The Giant of Kandahar: Myth, Mystery, or Military Cover-Up? Plus More True Terrors!

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome Weirdos. I'm Darren Marler and this 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. When a

(00:29):
great famine struck Europe in thirteen fourteen, mothers abandoned their
children and in some cases even hate them. Scholars believe
that these tragedies gave birth to the story of Hansel
and Gretel. Cultures all around the world have stories of
tiny humans, elves, leprechauns, fairies, hobbits. But how can so

(00:54):
many different communities have such similar descriptions of tiny people?
Can there be evidence to prove the existence of tiny humanoids?
Traveling to the Superstition Mountains in search of the rumored
treasure hidden there is not only a bad idea, it
could be a fatal one. Seeing an unidentified flying object

(01:18):
in the sky is pretty common, even in cases where
several people see the flying whatever it is at the
same time. But when is the last time you and
everyone around you looked up and saw an entire city
flying in the sky. That's exactly what happened in twenty
eleven in the Nigerian village of Bauchi. According to GPS

(01:43):
off the California coast, there are dozens, possibly hundreds of
ships moving around in circles, but the ships, while clearly
visible on the GPS system, are nowhere to be seen
by the human eye. Are these ghosts ships from the past,
the oceanic version of crop circles, sailing ships from a

(02:06):
different dimension, or could it be something more disturbing, like
a new type of cyber attack. Soon after the Cranmer
family moved into their new home on Brownsville Road, it
became clear that they were not alone. Did US Special
Forces really shoot dead a twelve foot tall giant in Kandahar, Afghanistan?

(02:30):
How much truth is behind the story and how does
it fit into the age old narrative of soldiers, knights
and heroes battling against and vanquishing giants and monstrous creatures.
The Elephant's foot was created after the Chaer Nooble disaster
in nineteen eighty six, when Reactor four exploded, releasing a
lava like mass of radioactive material called koreum, so radioactive

(02:55):
that it is still dangerous if you try and see
it for yourself. Today, when something horrifying happens. It's natural
to tell others about your experience, But what if no
matter how much you explain it, people simply don't believe you.
We'll look at numerous stories from people who have true
tales that they have a hard time getting even friends

(03:17):
and family to take seriously. Now, bult your doors, lock
your windows, turn off your lights, and come with me
into the weird darkness. Throughout history, tales have been passed

(03:39):
down of men fighting monsters. These tales are generally loosely
based on real life encounters, such as the kraken likely
being a giant squid or Bigfoot possibly being just bear
sightings and dense forests. From UFOs to the Lockness Monster,
these fantastical beasts and the associated stories dominate our imaginations.

(04:04):
One monster race which can be found in the stories
of most cultures is giants, from the fairy tale Jack
the Giant Killer to David versus Goliath. In the Bible,
giants are depicted as huge, violent beings. Depending on the story,
they are said to feed on humans or livestock. Many

(04:24):
cultures use giants as a foe for the hero of
the tale, demonstrating the strength of character and intelligence over
pure brawn and stupidity. The word giant first appeared in
Greek mythology in twelve ninety seven, derived from the gigantes.
In Norse mythology, the jotan are giants who lived throughout

(04:44):
the nine worlds and oppose the gods. The jotin come
in many forms, such as frost giants, fire giants, and
mountain giants. While the Norse gods are described as human sized,
the huge giants are their foes in many battles, most
notably Ragnarok the Final Battle, where the giants would storm Asgard,

(05:07):
the home of the gods, and battle the gods until
the world is destroyed. As you can see, giants were
firmly fixed throughout Norse folklore. The gods were even related
to the giants through many marriages. The whole Norse human
world was even told to have been created from the
flesh of Emir, a giant of cosmic proportions. In Icelandic folklore,

(05:30):
two giants, a man and a woman, which traversing the
Fiord near Drangey Island at night. As they were traveling,
the sun rose, and the sudden exposure to sunlight turned
them to stone, along with their cow, which was with
them creating the island. While in most stories giants are
portrayed as the antagonist, such as the popular children's story

(05:51):
Jack and the Beanstalk, there are also plenty of tales
showing the giants as both intelligent and friendly, most notably
in the works of Roald Dahl and Jonathan Swift. While
giants have been confined to ancient tales, books, and films,
a modern story has emerged from Kandahar in Afghanistan. While

(06:14):
supposedly taking place in two thousand and two, the story
was not picked up widely until twenty sixteen, when a
YouTuber named l A. Marzouli posted an episode of his
series Watchers. The episode featured a supposed military contractor or
soldier who said they witnessed a blade wielding giant kill
one of their fellow US Special Forces soldiers. The giant

(06:37):
was then taken down by the remaining troops. Following the skirmish,
the giant's body was loaded into a military transport aircraft
and flown to an undisclosed location to be hidden away
from the public. According to these supposed eyewitnesses, the Giant
of Kandahar was twelve to fifteen feet tall, eleven hundred pounds,
with scarlet colored hair, and six fingers instead of five.

(07:02):
The witness and his team were sent to a remote
area to search for a patrol which had gone missing.
As they arrived in the area, the giant emerged from
a cave wielding a huge blade, which it used to
skewer and kill his friend Dan. When questioned directly, the
US Department of Defense stated that they had no record

(07:23):
of this incident occurring. Furthermore, they said that the only
member and service who lost their life in Kandahar in
two thousand and two with the first name Dan or Daniel,
was one of four soldiers who lost their lives during
an accident involving the clearance and disposal of explosives. This
statement can be backed up by looking through the US
Department of Defense Press release page, which publicly lists all

(07:46):
military casualties. The press release page does not contain any
records which involve a giant or an entire patrol disappearing
in Afghanistan. Although this casts doubt on the story, this
has not stopped conspiracy theorists and monster enthusiasts from discussing
the story. Upon the release of the YouTube episode, which

(08:07):
brought the story to light. Several websites which are used
for discussions about conspiracies and monsters, crashed with the traffic
from people rushing to look into and talk about the story.
In the interview in question, the witness goes into a
lot of detail regarding the incident. The witness and the
victim were part of a special ops task force looking

(08:28):
for a missing US Army squad. After trekking along the
mountain trail, they arrived at a large cave surrounded by
broken military equipment and gear. As they prepared to enter
the cave, the giant emerged, impealing dan and proceeded to
attack the rest of the squad. The witness states it
took thirty seconds of continuous fire from them to down

(08:50):
the giant. Between them, the squad was armed with M
four submachine guns, semi automatic rifles, and fifty bmg Barrett
sniper rifles. This much firepower concentrated on one target for
one second, let alone thirty would create a lot of damage.
Stating that they fired for thirty seconds would mean that

(09:11):
the target was something big. If the story's true. According
to the witness, the giant wore canvas or animal hide,
covers on to protect its feet like moccasins, and smelt
like dead bodies. The creature's body was airlifted back to
the squad's base by a helicopter and net. From there,
it was loaded into an aircraft and taken away, never

(09:32):
to be seen again. Upon their return, the soldiers were
made to sign non disclosure paperwork to stop the words
spreading of their encounter. The witness states that he broke
his silence because people have the right to know what's
happening on our planet. Whether you believe it or not,
this certainly makes for a compelling story. The thought of

(09:53):
a cave dwelling giant who can slay Special Forces soldiers
in a single blow makes the hair on your ne
stand up. Throw in a government cover up and you
have something which will keep conspiracy theorists fueled for years
to come when weird darkness returns. If something horrifying happens,

(10:19):
it's natural to tell others about your experience. But what
if no matter how much you explain it, people simply
don't believe you. We'll look at numerous stories from people
who have true tales that they have a hard time
getting even friends and family to take seriously, that's up next.

(10:54):
When something frightening happens to you, the first thing you
usually want to do is tell someone. Can make you
feel a little better and a little less alone when
you share your story, but if no one believes what
you say, it can make you feel confused or even
second guess your sanity. On Reddit, people are sharing the

(11:14):
eeriest events they've experienced that sound unbelievable but they insist
are true. From redditor Real abstract Squid the second. I
live in an extremely old house. It creaks, it groans.
The house isn't completely level, so sometimes unlatched doors swing
open on their own, But really, because of physics, if

(11:38):
you sat in my house on a windy day, you'd
swear to God it was haunted because the window frames
aren't great, and the wind screams through the gaps and
rattles the glass as though it were angered. I've lived
here for a couple of years now I know every
noise this house makes like the back of my hand.
I hardly notice it these days, which is why I

(11:58):
found it odd that when I was rushing my teeth
one night a few months ago, I clearly heard two
men's voices on the other side of my bathroom door.
Now it's just me, the dogs, and my boyfriend here.
My boyfriend was across the hall lying in bed, and
the dogs were with him. The voices I heard were
clear as day, two older gentlemen. Should we tell him? No,

(12:22):
I was they in there? And the second voice did
not reply. I obviously yanked the bathroom door open and
looked to see who was in my hallway, but there
was no one there. I listened for a few minutes,
thinking maybe I heard the TV or something. I don't
hear anything. I call out and ask if my boyfriend

(12:43):
said anything. The hollers back no from where he's at
in the bedroom. I go back to my nighttime routine,
shut off the bathroom light, and now the hallway is dark.
I'm going to go to the bedroom. I bring my
hand down from turning the light switch off. In my
hand brushes up against a cold, rough feeling hand, like
someone with a lot of callouses on their hand. I

(13:05):
felt the thumb and palm distinctly like someone had reached
out to grab my hand, but my movement kind of
pulled out of the grasp before they could actually grab
my hand, if that makes sense. The hand came from
behind me from in the bathroom. I obviously know there's
no one in the bathroom. I just left the bathroom

(13:25):
and then I heard someone mumble from behind me, not
words exactly, just kind of a voice, like someone grumbling
under their breath. I jumped, turned the bathroom light back on,
saw no one left the light on, and hauled butt
to the bedroom to tell my boyfriend what just happened.
Because I was extremely freaked out. We checked out the

(13:48):
entire house for an intruder, found no signs of any
Everything was locked up as usual. It never happened again.
I have no idea what it was. From Retator Pradera Noir.
I was twenty at the time and was helping my
girlfriend who from Alabama to Los Angeles. Because she had

(14:11):
all her belongings and her car, we decided to drive.
At that time, she had a suspended license, so I
was the one who was forced to drive the whole way.
Because I didn't want to get any speeding tickets. I
brought my radar detector from home to take with us
on the drive. Now, it was the second day of
our trip and we had recently crossed into New Mexico.

(14:31):
At the time, it was already well past sunset, so
most of my drive that day was spent on the
I ten at night. I remember stopping that night really late,
at around eleven or twelve at a rest stop Engaged,
New Mexico. The only thing there was a small area
with many identical concrete structures covering picnic tables. As we

(14:52):
were pulling in, the radar detector started going haywire, showing
codes for multiple different bands, including x KA and laser
all at once. I turned the radar detector off, not
really thinking much of it at the time, and pulled
into a picnic area near the back. From what I remember,
I was going to eat a snack or something to

(15:13):
tide me over, and as I was grabbing the food
from the middle row, I heard a low rumble or
squeak as if somebody was rubbing their palm along the
side of the car. As I was grabbing some items
from a bag in my lap, my girlfriend at the
time grabbed my arm with the most intense grip and
fear and just started saying, we gotta go, we gotta go,

(15:33):
with increasing panic. I'll never forget what I saw, to
be honest, in her side mirror there was a large,
rough silhouette leaning against the car just past the back door.
Even from a glance, I could tell that the figure
had to be much taller than the suv, as it
looked a bit hunched. Over Seeing this, I immediately started

(15:54):
to panic as I was not sure if this was
a person, animal, or whatever. As I was fum pulling
for the keys and the cup holder, I glanced in
my side mirror and saw the exact same figure motionless
against the side of the car. A few seconds later,
I started the car and punched it out of there.
Where our car was parked, there was nothing visible from

(16:14):
the light coming from the picnic awning. I'm not a
huge believer in paranormal stuff, but this was an experience
that I would one hundred percent call my only real
paranormal encounter. From redator Rattiness. It was the first anniversary
of my aunt's death. She lived in the same house

(16:36):
as me, but different apartment. I go to take a bath.
The bathtub is positioned in a way that when you're inside,
you're facing the window. Suddenly I hear a knock. I
look at the window and I see a hand formed
into a fist. Quickly pulling down like someone knocked and
quickly disappeared. The thing is, my apartment was on the

(16:57):
second floor, and there was no way someone could reach
the window from outside at all. Now, looking back at it,
I just tell myself it was just my imagination. But
then I know what I saw, and no one believed me.
Of course, from Redditor Throw Me Away two twelve two

(17:18):
twenty three. I always put my keys in the exact
same spot after I get home from work, no matter what.
They always go in the dish in my living room.
One day last August, I'd been home from work for
a few hours and was cooking dinner when the thought
of where are your keys got stuck in my head.
I looked around the corner, and sure enough, I was

(17:40):
gonna see my keys in the dish, but there were
no keys. I looked around the surrounding area and expanded
my search to my purse jacket bedroom, only to turn
up empty. I drove home from work and let myself
in with my keys. I was home alone, and my
roommates had been out of town for a few days
at that point, so I knew I had them, and

(18:01):
I knew no one would have moved them. I flipped
my house upside down. Searching for about four hours before
I half heartedly shook my heaviest winter coat hanging in
the back of the closet. I found my keys zipped
up in the inside pocket of a coat that I
hadn't worn since mid February at the latest. Everyone always

(18:23):
brushes off the story as I must have moved them
and forgot about it, but that makes no sense to me.
I have absolutely no clue how they got there, and
I really only have four possible explanations paranormal activity, glitch
in the matrix, I blacked out and moved them for
whatever reason, or there was someone in my house and

(18:45):
that was the only thing they did. From Reditor BC
dev I grew up in a haunted house. My parents
still live there to this day. Most traumatic experiences of
my life. The one memory that tops the list is
one I hate telling and rarely do. I'd always wake

(19:07):
up in the middle of the night and see stuff
from as young as I can remember, until I moved
out at eighteen. One night I was about six, maybe
I woke up to see a man and woman, both
dressed all in white, peelest skin I'd ever seen, both
standing at the foot of my bed, looking out the window.
The woman looked average height while the man reached the ceiling.

(19:30):
I tried to convince myself it wasn't real that I
was dreaming, until the man turned and looked at me.
His eyes were red. I turned sideways and covered my head,
trying again to convince myself I was dreaming. After a
few minutes, I looked over the covers and the man
was now standing at the side of my bed looking
down at me. I remember nothing after that. I talked

(19:54):
to a specialist when I was older, thinking maybe I
suffered from sleep paralysis due to those experiences, but that
was not the case. In every experience, I could move
and even ran out of my bedroom multiple times, great
times from reditor dreaming druidous. I have many stories because

(20:18):
I do cleansings for people and dabble in pagan practices.
They all can be pretty wild. But the one most
people have the hardest time understanding was witnessed by myself,
my mother, and my sister. This occurred when I was eight,
so nineteen ninety eight, small town in Alabama. My family
had bought this house on the lake, a real haunted crapfest,

(20:41):
but hindsight, you know. Literally the second day of moving in,
we experienced something. Also. This took place well before any
dive into the occult. My family was non denominational Christian.
The house was six bedrooms, four baths, top and basement layout.
We all had our rooms on the top floor. My

(21:01):
room and my parents' room were the furthest down the hall.
My sister was near the beginning, right across from the bathroom,
so the hall wasn't super long, but my sister decided
to put like fourteen to fifteen family portraits up on
the walls. They varied in size and wait. Now, our
mom was in the living room, which is what the
hall opened up to, so not far and certainly inside

(21:24):
of one another. Dad was gone, probably work or something.
I was in my room putting up posters. Nothing out
of the ordinary, and it was midday. When my sister
finished putting the pictures up. She came to get me
to show me. She was proud of her work. We
were right outside of my room talking when we suddenly
felt super uneasy. The atmosphere had changed. I didn't understand

(21:47):
it at the time, but it was just heavy and
difficult to think straight and breathe. Needless to say, our
conversation halted. Even my mom felt it and stopped unpacking things.
She turned to look at us. All of a sudden,
we felt and heard this whoosh of wind go from
my parents' room right in front of us. Down the hall.

(22:08):
All of those pictures levitated off the wall and floated
mid air, resting in a horizontal position parallel to the ground.
We screamed and ran to our mom. We were hysterical,
as you can imagine. Mom said she was scared, but
she had to be mama bear and protect her babies.
She said, firmly, stop, you are scaring my children. She

(22:31):
also told it to leave because it was not welcome here.
Now this part I didn't see because my face was
buried into my mom's side as I was crying. She said,
the pictures all floated down and came to rest in
their original spot. The ceiling seemed to just raise and
become far away. Suddenly my sister saw this too. I

(22:52):
have no idea how else to explain it. They only
ever described it that way. But the house became normal
and still again, like nothing had ever happened. My dad
never believed us, despite all three of us experiencing that. Honestly,
that was the most team thing we experienced in the
house seven years of hell we endured there. From Redditor

(23:19):
the Reddit Scout. I was playing outside by myself and
a truck kept driving down the streets. I got uncomfortable
and started to walk home, and they followed. I stopped,
they stopped, I ran, They drove faster. I started sprinting home,
and when I came near other people, they turned around
and drove away. When I arrived home, I told my

(23:42):
mom and dad. Nobody believed me. Spent five years and
I'm still shocked. From Redditor Ichi the Killer two thousand
and one. Not sure if this is the scariest, but
grew up for a while in this crappy apartment complex
and a bad part of account early two thousands. One night,

(24:02):
my little kid's self woke up in the middle of
the night, went out to get something to eat, I think,
and took one look to the living room. Huge strange
man is kneeling next to the TV. Big mustache has
a gun. We just stare at each other. I slowly
walk back into my room and go to sleep. Next morning,

(24:24):
I tell my mom what happened, and she calls the police.
The part no one believes is the dude took our
Wei game console, but not the little censor thing that
it needed to actually work. From redditor Miss Rabbit, if
you're nasty, I grew up in a haunted house. Nobody
believes most of the stuff that happened to me. The

(24:45):
top of everything that nobody believes, I was yanked out
of my bed by my ankles in the middle of
the night from redditor twenty five hands. My bathroom is weird.
One time it'll illuminated from the outside, as if someone
put headlights up to the window. Empty lots behind me

(25:06):
and next to me, no outside light source. Same bathroom.
I often find the bottom vanity drawer pulled completely out
and on the floor. You have to be lifted off
the rollers. Same bathroom. Cat was growling and freaking out
and doing the stalk stance from rettor j D British

(25:27):
and out of body experience which I hope is never repeated.
Almost crapped myself in fear. I was about eleven maybe younger,
hard to remember, and was sick at school in the
nurses station called a sick room at my school, laying
on the camp bed feeling just generally weird looking out
the very tall, thin windows that are typical of Victorian

(25:49):
schools in the UK. Then I felt this strange. I
can only call it a juke to the side, but mentally,
and I saw myself outside the window looking in, and
at the same time I was looking out from the
bed through the window at myself floating outside. Apparently I yelled,
but I don't remember that part. Then the nurse called

(26:11):
my mom to pick me up and I went home.
I think I slept the rest of the day, but
I have no clear memories of that part from Redator Darrena.
I live alone and at the time had two cats.
I have one of those galaxy projection lights, the kind
that basically projects something onto your ceiling. It has an

(26:34):
IR or Bluetooth connection because it uses a remote to
change the colors and settings on it. It also has
a speaker on it for some reason, to let you
know if the remote is connected. One night, I turned
it off and sitting on my chair next to my bed,
I was in a dead sleep when I heard the
voice toggling on and off saying Bluetooth disconnected. That was

(26:56):
the initial thing that scared me because all I could
hear was this some bodied voice. I found the source
quickly and realized I had thrown some clothes over it,
so the ir port was blocked. I fell back to
sleep and was awoken again, this time in the morning
by a male voice saying, oh, hello, Blaze. It was
coming from the direction of the light. Blaze is the

(27:20):
name of my cat. I laid still for a moment,
my heart pounding. I rolled over and found my cat
sitting on the other side of my bed. He was
in the room. That scared the tar out of me
even more. I leaped out of bed and ran over
to the thing and ripped it out of the wall.
I haven't turned it on since I've been sitting in

(27:41):
a corner of my room with the plug detached. I'm
afraid to plug it back in. I would blaze hypnagogic
hallucinations because I have had them before, mostly my mom's
voice calling my name. But the fact that my cats
was in fact in my room, sitting basically in front
of the light terrified me. My cats don't have collars

(28:04):
or bells, so it's not like I would have passively
heard him in my sleep coming into my room. And
then imagined the voice. Not only that, but he seemed
freaked out too, like he had heard the voice as well.
I have no idea if it was that or he
was just reacting to me waking up. I inspected the
whole device, looking for cameras and microphones. I was going

(28:26):
to take it apart, but I was too scared of
what I might find from redditor. It's four oh two am.
I think my friends and I almost got struck by
lightning or some electrical phenomenon. In Pedauahua, Ontario, when I
was between five and seven. It was torrential raining, thundering,

(28:47):
and very humid outside. I was ready to go in,
but my friends two sisters who were my age and younger,
who lived across the street from me, were stuck outside.
I believe their teenage brother had locked them out as
a joke. I was standing across their lawn, debating going
in or sitting with them on their stoop, as the
youngest sister was crying out of fear because of the thunder. Suddenly,

(29:10):
a huge ball of bluish white light came down from
out of nowhere and seemed to strike the lawn between us.
I remember it looked like it was spiraling or spinning
like a super bouncer. It seemed to bounce off the ground,
and then it disappeared. The little sister screamed bloody murder,
and they dropped their umbrellas and were holding each other.

(29:32):
I ran inside my own house. I remember still seeing
the light when I closed my eyes, and it haunted
me for quite a while after. The lawn didn't look damaged,
and my mom thinks it was my imagination from Redator
tear ducked Duck. When I was around the ages four

(29:52):
and five, I would constantly see weird things in my
bedroom at night. It'd often be shadows on the wall
talking to each other. It happened so often that I
just took them to be normal occurrences. I saw all
sorts of weird things at night, but the shadows were
one of the things I saw most often. One night,
in particular, I was dreaming about being in a large

(30:14):
landscape of rolling green hills. Dotting the hills were odd
buffalo type creatures. Something seemed off about them. They seemed unnatural, evil,
and slightly monstrous. I started to get scared and woke up.
Laying in my bed. I turned over and saw a
horned shadow figure on the wall directly above my door.

(30:37):
I tried to ignore it and flipped back over. I
could feel it watching me and kept flipping back, hoping
it would be gone, but it was always there. It
was staring and smiling. After a while, I couldn't take
it anymore, so I started yelling from my mom. As
soon as she came in, it vanished. I have no
good way to explain the things that I saw as

(30:59):
a child. There seemed to oftentimes be a blurring between
my dreaming state and awakened state, so I may have
just had a very active and odd imagination to the
point where I was truly hallucinating on a regular basis.
When I was about six years old, I had enough
of the stuff, so I remembered opening the front door

(31:19):
of our house and screaming, get out to everything that
was bothering me. That's when my nights began to become
more normal, and I eventually never had any more problems
with them. From Reditor Dibbah six six six. When I
was seven or eight, I just got done watching an
episode of America's Most Wanted and I went out onto

(31:42):
the front porch to blow some bubbles. As I was
doing this, I saw a guy run out of the
neighbor's house and hide behind some bushes armed. Then I
realize I hear police sirens getting closer. They suddenly stop
before they get to my street. The guy looks over
at me, makes the shush gesture, and then runs across
our lawn to the other neighbor's yard. To this day,

(32:05):
and I swear to God this is true, I recognized
his face as one of the guys on America's Most
Wanted Don't remember who. As far as I know, the
cops didn't find him, and no one in my family
believes that it happened. I was frozen in fear shock
until he ran out of my sight, at which point
I ran back inside and told my parents what I saw.

(32:26):
I don't blame them for not believing me, but at
the very least, I did see a wanted criminal run
across our yard that day. From rettor Let's get wavy, dude.
So there's this local legend that there's a cult that
practices deep in the woods in my area. One night,

(32:48):
my friend and I decided to go on a hike
in the woods at like one am. He said he
knew the area. I didn't at all. Unsurprisingly, he gets
us lost and we're wandering around aimlessly to hear what
sounds like dozens of voices chanting all at once. Immediately,
our first assumption is we found the cult, because this

(33:08):
is literally like two miles into the woods off of
this road that's in the middle of nowhere, no houses
or anything for miles. We walk closer to investigate because
we're actual idiots, and this coyote appears on the trail
in front of us. I swear it was some kind
of spiritual thing or something, because it literally appeared out
of nowhere. My friend gets spooked and throws a gallon

(33:31):
of milk at it. He brought the milk with him
to drink. He's a strange one. Coyote runs off. We
decide that we should probably rethink our investigation, specially considering
we've probably made enough noise to alert them. Anyway, I
tell people this story and they find it entertaining, but
I don't think anyone actually believes me. From reditor am

(33:53):
I eight eight im I was using resistance bands to
exercise in our school gym had double doors with the
post in the middle so the doors could close so
I wrapped the band around the post. I started pulling
and a loose screw popped out, So the post came
flying out at me, only one or two inches from
my neck, pretty close to one of the blood vessels too.

(34:16):
Luckily it hit me closer to my shoulder instead, but
I still landed on my back from the force. If
not for the gym teacher, nurse, and four or five students,
no one would have believed it when weird darkness returns.
Soon after the Cranmer family moved into their new home

(34:37):
on Brownsville Road, it became clear that they were not alone.
But first the Elephant's foot. It was created after the
Chernobyl disaster in nineteen eighty six, when reactor four exploded,
releasing a lava like mass of radioactive material called choreum.
So radioactive it is still dangerous if you try to

(34:58):
see it for yourself today. That story is up next.

(35:20):
In April nineteen eighty six, the world experienced its worst
nuclear disaster yet when a reactor at the Chernobyl power
plant in Pripyat, Ukraine, erupted. More than fifty tons of
radioactive material quickly wafted through the air, traveling as far As, France.
The explosion was so severe that toxic levels of radioactive

(35:41):
material plumed out of the plant for ten days. But
when investigators finally braved the site at the disaster in
December of that year, they discovered something eerie, a heap
of searing hot lava like chemicals that had burned all
the way through to the facility's basement, where it had
then solidified. The mass was dubbed the elephant's foot for

(36:05):
its shape and color, and benign though that moniker is,
the elephant's foot continues to release extremely high amounts of
radiation to this day. Indeed, the amount of radiation detected
on the Elephant's Foot at the time was so severe
it could kill a person in a matter of seconds.
In the early morning of April twenty sixth, nineteen eighty six,

(36:27):
a massive explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in
then Soviet Ukraine led to a meltdown during a safety test.
The uranium core inside reactor four of the plant overheated
to a temperature of more than two thousand, nine hundred
twelve degrees fahrenheit. As a result, a chain of nuclear
reactions caused it to explode ripping through its one thousand

(36:49):
metric ton concrete and steel lid. The explosion then erupted
all one thousand, six hundred sixty of the reactor's pressure tubes,
thereby causing a second explosion and a fire that ultimately
exposed the radioactive core of Reactor four to the outside world.
The radiation released was detected as far away as Sweden.

(37:12):
Hundreds of laborers and engineers at the nuclear plant were
killed within weeks of being exposed to the radiation. Many
risked their lives to contain the explosion and subsequent fire
at the plant, a twenty five year old Vasily Ignitenko,
who perished three weeks after entering the toxic site. Countless
others contracted terminal illnesses like cancer. Even decades after the incident,

(37:36):
Millions who lived closest to the explosion suffered similar, long
lasting health effects. The effects of all that radiation are
still felt in Chernobyle today. Researchers continue to study the
after effects of the Chernobyl disaster, including the shocking resurgence
of wildlife in the surrounding red forest. Researchers are also

(37:58):
trying to quantify the broader ramfiations of the catastrophe, including
the strange chemical phenomenon that formed in the plant's basement
known as the elephant's foot. When reactor four overheated, the
uranium fuel inside its core became molten, then steam blasted
the reactor apart. Finally, heat, steam and molten nuclear fuel

(38:20):
combined to form a one hundred ton flow of searing
hot chemicals that gushed out of the reactor and through
the concrete floor to the basement of the facility, where
it eventually solidified. This lethal lava like mixture became known
as the elephant's foot for its shape and texture. The
elephant's foot is comprised of just a small percentage of

(38:42):
nuclear fuel. The rest is a mixture of sand, melted concrete,
and uranium. Its unique composition was named chorium to denote
where it began in the core. It's also referred to
as lava like fuel containing material or LFCM, which scientists
continue to study today. You could find a photo of

(39:04):
it everywhere on the web if you do a search
for Elephant's foot radiation. I also have a link to
one of the photos in the show notes. The bizarre
structure was discovered months after the Chernobyl disaster and was
reportedly still searing hunt. The several foot wide blob of
chemicals emitted extreme levels of radiation, causing painful side effects

(39:26):
and even death within a few seconds of exposure. When
it was first measured, the elephant's foot released nearly ten
thousand drenkens per hour. That meant that an hour's exposure
was comparable to that of four and a half million
chest X rays. Thirty seconds of exposure would have caused
dizziness and fatigue, two minutes of exposure would cause the

(39:48):
cells in one's body to hemorrhage, and five minutes or
more would result in death in just forty eight hours.
Despite the risk associated with examining the elephant's foot, investigators
or liquidators as they were called in the aftermath of
Chernobyl managed to document and study it. The mass was
relatively dense and could not be drilled. However, liquidators realized

(40:13):
that it was not bulletproof when they shot it with
an AKM rifle. One team of liquidators built a crude
wheeled camera to take photos of the elephant's foot from
a safe distance, but earlier photographs show workers taking photos
at close range. Arch Kornyev a radiation specialist who took
the well known photograph of the man beside the elephant's

(40:34):
foot was among these liquidators. Corneiev and his team were
tasked with locating the fuel left inside the reactor and
determining its levels of radiation. Sometimes we'd use a shovel,
he told The New York Times. Sometimes we'd use our
boots and just kick pieces of radioactive rubble aside. The
well known photograph was taken ten years after the Cherobyle incident,

(40:57):
and he was only there for a few seconds, but
still Corneev suffered from cataracts and other illnesses following his
exposure to the quorium mass. The elephant's foot no longer
emits as much radiation as it once did, but it
still poses a dangerous threat to anyone within its vicinity.
In order to conduct further studies without risking their health,

(41:19):
researchers are trying to replicate small amounts of the chemical
composition of the elephant's foot in a lap. In twenty twenty,
a team at the University of Sheffield in the UK
successfully developed a miniature of the elephant's foot using depleted uranium,
which is about forty percent less radioactive than natural uranium,
and is commonly used to produce tank armour and bullets.

(41:43):
The replica is a breakthrough for researchers who are trying
to avoid creating such unintentional radioactive masses. Again, however, researchers
caution that because the replica is not an exact match,
any studies based on it should be interpreted with a
grain of saltev A research from the Frumkin Institute of

(42:03):
Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Russia likened the simulation to
doing real sport and playing video games. Of course, studies
of simulant materials are important since they are way easier
and allow lots of experiments, he conceded, However, one should
be realistic about the meaning of studies of only the simulants.

(42:23):
For now, scientists will continue to look for ways in
which the disaster that the elephant's foot represents can be avoided.
From the outside, the Victorian house at thirty four oh
six Brownsville Road in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, looks like any other

(42:45):
in the neighborhood inside, though it was once a living hell.
This according to Bob Cranmer, who lived in the home
with his wife Lisa and four children for eighteen years.
He recounts the horrifying events his family ex sperienced in
the book The Demon of Brownsville Road. Cranmer writes, from

(43:05):
the first Lisa and I always had the feeling that
we were not alone in that house, that we were
being watched by someone or something. I can remember the
sensation so clearly. We felt surrounded by the past, as
if we were almost living in it, that we were
only temporary visitors, tolerated for the time being, who would
eventually be expelled. Strangely, Bob Cranmer felt drawn to the

(43:29):
house ever since he was a little boy. When he
learned it was up for sale in nineteen eighty eight,
he moved in to purchase it. Cranmer was right when
he said that he felt surrounded by the past. The
property is steeped in history. The house dates back to
seventeen ninety two, and legend has it that a mother
and her three children were killed by Native Americans on

(43:50):
the ground upon which the house stands, and that their
bodies were buried in the front yard. Strange encounters began
to happen before the family even moved in. While conducting
a walk through of the house. Soon after their offer
had been accepted, Bob found his young son, Bobby Junior,
crying and hyperventilating by a staircase, terrified by an unseen force.

(44:13):
Lisa also expressed that the house gave her the creeps. Nevertheless,
the Cranmer family moved into the home. Within weeks of
settling in, it became clear to the Cranmer family that
there was something off about their new home. At first,
there were small nuisances. Lights came on by themselves, a
pool chain on a light wrapped itself around the light

(44:35):
instead of hanging down. Soon, however, things took a turn
for the sinister. Bobby Junior refused to sleep in his bedroom,
sleeping instead in a closet with a light on. Also
around this time, a ghost began to make its presence,
felt sometimes as a black, foggy cloud and sometimes as
a stench. The family heard footsteps and unsettling sounds. Then

(45:00):
they found bent crucifixes and destroyed rosaries. The Cranmers finally
got the Catholic Church involved. They began to look at
their situation not as a ghost haunting, but as a
demonic possession. A ghost if you believe in them is
generally the soul of a person who passed on in
some tragic event or something. A demon is actually the

(45:21):
opposite of an angel, Bob told Hollywood on the Potomac.
The existence of this thing manifested itself in a much
different way than a ghost would. A ghost is generally
reliving some type of event that took place during a life.
Sometimes they can interact with people that are alive. In
our case, this was a demonic, evil, malicious, malevolent spirit

(45:42):
that interacted with us on a regular basis, and it
wanted to hurt us. It wanted to drive us out
of the house. There was no pretense of it being
some kind of a lost soul. When the family brought
in Catholic priests to bless the house with holy water,
the sinister force allegedly responded by covering the walls with blood.

(46:03):
Bob Cranmer writes in his book some of the areas
where the blood was dripping from were so far up
over nine feet that a person would have had to
use a ladder to get there. Another interesting aspect was
that it was only on the walls and not on
the ceilings, so that if it were thrown up there
it would have been impossible to miss hitting the ceilings.
It looked as if the walls were bleeding. The family

(46:28):
worked with three priests for two years to expel the
demon from their home. Lisa and two of their children
were hospitalized for psychiatric reasons during this traumatic time. In
two thousand and six, they were finally successful. Today, at
least according to Bob Cranmer, the house on Brownsville Road
is quiet. On June fifth, twenty nineteen, the Nigerian crew

(47:12):
boat Princess Janis made an impossible journey. Instead of ferrying
cruise to and from oil rigs in the Gulf of Guinea,
it was somehow transported thousands of miles to the Pacific
coast of northern California, just off Point Rays. Even more amazingly,
after a while, it started to sail inland, plowing across

(47:36):
mountains and deserts all the way to Utah. The Princess
Janis was just one of more than a dozen ghost
ships observed circling the seas off Point Rays, and circling
is the right word, as some ships seemed to ply
the Pacific waters in mysteriously elliptical movements at a constant

(47:57):
speed of exactly twenty knots, except that they didn't. The
Princess Janice never left its home waters, nor did any
of the other ships, which all continued to sail the
seas off Equatorial Guinea, Malaysia, Norway, and other far flung places.
It wasn't the actual physical ships that flew halfway across

(48:21):
the globe, just their virtual positions as reported by their
AIS transponders. Some ships were displaced for just a few hours,
but the Princess Janesis virtual trip to North America lasted
about two weeks, and not all hung around Point Rays.
Some showed up near Madrid or Hong Kong. The Point

(48:43):
Raise incident, publicized by Bjorn Bergmann, a researcher for environmental
watchdogs sky Truth and Global Fishing Watch, was the latest
example of a phenomenon known as circle spoofing, a refined
and as yet unexplained cousin of GPS spoofing. It is
unclear what or who caused these circles and why. Malfunction

(49:07):
or manipulation now missing with GPS signals is not new.
It's been part of the electronic warfare arsenal for decades.
Russia notably has been singled out as a pioneer in
this area. A report by the Center for Advanced Defense
Studies or C four ADS in Washington, DC, claims the

(49:28):
Russians have a mobile electronic warfare team that jams GPS
signals whenever and wherever President Putin appears in public. One
step up from mere jamming is spoofing, tricking someone that
a GPS geolocated object is somewhere else than it actually is.

(49:48):
The AIS transponders of ships seem particularly prone to this.
Russia has used GPS spoofing in a number of places,
notably Crimea, Syria, and the Black Sna according to the
C four ADS report. For example, in twenty seventeen, twenty
ships in the Black Sea reported a position thirty two

(50:09):
kilometers inland near Galenziic Airport. It's also been claimed Russia
uses spoofing to hide Putin's now infamous Black Sea Palace,
the existence of which was revealed by controversial dissident Alexi Navlni.
GPS spoofing has obvious strategic implications. Iran in particular has

(50:29):
proved a quick student and seems to have learned to
use spoofing to its advantage In twenty eleven, Iran claimed
to have used GPS spoofing to trick a Lockheed Martin
RQ one seventy Sentinel drone operated by the CIA above
Afghanistan to land at an Iranian airfield. The capture helped
Iran clone its own drone within a year. In twenty sixteen,

(50:53):
Iran probably used GPS spoofing to lure two US Navy
boats into Iranian territorial waters, where the Iranian Navy appeared
to be ready and waiting for them. And in twenty nineteen,
British intelligence warned merchant vessels in the Gulf that Iran
might use GPS spoofing to lure them into Iranian waters

(51:14):
as a pretext to seizing them. And then there's one
step up from GPS spoofing circle spoofing. In regular GPS spoofing,
the location typically of a ship is transported to a
static point somewhere else. In circle spoofing, the location is
moved to a dynamic position, rotating in a circular pattern.

(51:39):
This makes circle spoofing more difficult to read and potentially
more dangerous, although the actual intention behind the phenomenon remains unclear.
Circle spoofing came to light. After July twenty nineteen. That's
when the American container ship ENVI Monukai, upon entering Shanghai Harbor,
experienced total failure of both its AIS transponder and its

(52:02):
two GPS units. Just before all the alarms went off,
its AIS display behaved in a very peculiar manner. It
showed another ship approaching, disappearing, showing up docked, and then
again moving towards the Manuchai, all the while a visual
check confirmed the other ship had been at DOC. The

(52:25):
crew of the Manuchai reported the incident's stateside, where analysts
discovered an epidemic of spoofing attacks in Shanghai Harbor, which
had started the previous summer and culminated on the day
the Menuchai was attacked, just one of around three hundred
vessels that were being spoofed that day. It's unclear who
is doing the spoofing. Could it be the Chinese government

(52:48):
testing out cyber weapons, or perhaps criminals trying to confound
the authorities. Illegal sand dredgers and oil smugglers are desperate
to use any means to evade capture. The latter option
would explain why one particular patrol boat operated by the
Maritime Safety Authority. Shanghai's River Police was spoofed almost four

(53:10):
hundred times over a nine month period. But what was
even more remarkable than the sheer volume of the spoofing
was its cartographic shape. The ships jumped from one location
to another in a circular movement centered on the eastern
bank of the Wangpu River. Why how Those questions have

(53:31):
yet to be answered satisfactorily, But C four ADS found
an ingenious way to discount the possibility that the ship's
AIS was somehow at fault. Analysts looked at anonymized location
data provided by the Strava fitness app used by a
considerable number of Shanghai's ten million cyclists. Turns out, they

(53:52):
too were apparently going in circles when approaching the waterfront.
This proved the spoofing attacks targeted all GP devices, not
just the ship's AIS transponders, but that still did not
resolve the mystery of the circular spoofs, which were quickly
dubbed crop circles, an allusion to the mysterious figures that

(54:12):
regularly appear in the grain fields of southern England. Do
the positions at which the circles are centered offer any clue.
One such circle is positioned exactly around the CINEPEC Shanghai
Petrochemical Company. Does that suggest state involvement cloaked as private
enterprise or rather a rogue commercial venture. Or are the

(54:35):
circles themselves clever misdirections activated by devices stationed elsewhere. What
does seem certain is that circle spoofing is catching on,
following the incidents in Shanghai involving vessels close by and
off point rays involving ships very far away. A report
came in from Iran in March of twenty twenty where

(54:56):
a GPS device was observed moving in a large which
circle in downtown Tehran, so nowhere near any coast, at
a constant speed of twenty two miles per hour. The
spoofing occurred near the Aja University of Command and Staff,
the Staff College for Iran's Army, also known as the

(55:17):
country's War University. Again, a Strava heat map showed local
athletes running or cycling in circles in that same area,
apparently oblivious to local roads and buildings. Meanwhile, the mysteries
of circle spoofing, who was doing it, how and why
have yet to be cracked. Reports of circle spoofing near

(55:38):
various oil terminals in China suggests that it may be
a way to defend these installations from attack. In fact,
a Saudi oil facility suffered major damage in an attack
by an unidentified drone rumored to be Iranian in origin
in twenty nineteen. Another theory is that circle spoofing could

(55:58):
be assigned that GPS spoof once so complex and expensive
that it must have required state involvement, has now been commoditized.
It can now be used by low power, short range
devices that can target single ships instead of having to
cover a wider area. And that's a scary thought. It
could open maritime traffic to a whole new kind of piracy,

(56:22):
spoofing luxury yachts or ships with valuable cargo right into
the layer of the twenty first century disciples of long
John Silver armed with keyboards instead of cutlasses coming up.

(56:42):
When a great famine struck Europe in thirteen fourteen, mothers
abandoned their children and in some cases even ate them.
Scholars believe that these tragedies gave birth to the story
of Hansel and Gretel. Plus from children eating gingerbread houses
to fully grown humanoids only the size of children or

(57:03):
even smaller. Cultures all around the world have stories of
tiny people like elves, leprechauns, fairies, hobbits. But how can
so many different cultures have such similar descriptions of tiny
humanlike people. Could there be evidence to prove the existence
of these tiny creatures. We'll find out when Weird Darkness returns.

(57:42):
The notorious Tale of Hansel and Gretel has been translated
into one hundred and sixty languages since the brothers Grim
first published the German law in eighteen twelve. Dark as
it is, the story features child abandonment, attempted cannibalism, enslavement,
and murder. Unfortunately, the origins of the story are equally,

(58:04):
if not more, horrifying. Most people are familiar with the story,
but for those who aren't, it opens on a pair
of children who are to be abandoned by their starving
parents in the forest. The kids, hansoling Gretel, get wind
of their parents' plan and find their way home by
following a trail of stones that Hansel had dropped earlier.

(58:25):
The mother or stepmother by some tellings, then convinces the
father to abandon the children. A second time. This time,
Hansel drops bread crumbs to follow home, but birds eat
the bread crumbs and the children become lost in the forest.
The starving pair come upon a gingerbread house that they
begin to eat ravenously. Unbeknownst to them, the home is

(58:47):
actually a trap set by an old witch or ogre,
who enslaves Gretel and forces her to overfeed Hansel so
that he can be eaten by the witch herself. The
pair managed to escape when Grettel shoves the witch into
an oven. They return home with the witch's treasure and
find that their evil matriarch is no longer there and

(59:07):
is presumed dead. So they live happily ever after. But
the true history behind the tale of Hansel and Gretel
is not so happy as this ending. Modern readers know
Hansel and Gretel from the works of German brothers Jacob
and Wilhelm Grimm. The brothers were inseparable scholars medievalists who

(59:28):
had a passion for collecting German folklore. Between eighteen twelve
and eighteen fifty seven, the brothers published over two hundred
stories in seven different editions of what has since become
known in English as Grimm's fairy tales. Jacob and Wilhelm
Grimm never intended that their stories be for children per se,

(59:49):
but rather the brothers sought to preserve Germanic folklore in
a region whose culture was being overrun by France during
the Napoleonic Wars. In fact, the early editions of the
brothers work published as kinder und house Marchen or Children's
and Household Tales. It lacked illustrations, scholarly footnotes abounded. Though

(01:00:10):
the stories were dark and filled with murder and mayhem,
the stories nonetheless quickly caught on. Grim's fairy tales had
such universal appeal that eventually, in the United States alone,
there had been over one hundred and twenty different editions made.
These stories featured an all star lineup of well known characters,

(01:00:30):
including Cinderella, Rapunzel, ruppel Stiltskin, Snow White, Little Red riding Hood,
and of course, Hansel and Gretel. The true story of
Hansel and Gretel goes back to a cohort of tales
that originated in the Baltic regions during the Great Famine
of thirteen fourteen to thirteen twenty two. Volcanic activity in

(01:00:51):
Southeast Asia and New Zealand ushered in a period of
prolonged climate change that led to crop failures and massive
starvation across the globe. In Europe, the situation was particularly
dire since the food supply was already scarce when the
Great Famine struck. The results were devastating. One scholar estimated

(01:01:12):
that the Great Famine impacted four hundred thousand square miles
of europe thirty million people, and may have killed off
up to twenty five percent of the population in certain areas.
In the process, elderly people chose voluntarily to starve to
death to allow the young ones to live. Others committed
infanticide or abandoned their children. There is also evidence of cannibalism.

(01:01:36):
William Rosen, in his book The Third Horseman cites an
Estonian chronicle which states that in thirteen fifteen mothers were
fed their children. An Irish chronicler also wrote that the
famine was so bad people were so destroyed by hunger
that they extracted bodies of the dead from cemeteries and
dug out the flesh from the skulls and ate it,

(01:01:57):
and women ate their children out of hunger. And it
was from this grim chaos that the story of Hansel
and Gretel was born. The cautionary tales that preceded Hansel
and Gretel all dealt directly with themes of abandonment and survival.
Almost all of these stories also used the forest as

(01:02:17):
a tableau for danger, magic, and death. One such example
comes from the Italian fairy tale collector Jimbattista Basel, who
published a number of stories in his seventeenth century Pentamrone.
In his version titled Nenillo and Nenella, a cruel stepmother
forces her husband to abandon his two children in the woods.

(01:02:38):
The father tries to foil the plot by leaving the
children a trail of oats to follow, but these are
eaten by a donkey. The grimmest of these early tales, though,
is the Romanian story The Little Boy and the Wicked Stepmother.
In this fairy tale, two children are abandoned and find
their way home following a trail of ashes, but when

(01:02:59):
they return home, the stepmother kills the little boy and
forces the sister to prepare his corpse for a family meal.
The horrified girl obeys, but hides the boy's heart inside
a tree. The father unknowingly eats his son while the
sister refuses to take part. After the meal, the girl
takes the brother's bones and puts them inside the tree

(01:03:22):
with his heart. The next day, a cuckoo bird emerges, singing, cuckoo,
My sister has cooked me and my father has eaten me.
But I am now a cuckoo and safe from my stepmother.
The terrified stepmother throws a lump of salt at the bird,
but it just falls back on her head, killing her instantly.
The direct source for the story of Hansel and Gretel

(01:03:43):
as we know it came from Henrietta Dorothea Wilde, a
neighbor of the brother's grim, who narrated many of the
tales for their first edition. She ended up burying Wilhelm Grimm.
The original versions of the Grim Brother's Hansel and Gretel
changed over time. Perhaps the brothers were aware that their
stories were being read by children, and so by the

(01:04:05):
last edition that they published, they had sanitized the stories
somewhat where the mother had abandoned her biological children in
the first versions. By the time the last eighteen fifty
seven edition was printed, she had transformed into the archetypal
wicked stepmother. The father's role too was softened by the
eighteen fifty seven edition, as he showed more regret for

(01:04:27):
his actions. Meanwhile, the tale of Hansel and Gretel has
continued to evolve. There are versions today that are meant
for preschoolers, like children's author Mercer Mayer's story, which doesn't
even try to touch any of the child abandonment themes.
Every once in a while, the tale attempts to go
back to its dark roots. In twenty twenty, Orion Pictures

(01:04:51):
Gretel and Hansel, a grim fairy tale, hit theaters and
hedged on the side of creepy. This version has the
siblings looking through the forest for food and working to
help their parents when they meet the witch. Seems the
true story of Hansel and Gretel might still be darker
than even the movie versions of the twenty first century.

(01:05:20):
From the lush oases of Africa's Ethiopia, across the planet
to the sweltering jungles of Mexico, beyond the horizon, to
the primordial coasts of Hawaii, and back again to the gardens,
olive groves, and marble columns of ancient Greece. An obscure
common thread of small human subspecies endoers. Detailed accounts persist

(01:05:44):
about human subspecies that were small in stature, nocturnal, seemingly
gifted with advanced knowledge, who primarily dwelt underground and emerged
to the surface only at night. Is it possible that
such specific parallel may be something more than just common
mythological archetypes. Is there really some collective subconscious dynamic that

(01:06:08):
somehow triggers practically every indigenous ethnic group from around the
globe to harbor the belief that in prehistoric times there
existed two to three foot or zero point six two
point nine meters tall people who were skilled masons, astronomers, magicians,
or sorcerers, and who hoardered treasure. Or is there more
than just belief to this story? As it interesting as

(01:06:33):
the mythological parallels are, the beliefs and stories are attempting
to dismiss as a widespread element of folklore. However, archaeological
evidence in the form of megalithic ruins, stones, spheres, platform temples, pyramids,
and even remains do indeed exist and seem to have
cultural connections with these human subspecies of ancient lore. Several

(01:06:57):
different Greek scholars, historians, and philosophers wrote about these legendary
little human subspecies. In Aristotle's History of Animals from three
hundred BC, he writes, these birds the cranes, migrate from
the steps of Pscythia or modern Eurasia, to the marshlands
south of Egypt, where the Nile has its source. And

(01:07:18):
it is here by the way that they are said
to fight with the pigmies. And the story is not fabulous,
but there is in reality a race of dwarfish men,
and the horses are little in proportion, and the men
live in caves underground. Lucius Flavius Philostratus third century AD
also has written of a similar account. And as to

(01:07:39):
the Pigmies, he said that they lived underground, and that
they lay on the other side of the Ganges, and
lived in a manner which is related by all. As
to men, they are shadow footed or have long heads.
And as to the other poetical fancies which the Treaties
of Skylax recounts about them, he said that they didn't
live anywhere on the earth, and least of all in India.

(01:08:00):
Philostratus also recorded an account of a myth about Hercules,
in which the demi god Hero slayed a different demi
god slash giant warrior, and then fell asleep. But Hercules
did not know that the pigmies were related to the
giant that he had defeated, and he didn't know that
they were watching and grieving from their underground realm. He

(01:08:22):
goes on to detail how the pygmies lived underground in
tunnels where they stored provisions, had little horses, and when
Hercules fell asleep, they billowed forth from under the ground
in waves and attempted to bind and capture him. In
twenty nineteen, Jason Daily of the Smithsonian Magazine wrote an
article about what is believed to be the extremely ancient

(01:08:45):
remains of a Neanderthal child which was eaten by a
giant bird. The remains are approximately one hundred and fifteen
thousand years old and were discovered in Siemna Cave in
what's modern day Poland. They were found along with animal
bones and at cache, which indicated that all the bones
hominin and animal were preyed upon by and had traveled

(01:09:07):
through the digestive tract of a giant prehistoric bird. It's
important to note that the Neanderthal remains are few and
very tiny, and it's this fact that lead scientists to
believe that it was actually a small child, regardless if
these bones belonged to some very small human subspecies or
an infant child hominin. Either way, it's a fact that

(01:09:30):
in the very distant past of prehistory, little humans who
were not Homo sapiens were attacked and eaten by giant birds.
Modern day biologists have thoroughly studied the migratory patterns of
a variety of crane species, and some species of crane
do in fact migrate from marshes in Eurasia all the
way down to Ethiopia. The ancient Egyptian polytheistic belief system

(01:09:54):
comes complete with all manner of deities, monsters, and so on,
but the cult the deity Bess is unique. Unlike most
Egyptian deities, Bess was never portrayed from the profile position,
but always portrayed either in full frontal two dimensional form
or full three dimensional sculpture form. Bess was depicted as

(01:10:16):
a diminutive or dwarf human with some subtle anthropomorphic features.
Bess was not a deity to be sought out at
some luxurious temple, but his idol was kept at home
and it was the dwelling, which he guarded wearing his
warrior's tunic. He was a deity of music, protection, fertility,
and domestic pleasures. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of

(01:10:38):
Bess is that his cult was relatively new and that
it only became widespread during the New Kingdom, and this
is the result of its importation from the south, from Nubia, Somalia,
or Ethiopia. In other words, what's interesting about this is
that the ancient Greeks relate to us that these pygmy
human subspecies lived south of Egypt, and it's from this

(01:11:01):
same region that the cult of this dwarf god Bess originates.
Nubia brings to mind the many small pyramids that are
a mystery under themselves. While it's generally regarded as no
great mystery, exactly who were entombed within these Nubian pyramids
is not entirely clear, as many of those tombs were

(01:11:21):
allegedly looted in antiquity, and today many have been flooded
by a rising water table. In what is now modern
day Mexico, on the eastern side of the Yucatan Peninsula,
rests the ruins of the ancient Maya side Uxmol This
ancient Maya complex is held as one of the most important,
and it's noted for its large and imposing structures. Among

(01:11:43):
the most impressive and ancient of all these structures is
the El Aldovino, the Pyramid of the Magician, which is
also known as the Pyramid of the Dwarf. This name
comes from the Maya people themselves, who have several versions
of how this pyramid was constructed, but in each case
it was constructed by the incredible feats of a mysterious

(01:12:04):
and powerful little human subspecies. This pyramid has been called
the most distinct Maya structure on the entire peninsula, which
is saying a great deal. It has very steep rounded sides,
is very tall, and has an elliptical base. The simplest
account the Maya kept about the pyramid was that a

(01:12:25):
dwarfish sorcerer deity named Itsomna built the pyramid in a
single night, using only his strength and magic. In another
version of the myth, a witch gives birth to a
dwarf via an egg, and the miraculous birth draws the
attention of the king, who challenges the diminutive boy to
erect a temple in a single night or be put
to death. The powerful little man ultimately completes three seemingly

(01:12:50):
impossible challenges, kills the king, and becomes the new ruler
of Uxmol. The Maya story about a little person using
some other worldly or in genius methods to create grand
structures in a single night brings to mind the Manahune.
Who are these small archaic human subspecies inhabitants of Hawaii.

(01:13:10):
These mysterious prehistoric people are said to have inhabited the
Hawaiian islands long before Polynesians arrived, and were responsible for
the construction of the impressive and massive buildings like platforms, temples,
and artificial fish ponds. The Hawaiians believed that the Menahune
would only come out at night to build these structures,
and their goal was always to complete construction in one

(01:13:32):
single night. Similar to these other accounts, they would be
easy to dismiss if it were not for physical evidence
like the ruined temples and still functioning fish ponds, Just
as the Maya story as its magnificent megalithic marvel now
onto the islands and inlets of North Atlantic, Scandinavia, Ireland, Scotland, Iceland,

(01:13:53):
all of which are equally filled to the brim with
ancient accounts also attached to strange ruins. Scarabrae in Scotland,
for instance, comes to mind due to the measurements of
the doorways and beds which all existed in underground dwellings.
All of these North Atlantic regions have deeply ingrained within
them stylized recollections or mythology of these prehistoric predecessors elves, dwarfs, leprechauns,

(01:14:20):
and many other human subspecies. In Homer's epic poem the
Iliad from the eighth century BC, an ancient race of pygmies,
as the Greeks called them, were engaged in perpetual conflict
with this species of cranes. Apparently, there was a queen
of the little people named Gharana who offended hera with
her arrogance and claims of surpassing beauty, and as punishment,

(01:14:43):
this queen was then transformed into a crane, which sparked
the never ending conflict between the two species. Now, when
the men of both sides were set in order by
their leaders, the trojans came on with clamor and shouting
like wildfowl, as when the clamor of cranes goes to
the heavens when the cranes escape the winter time and
the rains, unceasing and clamorously wing their way to the

(01:15:06):
streaming ocean, bringing to the pygmy and men bloodshed and destruction.
At daybreak, they bring on the baleful battle against them.
The vast majority of the widely varied Native American tribes
have oral traditions that recall coexistence between the Native Americans
and a different, smaller and more ancient human subspecies. Common

(01:15:28):
elements to these accounts include mischievous behavior like luring children
into the forest by playing music. Similar to the Greeks
and North Atlantic people. The Native Americans believed that these
little people lived in caves and could potentially be dangerous.
For example, the Prior Mountains of Montana are said to
be home to this day of little people, who the

(01:15:51):
Crow tribe believes to be their sacred ancestors. The crew
are extremely weary and or cautious about entering into what
they perceived to be the territory of the little people. Interestingly,
the Prior Mountains are a relative hotspot for strange phenomenon
like disappearances, fairy rings, and reports of unusual sightings. Growing

(01:16:14):
up in a culture so rich in fiction, it can
be hard to distinguish between the fairy tales we learn
as children and what seems to be actual historical evidence
that in the distant past there may have been diminutive
species or subspecies of humans, who perhaps lived simply, but
also built unimaginable monuments and may have been preyed upon
by a giant species of bird. It is not that

(01:16:37):
all these myths are suddenly becoming valid, but it is
possible that certain historical events continue to echo in the
form of stylised recollections, which we call mythology. It's worth
considering for a moment that below the surface of the
Earth are miles upon miles of uncharted, unexplored cave systems.

(01:16:59):
Its estimates that less than one percent of known cave
systems have been mapped. This means that of the cave
systems that we do know about, ninety nine percent of
the systems themselves have still never been charted or explored.
It must surely be then that the great majority of
cave systems must be unknown entirely, meaning that we know

(01:17:23):
very very little about this part of the planet and
who might live there. When we'd darkness returns. Seeing an
unidentified flying object in the sky is pretty common, even

(01:17:46):
in cases where several people see the flying whatever it
is at the time. But when's the last time you
and everyone around you looked up and saw an entire
city flying in the sky. That's what happened in two
thousand in the Nigerian village of Bauci. But first traveling
to the Superstition Mountains in search of the rumored treasure

(01:18:08):
that's hidden there, it's not only a bad idea, it
could be a fatal one. We now travel to a

(01:18:32):
region where little people are also seen, but in a
much more bizarre way. Strange lights have been known to occur,
and many people have either gone missing or been found
dead in this place. People who have visited the area
report sightings of peculiar small beings who look like children,
but they're not. They're something entirely different. It is said

(01:18:56):
that a vast system of tunnels and an artificial subterranean
labyrinth could be home to unknown creatures who are dangerous
to approach. According to a legend, many people have never
returned when they went searching for an ancient treasure that
is allegedly hidden somewhere here. When visiting this place, people

(01:19:17):
report that they've experienced a loss of time and displacement
in space. Could some unknown force present in the area
be the cause. What kind of force is responsible for
peculiar levitation cases, numerous strange vanishings and deaths. Some people
have simply vanished into thin air, which has led to

(01:19:38):
speculations that there may be an invisible interdimensional portal in
the region. Something very strange is happening here, but no
one can explain what. The Superstition Mountains are a range
of mountains located just east of Apache Junction, Arizona. They
are anchored by Superstition Mountain that's become a popular recreation

(01:20:02):
destination for Phoenix residents. These remarkable and beautiful mountains are
often referred to as the Superstitions or the Soups. According
to the Lost Dutchman Mine legend, one of the most
famous ancient treasures is hidden somewhere around the Superstition Mountains.
The mind is named after German immigrant Jacob Waltz, who

(01:20:24):
purportedly discovered it in the nineteenth century and kept its
location a secret. Many have tried to find the gold
treasure and lost their lives while searching for it. The
Superstition Mountains are home to many strange tales and unexplained phenomena.
Local Indians feared the sacred grounds of the Apache. The
place was most likely named by early settlers who had

(01:20:47):
heard stories of scary incidents taking place there. Some accounts
can be the product of imagination caused by the hot
desert sun and the fearful winds that howl through the mountains,
but not all incidents can be dismissed as fantasy. In
May nineteen fifty nine, explorers reported seeing small children playing

(01:21:07):
near a small creek. These children, who were visible for
several days, appeared to be five or six years old.
The men found it odd and unsettling. How could small
children be playing in such a deserted place, so far
from any residential area. At first, the two men did

(01:21:28):
not react, as they thought the children must be in
the presence of their parents, who were probably somewhere nearby.
Every day, while digging, the explorers saw the children in
the same dry creek, but they were never accompanied by adults.
In their opinion, this was an unsuitable playground for small
children without supervision, especially because many strange deaths had occurred

(01:21:51):
in the area. One day, they decided to investigate and
find out what the children were doing there. When they
reached the creek, they discovered, to their estonishment that the
children had vanished. The two men looked around and could
see very fresh, small footprints in the sand. The prince
appeared as miniature duplicates of engineer boots. Over the next

(01:22:14):
few days, the two men returned to the same spot,
but they never saw the children again. How could the
children have vanished into thin air? Did they enter another
dimension through a portal that was undetectable to the two explorers.
Little children have been sighted by other people who visit
this region. Witnesses say that these beings looked more like

(01:22:36):
men than children. Some ranchers said that they could clearly
see little men on the tops of ridges and mountains
of the Superstition Range. None other ranchers tried to approach them,
and these curious little beings would only gaze silently at
the humans as they worked. Who are these little men?
Where do they come from? Are they members of an

(01:22:57):
unknown race that perhaps lives under There are numerous caves
and crevices in the region. Legends tell that beneath the
Superstition Mountains, there is a vast system of tunnels that
reaches as far as Central America. The caves are said
to serve as camouflage for the entryways to a huge
artificial subterranean labyrinth. Do these little men emerge from the

(01:23:22):
Earth's underground to gather food and bring water to their
subterranean homes, or do they perhaps reside in an invisible
world next to our own? Is it possible that an
invisible interdimensional portal is located somewhere between the mountains. It
has been suggested that the line that divides our reality

(01:23:42):
from other invisible worlds is especially narrow at this location.
Several people who visited this particular location reported a loss
of time and a conscious displacement in space. During this time,
they experienced what could be described as a journey through
portals to other dimensions, where they make contact with extraordinary

(01:24:04):
beings and visited unknown places. The Superstition Mountains are surrounded
by an intense group of magnetic fields. Scientists who have
investigated the area estimate that there are almost ten such fields,
which vary in intensity based on atmospheric conditions and tectonic activity.
It's been speculated that these powerful currents produce some sort

(01:24:27):
of temporal shield that freezes time. When a person is
unexpectedly caught in one of these strong whirlpools, he becomes trapped,
lifted off the ground, and suspended in the mid air.
The person who is forced to levitation has no control
over his body. This type of levitation can be extremely
dangerous because it can lead to death. Once the field dissipates,

(01:24:52):
the victim falls to the ground and ultimately dies. The
magnetic fields and intense whirlpools can explain some of the
mystify various deaths in the region. It's also been suggested
that there is a transdimensional vortex near the Superstition Mountains,
and this could account for the numerous UFO sidings near
Phoenix and around the mountains. Ufologists have proposed that unearthly

(01:25:15):
visitors could use the vortex as a shortcut when traveling
to our planet. The Superstition Mountains remain, without a doubt,
mysterious and beautiful. If you're ever in the region, go
and visit the Superstition Mountains, look at the skies, investigate
the caves, but be careful because you never know who

(01:25:36):
or what you might encounter. In March of twenty eleven,
according to residents of the small border village of Doulali

(01:25:57):
in Lanzai south ward Derazzo local government area of Bauchi State,
the global paranormal phenomenon of unidentified flying objects UFO, also
known as flying saucer, was sighted in Nigeria at that time.
Practically the entire village, consisting of a few hundred people,
saw a bright light in the sky immediately after morning

(01:26:19):
prayer at the local mosque. Soon after, they saw a
massive flying city or floating city descending from out of
the sky. The place was a border village called Dulali
in Lonzai's south ward Drazzo local government of Bauchi State.
What are the eyewitnesses? Saidou Mashai du Lali, who makes

(01:26:40):
a living brewing hot tea, coffee and cocoa beverages for locals,
tells journalists from a Nigerian newspaper that he saw the
light in the sky after morning prayer at the local
mosque while preparing to start the day's work. Suddenly, he
became aware of a pervading bright light enveloping the atmosphere,
followed by a sudden realization that the heavens were falling

(01:27:01):
on the village. As he looked up at the encroaching sky,
he saw the most amazing view of his forty years
of existence. According to him, there appeared a wide, large
mass of something that looked like a cloud from nowhere,
and it was flying slowly over the village, just at
the height of an average tree. The cloud was transparent,

(01:27:21):
and I saw beautiful tall buildings inside it, he said,
with tarred roads and cars. It was like a flying city.
And from it I could hear the sound of machines
making noise, just as you would hear at a shaka
cement factory. If SAIDU were the only witness of this
extraordinary experience, it would have been impossible to take his

(01:27:42):
testimony as a fact. Interestingly, the flying city was witnessed
by almost all the villagers, hundreds of them. The chief
and mom of the sole village mosque, included children and adults.
All saw and corroborated the story. Dad A Mohamet, a farmer,
also saw it while he was out in the fields.

(01:28:04):
He said he noticed the UFO over the sky and
that he was more astonished than scared. He also said
he saw buildings in the floating city which appeared swathed
in clouds. A ten year old boy, Ibrahim, said that
he saw the UFO passing behind a tree and appearing
on the other side. The young boy was evidently confused

(01:28:25):
about his perspective view of the extraordinary object, because he
seemed to think the UFO passed through the trees. We
believe that maybe Allah used those sightings to open our
eyes to see how jinns or spirits live in their
own world. Allah is great and there is nothing he
cannot do on Earth. Exactly two weeks after appearing in

(01:28:45):
our village, that flying object visited again at the same
exact time and stayed in the sky roving around the
village for almost an hour before it went away. We
are happy because it shows we are a special village.
Other towns around were not even given that privilege. However,
Brian Engler, commenting on the website Doubtful News, thinks the

(01:29:06):
UFO could have been a thought up morgana mirage. This
sounds like a thought of morgana mirage to me, he says,
although I have no idea whether the meteorological conditions at
the time and place would have supported that. Brian Dunning
has described the effect several times on Skeptoid and there's
a description that starts out talking about castles in the air,

(01:29:26):
which sounds a lot like what these folks described. Interesting
in any case, when the villagers of Dowlawi were asked
whether they had seen any living beings inside the Ufo,
they were all certain and specific with their response that indeed,
no living being was seen in that apparent city in
the sky. Back then, few had mobile phones in Nigeria.

(01:29:49):
This is especially true for suburban residences. An amazing case
remained only in the minds of the residents. Thanks for listening.
If you like the show, please cheer it with someone

(01:30:09):
you know who loves the paranormal or strange stories, true crime, monsters,
or unsolved mysteries like you do. All stories in Weird
Darkness 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 Giant of Kandahart was written
by Angus Wright for the website Where I Live. Nobody

(01:30:31):
Believes Me was organized and gathered by Amanda Ashley for
a Ranker's Graveyard shift. The Elephants Foot of Chernobyl is
by Natasha Ishik for all That's Interesting. The Demon of
Brownsville Road was written by Diana Villabert for the lineup.
Mysterious Visitors from Other Realms is written by Ellen Lloyd
for Ancient Pages. The grim True Story behind Hansel and

(01:30:54):
Gretel is by Joseph Williams. For all That's Interesting. Ufo
City was posted at Anime. California's ghost Ships is by
Frank Jacobs for Big Ideas and Little Human Subspecies was
written by Mark Andrew Carpenter for Ancient Origins. Weird Darkness
is a production of Marler House Productions. And now that

(01:31:15):
we're coming out of the dark, I'll leave you with
a little light James one, verses two through four. Consider
it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face
trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing
of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work
so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

(01:31:41):
And a final thought from doctor Partha Nandi. A wise
person speaks first with his actions, second with his mouth.
I'm Darren Marler. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.

(01:32:01):
Thre

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