THE DEFIANCE DOGMAN: Ohio’s Lycanthropic Summer of Fear, 1972

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
The Werewolf of Defiance is one of those local legends
that sounds like the beginning of a classic horror movie.
Two railway workers hooking up train cars late at night.
One looks over to see a towering werewolf fangs bared,
who proceeds to attack the hapless victim. Hollywood as it

(00:26):
might sound, that's the story that Ted Davis reported to
police in nineteen seventy two. The werewolf may have attacked
him with a club rather than his clause, but otherwise
the story sounds like so many other tall tales, except
the Davis wasn't the only one seeing dog man in
the wild. Another employee of the railway also reported a

(00:49):
wolfman stalking the rails. Then a week later, a grocer
driving home sees a lichenthrope in his headlights. With so
many reports of Harry brutes coming in to the station,
local Defiance police open an investigation. A neighboring Toledo newspaper
gets hold of the story, and suddenly it's were wolf

(01:10):
fever in Defiance. While no were wolf was ever found,
the legend has stuck to the town and locals still
talk about it to this day. I'm Darren Marler and
This is Weird Darkness. Welcome Weirdos. I'm Darren Marler. This

(01:38):
is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre,
unsolved and unexplained. Coming up in this episode, What would
happen if the First Lady of the U the United

(02:00):
States disclosed that she believed that she traveled with extraterrestrials
to Venus. That's exactly what happened to the First Lady
of Japan. The island of Guam is well known for
the part that it played in World War II, but
one hundred and twenty miles northeast of Guam is the
tiny island of Tinian and while it too had a

(02:23):
part in World War Two, it also contains secrets millennia
old of a people that might have existed before the
oldest people recorded living there. Robert Neilson had no professional
background in medicine or refrigeration. He didn't even have a
college degree. But this everyday TV repair man found himself

(02:46):
in the center of the cryogenics movement, and that's when
things started to get messy. But First Defiance, Ohio, is
a small town that reported a rash of werewolf sightings
in the early nineteen seventies, and it's a legend that
still persists to this day. We begin with that story. Now,

(03:10):
bult your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights,
and come with me into the weird darkness. July twenty fifth,

(03:38):
nineteen seventy two. It's four am in northwestern Ohio. The
moon is nearly full and a railroad worker is connecting
up train cars when he spots too huge hairy paws
on the ground and looks up. What he will later
tell the police he saw will spark a brief but
intense bount of hysteria in the small town of Defiance, Ohio.

(04:04):
Defiance is located around fifty miles south of Toledo. The
town joys warm summers and freezing snowy winters. Notable people
from Defiance include a twenty four time World horseshoe champion
and actress Michelle Burke, who played Connie Conehead in the
nineteen ninety three movie Coneheads. The town has a punk

(04:25):
rock band named after it, Defiance, Ohio, and the City
of Defiance website describes the town as a great place
to live. It was here where rumors of a man
beast started circling in the summer of nineteen seventy two.
The story of the dog Man of Defiance is always
told in much the same way. Railroad worker Ted Davis

(04:48):
was on the Norfolk and Western train tracks near Fifth
Street on July twenty fifth when he encountered the creature.
He was working when he spotted two large hairy paws
on the ground in front of him. He raised his
eyes and saw a huge, hairy creature six to eight
feet tall, hunched over slightly and wielding a large wooden board.

(05:11):
The creature struck Davis on the shoulder before running off
into the woods. A few days later, on July thirtieth,
both Ted Davis and another railroad worker, Tom Jones, spotted
the creature again. This time it was at a distance,
and they saw the beast crawling through some bushes. The
thing ran away when it was seen, and then the

(05:32):
man heard a scream coming from a nearby road in
the direction that the creature had bolted. The men reported
these incidents to the local police, who began an investigation.
Less than a week after the initial encounter, a third
sighting occurred. A grocery worker was driving home late one
night when a large dog like creature ran across the

(05:54):
road in front of him. These accounts were reported in
two local newspapers, the Toledo Blade and the Defiance Crescent News.
Once the story got out, people started feeling like the
werewolf was behind every corner. A few frenzied reports of
possible werewolf activity later, and then just as suddenly as

(06:15):
it had started, the werewolf fever died down and the
reports stopped. The unusual thing that sets this sighting apart
from other cryptid sightings of dog men and werewolves was
that these encounters were reported in newspapers and taken seriously
by the police. While the police were not convinced that
the assailant was a half man half dog creature, they

(06:38):
did believe that there was likely somebody going around in
a mask or a costume trying to scare people. Descriptions
of the dog man from various sightings describe it as
tall between six and nine feet, very hairy all over,
wearing dark blue jeans and a dark colored shirt, barefoot,

(07:00):
with large, hairy paws and claws. Bipedal, but was often
seen hunched over, ran from side to side like a caveman.
In the movies, according to the Toledo Blade, and described
as a man with an animal's head or like an
upright wolf. The main sources used for the story are

(07:21):
the articles published in the Toledo Blade on August third,
nineteen seventy two. The first article, titled Werewolf case in
defiance not viewed lightly by Police, written by James Stagel,
used direct quotes from the witnesses to report the incident,
although there are some inconsistencies even within this one article.

(07:42):
If you'd like to read the article, though, I do
have links in the essential weblinks section of the show notes.
The feature in the Blade stated early on that one man,
a train crewman switching trains, said that he was approached
from behind and was struck on the shoulder. This man
there refers to was Ted Davis, which we know despite

(08:02):
the Blade saying that the police were not releasing the
name of the witnesses at this point because the other
trained crewman, Tom Jones, only saw the beast from a distance.
Later in the same article, however, the newspaper used another
quote from Davis, after writing, when he first confronted mister Davis,
the creature ran away before he mister Davis could say anything.

(08:25):
I was connecting an air hose between two cars and
was looking down saw these huge, hairy feet. Then looked
up and he was standing there with a big stick
over his shoulder. When I started to say something, he
took off for the woods. It's unclear therefore, whether or
not the wolfman actually assaulted Ted Davis, or if it
simply ran away after scaring the man. The follow up

(08:49):
article in The Blade was titled Defiance Residents suspicious of
their Werewolf and goes on to say that most people
in the area didn't believe it was a werewolf, but
rather a man in a costume or just some nut
running loose. This article also adds to the confusion by
stating that one man said it hit him on the

(09:09):
shoulder with a board, again referring to the Davis incident.
As this was the only reported close encounter with the creature.
I have a link to this article in the show
notes as well. There are also included interviews from some
residents of Defiance in the area where the werewolf was
reported to be seen, which gives us an idea of
what the atmosphere at the time was like. Police were

(09:32):
called to one woman's house adjacent to the train tracks.
She'd not seen it, but reports about it put her
in a state of shock. They say he has hair
all over and he's about seven feet tall. From what
I've heard, I can say this guy as ugly as hell.
If I see him the werewolf. The police are going
to find out who he is. That's because they'll have

(09:52):
to take him to the hospital to get the buck
shot out. The Defiance Crescent News, another local newspaper, were
also published a report on the sightings on August two.
A link to this article in the show notes as well.
It's written by Ellen Armstrong, and this news story took
a less serious approach to the incidents, opening with a
quote from the nineteen forty one feature film The Wolfman

(10:15):
and suggesting the police may be armed with silver bullets
and sharpened steaks. This version also reported that one man
was attacked and struck on the shoulder with a two
by four, making it unclear if ted Davis was indeed
assaulted or not. The Crescent News made statements such as
two of the incidents occurred last week and one last night.

(10:39):
None has happened during a full moon, obviously intending to
further question the legitimacy of the claims by poking fun
at the idea of a werewolf running around. But the
first incident took place on July twenty fifth, nineteen seventy two,
the day before a full moon. The Blade also wrote
ted Davis said that the large figure, which they said

(11:02):
was between six and eight feet tall, has appeared twice
under a full moon, and quoted ted Davis as saying,
when we're working in defiance, the moon is full. The
Crescent News also reported three more minor sightings on the
fourth of August, but none of these complaints actually saw
a werewolf, and it seemed to just be the product

(11:24):
of panic in the community. One woman reported scratching at
her door, telling the police that if whatever it was
got inside, she would shoot it. This highlights the panic
and hysteria that some people experienced as a result of
these sightings. Yet there have been many other residents who
said that they hadn't heard anything about the werewolf, or

(11:47):
had heard very little and weren't concerned. Most other sites
that summarized the events of the nineteen seventy two sidings
state that the first man was attacked and hit on
the shoulder or possibly on the head with a two
by four. Several other sites also say that the other
two sightings were in fact attempted attacks, but the witnesses

(12:08):
managed to escape. These could both be the results of
storytellers telling the most exciting version of a tale, but
it's not completely without grounds, as both newspapers at the
time did report an attack at least once. Despite the
hysteria around the sightings, by mid August, all signs of

(12:29):
the werewolf had vanished and no more incidents were reported.
Was this because a person in a costume became too
afraid when there were threats of violence toward them, with
residents suggesting that they would shoot a werewolf on site
if there were to approach them or their property, or
did a real dog man simply move on from this area.

(12:52):
Defiance was not the first or last town in Ohio
to report a sighting of these elusive dogmen. In the
follow up article about the Defiance werewolf, there was a
brief mention of a man, Harold Anon, having spotted an
ape like creature walking upright on River Road north of Tiffin,
a town about seventy miles east of Defiance. It was

(13:14):
quote covered in hair with wolf like ears and fangs
quote six to seven feet tall and hunched over. When
the site was later checked, no signs of tracks or
disturbed vegetation were seen. Was this another siding of the
dog Man misinterpreted as a large ape man? An episode

(13:35):
of Paranormal Witness titled The Cabin focused on the possibilities
of werewolves in London, Ohio. Dog Man Encounters as a
website used to report dog Man sidings in the USA
and features several contributions from Ohio and most other states.
What is suggested to be archaeological evidence of werewolves has

(13:57):
been found and written about in a paper titled Where
Wolf Shamans in the Ancient Woodlands of the Eastern United States,
which I'll link to in the essential weblinks section of
the show notes. And there have also been a few
false alarms, like this one from June eighth, twenty eleven,
headline Ohio police captured drunken local werewolf people of the

(14:19):
Greater Cleveland area. We get it, you, miss Lebron, and
you're upset that he might win a championship noted, but
that's no excuse to let wolfmen roam free. This young
twenty year old Wolfman is likely especially spry, and he
claims to have a military background. If you've ever played
discount video games, you know that combination is a red flag.

(14:42):
Here's Fox eight's story on the matter. Lorraine County Sheriff's
deputies have received a call of a man acting angrily
and becoming violent with campers and animals. When deputies arrived
at the scene, according to the report, they found Stroop
passed out in a trailer. Deputies say troops smelled of
alcol and when they eventually were able to wake him up,
he began growling at them. Strup was placed under arrest

(15:06):
for underage consumption and told authorities that he'd blacked out
from drinking too much vodka that evening. According to the report,
Stroup went on to say that ever since he was
scratched by a wolf in Germany, he blacks out when
the moon comes out and goes on the attack. The
Morning Journal has more Deputies found Droup passed out inside
a trailer filled with knives, swords, and other edged weapons.

(15:29):
The report said when Stroop awoke at first, he only
growled at deputies. When he spoke, his words were slurred
and in a thick Russian accent. He told a deputy
he was going to kill the deputy's cousin, Keith, but
the deputy did not have a cousin named Keith. According
to the report, spooky scary, especially for you Keith. Whether

(15:53):
the dog men are real or fictional, there have been
many people who were inspired by the stories of them.
The YouTube channel Dogman Narratives is a channel that brings
stories like this to life by animating and telling them
and an entertaining narrative. The author, Linda S. Godfrey, has
written several books on the subject of werewolves and other cryptids,

(16:15):
and on August twenty fourth, twenty sixteen, the first ever
dog Man Symposium was organized by Ken Girard and featured
several expert speakers on the subject of dog men encounters.

(16:36):
When We'd Darkness returns, Robert Nelson had no professional background
in medicine or refrigeration. He didn't even have a college degree.
But this everyday TV repair man found himself in the
center of the cryogenics movement, and that's when things started
to get messy. That story is up next. Weird Darkness

(17:12):
is celebrating our birthday this month. We use this annual
celebration to help those who struggle with depression. Every October,
we raise money for organizations that help people overcome depression, anxiety,
and thoughts of suicide and self harm. It's called Overcoming
the Darkness, and you can make a donation right now
at Weirddarkness dot com slash hope. That's weird Darkness dot

(17:32):
com slash hope. A gift of any amount helps, with
every dollar bringing hope to someone affected by depression. To donate,
to get more information about overcoming the darkness, or to
find hope to battle back the darkness of depression in
yourself or someone you love, visit weird Darkness dot com
slash hope. The fundraiser ends on Halloween night at midnight,

(17:53):
so please give right now while you're thinking about it.
That's weird Darkness dot com slash hope. In nineteen sixty two,
Bob Nelson was just an average TV repairman, but he
did have one distinguishing characteristic, an odd obsession with the

(18:17):
theory of cryonics. Nelson, like all cryonauts, believed that humans
can be frozen after they died and revived in a
distant future where scientists had found a cure for aging so,
together with a crew of enthusiasts he met at a convention,
Nelson began to plan and execute his own cryonics program.

(18:39):
He soon found himself at the center of a nascent movement,
and the crew managed to freeze its first man in
nineteen sixty seven. But how exactly a high school dropout
with no scientific background reached such unprecedented heights As a
story for the Ages, even though Bob Nelson wouldn't quite

(19:01):
accomplish what he set out to, his story is nonetheless
like science fiction. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, in nineteen thirty six,
Bob Nelson's early life was rough. His father, Elvin Nelson,
left before he was born, and his mother was an alcoholic.
Nelson's stepfather, meanwhile, was a mobster named John Fatsbuccelli, who

(19:24):
was imprisoned for the so called three million dollar Brinks
robbery in January nineteen fifty. Nelson proved to be resourceful
when it came to fixing nineteen sixties television sets, but
his real passion lay between the pages of doctor Robert
Ettinger's seminal nineteen sixty two book The Prospect of Immortality.

(19:45):
Ettinger theorized that death was more like a disease than
it was an inevitability, and it could be cured. He
added that a man could be frozen today and then
thawed centuries into the future, where the technology to achieve
immortality exists. Did Nelson was obsessed with this notion, and
he became president of his local Life Extension Society in

(20:07):
Los Angeles in nineteen sixty six. He even got to
meet Ettinger before the doctor died of cancer and was
cryogenically frozen himself, which only proved to inspire Nelson. More
Nelson told This American Life in two thousand and eight
that when he heard an advertisement for the first meeting
of the Suspended Animation Group, an organization that believed in

(20:29):
cryonic freezing, I remember going and thinking I'm not going
to be allowed in because I'm not a scientist. I
went in and I came out voted president, and so
in nineteen sixty two he became the president of the
Cryonics Society of California c SC. The nonprofit largely consisted

(20:51):
of dreamers eager to be preserved in order to experience
the idyllic future promised by nineteen sixties science fiction. Unfortunately,
nearly everyone involved in the venture was a complete amateur
Many of them were old or sick and thinking of
their own deaths. Even the scientists that Nelson consulted were

(21:11):
skeptical about the feasibility of cryonic preservation. Nonetheless, the organization
found a volunteer in nineteen sixty six. That volunteer was
a seventy three year old psychology professor named doctor James Bedford.
Before dying of kidney cancer, he agreed to have his
body put on ice so that experts from the Cryonic

(21:33):
Society of California could then process it for immediate freezing.
But Nelson's group was not prepared for the undertaking. For
one thing, Bedford's cryonic capsule or coffin, was still being
built in Arizona when he died, so Nelson had no
choice but to ask two pothead friends for help. Bedford's

(21:53):
body was literally put on ice collected from the freezers
of neighbors to keep him from decomposing before the coffin
could be finished. When we froze, Bedford man had never
been on the moon, there had never been a heart transplant,
There was no GPS, no cell phones. Nelson recalled, I
called up and said I have a problem, and I

(22:14):
need your help. Sandra Stanley said what I said. I
have this frozen guy and no place to put him,
and it's going to be two or three weeks. Nelson
then drove a chilled Bedford stashed in the back of
his truck to his friend's place. It was crazy. I
look back at it now and I think, oh my god.

(22:35):
Bedford was officially frozen. When the coffin capsule was finished.
He was ejected with medical grade anti freeze through the neck,
Oxygen was pumped through his system with a machine called
an iron heart, and then he was placed in a
coffin shaped capsule filled with dry ice. Despite the group's
inexpert efforts, the fad caught on, and a thoroughly underqualified

(22:57):
Nelson quickly had his hands full. Besides experience, Nelson's organization
lacked money. They were forced to freeze their subjects in
dry ice and boxes lined with styrofoam. None of the
few other organizations that existed in the field of cryonics
even had doctors or morticians. Nelson at least had the

(23:19):
help of mortician Joseph Klockgether, who was responsible for injecting
the bodies with the proper fluids and then storing three
of those bodies packed in dry ice in his mortuary,
but even he grew uncomfortable with their situation by nineteen
sixty nine. By May nineteen seventy, Nelson had purchased an
underground vault in Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, outside

(23:43):
Los Angeles. Here he planned to preserve the bodies of
nine volunteers, all from the society. These include Luis Nisko,
Helen Klein, Stephen Mandel, Pedro, Ledesma Russ Stanley, Mildred and
Gay Lord Harris, Marie Phelps Sweet and Genevieve de la
Potoiit Pautois, an eight year old girl who died of cancer,

(24:05):
was the first child to be frozen. They were placed
in one tank together, while two other tanks held four
and three people each. Across the decade, Nelson's meager funding
ran out, and he constantly faced problems regarding ice replacement
and irrigation cryonics. Subjects today are cooled slowly over a

(24:26):
three day period, but Nelson couldn't afford such luxuries, nor
had the medical know how to even consider it. In
March nineteen seventy nine, Nelson locked the vault and walked
away from the venture altogether. Inside that Chatsworth cemetery, he
left nine bodies in liquid nitrogen capsules that, without regular maintenance,

(24:50):
would melt and leave the bodies to decompose. The cemetery
eventually covered the entrance to the vault with turf and
denied having any records of it. When I did put
the lock in the vault, I was heartbroken, said Nelson.
I went out into the desert and had a ceremony
and said goodbye to these people. I did the best

(25:10):
that I could. He and his business partner, mortician Joseph Klockgether,
were consequently sued by families of the unfrozen for a
total of eight hundred thousand dollars. He later settled. They
the prosecution presented me as someone who was trying to
start a new religion, said Nelson, someone trying to bring

(25:31):
back the dead. A brilliant attack. I couldn't get over it.
Mentally exhausted and financially drained, Nelson washed his hands of cryonics,
moved and changed his name. Bob Nelson revisited his tumultuous
life in cryonics in his twenty fourteen memoir freezing people
is not easy. The premise garnered Hollywood's attention, where a

(25:54):
comedy film currently Idols in pre production. As for the
study of cryonics, in twenty six sixteen, MIT graduate Robert
McIntyre successfully froze and revived a rabbit. The rabbit was
revived with all of its synapses and cell membranes intact.
And as for the frozen body of doctor Bedford, his

(26:14):
body was moved several times before being rehoused by the
Alcore Life Extension Foundation in nineteen ninety one. When he
was first removed from Nelson's care, he was found to
be a miraculously well developed, well nursed male who appears
younger than his seventy three years. The Alcore facility in
California currently holds one hundred forty eight frozen corpses. Only

(26:39):
time will tell if Nelson was in over his head
or ahead of his time when weird Darkness returns. The
island of Tinian is almost invisible even on modern maps,
but those who know their history know that it was

(27:00):
important to both the US and its allies during World
War Two, as well as to the Japanese. It was
a prime spot for launching bombers from But the history
of Tinian goes back much further than that, to a
time when there was no time when people created large monoliths,
and we still know almost nothing about these ancient of

(27:23):
ancient people. But first, in two thousand and nine, the
First Lady of Japan was ridiculed for her belief not
just in UFOs and extraterrestrials, but that she had actually
met the aliens and had even been taken to Venus
in one of their spaceships. So why didn't we hear
about it in the news? Surely something that outlandish would

(27:45):
have made international headlines right. That story is up next
when Weird Darkness returns. October is birthday month for Weird Darkness.

(28:07):
This year makes ten years of doing the show. But
while it's our birthday, we want the gifts to go
to those who help people who suffer from depression, anxiety,
or thoughts of suicide or self harm. That's what our
annual Overcoming the Darkness campaign is all about. It's the
only fundraiser I have all year long. You can bring
hope to those who are lost in the darkness of depression.

(28:27):
You can make a donation right now at weird Darkness
dot com slash hope. I'll close out the fundraiser at
the end of October and announce how much we raised.
The more we raise, the more people we can help
to donate, Get more information about the fundraiser and the
organizations we're supporting, or find hope for yourself or someone
you know who are fighting depression. Visit weirddarkness dot com

(28:48):
slash hope. Please donate now while you're thinking about it.
Weird darkness dot com slash hope. What would happen if
the First Lady of the United States disclosed that she
believed she traveled with extraterrestrials to Venus? It would no

(29:12):
doubt create quite the international media sensation. Right, Well, that's
exactly what happened in the case of Japanese First Lady
my Yuki Hattayama. However, did you hear about it at all?
In two thousand and nine, then sixty two year old
my Yuki Katayama, wife of Japan's Prime Minister elect Yuki Ohtayama,

(29:33):
came under scrutiny for what she wrote in a book
entitled Very Strange Things I've Encountered. Hatoyama wrote about an
experience that happened to her two decades before. While my
body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a
triangular shaped UFO and went to Venus, she explains in
the tomes she published. It was a very beautiful place,

(29:56):
and it was very green, she wrote. The retired act
actress and author of cookbooks also claimed to recognize the
actor Tom Cruise from another life. I believe he'd get
it if I said to him, long time, no see
when we meet, she said in an interview. When she
told her now ex husband at the time, he told
her it was probably just a dream. However, she said

(30:18):
that her new husband, Yukiyo Hatayama, would no doubt have
reacted differently. The divorced singer and dancer met the multi
millionaire while working in a Japanese restaurant in San Francisco.
They married in nineteen seventy five. My current husband has
a different way of thinking, she wrote. He would surely say, oh,
that's great. Stanford University educated Yukiyo Hatayama, also sixty two

(30:43):
at the time, is the grandson of a former prime minister.
According to Reuters, he earned the nickname the Alien for
his prominent eyes. According to The Independent, the nickname comes
from the couple's unconventional approach. Though mister Hatayama is a
multi millionaire and the fourth generation of his family to
rise to the top of the Japanese political world, his

(31:06):
appearance is unconventional by rigid Japanese standards. His hair is unruly,
and he rejects the navy uniform of the political world
in favor of suits of brown and moss green. It's
this refusal to bow to convention, as well as his
tendency to drop conversation stopping remarks like his call during

(31:26):
the election campaign for a politics full of love that
long ago led other Japanese politicians to dismiss him as
an Uchijin, an alien, though not presumably the one who
took Mayuki to Venus. One would think that this story
about travels to Venus might have been more prominent in

(31:46):
world news, but it seems to have barely made a
blip on the radar. One reason may be that Japan's
approach to the idea of extraterrestrials is so different from
Western countries. From the beginning, ancient stories tell of alien
like beings, including the ancient Dogu alien like figurines representing

(32:08):
gods from the sky. Ancient Aliens Season twelve, episode fourteen
explored this and the primary religion of Japan called Shintoism.
The belief connects Japan to a mystical past involving celestial
beings called kami. In two thousand and seven, the Japanese
government stated that it has not confirmed the existence of

(32:29):
unidentified flying objects believed to have come from anywhere other
than Earth. Then, Japan's Defense minister said there was no
grounds to deny outright the existence of alien manned UFOs.
BBC News reported that despite a lack of evidence, Chief
Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura later told reporters that he believed

(32:52):
that UFOs were definitely real. However, despite that admission, that
article noted Japan has not yet planned one what to
do should aliens arrive here. A member of the opposition
asked the government what its policy was to deal with UFOs.
He said work should began urgently to try to confirm
whether or not they exist because of what he called

(33:13):
incessant reports of sightings. The Japanese Civil Service swung into action.
In a statement, it said that should a flying saucer
be spotted in the country's airspace, a fighter would be
scrambled to attempt visual confirmation. By twenty fifteen, Defense Minister
Jen Nakatani answered a question about UFOs during a budget session.

(33:35):
He had a very different answer. When the Air Self
Defense Force detects indications of an unidentified flying object that
could violate our country's airspace, it scrambles fighter jets if necessary,
and makes visual observation. Nakatani responded earnestly, they sometimes find
birds or flying objects other than aircraft, but I don't
know of a case of finding an unidentified flying object

(33:58):
believed to have come over from anywhere other than Earth.

(34:23):
Not every ancient civilization is as famous as the Egyptians, Romans,
or the Maya, just to name a few. In a
remote region of the world, there was once an interesting
ancient culture that left behind intriguing stone structures. The location
of their home was a small place barely visible on

(34:44):
our modern maps, but their legacy is of great historical
value to those interested in unsolved ancient mysteries. We enter
a region few people are familiar with, will be following
in the footsteps of our ancestors and examine their myths, legends,
one's unusual buildings, and surprising knowledge of advanced ancient technology.

(35:06):
It's one of the key focus areas during World War
II when the United States was fighting Japan, and Tinian
became one of the most important operational bases in the Pacific.
That's how we remember this piece of land surrounded by
the vast waters of the Pacific Ocean. Tinian is a
small island in the Marianas Group, located in the Central Pacific.

(35:29):
Most of us know this place as it was described
in history school books. If we know it at all,
those dramatic events of World War II will forever remain
an important part of Tinian's history and heritage, But it
is still only a part of this island's long history
and its neighbors in the Mariana Group. The most striking

(35:49):
prehistoric feature of Tinian are strange monoliths still standing today.
How long back does the history of Tinian go? How
old are the monoliths that can also be found on
other Mariana islands. The height of construction's lat stones varies widely,

(36:10):
but the maximum is about eight feet, with the exceptions
of the sixteen foot high House of Taga on Tinian
and the unfinished structure that would have been perhaps eighteen
foot high. The inhabitants of the islands came to be
known as the Chamorros. Their culture is very old and
the name of its people is still applied to them.

(36:30):
Can we believe the Laate stones were created by the
ancient Chamorros themselves? According to the official explanation, the stone
latte were created with two pieces pillars and capstones, carved
from land and sea resources, including limestone and brain coral.
The salt tools such as adzes were used to chip

(36:51):
the stone, while rubble was removed with wooden shovels and
by hand. The largest Laate stone can still be found
on Tinian, where some of those most intriguing columns measure
more than eight feet in diameter, with shafts in excess
of twelve feet in height. At the same time, it
said that the Chamorros, who lived in villages located along

(37:12):
or in the vicinity of the coastline were fishermen and farmers.
They were expert outrigger canoe builders and skilled as sailors.
In fishing. They used nets, spears and hooks and lines.
They also gathered shellfish from the reefs. As farmers, they
raised yams, tarot, bananas, bread fruit, sugar cane, and coconut palms.

(37:34):
Their tools were of stone, shell, bone, and wood. For
metal was unknown. After the first contact with European ships,
iron was eagerly sought after pottery was extensively manufactured. These
ancient people were familiar with advanced technology that allowed them
to produce perfect holes in stones. Similar ancient stones with

(37:56):
holes had been discovered in Egypt, Syria and Malta. The
hardness of stone did not limit the ingenious skills of
these prehistoric builders. Large basalt mortars, so called loo songs,
are found at several ancient sites throughout the Mariana Islands
and are associated with the cultivation of rice. However, the

(38:19):
holes drilled in them are much older. Do they remember
Before time people. Over an extended period of time, the
remarkable pyramidal structures were apparently occupied by islanders who found
them already standing there. The Chamorros, descendants of the ancient Chamorros,
have never tried to take credits for relics from times

(38:41):
long ago. Instead, they ascribed the artifacts to the spirits
of the before Time people. They were built by people
who came to the island before them. They say the
ancient Tilate stones formed the base of the House of Taga,
as they were named after one of the chief yefs
of the Marianna Islands during the pre Spanish period. What

(39:04):
was the true prehistoric name of the structures, if they
had any No one knows this. The unusual structures were
described for the first time by Lord Anson during his
long voyage around the world from seventeen forty to seventeen
forty four. There are in all parts of the island,
he wrote, a great number of ruins of a very

(39:25):
particular kind. They usually consist of two rows of square
pyramidal pillars, each pillar being about six feet from the next,
and the distance between the rows being about twelve feet.
The pillars themselves are about five feet square at the
base and about thirteen feet high. Interestingly, in his accurate

(39:46):
description of the structures, Lord Anson never mentioned the name
House of Taga. Why standing artifacts of Tinnean Island must
have belonged to an advanced society that existed long before
the rise of ancient Chamorros, a distant and long gone culture.
We know nothing about the ruins of the once magnificent

(40:09):
ancient buildings were constructed with unknown prehistoric technology. How could
our ancestors accomplish something so extraordinary? Once again we find
evidence that our history books are missing an important story.
This story could shed more light on our intriguing, distant past.

(40:29):
The island of Tinian, along with the Hawaiian Islands, Easter Island, Tahiti,
and thousands of other rocky islands scattered throughout the Pacific,
may constitute the only surviving remnants of a great lost
island that existed thousands of years ago. As we know,
the vast area of the Pacific is full of ancient
traces of a mysterious, prodigious culture that left impressive marks

(40:52):
in form of ruins of ancient statues, temples, cyclopean walls,
peculiar arches, columns, and pure pyramids built with stones weighing
ninety tons or more. The monoliths known as stone Latte
are magnificent, intriguing, very unique, and constitute an outstanding and
ingenious work of unknown skilled craftsmen who lived on the

(41:16):
island long before the Chamorros. Why did those who constructed
these buildings leave so many unfinished megaliths? These ancient giant
stones are scattered all over the place. Why was the
work abruptly stopped? Did the inhabitants fear something was threatening
their existence? Who were the builders of the structures and

(41:38):
for what purpose were they erected. Despite many speculations, there
has been little agreement on what they represent exactly. The
method of erecting the pyramidal pillars remains a matter of speculation.
The use of the wheel was long unknown in the region.
No apparent method of lifting latte stones from quarries can

(41:58):
be suggested. The stone columns and capstones situated on top
of the stone uprights found on Tinian originate from a
coastal quarry located about four thousand feet south of the site.
Several similar prehistoric quarries have been discovered on the island.
From there, the quarried stones were probably moved to the beach,

(42:20):
loaded onto wooden rafts, perhaps or other floating structures, transported
by sea to other islands, and then dragged several hundred
feet inland to the erection site. The precise use of
these huge pillars hewn from solid rock or reef coral,
also remains a mystery. Estimated weight of a typical stone

(42:42):
column is approximately fourteen tons, assuming a fourteen foot column
length four and a half by three or four foot
average planned dimension. However, if we focus on some Pacific
island legends which have been a long time concealed in
oblivion and hidden regional libraries, we learned that once upon

(43:02):
a time strange men lived on the islands. They were great, strong,
and powerful. They could perform gigantic feats beyond those of
the normal man. According to Knives and Flores in the
Memorial Library in nineteen seventy one, they prided themselves having
tremendous physical strength and other superhuman abilities. According to Thompson's

(43:25):
collection in nineteen forty five, they are as large as giants,
and of so great strength that it has actually happened
that one of them, while standing on the ground, has
laid hold of two spaniards of good stature, seizing each
of them by one foot with his hands, and lifting
them as easily as if they were two children who
were the before time people were they really disembodied souls,

(43:50):
demons or spirits who were monstrous ogre like figures that
lived on the islands. According to Van Penan in nineteen
seventy four, Apparently they must have been there long before
the Spaniards arrived. Was it a godlike race of giants
who ruled the islands. The puzzling pyramidal pillars with capstones

(44:13):
on the Mariana Islands have a message left for future
generations of humans and for us today. This is the ancient,
undecipherable message in stone that we probably cannot decode, but
have we ever tried digging up the forgotten past is
only for those who are ready to embrace the truth,

(44:35):
even an inconvenient truth. Thanks for listening. If you're listening

(44:58):
to the show via podcast or you YouTube, be sure
to subscribe if you haven't already done so, and leave
a review of the show in the podcast app you
listen from. And if you're already a weirdo, please take
a moment today and share Weird Darkness with somebody you
know who loves paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters,
or mysteries like you do. All stories in Weird Darkness

(45:21):
aren't purported to be true unless stated otherwise, and you
can find source links or links to the authors in
the show notes. The Mysterious People Before Time was written
by Asutherland for ancient Pages dot com. Cryogenics and the
TV repair Man is by Marco Margeratov for All That's
Interesting dot com. The Werewolf of Defiance is from Armed

(45:43):
with Silver dot com. First Contact with the First Lady
is from Ancient Code dot com. And Ohio Police Capture
Drunken Local Werewolf is from Jackdickey for Deadspin dot com.
And now that we're coming out of the dark, I'll
leave you with a little light Matthew seven verse two

(46:04):
for in the same way you judge others, you will
be judged, And with the measure you use, it will
be measured to you. And a final thought, the happiest
people don't have the best of everything. They just make
the best of everything they have. I'm Darren Marler. Thanks

(46:26):
for joining me in the weird darkness.

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