#118 Legends of Alligator Men

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Any one.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
And I looked out and there was this big, red,
blinking UFO. I can just say this, something's going on
in the woods.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Something's going on.

Speaker 4 (00:29):
They're not dogs, they're not coyotes.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
What could it be?

Speaker 4 (00:31):
Right?

Speaker 1 (00:32):
I had an encounter with a skunk cake and it
completely altered the course of my life. I got a.

Speaker 4 (00:38):
Call on building.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
What about saying sightings of a UFO covering over a barn.

Speaker 4 (00:47):
Really woke up from a dream.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
And when I went into the bedroom, she said, there's
a monk there on the wall. They saw that the
creature had run through a barbed wire fence. They were
able to obtain cares. They sent the hairs to their
lab and it came back as an online creature creature.

Speaker 4 (01:09):
Shading boring O. What is up? Bizarre Rights and welcome
back to the most bizarre show on the Internet. I
am the one that, like a handful of people at
least call Shane Squatch.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
We are officially daily with a fucking Sam.

Speaker 4 (01:26):
Squamp, well, bubbles, not a Sam Squatch. Shane Squatch very
very close but slightly different and distant cousins. Distant cousins maybe.
And then over here, as you can see, I also
have the other gentleman with me. I have the big
bad boo daddy himself, Sir Orrin Felis, who's your daddy?

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, study, man, you just keep topping yourself with these
ridiculous ass intros.

Speaker 4 (01:51):
I'm gonna try to make one for each show, just
even it's just a little bit of something special, I go.
I gotta give you at least a little bit of something.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
But speaking of intros, from like rough and manly to
very suggestive there at the end.

Speaker 4 (02:02):
It has to get provocative as it goes through. You know,
it sets the pace and then it ends lately, But
as far as intros go.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
To Lee, that's ending.

Speaker 4 (02:10):
But okay, it might be a happy ending, though happy
ending at least. Yes, Hey, but at least you get
the boot beforehand, so you are the boo daddy.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Okay, that's all that matters, right.

Speaker 4 (02:19):
That's all that matters. But as far as before we
get into the show and everything, as far as personal
life updates, I know that you have something that you
wanted to mention before we get into everything. So without
further ADO want you to let him know a little
bit about the updates you got going on.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
Man, Yeah, this is kind of a business slash pleasure
if you will. But, as I've been mentioning in the
past few episodes, me and Jenny are gonna be at
the Smoky Mountain Bigfoot Conference in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. It's the
last weekend in July twenty fifth, twenty six, something like that.
I don't remember off the top of my head. We're

(02:53):
not gonna be vending. We're just gonna be hanging out.
So if you guys are gonna be at the show,
definitely hit us up and if you see us, holler
at us. We definitely love to hang out with you
guys and maybe sit some moonshine with y'all. So that's
all I got.

Speaker 4 (03:05):
And then as far as me for update, it's nothing
special and nothing fun, just you know, tank malfunctions and
trying to pile out dinner real quick before the show.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
But I am ready a tank, like a fish tank
or like a military tank.

Speaker 4 (03:15):
No, like these awesome tanks that are behind me that
you can see on the live feed for all the
lovely viewers out there that are looking at our mugs. Unfortunately,
sorry for everybody.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Cooler.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
If it was like an army tank, I.

Speaker 4 (03:23):
Wish I had an army tank, but hey, you lose
the fun of an army tank because if you buy
it legally, it of course has to have the barrel
sealed shut. So at that point you just have a
glorified tractor. So it loses half the fun. But but
it's a super badass track. I just want to blow
stuff up in a field. I'm not trying to make
mass destruction. I just want to blow up a giant
hill just for fun. Like if it just give me

(03:44):
a big field, let me blow some stuff up, and
that's all I'm asking for.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah, thanks a lot, Ben Lawden.

Speaker 4 (03:49):
God damn it. But for everybody that likes to listen
to all of our craziness that we get into and
all of our side tangents, there's a special place that
they're able to do that some month. Orne want you
to let them know a little bit about it.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
All right, So our next episode of Bizarre Inquiries is
going to be Thursday, July the third, so right before
the holiday weekend. Great way for you guys to just
roll straight into your holiday. But anyway, it's gonna be
roughly seven point fifteen ish Eastern time on the Open
Minds Media YouTube channel. So you guys be sure to
submit questions or articles or anything like that that you

(04:24):
want us to inquire about, and also join in on
the chat. That's a lot of fun getting to talk
to you guys as we're talking about the material.

Speaker 4 (04:30):
And if you guys enjoy catching Bizarre Encounters live, you
guys can catch it typically every single Thursday around seven
or seven thirty, depending on if we're having a guest
or we're doing a solo show. For doing the solo shows,
generally seven thirty. We're doing the guest shows seven to fifteen.
You know, I gotta give us a little bit of
leeway in there, But for anybody that wants to catch
the schedule for everything, it's usually posted on social media's

(04:51):
on Monday, so you guys can catch it over there,
or if you guys subscribe to the channel, hit the
little bell notification in the corner and then we go alive.
You guys will know instantly and you guys be able
to hop in and listen to our weird conversations about
weird things.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
And if any of you guys out there want to
be a guest on the show or get up with
us for any reason whatsoever, Shane tell them how they
can do that first.

Speaker 4 (05:10):
And foremost, So you guys can email us at Bizarre
Encounters at atlook dot com, or you guys can get
ahold of us through the hot line. You guys can
call Ortex that That number is three one, three, three six,
four one five five to one. And if you guys
didn't catch that, it is available down in the show notes.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
And as always, all this shit we've mentioned is in
the link tree and the show description.

Speaker 4 (05:29):
And now hopping into what we're getting into today, I
know this is something that Oran has put together. We're
trying to stay a little bit more in the field
of diving into some weird stuff that not a lot
of people have talked about, and from what I've seen
of this one, it looks like Ornan has definitely done
that yet again, So without further ado, I will let
Oran get into what we're going to be diving into today.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
Yeah, so this one is going to be a little
more folklore driven, like a lot of the stuff we've
been talking about recently, And you know, on the show,
we talk about a lot of cryptids, we talk about
dog Man, we talk about Mothman. Hell, we've even talked
about bunny Man, but we have not until tonight talked
about alligator Man.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
But that's about to change.

Speaker 4 (06:08):
Lizard Man is very close to alligator Man. Right, Well,
we might.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Touch on that here at the end, But do you
have anything before I jump in, Shane, Well.

Speaker 4 (06:14):
I'm already excited, so let's get into this. I love
the oddities. I'm already down all right.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
So, like I said, we're going to talk about a
couple different alligator Man type legends on tonight's show, and
we're going to start with the story of Jake the
Alligator Man. So, Jake the Alligator Man is an alleged
human alligator hybrid creature and his kind of like preserve
remains allegedly are on display at Marsh's Free Museum. And

(06:44):
this is kind of like a roadside attraction type situation.
And it's located in Long Beach, Washington, So not Long Beach, California,
Long Beach, Washington. And according to the story that's told
by the museum, way back in nineteen twenty one, yeah,
there you go.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
Here's in there.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
So anyway, way back in nineteen twenty one, there was
a man named Wellington Marsh Senior, and according to the story,
he left North Dakota kind of like at the beginning
of the Great Depression because he went bankrupt farming Rude Vega's,
which is pretty funny. And he eventually settled in Long Beach, Washington,

(07:25):
and after a while he opened up an ice cream parlor.
So fast forwarding to nineteen thirty, there was this steamship
called the SS Admiral Benson and it ran aground like
right off the coast of Long Beach, Washington, and the
ship remained stuck on this sandbar for several days, and
there were thirty five passengers and sixty four crew members,

(07:50):
and eventually all the passengers and crew members except for
the captain, whose name was C. C. Graham, were kind
of evacuated and transported to a nearby beach. So soon
after this happened, like this really bad storm rolled in
and it kind of like began tearing the ship into
all these different pieces. So after the storm, the ship

(08:13):
was kind of declared like unsalvageable, and at that point
the captain finally abandoned ship and came ashore. But anyway,
this kind of shipwreck attracted a lot of large crowds
of visitors to this beach and this mister Marsh kind
of sensing this business opportunity, he decided to open a
hamburger stand on the beach, and kind of interestingly, this

(08:38):
beach was later renamed Benson Beach after this shipwreck. But anyway,
this hamburger stand was super duper successful, and because of this,
Marsh converted his ice cream parlor into like a bar
and restaurant. And again, this is during the Great Depression,
so when like bar patrons were unable to pay their
bar tabs, Marsh kind of this practice where he would

(09:01):
accept like unusual or interesting personal items as payment, and
he started like displaying these items in the bar, like
on the walls and behind the bar, and as he
collected more and more of these items, this ultimately led
to him pivoting away from the bar and restaurant and
opening Marsh's Free Museum in nineteen thirty five, which is

(09:26):
kind of like this oddity freak show Ripley's Believe It
or Not type situation.

Speaker 4 (09:32):
Dude, I love those places. I wish there's more of
these roadside attractions that existed, because it seems like they're
kind of falling into obscurity where I mean, they're obscure
to begin with, but like roadside attractions seem to be
slowly dying out. So I miss places that exist like
this because I feel like there's a lot more. Even
when we were kids driving around.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
Well yeah, I mean you would see like gator farms
and stuff like that off the road all the time,
and a lot of that stuff, like you said, seems
like it's fallen by the wayside. But you know, it
seems like here, you know, thirties, forties, fifties, even probably
up until the sixties, a lot of this stuff was
a lot more prevalent, like we said, than it is nowadays.

Speaker 4 (10:06):
You want to hear something really really sad, So you know,
the whole like uh, weird Michigan, weird whatever, all the
stuff that Linna Godfreer was writing all those books. Yeah, yeah,
So there was a Weird Michigan museum that was like
part of that, that was up in the up in
say Nignas, which is like right when you go over
the mac and Operation. It's like right there where there's
a bunch of like little cute tourists kind of stores
and like native stores and all that kind of stuff.

(10:26):
So I figured out about this place after being up
there a million times and not seeing it, and I
finally realized where it is. I look it up, and
I'm like, awesome, I'm gonna go here next time I
go up there. Close two years before, so I was like, god,
damn it. I was going up there and this place
was around the area, but it was like kind of
tucked in a weird spot, so like I never saw it,
and unfortunately I never actually got to check it out.
But supposedly they had like you know, dog man statues

(10:50):
and stuff in their sasquatch statues and a bunch of
like weird paraphernalia type oddity stuff for Michigan dude. So
talk about missing out, man. I'm curious what happened all
that shit, if they like sold it off for somebody
took it all, or like what. But either way, it
seems like, like you said, there is still like little
things like that. Just a couple hours from here in Raleigh,
there's like this, uh I think they call it like

(11:11):
the International Paranormal and Cryptozoology Museum, But basically this guy
just started this thing like on the first floor of
his house, like with like bigfoot tracks and things like that,
and eventually he got like a standalone building. But anyway,
like me and Jenny probably been two or three years
ago now, just took a day trip up there and
checked it out.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
It was really cool. So I mean there's little things
like that that still exist, but they're kind of hidden gems.
At this point, you definitely got a kind of search
for him.

Speaker 4 (11:40):
It seems like, dude, I got one spot that I
really enjoy that. It's called the Troll Hole. It's in Ohio,
and it's supposed to have the biggest collection of control dolls,
right the Troll Hole, the troll So you know, I
know going there because because Gabby's in controls my girlfriend,
So you know, we go there should be check out
all the troll stuff. And then we go upstairs and
then I realized that there's just section and that gets
into like troll folklore. So they have like a section

(12:02):
where it's like a Sasquatch room with a bunch of
sasquatch paraphernalia and stuff. They start getting into like the Northrol.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
Some of y'all's pictures from this, didn't y'all stop at it?
Like coming back from Small Sound Monsters or something.

Speaker 4 (12:13):
Yeah, yeah, it was when you're coming back from small Monsters.
But that's one of those cool places that it's like,
you know, it's advertised as like the troll Hole, so
it's like, you know, folk glory people aren't necessarily thinking like, oh,
you know, I want to go see a giant troll collection.
You know, it's kind of you know, the people are
into collecting trolls. But there's this whole secret section with
like Bigfoot and everything up there talking about like wood
trolls and forest trolls and shit like. That's one of
those awesome roadside attractions now that I found on accident.

(12:35):
And now it's like every time I drive through, dude,
I end up stopping in there just because even the
gift store do they got a bunch of big Foot
stuff all over and I get I get told with
that stuff.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
You know, Well, as.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
We're going to see here in a few minutes, the
intersection of folklore and cryptids is pretty interesting.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
So I think that was a good segue.

Speaker 4 (12:51):
I didn't even do it on purpose. Hold on tight, guys,
we'll be right back after this brief commercial break.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
But in the meantime, don't forget to follow Bizarre Encounters
on Instagram and Facebook and don't forget to check out
Open Minds Media on YouTube and TikTok. We'd love to
hear from you, so feel free to leave a comment
or spark up a conversation. We love getting to know
you guys. And now back to the show anyway, So

(13:25):
jumping back in. Throughout the years, this museum Marsh's Free Museum,
their collection has grown to include all sorts of oddities
like shrunken heads, and they've got like taxidermy two headed calves.
Like I said, it's really similar to like a family
owned Ripley's believe it or not type situation. But anyway,
what they're most famous for, oh, there you go. There's

(13:47):
a bigfoot statue right there that you're looking at.

Speaker 4 (13:49):
Yep, right in the front door. And they got a
big barrier, they got this old pirate, and then of
course there's Jake the Alligator.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
Yes, and what they are most famous for is Jake
the Alligator Man and his kind of remains appear to
be quote, a mummified looking head and arms attached to
a taxidermied alligator carcass. And this kind of relic or
specimen or whatever you want to call it was acquired

(14:15):
in nineteen sixty eight, when Marsh's son, Wellington Marsh Junior,
purchased him from an antiques dealer for seven hundred and
fifty dollars, which would be like sixty seven hundred dollars
in today's money. So this thing was like pretty expensive
for back in the day. But allegedly, like according to

(14:35):
the story, so like mister Marsh Junior like initially scoffed
at like how expensive this thing was, but his wife
convinced him to like go back and purchase it, which
I think is kind of funny, Like you'd think it
would be the opposite way, like his wife would be
the one like complaining about how expensive this weird thing was,
but no, it was pretty funny that she kind of

(14:57):
convinced him to go back and buy it. But anyway, he's.

Speaker 4 (15:01):
Like, if I buy it, I'm gonna put a pin
up girl behind it, because anybody knows this little pin
up girl picture right here.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
We're getting there. That's one of the funniest parts of
the story. But anyway, so Jake's origins still kind of
largely remained a mystery, but a lot of people have
speculated that it was created by a man named Homer Tate,
and Tate was nicknamed the King of Gaffes, and he
was kind of infamous for creating like numerous artifacts and

(15:28):
sideshow exhibits throughout like the forties and fifties, so like
things you'd see it like the County Fair and stuff
like that, you know, like you know the kind of
shit I'm talking about, like mermaids and you know, bearded
Lady like all those kind of artifacts. Basically this guy
specialized in making those. So anyway, furthermore, people have kind

(15:51):
of speculated that prior to being owned by this antique dealer,
Jake was on display at this landmark in San Francisco
called the Cliff House, and that the antiques dealer kind
of acquired this thing after the Cliff House monument building
whatever burned down. So that's kind of the background of Jake.

(16:14):
Do you have anything to add before we jump into
the next section.

Speaker 4 (16:18):
I mean, he looks like he's kind of charred, so
I wonder if he was actually in that fire. I mean,
is there any background to that or I don't know.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
I did not come across that in any of my notes,
but that's a good observation, I think.

Speaker 4 (16:31):
And also just I don't know if you've actually mentioned
it during the notes, But do they confirm that it
actually is like an actual human skull that's used for this.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
I don't know if anybody's like confirmed confirmed, but based
off of some stuff that we're going to talk about
a little bit later, it would lead me to believe
that it was a human skull that was used to
create this. But again I didn't run across anything specifically
saying so they're spoiler alert. They're kind of a finicky
about letting people like do tests on this sort of thing.

(17:02):
He's just kind of remained in the museum for whatever
fifty some years now.

Speaker 4 (17:07):
See, they were grandfathered in with it because I know
you need to have like a special type of like
license to have like human remain body parts like legally
on display. Because there's a couple of museums that are
like in my area that are like oddity museums that
have like human skulls and stuff, And they mentioned that
you have to have a special license, So I wonder
if they're like, you know, if nobody knows if it's
real or not, then you know, we don't need to
have a special license for it.

Speaker 1 (17:28):
Well, and like you said, maybe they've just had this
shit for so long it doesn't matter because other pictures
I ran across of the exhibits in this museum that
have like a full on like human skeleton in uh
coffin there.

Speaker 4 (17:40):
So can you imagine being this guy that his head
got used if it is a real human skull, Like
you're immortalizing time as being a little nymph guy attached
to an alligator body.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
I can think of a lot less cool legacies to
leave behind, true.

Speaker 4 (17:54):
I like how they took the time to actually like
file down the teeth too, to make them like point
of teeth.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah, it's pretty funny, and we're gonna get into some
kind of connections to other things like this, but.

Speaker 4 (18:04):
This is probably convincing as fuck. Like when people first
started seeing this thing, like, I mean, who knows how
far back it goes goes? I mean probably I'm assuming
like early nineteen hundred, So at that point people are
a lot more optimistic to these things. So dude, imagine
like the first wave of people they were like, holy fuck,
this thing's real.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Well, I have a theory on when it was created,
but we'll get to that in a little bit.

Speaker 4 (18:23):
I won't to interrupt anymore. Let's get back in.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
It's all good, all right, So jumping back in on
November ninth, nineteen ninety three, there was an edition of
the Weekly World News tabloid that was released. And this
thing is kind of one of those you know, like
ragmags that you used to see in the kind of
like grocery store checkout line like batboy impregnant local girl,

(18:48):
you know that kind of shit.

Speaker 4 (18:49):
Like daily or what's that inquire the inquired.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
One of those type deals. But anyway, this tabloid featured
a front page article with the headline quote half human,
half alligator discovered in Florida swamp. And it was kind
of this like humorous tongue in cheek article, and it
talked about how quote, the creature was discovered alive, hissing
and carrying on in a grotesque manner, and it went

(19:15):
on to talk about quote, it's escaped from captivity attack
on a man in Miami and his subsequent delivery of
a baby dot dot dot his own exclamation mark, don
dun dune.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
So that's quite the tale that they spun there.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
But what's kind of funny is accompanying this article was
a photo of Jake the Alligator Man that Marsh's Free
Museum used for postcards, and they claimed that throughout the
years they have sold over thirty thousand postcards. So like
this picture was just like out there in the public,
and they basically stole this picture of Jake the Alligator

(19:54):
Man for this made up story that they put in
their ragmag tabloids.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
So I thought that was kind of funny.

Speaker 4 (20:00):
I gotta find this picture they had. I think it
was one of the uh, one of the stickers that
they made for it. I think that was originally why
I brought up this page in the first place. It
was like a Jake the Alligator Man is my friend
or something like that sticker.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
Yeah. I think in one of the pictures here on
the website you can see kind of one of the postcards.
It might be under that Jake's Place tab.

Speaker 4 (20:21):
Let me see here. I think I got it up
on this other screen. I just got to bring it
up right here. It's just the one right here. Uh
oh shit. I had it up and then it went down.
I got it. I got it. Ex give me one.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
I think that might be like a T shirt or something.

Speaker 4 (20:33):
But my friend Jake Long Beach Washington, that one.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
Yeah, But anyway, that's like the same images that they
used for like t shirts and stickers and things like that.
But anyway, uh so back in nineteen ninety three they
used a picture of Jake for this tabloid. But anyway,
kind of jumping back in. So, Jake has become like
a popular figure in the culture and folklore of the

(20:58):
Pacific Northwest.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
And every August first.

Speaker 1 (21:02):
The town of Long Beach, Washington celebrates Jake's quote unquote birthday,
and the celebration features like live music and a car show.
And this is funny, a contest where quote, local residents
choose a local maiden to become Jake's bride. And if
you want to pull up the Marsh's Free Museum website,

(21:23):
there's some pretty funny pictures on there.

Speaker 4 (21:26):
Is this the website right here?

Speaker 1 (21:27):
Uh no, just the one you're on a little bit ago.

Speaker 4 (21:32):
This guy. Wait, no, I just brought the same one here.
Hold on, I got it. I still got the screen up.
I just have so many screens there. It is all right,
this website.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
Right yeah, So go to the Jake's Place tab yeah,
and go down to Jake's Birthday and click on that yeah,
and just scroll Jake, there you go. You can see
like these uh pictures you were talking about the pin
up girl pictures.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
So these are like pictures.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
With Jake and his bride of the year, and for
our listeners, like they've got this kind of girl done
up in like Marilyn Monroe pin up type makeup, and
her and Jake are laid out on a blanket on
the grass, and then they've got Jake sipping a martini
on a pool table.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
So you know, Jake lives it up.

Speaker 1 (22:13):
He's got a pretty good life for a deceased alligator
man hybrid creature.

Speaker 4 (22:18):
Jack, I want you.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
To draw me like one of your French.

Speaker 4 (22:20):
Girls, Not Jack, but Jake. Jake drunk like one of
your French girls. I think they both could have fit
on that door. Though Jake doesn't look like he's very big. No,
definitely not. But either way, man, I mean's Jake's clearly
clearly getting it. Yeah, Jake Game seventy five years old, man,
he's still getting it, see that.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
But anyway, So in nineteen seventy two, Marsh's Free Museum
moved to a new location which was across the street
from the original location and the site is also home
to quote the world's largest frying pan and the world's
largest razor clam. So, like, this whole little complex that
they've built is just like roadside attraction, like you know,

(23:06):
like in a National Lampoon's family vacation where they're like, oh,
we're going to go see the world's biggest ball of yarn,
Like it's that kind of stuff. Oh, there's one of
the pictures of the skeletons I was talking about.

Speaker 4 (23:16):
Yup, I was trying to get into the main website
because they got a bunch of crazy stuff like the
two headed cow. Yeah see if there. Yeah, there's the
skeleton you're mentioning that was in within the coffin they
got had an arcade of course too, apparently like an
antique arcade. I mean that's pretty dope.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yeah. So anyway, like this whole complex is just chuck
full of like roadside attraction Americana Root sixty six type stuff.
And in twenty ten, there's a local high school senior
and he created the world's largest chopsticks for like his
senior project, and those are also displayed like in front

(23:52):
of the museum, which I thought was kind of funny
and like you said, it also features antiques. They've got
vient arcade games, this like huge gift shop, it looks like.
And they also claim to be home to quote America's
largest collection of glass fishing floats, which seems like a
pretty easy claim to make. I don't know who's gonna

(24:14):
fight you on that. And they also say that they
have a world class collection of seashells.

Speaker 4 (24:20):
Oh there's the world's biggest frying pan by the way, Yeah,
there you go. Found it a little delayed, but that's
a pretty damn big ass fucking frying pan.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
So Wellington Marsh Senior died back in nineteen seventy eight,
but the family still owns and operates the museum to
this day. And like you're seen looking at the pictures,
there's a lot of cool stuff there, and like, if
anybody is in the area, you can just pop in
and see this thing, which I think is pretty cool.

Speaker 4 (24:45):
So it says free Marsh free museum. Does that mean
that it's free to visit or does that Is that
just a name that kind of just fell in from
back when he used to have the coffee shop or
whatever and just would tell people, hey, go look at
the stuff. While you're you know, enjoying your meal in
your whatever.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
So I think that was like the original impetus of it,
Like it was a free museum when it started, and
it was basically like a guy's just to sell trinkets
and stuff out of the gift shop. But anyway, Yeah,
I've combed through this website doing research for this episode,
and I didn't see anything on there where.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
It said that it costs to go see it.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
So I'm assuming it is still free to this day,
and you can buy some you know, little sand dollars
and you know, world class collection of seashells and they
show like pirates, hats and shit you can buy there.
So if you want some cheap, crappy beach souvenirs and
to see some weird shit, I mean you're in luck.

Speaker 4 (25:39):
I'm gonna look it up just for the sake of it,
because I looked on the website and it doesn't look
like it has a price or anything like that. I
think it might actually be free and it's free to go.
That's what it's saying on this other website. So it
is still free to attack where you go. I'm assuming
they try to make most of their money on the
gift shop. So that being said, if people go in
and check this place out, keep places like this alive
and make sure that even though it's a free museum,
you grab something somebodice from their gift shop.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Buy you one of those postcards.

Speaker 4 (26:02):
Yeah, at least buy yourself a nice postcard. I'm sure
they got little Jake figurines. You know it. Set up
a little Jake figurine on your desk on top of
a you know, miniature of the world's largest frying pan,
because why the hell not.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
Wouldn't that just be a frying pan. A miniature of
the world's largest frying pan.

Speaker 4 (26:17):
See, that's the gimmick. Just a normal sized frying pans.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
Like model scale replicas of the world's largest frying pan.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
It's just a frying fan.

Speaker 4 (26:27):
World's model or well, miniature model of the world's largest
ball of yarn. We got a million different ideas we
can do with this. This is like an infinite business.
This is like a like a like a strategy. We
gotta go with it.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Man scale replicas of world's largest chopsticks.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
Those are free. We just go get Chinese food.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
We have just stumbled ass backwards into a perfect business Model.

Speaker 4 (26:49):
Twenty bucks, twenty bucks. It's authentic. It comes with a
comes to the little thing that says one of one
hundred you know.

Speaker 1 (26:54):
Or just right Marsh's free museum and sharpie on like
the chopsticks go man, good to go. We're gonna make
tens of dollars until we get a seasoned assist letter.

Speaker 4 (27:05):
And then they're gonna try to see us for all
we have and we'll be like, here's our pennies.

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Joy sir, that's not gonna be much.

Speaker 4 (27:11):
Can't assume me if I ain't got nothing, don't go anywhere. Guys.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
We'll be right back with that bizarre stuff you crave.
But just a quick reminder if you would like to
snag some gear from this show, inquiries of our reality
or one of your favorite creatures or topics, hop on
over to the Open Minds Media merch store for a
wide range of designs and new drops regularly and T
shirts for the low low price of just fifteen sixty eight.

(27:38):
That's oddly specific plus shipping.

Speaker 3 (27:49):
And we're back with the high Strangers.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
Let's get back into it all right, So kind of
jumping back in when I was originally doing the research
for this one, I was gonna kind of just do.
Jake the Alligator Man is like a cryptid grab bag section,
like just kind of a smaller thing, but like we're
prone to do. As I got digging into this, I
found some other things that kind of connected to it,

(28:11):
and I thought it warranted a whole episode, So we're
going to kind of jump into some of those now.
So obviously, like Jake the Alligator Man is not a
legitimate hybrid creature. This is like a sideshow attraction that
this guy probably created. But anyway, I did find a
story that I think possibly could have been the inspiration.

(28:33):
So there is a Colombian legend of elambre km On,
which literally translates to the alligator Man.

Speaker 4 (28:43):
It sounds a lot cooler in Spanish.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
Though it does it sounds exotic, but anyway, according to
this legend, there is a fisherman named Saul Montenegro, and
he once lived in a small coastal town called Plateau, Columbia,
and Montenegro was kind of fond of like hiding on
the banks of the Magdalena River and spying on young

(29:06):
women as they bathed, and he was fearful of being caught,
so he went to this local witch, and she gave
him two potions. There was a red potion that would
transform him into an alligator and a white one that
would like return him back to his human form. So
he enlisted the help of one of his friends to

(29:28):
like pour the white potion all over his body and
transform him into an alligator. So once he switched into
his alligator form, he was able to avoid detection and
like spy on these women from below the surface of
the river. So you know, this guy was just having
a grand old time, and when he finished up whatever

(29:50):
that might have entailed.

Speaker 3 (29:51):
He's clamming in your windows. He's snatching your people up, trying.

Speaker 4 (29:55):
To rape them.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
So y'all needs to hagi kids had a wife and
hagio because they raping anybody was.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
An alligator man's cone.

Speaker 4 (30:03):
Alligator man's coming in more than one way man, but.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
Anyway, So after he got done, he got his friend
to pour the white potion all over him, and he
transformed back into his human form the white potion. So
him and his friend they repeated this process like several
more times without any incident. But one day the friend
for some reason was like unable to help him, so

(30:27):
Montenegro was forced to like seek assistance from another local man,
and this man like poured the red potion all over
him to transform him into an alligator. But when the
time came to like pour the white potion over him,
this guy became like terrified of Montenegro's alligator form, and

(30:47):
he dropped the potion bottle and it broke after he
had only poured it on Montenegro's head and torso.

Speaker 4 (30:54):
So that's the sound he was making as he was transforming.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
Anyway, So his head and torso were returned to human form,
but it left his alligator body and tail intact.

Speaker 4 (31:10):
Are these real statues, by the way, or are these
like it looks like they might be.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
We were gonna get to that here in a second.

Speaker 4 (31:16):
I just want to make sure I'm looking at the
right thing here. I'm bringing up the right pictures, So.

Speaker 1 (31:19):
You are you are okay. So after this incident, Montenegro
became known locally as el Ambre came on and he
was kind of shunned from the local village, and only
his mother would like talk to him or have anything
to do with him, and she tried, like all these
different ways to return him to his fully human form.

(31:40):
She was unsuccessful every time, so Eventually she tried to
locate this witch who had originally given him the potions. Well,
she found out that the witch had died, and at
this point the mother was basically like heartbroken, she gave
up hope, she returned to the village, and soon she
died of grief. So so at this point, Montenegro or

(32:02):
the Alligator Man, was like completely alone. He had no friends,
he had no hope of returning to his human form,
so he decided to float down the Magdalena River and
out to sea, never to be seen again. So that's
kind of the nuts and bolts of the legend, the story,
what have you. But where it gets kind of interesting,

(32:24):
I think is allegedly, in the nineteen forties, the story
of Elambre came On was published in a local newspaper
called La Prensa. But this newspaper is now defunct and
there's like no known copies of this article that still exist.
But like we talked about earlier, this guy who was

(32:46):
like the king of the Gaffs who made all the
sideshow artifacts, he was active in like the forties and
the fifties, So I think it's very possible that he
heard this legend or saw a copy of the article
somehow and created the Jake the Alligator Man thing based
off of this legend and kind of jumping back in

(33:09):
before we get into some of the pictures that you
have pulled up, this legend has become like ingrained in
the coastal communities of Columbia, and in Plateau, Columbia, there's
a park with a statue built to honor the Alligator Man.
And that's that one that you've got pulled up there
on the top left. And if you look at that,
I mean, doesn't it seem like Jake the Alligator Man

(33:31):
could be like an artistic rendering of this statue.

Speaker 4 (33:36):
Oh yeah, one hundred percent. Even like the complexion of
the statue kind of fits with the whole you know,
like I was saying, maybe he was charted at some point,
or maybe that was intentional because it was kind of fitting,
you know, the story of this. But just to throw
in kind of a theory on possibly the origins of
the story, because it seems like with most folklore, it's
all rooted in some type of something. And of course,
you know, the alligator or slash human hybrid. It seems like,

(33:58):
you know, it's a little a little far fetched, so
trying to think of like real world explanations. You know
how like in South America, it seems like it's pretty
prevalent that there's a lot of like birth defects. I'm
kind of curious if you know, this may have been
some kid that had like some kind of birth defect
to the bottom half of his body, and people started
telling stories saying that he looked like an alligator, or
you know, he wasn't able to walk, so he'd like
drag his legs or something like that, and it just

(34:21):
ended up, you know, through the years becoming this more
and more folklory story about this kid actually being an
half alligator versus you know, maybe having again some type
of problem where he wasn't able to walk or he
had deformed legs and it looked like an alligator.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
Oh, it's funny you mentioned that, because I didn't think
about this when I was putting the episode together, but
it made me think about what you just said. That
is about a old Ancient Aliens episode where they're talking
about like the reptilions, I think, but anyway, they go
through like known human birth defects where you're like, you know,
one out of every thousand people are born with a
tail or something like that, Like it's not like a

(34:57):
long alligator tail, but still, and they talk about how
there is like a rare skin condition that it's like
a super aggressive form of like cerros or what.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
Is it called.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
Egzima or whatever.

Speaker 4 (35:10):
Yeah, where your skin kind of looks kind of scally
and patchy.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
There's like another one but anyway, but anyway, there's like
a super aggressive form of that that basically makes you
look scaly. So, you know, if this is happening one
hundred years ago, it seemed very plausible to me that
like there could have been, you know, an unfortunate child
who had these birth defects and this kind of story

(35:35):
could have come out of that.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
So I didn't think about that. But that's a really
great point.

Speaker 4 (35:39):
And I mean it seems like, uh, I'm kind of
curious if you look into it, if it seems like
with a lot of those birth effects, they seem to
be pretty like regional where there's like a huge area
where it seems like it's a lot more prevalent than
other areas. So I'm kind of curious if you look
into Columbia, if maybe the skin condition is one of
the more prevalent birth effects that happen in the area,
because you know, you may have already figured out the

(35:59):
enter of folklore right off of that.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
Yeah, I didn't think about that angle, but no, that's
really cool. See, that's why we need to just spitball
this stuff as we're going through.

Speaker 4 (36:08):
It, exactly because I mean, obviously with a lot of
like the South American stuff too, they're very like spiritual
people in more than one way. So of course, like
you know, it's gonna end up taking on this folclory aspect,
even if it starts off as something small, just because
of like their belief system, their belief structure, and on
top of the fact, dude, you know, they see a
lot of crazy shit out in South America, Like how

(36:29):
many endless stories are there about all these crazy creatures
that are like in the jungles that are you know,
the UFO stuff they kind of pops up, So it's
like this is just another one to add onto the list,
and it, you know, is probably one of those things.
They don't really think twice about the origin of it
because they're seeing enough weird shit already. They're like, all right,
fucking alligator man here you go.

Speaker 1 (36:46):
Absolutely and even just like on a more practical level,
like if this shit went back one hundred years ago,
it seems pretty logical to me, like people didn't have
as much of an understanding of like science and medicine
as they do now, and people just would have called,
you know, this individual, oh hey, that's the alligator man,

(37:07):
you know, and not fought anything else of it. So,
I mean, I can totally see how a story like this,
like we talk about, you know, Game of Telephone throughout
the years, could have grown out of something as simple
as that, you know.

Speaker 4 (37:21):
Or there was just a nephylum hybrid that randomly pops
up in the middle of Columbia.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
It's an actual reptilian.

Speaker 4 (37:28):
It's an actual or a half reptilian. It's a hybrid reptilian.
They're like, we need to refigure this science out because
clearly the same working.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
It's like one of the intermediate stages of like the
Pokemon evolution. It just comes out like kill me. That's
the bullshit alien movie where there's like all the half
clones of Ripley and the xenomorph. That's what this was.

Speaker 4 (37:51):
Or they tried to put it through a teleporter and
they didn't realize that you can't put a reptilian any
human in the same teleporter together, because they just ended
up with a split and on the other half before
the other half ended up, it was a top half
reptilian bottom half human. And that sounds horrifying you see
running around.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
Well, we're gonna get into that too.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
So before we get into that though, kind of closing out,
El Ambre came on. Like we said, there's this park
that has this really cool looking statue and every year
there's like this festival in this park dedicated to the
Alligator Man, which I think is really cool because it
shows that cryptid conventions and festivals are just worldwide. Like

(38:31):
we've got the Mothman Festival here down there, they've got the.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
Alligator Man festival.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
So if we're ever in Columbia or anywhere in South America,
we can go and visit the statue and hopefully go
to the little festival that they've got there, and I'll
probably bring a cooler and show up drunk.

Speaker 4 (38:48):
So I don't know how drunk you want to get
in Columbia, you might be disappeared depending on in the
area you're in.

Speaker 2 (38:52):
You know, I don't like living all that much.

Speaker 4 (38:55):
It's all right, commute to white We have some some
special powder for you. Okay, okay, I need to be
able to go all night. I've been drinking. Let's go. It.
Just got a van that says free white powder on
the side. That's how you catch an orang.

Speaker 1 (39:14):
We got alligator hands and white powder and beer in here.
We're just gonna preface that, like, if it was free beer,
I'd go for that. But I've never done white powder
of any sort. So listeners out.

Speaker 4 (39:30):
We were talking about powdered sugar the whole time, you know,
because adding a little bit of powdered sugar to your
beer makes it taste better. Right, That's that's why.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
I went somewhere else with that. I thought you were
talking about salt.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
That's what it is.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
It's a salt for your margarita.

Speaker 4 (39:41):
See and your beer because you put a little bit
of salt in your beer and it also enhances the taste.
So Boom then went in Rome.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
When in Colombia, Hey.

Speaker 4 (39:47):
When you're in Columbia, you gotta be drinking them them, uh,
you know South American beer, So it definitely fits with
the lime and the salt. So AnyWho, all.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
Right, guys, we got to take another break. We'll be
right back. And now we're getting back to the bizarre,
all right. So I said, we're going to talk about
something a little more terrifying. So we're to that point now.

(40:21):
So alligator Man, Jake, the alligator Man. That's obviously like
more like folklore legend type stuff, but there are like
reports of real world human alligator hybrid type creatures, and
allegedly there's been these reports of these alligator men, like
mostly throughout the southeastern United States, allegedly dating back to

(40:42):
at least like the seventeen hundreds. Now there's like very
little actual evidence to support any of these claims, but
allegedly these creatures were said to possess a humanoid head
and torso like sharp teeth and slits for eyes, and
they had green, gaily lower bodies resembling an alligator. They're

(41:03):
said to stand over four feet tall and weigh approximately
two hundred pounds, which is pretty stocky for something that's
only four feet tall.

Speaker 4 (41:12):
That's a showed, that's a certified shode right there. That's
a thick boy.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
But they were said to travel in groups at night
and have a taste for raw meat, and I found
a particularly interesting story. And it's funny you brought this
up earlier in the episode. And this is an alligator
man account that comes from Linda Godfrey's twenty fourteen book
American Monsters, So kind of funny you already brought that

(41:38):
up unintentionally.

Speaker 4 (41:39):
I mean, Linda Gottfried kind of has your place a
little bit everywhere as far as the community goes, and
she dives into some obscure shit. So if you're digging
into some obscure shit, I feel like her name is
about to pop up at some point.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
And this is an obscure one.

Speaker 4 (41:50):
Speaking of obscure shit, why is it that all of
these half human half creature hybrids are never human on
the bottom half. Can you imagine how much more horrifying
that would be?

Speaker 1 (41:59):
Well, I mean, I guess like some stuff from like
mythology kind of was you had, like the Egyptian gods
or like the bird heads and the human bodies.

Speaker 4 (42:08):
But can you imagine how horrifying a mermaid would look
if it was just human legs and you know genital Yeah,
can you imagine getting chased on the beach by that said? No,
even the flip side, dude, can you imagine getting chased
by the down the beach by el ombre came on
if he was flipped and he was just like an
alligator for the top half and then just like a

(42:28):
like a schlong dong on the bottom half, just chasing
you with an alligator head. That sounds significantly more horrifying.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
Well, minus the swong dong, that's what we're gonna talk
about right now. Cannot confirm nor deny the swong dong.
Please remove the slong dongs anyway. So, according to Linda
Godfrey in April of twenty thirteen, there was an anonymous
eighteen year old man who was kayaking in the Saint
John's River Delta of central Florida, and when he was kayaking,

(42:58):
a large scaly creature like bump into his kayak, and
so naturally this guy assumed that he had bumped into
an alligator. So he like rode over to the nearest
riverbank and tied off his kayak, and as he stood
on the shore, he saw a strange creature crawling out
of the water downstream.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
And the creature was.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
Really muscular, and it like vaguely resembled an alligator. But
its head was quote much taller vertically than an alligator's,
and its arms were much longer. He also said that
the creature's legs were quote broader and thicker and positioned
directly below the body rather than off.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
To the sides like a reptile.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
And as the man was kind of like looking at
this creature, it suddenly stood up on its hind legs
and hissed at him, and he estimated that it was
between six and seven feet tall. Then the creature like
walked toward the woods before dropping like back down onto
all fours and going into the woods.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
So of course this guy was like freaking out at
that point.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
He was afraid to get back in the water, so
he like ran through the woods back up to the
nearest road and returned home. But what's kind of interesting
is this man reported seeing the creature again later that
same night. So allegedly, him and his girlfriend were sleeping
on his sailboat and they were awakened by something like

(44:24):
splashing loudly outside, like in the water outside the boat.
And according to the man, quote I peered out the
porthole facing the canal entrance, and I could see a
figure in the dim light on the distant side of
the canal. I nearly felt like I'd have a heart
attack when I realized it was that thing from earlier.

(44:44):
So the man said that he woke up his girlfriend
and they watched the creature like just floating around for
several minutes. It swam like all around the sailboat, and
allegedly at one point it even like peered into one
of the portholes before it like wham away, and allegedly
they never saw it again.

Speaker 4 (45:03):
So Jesus, that was my phone. I didn't know I
had the volume on on my board for my phone.
My bad. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
It's all good.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
So no schlogdong's there.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
But there is a story of a creature that has
like an alligator head and a kind of human ish
lower body.

Speaker 4 (45:20):
I mean, I feel like it's one of those ones
that you know, with a lot of the stuff in
the water. I mean, there's definitely some good validity to it.
But on the other side, there's also, you know, the
factor of people being disillusioned by the water, by the
structure of things in the water because light pends and
everything like that. But like I said, on the flip side,
when it comes to these like aquatic stories. It's like,
I feel like there's a lot more validity to them

(45:41):
than a lot of other stories. But maybe not on
this side of it, but on the other side, I
will say that I don't know about you, but the
whole concept of mermaids, like, I feel like there could
be some validity to it, not in like the folklory sense,
but just in the aspect of humanoid creatures developing underwater
if you start getting into all the obscure kind of
weird stuff. So I mean, if that is theoretically a possibility,

(46:03):
you know, maybe there are some little side pockets of
some other stuff that have happened to exist and then
die out, you know, in small phases, you know, I mean,
who knows what could be happening in some of these
like micro areas, and then you know, something happens to
get out of that area and then it ends updying
off and then boom, that's all you see of it,
you know.

Speaker 1 (46:19):
Yeah, I mean how many times have we heard people say, oh,
we know more about space than we do about the
bottom of the ocean. So yeah, there could be all
sorts of things in the water in the ocean, and
like these like you said, super contained ecosystems like the
swamps of Florida. I mean, it doesn't seem outlandish to
me that something weird has developed or grows there, you know,

(46:43):
I mean, is it as outlandish as the story? No?

Speaker 2 (46:47):
Maybe not.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
Maybe this is either you know, like you said, embellished
or misinterpreted. But I mean, if there's going to be
something weird anywhere, like swamps of Florida seem like a
pretty good location to me.

Speaker 4 (47:00):
I mean, even on the flip side of that too,
getting into like some of the mermaidish kind of lower
type stuff. I mean, obviously it seems like most of
that would come from the ocean, so you know, Florida
swamps ain't too far off from that, So I mean, yeah,
you know, could have encountered some type of like mermaidish
being and then kind of spun it into the alligator thing,
considering you saw it in a swamp. So maybe like
the geographical area also kind of had something to do

(47:21):
with how we perceived whatever this thing happened to be
that you know, he had to scuffle with but next
to his boat.

Speaker 1 (47:28):
Well, and something that we're gonna kind of circle back
around to a little bit here before we close out.
But you know, this is the same general area where
a lot of like skunk ape sightings are reported. So
I mean we talk all the time about how like
a lot of sasquatch reports historically could have been misidentified
dog man and vice versa. I mean there could be

(47:50):
a little bit of that going on with some of
these stories as well.

Speaker 4 (47:54):
I mean portal areas with high strangeness, I mean that
could have something to do with it too. I mean
you never know what it might kick out from that
other I mean, if you get into the whole idea
about some of these portal areas possibly being almost like
a like a wormhole where maybe the other side isn't
necessarily fixed, but one side of it is fixed. I mean,
the majority of the time it could pull from this area,
which is why you're getting apes or skunk apes. You're

(48:15):
getting this, But you know, every once in a while
it could pull from another area and you get some
other kind of weird off the wall sighting that came
from somewhere else beyond the veil, so to speak.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
You get a alligator head, big donged hybrid creature.

Speaker 4 (48:29):
In another world. That is how we formed and developed
the entire world is just filled with alligator people. And
that's how everything in the world has to only be
about four feet tall. Otherwise these things aren't able to
interact with their environment. So imagine a world like that. Man.
You know they say that there's infinite possibilities with infinite
realities and some other reality. Man, we did all start
off from alligator It's kind of like Howard the Duck.

(48:51):
You know. They all evolved in that that world from
the duck world. So it's that, but with alligators.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
I hate we can own dream right, hold that thought.
We'll be back in a flash.

Speaker 4 (49:05):
But if you guys don't like hearing the ads, then
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(49:26):
and seven to eight free trials available.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
And now back to the show, all right, so kind
of rounding things out, This episode is not really going
to have like as much conclusions and theories as you
know most of our episodes do. This one is more
folklore based and kind of just more straightforward than a
lot of stuff. But there are some connections to other

(49:58):
things that I wanted to bring up, the first one
being the Fiji Mermaid. So I'm just gonna talk a
little bit about this. But the Fiji Mermaid is another
like sideshow attraction that was created allegedly originally anyway, by
sewing the head and torso of a juvenile blue faced
monkey onto the back half of a salmon, which sounds

(50:21):
gross as hell, but anyway, the original artifact was to
believe to have been one of many that were created
by Japanese fishermen, and the original one was purchased in
eighteen twenty two by an American ship captain named Samuel
Barrett Eads for six thousand dollars, which is like an
absurd amount of money in eighteen twenty two dollars.

Speaker 4 (50:45):
That monkey head kind of looks like a nostrafu head.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
Yeah, it's like terrifying.

Speaker 4 (50:49):
It looks like a mini vampire head.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
Anyway, this thing was like later bought by P. T. Barnum,
who was like, of course huge in freemasonry, like high ranking,
already third degree freemason. There's a lot of stuff you
guys can look into with the circus and freemasonry and
all that short sort of.

Speaker 4 (51:06):
Shit somebody would want to have on forever with Paul Stobbs,
with the whole clown aspect.

Speaker 2 (51:10):
Of exactly all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
But Barnum like displayed this thing in his Barnum's American
Museum in New York, and throughout the year several replicas
and different versions of this thing have been produced. And
I'm sure Shane you've got some info you want to
share about Fiji mermaids.

Speaker 4 (51:28):
I don't know where to start with this one. I mean,
other than the fact that, I mean it's extremely close
with the whole like Jake the alligator thing. I mean,
they seem like they could almost be like like siblings
of each.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
Other, you know, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 4 (51:40):
But like unfortunately, these are some of those things that
it's just like it's clearly a complete oddity, like it's
not real. There's no like solid validity to it. But
imagine being able to go back to that timeframe of
like the early nineteen hundreds and seeing something like this
and just being completely fucking mind blowed by it. I mean,
but without with that being said, I don't, like I
said earlier, kind of discredit the whole concept of mermaids,

(52:01):
Like not in like the folklory sense, but I feel
like in a little bit more of like a real
world sense. It's kind of like the whole like vampire
thing that everybody wants to imagine these things as this
like beautiful creature, But in world world of reality, if
something was, you know, evolved at the bottom of the ocean,
it's gonna be this lightly complexed, probably pretty horrifying, cave

(52:21):
dwelling looking creature. So with that said, I mean, I
feel like, obviously this is fake, but it's probably a
bit closer to a more actual representation of like what
I feel like a mermaid would be.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. Like with
a lot of this sort of stuff, we just have
very like sterilized versions, like romanticized almost. But yeah, if
any of these kind of folklorish type creatures exist, they're
probably fucking horrified.

Speaker 4 (52:50):
Like this guy right here, like this little picture of
this little drawing of this dude right here.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
If I'm not mistaken, that picture right there is like
a representation of the original pt bar Arnhum Fiji Mermaid.
Like a lot of these are replicas, but that one
where it's got like all the gnarled up arms and shit,
I believe that's the original one.

Speaker 4 (53:09):
I want to find a picture of the original one
because that looks pretty fucking horrifying. Yeah, unless he's just
trying to sell tickets with an awesome image. I mean,
that's the Fiji Mermaid Wikipedia page. I think there's one
on there. Let's see here. If I'm not mistaken, I'm
gonna bring it up. I just gotta switch screens here,
Fiji Mermaid Wikipedia.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
We got the original vision here for everybody.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
Bt Barnem Okay, so it's kind of a drawing as well,
but allegedly that's what the original one looked like.

Speaker 4 (53:35):
So I'm assuming the original one is probably in somebody's
private collection somewhere, and nobody actually knows what it looks like,
and more than likely it's probably in some old ladies
hoardorhouse shoved in the basement somewhere, forever lost in time.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
Shit as old as this thing was it's probably fucking
disintegrated by now. I mean, if it was a monkey
sewed onto a salmon, yeah, that thing had to smell
like hell.

Speaker 4 (53:59):
I mean I'm the flip side too. If you have
some of these like old world oddities, I feel like
that's one of those things that you kind of keep
on the hush hush because I feel like if you
publicize the fact that you own this thing, I don't know,
I feel like there might be some kind of pull
to it, saying that it's like a national artifact of
like American folklore or something like that, and there's probably
a good chance that they might try to find a

(54:19):
way to like legally take it from you. So if
you do have some of these oddities, I mean, unless
you want to share it with everybody, it's probably best
to kind of keep it on the hush hush. Otherwise
you're probably gonna have some problems.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
Or you could start a roadside attraction and show this
thing off and so seashells by the Seashore and bumper
stickers and postcards.

Speaker 4 (54:38):
Yes, sir, what happened to the Minnesota Iceman? I feel
like that's probably hidden somewhere too, because.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
It's probably in the basement of the Smithsonian.

Speaker 4 (54:45):
Do you you so the whole story with the Minnesota
Iceman not to get onto some other side tangent, but
there was like the original that the owner claimed to
have had, and then he said that it like disappeared,
and then all of a sudden this other one popped up.
So you know, do you think there's validity to the
first one. Maybe the first some one's hiding the Smithsonian.
The second one they knew was garbage. They're just like
that because there's all the conspiracies behind it that, you know,

(55:05):
they wanted to check it out. They wanted to check
it out. Then all of suddeny weren't interested in checking
it out and they were like, no, we're not interested anymore.
And that's when he noticed that it was like off
and not weird. So I mean, obviously there's also the
factor of this guy got caught in a lie and
you just came up with this giant lie to try
to cover up the original lie. Or on the flip side,
maybe there was actually something to the original Minnesota ice man,
even if it was just like a early man, you know,

(55:28):
and it wasn't necessarily a sasquatch. You know, it's still
something that I'm sure museums would definitely be interested in
getting their hands on, especially if it's preserved pretty well
and nice.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
I mean, gun to my head, that seems perfectly logical
to me.

Speaker 4 (55:40):
Yeah, we need to find a way to recollect all
of these old American folklory roadside attractions and obviously not
let the government have their hands on it. They can't
be a national museum, but we need to have a
quote national Museum of American roadside odities and just put
it all in one place for everybody.

Speaker 1 (55:56):
So I do a lot of back to the future quotes.
I'm gonna throw an Indiana Jones want at you right now,
You're ready.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
Belong There you go.

Speaker 4 (56:07):
It does all right.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
So kind of rounding out this episode, this is something
that's not super duper related, but I thought it merited
bringing back up in light of what we were talking about.
So if you longtime listeners out there, remember early early
on when I joined the show, we did our local
Lore of the Carolinas episode and we talked a little

(56:31):
bit about the lizard Man of Scape or Swamp, and
I figured alligator man, lizardman, this would be a good
time to kind of readdress this briefly.

Speaker 4 (56:40):
Okay, close enough.

Speaker 1 (56:42):
Close enough, but anyway, so this kind of started in
the summer of nineteen eighty eight, and there were several
sightings of a large bipedal creature in the area around Bishopville.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
South Carolina.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
The most famous sighting happened on the night of June
twenty nine. And on this night, there's a seventeen year
old boy named Chris Davis, and he was driving home
from his job working at McDonald's and he got a
flat tire, so he pulled over, changed the tire, got
back in his car, was getting ready to drive away,
and he saw this seven foot tall greenish brown humanoid creature.

(57:20):
He claimed that it had three fingers, glowing red eyes,
and he said that it had a long tail. So allegedly,
this creature jumped on the roof of the car and
Davis sped off and it knocked the creature to the ground. Allegedly,
the creature chased down the car and jumped onto the
roof again before ultimately falling off, and this kid got away.

Speaker 4 (57:43):
I really hope it actually looked like this picture, like
it looked like this Power Ranger villain right here. I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
If that looks like a Temu like Godzilla costume.

Speaker 4 (57:51):
That would be the one that CBS Austin uses to
talk about this story. They're like, yes, the lizard Man,
and we use the worst possible fucking image ever.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
I mean, that might actually be worse than like Power
Rangers level special effects.

Speaker 4 (58:05):
A little fun story about Power Rangers. Did you know
the Power Rangers stole all the fight scenes from an
old Japanese TV show and the only thing they actually
filmed was the parts where the kids weren't in the costumes.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
With the American kids.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
Yeah, no, actually we were watching a documentary about that
not so long ago.

Speaker 4 (58:20):
Dude, that's crazy that all the villains, like all the
main villains in the show, all of them. It was
like they did voiceover for but they did such a
good job that you didn't notice. So you're like, yes,
these are these Power Ranger fucking villains, but they never
were in the first place.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
Well, it also helps that you're four years old, and yes,
this is the height of cinema right here.

Speaker 4 (58:36):
That in fucking Beetleborgs. You remember that show.

Speaker 2 (58:39):
I think I might've been a little too old for
that one.

Speaker 4 (58:41):
Dude, Beetleborgs was awesome. I was always like a you know,
b type of person. So Beetleborgs dud Ha had the
monsters involved because they hung out at the house where
they had like you know, the mummy guy, the vampire,
the flabber, the goat, the ghost guy. So I was
all all in the range of Beetle Beetleborgs. That was
my shit. But of course my Power Rangers. Everybody watched
the Power Rangers, but.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
Ye, Beetleborgs. They got nothing on that one.

Speaker 1 (59:02):
Big bad Beetleborgs, all right. So fast forwarding on July
fourteenth of nineteen eighty eight, there's this local family who
reported that on the previous night, their car had been
mauled by a large creature when it was sitting in
their driveway. They said that wires from the car's engine

(59:22):
had been ripped out, and there were reddish brown hares
found and large footprints also at the scene. On July
twenty fourth, two local teenagers reported that while they were
driving near Bishopville, they saw this large bipedal creature run
across the road.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
In front of them.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
Two County Sheriff's deputies investigated the area. They found several
forty gallon drums that had been crushed and scattered along
the road. They found large three toed footprints and broken
tree limbs that were nearly nine feet off the ground.
One last encounter in the initial wave that I'll share

(01:00:05):
there was a crop duster and he claimed that about
one month before Chris Davis's sighting, he saw this strange
bipedal creature walk across the runway while he was taking
off in his plane. Allegedly, he said that the creature
was grayish brown in color and had a face that
resembled a monkey's. Fast forwarding a few years to nineteen

(01:00:28):
ninety one, there was this couple and they claimed that
they nearly collided with a large sasquatch like creature while
they are driving near Bishopville. And in two thousand and
eight there was another report of a car being damaged
in a very similar way to one of those nineteen
eighty eight incidents that we just talked about. At that point,

(01:00:49):
they did DNA testing on the hairs found at the
scene and it was concluded that it most likely came
from a domestic dog, which I think is kind of
interesting because while this thing is called the lizard man.
Like most of the reports, uh, the eyewitnesses basically report

(01:01:09):
like a sasquatch type entity or.

Speaker 2 (01:01:13):
Some large hairy hominid.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
So I think it's possible that this was a misidentified
bigfoot or maybe even a dog man. You know, they
talked about it attacking cars multiple times. They you know,
talked about the DNA testing done on the hairs came
back as a domestic dog.

Speaker 4 (01:01:29):
Think about the face too, because the lizard had the
elongated face, which would be a little bit differ in
the sasquatch. But some people might interpret that as a
monkey face too, because I mean it definitely seems like
the dogman slash sasquatch kind of mix up. Could definitely
make a little bit more sense with the lizard band thing,
just because the elongated face.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Well, and like we talk about all the time, like
back in the late eighties early nineties, like dog man
wasn't really a thing that much, especially in like South Carolina. Like, yeah,
maybe up in Bray Road it was a thing, but
I mean in South Carolina it wouldn't have been. So
could just be another misidentified dog man type situation. And

(01:02:06):
people have suggested that, you know, like the lizardman scales
type thing or just mud from the swamp that was
like matted in this thing's hair and it made it
kind of look like scales when it dried and cracked.
So I think that's kind of interesting. If your listeners
will remember recently, when we had Timothy Renner on the show,

(01:02:28):
we talked a lot about like bigfoot and three toed footprints.
You guys, go check out that episode if you have not.
But anyway, I thought this was kind of worth throwing
in here at the end, just to kind of compare
and contrast, and like we said, lizard man close enough
to alligator.

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
Man, I thought it was worth bringing back up.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
So that's all I got.

Speaker 4 (01:02:46):
I'm glad you brought up the thing with tim they
Renner because as soon as you said the three toest thing,
I remember that some of the reports were Sasquatch Lake,
and I was hoping that you'd bring that back in
because that just seems like another one that kind of
connects in with what he's been researching. And I'm kind
of curious if he has touched this one as part
of that research, because if you starts diving in, I'm
kind of curious if there may have been some women
in white sightings around that same time too, so I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:03:08):
Not sure about that. Our friend of the show, Lyle Blackburn,
who was recently on, if you guys haven't checked out
that episode, go check that one out as well. He's
got a whole book that he did about the lizard Man.
A lot of this information I got from that book,
but he goes super duper in depth with it. If
you guys are interested in this subject at all, I

(01:03:30):
would recommend y'all picking up that book. And if this
is something y'all want us to see or want to
see us rather readdress on the show. Like I said,
we just kind of hit it briefly in a very
old kind of grab bag type episode and we just
ran through, you know, kind of the high water marks here.
So if you guys want us to dive deeper into
the lizard Man, that is something I am definitely willing

(01:03:52):
to do.

Speaker 4 (01:03:52):
So I think we have a solution to all of
these things. It was either a cayman or a take you.
That's the general answer when it comes to this type
of stuff. So it was it must have all been
in Beneteu that people misidentified, right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
Well, that's kind of funny. I mean, remember when we
talked about like our Living Dinosaurs episode and a lot
of those reports could have been like misidentified Komodo dragons
and things like that. The reports that said they were
like four feet tall and two hundred pounds. That's what
that made me think about, Like if they saw this

(01:04:24):
thing like up on a rock or something like that,
you know, that's kind of proportions that it seems like
somebody might make the leap and assume.

Speaker 4 (01:04:34):
You know, I'm kind of curious too, if just another
possible answer, just at least maybe the one from Columbia.
You know, if there was an alligator that may have
gotten into a fight with another alligator and it had
part of its like mouth ripped off. You know, maybe
there was one alligator in the area that had like
a shortened mouth or shortened snout and they were seeing
this thing and they were like, oh, the top half
is the human, the bottom half's an alligator. You know,

(01:04:55):
because when it comes to like folklore and stuff like that, Dude,
it ends up spreading really really quick, and it's off
with one guy saying like, oh, I saw this really
weird looking alligator that had like a flat face and
then the next person's like, you know, Tom just said
that he saw an alligator that had a human face.
And the next person's like, hey, this guy said that.
This guy just saw an alligator man where it was
half human half alligator. Like, think about how quickly that

(01:05:15):
stuff changes. And even within like Columbia and stuff where
you know, you know, there's a lot more like the
small villages, a lot more like localized people like entertain themselves.
People are telling stories, dudes. These stories I feel like
spread faster in like these areas than they would, like,
you know, in our area, for example, because everybody up
here is entertained by social media all this kind of
shit where you know, down there, even when these stories

(01:05:37):
happen now, dude, it's like everything's word of mouth. People
are still like interacting like that, sharing stories. So this
stuff spreads, and it also morphs and changes very quickly.
I feel in South America, well.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
And we considered a deformed human, we didn't consider initially
a deformed alligator.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
So I mean that's option number two.

Speaker 4 (01:05:56):
I mean, which one. I feel like they're both definitely
they definitely got some pretty good validity to it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:03):
Stay tuned, guys, this is our last break.

Speaker 4 (01:06:05):
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Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
And now we're getting back to the bizarre. Well, Shane,
I think we should share this comment made by Man's
I think this is a good one. If you want
me to read it or you want to read it.

Speaker 4 (01:06:42):
Which one is it? Is it the very bottom?

Speaker 1 (01:06:44):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
The bottom one?

Speaker 4 (01:06:45):
All right, I'll bring it up on the screen. Here
you go.

Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
Well, he said, love this folklore about el Ambre came on.
Very interesting. Can't believe this home. We fumbled the white potion.
We got some emojis there, and this is the funny part.
Great episode. I'm out see y'all later. Alligators, here you
go after a while. Crackadile. Hey, I'm punny, as they say.

(01:07:09):
But anyway, that's all I got for this one. Kind
of a more lighthearted folklore based episode like we've been
doing lately, but still kind of a fun one to
put together. I thought the Jake the Alligator Man stuff
is funny. I think his yearly bride is just hilarious.
The razor clam and the frying pan, like just all
this stuff is like peak Americana, I think, and like

(01:07:30):
you said, in like our fast paced culture where we're
just on to the next thing, like we're not making
new Jake the Alligator Man's and World's Largest frying pan
stories anymore. So I think it was kind of cool to,
you know, kind of revisit stuff like that.

Speaker 4 (01:07:45):
See, I mean even the difference to back in the day,
it's like even if people didn't believe it, they still
kind of like entertained the fascination of it. You know,
we're now. I feel like if you try to like
recreate this stuff, even if you did it fully for
the aspect of like, oh, this is just fun otities,
people are gonna sit here and they're just going to
talk about like, oh, it's fake, it's fake, and then
that's just gonna be like the whole motif behind it.

(01:08:05):
When it's like you're telling people that it's fake, but
people are still going to think that you're trying to
like pull one over on them, because that's the society
we live in nowadays. Like, I feel like people have
kind of lost their sense of wonder for things like this,
you know, like entertaining the possibility that these weird things exist,
not directly entertaining that, yes, this is a solid, real
thing and right in front of me, Like people want
that real shit now, Like they can't just entertain fun

(01:08:26):
ideas anymore. You know.

Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
Oh, that's kind of something we talked about in our
recent Solway First Spaceman episode. Uh, one of the you know,
kind of researchers experts on that case basically said the
exact same thing, like this is not a mythology and
a story that could organically grow nowadays because everybody's just
so skeptical about everything. But you know, decades ago, people

(01:08:49):
were I'm not gonna say gull, but they were much
more open minded to entertaining things like this. So yeah,
so these kind of story are a lot of fun,
and I think, you know, in fifty years, we're probably
still going to be talking about the Subway, first space
Man and the Alligator man. I don't know if we're
gonna have new stories like this that pop up just

(01:09:10):
because we're just you know, like the Monroe Monster, we're
just onto the next thing. So again, like we talk
about with a lot of this folklore, I think it's
very important to keep these kind of stories alive and
they're a lot of fun to talk about too.

Speaker 4 (01:09:24):
Speaking of that, we'll have to touch base on what
is it, Jake the mongoose? Is that am I thinking
of the right name, because that's another kind of like.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
Weird something like that. I don't really know anything about it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
It was basically like.

Speaker 4 (01:09:33):
A talking name. It was like a paranormal talking mongoose.
I mean, it could definitely be a fun one to
dive into all these like.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Yeah, that would be a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (01:09:40):
You guys also hit us up if you want us
to talk about talking mongooses.

Speaker 4 (01:09:44):
Or if you guys have any weird local folklore stories
such as this one that may be lost if people
don't talk about them on podcast, throw them our way,
because you know, if you guys aren't telling us about them,
then you know they might just fall into obscurity. So
you know, we're always always happy to take suggestions. And
with that, of course, if you guys enjoyed today's conversation,
you guys want to show some love, smash the follow
icon and share today's episode with the friend. Grassroots support

(01:10:06):
from listeners just like you, guys is exactly how the
show grows, So thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
And if you guys want to get up with us
for any reason whatsoever, or to be a guest on
the show, or basically just anything, shame and tell them
how they can do that.

Speaker 4 (01:10:18):
First and foremost, you guys can email us at Bizarre
Encounters at outlook dot com, or you guys can get
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you guys could always pop into the discord and you
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last way you guys get ahold of us is through

(01:10:38):
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Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
And as always, you guys be sure to show some
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(01:11:16):
our buddy Joe with Cryptoteology for your you're ready for it,
I'm ready wawable equippedds. And We've also got big ape threads.

Speaker 4 (01:11:26):
And if you guys got some extra time, don't forget
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Speaker 1 (01:11:39):
And all this gay orrific shit is in the link
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Speaker 4 (01:11:44):
And with that, just like roadside Oddities, we always stay bizarre.
We always keep it bizarre. So just like us and
just like post modern America, always always stay bizarre, bizarre, bizarre.

Speaker 2 (01:11:58):
Stop staring at ladies from the river bank.

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