune. Nobody can find that piece
of solid copper. This is treated as a legend.

Speaker 4 (29:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
And we're also not saying that one piece of copper
made a fortune, right. We are saying it brought fortune
as in the concept of good things occurring.

Speaker 3 (30:00):
A magical charm, right, a talisman. Yeah. And we also
see a strange evolution in description, because if we fast
forward a little bit further, there are newspaper articles addressing
more and more alleged sightings. And the thing is, with
each of these reports, the general image of the creature

(30:24):
starts to transform as well, further and further away from
the original indigenous idea. There's an article that you'll see
referenced a lot from August twenty sixth, eighteen eighty six,
published by an outfit called the Menatawac Pilot. It's called
a Lake Superior Monster. The story bears some examination thanks

(30:49):
to our friends at the Pine Barrens Institute. It's got
prospectors in it. We love a prospector. Be aware this
might be kind of a tabloid, but let's give them
the story.

Speaker 4 (31:00):
And the story goes like this. A group of prospectors,
old prospectors potentially hoping to hit it big, strike it
rich and copper, found themselves on the shores of an
unidentified lake, and that would be Lake Superior. When they
didn't find any copper on the surface, they decided they
would check beneath the waves. These lakes, by the way,

(31:21):
are so big they have tides. It's fascinating looking for
rock formations that would be a telltale sign of copper deposits.

Speaker 3 (31:30):
Yeah, and this is, by the way, it's an unidentified
island in the story, but for the true believers it
has to be Mission Polkton Island.

Speaker 4 (31:40):
Right, And upon first glance, all of this telltale signs
were there. It seemed like a promising prospect. Let's just see.
So they set up the camp, made their little campfire,
cooked a bean, roasted a single bean, one would imagine,
and they prepared to stay the night. When one of
the miners got up to add law to their bean fire,

(32:01):
he saw something really strange. Saw a form moving in
the water, a strange green light that spread out almost
thirty feet in diameter. And when he told the other
prospectors what he'd seen, they punched him and told him
to shut up, and that they didn't want to hear
about any of this nonsense.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
Is that the story.

Speaker 4 (32:23):
No I made that part out. But one of them
did recall an ancient tale, an old piece of prospector's
lore told late at night around the bean fire, the
ancient tale of the Great Lynx. Another guy you know,
who was clearly drunk at the time, shot his gun
into the water, because yeah, America.

Speaker 3 (32:44):
America, brought to you by America, the one country that says,
I don't know what if we shoot it, well, weather, balloon,
a hurricane, something in the water. Let's go.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
Let's point out really quickly the last number of UFO
UAP strange lights sightings that occur above the water in
the sky in this area as well as below the
water in the Great Lakes, often strange lights that have
been reported to have been seen. This to me is

(33:17):
very interesting to know there's a green thirty foot light
somewhere beneath the water out where they are, because what
the heck could that be? This is eighteen eighty six. Boys,
I don't know how many divers are hanging out by
the shores and islands in Lake Superior. It's kind of weird.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
It is I like the idea of it being early
UAP or a USO, right, unidentified submersible submerge into object.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
But we it's at least an unidentified submerged green light.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
Right, And it could be some kind of phosphorescent lake life,
maybe algae of some sort. They don't know, but they
are freaking out. And as you said, no one of
the prospectors recalls this ancient tale from his previous adventures,
and they say, Okay, we're gonna We're gonna sleep on this.

(34:10):
We're gonna stay here so that we can dedicate a
full day to diving under the water and perhaps finding
copper there. Maybe this green light that scared the crap
out of us is an indicator of good fortune or
a good omen So they said, all right, and they
got together and they deliberated, they argued backstage, and ultimately

(34:33):
they said, look, the money we could make if we
find copper is way more real than the danger of
us being devoured by a what you call it again, man,
and the guys like mythical lake monster. Mythical lake monster,
that's right, Jeremy, I say we go get the copper.
And so they had they have one of those old

(34:53):
school bulky diving suits, you know, with the like the
itself a copper helmet, the big round ones with the
little holes. Okay, yeah, with like the air hose.

Speaker 4 (35:03):
Yeah, yes, of course, like a classic early scuba technology,
very jewles vern. Yes.

Speaker 3 (35:11):
And so one of the guys, we don't know how
they chose him, but one of the guys puts on
the suit and the weighted boots, which is common at
the time. He's got a knife on his belt, and
you know, he straps in and he makes sure the
hose is working. He jumps into the lake where they
saw the green light. He goes down about thirty feet

(35:33):
to the floor of the lake there and he's looking around,
you know, in the water, which was much clearer than
than it is now, and he sees the tailtal signs
of a submerged copper vein. And he follows this vein.
This is getting love Craft in all the way to
what he thinks is an overhanging rock, but he discovers

(35:55):
an underwater for fissure.

Speaker 4 (35:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
At this point, he's word read about his air hose.
He explores a little bit of the cave and then
you know, he feels like that tug like a dog
on a leash or something, or maybe a two year
old on a leash, because I know people do that.
And he turns back towards the entrance of the cave.
He's slowly underwater, chuging along in his heavy suit, and

(36:20):
then boom, everything goes.

Speaker 4 (36:24):
Oh no, we'll keep it.

Speaker 3 (36:27):
It went black for a second, right back, so okay,
so uh, let's somebody else pick it up. Here what
happens next?

Speaker 2 (36:37):
Here's where it gets not fun for the cave diver.
It wasn't a cave in, according to the story, it
was some thing. There was something in the water with him.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
How terrifying because he can't see it yet. He could
only feel it, like you're trying to feel a rock wall.
And all of a sudden, the rock wall is fleshy
and it's going.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
Well, yeah, it's large enough to block out the light
coming in from the entrance of the cave area. Ben,
I want you to finish this with just all of
the theatrics that it does that it needs.

Speaker 3 (37:22):
Let's okay, let's try it. So the diver screams for help.
What's that sound like?

Speaker 2 (37:29):
Ah, it sounds like this.

Speaker 3 (37:38):
So the diver is panic. It rightly. It's screaming and screaming, because,
in addition to the panic, our prospective diver here is
hoping that some fragment of his screams will make it
through the air hose and that his surface dwelling pals
will rescue him. But the only thing that hears him

(38:00):
is the monster, of course, which turns around.

Speaker 4 (38:04):
And it happens when you scream into the void.

Speaker 3 (38:06):
It turns around. It's glowing green. He can see enough
light from its movement coming in from the entrance of
the cave to freak out, and luckily he remembers he
has his knife. It's getting closer and closer to him,
and then he sees an enormous eye, and soap, being American,
he stabs it in the eye.

Speaker 4 (38:26):
Yeah, everybody knows that that's what you do with sea creatures.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
It's just the same guy who just shot at the water.

Speaker 4 (38:32):
I'm wondering he's got gumption, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
Yeah, that is the dude you send into the water.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
I think, yeah, I think you're right. I think that's
solid central casting. So this thing backs off for a second.
He sees it has more than a dozen flailing tentacles.
He slashes at it desperately, right, which is not what
manipestu has unless it's changing shape. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
So yeah, oh, guys, guys, just points on out here
as we're going in. We're talking about green glow on
a thing that is potentially made out of copper. I'm
thinking about weathered copper that's been oxidized and goes from
that that shiny copper color into this green almost teal
thing as you know, as it degrades and goes into stuff,

(39:17):
especially if it's been underwater exposed oxygen. I am wondering
if there is some kind of thing that could occur
with natural copper of some sort and the globe of
the moon right or the sun as it's hitting off
of this stuff, and it's this green color, and this is.

Speaker 3 (39:37):
This is our moment. So our guy is in a
positively epic Grecian myth level fight with a hydra for
all he knows, and it's the thing is slap in
its tentacles, Adam. He is trying to cut his way
through to escape the cave, but he ends up I

(39:58):
believe the story goes he ends up damaging his hose first,
so he cuts his hose first. Accidentally, which means has
an extremely limited time to breathe, and he manages to
split open one of the largest veins of this unidentified creature,

(40:18):
and the creature freaks out and dives deeper into the cave.
The guy never sees the end of the cave the diver.
We're happy to report according to this article, the diver
survives and the newspaper has a huge bump in sales
once they get a hold of the story. But this
is also like the age of yellow journalism. You know,

(40:40):
this is similar to the stories of ancient giant civilizations
in the Grand Canyon. There wasn't a ton of fact checking,
to be quite honest.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
Yeah, I mean it feels like a tail that is
quite tall. But you know, who are we to say
you weren't there?

Speaker 3 (41:01):
Yeah, but we can point out that usually if you
have a story like this, you'll want at least some
of the prospectors named. You'll want at least uh, the
name of an island, right, You'll want a few more
facts because that's what keeps it from sounding like a
tall campfire story.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
Yeah. So, if it does have a bunch of tentacles,
what are creatures that we know have tentacles. I'm thinking
of a squid and an octopus, a cuttlefish, anything, and
then that realm, Is there anything else that I'm not
thinking about that could have a bunch of different tentacles.

Speaker 4 (41:36):
A Cthulhu esque elder god of the deep? Potentially?

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Well, I do know that there are no there are
no species of fresh water squid or octopus or anything, right.

Speaker 4 (41:50):
I believe that screwed way, But you know, it could
be I mean, maybe not mistaken, but I mean eels
are kind of one big old tentacle.

Speaker 3 (41:58):
You know.

Speaker 4 (41:58):
Yeah, it could have been like a bunch of raking Yeah,
well exactly A bunch of them in a swarm could
feel a lot like being tentacled.

Speaker 3 (42:08):
Yeah, there are for the record, there are freshwater octopuses, really, yeah,
but they they live in brack water.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
Oh so were that's a partially.

Speaker 3 (42:21):
Salt, partially fresh.

Speaker 4 (42:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
Octopuses are also cool. Don't eat them unless you have to.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
But this lake superior in general isn't gonna be It's
not even brackish? Is it just because it's so separated
out now.

Speaker 3 (42:36):
It's fresher than fresco?

Speaker 4 (42:37):
Maybe?

Speaker 3 (42:38):
Yeah, guys.

Speaker 4 (42:39):
By the way, a group of eels is indeed called
a swarm or also known as a bed of eels.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
So maybe maybe there were a bunch of eels or
a bunch of eel like things, like maybe he saw
a bunch of lamp preis. That's terrifying too, But then
how can we explain the size of the eye that
he's Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
Because lampreys are You can hold a lamprey pretty easily
in your hand, but it does look kind of like
a little snake.

Speaker 3 (43:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And especially if you're already in a
pretty stressful environment or's mind space, and you see, as
Gul said, a swarm of eels or whatever the collective
term is for lamp praise, a terror of lamp praise,
then you could easily, especially low visibility, you could easily
assume it's one big creature and not just a group

(43:30):
of smaller creatures. This story is a banger, but it
raises interesting questions because this story does not describe anything.

Speaker 4 (43:39):
Panther like right exactly.

Speaker 3 (43:42):
It doesn't describe a great linkness. Yeah, maybe it changed shape.
Maybe there's more than one drifted I think that's shape.

Speaker 4 (43:49):
That's such a lazy argument, not not from you, bend,
just shape. Shifting in general. It could have been anything.
It's like it was a shape shifter.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
It's kind of like the last episode of Long Lost.
Oh boy, everybody's catching straight.

Speaker 4 (44:03):
I can't.

Speaker 2 (44:04):
I can't handle that. Can't handle just even the concept
of Lost because of the memories.

Speaker 3 (44:11):
Yeah, destination TV. Wow, it's a different time.

Speaker 4 (44:15):
The boys soon occupy a similar historical space to that.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
I would argue, I.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
Can't tell you, guys. I got convinced by my partner
to start watching a show very similar to Lost and
creative by some of the producers have Lost called from.

Speaker 4 (44:30):
Yeah, yeah, like I need to pick it back up.
But yeah, it's one of those mystery box type shows
for sure.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
I'm getting intense Lost vibes already from the first five
episodes where I'm just going, oh my god, they are
setting so much up and they're never gonna tell me
about the goddamn smoke monster, aren't they.

Speaker 4 (44:48):
They would have learned their lesson by now, though, and
had a better game plan or a roadmap, you would.

Speaker 3 (44:53):
Think, But it's it's really we know some TV writers
that it could be really tricky if you're on a
multi season thing to because you're always gambling, right, to
see whether you're rather the network is gonna let you
do another season right forever? Yeah, right, And then you're like,
I guess we got to do a bottle episode, or

(45:13):
let's let's do an hour on this character that you
know survey say, no one cares about.

Speaker 4 (45:18):
Let's do one from the perspective of the dog.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
Let's get to the dog because he's not union so
we don't have to pay him as much. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
I would just say, I want to see whatever this
show from that we're watching. I want to see this
guy named Victor who draws the pictures with crayon and
the little boy that can like see things. I just
want to see those two on like a Buddy road
Trip movie.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
That's all I want.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
By road Trip, everybody's great, it's just too many characters.

Speaker 4 (45:43):
All too many characters, too many cooks.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
I also love I love the increasing tendency, especially in
American discourse now, to find the shortest possible name for
shows and films. You know what I mean. I feel
kind of embarrassed for people when I see like thriller
and action films are really guilty of this. Where I
see a film whose entire name is the shooter hmm.

(46:10):
I'm like, come on, man, do you know how many
words are in the English language? Like you could have
used one or two more the shooter There we go,
see easily done.

Speaker 2 (46:22):
Any seo on that word though, bend everybody's movie.

Speaker 3 (46:28):
I mean, Disney nailed Frozen and covers just about a
lot of news stories about shooters in the United States
or the most clever thing. This is such a tangent
I believe it was. Boris Johnson did something amazing to
hack UH, to hack search engine optimization. He had an
out of the blue interview where he just talked about UH.

(46:51):
For some reason. He just talked about how he would
like take wine crates and make model buses and paint them.
This is not one of the model buses. That's a
funny camera bag. Yeah, And he did it entirely to
get another unfortunate public gaff with buses out of the
news and it worked.

Speaker 4 (47:11):
Interesting. It's weird, the great winebox subterfuge.

Speaker 3 (47:14):
I know it well, the winebox subterfuge. So this also
going back to Pressey, this could be an example of
a larger pattern that we've seen in these sightings over time,
kind of like descriptions of Santa Claus became normalized, descriptions
of the monster Pressy began to modernize. Right Michu Peshu

(47:37):
picked up the name Pressy due to some best documented
encounters with the creature on Memorial Day weekend in nineteen
seventy seven in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Speaker 4 (47:51):
So Smorial Day, we can hear, yeah it is. Couldn't
have planned this episode rollout better.

Speaker 3 (47:57):
We totally planned this, just like Lost. All right, I'll
let it go, But all right, I'll let.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
It go, but close that hatch bowling.

Speaker 4 (48:08):
I liked all the hatch stuff.

Speaker 3 (48:11):
Boat. Oh man, they did time travel pretty well. Okay,
I gotta let it go.

Speaker 4 (48:15):
Love that cast song, make your own kind of music.
You know that's a banger.

Speaker 3 (48:19):
That is a banger. And Pressey's banger name comes from
the press Isle River in Michigan's up Because by the
late nineteen seventies, people were already aware of the lockness
NeSSI stories right, and that we're fascinated by it. And
what's more American than being able to say, well, we

(48:39):
have Nessie at home. You'll have to fly to Scotland.
Just take a buddy road trip up to Michigan. And
maybe you can see America's NeSSI. We call her Pressy, Right,
So we.

Speaker 4 (48:53):
Do start seeing some NeSSI esque kind of cryptid sightings,
and you know, you know, arguably evidence that's being generated.
In eighteen ninety four, two separate steamer crews near Duluth
reported seeing a massive, undulating creature rise and fall in

(49:14):
the lakes waves.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
Yeah, we're also cherry picking a lot of the reports
because they're specifically the ones that say they saw something
serpent like.

Speaker 4 (49:23):
Well, I just want to get to the blurry photograph
because that's what I was kind of talking about too.
I mean, these early ones are more you know, oral
retellings or recounts of Yeah, we know how bad eyewitness
accounts are, so give me some hard evidence.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
There we go, and this hard evidence. After these various
serpentine or serpent like descriptions and sightings and encounters go
on throughout the eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds, we get
to nineteen seventy seven. I think this is what really
excited you know. A photograph is taken by a man
named Randy braun br A, and this shows what some

(50:02):
people will tell you is Pressy rising from the waves
and a lot of skeptics are going to dismiss I'm
doing puppetry. A lot of skeptics are going to dismiss
this as a log just kind of floating on the water,
or a trick of the light. But the true believers
will say, this is proof that this creature exists. And

(50:24):
this photo did get a lot of credence in certain circles.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
Do we have that photo. I'm looking for it. I'll
try and find it. Nineteen seventy seven.

Speaker 4 (50:34):
Yeah, we've seen this photo.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
What I'm seeing at least? Oh God, I'm on some
sub stack right now. I don't know if I can
trust this.

Speaker 4 (50:42):
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (50:44):
That's the one you'll see sighted most often. And as
you can tell, it looks like logs.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
Yeah, or drift a shadow under the water.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (50:56):
Great, Well I'm not sold, guys, I'm not sold.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
Yeah, Randy didn't convince everybody, but we also know sightings continued.
In the nineteen nineties. Fishermen near Point Iroquois saw a
deer getting dragged into the water by what they could
only describe as something powerful. The only thing they were
able to recover was the head of the buck. Woa

(51:21):
it was probably r FK yeah, or a late gater.
They have great late gaters.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
What what is the most dangerous known animal in the waters.

Speaker 3 (51:33):
It is mad mad uh, it's gonna be It's gonna
be that lamprey. Other than to your point, in all
the humans, it's going to be the lamprey.

Speaker 4 (51:42):
Lampreys they're poisonous. Don't eat them.

Speaker 3 (51:46):
They love blood and bodily fluids. They absolutely murdered trout,
you know. Okay, okay, but so I guess the question
is do we mean dangerous in general or dangerous to humans?

Speaker 2 (51:56):
Something they could take down a you know, a large
animal like that and leave only the head.

Speaker 4 (52:02):
I don't know that we have anything right that would
be indigenous to the.

Speaker 3 (52:06):
Lake, right, and the fisher folks know that as well.
So I think that's part of why they were so
freaked out.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
Yeah, I mean that makes sense though, right. You would
have to have some kind of exceptional thing happening, some
creature that shouldn't be there, that's in there, or at
least that is not known to be there to do
that thing if you truly.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
Saw that, And then it would also have to be
able to get close enough to the surface right to breach,
or at least a bit or maybe the maybe the
deer was drinking in the water right and it walked
out up to its you know, part of its deer legs. Well,
I got God.

Speaker 4 (52:44):
And one thing that often comes up to with the
accounting of like fishermen's tail is that, you know, fishermen's
when they tell their tails are often quite drunk. It's
a thing that they enjoyed to do the drink. I've really, really,
really been loving this new app TV series called Widow's
Bay that is very much centered around these types of

(53:05):
like spooky fisherman's tales and the lore. And it's a man,
is it good? It's very Stephen King ask, Like every
episode is sort of its own self contained thing within
a larger framework of story, but it's clearly nodding to
Stephen King. And it's very big good Widow's Bay. You
would love it in particular Ben, but very much what's

(53:27):
his name, Stephen Root, who we very much enjoy plays
kind of the old grizzled fisherman who's talking about the
ghosts and the fog and the tail of the sea
hag and things like that. It's really great love.

Speaker 3 (53:40):
That I am a sucker for those.

Speaker 2 (53:42):
Yeah, I want to get into the description of whatever
this thing is, because so far we've talked about the
Missu Peshu, that is this linx underwater cat thing that's
very dangerous that could very well kill a deer and
to capitate it. We got some giant tentacled creature right

(54:03):
that potentially could latch on and pull that deer under
and then do whatever with it, spit the head out.
What what are the differences between that and then something
that is closer to NeSSI, the loch Ness monster that
that's known as Pressy.

Speaker 3 (54:19):
Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question because the modern secular
cryptid accounts of Pressy are going to say, yes, this
is what the old ojib what myths were about. But
the creature they're describing has a serpent's body, a horse's head,
a whale's tail. It's blackish green in color, meaning a

(54:40):
lower back tattooed. No, no, that's a thing that's a
tram stamp in the whales too. I'm so sorry. Please continue.
A fifteen foot neck, and then it's supposed to be
around seventy five feet in total length. Again, that sounds
hard to hide.

Speaker 4 (54:57):
It just the occasional uh spotting.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
So it looked but like to that point right shape.
If we weigh again, I agree with you, I think
that's kind of lazy writing. But if we look at
if we bracket that, we look at this purported relationship
between the great links of myth and the modern Pressy,
those depictions over time are no longer that similar at all.

(55:26):
You know what I mean? That now sounds like people
are maybe maybe unconsciously, maybe acting in bad faith. They're
trying to make this legend more like NeSSI because it's
better marketing. I mean that leads us to our next questions,
what could Pressy be? Maybe we take an ad break

(55:49):
and play a fun police of the lake for a second.

Speaker 4 (55:52):
Let's do it.

Speaker 3 (55:58):
All right, we have retur now. First things first, Just
like with the more controversial alleged NeSSI photos, some of
these reports can be purposeful hoaxes. We've seen it time
and time again. It's very common, unfortunately in cryptozoology. I
remember several years back, we we who are increasingly cynical.

(56:23):
We get pretty excited when some kids in Georgia said
they had the body of an actual big Foot and
it was a gorilla costume. You guys remember this. It
was a gorilla costume.

Speaker 4 (56:37):
Like there's you know, there's many of them.

Speaker 3 (56:40):
Yes, yeah, it was a gorilla costume in a large cooler.
Maybe people do it just for fun, just to prank
the boffins. We know that happens a lot with crop
circles as well. Second possibility, what if the Great Links
the stories are based on a now extinct animal that

(57:02):
once lived in the area that died due to human
impact or the changing climate. That's possible. We also know
that Pressy could descend from stories of a real life
relic population of creatures that died out everywhere else but
persisted for some time in the unique ecosystem of the

(57:22):
Great Lakes. It reminds me of do we all remember
that story of a relic population of wooly mammos They
survived on like this one island for thousands of years
after the rest would extinct.

Speaker 4 (57:36):
Oh, I don't remember that. What I did find, though, Ben,
is that photo that we were talking about, the Glory photo.
I initially was trying to find it and I just googled,
like nineteen seventy seven press photo and what came up
initially for me was one of the most famous and
famously I believe, debunked Locanesse Monster Photos, which apparently also

(57:57):
was released in nineteen seventy seven. So you gotta wonder, like,
are they just trying to keep up with the with
the you know, the Scots, and like there's NeSSI fevers
in the air, and to your whole point of we
have NeSSI at home. You know, I don't know the
mac Jones is.

Speaker 3 (58:10):
We're keeping up with the mac Jones.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
We've talked. We won't get into it completely, but we've
talked before about how great it can be for let's say,
a local town and area of a hotel a restaurant
to have some kind of legendary crypti that exists just
in your lake, just in your town in the woods,
specifically right behind the big hotel.

Speaker 3 (58:32):
Shout out to point pleasant, West Virginia, and shout out
to that. Again, that's just the dadas of a Mothman statue. Also,
it's funny you mentioned that, guys, because I can't wait
till we all go to Japan together. But small towns
in Japan are very good about this and very transparent,

(58:53):
like every town has a mascot.

Speaker 4 (58:54):
Well, the Yokai are huge there, and they have like
red like lots of sculptures and ones that are particular
to certain regions or cities. I'm I'm really excited to
go and see some of that stuff in November.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
Yeah, it's going to be a last I feel like
there's such a a cynical thing going on with human
brains where we can't even handle that anymore. Like it's
not cool to me. That is the that is so
much fun and awesome and cool, and I think it
is for all of us here. Like that concept of
having a legend in a local small town area.

Speaker 4 (59:27):
I don't care if it's true or I don't need
to know. I like I like the imple. I just
like the mystery and the lore of it all. There's
no part of me that wants that even needs to
believe that it's real or not. It's beside the point
to me.

Speaker 3 (59:41):
Yeah, just give me a really cool quirky museum that
some guy who owns the gas station in town is
made in the back of the gas station. I'm so
into that, you know, when House of It When I
first watched House of a Thousand Corpses, if you guys
remember that one.

Speaker 4 (59:58):
Like if only that were real.

Speaker 3 (01:00:01):
Kind of Yeah. At the beginning at least I thought, Oh,
this is how they get in trouble, and this is
how this becomes a horror movie, And then instantly realized
if I were hanging out with Dylan, Matt and Nol
and we were on a road trip and a guy
had a horror museum in the back of his gas station,
we would all four absolutely.

Speaker 4 (01:00:21):
Go don't know about that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:21):
Man.

Speaker 4 (01:00:22):
Speak for yourself. I might, I might, I might read
the room. Dude. I think I would be the horror
movie character that doesn't go into the scary thing or
up the stairs.

Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
You know, you just hold open the front door, okay,
and you just like stand there with the door for us.

Speaker 4 (01:00:37):
And all this stuff we're talking about is so fully
fleshed out in that show. I was just mentioning widows,
they can't recommend it because it is also about bringing
tourism to this island that has this checkered past of
like really crazy, uh supernatural occurrences, and the mayor fighting
tooth and nail to like, you know, get away from
all that stuff. And then the local fishermen community just

(01:01:00):
like being so hardlined about no, this stuff is very,
very real it's I can't recommend it enough, especially in
the context of what we're talking about today.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
Awesome, And we also have to recommend since we're playing
Lake fun Police, we also have to mention our third
and personal forerunner for theories about Pressy it is this.
The sightings could be misidentifications of proven animals. We already
exist in the waters of Lake Superior. This happens all

(01:01:29):
the time in cryptozoology. Catfish are a great example. They
already look kind of weird. You know, they got the
switching whiskers that are mentioned in some encounters.

Speaker 4 (01:01:39):
Bottom fitters, and we eat them strangely. Wait a minute
nowt catfish.

Speaker 3 (01:01:45):
Oh that's right, I didn't even think about that.

Speaker 4 (01:01:47):
Great fish baby.

Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
Yeah, the biggest, baddest catfish that anyone had ever seen.
And they just caught the whiskers come out of the
water a little bit, and then it's splashed down real big.

Speaker 3 (01:02:00):
I'm into it. I'm into it.

Speaker 4 (01:02:02):
People do noodling where they stick their whole fist in
the water and the catfishes clombs on. Yeah, you can
lose it, lose a finger.

Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
I've done it. I still have all the factory setting fingers.
But man, that's that's a weird one. You get to
a point where you're like, hey, this is a fun afternoon,
but maybe we should just go to Kroger and buy
some fish.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
Serious question, Ben, where did you do that? Because I
want to try that Tennessee just in Uh? Is it rivers?
Are it's lakes?

Speaker 3 (01:02:31):
Lakes? No, this was a lake. You're right, you're right,
you're right. I don't remember this specifically, but yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
Okay, I just go to a place where you can
do this.

Speaker 4 (01:02:40):
Uh, you gotta go. You gotta have a guy, man,
there's no like.

Speaker 3 (01:02:43):
You gotta have a guy. You gotta have a noodle.

Speaker 4 (01:02:47):
You gotta know Kleatus from down the creek.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
Okay, okay, well hit us up.

Speaker 4 (01:02:52):
I go, I got welcome you all they call I'm
a bit of a noodle free missing his pink.

Speaker 3 (01:03:01):
Yeah, I al. They accept payment and doctor. So I mean.
It is interesting though, because catfish are a good example.
Certain kinds of catfish can grow pretty large. Side note,
by the way, for anybody who likes eat fish, the
larger catfish gets, the less tasty it's generally gonna be

(01:03:22):
because they are garbage eaters. They eat garbage.

Speaker 4 (01:03:26):
M but the table it just makes them taste yummy.

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
Just leave it there.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
But I'm imagining just the some of the some of
the tribes that lived in these areas for so long.
They're primarily you know, their food source is the rice,
right that's around them, and other naturally growing like fruits
and vegetables and stuff that are out there. But if
you caught a massive catfish, imagine how many human beings

(01:03:56):
you could feed with that, just in one go, right,
And how much of a blessing that would be, and
how important that could be just in the short term
for your group. And I don't know why that, I
don't know why I even talking about that, and just
I think it would be it could be seen as
such a moment of good fortune if you were to

(01:04:19):
capture something like this and you were able to kill
it and eat it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:22):
Yeah, it could also be. I love that idea, because
it also could be good fortune to release it and say, hey,
this is too large, and it might be close to
a breeding scene you wish it might grant you a
wish like in that film Big Fish, Remember that one.

Speaker 4 (01:04:40):
That's what I'm thinking of, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
There are only a few movies where I've cried that hard.

Speaker 4 (01:04:46):
That's a crier. Watch so good, that's a tear trigger.

Speaker 3 (01:04:50):
But we do know that there are problems with our
catfish theory, even though you can tell we all love it, folks.
The type of catfish in the Great Lakes is something
called the cham Old catfish, and it has two big
points against it. The first point is it's two to four.

Speaker 4 (01:05:05):
Pounds what not nearly half pounds not enough?

Speaker 3 (01:05:10):
I mean the biggest one, the record weight I believe
is fifty eight pounds, and that's chonky, but that's not
pressy level.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
No.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
They also they have one bigger con, which is the
real nail in the coffin here or the real fry
in the tartar sauce. The channel catfish is in all
the Great Lakes except for one lake, Superior Crap.

Speaker 4 (01:05:40):
Well, guys, you know how big fish definitely just capitalizes
on lots of different lore. But there are multiple versions
throughout various cultures that kind of what do you call it,
like synchrony of a fish that is caught and released
and then the fish grants an individual a wish, and
then the wish is typically squad and wasted due to

(01:06:01):
human greed and imperfection.

Speaker 3 (01:06:04):
Yep, yep, yep, Yeah, that's the tail.

Speaker 4 (01:06:06):
There's one by the Grim Brothers, there's one by Pushkin,
and then there are variants worldwide, including one specifically about
the East Asian carp related to dragon mythology, where there's
some transformation of the creature into a dragon rather than
this wish granting aspect of it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:23):
Pretty cool. The shape shifter again, yeah yeah, and don't
get us started on selkies. So now we've got another
culprit that I think we can all agree is very
strong as a candidate for the origin of some of
these tales. It is the lake sturgeon. These guys are bigger.

(01:06:44):
They can grow up to seven and a half seven
point twenty five feet long, and they weigh in at
two hundred and fifty pounds. They also, like the old
Mishu Peshu legends, they also have rows of bony plates
along their sides and backs, and they can live for
a very long time fifty five if you're a male,

(01:07:04):
up to one hundred and fifty if you're a female.

Speaker 4 (01:07:06):
But they still ain't panther sized, not.

Speaker 2 (01:07:09):
The panther like about them, but their face look at
the face like.

Speaker 3 (01:07:15):
Sturgeon creepy face only a mother could.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
But for real, it's not the same as a catfish
right when we were talking about but.

Speaker 3 (01:07:24):
It doesn't look like a regular fish it.

Speaker 4 (01:07:27):
Yeah, it's got that ceiling can't quality to it, like
you were mentioning earlier, Ben, And they boy, oh boy,
they do get pretty big, like a small a small panther,
perhaps a panther does.

Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
They're the little whisker looking things that are on the
front of their face, the feelers do it does now,
it does seem like something that if you caught a
glimpse of it, right.

Speaker 4 (01:07:49):
This is a bengo.

Speaker 3 (01:07:51):
Yeah, it feels like a I mean, if it was
upside down, those whiskers might be seen as horns or spines,
you know. And depending on the way it's swimming, maybe
looking into the distance in the water conditions, you could
see a sturgeon swimming from some measurable distance, something weird
is happening, and it's just bopping through on the surface

(01:08:15):
and breaking the water. It could look like one long creature,
just sort of undulating lull.

Speaker 4 (01:08:22):
It takes three men to hold one of these things.

Speaker 3 (01:08:24):
I mean, they're still pretty big.

Speaker 4 (01:08:26):
A lot of the writing about it too really references
the fact that it is kind of an example of
like a living dinosaur.

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
Oh, yeah, very much. So, Yeah, you could tell something
in the eye.

Speaker 4 (01:08:36):
Also, do you remember when we know, I think you
didn't go with me, Ben, I went to breakfast once
with our buddy AJ Jacobs in New York to this
place called Barney green Grass, the Sturgeon King of New York.
It's a really popular old timey deli, you know, breakfast
type place, and it specializes in sturgeon. It's like almost

(01:08:57):
considered even finer than like the finest of locks, and
they create caviaar very very very popular for their eggs.

Speaker 2 (01:09:07):
I'm looking at more pictures of sturgeon, specific specifically Lake
Superior Sturgeon, and when viewed from above in the water,
there is something sleek about their their heads and where
their eyes are placed that looks very feline to me.
And I don't know if that's just what I'm seeing here,

(01:09:28):
because I'm trying to overlay that to like understand what
somebody might have seen and mistook it for something feline
or panther like, but there for me, there's something something
about it. H Well, I'm thinking of a lake panther.
A great lynx, a true lynx underwater panther. I can

(01:09:49):
see something there, I hear you.

Speaker 3 (01:09:51):
Yeah, it feels again, it feels like our front runner candidate.
Because we also know, given their lifespan is lake sturgeon
can continue to grow, right, And it's possible that human
communities in the area could have thought groups of sturgeon
were a single creature cited over centuries. So now it's

(01:10:13):
the immortal pressie, it's the immortal issue, peshue. It's not
just long lived sturgeon in the same area. But it's
gotta all right, here's my take, guys. It has to
explain not all of the sightings, but at least a
few encounters, right, especially if we're talking about Europeans being
unfamiliar with the area. Right, it's a weird fish.

Speaker 4 (01:10:36):
And it is, by the way, the sturgeon is what
cavir is. Caviar is sturgeon row. I just was looking
it up and I didn't realize this specific There are
a bunch of different varieties of sturgeon, like beluga is
a different type Osteria, et cetera. But like that is
specifically what caviar is versus just row. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Also,
we're going to order some smoke sturgeon if the prices

(01:10:57):
aren't too crazy. There's also a whole thing where like
it's I forget exactly when you're harvesting the sturgeon to
you have to like get rid of the eggs because
they're illegal or in some places to harvest, and it
makes they're worth thousands and thousands of dollars.

Speaker 3 (01:11:14):
Yeah, it's a huge trade, especially out of the Caspian, right.
I think caviar is a little overrated, like the fancy
Caspian stuff, But that's just me being cheap, and we
got to say the sturgeon is one of our best
candidates for misidentification. Also, to connect this, the sturgeon is endangered.

(01:11:39):
It's a species under threat in the Great Lakes system.
So we could attempt to correlate sightings of pressy dying
off with evidence of sturgeon dying off right, So we
would be able to prove our theory in a tragic
way by noting that the fewer sturge there are, the

(01:12:00):
fewer press sidings there are. On a positive note, if
we can save this species, then we would want to
check to see whether there was a sudden uptick or
resurgence in pressy sightings. More sturgeon equals more pressy. That's
a positive note like this. Okay, yeah, all right, now
I feel bad. I'm not going to order smoke sturgeon. Okay,

(01:12:22):
now I'm learning the wrong lesson from that. So we've
got we got to tell you. Obviously, as you've heard
us say in multiple episodes over low these many years,
there are two big factors improving the existence of a
cryptid to the scientific community, in ascending order, they are this.
The second biggest factor is photographic video evidence. The biggest factor,

(01:12:46):
the real holy grail here is the physical evidence. Skeletons, poop,
living specimens. You want physical evidence, maybe the creature's impact
on other things, claw marks on trees or you know why.
Considered one of the first proofs of colossal squid huge
sucker marks on certain whales from when they beefed with

(01:13:08):
the squid. You know, yes, there's no other way to
explain that. So what about ships?

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
They got taken all the way down to the murky depths.
V Jones Lockers.

Speaker 3 (01:13:22):
I would chop at a shoe store by the coast
called Davy Jones foot Locker.

Speaker 4 (01:13:26):
That'd be fun. That'd be fun. They might have to
pay some royalties for that, though.

Speaker 3 (01:13:29):
They probably do. We're gonna write it down, but we're
not going to pitch it hard.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):
So we've just got these ancient chests that they open
up and whatever's inside.

Speaker 4 (01:13:37):
They only sell shoes with giant buckles like yeah, and
they have these rules clearly listed out right.

Speaker 3 (01:13:47):
No albatross allowed.

Speaker 4 (01:13:48):
No, you don't kill a sebird. You don't do it.
It's bad. Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:13:55):
The lighthouse U Hope springs eternal. Though, because we mentioned
in the very beginning of tonight's episode that archaeologists are
still searching for answers about ancient human habitation sites beneath
the waves, they are using incredibly impressive technology to do
these new searches. They're remote survey tools, advanced sonar that

(01:14:19):
maps the lake floor on a level we've never seen before.
It's similar in some ways to how light ar helps
you find ancient lost cities in Central America and South America,
because they can sense stone tools beneath layers of sediment
and invasive muscle blankets. And just like those old hopper prospectors,

(01:14:41):
if they find something promising, they can send down a
diver they can send down a submersible. So it's as
crazy as it sounds, and I know, sounding a little
off here. As crazy as it sounds, despite the fact
that these teams are looking for ancient human civilizations, they
might be the people with the best odds of stumbling

(01:15:03):
across this cryptid, of finding Pressy while looking for something else.
It'd be a cool story.

Speaker 4 (01:15:09):
Right, It is a cool story.

Speaker 3 (01:15:11):
We just told it. Yes, that is. If Pressy exists,
that's a great way for us to sew it up, golf,
We would. We can't thank you enough for tuning in. Folks.
Catch us at Virgin voyages. Maybe we'll find some cryptids
of our own. Maybe we were the cryptids we were
looking for all the while. But we want to hear

(01:15:31):
from you. If you live in or have spent time
in this area, do you ever hear stories about Pressy
from friends and family and neighbors. Do you have a
story of your own? Do you think there's really any
chance that, even in twenty twenty six, there might really
be a giant serpent like creature beneath the waves of

(01:15:52):
Lake Superior. Let us know. Find us on the lines,
call us on the phone, send us an email.

Speaker 4 (01:15:57):
Oh my gosh, please, by all means, do every one
of those things, starting off with reaching out to us
on the lines at the handle conspiracy stuff or conspiracy
Stuff Show. Depending on which social media platform you go
out for.

Speaker 2 (01:16:09):
You can give us a call right now or any time.
Our number is one eight three three STDWYTK. When you
call in, give yourself a cool nickname and let us
know if we can use your name and message on
the air. It might show up in one of our
listener mail episodes that show up in the audio feed.
If you happen to be watching this on Netflix.

Speaker 4 (01:16:28):
Oh what else?

Speaker 2 (01:16:30):
Oh, you can send us an email.

Speaker 3 (01:16:31):
We are the entities the redach piece of correspondence we receive.
Be well aware, yet out afraid. Sometimes the void writes back,
join us underwater. We're out in the dark. Conspiracy at
iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:17:03):
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.