The Children Who Spoke in Whispers

In 12th-century England, two strange children emerged from the woods — with green skin, strange clothes, and a language no one understood.
Were they lost? Or were they something else entirely?

Tonight on Silent Secrets, we wander through whispered legends, soft fields, and centuries-old mystery to meet The Green Children of Woolpit.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Approach production. Hi, Welcome to Silent Secrets, a bedtime podcast
for curious minds. I'm jay, I'm glad you're here. This

(00:26):
is your time to let go of today, to settle
in and slow down, and let curiosity gently carry you
towards sleep. In each episode, I'm going to share a
true story of the unexplained, not to alarm you, but
to quiet your mind, to remind you that the world

(00:47):
is full of wonder and some things we'll never truly understand.
So take a deep breath, feel your body sink into comfort,
let the weight of the day drift away. As we
begin tonight's story, close your eyes and imagine England in

(01:17):
the twelfth century. The country is a patchwork of fields
and forests, dotted with small villages that feel timeless. It's
the middle of the eleven hundreds and the era of
castles and knights, of market fairs and wandering story tellers.
Superstitions run deep. The forests are filled with whispered tales

(01:42):
of fairies, spirits, and other worlds such as lie just
beyond the veil of our own. In this world of
shadow and folklore, something extraordinary is said to have happened
in the quiet village of Wolpit. Two children appear one day,

(02:03):
a boy and a girl. They were dressed in clothes
made from fabric no one had ever seen. They spoke
an unknown language, and the most unsettling of all, their
skin was green. They seemed to have stepped out of nowhere.

(02:24):
Where did they come from? Some believe they wandered from
afar off land. Others say they came from an underground world,
or perhaps from the stars themselves. Tonight we journey back
to medieval Suffolk in a story that's fascinated historians and

(02:45):
storytellers for more than eight hundred years. It's the Tale
of the Green Children of Wolpit. Wolpit, even today, is
a small village which its name was derived from the

(03:07):
deep wolf pits that were dug to trap wolves that
roamed the English countryside. Pictriot in the twelfth century thatched
cottages with smoke curling from their chimneys, Villages working fields
during the day, swinging through ripe and wheat, the distant

(03:29):
toll of church bells marking the hours. Life here was
simple but harsh. The average person rarely traveled more than
a few miles from home. Stories of strange creatures and
magical lands were part of everyday conversation. It was here

(03:49):
sometime in the reign of King Stephen or King Henry,
that this strange event unfolded. It was harvest time, likely
in late summer. The sun was warm and the fields

(04:11):
were alive with the sounds of villages gathering crops. A
group of workers was out in the field near one
of the old wolf pits when they noticed something unusual.
Two children, a boy and a girl, were standing by
the edge of a pit. They were holding hands, looking
frightened and confused. The villagers stopped what they were doing.

(04:37):
These children were unlike any they'd ever seen. Their skin
had a green tint, not pale or sunburned, but the
color of fresh spring leaves. Their clothes were made from
fabric no one recognized, rough but colorful, and stitched in

(04:58):
an unfamiliar style. And when the villagers tried to speak
to them, the children replied language no one understood. The
children were taken to the village. They were thin and exhausted,
as if they had walked a great distance. The villagers

(05:20):
tried to feed them, but the children refused everything bread, meat, vegetables.
They looked at the food with confusion, as though they
didn't recognize it as something edible, and someone bought them
freshly picked raw beans still in their pods. The children
lit up. They opened the pods, ate the raw beans,

(05:44):
and smiled for the first time. This small moment two
frightened children eating beans by the hearth was the start
of their new life in woolpits. The villagers cared for

(06:04):
the children, giving them a place to stay and teaching
them English. But after just a few weeks, tragedy struck
the boy, the younger of the two, became ill. He
never fully recovered from their mysterious journey, and he died.

(06:24):
The girl, however, grew stronger. Her greenish hue slowly faded,
and she began to adapt to the ways of the village.
Over time, she learned enough English to tell her story,
a story that would only deepen the mystery, which she

(06:47):
could finally speak clearly. The girl told the villages about
the place she came from. She said that her and
her brother came from a land they called Saint Martin's Land.
This was a place of twilight, where the sun never
rose in the sky. Instead, it was always dusk. A soft,

(07:09):
dim light covered the land everyone there, she said, had
a skin color of green leaves, just like they did.
She told the villagers that while tending their father's cattle,
she and her brother heard the sounds of bells. They
followed the sound, and somewhere in the forest they found

(07:31):
what they described as a long, dark tunnel or cave.
They walked through the darkness, and when they emerged on
the other side, the light was blinding, brighter than they
had ever seen. The warmth of the sun was strange
to them. Before they could figure out where they were,

(07:53):
they saw the wolf pit, and the villages found them.
Soon after, the girl grew up in wool Pit, she
was baptized and became part of the community. As she matured,
she worked as a servant for the local landowner. According
to one account, she eventually married a man from a
nearby village in King's Lynn. By all records, she lived

(08:17):
a normal life, but she never forgot where she came from.
So what could explain the story of the green children.
Some historians argue this is just a medieval folklore preserved

(08:38):
by chroniclers like William of Newbury and Ralph of Cogsall.
Folklore often used mysterious children to symbolize outsiders, strangers, or immigrants.
Others believed the children might have been Flemish immigrants. In
the twelfth century. Parts of England are home to Flemish settlers,

(09:00):
who spoke their own language and wore different clothes. The
green tint on their skin could have come from malnutrition
or iron deficiency, known as green sickness. Some believe the
girl's story of a twilight world suggests a realm beneath
the earth, a legendary hollow earth, or parallel to mention.

(09:27):
Medieval folklore often told of fairylands where time and light
were different. In modern times, some writers have suggested that
these two were not human children at all, but beings
from another world accidentally crossing into ours. Part of what

(09:48):
makes the Green Children's stories so enduring is that it
straddles the line between fact and legend. Two separate historians
recorded it as truth, yet its details feel like something
out of a fairy tale. It's a story asks the
big questions. Could there be places we don't know about,

(10:10):
just beyond our perception? As you drift off to sleep,
picture that harvest field and suffolk more than eight hundred
years ago, the gold stalks of wheed swaying in the breeze,

(10:32):
the sound of six cutting through the grain, and then silence,
as the village has noticed two strange children by the
wolf pit, frightened, hungry, speaking a language no one knows.
Their skin, the color of leaves, the green children of

(10:55):
Woodpit remains a mystery, a reminder that sometimes the line
between our world and the unknown is thinner than we think.
Thank you for listening to silent secrets. I hope tonight's

(11:15):
story has given your mind something soft to wander through
as you drift towards rest at the quieter the night.
Wrap around you now and know that mysteries will still
be here tomorrow. Close your eyes, breathe deeply, and let's
sleep take over until we share another secret next time.

(11:42):
Good Night to the money in the Way, and