April 26, 2019 • 51 mins
Whenever you tune into the news nowadays, it seems like there's yet another tragic disaster on the airwaves. And, over recent years, some fringe researchers have been arguing that disaster has a season -- not some part of the year wherein disasters are naturally more likely to occur, but a time of the year when certain forces are purposefully creating tragedies. Listen in to learn more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt noel Is on Adventures.
They call me Ben. We are joined with our guests,
super producer Torri Harrison, So everybody dropped by our various
social media's and and give her a hello, thank her
for saving the show. Most importantly, you are you, You
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
(00:46):
you to know. A very very strange episode. Uh an
episode that draws in allegations of the paranormal, the occult
cults in specific, and much much more, and just numbers
numerology a little bit to a small extent to a
larger extent. Cool incidence. I'd like to open today's episode
(01:10):
with with a quote from a poem many of us
in the audience will recognize. Can we get just a
little bit of ominous music? April is the coolest month,
breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire,
stirring dull roots with spring rain. That's just the first
(01:35):
that's the first four lines of The Waste Land by T. S. Elliott,
and it's it's useful for our purposes today because we
just see the beginning of some of the themes that
Elliot is working with throughout the Wasteland. You you had
to read that, I'm sure at some point, like high school, college,
(01:59):
read it for fun. And it's just a it's a
creepy poem. It is, it is, and it it characterizes
April in a very different way than I think maybe
a lot of us see April, at least especially in
the southern the Southeastern United States and a couple other places,
where April seems to be really when spring starts happening.
(02:22):
You know, you have a lot of March. Then once
you get into April, that's when all the pollen starts
showing up, at least around these parts. That's when the
flowers start blooming. Seems really happy and not at all
a waste land. We even say often in English and
especially in the southeastern part of the United States, that
April showers bring may flowers. It's a time of um rejuvenation, resurrection,
(02:48):
after the after the symbolic death of the world in
winter right, symbolic death and or real death of Jesus
Christ right right, exactly, which you know is mythologically, uh,
an ancient concept that goes back to you know, the
resurrected vegetable god. You know, even even the ideas of
(03:11):
gods that were dismembered by their followers to ensure harvest.
There is a ton of folklore here and it goes
very very deep. But for our purposes today, we have
to say that April is a month full of symbolic
contradiction right today and in these our modern times, April
(03:32):
is as you said, man, it's the beginning of spring,
you know what I mean. Let's all go hunt for
plastic eggs in someone's lawn, right. But in times past
it was it was much more important, especially when people
were much more closely tied to an agrarian lifestyle. We're
living off the land. And just one last thing you
put in here it symbolically, in order for a rebirth
(03:57):
to occur, what must there be death? Right? That's correct? Yes?
And now, speaking of these are modern days, let's let's
take a look. Let's all let's all zoom out in
our imaginary Google Earth maps. Uh, so far that we
can see this, this blue dot, our own little spaceship
(04:18):
right orbiting the Sun. This is a huge world, at
least as far as we're concerned. It's also imperfect. And
let's zoom back in a little bit further, and let's
focus just on the United States for now, just on
North America. For the past few decades, Americans have encountered
numerous horrific domestic events such as bombings, mass murders, acts
(04:44):
of terrorism, spree killing, and so on, often resulting in
the deaths of dozens or in some cases hundreds of people,
and sadly, tragically, for most of us, the endless march
of these events can blend to other at times. I
like what you did there with the endless march. Yes
(05:05):
that was unintentional, but yes it's true. Right, I mean,
you know, think about think about the horrific occurrence of
school shootings, right, which have which have been reported at
such a frequency. And let's be careful to emphasize that
we're reported at such a frequency. That there were times
(05:26):
when you and I were here in the office working
on something, talking about something, and then we would be
talking about two different school shootings because we didn't happen. Yeah,
we didn't realize in the moment that we're talking about
two different ones exactly. So for some of us, this
has become the new normal. You turn on the news,
(05:47):
you log into your new source of choice, or you
open your morning paper and you are surprised if something
has not occurred, right. But for other people, a single
day or a single afternoon fundamentally changed our understanding of
this country and of the world in general. If you
were someone who was present, uh during the Centennial Olympic
(06:11):
bombing here in Atlanta, if you were someone present during
the attack on the World Trade Center on September eleven,
two thousand one, it's it has inherently altered your perspective.
In today's episode, we're exploring a bizarre claim related to some,
but not all, of these tragedies. Do they seem to have,
(06:36):
for lack of a better word, a season, you know
what I mean? Like how like how we talked previously
about the small town of Shag Harbor. It has a
lobster season. It's a lobster town, but it's only through
I believe November to to a certain amount of time
that they actually fish for lobster. So do these tragedies.
(07:00):
If you look at at these things that occur in
the United States, is there a season where they are
more likely to occur throughout the year. Well, let's take
a look back through even just the recent history, starting
in ninete and it we were we were recording this
on April nineteenth, two thousand nineteen, and on April nineteenth, uh,
(07:24):
something happened that has been called and is known as
the Waco massacre, the Waco siege, Waco siege. There, It's
been called a lot of things depending on which side
you land on, like in your beliefs about what happened
that day. But that's when an FBI assault and a
t F and several other agencies um led to the
burning down of the compound of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas,
(07:47):
and it killed seventy six men, women, and children. It
was a terrible and highly contentious moment or a couple
of days um the way Co massacre. But that was
nine Then in we have the Oklahoma City bombing, which
killed a hundred and sixty eight people when a a vehicle,
(08:11):
a bomb inside a vehicle exploded in the lower levels
of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City, and then on
April nine, the Columbine High School massacre happened, where two
young men killed thirteen people and injured twenty one others.
April sixteenth, two thousand and seven, the Virginia massacre occurs,
(08:31):
thirty two people are killed, seventeen are injured. April sixteen
to twenty thirteen, the Boston Marathon explosions occur. A hundred
and seven people are injured, three are killed. And then
on April eighteen, there was an explosion at a fertilizer
plant in Texas where somewhere between five and fifteen are killed.
(08:51):
And this happened almost exactly twenty years after the Waco massacre,
and it's in roughly the same area. So that's something
that will notice people point out at least a lot
online and on and on you'll find you'll you'll find
other incidents or other events, other tragedies of their shootings,
other acts of domestic terrorism that leads people to ask,
(09:17):
is there something off about April Because astute listeners will
notice that these widely varying events, while while if you
had some geographical similarities, they all occurred within the same month.
That's very strange. We have to acknowledge, first off, that
(09:37):
the proliferation of mass media allows us all to be
more aware of tragedies when they do occur. So it
is not necessarily true that more bad things are happening.
It's just that it's easier for us to learn about
these things, and more importantly, it's easier for us to
remember those events because we have libraries on our phones
(09:59):
ESSENTI sleep. So is there are there more skeletons in
the closet or do we just have better flashlights or
better keys to the closets? I don't know. I mean,
if you jump back to seven, there's also something that
occurred in on April sixt um. So, like you said,
like throughout history, terrible things have been happening, And in
(10:20):
this case, it was a ship that was was in
the port of Texas, UH and Texas City, I guess,
And it was a huge explosion because of some ammonium
nitrate that was just sitting in that ship when it exploded,
and it killed like five hundred and seventy six people.
And you know, like you said, to your point, been
(10:40):
things terrible things happen all the time. It does seem
a little coincidental that all of these occur in the
middle of April. Mm hmm. And and it does secondly
appear to be a strange confluence of events. These are
all incredibly violent attacks, with the exception of the night
te thing, which could have been an accident. Right, But
(11:05):
they're all happening around the same time. So why April?
What gives is this a coincidence? Just some morbid, horrific accident. Well,
according to some researchers that you will find online, absolutely not.
There's something a lot more sinister going on, something that's
been happening for a long long time, and we'll hear
(11:29):
about it right after a quick word from our sponsor.
Here's where it gets crazy. What if these acts of violence,
these explosions, these massive losses of life, are not randomized.
(11:51):
What if they are occurring to the tune to the
cadence of some earlier, pre existing path Earn, that's the
argument that you will hear fringe researchers make, uh, one
of these strangers, let's dive in. One of the strangest
arguments is the idea that these are not accidents, These
(12:14):
are not lone wolf acts of violence, but instead they
are the result of ritualized sacrifices perpetrated by an ancient
and sinister cult, a faction of people who worship the
god known as Ball or Baal. Let's take a quote
(12:38):
from a website called the Vigilant Citizen, which for the record,
is what we would consider very much conspiratorial. Throughout many
centuries and across many civilizations, the second half of April
has always been a time of blood sacrifice. The worship
of Ball took many names and mullock and spread across
(13:02):
several civilizations, being a sun god and a god of fertility,
rituals celebrating but all took place after the vernal equinox,
a time of rebirth, and often involved human sacrifice. So
the idea here is that this god, this bald character,
(13:23):
was worshiped and was the beneficiary of these various acts
of agilation. Right and ritualized sacrifice and sacrifice in many
religions is a normal thing for most of us in
(13:45):
the human species. It only it only becomes something that
crosses line when the things being sacrificed are people, right
like in Mesoamerican religions. However, sacrificing a bull, a ram, goat,
or a lamb or whatever. That's completely fine, that's in
line with what is considered normal. Yeah, and you also
(14:08):
have sacrifices in the more modern age that are much
more symbolic. Giving something up, say for lent or something
to that effect, is in a way seen as a sacrifice.
Um stopping, Yeah, stopping doing something many times is considered
a sacrifice. And there are other ways to do it
rather than just you know, slaughtering and cattle or something. Sure, sure,
(14:32):
I mean you can argue that some religious practices we
are aware of or even participate in today are ultimately
descended from actual acts of sacrifice. Right, So let's look
at this Ball character for a second. What we know
about Ball now is that Ball in popular fiction has
(14:54):
done a lot of great things for for horror film writers.
And the original phrase ball was a title. It meant
owner or lord, yeah, b A a L by the way,
just in case, or be a apostrophe a L how
(15:14):
you want to go? And this this um entity or
this god went through a couple of different incarnations, so
someone say, there's Ball, and then there would be but
all Haman, who was worshiped in Carthage as their supreme god,
somewhere around the fifth century b c e. And it's
(15:38):
just something to put out. A lot of times I've
heard it pronounced bail, especially if you look at uh
and I just recall that from the Diablo series, of
all things, the video game series. It's it says, though
it would be spelled b A y L or b
A e L. I guess bail, but it's it's changed.
It changes depending on who's referring to it. And it's
(16:00):
also common in works of fiction to make something just
slightly spelled differently, you know what I mean, like substitute,
maybe not in the case of ball, but to substitute
a why for another vowel and demon or something that.
As a guy who read a lot of comic books
in the nineties, that's very common. So this, this entity,
(16:24):
the idea of ball, appears about ninety times in Hebrew
scriptures in reference to various gods. The priest of the
Canaanite Ball are mentioned in I think most often in
the first Book of Kings. And people argue that. People
(16:47):
argue that you can interpret different because of the vagueness
of the title ball, just lord or whatever. You can
interpret different local gods that were being worshiped as being
er too by their own people as baal you know
what I mean, sort of like how many many original
(17:08):
communities were tribes of human beings. If you ask in
their native language what their word for themselves is, it
translates to something like the people or the real people.
So we have to be careful with this title. What
they're claiming in this research is that there is a
demonic god. This, this argument is going to be rooted
(17:30):
in in Um Abrahamic religion. Uh, this idea that there
is a true Geo Christian Islamic god and that there
are demons like but all that we're confused with gods
by local people, by the Phoenicians right or in Carthage.
So so we have we have that established that all
(17:55):
could be many could be several different things to several
different people. But according to the Encyclopedia of mythic Um,
and according to the argument that these French researchers are
proposing the practice of worshiping, this ball, whichever particular one
they believe it was, was vilified and was at times
(18:15):
violently suppressed by the other religions of the area and
of the time, but that it survived into biblical times,
and then later they'll say it survived even further. So
we have a quote here from that encyclopedia. The religion
of the God ball was widely accepted amongst the ancient Jews,
(18:38):
and although it was put down at times, it was
never permanently stamped out. Kings and other royalty of the
ten biblical tribes worshiped this god. The ordinary people ardently
worshiped the Sun God too, because their prosperity depended on
the productivity of their crops and livestock. And it goes
on to describe how the God's images were erected on
(18:58):
different buildings. There appear to be priests in classes of
devotees throughout the socioeconomic strata, and that their ceremonies included, quote,
burning incense and offering burnt sacrifices, occasionally consisting of human victims.
The officiating priest danced around the altars, chanting frantically and
cutting themselves with knives to inspire the attention and compassion
(19:21):
of the God. And for some of us listening, this
sounds pretty similar to the alleged sacrifices to Moloch, right
where people would uh people would put human sacrifices inside
a hollow metal bull and then light a fire under
the bully. And it also it harkens back the imagery
(19:45):
of something like the Bohemian Grove exactly. Yeah, with the
cremation of care. Sacrifices that occur again very symbolic at
least from everything we can find that occur there. But
the ritual sound pretty similar without the whole dancing around
and cutting themselves. Things were cut off. Yeah, yeah, so
(20:07):
the cremation of care is the creation of a care?
Is this ritual that people who attend the Bohemian Grove
participate in? Uh, it's best phrased is an annual theatrical production.
Maybe right, that's the Bohemian Club at the Bohemian Club.
(20:29):
So what they do is we could talk about this
for a little bit. This is interesting. If you've never
heard about this, this is crazy because this is a
real thing and we have an episode I believe specifically
on this think But anyway, check that out if you
want to know a ton about it. Yeah, if you
just want to know the I guess here they here.
(20:50):
The HITS presidents go there, uh, captains of industry and
they go to summer camp essentially theatrical summer camp up
where they all get to be boys and they get
cartoonishly inebriated. According to this story, they don't discuss business
(21:13):
or policy. Their phrases weaving spiders come not here, and
they have a forty foot or twelve meters for the
entire rest of the world. They have a they have
forty twelve mem hollow statue of an owl. It's an
owl shrine. It's at one edge of a man made pond.
(21:34):
And during the Bohemian Grove get together during their time
at summer camp, they sacrifice and effigy in front of
this owl. And it happens on the first night of
their summer camp. I love that phrase, Matt, And they
(21:56):
when they burn this effigy, it's supposed to banished all
the cares of the outside world. So now you can
just hang with your buddies and have fun because you
have banished all your problems outside of the grove. Uh.
And then also they'll say it presents symbolically the salvation
of the trees by the club. The club is protecting
(22:18):
old growth groves of redwoods. Yeah. So in the robes,
though the robes are creepy, there's a lot of robes there.
It's um, it's definitely I can't get around just the
performance factor. Even though it is a right of some sorts,
it's a performance of a right. I don't know it.
(22:41):
It's it's just creepy to imagine that George H. W.
Bush and George W. Bush and you know, Nixon, Clinton,
all these other people, they end up there at some point, um,
hanging out and watching this thing. Nixon was not a
fan of it. He was not, but he was there.
He has a very explicit quote that we don't have
(23:05):
to go into, uh, but you can find it on Google.
Just google Nixon Bohemian Grove quote and I guarantee you
you'll get a chuckle out of it. And watch House
of Cards season four maybe has that in there as well.
It's a fictionalized version of it. So it's it's a
real thing. It's a real right, and for many of
us it's like, hey, that's that's silly, you know, but
(23:28):
we have to remember that for a long time, the
existence of that right was denied until a group of
people were able to get some some surreptitious hidden camera
footage of the thing actually happening and the whole thing
really does happen. These these people who I would ordinarily
(23:51):
assume had better things to do with their time, do
get dressed up in ropes, they do burn this effigy
in front of this giant owls sculpture, and they have
kind of a ritualized, dramatic play. Yeah, and you know,
one of the biggest questions here is what does the
owl truly represent? Right? Right? So, then when you're talking
about some of these ancient cults that may or may
(24:13):
not exist, to ball or Bail or whatever, to Minerva perhaps,
or to Mithra, the cult of Mithrus, they're all of
these different things of what could that owl possibly represent?
And that's where some of the independent researchers out there,
people who really see something nefarious happening here, it's where
(24:33):
they kind of take it a little further. Then maybe
you would imagine, sure, yeah, because then we I mean,
we can get into the psychology of this a little
bit later. But I think that's an excellent way to
set it up. We understand that in the absence of
a clear explanation, of course, speculation is going to thrive.
(24:55):
That's what human beings do. And we're maybe this is
not the best choice of word. We are devilishly good
at it. So this so not from nothing does this,
this idea of a cult of ball arise. But the
the speculation and the extrapolation that a lot of these
(25:17):
folks are making when when they take this this idea further,
is that this cult survived to modern times. Now, sure,
there are a lot of let's say, secretive religious organizations,
(25:37):
but that doesn't make them evil. For instance, the Drews
Religion d r u Z. The Drews religion is secretive.
It's not a thing everybody can join, but that doesn't
make it evil. Right. But the problem here is that
these fringe researchers say, Okay, this cult continues today, some
(25:59):
form of it. But this practice that there's not a
ton of hard proof of, this practice of human sacrifice,
continues today in an altered form. Today's occult elite still
observes these rights with one major difference. So so gunfire
replaces explosions, but also these rights are carried out on
(26:24):
unsuspecting civilians spread across the world through mass media. There's
a quotation, fed and amplified by the fear and trauma
of the masses. These mega rituals are seen by all,
but only celebrated by the occult elite. So the idea
here too. You've probably heard this in many horror stories,
or you've read this in horror fiction and so on.
(26:46):
The idea is that it's not just the murder itself
that occurs, it's the mental state of the victim that
is paramount of the ritual being conducted correctly. So the
fee year has to be there, right. The more people
that see this, that encounter this, witness it and feel
fear and trauma because of it, the more powerful the
(27:08):
ritual becomes. So you can see how this quickly goes
from here are some ancient text Here are some arguable
pieces of evidence about human sacrifice from thousands of years ago,
and then it jumps to here's black magic in the
modern day, and in between you get here are some
(27:31):
weird rituals that elite people to do right, and that's
the Bohemian growth thing is one example. And again, as
far as we know, the effigy has always only been
an effigy. So, Matt, you mentioned earlier the existence of
numerology playing a role here. What what's all that about? Well,
(27:52):
numbers man, the significance of numbers and letters adding up
to numbers, words equaling number is and then the the
significance of the number itself. So let's let's look at
one thing from the website Cutting Edge. So it's talking
about April nineteen to May one, and they are they're
(28:15):
saying on this website that this is blood sacrifice to
the beast, a most critical thirteen day period. Um. So
this is basically just kind of stating out there that
because of these numbers, because of four four nineteen and
or five one, and how they relate to each other
within a thirteen day period, it's important to sacrifice to
(28:39):
the beast. There specifically blood sacrifice. Then fire sacrifice is
specifically required at the beginning of this thirteen day period
on April nineteen. Interesting, where do you get all this?
It's a bit of a mystery to me. Um. Then. Also,
according to this website, April nineteenth is the first day
(29:00):
of that thirteen day period, and it's also a Satanic
ritual day uh also relating to fire and also relating
to the sun god or the the ancient Phoenician sun
god Bail or ball and this is also known as
Malek Nimrod, and is also having to do with the
Roman god Saturn. A lot of times when you're talking
(29:22):
about fire, you're gonna be speaking about a sun god
just someone who a god that represents fire, but also Satan, uh,
you know Saturn, which could be Satan or the devil. Um. Again,
we're talking about April nineteenth year specifically. They're they're saying
that this day is really a almost it's not a holiday,
(29:42):
but it's a human sacrifice day. It's it's important to
sacrifice on April nineteen, and the sacrifices generally demand fire,
with an emphasis on younger people, on children, on early
life of virgins, that kind of thing. Um. And it's
again this is all according to Cutting Edge quote. This
day is one of the most important human sacrifice days
(30:05):
and as such has some very important historic events which
occur on this day. And that's the period, you know,
April nineteen to May first, again a thirteen day period.
So for people who believe in aspects of neurology that
would apply to this line of thinking, these seem like
very powerful significant numbers. We do have. We we have
(30:29):
an episode on numerology, don't we We did a video
on it. I did a video, don't know if we
ever covered it, and you run into it sometimes. But
numerology itself is um is not a monolithic belief system.
There are people who have varying, varying interpretations of this.
So it's a little suspect um. Yeah, we can we
(30:51):
can say we can say that. I mean, it's a
little suspect because a lot of times what we found
is that some people online in who you will find
using our appearing to use numerology are not necessarily using
the same techniques or the same meanings for numbers and
or um letters to numbers. There there's it's it's very fluid,
(31:15):
that's what I'm saying that. Yeah, that's what I mean.
There's not it's not monolithic. It's not a homogeneous approach,
you know what I mean. So, and and the plus,
whenever people begin adding up numbers or picking numbers in
the way they do so varies widely. That's one of
the problems. But uh, Sun, God's fertility, God's ball and
(31:37):
sacrifices aside. Uh, let's look at some of the issues
with this belief. After a word from our sponsor, and
we have like spring returned. So if we didn't die
(32:01):
in the interim, So like the concept of numerology, which
we won't get into too much, because I think we
do have an interesting episode ahead of ahead of us
in that regard, Uh, there are a couple of other
problems with this idea, which shouldn't come as too much
of a surprise. The first problem, let's call it the
(32:23):
anniversary problem. According to Professor Robert blaskowis UH, the author
of a blog called Skeptical Humanities and actually a professor
here at our local institution of learning, Georgia Tech, there's
nothing about April itself as a month that makes people
inherently more violent. Instead, he argues, it comes down to anniversaries.
(32:50):
We have a quote here he says, the reason why
we see certain types of political violence in mid to
late April is because of a few unhappy coincidences. That
Waco happened to fall on the anniversary of the battles
of Lexington and Concord, the first battles in a war
against the tyrannical oppressor, and Professor Blastowoodz goes on to
(33:11):
say that for anti federal activists, the Waco massacre symbolized
a war of tyrannical government against the people. So you're
seeing the symbology being applied there. Um. Then he jumps
down to Timothy McVeigh and the Murray Building in Oklahoma City. Um,
and they're saying that he says that Mavey bombed on
(33:31):
the anniversary because of the symbolic importance, and that was
actually a known thing. He's said that. He stated that. Um,
his fake driver's license had an issue date of April nineteenth,
n the date of the Branch Davidian fire. Yes, that's correct.
And on April nineteen, twenty ten, gun advocates had a
(33:55):
rally in Washington to support the Second Amendment, even though
it hasn't really it wasn't really on the presidential administration's
radar at that time. So they did that again with
this April nineteenth date, this anniversary. This all led Professor
blaskowis to conclude that in the mythology that's grown up
(34:18):
around Waco and Oklahoma City among self identified patriots, the
nineteenth of April has become a sort of high holiday
for those who think they live under the thumb of
a tyrannical government. Yeah, it's pretty good argument. Absolutely. When
you see that when you see the basis there, and I,
you know, I have to say I I tend to
agree with that, because anniversaries are important to people, especially
(34:41):
for trying to rally people around the cause. The problem
I have with translating April into back in time to
ancient ancient practices is that the calendars differ. Bubble right
people um people before the Common Era, if you said
(35:07):
it was April nineteen, they would have no idea what
you were talking about. For the vast majority of the population,
if not the entire population they now, you know, Earth
just moves to its own tune, and people make calendars
to attempt to explain its movements and its moods. So
Earth was probably doing the same thing, roughly the same
(35:30):
thing around roughly the same time. But to ascribe a
certain take to that is a human technology. Absolutely, so
it makes all of sense. Depending on where you were
in the world before the Common Era, you would have
a completely different calendar because everything is different. We still
don't all have the same calendar now exactly. I mean,
(35:52):
what year is it in North Korea, what year is
it in Um the Islamic calendar, or what year you
know it's I think it's just because we all live
for so short a time at least for now, that
all these terribly ephemeral things appear to be uh static again,
(36:14):
monolithic and unchanging. But it's not the case. April is
a fad. The current calendar is a fad. Let's let's
see if we make it to this year three thousand
with this thing. But then we go to another problem,
which is a psychological a psychological plot twist we alluded
to in the first part of today's episode, and that
(36:36):
is the problem of information bias. You see, it turns
out that many, many, many, many, many other terrible things
have occurred during the other eleven months of the year.
Like Matt and I love August. That doesn't mean that
nothing bad happens in August. And things happened in August
a lot, and on August five, my birthday inste Yeah,
(37:00):
it's scary, don't feel bad, man, Whole Hogan was born
on my birthday August eleventh. I don't know. So that
messed it up for everyone. Wait it messed it up. Yeah,
it messed it up. What about Okay? Wait, are we
taking Hulk Hogan as a whole or are we taking
like the whole hogan. Take the whole hogan. It's a
(37:20):
it's a it's a it's a net negative. That is
a shirt, my friend, the whole hogan. Oh boy, that's
the the whole ugly truth. Just not just pasta Mania.
He had a restaurant. Was it a restaurant? Do you
remember that? I don't. Oh, I've got okay, we gotta
do stop everything. I've hold the presses. You gotta show
(37:41):
you this. So I'm showing yeah, it was a restaurant,
Posta Mania. I'm showing uh from Matt a great great
picture of Hulk Holgan promoting Posta Mania, his short lived
pasta store. Could you describe this picture? Back? So he's
got his signature yellow shredded up tank top and he's
(38:06):
also got a yellow chef's hat. He's holding up in
his right hand if if this is correct, he spooned
or no, a fork full of pasta. He in his
other hand. He's just got too much pasta in a plate,
a bowl of sorts, and on his shirt it says
Pasta Mania with an exclamation mark, and it is just
(38:26):
a beautiful image. He also has a a sort of
cheeky chef style hat. That's flopped over on the side
and blazing with the same logo in his cross necklace
and his cross necklace, so you know that he's sacrificing
to the pasta cos right, And uh, these Kirsten Dunce
(38:48):
level dead eyes. That is pasta mania. Yeah. Yeah, that
must have been an old was it w W at
the time. It must have been old promotion of some sort.
And there's no way he went in on fosta maniaganu
(39:09):
the hole Hogan. Yeah, Uh, we've got a no, he
really did it. I could see that. I just pulled
up the menu. H So, so that moment of levity aside.
It's true that terrible things have occurred the other eleven
months of the year. For example, nine eleven occurred in September, right,
(39:30):
m hm, yeah, I mean yes, yes, it's and it's
it's disturbingly easy for any human brain to dwell on
information that fits a predetermined conclusion, and it's easy for
us to ignore evidence to the contrary. And we've talked
about this before, and I know how ridiculous it sounds
(39:51):
when we're talking about it on a purely intellectual basis,
But when you come to when you when you come
to an emotional argument or something with which you identify emotionally,
it's very tough to catch yourself in the moment. And
it's it's happened to all of us. It's our it's
our habit of cherry picking things. And this We have
(40:16):
one example, which is, like, you know, if you believe
that all birds can fly, and you're emotionally wrapped up
in this, then your brain will have an easy time
discounting evidence that Kiwi's ostriches and EMUs and so on
either a exist or be birds. You know, like they're
not really birds though, because all birds can fly. Why
(40:38):
are you hastling me about this? You're being a real
pill specifically Kiwi's. Specifically kiwis the most hated. Which penguins? Oh, yeah, penguins.
I've never eaten a penguin, but I have heard, I've
read from historical accounts that they do have a fishy taste.
(40:59):
Is just making yeah, she hates penguins. Have you eaten
a penguin? Whoa that many see? I hope she's recording that,
because if she's not, we can we get to make
it seem like she said anything. We want maybe a
better example of cherry picking that would that will unfortunately
(41:21):
hit home for all of us listening is if you
have ever had an argument with a significant other or
someone at work, especially if someone who works you don't
get along with, or you know a family member or
a close friend, anyone that you're emotionally close to or
see often if you have formed an opinion about them,
(41:43):
it doesn't really matter after a certain amount of time,
whether or after a certain degree, whether or not your
opinion jives with the facts. There was an old um
there's an old stand up bit where where in the comic.
All right, I'll say his name, Louis c. K horrible person,
(42:05):
But where where wherein he pointed out? You know, if
you don't like someone, you'll just find reasons not to
like them. They can do any number of amazing, wonderful
things for the world, and you'll just hate him. That's
that's how it works, because you'll cherry pick discount the
things that they did that run counter to your opinion
(42:25):
of them. And it works in the other direction as well.
If you really really love someone, you really really love,
even like a band or um, a member of a
band or something, or a wrestler, you know, then then
you'll ignore the whole hogan and you'll just go for Yeah,
you'll just go for the things that you find likable
(42:49):
about that person. And this this is dangerous because we
just illustrated. I think, how, uh, one other example if
we didn't get everybody in the cry out yet, here's
one other example, but a president Wow for real though, No,
that's that's true. Yeah, any president that has ever been
in office. That occurs to them by pretty much every
(43:12):
American at least, people say one way or the other. Yeah,
one way or the other. People say Kennedy could do
no wrong or you know, right right, so on. And
one thing would be a good personal example is let's
say you've been in a relationship that's at a low
point or it's not working out, and you're at the
point where a lot of your arguments are the you
(43:35):
always do this arguments. So don't let yourself emotionally get
trapped there right now as you're listening, But think about
it in the most abstract way you can. Are they
always like that? Are they really always like that? Because
they're probably not. They're probably not always like that. I
(43:55):
have just a really personal quick example. I had a
very very deep dislike of close to hatred but not
quite of a certain singer named Beyonce when I was
growing up, okay, in early in high school. And it's
because of the movie Goldfinger Austin Powers, because in my opinion,
(44:17):
she ruined that film when I was that kid. Now, look,
I recently watched Homecoming on Netflix with my wife, a
performance that she had at Coachella that she produced and directed.
It was one of the most phenomenal things I've ever seen. Um,
it took me this long to change my opinion about
Beyonce or Beyonce, miss b whoever, queen be whatever you
(44:40):
want to call her. A person that you have never met,
a person I've never met but had preconceived notions about
because of a performance in a movie that that I
felt strongly about when I was a kid. Uh, And
it took until now. But anyway, just just putting that
out there, did you feel like Goldmember was this cinematic
master she and that was high school Austin Powers was
(45:04):
one of my favorite things. And when Goldmember happened, I
was just like, Nah, I can't handle this. You felt
they had you felt they had fallen. Wow, But anyway,
I just apologies overall, and uh, watch Homecoming. It's actually great.
I'll check it out. Yeah, And I think that's I
(45:24):
think that's a good That's a good example because it
shows us how this phenomenon of of of cherry picking
and predetermining stuff occurs on micro and macro cosmic levels.
And furthermore, kudos to you man, because you were able
to You were able to critically assess your own opinion.
(45:47):
And it's okay for people to change their minds when
exposed to new information or new experiences. I know we
don't like to hear that too often a mass media.
It's called flip flopping. But when new information emerges, if
you if you want to work to your highest mental abilities,
that means you have to continually assess what's going on
(46:09):
in the world around you, way tougher than it seems
in this case. To take it past Beyonce, past whole Hogan,
and back to this idea of a cult purposefully sacrificeing
large amounts of people through very circuitous means during during April,
(46:35):
we have to say that the connection between these massive
acts of violence in the month of April seemed more
connected through cherry picking and the possible commemoration of previous tragedies,
you know, like, um, we don't know for sure whether
the shooters in Columbine were commemorating the birthday of Adolf
Hitler or Waco. While there may be something darkly tempting
(46:58):
about connecting these events to an ancient religious practice, the
evidence just does not seem to support some sort of
purposeful mass sacrifice by a secret elite cult. Yeah, it's
just it's not there right now, it's not. And we
say that only what five days ago, four days ago
(47:20):
the massive fire and Notre Dame and the cathedral. Yes,
I'm so glad you mentioned that. Yeah, I mean, we're
right within that range. And we're actually recording on April
nineteen and now speaking on the Notre Dame fire. What
we know as of this day, on the nineteenth, it
seems to be it occurred at least probably because of
an electrical short or an electrical issue, while while repairs
(47:44):
and or um not refurbishments with restorations restorations on the
cathedral were occurring, and no one was injured at least
as of now, that's what we we know that no
one was injured. But still it was this massive fire
that was a worldwide story that that happened right right
the fire at Notre Dame, and you had, um, you
(48:05):
had mentioned this too off air before we hopped in,
and it had me frantically searching to see whether someone
had died. It's a little bit early now for the more, um,
the more analytical information to come out about this, because
I believe the police are still researching. I do think
(48:27):
it's interesting that so many people came together to donate
a massive amount of money for this, uh for for
the restoration and the reconstruction of the building, um in
so short a time. And it's also true that it's
(48:49):
entirely possible something else could happen after we record this episode,
where after it publishes. Yeah, well if we gosh, I'm
so sorry. Just a couple of other instances the widely
reported Boeing plane crashes that have occurred, and I believe
they occurred mostly in March, at least I know the
(49:10):
Ethiopian one I think occurred in March. And you know,
these are fiery explosions that killed lots and lots of people,
but they occurred right outside of this range that you know, UM,
some of the researchers would believe is the time of sacrifice.
So it's it just kind of leads us back to
all these things. I'm just trying trying to throw these
(49:31):
things out there because I know people might wonder about
them or why we didn't mention them. M hmm, yeah, yeah,
and I think it's important to mention those. Furthermore, we'd
like to know other events that we have not touched
on that occurred in April of this year. As we know,
mass media does try to cast its eye everywhere, but
(49:52):
it promotes some stories more than it promotes others, So
let us know what you think. We also want to
point out there's another deeply disturbing concern here. Does the
proliferation of this sort of pattern making somehow cheapen the deaths,
of the tragedy, of the loss of the people who
fell victim to these heinous acts? It's a valid question.
(50:15):
Or are members of society simply doing what humans do best,
creating patterns in a misguided attempt to make sense of
a senseless, chaotic, and uncarrying universe. Again, let us know. Yeah,
you can find us on social media On Twitter and Facebook,
we are conspiracy stuff. On Instagram, we are a Conspiracy
(50:35):
Stuff Show. Come hang out with us on Facebook on
Here's where it Gets Crazy. That's our that's our page there,
and we can have discussions. We can talk about all
these things together and definitely do that. If you want
to call us and leave a message, tell us your
personal stories. Our number is one eight three three S
T d W y t K. Leave a message, you
(50:58):
get three minutes. You can't get it in three minutes,
just call back. UM. If you don't want to do
any of that stuff, you can send us an email.
We are conspiracy at how stuff Works dot com. Stuff
(51:29):
they Don't Want you to Know is a production of
I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Welcome back
(00:24):
to the show. My name is Matt noel Is on Adventures.
They call me Ben. We are joined with our guests,
super producer Torri Harrison, So everybody dropped by our various
social media's and and give her a hello, thank her
for saving the show. Most importantly, you are you, You
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
(00:46):
you to know. A very very strange episode. Uh an
episode that draws in allegations of the paranormal, the occult
cults in specific, and much much more, and just numbers
numerology a little bit to a small extent to a
larger extent. Cool incidence. I'd like to open today's episode
(01:10):
with with a quote from a poem many of us
in the audience will recognize. Can we get just a
little bit of ominous music? April is the coolest month,
breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire,
stirring dull roots with spring rain. That's just the first
(01:35):
that's the first four lines of The Waste Land by T. S. Elliott,
and it's it's useful for our purposes today because we
just see the beginning of some of the themes that
Elliot is working with throughout the Wasteland. You you had
to read that, I'm sure at some point, like high school, college,
(01:59):
read it for fun. And it's just a it's a
creepy poem. It is, it is, and it it characterizes
April in a very different way than I think maybe
a lot of us see April, at least especially in
the southern the Southeastern United States and a couple other places,
where April seems to be really when spring starts happening.
(02:22):
You know, you have a lot of March. Then once
you get into April, that's when all the pollen starts
showing up, at least around these parts. That's when the
flowers start blooming. Seems really happy and not at all
a waste land. We even say often in English and
especially in the southeastern part of the United States, that
April showers bring may flowers. It's a time of um rejuvenation, resurrection,
(02:48):
after the after the symbolic death of the world in
winter right, symbolic death and or real death of Jesus
Christ right right, exactly, which you know is mythologically, uh,
an ancient concept that goes back to you know, the
resurrected vegetable god. You know, even even the ideas of
(03:11):
gods that were dismembered by their followers to ensure harvest.
There is a ton of folklore here and it goes
very very deep. But for our purposes today, we have
to say that April is a month full of symbolic
contradiction right today and in these our modern times, April
(03:32):
is as you said, man, it's the beginning of spring,
you know what I mean. Let's all go hunt for
plastic eggs in someone's lawn, right. But in times past
it was it was much more important, especially when people
were much more closely tied to an agrarian lifestyle. We're
living off the land. And just one last thing you
put in here it symbolically, in order for a rebirth
(03:57):
to occur, what must there be death? Right? That's correct? Yes?
And now, speaking of these are modern days, let's let's
take a look. Let's all let's all zoom out in
our imaginary Google Earth maps. Uh, so far that we
can see this, this blue dot, our own little spaceship
(04:18):
right orbiting the Sun. This is a huge world, at
least as far as we're concerned. It's also imperfect. And
let's zoom back in a little bit further, and let's
focus just on the United States for now, just on
North America. For the past few decades, Americans have encountered
numerous horrific domestic events such as bombings, mass murders, acts
(04:44):
of terrorism, spree killing, and so on, often resulting in
the deaths of dozens or in some cases hundreds of people,
and sadly, tragically, for most of us, the endless march
of these events can blend to other at times. I
like what you did there with the endless march. Yes
(05:05):
that was unintentional, but yes it's true. Right, I mean,
you know, think about think about the horrific occurrence of
school shootings, right, which have which have been reported at
such a frequency. And let's be careful to emphasize that
we're reported at such a frequency. That there were times
(05:26):
when you and I were here in the office working
on something, talking about something, and then we would be
talking about two different school shootings because we didn't happen. Yeah,
we didn't realize in the moment that we're talking about
two different ones exactly. So for some of us, this
has become the new normal. You turn on the news,
(05:47):
you log into your new source of choice, or you
open your morning paper and you are surprised if something
has not occurred, right. But for other people, a single
day or a single afternoon fundamentally changed our understanding of
this country and of the world in general. If you
were someone who was present, uh during the Centennial Olympic
(06:11):
bombing here in Atlanta, if you were someone present during
the attack on the World Trade Center on September eleven,
two thousand one, it's it has inherently altered your perspective.
In today's episode, we're exploring a bizarre claim related to some,
but not all, of these tragedies. Do they seem to have,
(06:36):
for lack of a better word, a season, you know
what I mean? Like how like how we talked previously
about the small town of Shag Harbor. It has a
lobster season. It's a lobster town, but it's only through
I believe November to to a certain amount of time
that they actually fish for lobster. So do these tragedies.
(07:00):
If you look at at these things that occur in
the United States, is there a season where they are
more likely to occur throughout the year. Well, let's take
a look back through even just the recent history, starting
in ninete and it we were we were recording this
on April nineteenth, two thousand nineteen, and on April nineteenth, uh,
(07:24):
something happened that has been called and is known as
the Waco massacre, the Waco siege, Waco siege. There, It's
been called a lot of things depending on which side
you land on, like in your beliefs about what happened
that day. But that's when an FBI assault and a
t F and several other agencies um led to the
burning down of the compound of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas,
(07:47):
and it killed seventy six men, women, and children. It
was a terrible and highly contentious moment or a couple
of days um the way Co massacre. But that was
nine Then in we have the Oklahoma City bombing, which
killed a hundred and sixty eight people when a a vehicle,
(08:11):
a bomb inside a vehicle exploded in the lower levels
of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City, and then on
April nine, the Columbine High School massacre happened, where two
young men killed thirteen people and injured twenty one others.
April sixteenth, two thousand and seven, the Virginia massacre occurs,
(08:31):
thirty two people are killed, seventeen are injured. April sixteen
to twenty thirteen, the Boston Marathon explosions occur. A hundred
and seven people are injured, three are killed. And then
on April eighteen, there was an explosion at a fertilizer
plant in Texas where somewhere between five and fifteen are killed.
(08:51):
And this happened almost exactly twenty years after the Waco massacre,
and it's in roughly the same area. So that's something
that will notice people point out at least a lot
online and on and on you'll find you'll you'll find
other incidents or other events, other tragedies of their shootings,
other acts of domestic terrorism that leads people to ask,
(09:17):
is there something off about April Because astute listeners will
notice that these widely varying events, while while if you
had some geographical similarities, they all occurred within the same month.
That's very strange. We have to acknowledge, first off, that
(09:37):
the proliferation of mass media allows us all to be
more aware of tragedies when they do occur. So it
is not necessarily true that more bad things are happening.
It's just that it's easier for us to learn about
these things, and more importantly, it's easier for us to
remember those events because we have libraries on our phones
(09:59):
ESSENTI sleep. So is there are there more skeletons in
the closet or do we just have better flashlights or
better keys to the closets? I don't know. I mean,
if you jump back to seven, there's also something that
occurred in on April sixt um. So, like you said,
like throughout history, terrible things have been happening, And in
(10:20):
this case, it was a ship that was was in
the port of Texas, UH and Texas City, I guess,
And it was a huge explosion because of some ammonium
nitrate that was just sitting in that ship when it exploded,
and it killed like five hundred and seventy six people.
And you know, like you said, to your point, been
(10:40):
things terrible things happen all the time. It does seem
a little coincidental that all of these occur in the
middle of April. Mm hmm. And and it does secondly
appear to be a strange confluence of events. These are
all incredibly violent attacks, with the exception of the night
te thing, which could have been an accident. Right, But
(11:05):
they're all happening around the same time. So why April?
What gives is this a coincidence? Just some morbid, horrific accident. Well,
according to some researchers that you will find online, absolutely not.
There's something a lot more sinister going on, something that's
been happening for a long long time, and we'll hear
(11:29):
about it right after a quick word from our sponsor.
Here's where it gets crazy. What if these acts of violence,
these explosions, these massive losses of life, are not randomized.
(11:51):
What if they are occurring to the tune to the
cadence of some earlier, pre existing path Earn, that's the
argument that you will hear fringe researchers make, uh, one
of these strangers, let's dive in. One of the strangest
arguments is the idea that these are not accidents, These
(12:14):
are not lone wolf acts of violence, but instead they
are the result of ritualized sacrifices perpetrated by an ancient
and sinister cult, a faction of people who worship the
god known as Ball or Baal. Let's take a quote
(12:38):
from a website called the Vigilant Citizen, which for the record,
is what we would consider very much conspiratorial. Throughout many
centuries and across many civilizations, the second half of April
has always been a time of blood sacrifice. The worship
of Ball took many names and mullock and spread across
(13:02):
several civilizations, being a sun god and a god of fertility,
rituals celebrating but all took place after the vernal equinox,
a time of rebirth, and often involved human sacrifice. So
the idea here is that this god, this bald character,
(13:23):
was worshiped and was the beneficiary of these various acts
of agilation. Right and ritualized sacrifice and sacrifice in many
religions is a normal thing for most of us in
(13:45):
the human species. It only it only becomes something that
crosses line when the things being sacrificed are people, right
like in Mesoamerican religions. However, sacrificing a bull, a ram, goat,
or a lamb or whatever. That's completely fine, that's in
line with what is considered normal. Yeah, and you also
(14:08):
have sacrifices in the more modern age that are much
more symbolic. Giving something up, say for lent or something
to that effect, is in a way seen as a sacrifice.
Um stopping, Yeah, stopping doing something many times is considered
a sacrifice. And there are other ways to do it
rather than just you know, slaughtering and cattle or something. Sure, sure,
(14:32):
I mean you can argue that some religious practices we
are aware of or even participate in today are ultimately
descended from actual acts of sacrifice. Right, So let's look
at this Ball character for a second. What we know
about Ball now is that Ball in popular fiction has
(14:54):
done a lot of great things for for horror film writers.
And the original phrase ball was a title. It meant
owner or lord, yeah, b A a L by the way,
just in case, or be a apostrophe a L how
(15:14):
you want to go? And this this um entity or
this god went through a couple of different incarnations, so
someone say, there's Ball, and then there would be but
all Haman, who was worshiped in Carthage as their supreme god,
somewhere around the fifth century b c e. And it's
(15:38):
just something to put out. A lot of times I've
heard it pronounced bail, especially if you look at uh
and I just recall that from the Diablo series, of
all things, the video game series. It's it says, though
it would be spelled b A y L or b
A e L. I guess bail, but it's it's changed.
It changes depending on who's referring to it. And it's
(16:00):
also common in works of fiction to make something just
slightly spelled differently, you know what I mean, like substitute,
maybe not in the case of ball, but to substitute
a why for another vowel and demon or something that.
As a guy who read a lot of comic books
in the nineties, that's very common. So this, this entity,
(16:24):
the idea of ball, appears about ninety times in Hebrew
scriptures in reference to various gods. The priest of the
Canaanite Ball are mentioned in I think most often in
the first Book of Kings. And people argue that. People
(16:47):
argue that you can interpret different because of the vagueness
of the title ball, just lord or whatever. You can
interpret different local gods that were being worshiped as being
er too by their own people as baal you know
what I mean, sort of like how many many original
(17:08):
communities were tribes of human beings. If you ask in
their native language what their word for themselves is, it
translates to something like the people or the real people.
So we have to be careful with this title. What
they're claiming in this research is that there is a
demonic god. This, this argument is going to be rooted
(17:30):
in in Um Abrahamic religion. Uh, this idea that there
is a true Geo Christian Islamic god and that there
are demons like but all that we're confused with gods
by local people, by the Phoenicians right or in Carthage.
So so we have we have that established that all
(17:55):
could be many could be several different things to several
different people. But according to the Encyclopedia of mythic Um,
and according to the argument that these French researchers are
proposing the practice of worshiping, this ball, whichever particular one
they believe it was, was vilified and was at times
(18:15):
violently suppressed by the other religions of the area and
of the time, but that it survived into biblical times,
and then later they'll say it survived even further. So
we have a quote here from that encyclopedia. The religion
of the God ball was widely accepted amongst the ancient Jews,
(18:38):
and although it was put down at times, it was
never permanently stamped out. Kings and other royalty of the
ten biblical tribes worshiped this god. The ordinary people ardently
worshiped the Sun God too, because their prosperity depended on
the productivity of their crops and livestock. And it goes
on to describe how the God's images were erected on
(18:58):
different buildings. There appear to be priests in classes of
devotees throughout the socioeconomic strata, and that their ceremonies included, quote,
burning incense and offering burnt sacrifices, occasionally consisting of human victims.
The officiating priest danced around the altars, chanting frantically and
cutting themselves with knives to inspire the attention and compassion
(19:21):
of the God. And for some of us listening, this
sounds pretty similar to the alleged sacrifices to Moloch, right
where people would uh people would put human sacrifices inside
a hollow metal bull and then light a fire under
the bully. And it also it harkens back the imagery
(19:45):
of something like the Bohemian Grove exactly. Yeah, with the
cremation of care. Sacrifices that occur again very symbolic at
least from everything we can find that occur there. But
the ritual sound pretty similar without the whole dancing around
and cutting themselves. Things were cut off. Yeah, yeah, so
(20:07):
the cremation of care is the creation of a care?
Is this ritual that people who attend the Bohemian Grove
participate in? Uh, it's best phrased is an annual theatrical production.
Maybe right, that's the Bohemian Club at the Bohemian Club.
(20:29):
So what they do is we could talk about this
for a little bit. This is interesting. If you've never
heard about this, this is crazy because this is a
real thing and we have an episode I believe specifically
on this think But anyway, check that out if you
want to know a ton about it. Yeah, if you
just want to know the I guess here they here.
(20:50):
The HITS presidents go there, uh, captains of industry and
they go to summer camp essentially theatrical summer camp up
where they all get to be boys and they get
cartoonishly inebriated. According to this story, they don't discuss business
(21:13):
or policy. Their phrases weaving spiders come not here, and
they have a forty foot or twelve meters for the
entire rest of the world. They have a they have
forty twelve mem hollow statue of an owl. It's an
owl shrine. It's at one edge of a man made pond.
(21:34):
And during the Bohemian Grove get together during their time
at summer camp, they sacrifice and effigy in front of
this owl. And it happens on the first night of
their summer camp. I love that phrase, Matt, And they
(21:56):
when they burn this effigy, it's supposed to banished all
the cares of the outside world. So now you can
just hang with your buddies and have fun because you
have banished all your problems outside of the grove. Uh.
And then also they'll say it presents symbolically the salvation
of the trees by the club. The club is protecting
(22:18):
old growth groves of redwoods. Yeah. So in the robes,
though the robes are creepy, there's a lot of robes there.
It's um, it's definitely I can't get around just the
performance factor. Even though it is a right of some sorts,
it's a performance of a right. I don't know it.
(22:41):
It's it's just creepy to imagine that George H. W.
Bush and George W. Bush and you know, Nixon, Clinton,
all these other people, they end up there at some point, um,
hanging out and watching this thing. Nixon was not a
fan of it. He was not, but he was there.
He has a very explicit quote that we don't have
(23:05):
to go into, uh, but you can find it on Google.
Just google Nixon Bohemian Grove quote and I guarantee you
you'll get a chuckle out of it. And watch House
of Cards season four maybe has that in there as well.
It's a fictionalized version of it. So it's it's a
real thing. It's a real right, and for many of
us it's like, hey, that's that's silly, you know, but
(23:28):
we have to remember that for a long time, the
existence of that right was denied until a group of
people were able to get some some surreptitious hidden camera
footage of the thing actually happening and the whole thing
really does happen. These these people who I would ordinarily
(23:51):
assume had better things to do with their time, do
get dressed up in ropes, they do burn this effigy
in front of this giant owls sculpture, and they have
kind of a ritualized, dramatic play. Yeah, and you know,
one of the biggest questions here is what does the
owl truly represent? Right? Right? So, then when you're talking
about some of these ancient cults that may or may
(24:13):
not exist, to ball or Bail or whatever, to Minerva perhaps,
or to Mithra, the cult of Mithrus, they're all of
these different things of what could that owl possibly represent?
And that's where some of the independent researchers out there,
people who really see something nefarious happening here, it's where
(24:33):
they kind of take it a little further. Then maybe
you would imagine, sure, yeah, because then we I mean,
we can get into the psychology of this a little
bit later. But I think that's an excellent way to
set it up. We understand that in the absence of
a clear explanation, of course, speculation is going to thrive.
(24:55):
That's what human beings do. And we're maybe this is
not the best choice of word. We are devilishly good
at it. So this so not from nothing does this,
this idea of a cult of ball arise. But the
the speculation and the extrapolation that a lot of these
(25:17):
folks are making when when they take this this idea further,
is that this cult survived to modern times. Now, sure,
there are a lot of let's say, secretive religious organizations,
(25:37):
but that doesn't make them evil. For instance, the Drews
Religion d r u Z. The Drews religion is secretive.
It's not a thing everybody can join, but that doesn't
make it evil. Right. But the problem here is that
these fringe researchers say, Okay, this cult continues today, some
(25:59):
form of it. But this practice that there's not a
ton of hard proof of, this practice of human sacrifice,
continues today in an altered form. Today's occult elite still
observes these rights with one major difference. So so gunfire
replaces explosions, but also these rights are carried out on
(26:24):
unsuspecting civilians spread across the world through mass media. There's
a quotation, fed and amplified by the fear and trauma
of the masses. These mega rituals are seen by all,
but only celebrated by the occult elite. So the idea
here too. You've probably heard this in many horror stories,
or you've read this in horror fiction and so on.
(26:46):
The idea is that it's not just the murder itself
that occurs, it's the mental state of the victim that
is paramount of the ritual being conducted correctly. So the
fee year has to be there, right. The more people
that see this, that encounter this, witness it and feel
fear and trauma because of it, the more powerful the
(27:08):
ritual becomes. So you can see how this quickly goes
from here are some ancient text Here are some arguable
pieces of evidence about human sacrifice from thousands of years ago,
and then it jumps to here's black magic in the
modern day, and in between you get here are some
(27:31):
weird rituals that elite people to do right, and that's
the Bohemian growth thing is one example. And again, as
far as we know, the effigy has always only been
an effigy. So, Matt, you mentioned earlier the existence of
numerology playing a role here. What what's all that about? Well,
(27:52):
numbers man, the significance of numbers and letters adding up
to numbers, words equaling number is and then the the
significance of the number itself. So let's let's look at
one thing from the website Cutting Edge. So it's talking
about April nineteen to May one, and they are they're
(28:15):
saying on this website that this is blood sacrifice to
the beast, a most critical thirteen day period. Um. So
this is basically just kind of stating out there that
because of these numbers, because of four four nineteen and
or five one, and how they relate to each other
within a thirteen day period, it's important to sacrifice to
(28:39):
the beast. There specifically blood sacrifice. Then fire sacrifice is
specifically required at the beginning of this thirteen day period
on April nineteen. Interesting, where do you get all this?
It's a bit of a mystery to me. Um. Then. Also,
according to this website, April nineteenth is the first day
(29:00):
of that thirteen day period, and it's also a Satanic
ritual day uh also relating to fire and also relating
to the sun god or the the ancient Phoenician sun
god Bail or ball and this is also known as
Malek Nimrod, and is also having to do with the
Roman god Saturn. A lot of times when you're talking
(29:22):
about fire, you're gonna be speaking about a sun god
just someone who a god that represents fire, but also Satan, uh,
you know Saturn, which could be Satan or the devil. Um. Again,
we're talking about April nineteenth year specifically. They're they're saying
that this day is really a almost it's not a holiday,
(29:42):
but it's a human sacrifice day. It's it's important to
sacrifice on April nineteen, and the sacrifices generally demand fire,
with an emphasis on younger people, on children, on early
life of virgins, that kind of thing. Um. And it's
again this is all according to Cutting Edge quote. This
day is one of the most important human sacrifice days
(30:05):
and as such has some very important historic events which
occur on this day. And that's the period, you know,
April nineteen to May first, again a thirteen day period.
So for people who believe in aspects of neurology that
would apply to this line of thinking, these seem like
very powerful significant numbers. We do have. We we have
(30:29):
an episode on numerology, don't we We did a video
on it. I did a video, don't know if we
ever covered it, and you run into it sometimes. But
numerology itself is um is not a monolithic belief system.
There are people who have varying, varying interpretations of this.
So it's a little suspect um. Yeah, we can we
(30:51):
can say we can say that. I mean, it's a
little suspect because a lot of times what we found
is that some people online in who you will find
using our appearing to use numerology are not necessarily using
the same techniques or the same meanings for numbers and
or um letters to numbers. There there's it's it's very fluid,
(31:15):
that's what I'm saying that. Yeah, that's what I mean.
There's not it's not monolithic. It's not a homogeneous approach,
you know what I mean. So, and and the plus,
whenever people begin adding up numbers or picking numbers in
the way they do so varies widely. That's one of
the problems. But uh, Sun, God's fertility, God's ball and
(31:37):
sacrifices aside. Uh, let's look at some of the issues
with this belief. After a word from our sponsor, and
we have like spring returned. So if we didn't die
(32:01):
in the interim, So like the concept of numerology, which
we won't get into too much, because I think we
do have an interesting episode ahead of ahead of us
in that regard, Uh, there are a couple of other
problems with this idea, which shouldn't come as too much
of a surprise. The first problem, let's call it the
(32:23):
anniversary problem. According to Professor Robert blaskowis UH, the author
of a blog called Skeptical Humanities and actually a professor
here at our local institution of learning, Georgia Tech, there's
nothing about April itself as a month that makes people
inherently more violent. Instead, he argues, it comes down to anniversaries.
(32:50):
We have a quote here he says, the reason why
we see certain types of political violence in mid to
late April is because of a few unhappy coincidences. That
Waco happened to fall on the anniversary of the battles
of Lexington and Concord, the first battles in a war
against the tyrannical oppressor, and Professor Blastowoodz goes on to
(33:11):
say that for anti federal activists, the Waco massacre symbolized
a war of tyrannical government against the people. So you're
seeing the symbology being applied there. Um. Then he jumps
down to Timothy McVeigh and the Murray Building in Oklahoma City. Um,
and they're saying that he says that Mavey bombed on
(33:31):
the anniversary because of the symbolic importance, and that was
actually a known thing. He's said that. He stated that. Um,
his fake driver's license had an issue date of April nineteenth,
n the date of the Branch Davidian fire. Yes, that's correct.
And on April nineteen, twenty ten, gun advocates had a
(33:55):
rally in Washington to support the Second Amendment, even though
it hasn't really it wasn't really on the presidential administration's
radar at that time. So they did that again with
this April nineteenth date, this anniversary. This all led Professor
blaskowis to conclude that in the mythology that's grown up
(34:18):
around Waco and Oklahoma City among self identified patriots, the
nineteenth of April has become a sort of high holiday
for those who think they live under the thumb of
a tyrannical government. Yeah, it's pretty good argument. Absolutely. When
you see that when you see the basis there, and I,
you know, I have to say I I tend to
agree with that, because anniversaries are important to people, especially
(34:41):
for trying to rally people around the cause. The problem
I have with translating April into back in time to
ancient ancient practices is that the calendars differ. Bubble right
people um people before the Common Era, if you said
(35:07):
it was April nineteen, they would have no idea what
you were talking about. For the vast majority of the population,
if not the entire population they now, you know, Earth
just moves to its own tune, and people make calendars
to attempt to explain its movements and its moods. So
Earth was probably doing the same thing, roughly the same
(35:30):
thing around roughly the same time. But to ascribe a
certain take to that is a human technology. Absolutely, so
it makes all of sense. Depending on where you were
in the world before the Common Era, you would have
a completely different calendar because everything is different. We still
don't all have the same calendar now exactly. I mean,
(35:52):
what year is it in North Korea, what year is
it in Um the Islamic calendar, or what year you
know it's I think it's just because we all live
for so short a time at least for now, that
all these terribly ephemeral things appear to be uh static again,
(36:14):
monolithic and unchanging. But it's not the case. April is
a fad. The current calendar is a fad. Let's let's
see if we make it to this year three thousand
with this thing. But then we go to another problem,
which is a psychological a psychological plot twist we alluded
to in the first part of today's episode, and that
(36:36):
is the problem of information bias. You see, it turns
out that many, many, many, many, many other terrible things
have occurred during the other eleven months of the year.
Like Matt and I love August. That doesn't mean that
nothing bad happens in August. And things happened in August
a lot, and on August five, my birthday inste Yeah,
(37:00):
it's scary, don't feel bad, man, Whole Hogan was born
on my birthday August eleventh. I don't know. So that
messed it up for everyone. Wait it messed it up. Yeah,
it messed it up. What about Okay? Wait, are we
taking Hulk Hogan as a whole or are we taking
like the whole hogan. Take the whole hogan. It's a
(37:20):
it's a it's a it's a net negative. That is
a shirt, my friend, the whole hogan. Oh boy, that's
the the whole ugly truth. Just not just pasta Mania.
He had a restaurant. Was it a restaurant? Do you
remember that? I don't. Oh, I've got okay, we gotta
do stop everything. I've hold the presses. You gotta show
(37:41):
you this. So I'm showing yeah, it was a restaurant,
Posta Mania. I'm showing uh from Matt a great great
picture of Hulk Holgan promoting Posta Mania, his short lived
pasta store. Could you describe this picture? Back? So he's
got his signature yellow shredded up tank top and he's
(38:06):
also got a yellow chef's hat. He's holding up in
his right hand if if this is correct, he spooned
or no, a fork full of pasta. He in his
other hand. He's just got too much pasta in a plate,
a bowl of sorts, and on his shirt it says
Pasta Mania with an exclamation mark, and it is just
(38:26):
a beautiful image. He also has a a sort of
cheeky chef style hat. That's flopped over on the side
and blazing with the same logo in his cross necklace
and his cross necklace, so you know that he's sacrificing
to the pasta cos right, And uh, these Kirsten Dunce
(38:48):
level dead eyes. That is pasta mania. Yeah. Yeah, that
must have been an old was it w W at
the time. It must have been old promotion of some sort.
And there's no way he went in on fosta maniaganu
(39:09):
the hole Hogan. Yeah, Uh, we've got a no, he
really did it. I could see that. I just pulled
up the menu. H So, so that moment of levity aside.
It's true that terrible things have occurred the other eleven
months of the year. For example, nine eleven occurred in September, right,
(39:30):
m hm, yeah, I mean yes, yes, it's and it's
it's disturbingly easy for any human brain to dwell on
information that fits a predetermined conclusion, and it's easy for
us to ignore evidence to the contrary. And we've talked
about this before, and I know how ridiculous it sounds
(39:51):
when we're talking about it on a purely intellectual basis,
But when you come to when you when you come
to an emotional argument or something with which you identify emotionally,
it's very tough to catch yourself in the moment. And
it's it's happened to all of us. It's our it's
our habit of cherry picking things. And this We have
(40:16):
one example, which is, like, you know, if you believe
that all birds can fly, and you're emotionally wrapped up
in this, then your brain will have an easy time
discounting evidence that Kiwi's ostriches and EMUs and so on
either a exist or be birds. You know, like they're
not really birds though, because all birds can fly. Why
(40:38):
are you hastling me about this? You're being a real
pill specifically Kiwi's. Specifically kiwis the most hated. Which penguins? Oh, yeah, penguins.
I've never eaten a penguin, but I have heard, I've
read from historical accounts that they do have a fishy taste.
(40:59):
Is just making yeah, she hates penguins. Have you eaten
a penguin? Whoa that many see? I hope she's recording that,
because if she's not, we can we get to make
it seem like she said anything. We want maybe a
better example of cherry picking that would that will unfortunately
(41:21):
hit home for all of us listening is if you
have ever had an argument with a significant other or
someone at work, especially if someone who works you don't
get along with, or you know a family member or
a close friend, anyone that you're emotionally close to or
see often if you have formed an opinion about them,
(41:43):
it doesn't really matter after a certain amount of time,
whether or after a certain degree, whether or not your
opinion jives with the facts. There was an old um
there's an old stand up bit where where in the comic.
All right, I'll say his name, Louis c. K horrible person,
(42:05):
But where where wherein he pointed out? You know, if
you don't like someone, you'll just find reasons not to
like them. They can do any number of amazing, wonderful
things for the world, and you'll just hate him. That's
that's how it works, because you'll cherry pick discount the
things that they did that run counter to your opinion
(42:25):
of them. And it works in the other direction as well.
If you really really love someone, you really really love,
even like a band or um, a member of a
band or something, or a wrestler, you know, then then
you'll ignore the whole hogan and you'll just go for Yeah,
you'll just go for the things that you find likable
(42:49):
about that person. And this this is dangerous because we
just illustrated. I think, how, uh, one other example if
we didn't get everybody in the cry out yet, here's
one other example, but a president Wow for real though, No,
that's that's true. Yeah, any president that has ever been
in office. That occurs to them by pretty much every
(43:12):
American at least, people say one way or the other. Yeah,
one way or the other. People say Kennedy could do
no wrong or you know, right right, so on. And
one thing would be a good personal example is let's
say you've been in a relationship that's at a low
point or it's not working out, and you're at the
point where a lot of your arguments are the you
(43:35):
always do this arguments. So don't let yourself emotionally get
trapped there right now as you're listening, But think about
it in the most abstract way you can. Are they
always like that? Are they really always like that? Because
they're probably not. They're probably not always like that. I
(43:55):
have just a really personal quick example. I had a
very very deep dislike of close to hatred but not
quite of a certain singer named Beyonce when I was
growing up, okay, in early in high school. And it's
because of the movie Goldfinger Austin Powers, because in my opinion,
(44:17):
she ruined that film when I was that kid. Now, look,
I recently watched Homecoming on Netflix with my wife, a
performance that she had at Coachella that she produced and directed.
It was one of the most phenomenal things I've ever seen. Um,
it took me this long to change my opinion about
Beyonce or Beyonce, miss b whoever, queen be whatever you
(44:40):
want to call her. A person that you have never met,
a person I've never met but had preconceived notions about
because of a performance in a movie that that I
felt strongly about when I was a kid. Uh, And
it took until now. But anyway, just just putting that
out there, did you feel like Goldmember was this cinematic
master she and that was high school Austin Powers was
(45:04):
one of my favorite things. And when Goldmember happened, I
was just like, Nah, I can't handle this. You felt
they had you felt they had fallen. Wow, But anyway,
I just apologies overall, and uh, watch Homecoming. It's actually great.
I'll check it out. Yeah, And I think that's I
(45:24):
think that's a good That's a good example because it
shows us how this phenomenon of of of cherry picking
and predetermining stuff occurs on micro and macro cosmic levels.
And furthermore, kudos to you man, because you were able
to You were able to critically assess your own opinion.
(45:47):
And it's okay for people to change their minds when
exposed to new information or new experiences. I know we
don't like to hear that too often a mass media.
It's called flip flopping. But when new information emerges, if
you if you want to work to your highest mental abilities,
that means you have to continually assess what's going on
(46:09):
in the world around you, way tougher than it seems
in this case. To take it past Beyonce, past whole Hogan,
and back to this idea of a cult purposefully sacrificeing
large amounts of people through very circuitous means during during April,
(46:35):
we have to say that the connection between these massive
acts of violence in the month of April seemed more
connected through cherry picking and the possible commemoration of previous tragedies,
you know, like, um, we don't know for sure whether
the shooters in Columbine were commemorating the birthday of Adolf
Hitler or Waco. While there may be something darkly tempting
(46:58):
about connecting these events to an ancient religious practice, the
evidence just does not seem to support some sort of
purposeful mass sacrifice by a secret elite cult. Yeah, it's
just it's not there right now, it's not. And we
say that only what five days ago, four days ago
(47:20):
the massive fire and Notre Dame and the cathedral. Yes,
I'm so glad you mentioned that. Yeah, I mean, we're
right within that range. And we're actually recording on April
nineteen and now speaking on the Notre Dame fire. What
we know as of this day, on the nineteenth, it
seems to be it occurred at least probably because of
an electrical short or an electrical issue, while while repairs
(47:44):
and or um not refurbishments with restorations restorations on the
cathedral were occurring, and no one was injured at least
as of now, that's what we we know that no
one was injured. But still it was this massive fire
that was a worldwide story that that happened right right
the fire at Notre Dame, and you had, um, you
(48:05):
had mentioned this too off air before we hopped in,
and it had me frantically searching to see whether someone
had died. It's a little bit early now for the more, um,
the more analytical information to come out about this, because
I believe the police are still researching. I do think
(48:27):
it's interesting that so many people came together to donate
a massive amount of money for this, uh for for
the restoration and the reconstruction of the building, um in
so short a time. And it's also true that it's
(48:49):
entirely possible something else could happen after we record this episode,
where after it publishes. Yeah, well if we gosh, I'm
so sorry. Just a couple of other instances the widely
reported Boeing plane crashes that have occurred, and I believe
they occurred mostly in March, at least I know the
(49:10):
Ethiopian one I think occurred in March. And you know,
these are fiery explosions that killed lots and lots of people,
but they occurred right outside of this range that you know, UM,
some of the researchers would believe is the time of sacrifice.
So it's it just kind of leads us back to
all these things. I'm just trying trying to throw these
(49:31):
things out there because I know people might wonder about
them or why we didn't mention them. M hmm, yeah, yeah,
and I think it's important to mention those. Furthermore, we'd
like to know other events that we have not touched
on that occurred in April of this year. As we know,
mass media does try to cast its eye everywhere, but
(49:52):
it promotes some stories more than it promotes others, So
let us know what you think. We also want to
point out there's another deeply disturbing concern here. Does the
proliferation of this sort of pattern making somehow cheapen the deaths,
of the tragedy, of the loss of the people who
fell victim to these heinous acts? It's a valid question.
(50:15):
Or are members of society simply doing what humans do best,
creating patterns in a misguided attempt to make sense of
a senseless, chaotic, and uncarrying universe. Again, let us know. Yeah,
you can find us on social media On Twitter and Facebook,
we are conspiracy stuff. On Instagram, we are a Conspiracy
(50:35):
Stuff Show. Come hang out with us on Facebook on
Here's where it Gets Crazy. That's our that's our page there,
and we can have discussions. We can talk about all
these things together and definitely do that. If you want
to call us and leave a message, tell us your
personal stories. Our number is one eight three three S
T d W y t K. Leave a message, you
(50:58):
get three minutes. You can't get it in three minutes,
just call back. UM. If you don't want to do
any of that stuff, you can send us an email.
We are conspiracy at how stuff Works dot com. Stuff
(51:29):
they Don't Want you to Know is a production of
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