#132 Blackbeard & The Cursed Town of Bath, NC

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Any one, and I looked out and there was this big, red,
blinking UFO.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
I can just say this, something's going on in the woods.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Something's going on. They're not dogs, they're not coyotes. What
could it be? Right?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
I had an encounter with a skunk cake and it
completely altered the course of my life.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
I got a call on building about what about sightings
of a u f FO covering over a farm.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Really woke up from a dream and when I went
into the bedroom, she said, there's a monster on the wall.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
They saw that the creature had run through a barb
wire fence that they were able to obtain cares. They
sent the hairs to their lab and it came back
as an ongoing creature creature. More suck, What is up?

(01:14):
Bizarre Rights and welcome back to the most bizarre show
on the Internet. I am the one that some people
refer to as Shane aka the original Shane Squatch. Hi
fish Fine, not fish face. I am a Shane Squatch,
my friend, and alongside me, like usual, I have the
big bad boo Daddy himself. Sir orn Felix, you are

(01:35):
Maley pirate Hooker. Well that was a little far. Sorry,
damn Ron Burgundy chill for the episode. That's what I
was going for. Man, I got fish face and you're
a smelly pirate horse. So welcome to the show. Everybody
already off to a good start. So uh, a little
bit of a news and update before we get into

(01:55):
the usual fun stuff that we get into as we
do on the show. We mentioned it last, but something
that we're gonna hopefully try to put together as far
as the Patreon goes. I really like the name that
orin through last week, so we're gonna stick with that.
I'm gonna be trying to do some bizarre town halls
for the Patreon. Anybody that becomes part of the Patreon,
whether you're part of the ad free tier or the
full access to here, whatever, everybody will have access to it.

(02:16):
And essentially what it will be is kind of like
a meetup group discussion where everybody can kind of hang
out discuss things that are on their minds. We can
go into particular topics if you guys might be into that,
if you guys want to discuss shadow people on one
or whatever. But something I'm gonna try to put together.
So if anybody thinks that they might be interested in
doing something like that to shoot me a message let
me know, or if you guys are already a member

(02:37):
of the Patreon, just let me know what you guys
think about it. But hopefully should be a lot of
fun when we get it rolling, and hopefully once in
a while we'll have or and pop in for that
one too, so you know we'll be able to hang
out with us behind the scenes. We can call it
up Bizarren'counters after Dark if you will.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
And that's only when it gets extra frisky.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
Though that's true. Well you never know, man, we got
listeners popping in there. It might get real frisky because
I don't know about you, man, but I love them listeners.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Speaking of getting real frisky, our next episode of Bizarre Inquiries,
our YouTube live show, is going to be Thursday, December
the fourth. It's gonna be roughly seven to fifteen Eastern
Time on the Bizarre Reality Media YouTube channel, So you
guys be sure to submit questions or articles or videos
or anything you want us to inquire about. Being that

(03:22):
it's the month of December, we could even do kind
of like Christmas themed things if you guys want, But anyway,
be sure to submit anything you want us to inquire
out for that and also join us in the chat
during the episode.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
And if any of you guys might want to contact
us for any reason whatsoever, be it being a guest
on the show, sharing clips, articles, questions, sharing your experiences
or encounters, or simply just be able to talk to us,
You guys can get ahold of us through our email,
which is Bizarre Encounters at outlook dot com. Or you
guys could always call or text the Bizarre Reality Media
Hotline twenty four to seven and that number is three

(03:54):
one three three six four one five to five to one.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
And if you guys would like to support the show,
shang tell them how they can do that.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
As I mentioned a little bit earlier, you guys can
come and become part of the Patreon two tiers available
at free slash, early Access and full Access, And if
you guys are interested in seeing what it's all about,
there are seven day free trials available for both tiers,
and any of your guys support that goes towards the
show we greatly appreciate.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
And you guys can also support the Bizarre Reality Media
merch store with t shirts starting at just the oddly
specific and let's see what we're in November and thankfully
low price of fifteen sixty eight plus shipping.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
Wow, that's fantastic. And I know times are tough out there,
especially with the holidays coming up, so we completely understand.
But if you'd like to support the show in some
other ways which go a long way, and we would
definitely appreciate. First and foremost, you guys could definitely leave
a review for the show on iTunes any podcast you
guys happen to use, and as our usual rule goes

(04:52):
one or five stars, you'll read them on the show
and either give you a shout out or ridicule you
depend on which way you want to go with it.
We're here for both.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
And you guys can also do all the internet things
like share and subscribe, share the show with your friends,
your family, or even your enemies if you feel so inclined.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
Whoever it is, just throw the show at him, you know,
like literally just throw it at him, like put it
on a sticker, put it on a towel, piece of paper,
just throw it at their face and say read it bitch.
In last, butno least, you guys can come and catch
live shows and video content on the Bizarre reality media
YouTube Rumble and Twitch channels.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
And as always, all this shit we've mentioned is in
the link tree in the show description.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
And now hopping into today's content, as you guys probably
may be caught from the intro as we were coming in,
and I'm assuming that you guys probably saw the cover art,
so you already know what we're talking about today. But
you know, if you didn't, you weren't regularly paying attention.
You just hop right into the episode or and why
don't you let him know what we're getting into today?

Speaker 2 (05:44):
All right? So for all you listeners out there, you know,
in the month of October, Shane suggested that we kind
of do things that were more spooky and Halloween themes.
So we tried to do that for you guys, and
he also suggested maybe for November to coincide with Thanksgiving,
we could do things that were more like Native American
or pilgrim or colonial related. So I was going through

(06:05):
like the word document, I keep of potential topics for
the show, and nothing was really super duper specific to that,
but I was like pirates.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
Unfortunately we hit Rono too early.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
We did, we did, but uh, Pirates, that's close enough,
I thought it would work. And this is kind of
a topic I've been wanting to cover on the show
for a while now, so I thought it would be
a good opportunity to do that. We're going to talk
about Blackbeard and the cursed town of.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
Bath Woo, and actually, how many natural science podcasts end
up covering pirates. We might be in some bizarre territory
right now, which is exactly what we try to do here. Well,
this one's.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
Gonna combine a lot of things. We're gonna talk a
little bit about history, a little bit about folklore, and
then we're gonna kind of get bizarre at the end.
So we're gonna cover a lot of bases here, and uh, Shane,
unless you got anything else, I'll go ahead and jump
into tonight's material.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
I just got some pirate fun facts, but I'll throw
them along as we go along the episode because I've
had them sitting in my brain for way too long
and this is the perfect excuse to use.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
All Right, So we're going to start off talking about
black Beard. So Edward teach Or, better known as black Beard,
is arguably the most famous pirate of all time. Not
much is known about his early life, but it's believed
that he was born in Bristol, England, sometime around the
year sixteen eighty and it's also commonly believed that he

(07:22):
began his career as a cabin boy on a privateership
during Queen Anne's War. And Queen Anne's War was a
war that was fought between Great Britain, France and Spain,
and privateers were private persons slash vessels that were commissioned
by the British Crown to attack enemy ships and a

(07:44):
lot of times they would like confiscate the ships and
their cargo and capture and kill the crew members. So
basically they were just like mercenaries or quote unquote legal pirates.

Speaker 3 (07:56):
And I'm just gonna throw this in here because you
already kind of made a reference to it with a
arguably you know, like not exactly with a lot of
this pirate stuff, as I'm sure anybody that's kind of
dived into pirates kind of knows, a lot of this
stuff is kind of up in the air. It's really
hard to be able to track any of this stuff.
And just like with a lot of these captains that
have the names behind them, you know, the folklore was
just as important. So a lot of these stories like

(08:17):
were stuff that people talked up, so it's really really
hard to separate like the fact from fiction with a
lot of this pirate stuff. And I'm sure that even
North Carolina has one what's his name, Black Caesar I
think it was that it's like a big pirate legend
that's around like North Carolina, and they've recently proven that
the guy never even existed in the first place. So
like it, it's so weird with this pirate stuff that
it's like you never really know where the validity is

(08:40):
to it, but you know that there's something to it.
It's literally just folklore as like pirate history, you know
what I mean.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah, a lot of these pirate captains just have like
really good marketing and we're going to get into that
a little bit later in the episode. But so moving on,
Edward Teach slash Blackbeard. After the end of Queen Anne War,
he turned from you know, working on these privateer ships
to just straight up piracy and that's what a lot

(09:07):
of privateers did after the war, and he joined forces
with another former privateer named Captain Benjamin Hornygold, which is
that great name.

Speaker 3 (09:19):
Weird thing to think about by the way, just to
throw this in here, you said that a lot of
these pirates went from privateers into piracy. Just a weird correlation,
doesn't this kind of remind you of like Vietnam Vets
right after Vietnam coming back, they turned into like these
biker gangs. Like it kind of seems like it's kind
of the same motif but in a different era, you
know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yeah, I can definitely see that. But you know the
thing about it, like we kind of said in the
previous section, basically these privateers were pirates anyway. They were
just allowed to do it during this war. So they
were basically doing the exact same thing. It just wasn't
legal anymore.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
Same with the Vietnam Vets though, I mean, in all fairness,
I mean, like as messed up as it sounds like
they were raping and pill over in Vietnam and it
was legal. Then they came here and they were just like, good,
what do I do? Man? Like I can't live in
this society now? Like the hell it pretty close.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Yeah. So black Beard Slash Edward Teach, whatever you want
to call him. He was appointed as captain of one
of Hornygold's ships, but Hornygold soon retired from piracy and
Edward Teach took command of the entire fleet. And at
this point his reputation grew very quickly, and he began began,

(10:28):
excuse me, to be referred to as black Beard due
to the quote very black beard, which he wore very long.
And he also adopted this habit of braiding his beard
into almost like pigtails and tying it with these bright
red ribbons. And he would also tie lit fuses under
like his pirate's hat, so when he went into battle,

(10:51):
what smoke would be billowing out of his hat and
around his head. And because of all this, he kind
of developed this reputation and this very fearsome image, and
he was once described as quote such a figure that
imagination cannot form an idea of a fury from hell

(11:12):
to look more frightful. And he was also allegedly like
seven feet tall, and this is, you know, back in
the seventeen hundreds, So between all that stuff, he probably
was a pretty scary dude to run into on the
high seas.

Speaker 3 (11:24):
You know those old depictions you see where like he
is like twice the height of everybody else on the ship.
I guess there actually is some stock to that, you know,
allegedly anyway, allegedly that that's smoking the hat thing. Though
that's pretty dope. Though that's that's that's almost kind of
like that whole thing about like playing drums to sound
like there's more people like it's like the extra little
element of fear that makes that huge difference. Like it's
something so subtle and small. But again, look at the

(11:46):
time and era. You see some dude running at you
with a smoking beard, You're like, oh, crap, I ain't
messing with that guy.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
Well, and in a lot of the depictions and kind
of the drawings and paintings of black Beard, he does
have you know, these lit fuses his hat and a
lot of times he does have like smoke around his
head when he's in these depictions. But anyway, sa at
the height of his power, Blackbeard commanded four ships and
over three hundred men, and one of his most notable

(12:14):
kind of acts of piracy was his siege of the
city of Charleston, South Carolina. And Blackbeard's fleet set up
like this blockade in the port of Charleston, and they
stopped and pillaged all incoming and outgoing ships, and they
demanded food, money, and even women from these ships, which

(12:36):
is pretty crazy by today's standards. But Blackbeard was active
from New England all the way down to the Caribbean,
but he chose the outer banks of North Carolina as
kind of like his primary base of operations. This was
due largely to like the occlusion slash concealment that was
provided by the aisles and inlets of this area, but

(12:58):
it also seemed like a lot of the locals were
more than willing to kind of turn a blind eye
to a lot of his piracy and criminal activity. In
the year seventeen seventeen, he captured a French slave ship
called the La Concord and he renamed it Queen Anne's Revenge,
so kind of you know, back to his history in

(13:19):
Queen Anne's War, and this Queen Anne's Revenge ship would
serve as his flagship until it ran aground off the
coast of Beaufort, North Carolina, which is only like forty
five minutes from where I grew up.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
Is there any type of like like anything there for it,
Like I'm assuming that the ship probably got completely taken
apart and rebuilt into something else, But is there like
a like a marker or anything there by chance.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
So there is like a small black Beard museum in Beaufort.
I haven't been, probably since I was a kid, But
this whole area is kind of notorious for shipwrecks. This
is kind of like the southern Outer Banks, and that
whole area is kind of noted as the Graveyard of
the Atlantic because of all the shipwrecks that occurred in

(14:01):
this like little strip of water off the coast of
North Carolina.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
Do they do like boat tours or anything out there
or you can see it, like I don't know how
clear the water is, but do they do anything like that?
That'd be pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Uh, not that I'm aware of.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
But they have a lot of.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
Like like day trips you can take on like fake
pirate ships and like just like a little three hour
tour Gilligan's Island type thing going on this pirate ship.
And they have like a pirate reenactment every year in
this town, so almost like a Civil war reenactment where
people like set up camps and have like fake battles
and whatnot, but instead of Civil wars, pirates. So it's

(14:37):
pretty cool. I mean, the area has definitely really embraced
black Beard and the whole pirate lore and legends like
pretty wholeheartedly, which I think is really cool.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
I mean it sounds like something else we need to
add to the Bizarre Encounters world tour. You know, we
gotta do Florida. Man, we gotta do this pirate reenactment.
Like we got a list here. Man, I'm done for
a pirate enactment.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
Yeah, Like the whole outer Banks of North Carolina like
really leans hard into this whole pirate thing. And you know, I,
you know, grew up in this area. I love pirate stuff.
Always have got the uh pirate flag tattoo. That was
one of my first ones I ever got, so good.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
Old Jolly Roger Dude. If I'm in that reenactment, I'm
gonna be the first one to get in trouble because
I'm gonna be the first one that swings down from
some high beam with a knife in my teeth, because
that is like the ultimate epitome of a pirate movie
that I've always wanted to do. They'd be like, sure,
you can't do that on the ship. You need to
get off please, It's a fake knife, I swear.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
Just don't tie lit fuses under your hat and you
should be good to go.

Speaker 3 (15:33):
I mean, if I'm already doing one, I might as
well do the other. I mean, I got the big
long black Beard already going, I might as well go
all out right, and at least I have an excuse
I could say I was taking this very seriously. I'm
a method actor. If I'm gonna dress up as black Beard,
I gotta be doing the pirate shit.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
Maybe we can call you like little Beard or something
like that, Little.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
Black Beard, black Beard Junior. No, little Beard sounds like
like a rapper, black Beard Junior. I don't know any
different one.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
We'll call it AJ black Beard Junior.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
That sounds call me brown Beard. That'd be close enough.

Speaker 2 (16:03):
That'll work, all right, BJ, you want to take it
right here.

Speaker 3 (16:08):
For BJ, maybe we apologize guys for the interference, but
we will be right back and now back to the show.

Speaker 2 (16:26):
So jumping back in early in the year of seventeen eighteen,
Blackbeard married his fourteenth wife.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
At least it was a fourteen year old.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
Oh no, she wasn't fourteen. She was sixteen oh two
years a grown ass woman.

Speaker 3 (16:41):
Almost maybe by eighteen hundred standards. I mean, the life
expectancy was what like thirty five, so that's middle aged
at that time. Right.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
Anyway, this sixteen year old girl, her name was Mary Ormond,
and her and Blackbeard settled down in Ormond's hometown of Bath,
North Carolina, and not spelled Bata like taking a bath.
And we're going to discuss this town in more detail
in a little bit. But supposedly when they moved to Bath,
Blackbeard allegedly gave up piracy a period of time. And

(17:14):
while they were living there, his neighbor and suspected business
partner was the governor of North Carolina, a man named
Charles Eden, and because of this relationship that they had,
Blackbeard was able to secure an official pardon from the governor. However,
soon after receiving this pardon, he acquired quote unquote a

(17:38):
ship called the Adventure and he returned to piracy.

Speaker 3 (17:42):
Well duh, I mean, once you live that life, man,
you can't.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
Go back out of that once you can't go back, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:47):
There ain't no going back from pirating man.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
So this return to piracy was like a direct violation
of the terms of his pardon, and a bounty was
placed on his head by the Virginia governor, who is
a man named Alexander Spotswood, which is another great name.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
Do you think he just did this to add more
excitement to being a pirate. He's like, I had no
intention in ever stopping. I just wanted to make it
more risky so it's more fun.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
He just wanted to, you know, take a little siesta,
shack up with a sixteen year old wife, and then
go back to pirate in.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
Wait, how old was he at this time? Do you know? Offhand?

Speaker 2 (18:21):
So I didn't do the math. It says he was
born in roughly sixteen eighty and this was I think
we said so thirty seven. Yeah, so he was like
approaching middle age.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
Yeah, so he was you know twice. Yeah, it's creepy
at that point. We'll just call it that. If he
was like by a mid twenties hundred standard, yeah, if
he was like mid twenties, you know, early thirties maybe
with the time, but no, this dude was like late thirties.
This dad was creeping.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
So on November twenty second of seventeen eighteen, a fleet
of ships led by a man named Lieutenant Robert Maynard
attacked Blackbeard and his men at their hideout on Okracoke Island,
North Carolina.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
Good job with that one. I was about to stumble
over that word.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
It's only because I've heard it my entire life for
some reason, I know how to say it. But anyway,
supposedly this like lengthy battle took place, and allegedly Blackbeard
was shot multiple times and stabbed thirty seven times, but
eventually he was beheaded by this Lieutenant Maynard, and according

(19:26):
to the legend, Lieutenant Maynard stuck blackbeard severed head on
the mast of his ship and sailed back to Virginia
with the head still on the mast.

Speaker 3 (19:35):
Pretty dope. I wonder if that skull somewhere weird thought,
I'm sure I feel.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
I mean, it seems like that would have been a
keepsake that they would have held on to.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
That's what I'm saying. It is probably in the Simsonian.
It belongs in a museum, as they.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
Say, with the giant skeletons.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
Yeah, with the giant skeletons and black Beard's head because
apparently he may have been an ephlom. He was almost
seven feet tall.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
Close enough.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
Yeah, They're like, just put it with the giant skulls.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
So kind of rounding out some miscellaneous and some fun
little thoughts and theories with black Beard. So I was
kind of surprised doing the research of this he was
only active for like approximately two years really, which is
kind of crazy. Yeah, because like when I was going
through the research, like all the time stamps were like

(20:19):
within this two year period. It's like, man, there's no
way that's correct. And I had to like corroborate and
double triple fact check all this to make sure the
dates were correct, because there's no way this dude did
all this stuff in like two years. But apparently he
did so even though his career was very short. It's
been said that he quote was romanticized after his death

(20:39):
and became the inspiration for an archetypal pirate in works
of fiction across many genres, and it's also led to
a lot of kind of ghost stories and legends surrounding
black Beard. On the Outer Banks in North Carolina, there's
a lot of tales of like orbs and strange lights
and even like ghostly ship seen off the coast, and

(21:02):
there's also tales of people seeing Blackbeard's decapitated ghost supposedly
searching for his severed head.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
I feel like it'd be more scary if it was
a floating head, so you're probably lucky you get the
reverse on that one.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah, I mean, you can't chase after you that way.

Speaker 3 (21:16):
Floating heads are fucking horrifying.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
Just but it has been said that this is kind
of an omen of bad luck and death, and bad
luck befalls anyone who is unfortunate enough to cross paths
with this ghost. And finally, it's believed by many that
Blackbeard had like this vast treasure hidden before his death,

(21:39):
and this treasure has so far never been found. So
that's all I've got for the Blackbeard portion, if you've
got anything you want to throw in.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
I was gonna ask about the treasure anyways, but I
guess you already brought it up. Man. The question is,
what do you have actually hit his treasure in North Carolina,
because I feel like the treasure would be nowhere near
where his main base of operation was, because that would
be exactly where people were looking. If this treasure does
exist out there, it's going to be in the middle
of bfe well.

Speaker 2 (22:04):
And like we said, I mean, he was active all
the way from New England down to the Caribbean, so
I mean that's a pretty large area to have to
search for for this treasure.

Speaker 3 (22:12):
Call it generic, but I'm going to assume that his
treasure is probably on some random little tiny island down
in South America, like that would probably be the best
place for you to hydro treasure.

Speaker 2 (22:22):
Maybe it's a down to South America with the Nazis.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
Hey, maybe maybe that's what they're using in Argentina. Man
or No, they just took his treasure all the way
down to Antarctica at this point.

Speaker 2 (22:30):
Oh, we always hear about Nazi gold. Maybe it was
a Blackbeard's gold first.

Speaker 3 (22:33):
Yeah, and they took his head too. They recreate his
head so that he could tell him where the gold was,
so that they could use it to continue their operations
out in Argentina.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
That seems like something those rascally Nazis would do.

Speaker 3 (22:44):
They obviously became friends with him when they use their
their die glocking to time travel to you know, get
to know him a little bit. They said, let us
know where the treasure is and we will find it
later on and we'll bring your head back to life.
He's like, what do you mean my head back to life?
You're like, ohit weren't supposed to tell you that part
of the future. Do we learn this from Back to
the Future. You're not supposed to tell people how their
death happens.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
Or fuck your mom. You're not supposed to do that either.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
Yes, otherwise you might end up becoming your own dad,
or you might have to spin it where your dad
ends up falling in love with your mom because your
mom feels like she kissed your kissed her brother when
she kisses you.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
Okay, I want to take an ad break there.

Speaker 3 (23:18):
Yeah, probably good idea. Sorry, I'll watch Back to the
Future recently, so I'm a little fresh on the Back
to the Future news. I'm going back through it watching
it with my daughter. So we're on Back to the
future too, So I got I got all the Back
to the Future lore fresh in my mind. My friend.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
God, all right, guys, we got to take another break.
We'll be right back. And now we're getting back to
the bazaar. All right. So, like I said a little
bit ago, we're gonna talk a little bit more about
the cursed town of Bath now. So, the town of Bath,

(23:56):
North Carolina is, you know, most well known for these
connections to black but it has a pretty strange and
interesting history kind of all of its own. It's located
off of the Pamlico Sound, which is in Beaufort County.
It's kind of in the middle of nowhere, but the
closest like actual, you know, substantial towns are Newbern and Washington.

(24:19):
And Bath was officially incorporated in seventeen oh five, and
because of this, it's considered North Carolina's first town and
also kind of its first capital because the North Carolina
General Assembly met there on several occasions.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
Is there freshell like springs there by chance? Because I
feel like every single town that's named Bath has like
fresh springs.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
Not that I'm aware of, but like it's on this
like little Alcove inlet, just a small body of water.

Speaker 3 (24:48):
Kind of weird. I feel like most towns are like
named after what they did. So it's like Bath, hot springs,
people Bath there, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I'm
surpris there's not a connection to that.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
Yeah, I'm not sure why it was called that. I
never really found anything about any of my research.

Speaker 3 (25:01):
Because black Beard was Scrooge mcduckan and that motherfucker that's
why him.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
And the governor. Yeah. So anyway, in the early years
of this town, it developed this reputation for being rambunctious
and lawless, and this was largely due to it being
like a naval port and a trading hub and a
lot of people from a lot of places coming through this.

Speaker 3 (25:23):
Town, almost like Biff's town. And back to the future too,
you're all.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
Kind of Biff Tannin's pleasure palaces, Blackbeard's pleasure palace exactly.
So we're going to fast forward to the seventeen fifties,
and at this time there was a traveling evangelist named
George Whitefield, and he visited Bath on several occasions, and
he was like this real like hell Fire and Brimstone

(25:48):
type preacher, and he condemned the locals for their like
wicked and sinful ways. But he was also known for
being kind of an eccentric guy. And he traveled in
a wagon that he carried his own coffin in, and
he even slept in this coffin, and that was allegedly
because quote he preferred it to sleeping or preferred it

(26:11):
to sleeping in the dens of sin that served the
public with lodging.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
He's just trying to get his money's worth, man, If
he's going to spend money on a coffin he's going
to enjoy it first.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
Well, and hotels are expensive. I mean, the economy's bad
out there in Bath. But anyway, so after a while,
you know, this guy's whole stick kind of got old
with the locals and he was informed that he was
no longer welcome in the town.

Speaker 3 (26:34):
I'm surprised I didn't just nail him into the coffin
when he was sleeping.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
Well, apparently this did not sit very well with this guy,
and he decided that he was going to place a
curse on the town, and he allegedly said, quote, I
say to the village of Bath Village, you shall remain
now and forever forgotten by men and nations, until such
time as it pleases God to turn the light of

(26:59):
his countenance again upon you. And what's kind of interesting
about this is, you know, he said that this town
would be forgotten by men and nations. Well, nowadays Bath
only has about two hundred and fifty permanent residents, and
like never developed into you know this bustling port or

(27:19):
commercial hub or you know, government center that it probably
should have, being that it was like literally the first
most important town in the state of North Carolina. So
I thought that was kind of interesting.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
Yeah, that is kind of weird. I kind of figured that, again,
the first town, it would have actually turned into something,
So yeah, there's some validity to some curses. Man.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
Yeah, and like I said, it's kind of in the
middle of nowhere. The actual capital got established, I believe
in Newbern, which is pretty close to this, not long after,
but still just kind of interesting that, you know, nothing
ever really came of this town. And you know, me
and Jenny have talked about going there to visit, but
there's like nothing there. There's like one restaurant, there's some

(28:02):
Blackbeard stuff, there's like the oldest church in North Carolina,
and like an old homestead and things like that, but
like there's not really enough there to like make a
trip out of. And it's not like it's on the
way to or from anything.

Speaker 3 (28:16):
But you just got to turn it on out there
an adventure looking for ghost ships or something. You know,
get like a nice little like spot on the beach,
if they got like an Airbnb or something like that,
and you know, look for ghot ships. Maybe you'll get
lucky and you'll see about black Beard. Maybe. Well maybe
I said that I wouldn't be lucky that'd be a curse little.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
Bed and breakfast there. And then they've got this like
marina that has hotel rooms that you can stay at.
So it looks like a cute little town. So hopefully
before too long we can make it out there and
I'll be able to take some pictures and share with
you guys.

Speaker 3 (28:43):
Oh that'd be awesome, man, just even an overnight trip,
that'd be pretty cool. If you and I'm going to
the Black Beard Gift Shop, though, you have to let
me know what they got in there, because that place,
it probably sounds like you have some pretty cool stuff.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
And then say, okay, I'll get you a sticker.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
Or something perfect, so put it right here, right here
behind me, all right.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
So the town of Bath is also notable for being
home to this strange phenomenon known as the Devil's Hoof prints.

Speaker 3 (29:05):
Love that there's so many different altercations of saying basically
the same thing.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
Oh, we're gonna get to that. So, according to this legend,
in October of eighteen thirteen, there's this local man named
Edward Cutler, and he hosted this community picnic and a
day of horse racing on his farm and prior to
the start of one of the races. There's this young
man named Jesse Elliott, and he was bragging about how

(29:32):
he was, you know, the best horse racer in the county.
And about this time, a mysterious stranger wearing all black
rode up on a jet black horse, which possible men
in black connections. But anyway, this mysterious stranger challenged Jesse
to a race, and you know, Jesse, being the prideful
young man that he was, gladly accepted this challenge and

(29:56):
he mounted his horse, whose name was Fury. And during
the race, Jesse got out to you know, what seemed
to be an insurmountable lead, but on the backstretch of
the horse track, he was heard screaming at Fury, quote,
take me a winner, or take me to hell. And
at this point Fury suddenly stopped and dug his hoofs

(30:19):
into the ground and Jesse was thrown from the horse
and he collided headfirst with a pine tree and it
killed him instantly.

Speaker 3 (30:27):
Yikes, that sounds like an awful way to go.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
Yeah, So, as all this was going on, the mysterious
stranger rode off into the nearby woods and supposedly he
was laughing maniacally and never seen again. Done Done, Done.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
Dune, Dundune. So they had this horseman. This is the
origin tale. This is where he originally came from, and
then he somehow lost his head in a race, and
then now we have them modern you know head this horseman.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
It's like an inception situation.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
Yeah, this is an early appearance before he lost his head.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
So in the years following this race and this incident,
the locals began to notice a lot of strange things
about this area where Jesse died. It was said that
the hoof prints left by Fury did not erode or
fade away, and the grass would like not grow in
that area any longer.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
Sounds like the devil's tramping ground, right.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Or we're gonna talk about that a little bit. Yeah,
And some of the locals even began to wonder if
the stranger had actually been the devil himself, sent to
claim Jesse's soul. Done Dundune, Dune, Dun Dune.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
No.

Speaker 3 (31:30):
Yeah, that definitely sounds like there's clearly a connection between
you know, the alien thing and this whole like demonic
Luciferian type thing, like whatever it is, we haven't quite
figured out yet, but there's some kind of clear tie
to it, And it seems like one of the main
things you always go back to is the fact of
like stuff being burned and never going back to being
normal again. Like the Devil's Tramping Ground was one. We're

(31:53):
talking about the uh, what's the other one? The claw
prints that are on that front door of that church. Yeah,
for you know, that was all black shock yeap, black
shock shuck over in England. But it seems to be
like a typical like motif. And it's also again usually
something you see with a lot of extraterrestrial stuff, like
there'll be like landing sites and all of a sudden
nothing will grow in that area again. But here's where

(32:13):
the weird part comes in. So obviously it has something
to do with like radiation for example. And I think
we talked about this on a bizarre increase. The whole
thing about the arc of the Covenant that they believe
that it has some kind of like radioactiveness to it.
And then there's the whole theory about it being in
Ethiopia in this specific church, and everybody that works at
that church is completely blind, like there's something too these

(32:36):
things that come from another realm, so to speak and
them being radioactive, Like, I don't know if it's necessarily
the radioactive or it's just that maybe the particles work
differently because they come from another reality. But there is
this heavy tie to it. It's just what is it?
It's so hard to just throw around in your head,
like what could it possibly be? Because it's not just
demonic like I said, like the Arc of the Covenant

(32:56):
seems to carry these same properties, So what's the deal
with that?

Speaker 2 (33:00):
Yeah, you're definitely right. I mean, this motif of radiation
is very much associated with any type of alien UFO
type landing. Minor spoiler. The next topic that I'm working
on for Deep Dive, we're actually going to talk about
radio activity in concert with a UFO landing. I don't

(33:22):
want to say too much about it. So it's kind
of funny you brought that up little. And also, you
know how many times do we talk about you one
person's alien is another person's demon, especially back in these days.
I mean, it was harder for people to kind of
separate the two, I think.

Speaker 3 (33:37):
I mean, there was no idea or an alien at
this point. It wasn't until what the nineteen like forties,
maybe that the whole concept of like aliens like that
really started coming to be.

Speaker 2 (33:47):
Yeah, I mean your religious framework would be the only
lens that people had to view anything out of the ordinary.
So yeah, I mean very interesting and touches on a
lot of things we talk about on the show all
the time.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
Yeah, it's like the whole like mysterious stranger like the others,
like a trickster or something like that, you know, because
there's clearly like a tie to it, and you know,
the devil, I guess himself is a trickster. So that's
one way to interpret it. But the other side is
these tructures coming from another reality, you know, and then
it kind of gets into the whole radioactivity aspect of
things again. Yeah, for sure, hold that thought. We'll be
right back after this brief commercial break and we are

(34:30):
back to the show. Let's hop right in.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
Okay, So jumping back into the Devil's hoof prints. According
to the local folklore, the hoof prints made by Jesse
Elliott's horse are still there to this day. They're currently
located on private property, but it's located within this grassy area,
but supposedly still no grass grows within the prints.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
I'm gonna try to look up a picture of it,
by the way.

Speaker 2 (34:54):
Okay, I'll just keep on while you're looking it up.
And it says that still they can be filled in
or eroded, and that if any you know, sticks or
debris or anything like that falls into the prints, it
will mysteriously disappear. There's also some other bizarre occurrences reported
in this area, including strange electronic malfunctions and animals refusing

(35:18):
to grow go near these hoof prints. And how many
times do we talk about electronic malfunctions and animals behaving
weirdly around these kind of paranormal alien, high strangeness situations.

Speaker 3 (35:31):
I'm gonna bring this up real quick. By the way,
I don't know if this is actually it is that.
Is that it because it's saying North Carolina bath like
it's just it's like in the dirt like that. Or
is it more of these like rock looking ones.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
I am not sure. I think it's kind of more
the rock looking ones, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 3 (35:50):
These guys right here Elchemo, and I think.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
That's probably more it because, like I said, the research
I found said that it's currently located in kind of
like a grassy area.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
So yeah, so it's kind of hard to find pictures
of it, especially if it's private property. Like I'm gonna
assume that these pictures are it. It's just hard to
see because it's all covered in brush and stuff.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
Yeah. So basically from my understanding, now, this is pretty
much located like in the woods behind somebody's house, so
you've got to like go through these people's yard to
get to you know, the Devil's hoof.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
Prints, which explains why there's like no pictures of it.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
Yep. So uh, anyway, jumping back in, I thought this
is kind of interesting you.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
By the way you made that comment about the animals.
I was gonna say, I wonder if the radioactivity might
have something to do with it, because obviously radioactivity like
stays in an area, and these animals clearly have this
connection with like magnetic frequency is and like picking up
stuff in the air. So I'm kind of curious if
it's a matter of that that if there's some type
of like radioactivity coming from it, they are like receptors

(36:52):
that pick up like the magnetism like interact with it.
Possibly that's kind of what I'm kind of theorizing.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
No, I think that makes perfect sense, because I mean,
you know, animals can even pick up on like weather
and stuff. Like when I was a kid, whenever there'd
be a hurricane coming, like it would still be hours
off the coast, but like the animals always started freaking
out and like could tell that the storm was coming. So,
I mean, if animals can pick up on a hurricane,
you would think they damned shore could pick up on

(37:18):
radio activity, you know, the.

Speaker 3 (37:20):
Whole like seagulls on the breakwall thing. I'm sure you've
heard that living in North Carolina that you know, if
it looks like it's gonna storm and the seagulls are
still flying around, you're good. But even if it looks
like it's clear, you see them sitting on the breakwall,
get out of the water.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
Yep, yeah for sure. But anyway, like I said, I
thought this was a kind of interesting little tidbit. So
at one point in time, a local news crew visited
the Devil's Hoof prints area and they were kind of
attempting to debunk the legend. And what they did was
they filled the prints with like dirt and sticks and
other debris, and then they covered it with like this

(37:55):
kind of grid system that they made out of thread,
the idea being if anybody fucked with the footprints or
the hoof prints rather, it would break the thread, and
you know they'd know somebody had messed with it. Well, anyway,
the next morning, when they returned, they discovered that all
the prints were clear of debris, but this kind of
lattice work of thread was still intact, which I think

(38:18):
is kind of crazy. Also, scientists from Duke University have
studied the prints. They did not come to any definitive explanation,
but some possible explanations were that they were caused by erosion,
caused by groundwater, that they were small sinkholes, or that
they were caused by veins of salt. And remember that

(38:40):
veins of salt. I think that this one's kind of interesting,
and we're going to circle back around to it later.

Speaker 3 (38:44):
The first couple of them just sound like the usual,
Like it's more believable to just say something weird's happening
than to say, like, oh, yeah, like erosion happens overnight
and all of it is gone. Oh it must be
some really really small sinkholes that we can't see, but
it moves all this debris out of it, like those
just sound just this ridiculous.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
I'm surprised they didn't say it was from like the
beak of a sandhill crank.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
It was ball lightning it pulls it up out of it.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
There you go. So you already talked about this a
little bit, Shane, But the legend of the Devil's Hoof
prints shares a lot of similarities with another piece of
North Carolina folklore known as the Devil's Tramping Ground. And
we did a whole episode on this all the way
back in episode number forty three. So if you guys

(39:29):
want some more information about this, definitely go back and
listen to that episode. It's one of our early ones.
So it's kind of rough. Maybe we should revisit this
topic again at some point.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
But just out of curiosity before we get too far in.
Do you know how far these two locations are from
each other, So it's probably about three hours, I would say, Okay,
so it probably isn't anything like they're relatively close, and
it might be something with that particular area. That's what
I was trying to throw out.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
Yeah, so where I live now is kind of like
in the middle of the state, and this the Devil's
hoof Prints is on the east coast of the state,
so probably two hours from where I'm at now, and
the Devil's Tramping Ground is like an hour or so
kind of southwest, I believe, So it's probably about three

(40:15):
hours total between these two.

Speaker 3 (40:16):
Yeah, so there's probably no like similarities. Maybe some of
the like mineral build up and stuff like that, but
for the most part, there's not like a, oh, there's
something weird to this area, like it's radioactive. It's this
they're too far away from each other.

Speaker 2 (40:28):
I mean, this would be very different types of soil
and whatnot. I mean one is like on the coast,
so it's probably very sandy, and then this other one
is more in kind of the Piedmont area of the state,
So totally different geographical things going on there.

Speaker 3 (40:43):
Makes it that much more interesting though that both from
are in the same state, but don't actually carry any
similarities as far as yeah round Roland.

Speaker 2 (40:48):
So there's a lot of similarities, they're just not geographic.
So this Devil's Tramping Ground, it's located off of a
remote stretch of road in Chatham County, North Carolina, and
it's this mysterious forty foot circle of barren ground, and
according to legend and folklore, no grass or vegetation has

(41:09):
grown in the circle for like well over one hundred years,
and it's said that the devil himself haunts the area, quote,
walking in circles as he thinks up new means for
causing trouble for humanity. Yeah, there you go, there's a picture.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
I figured i'd bring up a pictures and it's already
had everything. It was actually popping up with this when
I was looking up the sprint, so I figured I
might as well just bring this up.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
These pictures are a lot more impressive and.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
A lot easier to see and actually understand what you're
trying to look at.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So anyway, this area is also
associated with a lot of strange phenomenon. It's, you know,
similar to the Devil's hoof prints, sticks and objects and
debris that's left inside the circle disappears when left overnight.
People have attempted to camp inside the circle, and they

(41:56):
report waking up to find themselves and their camping gear
outside of the circle. And also dogs and other animals
refused to go near this place as well. So a
whole lot of similarities to the Devil's hoof prints. Some
of the theories and legends and explanations for this include

(42:16):
the following. There's a Native American legend that says two
rival tribes fought a battle at the location, and during
this battle chief Croatan, who we talked about in our
Lost Colony of Roanoke episode.

Speaker 3 (42:29):
Do you know what number? That was?

Speaker 2 (42:30):
One O seven if you're not mistaken, so a more
recent one. But supposedly he was killed during this battle,
and he was buried at this spot, and nothing grows
there quote because the great Spirits are still in mourning
for their fallen leader, like you talked about a little
bit ago. It's also been suggested that this area could

(42:51):
have been a UFO landing spot and that an extraterrestrial
craft could have burned the grass and irradiated the soil.
And I'm sure you're gonna have something to add to
this section, so just pop in whenever you want to.
There's also a lot of similarities between the Devil's Tramping
Ground and like the fairy rings of European folklore, and

(43:13):
a fairy ring is quote a naturally occurring ring or
arc of mushrooms, a necrotic zone which means dead grass
or a ring of dark green grass, and according to folklore,
stepping inside one of these fairy rings was considered super
duper dangerous and could even lead to being cursed or abducted.

(43:34):
Done done, done, done, done done.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
And yeah, I've always heard you not step in ferry rings?
Is it not? Was it Kevin? Was it a fairy
ring involved in his weird mushroom story?

Speaker 2 (43:43):
Yeah, kind of sort of. I'm not sure if it
was specifically a ring, but yeah, same type of situation.

Speaker 3 (43:49):
I vaguely remember him mentioning, like walking through a fairy
ring and then that's when that weird stuff happened.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
Yeah, something very much of the same. Vein Uh. But
kind of what's interesting is these fairy rings are also
associated with witches and the devil, which I think is
kind of funny with like the devil's tramping ground, devil's
hoof prints, and also.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
The portals that we're kind of talking about or stargates
were mentioning on the last episode with Trade two.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
Yeah, and so this is kind of interesting. In his
nineteen sixty nine book Passport to Magonia, astronomer and ufologist
Jacques of Valet talks about a lot of similarities between
you know, the fairy lore of you know, ancient Europe
and the modern day UFO phenomenon, So a lot to unpack.

(44:35):
There is there anything you want to add to this section?

Speaker 3 (44:37):
I mean that's the other weird similarity. Man, we were
talking about it a little bit earlier with the whole
like you know, demon slash aliens thing, and then you
also have the I forgot to throw fairies into that one.
I mean, that's like the other one that kind of
has these weird similarities. Like yeah, they're not all like
fully distinct, but like the common motifs of like being
abducted or taken you go into this place and time

(44:58):
dilutes differently them trying to trick you into coming into
their area. And then also you're basically trapped there forever.
I mean, that's essentially the whole thing about like selling
your soul going to hell. You know, you get tricked
into a deal, which is exactly what the fairies do.
They're like, oh, come and eat our food, come and
hang out with us, come and party with us, and
now you're stuck here forever. Like and then the time,
like I said, the dilation thing that you kind of

(45:18):
get as far as like the extraterrestrial stuff, Like it's weird.
It's like, yeah, you can't say that all of them
exactly parallel each other, but they all kind of have
those things that all kind of are like similar back
and forth with each other. But like to put two
side by side, you have to put all three, and
then you kind of notice that they have these like
bounce back and forth. You know, they're not like completely parallel,
but this thing kind of matches with this thing, and
this thing kind of matches with this thing.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 (45:40):
I don't know if they're all coming from the same
thing or they are the same thing, but they definitely
have some similarities as far as like if they are
coming from another place, like maybe that's the commonly shared
thing here.

Speaker 2 (45:51):
Well, unlike we always talk about, you know, issues of language,
and like you're saying, when you factor in hundreds or
you know, close to thousands of years and a lot
of these stories, they're all remarkably similar. So yeah, there's
some sort of core thing or motif going on that
connects all these different things. It's just how much stock

(46:12):
do we want to put in the differences and how
much stock do we want to put in the similarities.
And you know, I'm very much of the persuasion and
a lot of these things, we're all talking about the
same thing. We're just calling something different. Tight, guys, we
gotta pay some bills and now back to the show.

Speaker 3 (46:38):
I mean, in an all fairness, dude, I said, I've
said this on a million shows. But if there wasn't
any validity to the weirdness with the fairy stuff, then
why would they completely reroute highways in Europe? Because they
know that it's a known faery area. Like, if there
wasn't something to it, then they would not be spending
an extra couple million dollars just to reroute a roads
and not touch an area like that just doesn't make

(46:58):
any sense to me, Like they know, I don't know,
Maybe it's one of those conspiracies that like the people
that are in charge know a little bit more about
it than they kind of lead off. Or I don't know, man,
there's something to it. I kind of feel like there's
a lot of similarities between like that and like the
National Parks thing, because it seems like it's the matter
of like we just did it a different way instead
of rerouting a highway, we go, this is a national

(47:18):
park park. We don't put anything through there.

Speaker 2 (47:20):
And that even gets back to you know, with fairies,
you can be abducted, you can go missing in faery land,
and then that gets back to missing four one one
in the park. So yeah, there's definitely something there.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
Man.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
Maybe it's the same thing is that they know that
people will go missing in these areas. So maybe it's
not even necessarily they put stock in the whole faery thing,
but they just know that, like anomalist events happen, and
we're not going to put anything else past that. We
just don't want to take any chances with it. Yeah,
for sure, which I mean an all fairness, dude, At
this point, I'm surprised they haven't closed down certain areas
of national parks just because of a high volume of

(47:53):
people disappearing in one particular spot.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
Well I'm sure, you know, if they could, they would,
But it's kind of one of those double edged swords.
Are you gonna get more flack and more attention for
closing this down than if you just let somebody disappear
every once in a while, you know, But.

Speaker 3 (48:09):
I almost feel like you wouldn't get any flack if
you just kind of like closed off the area and
didn't really say anything about it. You know, you just
don't try attention to it.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
They kind of do close like, you know, this area's
under maintenance, this bridge needs to be repaired, things like that.
So I mean maybe that's what they're doing in those
type of situations.

Speaker 3 (48:25):
Like Daniel Boone specifically. I don't know if you've looked
at like the Missing Person's map from there, but it's
like clustered heavy in like specific areas. Like that's like
one of those perfect instances. I'm surprised they don't just
kind of like fence off the area and just say
like unsafe to travel, you know, like sinkholes or something
like that. You know, well, it's definitely unsafe to travel.

(48:45):
You're gonna travel to another reality my friends.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
All right, So kind of a closing out the Devil's
Tramping Ground. Uh, there's been testing conducted by the North
Carolina Department of Agriculture in this area and they found
that the soil was completely sterile and it had unusually
high salt content. And if we remember back to when
we were talking about the Devil's hoofprint veins of salt

(49:10):
or one of the possible explanations for that. And I
think this whole salt motif also is kind of interesting
in light of like salt being associated with witchcraft and
magic and things like that.

Speaker 3 (49:21):
But keeping them away though that's the kind of weird
aspect of it. Maybe this is gonna sound weird, but
think about this theory. What if there's something to it
that these specific places that an anomalous event will kind
of happen and that'll just kind of sit uncomfortable but vacant.
Maybe it's a matter of like something closing that area.
Maybe that's why there's the salt, because you know, there's
the whole thing with salt that you know, you put

(49:42):
it across doors, you surround yourself the salt when you're
doing like a ritual and stuff. I wonder if there's
a matter of like something's been closed in these areas
and that's why the salt's there, and that's why nothing
ever grows back is because of the salt content and
because some kind of doorway has been permanently closed.

Speaker 2 (49:57):
No. I think that makes a lot of sense, especially
when we talk about how these areas are very much
associated with the devil and witches and witchcraft and things
like that. And when you bring in this salt aspect,
I think it is interesting to think, hey, maybe hundreds
thousands of years ago, you know, people still knew these
areas were weird, and weird things happened, and weird things

(50:19):
showed up, and they did some sort of ritual using
salt to close these doorways and keep the devil away. So,
I mean, I think that's a really really good point.

Speaker 3 (50:28):
And there might be even some more stock to that too,
that it might actually be something more paranormal. I mean,
typically salt animals love salt, Dude. You put salt out
for like a deer, they'll lick the hell out of
some salt. So why is it this particular salt the
animals don't want to go anywhere near is because maybe
there's something more to it, you know, because anywhere else
if you put a black eyed salt out in the wood, dude, woods, dude,

(50:48):
every animal's gonna be come up and start licking that thing.
Like it's weird that the salt areas they'd want to avoid.
You think they'd be all over it, you know.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
Yeah, it's almost like there's something else going.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
On there, right exactly, you know?

Speaker 2 (51:00):
All right, So this episode really isn't going to have
as much as like a conclusion section as a lot
of the stuff we talk about. But do you have
any final thoughts on Blackbeard or the Cursed Town of
Bath or the Devil's hoof prints slash the Devil's Tramping Ground.

Speaker 3 (51:17):
I'm gonna put it as this, Blackbeard in general really
really fun want to dive into. Obviously not something that
I ever thought we'd have around up covering on the show,
but I'm glad that you kind of brought some more
knowledge as far as black Beard with the whole like
you know, only running and doing two years, like that's
absolutely crazy to me. But continuing out further from that,
I personally, again probably not being in North Carolina, resident

(51:39):
was not aware of all these like paranormal and other
ties to Blackbeard. Like I've heard the Blackbeard story a
million times, but I was honestly not aware of any
of this aspect of it. So it was kind of
a weird one to hit because it's a pirate story,
but kind of weird that as we get to the end,
like there's all these connections with black Beard that links
into our other research. So like just just a weird comment.

(52:00):
We came into this one at least, I did, you know,
kind of thinking that, you know, this is gonna be
something a little bit different, but kind of weird. How
you know all signs point back to or all roads
point back to Rome, you know.

Speaker 2 (52:08):
Yeah for sure. And you know, growing up, I always
saw like these, you know, ghosts of Blackbeard books, like
in the local bookstores and things like that. And there
is a lot of like paranormal stuff associated with pirates
in this area. And you know, I never really thought
about it because I've just always been around it. But
maybe that's something we could dig into in a future

(52:29):
episode more like kind of paranormal ghost pirate stories. Because
I had a lot of fun putting this one together.

Speaker 3 (52:34):
I mean, they might even fall in with the whole like,
uh crap, Why am I always brain farting on that word?
The whole like thought projected being concept begin with the tulpa. Yeah, tulpa,
that's it. I'm always brain farting on that word. You
know a lot of people they love the pirate stories,
you know, Treasure Island like all that type of stuff.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
So I wonder if Jack Sparrow like really highlighted this
for you know, younger generations.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
So I wonder if a lot of these uh like
pirate because obviously like ghost ships and all that stuff
are pretty rampant when it comes to pirate lore. I
wonder if it's a matter of like the Tulpa effect,
you know that so many people have so much interest
and thought projected into pirates that these things appear not
because they're there necessarily, but because we're creating them into
our reality because so many people are putting thought on it.

(53:18):
Like if you're in this area where there's pirates, even
if you're not into pirates, you're gonna be like, oh, dude,
it'd be cool if I saw a ghost ship. So
every single person in that area is putting thought and
projection into that. And on top of that, you have
this area that's got all this weird stuff going on anyways,
So I don't know if it falls on a lay line.
I don't know if there's something special about the land,
But if there's something special about the land and then
you have all these people that are coming there and

(53:40):
thinking of pirates, it might just spark that up and
cause more of these pirate ghost tulpas because there may
be is something energetic about the land itself.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
Yeah, I mean, and a lot of these stories people
talk about like ghost lights or what are basically orbs,
And how many times have we talked about the phenomenon
presenting itself largely in the way that the experience or
expects it to present itself. So yeah, between this whole
tupa idea and the phenomenon wearing masks, you know, if
you're seeing this orb or this manifestation or whatever you

(54:11):
want to call it in this area and you're expecting
to see a pirate ghost ship, you're probably gonna see
a pirate ghost ship.

Speaker 3 (54:18):
As long as it gets thought and idea, that's all
they seem to care about. It's kind of like the
whole like demon concept that you see these things that
they will kind of go through the ages and have
different names and different things that people kind of like
pray to you through the ages and everything. So it's
not that there's necessarily power in the name. It's power
in the thought and projection of putting it on that thing.
So if that thing decides to take the role of

(54:39):
something else and people are still thinking of it in
a way, You're just adding more energy to it, you
know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And yeah, like you said, it's funny.
I you know, I thought this was gonna be a
little more history folklore based, but there's so many connections
to other things we've talked about on the show, and
this one got more bizarre than I thought it was
going to when I started doing the research. So kind
of my concluding thoughts Blackbeard, Like we said, great marketing.

(55:08):
This guy was only active for two years and he's
like the most popular person to ever do his line
of work.

Speaker 3 (55:15):
We've been running this podcast for almost twice as long
as Blackbeard's rain. That's crazy to think about.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
Yeah, it really is. So, I mean, thumbs up to
black Beard. He was very efficient. We need his marketing
team for real. When it comes to the town of Bath,
I think this is a really fun story. I think
it's interesting, you know, the curse and how the town
like never really developed. There's you know, nobody or nothing there.

(55:41):
Like I said, definitely want to get out there at
some point in time and visit and take some pictures
and maybe I can do kind of like a report
back if we end up doing that Devil's Hoof Prints
slash Devil's Tramping Ground. I think both of these stories
are really fun on their own, but I think it's
super cool to look at the similarities between the two.

(56:03):
Like I've talked about on the show, like the Devil's
Tramping Ground is my favorite piece of North Carolina folklore,
so I thought it was really cool to find this
other thing that was very similar.

Speaker 3 (56:12):
And also in the same state. Dude, I feel like
there might even be more if you really dig into it,
because if this one's on somebody's property and it's just
kind of like known but kind of forgotten about the
same time, I almost wonder if there's more spots like
this in North Carolina that are just private property that
like they're just completely forgotten.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
You know.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
I'm sure there's spots like this everywhere. It's just you
got to, you know, find the folk lore and then
find the spot. I think that's kind of the thing
about it. Like, you know, the Devil's Tramping Ground is
this big fucking circle in the middle of nowhere. People
can find that, but like this Devil's Hoof Prints is
pretty much only kept alive by the story at this point,
So like we talk about all the time. That's why

(56:50):
it's important, I think, to talk about these local pieces
of folk lore because it keeps the stories alive. And
you know, in another ten, fifteen, twenty years, you know,
less and less people are going to know about this
and it's going to be more overgrown in this area
and even harder to find. So I mean, like we
say all the time, I just think it's important to
talk about this sort of thing, give.

Speaker 3 (57:10):
Them a means to jump into a digital media, you know,
because I'm sure these are in books, but even books
partially get forgot about. Podcast will eventually God forgot about.
But at least at this current day and age, digital
media is the way to go. So we're giving it
a new life, and we're, in a weird way, we're
kind of giving it an eternal life because I feel
like the stuff are on the internet. As long as
humanity exists, it's going to exist somewhere on a database somewhere,
So you know, in a weird way, we kind of
are trying to preserve all these old stories. Yeah, all right, guys,

(57:35):
this is our last break, so hold on tight and
now back to the show.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
So last thing I'll throw in with the Devil's Tramping Ground,
So this past October, so about a month ago, they
actually did like a paranormal festival there, so I hope
this is something they do again in the future. I
wasn't able to attend. It was the same day as
my sister's wedding, so I couldn't really get away with
going to the Devil's Tramping Ground for that, but I

(58:11):
hope they do it next year. If they do, We're
definitely going to go to it, and I'll keep you
guys posted on that as well. But yeah, this was
a fun episode to put together. Like I said, it
combined a lot of history, a lot of folklore, and
then even some bizarre stuff at the end. So yeah,
that's all I've got for this. But I think, Shane,
you've got some pirate factoids to share, do you not?

Speaker 3 (58:30):
Yes, I have some fun facts. So considering you know
pirates or pirates, you would assume that their rules and
guidelines are probably pretty pirate, like, right, you would assume,
you would assume, But that is incorrect, believe it or not.
Pirates actually have a very strict, very righteous code, believe
it or not, and I wanted to bring it up here,
and sure some other pirate fun facts with you. So

(58:51):
first and foremost, if you're a pirate, crew members had
the right to vote unimportant decisions, doesn't matter who it is.
It was a complete democracy, so everybody on the ship
had an equal vote, which is a crazy concept and
you're really thinking about pirates. Fair shares loot was divided
amongst the crew members on rank, with captains and officers
receiving more shares than the average sailor. But for the
most part, everybody on the ship, no matter what received loot,

(59:13):
everybody received the same set amount, unless you were a
captain or a higher officer, which again makes sense, that's
kind of how the hierarchy works. But every pirate got paid,
which is fantastic and weird thing to think about. Compensation
for injury. A portion of the common stock was set
aside for crew members.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
Who would go stop you there, So pirates had a
better health care and monetary system than we currently have.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
Yes, sir, Yes, A portion of common stock was set
aside for crew members who lost a limb or injured
in service, so they took care of their own man
and disputes. Fights between crew members were forbidden on board.
Cores were to be settled on shore with a duel,
so there was no fighting allowed on the ship, which
that makes sense. I mean, that's the only way it's
gonna work, man. But the old Pirate movies you see

(59:56):
all the pirates fighting, they're doing all this not a
thing they never did that. Thieving, robbery or stealing from
another crew member was punishable and often led in marooning,
which I will come back around to. But thievery amongst
pirates not allowed. You're out of the ship. Gambling many
codes prohibited gambling with cards or money or dice on
the ship. So pirate typical pirate movie. Everybody's gambling, everybody's

(01:00:20):
doing whatever. No gambling on a pirate ship. That was
completely against the rules because they knew that crew members
would argue over it eventually. And weapons. Each pirate was
required to keep their own weapon clean and ready for action,
so it wasn't a matter of keeping a stockpile like
they showing the Pirate movies. Everybody had their particular weapon,
and you took care of your weapon, just like the
military curfew. Lights were to be extinguished by the specific

(01:00:43):
time of eight PM, so pirates had a bedtime of
eight pm. So a little fun fact for you there.
That's a weird one to me too.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
They probably also got up at like four in the morning.

Speaker 3 (01:00:53):
That's true, the second the light started shine, and they're
probably up. But women, some codes explicted deplicitly blanned women
and children from the ship and the penalty of death
for anyone who had brought them aboard. Obviously this kind
of changed as some of the ships were led by women,
but originally the whole thing was, you know, we don't
want women or children on the ship. This is strictly
for men. If you brought them on the ship, you

(01:01:14):
were off. We're not doing this here.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
How did that work with Blackbeard and his wife being
a child?

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
Weren't they on shore? I don't know if she did.
I did it mentioned that she actually came on the ship,
because I don't think she did. Well, no, that's why
he had to acquire that new ship. I guess you
are mainly pirate hooker desertion I pirate who deserted the
ship in battle face punishment by death or marooning. So
you left, you deserted the ship. Obviously, that's pretty straightforward,

(01:01:40):
like you're gonna get kicked off the ship and you're
gonna be maroons which brings me to my last point.
The typical idea of pirates is you walk the plank, right.
Everybody sees that. Everybody sees it in every movie. Everything
that was everything. Pirates did not do that. They used
to maroon, which was very very interesting. I don't know
if you've looked into what marooning is exactly, but basically
what it was was they would put you on an island,
a really really small island, really really small area they

(01:02:03):
could just drop you off at, and they leave you
with two things, a bottle of rum and a revolver
or some type of gun with one shot in it.
And basically your options were to drink yourself to death
and dye in the sun, or you could just end
it now and put a bullet in your head. And
that's what they used to do to pirates. There was
never kicking them off the thing, never doing none of that.
The typical punishment was always marooning, which was pick your poison,

(01:02:26):
end it now, drink yourself to death, have fun, buddy.
But at least they left you the bottle of rum, right.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
I was gonna say, I at least drink the bottle
of rum before I made my decision.

Speaker 3 (01:02:33):
That's what I would say, No matter what, I'm drinking
that bottle of rum first, and then we're gonna go
from there.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
But well, that was a pretty fun Shane, and very topical. Uh.
Like we said, I don't know how else we would
have fit that into the show. So I think it
was good that we got to talk about some pirate shit.
It was not Pilgrims or Native Americans or anything like
that to do with Thanksgiving. But like I said, close enough.
Do you have anything else to add for this one?

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
I'm just happy I finally got to use my pirate
fun facts I've been sitting on for a So here
we are, There you go, There we go.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
If anyone would like to get in touch with us
for any reason whatsoever, Shane tell them how they can
do that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:09):
First and foremost, you guys can email us at Bizarre
Encounters at outlook dot com. You guys can also get
up with us through social media. Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook
are the ones that we are the most active on.
You guys can also get ahold of us through the
submission form, which is available up at the top. Of
the link tree and goes directly to our email. And
the last, but not least, you guys could always call
or text the Bizarre Reality Media Hotline twenty four to

(01:03:29):
seven and that number is three one three, three six,
four one five five to one. And if you happen
to miss any of that, it is available down in
the show description.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
And you guys be able be sure excuse me to
show some love to our friends and sponsors of the show.
We got our buddies Rick and Hans with I Know
Squatch for all your squatchy gear needs. We got our
buddy Dave aka the Snarly Yao with Snarly Yao Natural Products.
And we got our buddy Joe with Cryptoteology for all
your wawable Thanksgiving quipitch.

Speaker 3 (01:03:59):
There you go, and if you also have some additional
free time, don't forget to check out our awesome friends
with affiliate links. We got to Mention devices over there
for all of your paranormal investigating awesome equipment. And we
also got Stickermeal if you'd like to pick up some stickers,
t shirts, any of that fun stuff. And we do
have a ten dollars credit available for you guys and
more additional credits available for you guys down in the

(01:04:20):
show description, and.

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
As always, all this shit we've mentioned is in the
link tree and the show description.

Speaker 3 (01:04:26):
I have been the one that they call Shane aka
the original Saint Squatch, and.

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
I have been the big bad boo Daddy orn Felix, And.

Speaker 3 (01:04:36):
As we usually do around here, we keep it bizarre.
So we're gonna tell you guys the same. Don't forget
do always, always keep it and stay bizarre, bizarre bizarre.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
You're smelly pirate hooker. Why don't you go back to
your home on whore Island?

Speaker 3 (01:05:04):
Or affect the pop us, make people

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Crime Junkie

The Brothers Ortiz

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#132 Blackbeard & The Cursed Town of Bath, NC

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Crime Junkie

The Brothers Ortiz

All Episodes

#132 Blackbeard & The Cursed Town of Bath, NC

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang