March 17, 2021 • 41 mins
Did Justin Alexander Shetler - nomad, ninja and epic adventurer - meet his match in India when he disappeared in 2016? Or is a cryptic message in one of his last instagram posts proof that he doesn’t want to be found?
Michael Yon, a former green beret and combat correspondent, who assisted in the investigation to find Justin, offers insight while sharing his own favorite pastime in India: Cannibal Hunting.
Justin Shetler Alexander Show Notes:
Justin Alexander Shetler’s Instagram and Blog: Adventures of Justin
Harley Rustad’s article in ‘Outside Magazine.’ Rustad’s article was hugely helpful in writing this episode. He has a book about Justin Shetler Alexander coming out soon.
Michael Yon ~ Combat correspondent whose hobby is Aghori “cannibal” hunting.
Yon’s Vice article about Gary Stevenson.
Astray Production Team:
School of Humans // iHeartRadio
Caroline Slaughter ~ Host, Writer, Producer
Ankita Anand ~ Producer
Gabbie Watts ~ Supervising Producer
Jason Shannon ~ Composer
Harper Harris ~ Sound Design, Audio Mixer
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. A warning. This episode of Astray contains
graphic subject matter, so please be aware. Solitude makes me
appreciate human connection all the more. This is a quote
from the nomad an adventurer Justin Alexander Schetler's August twentieth,
(00:31):
twenty sixteen Instagram post. His last Instagram post. Justin, like
many seekers called the India, was in search of something more,
a higher meaning, deeper connection, a sense of purpose, enlightenment.
But we don't know if he ever found it, because
(00:52):
Justin vanished, swallowed by the Privati Valley, nicknamed the Valley
of Death, that had taken many before him. For over
two decades, around twenty one, foreigners drawn to the valley's lush,
mountainous landscape in northern India have gone missing, some in
search of a thrilling trek through the beautiful but at
(01:14):
times volatile Himalayas, and seekers drawn to the valley where
the Hindu god Shiva, with the power to destroy and
restore worlds, meditated for three thousand years. This majestic valley
is a shangri law for Westerners, not only because the
hash runs deep here, literally growing wild along the rivers
(01:36):
and roads, but It's also the home of the Rainbow Gathering,
where hippies seek peace, harmony, love, light, and freedom, away
from civilization and surrounded by nature. This sounds idyllic, magical even,
but the valley also holds dark secrets and missing foreigners
like Justin Alexander Schettler. But was Justin's last adventure meant
(02:01):
to be a spiritual one? What was he seeking and more?
Or was it worth the sacrifice? It's August twentieth, twenty sixteen.
Justin's packing his weathered backpack. His chiseled frame is thinner
than usual, and his back aches from an injury he
(02:21):
got at nineteen that's been stressed from his high altitude
cave dwelling. The past few weeks, he's been living in
idealized life of a nomad, drinking Himalayan mountain water from rivers,
scavenging edible plants, writing his journal by candlelight in a
damp but sheltering cave. He's been traveling with little food.
His only precious possessions are a bullhorn he found in
(02:43):
the forest, which is a symbol of Shiva, a long
and elegant griffin feather that looks like it was plucked
from a mythical animal and an Indian ben surrey, a
bamboo flute carved with intricate detail that he uses as
a walking stick on his meandering tracks. Justin can live
(03:04):
off of almost enough thing. That's something he used to
impress Frenzy went camping with back in the States. He's
a survivalist, even admits the at times severe conditions, so
the Pravadi Valley two days before he found an abandoned
black and brown speckled puppy in Kiera Gunga, an hour
trek from his cave where he soaks his back in
(03:25):
the hot springs that are thought to have sacred healing properties.
The puppy was wet and shivering, so Justa nestled him
under his shirt to keep him warm and took care
of the teething pop until he found him a home. Now,
Justin pack's oats, nuts, raisins, a sleeping pad and bag,
some clothing, a wool blanket, rain cover, metal cup, machette,
(03:48):
cameras and power banks. This is what he'll need for
the next few days, which will consist of a strenuous
three day track, then ten days meditating in spiritual retreat
at Montalai Lake, a holy site that at thirteen thousand
feet provides other worldly views with its barren all rock terrain.
There's no vegetation or wood to burn at the lake,
(04:10):
so like all of Justin's adventures, it's extreme. After the
ten days, the trip will close with a three day
trek back to civilization. This is not an easy journey.
You have to earn the breathtaking views in spiritual magnitude
of Montalai Lake, and though Justin is primed for a
track like this, it's not one he'll do alone. A
(04:31):
kilo of rice, sugar flower, some tea, tarp, tin, boxes
of cigarettes, and matches all for him. Joining Justin on
his holy pilgrimage will be sut Nayan Rawat. He's a Sadu,
which is a Hindu holy man who has devoted his
life to Lord Shiva and his spiritual practice even to
(04:54):
the extreme. According to Justin, this sadu has cut his
penis off in full renunciation of lust. I don't know
how to casually drop that bomb, but I find it
both unsettling and impressively dedicated. Okay, I'm out of my
depth with this one, so I'm going to get Keta's expertise,
(05:15):
What are your thoughts on that particular Sadu and his
extreme behavior. I mean, that's crazy. He cut off his penis.
I mean my first reaction would be how it's I mean,
it sounds bloody, it sounds gory, and I'm just wondering
how someone can manage to perform this medical operation upon himself.
That's just my journalistic mind speaking. That's totally not where
(05:37):
my head went. Wow, that's dedication. And then as a feminist,
I would say, well, you know, he's taking responsibility for
his feelings instead of blaming women for seducing or tempting men.
If you look at Hindu my authology, there is this
tale where sad or rishi called Vishwa Mitro was a
(06:01):
great Sadu and he was praying and meditating so well
and with such devotion that one of the gods up
there called Indra. He got insecure and he felt like
if he meditates so much, he would gain a lot
in power. So this god gets insecure and he sends
the celestial maiden called Menka down to us to seduce
(06:24):
this Sadu. Menka, the celestial maiden sent down to earth
by the god Indra does his bidding and seduces the
Sadu Veshuamitra. But then she's cursed and caught in the
middle of this envious god and now cursed Sado. Like
most of these mythical tales, the woman is a casualty,
(06:45):
which is why Ankita has some respect for a man
who's taking control over his Colonel urges she will just
assign the stars that she had to do, and you know,
she was ordered by the Scott to do it, so
she had to do it. But she gets cursed and
she gets caught in the middle. So when I hear
this story, I feel like, Okay, at least now men
are taking responsibility for their own feelings and their own actions.
(07:11):
Sadu is a general term for all holy men in India,
but you'll also hear baba and naga used to describe
rawat the Sadu justin befriended. Baba is a common term
of address for Sadus, but Naga is more specific. So
Nagas are seen as these warriors Sadus who would often
(07:31):
be seen in these kummelas or fairs, and they're often naked,
oh though sometimes when they are dealing with the public.
They do wear some kind of clothes around their private paths,
and they would often have ash smeared on their bodies
or have breadlock. So this is just kind of a
physical identification of Naga sados. There is a black and
(07:55):
white photo of Satan Aayan Rawat posted on Justin's Instagram
from August sixteenth. He wears a turban and baggy pants.
His lanky frame is punk shuated with lemon sized growths
on his elbows, wrists, ankles, and knees. The swelling lumps
are unsettling to look at in the photo. I've heard
stories about the magical powers of these bobbas. They can
(08:19):
see into your soul and know your past and future.
They can bless or curse. He spends his life sitting
by a fire that never goes out. People visit and
ask for blessings and often bring tobacco mal what he
calls charis hashish, marijuana resin, and yes, sometimes a monetary donation.
(08:42):
Some of these bobbas are reported to go months without food,
living on pure life energy and hashish, and the photo
Rowat smokes a pipe filled with chillum, a mix of
hashish and tobacco. Since Lord Shivo is a big fan
of marijuana. The drug is a dietary staple for some Sadus.
Rowat shares his chillum with Justin, among others. He fed
(09:06):
me once a day, which was often my only meal,
milk tea chapati or cure, a delicious rice pudding made
with fresh buffalo milk. They met when Justin was living
in seclusion in the caves, and by all accounts, there
was a friendly, almost nurturing relationship between them. But when
the Sadu asked Justin to join him in a spiritual pilgrimage,
(09:28):
Justin had some reservations. He speaks no English besides good
and yoga, and I'm not totally sure why I was invited.
Without words, he can't teach me any ancient doctrine or
explain anything intellectual, but from what I understand, he wants
to mentor me in the ways of the Sadu of Shiva,
(09:49):
the first Yogi. He follows a strict spiritual routine that
I know nothing about, and I am intensely curious. These
babbas are said to have magical powers from decades of
ancient yoga practice, but I don't know what to expect.
Even with that small inkling of doubt, Justin stayed the course.
(10:12):
But what he wrote on Instagram beside the black and
white photo for what is what got me. They are
holy men but wild and are even above the law
in India police won't arrest them even for murder. To me,
this shouted danger, but it was awarding. Justin didn't listen
to or want to listen to. I asked Ikeata about this.
(10:37):
Are all sados holy or their scam artists dotting those
saffron robes? Yeah? I would definitely say that they're sadus
who are shotstas and are duping people for their own benefit,
either to get money out of them or to get
access to places that they would otherwise not be allowed in.
(10:59):
Do you think these people can be dangerous? Ultimately? Yeah,
they can, especially if they're trusted completely and immediately without
any kind of background checks. Justin's final blog entry from
August nineteenth, twenty sixteen, is cryptic. I should return mid September,
so if I'm not back by then, don't look for me.
(11:23):
He signs off with a winking, smiling emoji, which makes
me wonder did he know what he was getting himself
into seeking a spiritual edge, or as someone who pushed
his physical edge as a survivalist, accomplished adventurer and ninja
who scales seven hundred foot structures. Did his quest for
a spiritual extreme lead to the ultimate sacrifice his life?
(11:52):
Above Justin's final blog post, there is a haunting video
that doesn't match the rest of his entries. This is
not one of the daring adventures Justin once captured. It's reflective.
In the video, Justin is a solitary man, monk like
walking barefoot through the mossy, dense forest, setting up camp
in his cave, meditating. The spread wings of the hawkish
(12:15):
bird tattooed on his chest looked like a symbol of freedom,
the freedom Justin continuously sought out in his life. The
music in the video matches the mood. It's eerie and rawat.
The Sadu makes an appearance surrounded by billowing smoke. His
shrewd gaze slowly meets the camera, then the video fades
(12:40):
to black. On August twenty second, twenty sixteen, Justin Rawat
an a porter the sadou hired, embarked on the strenuous
track to Montalai Lake. The trio reached their destination, and
on September third, three Indian hikers reported seeing them at
the lake. When they approached them, Justin and the Sadou
(13:03):
were arguing. Justin was exhausted and hungry. He said he
wanted to descend, but he didn't leave with the hikers.
By the end of September, Justin hadn't returned from his track,
and because of his close relationship to his mother in
a social media presence, people noticed upon hearing about Justin's disappearance.
(13:26):
One of the last people to see him, a Russian
man who had taken Justin's picture at the trailhead before
he embarked on his spiritual track, messaged a French traveler,
Christopher Lee, who was still in the valley and whom
Justin had connected with online a year earlier. He asked
Lee to check on the Sadu Rowatt, who Justin had
embarked on his spiritual crusade with. Lee hiked to kier
(13:50):
Gunga and found Rowatt sitting alone in his hut. India's
famous for criminal sadis. And this isn't just now. This
goes back and you can read about in eighteen hundreds,
I mean, many of the old books that I've read
on the India, they're like, oh, on the other the
criminal sidos and they caught that's when I executed him,
you know what I mean. And this is like Costa
Terminals dressing EPISODEOS. This is Michael Yon, a former Greenbrey
(14:14):
and current combat correspondent with a thorough knowledge of India's
topography and hidden dangers. He's often called on to navigate
disappearances like Justin's. Oh, and this is his hobby. I'm
the world's greatest cannibal hunter. That's my modest opinion. This
is one of the most interesting things about jan which
(14:36):
we'll get into later, But what we're talking about now
is his proficiency for man hunting with Justin. First of all,
people contacted me about him. You know, his mother and
his best friend were looking for him, and so other
people notice that. They're like, hey, Mike, you know they
know me from my work correspondent work, right, and they're like, hey,
(14:58):
you've talked sometimes about tracking people in India. So that
some people sent it to me that checked it out
and put that on his online diary. That started reading
part of it, and I was like, he sounds like
actually a cool guy actually, except he's got a weakness.
He's seeking. While I relate to being a seeker, Yan
(15:18):
sees it as a liability. And I get this. I mean,
someone like Jan who has been forced to trust his
instincts in combat a life or death situation, doesn't have
the luxury of curiosity or trust for that matter. But
like me, He also noticed Justin's hesitancy about joining Rowatt
on this spiritual track. You could tell in the back
(15:40):
of his mind that something didn't sit right with him.
It's just like one sentence in there somewhere. I don't
remember what it said, but I was like, you just
set it to yourself. You didn't listen to it, and
that little voice says, don't do it, and you're in India.
You don't do it, You back off, you know what
I mean. But he didn't. He pressed forward. And now
(16:02):
Rowatt's that alone in his stone walled hut rome. A
month ago, Justin had shot that eerie video of the Sadu.
The French trekker Lee, who was sent to confront Rawat,
asked him about Justin, to which Rawat replied, Justin is crazy.
Then he ranted about Justin leaving him. After meeting some
trekkers at the lake who he headed up the valley with.
(16:25):
Lee didn't believe the Sadu, who he knew many were
referred to as a business baba who was only out
for money, not enlightenment. Lee immediately filed a police report.
After studying Justin's blog and social media entries, Michael John
came to the same conclusion, you need to go to
that naga. Based on everything I'm reading, I would track
(16:46):
his ass down. That's your guy. I don't know, obviously,
I've never met him. It's just it's written right there
in plain view, right, I mean, it's not in play.
It's written for me in plain view. And they wanted
to hire me. I'm like, I'm busy on some stuff,
but I'll advise you as you're over there. So they
went over there, and they rented a helicopter and got
(17:07):
a bunch of men together and had it brought it
drone out all kinds of stuff, and then they found
his flute, the Indian ben surrey or bamboo flute that
Justin had been using as a walking stick. I assume
if he was as weak as those who saw him
said he was, that he would be somewhat dependent on
that walking stick to navigate the strenuous track to the
(17:28):
lake or from it. So when the flute was found
and he wasn't, that said something. I got a message
like we found this, we found his flute and some
other stuff. I was like, bag it up, man, and
treat it like a crime scene. I know you're not
FBI or something, but you haven't solved it yet, you
know what I mean. You haven't solved it until you've
got a body or something. And they got a little
(17:52):
overconfident in that. Now. I was like, you're making a mistake.
You need to gather all information at all times. Vacuum
up everything and preserve everything. Photograph everything from ten different
as this right when people are talking, get the recorder
going because there's little clues. They're flying around here and
you're not going to be able to figure a mountain tea.
(18:12):
Listen to the recording ten times right, and long story short,
the Indian government got involved because it started getting more
pressed that Naga got arrested. At the valley's small police station,
Rowatt sat in front of Susie Reebe, Justin's mom, who
had flown to India October ninth to look for her son,
who had been missing for over a month. Rowatt told
(18:35):
Reebe a different story than he had told Lee the
Frenchman who had reported him to the authorities. Rowatt was
not a reliable source, which made him look guilty for
either knowing more about Justin's disappearance than he let on
or for murdering him. You may have read the story right.
(18:55):
He ended up being hanged, so wow, that was the
guy who called him to go get Jana speaking about Rowatt,
but his account is different from other reports where Rowatt
press umably hung himself with his doughtie the loose pants
he wore. Media outlets paint Rowatt's death two different ways
as a confession to his guilt or as a response
(19:16):
to the immense shame he felt at being penned for
Justin's murder. Either way, this tragedy is heartbreaking because, like
Ryan chambers parents, Reeb doesn't have any answers round her
son's disappearance. As we've seen, Justin's skated this line between
adventure and harm effortlessly in his life. He conquered dangerous
(19:39):
situations with an ease that's envious to many of us
who only wish we could dare so greatly. But Justin
is still human and susceptible to danger, which is something
that unfortunately found him in India. Michael John, the Manhunter
who helped with the investigation of Justin's disappearance, had a
(20:00):
respect for Justin because he too is drawn to danger
and as and tracking people who deeply understand what enlightenment
means to them. What's the cost eating another human? Once
(20:24):
you've tracked enough album, that's the easiest spotting a Catholic priest,
you know what I mean. Michael Johan is talking about
his ability to spot and a gory or his fond
nickname for them cannibals. He's not wrong the agory or
sadus that engage in post mortem rituals, which includes cannibalism.
Jan told me about a time when he was helping
a former Israeli special Forces officer Egal Zor find a
(20:48):
missing Israeli who had presumably drowned in the Ganges. But
they came across a different body and someone who had
their sights on it. Trigger warning. This is where it
gets graphic. He had found this body and it's naked.
Out of all the hundreds of bodies I've seen there.
None were naked, and the ones that were close to naked,
(21:09):
they were clearly in the river for a very long time,
like there was almost like their hands would be missing.
Always you would see hands and feet would first to
be missing because the dogs would get the hands in
the feet, and sometimes they would be headless. But this
one looked really fresh, and it had no pubic hair.
It was a male. It had no armpit hair, and
(21:32):
it looked like the head was shaved partially, and it
had a wire saw in the head right like somebody
was cutting into the head with the wire saw. It
looks like somebody has hacked out. It's abdomin. It's like
really eviscerated. Like something's wrong here, I said, the goall
that looks like a human sacrifice. The police are right there.
(21:55):
The body's there. It looks like it's been murdered. It's
got what appears to be confusions. I didn't see any
knife marks on the forearms or anything like that. No
bullet wounds. And this agory comes out now the gory's
feet are in the river. They actually think that they
can meditate beside the Godgas River and make a body
come to them, So think how this plays into his
(22:16):
potential psyche. He sees white Israeli dude swim out into
the river and come back with a body. It's like, well,
I'm praying for a body to come and there it is, right,
and it's like, you know, pizza delivery here almost right,
And the agory reaches down into the river. This body
is naked, The guts are hanging out, intestines are hanging out.
(22:41):
It looks like it's been hacked open, and not just slit,
but like missing part of the ribs and stuff like
a jack o lantern top is taken off, you know
what I mean. And the top is missing and all
the guts are exposed. You know, flies are landing on
a body because you can see him in the photos.
And he picks a stone from the river, from the
gongs and he puts it on the pubic bone of
(23:01):
the body, just above the penis right, and then he
reaches down and he picks part of the force get
off and eats it right in front of the police
and gods, who are this? You know, former Special Forces
officer in the IDF. He's like, then my adrenaline just went.
You know, I've been in India many many times for
(23:22):
many years, and I've never seen something like this. What
was this man? What is he doing? And I was like, well,
that's clearly an a gory. It doesn't take five months
of study or six months of study the spot one
I can teach you in like you two hours, right,
and then the agory picked up a stick and everything,
and he disappeared into the jungle. This story is so
(23:43):
out there. When Yon first told it to me, I
didn't believe him. But when he broke down the beliefs
of the agory why they do what they do, it
made more sense. They believe a God or the gods
created everything, and God or the gods is perfect. Therefore
everything is perfect in the world. Therefore, if you're disgusted
by anything, you're disgusted by God, and you should seek
(24:05):
to overcome everything that disgusted you, seek to overcome the
emotion of disgust. You can see how seeking to overcome
the emotion of disgust would lead to some pretty vile behavior, which,
according to Jan it definitely does. I mean, they'll literally
sleep with a dead dog for until the as a
pillow as it rots day after day, week after week
(24:27):
until it's gone maggots and everything, right, carrying it on
their shoulder walking down the road, dead dog, right, you know,
set it beside them whether they're eating. You know, they
believe that, for instance, prostitutes and menstrual blood are bad, right,
And so they don't like have sex with a menstruating
prostitute on a corpse in a burning place or in
(24:48):
a cemetery, right, like stacking disgust on top of disgust.
And just so you know how to spot in the gory,
they always carry a human skull to drink from or
eat from, or they use it for begging for alms.
They use a human femur as a horn beeB right,
and and they use baby stalls and baby skins for
a damaru drum. A damaru is those sorts of drums
(25:11):
where it's got you know, you hold it in your
hand and you can twist your wrist bing bing bing
bing bing bing bing bing, you know what I mean.
Often they'll be wearing black. They'll have you know, dreadlocks typically,
which a lot of people do, but they'll often be
wearing a garland of bones, human bones. They've got a
certain look. I know, all of this sounds pretty outrageous.
(25:35):
And I'm sure, like I did, you're questioning it. I mean,
rationalizing cannibalism isn't easy. But these Agory consider their post
mortem rituals holy. They live among India's cremation sites, where
Lord Shiva and kylie Ma, whom they worship, are said
to dwell, their faces and bodies painted in ash. They
(25:55):
collect the remains of the humans disposed there, using them
in rituals to reach spiritual enlightenment. These rituals do include
the taboo act of cannibalism, but they also ascribe to
a combination of marijuana, alcohol, and meditation to bring them
to a disconnected state of heightened awareness. There's no doubt
(26:16):
that the agory practices are radical, but are they dangerous?
Jan makes a correlation between the agory and those who
have gone missing in India, as photos of missing people
all over the place here, for like missing tourists and stuff.
And it says even in the Lonely Planet guide book
it said like two to three people go missing every
(26:38):
three to four months Westerners and nobody it's hardly ever
in the news, right, and it's like it's covered up
or something like that. And I was like, Wow, this
is so weird based on just other things that I
was picking up. I was like, I wonder if they're
related to some of these people that are missing. This
is an extreme theory, but as you can tell, Jan
is an extreme sort of guy. But if this theory
(27:00):
is true, why besides the cannibalism factor, will the Agori
want to go after Western Obviously Jan has an opinion
on this too. You know, Shakti is the universal feminine
energy in Hinduism, right, and a good analogy to shakti
is just money. You can be born with shockti, you
can earn it, lose it, it can be stolen from you.
(27:23):
And they believe some people know how to make shakti
better than others. And for instance, children they believe have
a lot of shocked because they didn't use their shockdi
yet because they're young. And they also believe that Caucasians
have a lot of shocked because that explains partially why
Caucasians are so rich and are able to travel around
the world. Right, And so they would prefer to sacrifice
(27:48):
somebody with shakti, a lot of shakti, because they'll get
that shock ti. So they're not only robbing you for
your watch. They're robbing you for your Shockti. We've spoken
about the destabilizing dangers of India, or the idea that
something ominous is lurking beneath the spiritual steak, waiting ready
to pounce on an unsuspecting foreigner, sacrificing their mind or
(28:12):
their body. If this threat were personified, it would be
in a gory, or at least the kind of a
gory that Michael jan has described. But I'll be honest,
these stories felt like larger than life tales to me,
so obviously I pulled a Kita end to ask if
she believes these Agori pos as much of a threat
to western tourist as Michael claims. And Qita has never
(28:35):
reported on the Agori, but this is what she knows
from her research and from colleagues you have. I would
say that Agoris the minute you talk of them, you
immediately think of people who practice tantrik with thea or
knowledge of the tantra. I always assumed anything related to
tantra was sexual, but in Keita clarifies what tantra VideA
(28:57):
is for me. Very strong, possibly even dark powers, and
worshiping God's like Kali or Shiva who are associated with
very strong, almost reache like emotions, and therefore it is
said that their powers are destructive. And therefore it is
(29:20):
said that if you are in agory, and if you
are trying to develop your powers, then you have to
be very careful because not only can you destroy others,
you can also destroy yourself. Do you think that these
are gory have anything to do with people that have
come missing in India? I would not make a correlation
there concluding that because gorries a rituals around corpses, they're
(29:45):
more likely to kill or come at other crimes. That's
like watching a mystery movie and saying that the most
dangerous looking person must be the murderer. But that is yeah,
I mean, at the end of the movie, it's usually
the most innocent person, right, seemingly innocent. But since agory
(30:05):
have to do with religion and ristuls and religious people
are not supposed to cause harm, they're supposed to be
holy and sacred. They are trusted more easily to take
undue advantage of that trust and devotion, somebody may adopt
the guys off in agorian indulgent crimes. So just because
the egory worships something taboo in our culture doesn't necessarily
(30:28):
make them dangerous to us. But Akita explains why it
might be terrifying for a Westerner to witness one of
the Agori's ritualistic acts. It's just an extension of the
fear that comes with seeing something that is not seen
commonly around you, or seeing something that you do not understand.
I asked Keita to fact check Michael stat that two
(30:50):
to three Westerners go missing every three to four months
in India, which she couldn't find any specific data on,
but she did say compared to the States, it's easy
for Westerners to get visas in India, so the Indian
government is and as concerned with tracking foreigners, which means
it's a country where someone could easily fall off the grid.
(31:13):
The American agory Gary Stephenson was one of those people.
He disappeared in India by choice, but when Yan heard
about him, Gary didn't have a choice. There was nothing
stopping Jan from seeing for himself. This Texan turned Cannibal
(31:40):
Michael Jan as a hero. Legitimately, he served our country
in the military and then as a combat correspondent reporting
from war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is a
moving picture he took of a US Army major cradling
an Iraqi girl. She's so small she looks like a
doll in his arms. His face is obscured by her
(32:01):
wet hair, her fragile body wrapped in a blood soaked blank.
Get this child. Farah died on the helicopter ride to
the hospital. It was a car bomb that killed her,
one of the many bombs Yan experienced at war, and
Farah was one of the many children he saw die.
(32:21):
This would do a number on anyone. He still has
detailed nightmares bought suicide bombings, but he wakes up, puts
his blinders on, and gets back to work. He's now
focused on fighting the Chinese Communist Party. My point is
Jan's trained military, an instinctive manhunter, and when he set
(32:42):
his sights on tracking down Gary Stevenson or Gary the Cannibal,
as Yan fondly calls him, there was no doubt he
would find him. I was able to catch Yan on
a car trip he was making through the Redwoods. So
the audio isn't great, but Jan filled me in on
my Gary, a seemingly normal, hippieish spiritual dude, ended up
in India eating people. Dar he's more like walk feel hey,
(33:06):
not all hit. These are nice guys, right, like Charles Manson,
you know what I mean. Gary Stephenson, a descendant of
Robert Louis Stephenson, author of Treasure Island, grew up in
Texas in the nineteen fifties and I'll leave it to
beaver household. At two years old, he got polio, which
left him with a shriveled leg that, according to Jan
(33:26):
looked like bone with some skin attached to it. Throughout
his life, Gary searched for a way to heal his leg,
but he was constantly let down by different ideologies or methods.
Gary was set on a spiritual path at fifteen when
his mother gave him a copy of Autobiography of a
Yogi by a param Hans Yoganand I read the Bible
(33:47):
and the clans and autobiography, and they're all promising immortality.
They're all promising miracle cures. They're all promising, you know,
touched by the Guru and now you're heeled. And so
they're all they're all promising the same stuff. One of
the big things a religion that's gonna last, As to
promise immortality. You don't promise emortality. We're not going to
get a lot of people joined up. Gary was influenced
(34:10):
by the spiritual truths delivered an autobiography of Yogi and
some other themes as well, and the book Autobiography of Yogie.
What does he do? Runs away? You know, the child
runs away, rows up to Northern India, which is where Gary.
Gary eventually ended up in Northern India. But when he
ran away from home as a teen due to a
toxic relationship with his father, he bounced around, living in
(34:34):
hate Ashbury in the sixties, then Taylor Camp, a hippie
refuge in Kawaii where people were naked more than not,
and then a spiritual pilgrimage made by many seekers at
the time. This is Hippieville nineteen sixties, right, This is
Uru seeking run off from the hippie trail, who ran
through Afghanistan, through Pakistan, India, Nepal and that was the
(34:57):
big bickie trail, right, and then someone end up in Thailand.
But through all of his travels, which centered mostly on
California and why Gary kept coming back to India, He
just kept going west west until he was east, right,
and it was the same way. It's clear with this
religious streams. It was like the frog in the water.
Things clearly got more and more. This is normal, This
(35:20):
is normal until you know he's finally eating people, I
mean really eating people. Come on, it's straight up. You
can go to you can go to Varnassi right now.
And and I am like ninety percent certain that you
could find somebody probably within the first twelve hours that
knew him, because I've interviewed a lot of him, I've
got him on video, and I've got him on audience.
(35:41):
He was he was eating people right in front of people.
It's like nobody, nobody's gonna stop you and varn Aussi
from doing But that line, if you want to become
if you want to become accountable, you can get on
an airplane in Atlanta Airport right now, in forty eight
hours from now, you can be eating people in Varnassi
and nobody's gonna say, shit, you're insane. I'm not gonna
do that. You're gonna do it. We're gonna You're gonna
(36:03):
do it. I know you're gonna do it. You're gonna
do it because you have to do it to make
sure it's real. Okay, I go in deep for a story,
but there is a definitive line here for me. But
that tight rope I've spoken about with enlightenment, that thin
line between healing and harm. I'd say that Gary crossed
over in harm. But Michael sees the Agorian their rituals differently.
(36:27):
I'll take you to India when this pandemic is over,
and you will meet Agoye, and I guarantee you you're
going to question yourself, is this guy really crazy? Or
is this just his religion because this religion goes back
at least six hundred years, right? And is it irrational?
Is it irrational when you look I'm talking about not
from power perspective as Americans, especially from the East Coast
(36:48):
as I am from. So for me, it's completely radical
and insane, right, But in the context of things I've
seen around the world, is it insane? Nope, not even close.
Think about it. Salmons are constant in Asia, been thousands
of fanis. Nobody could ever possibly count the ball, right,
(37:09):
And when it comes to people that starved, the death
for people that die in survival famine situations one of
the number one reasons why some people survive and some
dope is they overcome tabs more quickly. You can have
the biggest famine in the world. If there's two people left,
the agory is going to be the one that's left standing.
(37:30):
This is just my theory. I don't know where it
came from. The ability to overcome discussed pretty much. You know,
gives you an insurance policy against a lot of disasters.
Jan formed a friendship with Gary, one where Yan had
to continually look over his shoulder to make sure he
wasn't going to be attacked, but ironically also one of respect.
(37:52):
When Yan negotiated Gary's released from prison after he tried
to stab a man and was charged with a visa violation.
Oh and a woman's arm was found in his hut,
though he wasn't charged for that. Gary offered to give
up cannibalism for him, but at this point Jan doesn't
know if that ever happened. After getting him out of
jail in India, Jan brought Gary back to the States
(38:15):
for a bit, but Gary was able to obtain another
ten year India visa, so he flew back and yet
again fell off the grid. On Jan's website, he has
copies of Gary Stevenson's passport and license, along with photographs
that prove that Gary the Cannibal was not just an
urban legend, but a man as you've witnessed. Like Gary, Michael,
(38:40):
Jan is a memorable character and his stories are intense
and sensational, which is something I considered when deciding whether
or not to add them to this episode, and something
I confronted John about. I'll be honest with you, a
lot of the stories with the Cannibals are so extreme.
I just continuously want to ground it so that people
(39:02):
can actually be on board and not be like, is
this really real? Because it is. It's so out there, dude,
Oh it's real. An hour after this conversation with Jan,
I read about American movie star Army Hammer, who was
called out by an X who said the actor told
her he wanted to break her rib, then barbecue and
(39:22):
eat it. Hammer allegedly asked another partner if he could
cut off her toe and keep it as a souvenir.
I told Yan I'd found his next cannibal to hunt down,
but he declined and said even Gary the Cannibal would
think Army Hammer was a creep. Apparently, there is a
line in Cannibalism too, and the next episode of Astray,
(39:47):
I'll be reporting on someone whose story has affected me
more than any I've covered, and because of a connection
I made while researching the story, one that's ultimately made
me question this entire podcast, like I don't know, I
just feel really fel torn about it and even writing
his episodes really hard. I'll share that and more on
(40:14):
the next episode of A Stray. Many of the logistical
facts that I found around Justin Schtler Alexander's disappearance came
from a thorough article that Harley Rustad wrote for Outside
Magazine in twenty eighteen. Rustad will soon be releasing a
book on this called Lost in the Valley of Death.
(40:37):
Astray as a production of School of Humans and iHeartRadio.
Today's episode of Astray, Justin Alexander Schettler was produced, written,
and narrated by Me, Caroline Slaughter and Quita Ananda is
my co producer, and Gabby Watts is our supervising producer.
With special thanks to our voiceover Van Gunter. Astray was
(40:59):
sound produced by Tune Welders, scored by Jason Shannon, and
mix by Harper Harris. Executive producers are Elsie Crowley, Brian Lavin,
and Brandon Barr, thanks for listening. School of Humans,
School of Humans. A warning. This episode of Astray contains
graphic subject matter, so please be aware. Solitude makes me
appreciate human connection all the more. This is a quote
from the nomad an adventurer Justin Alexander Schetler's August twentieth,
(00:31):
twenty sixteen Instagram post. His last Instagram post. Justin, like
many seekers called the India, was in search of something more,
a higher meaning, deeper connection, a sense of purpose, enlightenment.
But we don't know if he ever found it, because
(00:52):
Justin vanished, swallowed by the Privati Valley, nicknamed the Valley
of Death, that had taken many before him. For over
two decades, around twenty one, foreigners drawn to the valley's lush,
mountainous landscape in northern India have gone missing, some in
search of a thrilling trek through the beautiful but at
(01:14):
times volatile Himalayas, and seekers drawn to the valley where
the Hindu god Shiva, with the power to destroy and
restore worlds, meditated for three thousand years. This majestic valley
is a shangri law for Westerners, not only because the
hash runs deep here, literally growing wild along the rivers
(01:36):
and roads, but It's also the home of the Rainbow Gathering,
where hippies seek peace, harmony, love, light, and freedom, away
from civilization and surrounded by nature. This sounds idyllic, magical even,
but the valley also holds dark secrets and missing foreigners
like Justin Alexander Schettler. But was Justin's last adventure meant
(02:01):
to be a spiritual one? What was he seeking and more?
Or was it worth the sacrifice? It's August twentieth, twenty sixteen.
Justin's packing his weathered backpack. His chiseled frame is thinner
than usual, and his back aches from an injury he
(02:21):
got at nineteen that's been stressed from his high altitude
cave dwelling. The past few weeks, he's been living in
idealized life of a nomad, drinking Himalayan mountain water from rivers,
scavenging edible plants, writing his journal by candlelight in a
damp but sheltering cave. He's been traveling with little food.
His only precious possessions are a bullhorn he found in
(02:43):
the forest, which is a symbol of Shiva, a long
and elegant griffin feather that looks like it was plucked
from a mythical animal and an Indian ben surrey, a
bamboo flute carved with intricate detail that he uses as
a walking stick on his meandering tracks. Justin can live
(03:04):
off of almost enough thing. That's something he used to
impress Frenzy went camping with back in the States. He's
a survivalist, even admits the at times severe conditions, so
the Pravadi Valley two days before he found an abandoned
black and brown speckled puppy in Kiera Gunga, an hour
trek from his cave where he soaks his back in
(03:25):
the hot springs that are thought to have sacred healing properties.
The puppy was wet and shivering, so Justa nestled him
under his shirt to keep him warm and took care
of the teething pop until he found him a home. Now,
Justin pack's oats, nuts, raisins, a sleeping pad and bag,
some clothing, a wool blanket, rain cover, metal cup, machette,
(03:48):
cameras and power banks. This is what he'll need for
the next few days, which will consist of a strenuous
three day track, then ten days meditating in spiritual retreat
at Montalai Lake, a holy site that at thirteen thousand
feet provides other worldly views with its barren all rock terrain.
There's no vegetation or wood to burn at the lake,
(04:10):
so like all of Justin's adventures, it's extreme. After the
ten days, the trip will close with a three day
trek back to civilization. This is not an easy journey.
You have to earn the breathtaking views in spiritual magnitude
of Montalai Lake, and though Justin is primed for a
track like this, it's not one he'll do alone. A
(04:31):
kilo of rice, sugar flower, some tea, tarp, tin, boxes
of cigarettes, and matches all for him. Joining Justin on
his holy pilgrimage will be sut Nayan Rawat. He's a Sadu,
which is a Hindu holy man who has devoted his
life to Lord Shiva and his spiritual practice even to
(04:54):
the extreme. According to Justin, this sadu has cut his
penis off in full renunciation of lust. I don't know
how to casually drop that bomb, but I find it
both unsettling and impressively dedicated. Okay, I'm out of my
depth with this one, so I'm going to get Keta's expertise,
(05:15):
What are your thoughts on that particular Sadu and his
extreme behavior. I mean, that's crazy. He cut off his penis.
I mean my first reaction would be how it's I mean,
it sounds bloody, it sounds gory, and I'm just wondering
how someone can manage to perform this medical operation upon himself.
That's just my journalistic mind speaking. That's totally not where
(05:37):
my head went. Wow, that's dedication. And then as a feminist,
I would say, well, you know, he's taking responsibility for
his feelings instead of blaming women for seducing or tempting men.
If you look at Hindu my authology, there is this
tale where sad or rishi called Vishwa Mitro was a
(06:01):
great Sadu and he was praying and meditating so well
and with such devotion that one of the gods up
there called Indra. He got insecure and he felt like
if he meditates so much, he would gain a lot
in power. So this god gets insecure and he sends
the celestial maiden called Menka down to us to seduce
(06:24):
this Sadu. Menka, the celestial maiden sent down to earth
by the god Indra does his bidding and seduces the
Sadu Veshuamitra. But then she's cursed and caught in the
middle of this envious god and now cursed Sado. Like
most of these mythical tales, the woman is a casualty,
(06:45):
which is why Ankita has some respect for a man
who's taking control over his Colonel urges she will just
assign the stars that she had to do, and you know,
she was ordered by the Scott to do it, so
she had to do it. But she gets cursed and
she gets caught in the middle. So when I hear
this story, I feel like, Okay, at least now men
are taking responsibility for their own feelings and their own actions.
(07:11):
Sadu is a general term for all holy men in India,
but you'll also hear baba and naga used to describe
rawat the Sadu justin befriended. Baba is a common term
of address for Sadus, but Naga is more specific. So
Nagas are seen as these warriors Sadus who would often
(07:31):
be seen in these kummelas or fairs, and they're often naked,
oh though sometimes when they are dealing with the public.
They do wear some kind of clothes around their private paths,
and they would often have ash smeared on their bodies
or have breadlock. So this is just kind of a
physical identification of Naga sados. There is a black and
(07:55):
white photo of Satan Aayan Rawat posted on Justin's Instagram
from August sixteenth. He wears a turban and baggy pants.
His lanky frame is punk shuated with lemon sized growths
on his elbows, wrists, ankles, and knees. The swelling lumps
are unsettling to look at in the photo. I've heard
stories about the magical powers of these bobbas. They can
(08:19):
see into your soul and know your past and future.
They can bless or curse. He spends his life sitting
by a fire that never goes out. People visit and
ask for blessings and often bring tobacco mal what he
calls charis hashish, marijuana resin, and yes, sometimes a monetary donation.
(08:42):
Some of these bobbas are reported to go months without food,
living on pure life energy and hashish, and the photo
Rowat smokes a pipe filled with chillum, a mix of
hashish and tobacco. Since Lord Shivo is a big fan
of marijuana. The drug is a dietary staple for some Sadus.
Rowat shares his chillum with Justin, among others. He fed
(09:06):
me once a day, which was often my only meal,
milk tea chapati or cure, a delicious rice pudding made
with fresh buffalo milk. They met when Justin was living
in seclusion in the caves, and by all accounts, there
was a friendly, almost nurturing relationship between them. But when
the Sadu asked Justin to join him in a spiritual pilgrimage,
(09:28):
Justin had some reservations. He speaks no English besides good
and yoga, and I'm not totally sure why I was invited.
Without words, he can't teach me any ancient doctrine or
explain anything intellectual, but from what I understand, he wants
to mentor me in the ways of the Sadu of Shiva,
(09:49):
the first Yogi. He follows a strict spiritual routine that
I know nothing about, and I am intensely curious. These
babbas are said to have magical powers from decades of
ancient yoga practice, but I don't know what to expect.
Even with that small inkling of doubt, Justin stayed the course.
(10:12):
But what he wrote on Instagram beside the black and
white photo for what is what got me. They are
holy men but wild and are even above the law
in India police won't arrest them even for murder. To me,
this shouted danger, but it was awarding. Justin didn't listen
to or want to listen to. I asked Ikeata about this.
(10:37):
Are all sados holy or their scam artists dotting those
saffron robes? Yeah? I would definitely say that they're sadus
who are shotstas and are duping people for their own benefit,
either to get money out of them or to get
access to places that they would otherwise not be allowed in.
(10:59):
Do you think these people can be dangerous? Ultimately? Yeah,
they can, especially if they're trusted completely and immediately without
any kind of background checks. Justin's final blog entry from
August nineteenth, twenty sixteen, is cryptic. I should return mid September,
so if I'm not back by then, don't look for me.
(11:23):
He signs off with a winking, smiling emoji, which makes
me wonder did he know what he was getting himself
into seeking a spiritual edge, or as someone who pushed
his physical edge as a survivalist, accomplished adventurer and ninja
who scales seven hundred foot structures. Did his quest for
a spiritual extreme lead to the ultimate sacrifice his life?
(11:52):
Above Justin's final blog post, there is a haunting video
that doesn't match the rest of his entries. This is
not one of the daring adventures Justin once captured. It's reflective.
In the video, Justin is a solitary man, monk like
walking barefoot through the mossy, dense forest, setting up camp
in his cave, meditating. The spread wings of the hawkish
(12:15):
bird tattooed on his chest looked like a symbol of freedom,
the freedom Justin continuously sought out in his life. The
music in the video matches the mood. It's eerie and rawat.
The Sadu makes an appearance surrounded by billowing smoke. His
shrewd gaze slowly meets the camera, then the video fades
(12:40):
to black. On August twenty second, twenty sixteen, Justin Rawat
an a porter the sadou hired, embarked on the strenuous
track to Montalai Lake. The trio reached their destination, and
on September third, three Indian hikers reported seeing them at
the lake. When they approached them, Justin and the Sadou
(13:03):
were arguing. Justin was exhausted and hungry. He said he
wanted to descend, but he didn't leave with the hikers.
By the end of September, Justin hadn't returned from his track,
and because of his close relationship to his mother in
a social media presence, people noticed upon hearing about Justin's disappearance.
(13:26):
One of the last people to see him, a Russian
man who had taken Justin's picture at the trailhead before
he embarked on his spiritual track, messaged a French traveler,
Christopher Lee, who was still in the valley and whom
Justin had connected with online a year earlier. He asked
Lee to check on the Sadu Rowatt, who Justin had
embarked on his spiritual crusade with. Lee hiked to kier
(13:50):
Gunga and found Rowatt sitting alone in his hut. India's
famous for criminal sadis. And this isn't just now. This
goes back and you can read about in eighteen hundreds,
I mean, many of the old books that I've read
on the India, they're like, oh, on the other the
criminal sidos and they caught that's when I executed him,
you know what I mean. And this is like Costa
Terminals dressing EPISODEOS. This is Michael Yon, a former Greenbrey
(14:14):
and current combat correspondent with a thorough knowledge of India's
topography and hidden dangers. He's often called on to navigate
disappearances like Justin's. Oh, and this is his hobby. I'm
the world's greatest cannibal hunter. That's my modest opinion. This
is one of the most interesting things about jan which
(14:36):
we'll get into later, But what we're talking about now
is his proficiency for man hunting with Justin. First of all,
people contacted me about him. You know, his mother and
his best friend were looking for him, and so other
people notice that. They're like, hey, Mike, you know they
know me from my work correspondent work, right, and they're like, hey,
(14:58):
you've talked sometimes about tracking people in India. So that
some people sent it to me that checked it out
and put that on his online diary. That started reading
part of it, and I was like, he sounds like
actually a cool guy actually, except he's got a weakness.
He's seeking. While I relate to being a seeker, Yan
(15:18):
sees it as a liability. And I get this. I mean,
someone like Jan who has been forced to trust his
instincts in combat a life or death situation, doesn't have
the luxury of curiosity or trust for that matter. But
like me, He also noticed Justin's hesitancy about joining Rowatt
on this spiritual track. You could tell in the back
(15:40):
of his mind that something didn't sit right with him.
It's just like one sentence in there somewhere. I don't
remember what it said, but I was like, you just
set it to yourself. You didn't listen to it, and
that little voice says, don't do it, and you're in India.
You don't do it, You back off, you know what
I mean. But he didn't. He pressed forward. And now
(16:02):
Rowatt's that alone in his stone walled hut rome. A
month ago, Justin had shot that eerie video of the Sadu.
The French trekker Lee, who was sent to confront Rawat,
asked him about Justin, to which Rawat replied, Justin is crazy.
Then he ranted about Justin leaving him. After meeting some
trekkers at the lake who he headed up the valley with.
(16:25):
Lee didn't believe the Sadu, who he knew many were
referred to as a business baba who was only out
for money, not enlightenment. Lee immediately filed a police report.
After studying Justin's blog and social media entries, Michael John
came to the same conclusion, you need to go to
that naga. Based on everything I'm reading, I would track
(16:46):
his ass down. That's your guy. I don't know, obviously,
I've never met him. It's just it's written right there
in plain view, right, I mean, it's not in play.
It's written for me in plain view. And they wanted
to hire me. I'm like, I'm busy on some stuff,
but I'll advise you as you're over there. So they
went over there, and they rented a helicopter and got
(17:07):
a bunch of men together and had it brought it
drone out all kinds of stuff, and then they found
his flute, the Indian ben surrey or bamboo flute that
Justin had been using as a walking stick. I assume
if he was as weak as those who saw him
said he was, that he would be somewhat dependent on
that walking stick to navigate the strenuous track to the
(17:28):
lake or from it. So when the flute was found
and he wasn't, that said something. I got a message
like we found this, we found his flute and some
other stuff. I was like, bag it up, man, and
treat it like a crime scene. I know you're not
FBI or something, but you haven't solved it yet, you
know what I mean. You haven't solved it until you've
got a body or something. And they got a little
(17:52):
overconfident in that. Now. I was like, you're making a mistake.
You need to gather all information at all times. Vacuum
up everything and preserve everything. Photograph everything from ten different
as this right when people are talking, get the recorder
going because there's little clues. They're flying around here and
you're not going to be able to figure a mountain tea.
(18:12):
Listen to the recording ten times right, and long story short,
the Indian government got involved because it started getting more
pressed that Naga got arrested. At the valley's small police station,
Rowatt sat in front of Susie Reebe, Justin's mom, who
had flown to India October ninth to look for her son,
who had been missing for over a month. Rowatt told
(18:35):
Reebe a different story than he had told Lee the
Frenchman who had reported him to the authorities. Rowatt was
not a reliable source, which made him look guilty for
either knowing more about Justin's disappearance than he let on
or for murdering him. You may have read the story right.
(18:55):
He ended up being hanged, so wow, that was the
guy who called him to go get Jana speaking about Rowatt,
but his account is different from other reports where Rowatt
press umably hung himself with his doughtie the loose pants
he wore. Media outlets paint Rowatt's death two different ways
as a confession to his guilt or as a response
(19:16):
to the immense shame he felt at being penned for
Justin's murder. Either way, this tragedy is heartbreaking because, like
Ryan chambers parents, Reeb doesn't have any answers round her
son's disappearance. As we've seen, Justin's skated this line between
adventure and harm effortlessly in his life. He conquered dangerous
(19:39):
situations with an ease that's envious to many of us
who only wish we could dare so greatly. But Justin
is still human and susceptible to danger, which is something
that unfortunately found him in India. Michael John, the Manhunter
who helped with the investigation of Justin's disappearance, had a
(20:00):
respect for Justin because he too is drawn to danger
and as and tracking people who deeply understand what enlightenment
means to them. What's the cost eating another human? Once
(20:24):
you've tracked enough album, that's the easiest spotting a Catholic priest,
you know what I mean. Michael Johan is talking about
his ability to spot and a gory or his fond
nickname for them cannibals. He's not wrong the agory or
sadus that engage in post mortem rituals, which includes cannibalism.
Jan told me about a time when he was helping
a former Israeli special Forces officer Egal Zor find a
(20:48):
missing Israeli who had presumably drowned in the Ganges. But
they came across a different body and someone who had
their sights on it. Trigger warning. This is where it
gets graphic. He had found this body and it's naked.
Out of all the hundreds of bodies I've seen there.
None were naked, and the ones that were close to naked,
(21:09):
they were clearly in the river for a very long time,
like there was almost like their hands would be missing.
Always you would see hands and feet would first to
be missing because the dogs would get the hands in
the feet, and sometimes they would be headless. But this
one looked really fresh, and it had no pubic hair.
It was a male. It had no armpit hair, and
(21:32):
it looked like the head was shaved partially, and it
had a wire saw in the head right like somebody
was cutting into the head with the wire saw. It
looks like somebody has hacked out. It's abdomin. It's like
really eviscerated. Like something's wrong here, I said, the goall
that looks like a human sacrifice. The police are right there.
(21:55):
The body's there. It looks like it's been murdered. It's
got what appears to be confusions. I didn't see any
knife marks on the forearms or anything like that. No
bullet wounds. And this agory comes out now the gory's
feet are in the river. They actually think that they
can meditate beside the Godgas River and make a body
come to them, So think how this plays into his
(22:16):
potential psyche. He sees white Israeli dude swim out into
the river and come back with a body. It's like, well,
I'm praying for a body to come and there it is, right,
and it's like, you know, pizza delivery here almost right,
And the agory reaches down into the river. This body
is naked, The guts are hanging out, intestines are hanging out.
(22:41):
It looks like it's been hacked open, and not just slit,
but like missing part of the ribs and stuff like
a jack o lantern top is taken off, you know
what I mean. And the top is missing and all
the guts are exposed. You know, flies are landing on
a body because you can see him in the photos.
And he picks a stone from the river, from the
gongs and he puts it on the pubic bone of
(23:01):
the body, just above the penis right, and then he
reaches down and he picks part of the force get
off and eats it right in front of the police
and gods, who are this? You know, former Special Forces
officer in the IDF. He's like, then my adrenaline just went.
You know, I've been in India many many times for
(23:22):
many years, and I've never seen something like this. What
was this man? What is he doing? And I was like, well,
that's clearly an a gory. It doesn't take five months
of study or six months of study the spot one
I can teach you in like you two hours, right,
and then the agory picked up a stick and everything,
and he disappeared into the jungle. This story is so
(23:43):
out there. When Yon first told it to me, I
didn't believe him. But when he broke down the beliefs
of the agory why they do what they do, it
made more sense. They believe a God or the gods
created everything, and God or the gods is perfect. Therefore
everything is perfect in the world. Therefore, if you're disgusted
by anything, you're disgusted by God, and you should seek
(24:05):
to overcome everything that disgusted you, seek to overcome the
emotion of disgust. You can see how seeking to overcome
the emotion of disgust would lead to some pretty vile behavior, which,
according to Jan it definitely does. I mean, they'll literally
sleep with a dead dog for until the as a
pillow as it rots day after day, week after week
(24:27):
until it's gone maggots and everything, right, carrying it on
their shoulder walking down the road, dead dog, right, you know,
set it beside them whether they're eating. You know, they
believe that, for instance, prostitutes and menstrual blood are bad, right,
And so they don't like have sex with a menstruating
prostitute on a corpse in a burning place or in
(24:48):
a cemetery, right, like stacking disgust on top of disgust.
And just so you know how to spot in the gory,
they always carry a human skull to drink from or
eat from, or they use it for begging for alms.
They use a human femur as a horn beeB right,
and and they use baby stalls and baby skins for
a damaru drum. A damaru is those sorts of drums
(25:11):
where it's got you know, you hold it in your
hand and you can twist your wrist bing bing bing
bing bing bing bing bing, you know what I mean.
Often they'll be wearing black. They'll have you know, dreadlocks typically,
which a lot of people do, but they'll often be
wearing a garland of bones, human bones. They've got a
certain look. I know, all of this sounds pretty outrageous.
(25:35):
And I'm sure, like I did, you're questioning it. I mean,
rationalizing cannibalism isn't easy. But these Agory consider their post
mortem rituals holy. They live among India's cremation sites, where
Lord Shiva and kylie Ma, whom they worship, are said
to dwell, their faces and bodies painted in ash. They
(25:55):
collect the remains of the humans disposed there, using them
in rituals to reach spiritual enlightenment. These rituals do include
the taboo act of cannibalism, but they also ascribe to
a combination of marijuana, alcohol, and meditation to bring them
to a disconnected state of heightened awareness. There's no doubt
(26:16):
that the agory practices are radical, but are they dangerous?
Jan makes a correlation between the agory and those who
have gone missing in India, as photos of missing people
all over the place here, for like missing tourists and stuff.
And it says even in the Lonely Planet guide book
it said like two to three people go missing every
(26:38):
three to four months Westerners and nobody it's hardly ever
in the news, right, and it's like it's covered up
or something like that. And I was like, Wow, this
is so weird based on just other things that I
was picking up. I was like, I wonder if they're
related to some of these people that are missing. This
is an extreme theory, but as you can tell, Jan
is an extreme sort of guy. But if this theory
(27:00):
is true, why besides the cannibalism factor, will the Agori
want to go after Western Obviously Jan has an opinion
on this too. You know, Shakti is the universal feminine
energy in Hinduism, right, and a good analogy to shakti
is just money. You can be born with shockti, you
can earn it, lose it, it can be stolen from you.
(27:23):
And they believe some people know how to make shakti
better than others. And for instance, children they believe have
a lot of shocked because they didn't use their shockdi
yet because they're young. And they also believe that Caucasians
have a lot of shocked because that explains partially why
Caucasians are so rich and are able to travel around
the world. Right, And so they would prefer to sacrifice
(27:48):
somebody with shakti, a lot of shakti, because they'll get
that shock ti. So they're not only robbing you for
your watch. They're robbing you for your Shockti. We've spoken
about the destabilizing dangers of India, or the idea that
something ominous is lurking beneath the spiritual steak, waiting ready
to pounce on an unsuspecting foreigner, sacrificing their mind or
(28:12):
their body. If this threat were personified, it would be
in a gory, or at least the kind of a
gory that Michael jan has described. But I'll be honest,
these stories felt like larger than life tales to me,
so obviously I pulled a Kita end to ask if
she believes these Agori pos as much of a threat
to western tourist as Michael claims. And Qita has never
(28:35):
reported on the Agori, but this is what she knows
from her research and from colleagues you have. I would
say that Agoris the minute you talk of them, you
immediately think of people who practice tantrik with thea or
knowledge of the tantra. I always assumed anything related to
tantra was sexual, but in Keita clarifies what tantra VideA
(28:57):
is for me. Very strong, possibly even dark powers, and
worshiping God's like Kali or Shiva who are associated with
very strong, almost reache like emotions, and therefore it is
said that their powers are destructive. And therefore it is
(29:20):
said that if you are in agory, and if you
are trying to develop your powers, then you have to
be very careful because not only can you destroy others,
you can also destroy yourself. Do you think that these
are gory have anything to do with people that have
come missing in India? I would not make a correlation
there concluding that because gorries a rituals around corpses, they're
(29:45):
more likely to kill or come at other crimes. That's
like watching a mystery movie and saying that the most
dangerous looking person must be the murderer. But that is yeah,
I mean, at the end of the movie, it's usually
the most innocent person, right, seemingly innocent. But since agory
(30:05):
have to do with religion and ristuls and religious people
are not supposed to cause harm, they're supposed to be
holy and sacred. They are trusted more easily to take
undue advantage of that trust and devotion, somebody may adopt
the guys off in agorian indulgent crimes. So just because
the egory worships something taboo in our culture doesn't necessarily
(30:28):
make them dangerous to us. But Akita explains why it
might be terrifying for a Westerner to witness one of
the Agori's ritualistic acts. It's just an extension of the
fear that comes with seeing something that is not seen
commonly around you, or seeing something that you do not understand.
I asked Keita to fact check Michael stat that two
(30:50):
to three Westerners go missing every three to four months
in India, which she couldn't find any specific data on,
but she did say compared to the States, it's easy
for Westerners to get visas in India, so the Indian
government is and as concerned with tracking foreigners, which means
it's a country where someone could easily fall off the grid.
(31:13):
The American agory Gary Stephenson was one of those people.
He disappeared in India by choice, but when Yan heard
about him, Gary didn't have a choice. There was nothing
stopping Jan from seeing for himself. This Texan turned Cannibal
(31:40):
Michael Jan as a hero. Legitimately, he served our country
in the military and then as a combat correspondent reporting
from war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is a
moving picture he took of a US Army major cradling
an Iraqi girl. She's so small she looks like a
doll in his arms. His face is obscured by her
(32:01):
wet hair, her fragile body wrapped in a blood soaked blank.
Get this child. Farah died on the helicopter ride to
the hospital. It was a car bomb that killed her,
one of the many bombs Yan experienced at war, and
Farah was one of the many children he saw die.
(32:21):
This would do a number on anyone. He still has
detailed nightmares bought suicide bombings, but he wakes up, puts
his blinders on, and gets back to work. He's now
focused on fighting the Chinese Communist Party. My point is
Jan's trained military, an instinctive manhunter, and when he set
(32:42):
his sights on tracking down Gary Stevenson or Gary the Cannibal,
as Yan fondly calls him, there was no doubt he
would find him. I was able to catch Yan on
a car trip he was making through the Redwoods. So
the audio isn't great, but Jan filled me in on
my Gary, a seemingly normal, hippieish spiritual dude, ended up
in India eating people. Dar he's more like walk feel hey,
(33:06):
not all hit. These are nice guys, right, like Charles Manson,
you know what I mean. Gary Stephenson, a descendant of
Robert Louis Stephenson, author of Treasure Island, grew up in
Texas in the nineteen fifties and I'll leave it to
beaver household. At two years old, he got polio, which
left him with a shriveled leg that, according to Jan
(33:26):
looked like bone with some skin attached to it. Throughout
his life, Gary searched for a way to heal his leg,
but he was constantly let down by different ideologies or methods.
Gary was set on a spiritual path at fifteen when
his mother gave him a copy of Autobiography of a
Yogi by a param Hans Yoganand I read the Bible
(33:47):
and the clans and autobiography, and they're all promising immortality.
They're all promising miracle cures. They're all promising, you know,
touched by the Guru and now you're heeled. And so
they're all they're all promising the same stuff. One of
the big things a religion that's gonna last, As to
promise immortality. You don't promise emortality. We're not going to
get a lot of people joined up. Gary was influenced
(34:10):
by the spiritual truths delivered an autobiography of Yogi and
some other themes as well, and the book Autobiography of Yogie.
What does he do? Runs away? You know, the child
runs away, rows up to Northern India, which is where Gary.
Gary eventually ended up in Northern India. But when he
ran away from home as a teen due to a
toxic relationship with his father, he bounced around, living in
(34:34):
hate Ashbury in the sixties, then Taylor Camp, a hippie
refuge in Kawaii where people were naked more than not,
and then a spiritual pilgrimage made by many seekers at
the time. This is Hippieville nineteen sixties, right, This is
Uru seeking run off from the hippie trail, who ran
through Afghanistan, through Pakistan, India, Nepal and that was the
(34:57):
big bickie trail, right, and then someone end up in Thailand.
But through all of his travels, which centered mostly on
California and why Gary kept coming back to India, He
just kept going west west until he was east, right,
and it was the same way. It's clear with this
religious streams. It was like the frog in the water.
Things clearly got more and more. This is normal, This
(35:20):
is normal until you know he's finally eating people, I
mean really eating people. Come on, it's straight up. You
can go to you can go to Varnassi right now.
And and I am like ninety percent certain that you
could find somebody probably within the first twelve hours that
knew him, because I've interviewed a lot of him, I've
got him on video, and I've got him on audience.
(35:41):
He was he was eating people right in front of people.
It's like nobody, nobody's gonna stop you and varn Aussi
from doing But that line, if you want to become
if you want to become accountable, you can get on
an airplane in Atlanta Airport right now, in forty eight
hours from now, you can be eating people in Varnassi
and nobody's gonna say, shit, you're insane. I'm not gonna
do that. You're gonna do it. We're gonna You're gonna
(36:03):
do it. I know you're gonna do it. You're gonna
do it because you have to do it to make
sure it's real. Okay, I go in deep for a story,
but there is a definitive line here for me. But
that tight rope I've spoken about with enlightenment, that thin
line between healing and harm. I'd say that Gary crossed
over in harm. But Michael sees the Agorian their rituals differently.
(36:27):
I'll take you to India when this pandemic is over,
and you will meet Agoye, and I guarantee you you're
going to question yourself, is this guy really crazy? Or
is this just his religion because this religion goes back
at least six hundred years, right? And is it irrational?
Is it irrational when you look I'm talking about not
from power perspective as Americans, especially from the East Coast
(36:48):
as I am from. So for me, it's completely radical
and insane, right, But in the context of things I've
seen around the world, is it insane? Nope, not even close.
Think about it. Salmons are constant in Asia, been thousands
of fanis. Nobody could ever possibly count the ball, right,
(37:09):
And when it comes to people that starved, the death
for people that die in survival famine situations one of
the number one reasons why some people survive and some
dope is they overcome tabs more quickly. You can have
the biggest famine in the world. If there's two people left,
the agory is going to be the one that's left standing.
(37:30):
This is just my theory. I don't know where it
came from. The ability to overcome discussed pretty much. You know,
gives you an insurance policy against a lot of disasters.
Jan formed a friendship with Gary, one where Yan had
to continually look over his shoulder to make sure he
wasn't going to be attacked, but ironically also one of respect.
(37:52):
When Yan negotiated Gary's released from prison after he tried
to stab a man and was charged with a visa violation.
Oh and a woman's arm was found in his hut,
though he wasn't charged for that. Gary offered to give
up cannibalism for him, but at this point Jan doesn't
know if that ever happened. After getting him out of
jail in India, Jan brought Gary back to the States
(38:15):
for a bit, but Gary was able to obtain another
ten year India visa, so he flew back and yet
again fell off the grid. On Jan's website, he has
copies of Gary Stevenson's passport and license, along with photographs
that prove that Gary the Cannibal was not just an
urban legend, but a man as you've witnessed. Like Gary, Michael,
(38:40):
Jan is a memorable character and his stories are intense
and sensational, which is something I considered when deciding whether
or not to add them to this episode, and something
I confronted John about. I'll be honest with you, a
lot of the stories with the Cannibals are so extreme.
I just continuously want to ground it so that people
(39:02):
can actually be on board and not be like, is
this really real? Because it is. It's so out there, dude,
Oh it's real. An hour after this conversation with Jan,
I read about American movie star Army Hammer, who was
called out by an X who said the actor told
her he wanted to break her rib, then barbecue and
(39:22):
eat it. Hammer allegedly asked another partner if he could
cut off her toe and keep it as a souvenir.
I told Yan I'd found his next cannibal to hunt down,
but he declined and said even Gary the Cannibal would
think Army Hammer was a creep. Apparently, there is a
line in Cannibalism too, and the next episode of Astray,
(39:47):
I'll be reporting on someone whose story has affected me
more than any I've covered, and because of a connection
I made while researching the story, one that's ultimately made
me question this entire podcast, like I don't know, I
just feel really fel torn about it and even writing
his episodes really hard. I'll share that and more on
(40:14):
the next episode of A Stray. Many of the logistical
facts that I found around Justin Schtler Alexander's disappearance came
from a thorough article that Harley Rustad wrote for Outside
Magazine in twenty eighteen. Rustad will soon be releasing a
book on this called Lost in the Valley of Death.
(40:37):
Astray as a production of School of Humans and iHeartRadio.
Today's episode of Astray, Justin Alexander Schettler was produced, written,
and narrated by Me, Caroline Slaughter and Quita Ananda is
my co producer, and Gabby Watts is our supervising producer.
With special thanks to our voiceover Van Gunter. Astray was
(40:59):
sound produced by Tune Welders, scored by Jason Shannon, and
mix by Harper Harris. Executive producers are Elsie Crowley, Brian Lavin,
and Brandon Barr, thanks for listening. School of Humans,
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