August 12, 2025 • 63 mins
The absurdity of life and death continues as Joey leads us further into our exploration of unusual deaths throughout history, including a series of shark attacks in New Jersey, the bizarre dancing plague of 1518, and the unfortunate demise of a man crushed by cheese.
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Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Unusual Deaths
00:01 The Shark Attacks of 1916
02:56 The First Victim: Charles Van Zandt
08:45 The Second Victim: Charles Brooder
11:50 The Creek Incident: Two Lives Lost
15:46 The Aftermath: Public Reaction and Shark Hunts
22:12 The Shark Conspiracy
24:26 The Unusual Death of Aeschylus
31:12 The Plane Crash and the Crocodile
37:32 The Dancing Plague of 1518
42:36 The Dance Plague of Strasbourg
49:09 Mass Hysteria and Historical Context
54:27 Unusual Deaths: A Series of Bizarre Tales
MUSIC CREDITS:
Outro Music: Lounge Jungle by Curt S D Macdonald
https://download.audiohero.com/track/41504269
Music Licensing Agreements: https://blackcat.report/music-licensing-agreement
TAGS:
#OddHistory #Comedy #UnusualDeaths #BizarreHistory #StrangeStories
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome back to the Thunderdome of Unusual Deaths.
Tina Turner yells remember whereyou are.
This is Thunderdome and death islistening.
And we'll take the first man that screams well by Turkey,
cheese, dancing or sharks. Death comes to all, and we're
going to wade through the mud that is another edition of most
(00:24):
unusual deaths throughout history.
I didn't see you there. It all started early this
morning. From hunting ghosts to Bigfoot
UFOs. Cryptids, true crime,
paranormal, and more I always wanted to see.
AUFO Oh, I was. I was researching for your
entertainment. That's Bigfoot's cat.
He basically wrote the book on Monarch.
We aren't really comedians. What if Buddha did cocaine?
(00:46):
The Addams family on meth. This is the Black Hat report.
See you on the other side. Good morning and afternoon,
evening and good night and welcome to the Black Cat Report.
We are on episode 136. I am Joey and with me is the
Charlotte St. Harlot, the Amboy Rd., Toad, the
(01:09):
Chicken Alley, Batty Gill, He. Is would it be incriminating if
I acknowledged it? I hope it's not incriminating.
Anybody who's been to Asheville and learned that obscure piece
of history will know all of thatis true.
All of it. We are, we are going through the
mud, Doobie the cat, wading right through it.
(01:31):
Yes, and. For everybody else, I'm just
going to drop it on him. Chicken Alley is a notorious
spot for sex workers. Or at least it used to be 10 to
15 years ago and and Nashville'snotorious history.
So basically, Joey just called me a slut.
Thank you, Joey. I did say the Charlotte St.
(01:52):
Harlot was your first one. Yeah, you called me a slut, a
sex worker, and I'm pretty sure you said nice man somewhere in
there, but I appreciate it. I did say Toad, take that which
you will. Oh my gosh, I will wear this
(02:13):
title proudly, Sir. You also try to come up with
names of streets in Asheville and then things that are part of
it. Well, today we are going to
continue our journey into Unusual Deaths in History Part
2. We'll be getting back to the
conclusion of the Sewin Murders and Palmyra Atoll next week.
(02:36):
So let's get back into our journey throughout Unusual
Deaths of history because I alsofound so many good ones that I
wanted to do the second episode of this.
So let's jump right into this, since it's summer, kind of the
end of summer, and I want to tryto scare you out of the water.
(02:56):
Our first story of unusual deathtakes place in early to mid-july
of 1916. So at this time it happens in
the most cultural of all places,the New Jersey shoreline.
It was a big situation. What happened to the old Jersey
Shoreline? We are talking about a mass
(03:18):
shark attack so on July 1st at Beach Haven which Why do these
places always have to have such a nice name?
Oh nice and Beach Haven a bunch of sharks attack people which is
located on Long Beach Island. A man named Charles Van Zandt
(03:41):
was vacationing at a hotel with his family.
Shortly after he decided to go for a pre dinner swim, which is
important because as we know from our young days, you can't
swim up to an hour after you eat.
Make sure you do not swim an hour after you eat.
Shortly after entering the waterVan Zandt started shouting and
people thought he was calling for his dog but a lifeguard,
(04:04):
usually the only one realizing stuff going on in this
situation, realized what was going on and ended up pulling
Van Zandt out of the water. As as the lifeguard was dragging
him out of the water, the shark was following him.
So the shark bit him on the leftthigh and it stripped his leg of
flesh and sadly he bled to deathat the manager's desk.
(04:27):
Nowadays this this is like easily saveable.
A lot of times most people don'tdie because of shark attacks and
I think This is why this is suchan unusual thing.
I will also say the reason why these shark attacks are crazy is
because a lot of them happened in the span of like 5 days and
so everyone was talking about itbut before like to make it even
(04:49):
crazier is before this there wasnot really any known shark
attacks like a lot there. Was because the sharks killed
the person that was keeping track of them.
Yes, yes, they went after the. This is note taker.
This is the exact same reason, the exact same shit of why I've
been deathly afraid of manatees for going on 15 years now, ever
(05:14):
since. And it had nothing to do with me
being on LSD, somebody explaining swimming with
manatees with me and like, you know, just all the visuals that
came with it. But I realized that these slow
lumbering elephants of death arejust, they're basically, they're
sloth ninjas of the rivers in myopinion.
(05:36):
And yeah, and I've looked it up.I've tried so hard to find any
recorded deaths of people killedby manatees and there's nothing
now there's like 40 people a year that get killed by vending
machines. All right.
There is no way in hell people aren't getting massacred on a
daily basis by manatees. I'm just saying why did they get
(05:57):
so close to the boats that they get chopped up?
I think it was self-defense on the boat drivers.
Might be, might be a big thing, but I'm pretty sure they are.
They are hunting down and killing all the statisticians.
And so, yeah. You know what?
Go. I love every other animal
manatees. Stand.
Finally. I'm taking a stand against you.
(06:18):
So this is it. Well, I'm taking the I'm taking
the gloves off. You are gonna sit here and bad
mouth the cows of the sea. The sweetest animals that never
attack a human being. Sounds like they have a good PR
team. I don't know man.
The ones that are the only ones that can sell T-shirts.
(06:41):
Manatee Oh my gosh man, only ones step on up and get.
Your Mana T-shirts. The only one that can sell
T-shirts to people and not kill a human being.
Because unlike Shamu and all thekiller whales, orcas that murder
people that sell a trillion T-shirts, it's true.
(07:02):
Yeah, well, they're just they'rejust putting on that that good
that that good guy persona. And Joey, I think that this is a
perfect time to segue into today's episode.
Sponsor Manatees T-shirts located in Tampa, FL 336 fake
Highland Drive. If y'all are in the mood to get
(07:22):
killed by a manatee, go there ordon't we don't care.
They already. Paid us?
Yeah, you already got your T-shirts.
So T-shirts. Why, why, Why is the T-shirt my
son sent me from his trip covered in blood?
So yeah, there's. There's also a funeral
invitation. They said they're still looking
for the killer. No, I thought he would be safe
(07:45):
as a statistician and. It's just a manatee doing this
with a dead body. Fucking cleaver.
Yeah. With the cleaver in his hand.
Yeah. I mean, that makes sense.
That tracks. And by the way, when you started
saying manatee, I thought you meant, like, a, a, a Stingray
(08:06):
and I so I was just like, oh, obviously they've killed people.
They killed Steve Irwin, one of the most famous animal people in
the world. The only St. of our generation.
Truth. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, well, the next shark attack happened on July 6th in
Spring Lake, which is not too far down the coast from where
(08:27):
the first one happened. But there in Spring Lake, there
were a lot of reports coming in of large sharks swimming off the
coast from sea captains. So a bunch of people were
sitting on the a bunch of sea captains were, you know,
maneuvering their boats in the air, being just like there's a
bunch of sharks over there. And so people are just like,
it's fine, we're just going to swim anyways.
(08:51):
They're harmless. They're harmless manatees.
Did you hear what they've been doing down in Florida?
Eating. Legs that's I did want to say
real quick, and this can get edited into whatever random area
later, but the reason everybody thinks that all the scars and
mantes bodies are from boat propellers, right, They're
(09:14):
actually from knife fights. So it's another way to look at
it. And I do want to also point out
what Laura said. I bet they blame the sharks.
I think we've got a honestly ABCRE ecology conspiracy
happening here. I'm for it.
The manatees are the ones blaming the sharks, are they?
Yes, that makes. Sense we need to look into who
(09:37):
funded JAWS. That's what I'm saying.
I will get into that in a few minutes.
The end of this story. Manatee International.
OK. Yeah, yeah.
Well, a man named Charles Brooder was attacked by a shark
that bit his abdomen and then severed his legs, right.
So basically severed this guy almost in pretty much in half.
(09:57):
And again, a lifeguard figured out what was going on and got
him and pulled him out of the water.
Dear God, he saw it in half. Yeah.
Yeah. Dammit, Johnson, we knew you
were sorry. You were smart when we hired
you, but we didn't know you werea fucking genius.
Thank you. Thank you.
You're promoted to lifeguard, leader of the lifeguards.
(10:19):
You're promoted to Zac Efron. You're promoted to Zac Efron.
Well, and he bled to death on the beach.
And if you don't know the reference, he was in the new
Baywatch movie, The remake of Baywatch.
For some reason, I don't think our general listener demographic
(10:40):
saw that. Joey and I, if they come after
us, I'll defend you so. Thank you, I guess I could take
it in some more. Back in the day, tunes.
Was Patrick Swayze in the original Baywatch, no?
No, no, no. That was a.
Oh. My God I have he was in the
(11:02):
SpongeBob movie. He was in God damn it why am I?
I have his face up hops. Dustin Hoffman, Dustin.
Hoffman, Dustin. Hoffman fucking Oh my God,
somebody's going to pop in in the chat here in a.
Moment somebody's got it, we will figure it out.
Later I I literally can see him.David Hasselhoff.
(11:25):
David Hasselhoff. Well yes, he got promoted to
David Hasselhoff. There was our long winded joke
that now we have to love. He was David Hasselhoff's
grandfather. Yes #2 deaths.
Out of that, then in one day in Matawan Creek near the town of
Keyport, which is also again along the strip of the islands
(11:48):
or the little beaches along New Jersey.
On July 12th, a group of local boys noticed a dorsal fin in the
water, which is normal and whilethey were swinging with their
dog and as they were trying to climb out of the Creek.
So this one is different. It's it's kind of a Creek.
It's not actually in the open ocean.
The shark pulled one of the boysunderwater and was eventually.
(12:12):
The boy was eventually recoveredupstream when the other boys
went to run to get help. An older man came to investigate
and when he dove into the Creek he was also bitten by the shark
and then he bled to. Damn.
So that shark got two people in like 1 little part of the day.
Jesus man, See this is what happened before we all started
(12:34):
polluting more. The sharks didn't have anything
to eat. They were.
This is just an anti environmentepisode.
They didn't have anything to be afraid of.
They didn't have. They couldn't be afraid.
Of us heavily sarcastic, everyone was.
They weren't afraid of us yet because we didn't know what
plastic was. The last victim of shark
attacks, which is on the same day, July 12th, was a man named
(12:59):
Joseph Dunn. Nearly 30 minutes and a half
mile from the other attacks thatday, feasibly the same shark.
The shark bit Dunn's left leg, stripping off the flesh.
He was the last leg. Fetish.
But luckily he was the only one to survive.
(13:21):
He barely survived. He didn't bleed to death, so he
was the last victim of being bitten by the shark.
OK. I do want to say these deaths
nowadays, like I said earlier, are very rare, but we also don't
see a lot of victims bitten in the same area.
There hasn't been one of these since then.
Usually they're like one bite. You know, we get one bite and
(13:44):
nobody really dies because most of the time they just kind of
get out, you know, get out and they're like have a chunk of
their leg missing. It's mostly surfers, and we know
why. It's because they're surfers.
They're like surfboard is kind of shaped like a seal.
So a lot of times it's surfboards or like a person that
shark bites because it's trying to feel that's how it feels what
it's looking for. So what is kind of funny about
(14:08):
this is it's all along the same line.
And what's unusual is that they thought, and eventually they
figured that it actually is probably the same shark that bit
all of these people. And so when people were asked,
they said they didn't know what kind of shark it was because it
bit. And they were kind of, you know,
most of them died. Folks from Jersey aren't fucking
(14:30):
snitches. No, exactly.
Yeah, you're right. They're not going to snitch on
that shark, and neither were theother sharks in the area, No.
No, nobody's snitching. What are you, a game warden?
You said about a force cop That here?
Yeah. Well, the thought though, that
(14:51):
it was either a bull shark or a great white shark.
And one of the reasons they theydon't think, well, I'll get into
this, but they don't think it was a great white shark is
because one of them was in the river.
It was like right up the stream a little bit.
And great white sharks can't getupstream, but bull sharks can
and have been known to go into, into river like little areas
(15:14):
where obviously it's not all theway up the river.
Yeah, it's not all the way up the river, but it was close
enough to be like great white probably wouldn't be in this
area. But this mass shark attack in
New Jersey became the influence for Peter Benchley's book Jaws
and the subsequent movie Jaws, because of it all happened at
the time in like the 60s and 70's.
(15:35):
The idea was that it was a greatwhite shark.
So when the when the book was written, they thought it was a
great white shark. So they were like, oh, obviously
this is a town and in obviously in the movie it's New Jersey,
right? Yeah.
Yeah. So it makes sense.
I also, I need, I need to point something out that kind of goes
with your data earlier, your statistics, wondering where you
(15:59):
got those. But as the number of shark
attacks have gone down, so too has the manatee population
throwing it out, just putting itout there.
I'm just calling it like I see it.
A complete, widely UN unresearched piece of data that
(16:19):
Gil threw out there. I don't know, buy your tease
from Manatee. We get money every time we say
it, so we got to say it a few times during the episode.
Well. We are we are manatee shells at
this point. We are, I know.
And Gil, even though Gil was trying to throw them under the
(16:40):
bus earlier for all the deaths, that's part of it.
We got they. Paid me a lot of money.
Like I had to take it, that's true.
I had to take it, that's true. I almost had enough for like a
cheeseburger at that point. Like I can't say no to that.
Yeah, that's true. You know, they do say though,
and is is basically, you know, if you have very strong feelings
on both sides of the the argument, you know, it'll get
(17:00):
more traction. You know, if you have one that
hates it and one that's for it, you know, argues together
probably blow up a little bit more on the Internet.
That's what they say. Well, due to the amount of shark
attacks in such a small time period, it got all the way to
the federal government. So I think that's what makes
this most interesting is also the reaction to the shark
(17:22):
attacks. During the following days and
weeks after the attacks, people started patrolling the beach and
motor boats with weapons and huge Nets, trying to catch any
shark they could and kill it. Fuck yeah America, this is the
fucking way we respond to shit. They were shooting wildly into
the waters without finding out if it was a shark or not.
(17:45):
So it was just like, I mean. I don't know, yeah.
Yeah, we're a small child. They didn't know, so they just
be like. And it's people from New Jersey,
too. One of them sharks shot this
kid. God damn we were just over here.
I know. How'd we miss it?
Yeah, well, it didn't stop therebecause residents of the place
(18:08):
where the second bite happened, they started patrolling the
waters with Nets and started using dynamite to blow up
anything resembling a shark. So they're just tossing dynamite
into the water. Oh my God.
This is I could just hear. I'm proud to be an American
blasting the whole time. Yeah, Lee Greenwood blasting.
(18:35):
People are just like going out there selling hot dogs.
They're they're selling a Shark Hunter T-shirts.
There's already somebody who's made shirts.
They're just like, they're like,and my mom called me crazy when
I spent my inheritance on this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Now who'll show her? Yep, bite the sharks, be a
manatee. Well.
(18:59):
It was actually just manatees out there with fake mustaches on
being like. They're also selling TNT, the
The Manatees, The Most DangerousGame, and.
This episode is not to you. This episode's also brought to
you by Manatee and T Your place for?
(19:25):
Oh, it's pretty good. Located on Located in Tampa, FL
next to Manatees. T-shirt.
Wow. As they were going through the
area and blowing up the shoreline, obviously they the
government also had a shark bounty in the area.
(19:47):
For anyone who killed a shark, there was $100 reward.
So in 2024 dollars that was about $2900 per shark.
So that's a fair bit. What's funny is that it was
reported. That there were absolutely no
sharks killed or captured in thearea at all.
(20:12):
There no one claimed the reward for killing any sharks in the
area, so no one got the bounty. They were just tossing dynamite
and TNT into the into the water,blowing shit up for no reason.
It's because there were no sharks.
It was manatees the whole fucking time I've been trying to
tell you. Yeah, yeah, it was manatees.
(20:36):
Well, after that, after they hadbasically employed a bunch of a,
what would we call them, like a militia of shark hunters.
Yeah, Manatee militia of shark hunters, the New Jersey House of
Representatives started a shark hunt, deploying the Coast Guard.
So they started putting the Coast Guard out on this.
(20:59):
The Coast Guard, however, was matched better at killing
sharks. I.
Was going to say the Coast Guardjust called back and be like you
expect us to outperform a bunch of people from Jersey Shore?
Wait, what day is it? Is that April first?
I don't the governor wants to stand there but just cracking up
laughing. Yeah, yeah, damn it.
(21:20):
So they were better though somehow.
The Coast Guard actually killed hundreds of sharks, I imagine.
Christ, Yeah, I imagine the Coast Guard was able to go
France or Yeah, I imagine the Coast Guard was able to go a bit
farther out. And so I imagine the people, the
the New Jersey representatives from the shark hunt were
(21:40):
probably getting on the shoreline where there probably
wasn't that many sharks in the moment, or in the river where
there was no sharks at all. And then they were blowing up
the river And the Coast Guard was like, well, why don't we
just go a little farther out? Or most likely there are sharks
in enough room. And so they killed hundreds of
sharks. It eventually was called the
(22:01):
largest scale animal hunt in history.
Holy fuck is this? This is bigger than the Emu
wars. Yes, because of how many were
killed. Well, to be fair, nothing really
came out of it besides killing hundreds of sharks, which is
really. Two inconspicuous businesses
(22:22):
that opened in Tampa, FL. Manatee and manatee and tea.
It was also likely just one shark that got a taste for flesh
and trolled the shoreline and found a few people to snack on.
I doubt that shark was even killed.
I doubt they ever found the realshark that did it.
And I imagine just by the way everything happened, it was one
(22:44):
shark that just started eating people.
You know, yeah, I got nothing. You know how I feel about it.
I think the sharks, the sharks are completely innocent.
Yeah, we know who the real culprits are.
The real culprits? Murder shark Doo Doo Doo Doo
(23:04):
murder shark. Doo Doo Doo.
Murder Shark. Baby's Aww.
Poor man. And you know what?
The sharks were the unintended victims of this.
The manatees were the true haters.
I'm. Just saying follow the money,
(23:26):
follow the money. The two the two businesses that
opened up right after this. You know, it's also odd I looked
into their records. The only day they didn't go into
work in 2001 was on 9/11 at their office in downtown
Manhattan. That's scary now.
(23:51):
We're going to look into this there.
That's true. My weather manatees.
We're gonna get assassinated forthis.
Oh, I know. They're already on their way.
They're already on their way. Man, TTTTT, shut up.
Well, yeah, you should. Have seen that.
Story for the end cuz that's just stuck in my fucking.
(24:12):
Good. You'll just sing it through the
rest of the episode. Just hum it through the rest of
the episode. Well, the next unusual death is
truly, maybe I'll say out of this world, but kind of in this
world, maybe pulled out of the air.
It involved an ancient Athenian and father of the modern
tragedy, A Scylus, a Silas. So I can never really say this
(24:36):
right. AI think it's a Silas.
Yeah, a Silas was born in eithera Scylus.
A Scylus. I don't know how to say Athenian
names. I don't think you know they make
much. It's, it's whatever A Silas was
born in either 525 or 524 BC. Always kind up in the air.
(24:58):
We don't really always know whenpeople were born before, you
know, a long time ago, because it's not always made clear.
He was born in a small town northwest of Athens, not Ohio,
but in near Greece. He was a playwright as well as a
soldier and a commander. Thanks for the clarification
(25:19):
Joey. You're welcome.
I don't know why we would have records of a Greek person born
in the non existent state of Ohio. 5/24, 5:20. 4 You never
know, but well in 490 BC he fought and helped defeat the
(25:40):
army of Darius, the first of Persia at the Battle of
Marathon, which obviously is howwe got the modern day so much of
the marathon battle. Yeah yeah on 480 BC he was sent
into battle again this time withXerxes, the first invasion at
the Battle of Salamis. This is all to say that he was a
(26:00):
pretty prolific warrior. His military prowess wasn't the
only expertise he had. He shone so brightly as a
popular playwright and as I saidearlier, he created the idea of
the modern tragedy a. Silas kept winning the Dionysian
competitions for playwrights andhe had in between 70 to 90
(26:23):
plays, a tribute to him throughout his life, which is a
lot of plays. That's a lot of plays.
To be fair, though, plays were kind of a new concept back then
and it was mostly just like a guy walking up on the stage and
being like, I am a chicken, can I vote?
(26:46):
And then they just walk. Brilliant, brilliant.
Everybody from Sparta's in the crowd are just like, fucking
philosophers over here fucking are weird.
Kill him, kill him, fight him. Kick him in the pit kick.
Him in the pit, yeah, Yeah. But out of those 70 to 90 plays,
only 7 actually remain intact, like 7 full plays that we still
(27:11):
have. The plays are the Persians 7
against Thebes, the Suppliants and the trilogy known as the
Aristea, which is basically the three tragedies of Agamemnon.
The three tragedies. Of Mark Scorsese titles.
Yeah, right. The Purge.
(27:32):
The three tragedies are Agamemnon.
I mean, it's a lot of names. I'm sorry for mispronouncing
them. There's like crazy names in here
that I don't know how to pronounce but.
No, you're doing great. The artistea which is basically
3 tragedies, the Agamemdon, the libation bearers and the
(27:54):
amenities. The libation bearers are just
people who bring in your drinks.And Agamemdon 2 Electric,
Agamemdon Louvre had something Iforgot.
It's OK, and Prometheus bound was the last one, the last of
the seven that was like saved. That's a dope title.
(28:15):
That's a really fucking dope title.
Prometheus Bound. Well, besides all his cool
backgrounds, he actually had a unusual death, and we'd call it
the most unlucky death you couldprobably ever have.
A Silas when he was about 67 wasvisiting the city of Gala in
(28:38):
about 456 BC and he was sleepingoutside because his head was
bald. An eagle mistook his head for a
rock and dropped a turtle on hishead trying to crack open the
turtle shell so he could eat them.
The turtle shell killed him instantly and he he died because
(29:03):
an eagle dropped a like really high up dropped a turtle on his
bald head. Why did?
Why didn't you open with this? I don't know.
That's a good, good one. Well, what's funny is it's not
really. It's pretty funny.
It's funny. It is funny.
(29:24):
I mean it's really funny, but there is a tiny Side Story about
why he was sleeping. About the Turtles adventure.
No, no. That would be great if they had
the tourist adventure. But why?
He was sleeping outside, right? So normally everyone, you know,
obviously at this time they're already asleep.
He was sleeping inside, but he was told by like a fortune
(29:46):
teller of some sort that he was going to be killed by something.
A life if you sleep outside thisevening.
He was going to be killed by something falling off and
hitting him in the head. And he just, he thought that,
like, because if he slept outside, he would have way less
of a chance of something fallingoff like a shelf or falling off
(30:08):
the roof and hitting him in the head.
So he's like, well, let's go Where?
Like, not much can follow me. I mean, besides rain, besides
hail, besides ash, besides, you know, lots of stuff besides a
full grown turtle. Yes.
Yeah. And he died, and that is the end
of his. Story the second the second he
(30:31):
thank you so much, Mystic. I really, I really appreciate
this. You know, I'm, you know I'm a
huge fan. I'll be I'll be putting your
I'll be putting your your tip over in this jar.
Thank you. Thank you again so much for your
time. Walks out the door, the door
slowly, Mystic turns around ripsoff the veil.
It's a fucking manatee holding the deck of Killed Turtles
(30:54):
T-shirts ready to start sailing.Dude, I'm telling you they know
how to market. They just, they're, they're kind
of like arms dealers for like the genocide of other animals.
That's, I think that's the best way to really picture manatees.
That's true. I guess there's a lot of animals
(31:14):
in these desks for these ones because the next one involves an
animal too. What do you think?
So, Gracias, what do you think happened to them?
I don't kill the turtles. Kill the turtles.
Got your shoes over here, Sir? Sir.
Do you know what happened to him?
What? The guy who got killed by a
turtle? How do you know?
How do you have these shirts so fast?
(31:34):
You look good in Excel. Has anybody?
Yeah, you'd look good in an Excel.
This is turtle green too, so this is going to be perfect on
you. This is nice.
It's said to help repel eagles as well.
I like eagles, but I'd like to repel them.
Well, he died. Erica was assassinating people
(31:57):
in other countries before it even existed.
Dude, that's the CIA for you. They were implanting.
They went back in time, implanted Eagle's brains on how
to murder people. Time travelling eagle drones.
That sounds like a Danger 5 plotline if I've ever heard one.
Actually it does. Yeah.
(32:17):
We need to bring that show back.They do.
Well. Our next story is another short
one, but also has another animalin it.
So this is the first three are going to be some animal ones,
which is, you know, they are pretty interesting.
It's one of the weirdest storiesI think I've heard, actually,
with all these ones we've done well on August 25th.
(32:38):
It's actually a recent one, August 25th of 2010, a Let L410
turbolet passenger plane flown by Fillair took off from the
Badondu Airport in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo. And you remember, as I told you
recently, I was looking up all the African countries.
This is also one of the reasons why this passenger plane was
(33:00):
able to hold about 19 passengersand it was sold out.
So there was 21 people on board of this, you know, 19
passengers, 2 pilots. As it was on its final approach
to the airport to land, it started losing its stability to
the point that it started rapidly falling and just crashed
(33:21):
just short of a runway directly into a house, directly into a
house. So, Gil, I can imagine you had
lots of fears when you lived underneath the airport in Ohio.
No, the gas has kept me pretty pretty calm.
Pretty high, yeah. Yeah, the gas is in the
pollution. Yeah, something something about
(33:42):
all that lead in the atmosphere trickly above where I was
raised. Just glad they proved there were
no long term side effects back when I was a kid.
Due to this plane crash, luckilythe house was empty.
The house that the plane crashedinto was empty.
Luckily nobody was in the house.No one died OK after the plane
(34:02):
crash, 20 out of the 21 people died in the crash.
And just like the recent plane crash in India, where there was
exactly one single survivor. Seat. 11 E remember.
Yeah. Everyone made the joke about
like, now I'm sitting in 11 E because it seems like that's the
(34:23):
only place that people survive. Actually, the middle of the
plane is always the place where you survive.
Except for these specific cases.Well.
I mean when manatees are involved.
The plane crash in the Andes, the people in the middle of it
survived. Everybody in the front died.
Everybody in the back flew out the back.
(34:43):
So it was kind of like a very interesting.
Yeah. Anyways, yeah, if you're in
first class, you're going to be first dead.
So that's the well, I like them.The crash was crazy because, as
I said, it just fell short of the runway.
But when the one person who survived was questioned after he
(35:05):
like kind of recovered, kind of got back his senses, they
questioned him like, do you knowwhy this happened?
You guys were right really closeto the runway.
He said that somebody smuggled acrocodile aboard and it got
loose. As the crocodile made its way up
(35:27):
the aisle to the front of the plane, everyone started running
towards the cockpit, which caused the loss of balance in
the plane because they are very balanced to have people in all
parts of it. It crashed, it pulled the nose
down as they were getting there and crashed into the ground.
(35:47):
It's really terrible, but it takes the snakes on the plane
movie, which I thought should have been Crocodiles on a Plane
movie. I'm.
Going to have to go rewatch thatand be like this.
This movie is based on a series of actual offense or whatever.
No, I I too, like many, many Americans, feel that the the TSA
(36:14):
is a little bit overboard with their security and safety checks
and what you can and can't bringon a plane.
I think this is the one time where I'm gonna I'm gonna have
to side with them. You should not bring your
emotional support large reptile onto a plane with you.
(36:34):
It's really interesting that there was no crocodile carcass
found, but I'm pulling up some images here.
I don't know if I'll be able to show them.
Did you get a look at the corner?
It's a man, It's really. It's a manatee standing there in
a robe with like a very cheap crocodile costume hanging out of
(36:55):
a dumpster next. It was the manatees all.
Along I fucking knew that they keep going so much sense well.
Let's get into our first one that doesn't have to do with
animals, and our next two don't have to do with animals.
So oh wait, no, well, it's the only one today that doesn't have
(37:17):
to do with animals. So we almost got through it.
Well, this one is an unusual death that you might have
actually heard of and it be sureto get you out of your seat.
The outbreak of this started in July of 1518 in Strasburg, which
was at the time part of the HolyRoman Empire and became part of
(37:38):
France. Eventually it changed the hands
a few times during wars and eventually reverted back to
France after World War One and then to Germany obviously during
World War 2 and then back to France after World War 2.
This story actually, while it has nothing to do with animals,
is entirely based off of nation state lines that this is the
(38:00):
murder that we're talking about.Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah.
Well, in July. 15th is Constantinople, Yeah, Sorry,
yeah. A woman named Frau Troffe and
her daughter Frau Line Emma Gotts, started dancing in what
would be called an uncontrollable and fervent
(38:21):
manner. So just picture someone, and I
know you probably don't know what I'm saying, and this is
completely tripping their mind off at Coachella just just
flailing their bodies fervently,continuously.
They are having the time. If you need to see an example of
(38:42):
what these folks were dancing like, go look up some some crowd
footage from Grateful Dead show.It's pretty much exactly the
same, but. It is exactly the same.
They're having the time of theirlife, but it is actually kind of
scary, the kind of tripping thatif you stop dancing, you feel
like you'll die. Well, they were dancing on a
(39:03):
small. Staying alive was.
About it was right. Have been wondering God Saturday
night fever staying. Dude these songs make so much
more sense now. They had dance hysteria.
They had dance hysteria. Yep, fucking shit.
They were dancing on the small cobbled St.
(39:24):
Outside of their homes. So at the beginning there was no
music playing while they were dancing, just completely.
Out of their. Mind.
Yeah, the tune of life. Well, as people were passing by
and noticing those two continuously dancing, jerking,
jiving, they started to mimic her.
(39:46):
Yep. Yeah, they started to mimic her.
Is that? Is that old Misses Wilson
twerking on a crumpet just the crumpet?
Kind of jealous I am too. Do you think anyone care if we
joined? We'll bring some alcohol.
OK, let's go. Then it became a fucking party.
(40:06):
It did, and they didn't stop fora week.
And people stopped. Joining in, more than 30 people
started dancing alongside her and her daughter.
Yep, Yep, it's literally Saturday Night Fever.
This started in early to mid-july and it lasted all the
way until mid August because, well, they probably weren't
(40:30):
drinking enough water or eating at all because they were burning
calories like this. I mean if you ever dance you get
tired after like 15. Minutes these we're in a bunch
of time travellers from the disco era that just all like
just boogieed so fucking hard that they went back in time
while they were hopped up on coke.
(40:51):
They got yeah, they coke themselves up.
That's the true secret to time. Travel.
Literally time travel. Yeah, yeah.
Makes sense? They pooled with sweat drenched
in it, basically ringing all thewater out of their bodies, and
due to their probably terrible clothes and shoes at the time,
(41:11):
blood started discovering in their shoes and all over the
ground. So just imagine how how
horrifying this and and funny insome ways, but horrifying this
is. If you just watch somebody
continuously dancing, you're like, Oh yeah, for the first
couple days you're like, damn, they're having fun.
(41:33):
And then like, they're smiling, but they're almost like not
smiling. The victims were starting to cry
and scream for help while they were dancing because of weeks
they couldn't get and they couldn't eat enough food and
they couldn't stop. The lucky ones were dying of
(41:53):
heart attacks. The lucky ones were dying of
heart attacks. The other ones.
Exactly like the disco era, Joeythinks.
True. Yeah.
No, it's true. Back when Coke was considered
fun, before they knew that caused problems.
The lucky ones were dying early from heart attacks while
everybody was in polyester suitsand very uncomfortable platform
(42:16):
shoes. Their feet were bleeding, they
were sweating. And who sold those suits
anyways? Manatees, we're back right
around well, during August, the town actually started
constructing a stage and broughtin musicians and professional
dancers as these people that couldn't stop dancing were
(42:41):
dying. They were like, pull, there's
blood on the ground, blood in their shoes, blood on the
ground. And the government was like, you
know what, let's take advantage of this fever and let's make
everybody dance and they're like, they're going to dance.
At least we'll get rid of some of them, you know, in a so
government thing to just let people dance to their death with
(43:02):
not caring. Jesus Christ.
So they sent in the New Jersey National Guard.
Yes, so they sent in the New Jersey National Guard to take
care of them once it hit its. Peak.
That is how Guido's came to be. It's the origin story, Mama.
(43:28):
I mean it was kind of near Italyat the time.
That's true. Once it hit its peak, there were
15 people dying per day dancing themselves to death, which is a
shit ton of. People in this town.
It's Strasburg. It was a pretty big town in the
Holy Roman Empire. Yeah, but like back in the day,
like I pictured, like that's a shit ton of people.
(43:50):
And yeah, yeah. There's a good amount of people.
I mean, I imagine there's thousands, honestly, I imagine
there's thousands in this town. Well, there are no exact
concrete, like numbers of death tolls.
So I did a little wild stab in the dark of like how many people
I think died during this time. Because I would say if you die
(44:12):
within three to five days without water, right?
So you're dying, you can only gowith three to five days.
I imagine the first few days they had.
So. It had some water for I'd say if
you started on July 11th, you give it four days.
That's the 15th. It would have taken about, in my
opinion, around 800 lives if it was about the correct count at
(44:35):
15 per day. So 800 people in my estimate
died of dancing to death. Dance, dance.
Fever. Dance, Dance fever.
And now you did. Well, during the time there was
no known cure for. I call it dancitis or maybe
(44:55):
flossitis. The physicians said they would
have to dance themselves free ofit.
So they basically said these people just have to dance
themselves to death because theydidn't know there was an.
Excuse me, Doctor. Doctor Dog and Doctor Funk.
What do you think we should do? Well, they're just going to have
to dance themselves through it. Yeah, yeah.
(45:18):
Well, they didn't. They didn't know what was going
on and it was a bad idea. Obviously they, I mean, who
knows? So just like they interrupt.
Somebody while they're dancing, what else could they do?
Well, this, they can do this. So obviously, like governments
(45:39):
do, because people started dyingdoing this, they banned public
dancing. The government is Rosenberg
banned public dancing. And when that didn't stop it, I
mean, obviously what are they going to do?
Those people are going to probably die anyways because
they don't know how to fix it. So they just after that, they
(46:00):
went, well, nobody's not stopping dancing.
Now we have to ban the music. They're breaking the law.
They banned the music. They could die dancing.
Yeah, yeah. They banned the music that they
had brought in themselves, so and the dancers that they had
brought themselves, because I remember they brought in pro
dancers and pro musicians to play.
(46:20):
And so after that they banned both of those and it still
didn't stop anything. This is you're right, this is
the most government shit possible.
You're like, fine, if you're notgoing to follow the law that we
made-up, we're just going to take away all the shit that we
gave you that made your shit worse.
How do you like them apples? See, we are tough on crime.
(46:41):
Yeah, I mean, maybe for part of it, it made it nicer because at
least in the background of you, someone dancing to death, they
had a nice backbeat to it, you know, Like as they're bleeding
to death on the ground, there's like boom, boom, boom.
Boom. There would be like a
hysterical, like, wails and likecrying and like all sorts of
really bucked up sounds coming out.
(47:02):
Yeah. And then not just in New Jersey,
but also here too, there would be hysterical wails and there'd
be crying. And also that was a bad joke
but. Yeah, yeah.
But. But yes, I mean, honestly, the
music made sense, but I think what happened is too much of
their tax. The government's tax revenue was
dying off and they couldn't afford to pay the band anymore.
(47:24):
That's that would be my assumption.
Oh yeah, that could have been. Yeah, that's, that might be true
actually. Well, obviously none of that
worked. So like, obviously banning music
and banning dancing did not workand eventually they took the
people who were afflicted with it to a monastery in the hills
and either restrained them or just let them dance until they
(47:48):
died in the hills. The.
Monastery Mariachi line in history.
All right, let's go. Yeah, let's go every.
Time they go like done, like hitleft or hit right, there's just
another body falling out and rolling down there.
Exactly. Yeah, so, so what's crazy?
(48:11):
So there is some like there is some interesting stuff well
about this, right, so. If you need to know about the
chemical behind it. Ergo, poisoning.
Ergot poisoning. Ergot.
Yep. Yeah, LSE.
Baby, they don't know if it was really that they they did say it
(48:32):
could have been ergot poisoning because obviously that happened
a lot during this time. Take it from someone who's taken
ergot, this sounds about right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But a lot of people, yeah. I guess, you know, basically,
yeah. LSD eventually what it would be.
Yeah. Some people thought it actually
(48:52):
could have been just like some kind of mass hysteria in the
time they call it like a a dancing curse too, which
actually became a disorder that they figured out.
But we've talked about that after you go.
I'm starting to wonder here about all these moments in
history where it's like they were first labeled mass
(49:14):
hysteria. Like every fucking time
something an anomaly happens, instead of saying it's a
phenomenon, which is like the term you would use for, you
know, not currently understood, right?
Yes. They say hysteria and it kind of
like downplays that. It makes the people involved
seem like they're stupid. Oh, they're crazy.
Or they're crazy. Or there was there was so many
(49:36):
things going on you would understand if they lost their
wits. It's hysteria.
And I just wonder about who has been traveling through time
constantly labeling things at the moment of events is hysteria
and then disappearing before they lose their medical license.
We're taking a road trip to Tampa anyways.
(49:59):
Well eventually it became labeled as St.
Vitus Dance, which was name of the disorder that what they
think it called that actually got renamed to Sydenham's Korea.
Wasn't it? I thought it was a was it Saint
Elmo's fire? That's a neurological disease.
(50:24):
No. Maybe Saint Anthony's fire.
I don't know. Saint Elmo's fire sounds right,
but but Saint Vitus's dance is what it's like, what it became.
And so the reason that's the name St.
Vitus is because St. Vitus was actually a in the
Middle Ages, he was counted as one of the 14 Holy Helpers in
(50:44):
Germany. And he had a feast that was
celebrated with dancing before his statue.
And dancing became synonymous with St.
Vitus. And so they added this.
He became the patron St. of dancers and of entertainers in
general. And he was also said to protect
against lightning strikes, animal attacks and oversleeping.
(51:05):
So all the other people in her other stories could have used
St. Vitus as hell.
That St. Vitus itis that's damn so I
don't think you got. Are you getting into where ergot
pops up and why they got exposedto it?
They don't think for the most part that it was ergot
(51:27):
poisoning. They think it was probably just
the neurological damage that they had from Korea from sorry,
relook at what it says, 'cause Ialways forgetting it.
The Sydenham's Korea, That's what they really think that it
was. They didn't think that it was
because of the idea of the way that they jerked and their
(51:49):
bodies moved and that it wasn't ergot because it wouldn't have
it would have eventually gone out of their system because they
weren't eating. That is, they weren't eating and
so. The reason why we're having this
debate, though, about the ergot is that ergot on untreated rye
(52:12):
and like grains, bread grains, cereal grains, ergot's a type of
fungus that can naturally appearon the grains themselves.
And it's not necessarily easy tonotice that it is on grains.
And especially when you're goingthrough and just kind of like
processing shit tons of shit tons of grain to turn into flour
(52:32):
to turn into bread. And back in the day when towns
only had like one or two bakers and everybody got their bread
from the same place, it's kind of like wherever the hell those
one or two bakers managed to source their raw materials to
make everybody's bread. That's the ingredients
everyone's getting that day. Ergo ergot.
If a batch of of rye came in, for instance, that was infected
(52:57):
with ergot, Baker made a whole batch of bread and sent it out
to everybody. An entire town or neighborhood
or a city could like all start experiencing very intense
hallucinations and things very similar to to this mass dance
craze here the first the first disco era, but.
Yeah. Yeah, and I got to throw it out
(53:19):
there, actually. No, Save that.
Save that for a bonus about how LSA and LSD ergot led to LSD.
Yeah, nice. Well, this wasn't the only
example of this either, because in the 11th century, in Saxony,
it happened as well as in Italy in the 15th century, The Italian
(53:43):
one happened because a woman wassupposedly bitten by a tarantula
and the venom was working through her body, made her jerk
and move until the. Yeah, until the venom succumbed
her. So basically that wasn't it.
It found out eventually that that wasn't part of the same
thing that happened in the Strasburg.
Strasburg dancing plague is which it became called and it's
(54:08):
just venom that eventually killed her.
But these people from again, like it's not always cut and dry
what it is. So could have been some ergot
poisoning, could have been the Saint Vitus's dance or what it
is now called is Sydenham's Korea neurological jerking and
like move, uncontrollable movement of your body.
(54:31):
So could have been either of those things.
But again, it's in the past. A lot of times it's not super
well notated. It's kind of hard to for us to
figure it out. Well, these last two stories
that we're going to hop into aregoing to be rather short, but I
wanted to get them in here because just how ridiculous they
(54:51):
are. The next story is that of Samuel
Spencer. Samuel was from Connecticut and
born in 1734. He became a lawyer and
eventually a politician, as whatwould normally happens, I guess,
because most of the time in those days, if you become a
lawyer, eventually become a politician happened a lot.
(55:12):
He moved from Connecticut to Anson County, North Carolina.
Anson is right in between Charlotte and Fayetteville, so
not super far from us. Maybe like 4 hours from us.
Well he was elected to the stateCongress in 1774 and 1775 and
then become one of the three judges appointed to the first
North Carolina Supreme Court in 1777.
(55:36):
He eventually became a leader inthe anti federalist NC
conventions prior to the revolution.
He became a Colonel in the localmilitia and eventually became a
commandant on the American side of the Revolution.
Well, the reason we are introducing him is not because
of the things that he did, but the things that were done to
(55:56):
him, just like we always talk about in the most unusual death.
Well, he died in 1793 while resting on his front porch, kind
of like a Scaly's. Well, in between court sessions,
he was taking a nice short snooze in a rocking chair right
on his front porch. He was wearing a red cap on his
(56:20):
head. A large Turkey gobbler, thinking
that the moving red cap was a challenge, attack the man and
threw him from his chair. Sam, covered in pecks and
scratches, develops basically Irisciplus.
Irisciplus and died in the firstknown case of death by Turkey
(56:43):
that wasn't on Thanksgiving. So he was murdered by a Turkey.
Oh my God, I love that so much. Yep, I'd never actually heard of
a Turkey killing someone except on Thanksgiving.
You know, when it gave people choked on a Turkey or something
(57:04):
like that. Turkey leg or?
You know they deep fry it and their house burns down.
Exactly, Yeah. Damn I love that story.
I I don't I don't have anything funny.
This is clearly not manatee related.
Nope, that was a Turkey. Yeah, that was that was 100%.
I'm just gonna I'm, I'm over here.
(57:25):
I'm trying to find space. I've been keeping score of how
many people manatees have killedand I I don't have a lot of room
left for turkeys, but. Yeah, I don't know why this this
turned into death by animals mostly, but that was just a lot
of those stuff, funny stuff thathappened.
Well, the last one, it's probably the saddest one, right?
(57:45):
So I know the last episode I kind of lifted us up.
I lifted us up with the guy who won the horse after, won the
horse race after he died, remember?
And we were just like, yeah, that was fucking died in the
saddle. Yeah, he died in the saddle.
This one didn't. Settle.
I'm going to depress of all of you until we get to our next
episode. We're going to be depressed.
So what? The fuck Joey?
(58:06):
Don't do that too. I know.
I'm sure a lot of people that are listening to this would
accept an unusual death in this way.
A man named Giacomo. I should know, this is Diane.
A man named Giacomo Ciaparini owned a cheese warehouse.
(58:27):
It's pretty recent too, as it happened in August of 2023.
As Giacomo was walking and checking in on the massive,
massive amount of ripening cheese in his warehouse, he
entered the area where a roboticarm was cleaning the cheese
rounds during the aging process.So basically, it's like cutting
(58:50):
off all the bad parts? Well, the ripening wheels that
are stored on metal shelves which go up to about 33 feet
high, right? The whole warehouse itself
stored up to 25,000 wheels of delicious, beautiful Grana
Padana cheese. As he was checking in on the
(59:15):
cheeses, one of the shelves broke in the warehouse and
created a domino effect, knocking over every shelf and
wheel of cheese. Giacomo was crushed by Grana
Padana cheese, and at 74, they basically had to go in there by
(59:35):
hand, pulling out each piece of cheese to uncover his dead body.
And that's the saddest way to go.
Death by cheese, not by cholesterol.
Well, thank you so much for listening to Black Cat Report
and Episode 1 36. Yes, 136.
(59:55):
You can catch all our cool new stuff and other mini sods and
game nights on patreon@patreon.com/blackcat
Report. Most of the stuff is literally
free. We just like to use it as a nice
way to give you all of the updates and new stuff that we
do. One solid place for
communication. You can also catch me or Gil on
(01:00:19):
one of the weekly Paranormal Happy hours, which is our Beer
Booze, an affiliate podcast. It's not really affiliate.
I just like calling an affiliate.
It's the same podcast. It's just two out of the four.
Yeah, this coming week will be probably K Booze and I Yeah,
(01:00:40):
we'll be doing it. And now we can get to our thank
yous for all of our gracious andgenerous and gratuitous Patreon
followers. If you haven't.
You hold on. On Patreon Do we have other
news? Yep, there's somebody we need to
give an extra special shout out to that I copied and pasted a
screenshot of at the very top ofyour script before the word
(01:01:03):
welcome, but you ran right through it.
But. I did.
But we're gonna do it right now.We're gonna do it right now.
Yes, we're gonna do it right now.
Yes. Give it.
Right now. We do want to thank The Nice
Vegetarian for their great review on iTunes.
Very cool and informative. Thank for y'alls hard work.
(01:01:25):
Thumbs up. And made us feel great.
Yeah, we do really appreciate you.
Thank you so much for taking thetime to review us.
If you haven't, please take the time to go on wherever you're
listening to us. It's Apple podcast, Spotify,
anything. Just give us a little review,
five stars and a little review or however you feel we're doing.
I feel we're not doing great. Message us on Instagram.
(01:01:45):
We'll fight you, but I won't look at it.
We'll look at it. He'll fight you.
He's the fighter of the group. All right, if you haven't taken
the time to follow us on Patreon, please do
patreon.com/blackcat Report. You can get all of our cool
stuff there and we are ready to give our shout outs.
(01:02:06):
You ready? Yes, Sir.
Good time do. You want me to read the shout
outs? If you want to, I can.
OK, when you ask, nevermind. Please continue.
You're confusing me. Go for it, Joey.
We want to thank Oscar Amandine,Stephanie, Harry Carey, Tristan,
(01:02:29):
Bud, Don Thomas, Little Mystery,Bobby Betsabay, Lucas, Tim D,
Max, Ian Morgan, Dragon Paul from the Star Blood Chronicles
Podcast, Tim Miller from Miller's Monsters, Marissa
Gavin, Fearless Leader of the Chicken Cult, Rachel AB Jayden,
(01:02:52):
Jackie, Yellow Bear, Dwayne AKA Snatch Twat, Alyssa Breed, A
Michael, Extreme Kristen from the Paranormal Girl Podcast,
James, and most importantly our sexiest producer.
Sexiest one? Yeah, copy.
Kitty. Girl, thank you all so much for
(01:03:16):
listening and we'll see you nextweek.
Paul Meyer Atoll in the Sea WindMurders part face I'm.
Like that? Love you all, bye.
Bye.
Welcome back to the Thunderdome of Unusual Deaths.
Tina Turner yells remember whereyou are.
This is Thunderdome and death islistening.
And we'll take the first man that screams well by Turkey,
cheese, dancing or sharks. Death comes to all, and we're
going to wade through the mud that is another edition of most
(00:24):
unusual deaths throughout history.
I didn't see you there. It all started early this
morning. From hunting ghosts to Bigfoot
UFOs. Cryptids, true crime,
paranormal, and more I always wanted to see.
AUFO Oh, I was. I was researching for your
entertainment. That's Bigfoot's cat.
He basically wrote the book on Monarch.
We aren't really comedians. What if Buddha did cocaine?
(00:46):
The Addams family on meth. This is the Black Hat report.
See you on the other side. Good morning and afternoon,
evening and good night and welcome to the Black Cat Report.
We are on episode 136. I am Joey and with me is the
Charlotte St. Harlot, the Amboy Rd., Toad, the
(01:09):
Chicken Alley, Batty Gill, He. Is would it be incriminating if
I acknowledged it? I hope it's not incriminating.
Anybody who's been to Asheville and learned that obscure piece
of history will know all of thatis true.
All of it. We are, we are going through the
mud, Doobie the cat, wading right through it.
(01:31):
Yes, and. For everybody else, I'm just
going to drop it on him. Chicken Alley is a notorious
spot for sex workers. Or at least it used to be 10 to
15 years ago and and Nashville'snotorious history.
So basically, Joey just called me a slut.
Thank you, Joey. I did say the Charlotte St.
(01:52):
Harlot was your first one. Yeah, you called me a slut, a
sex worker, and I'm pretty sure you said nice man somewhere in
there, but I appreciate it. I did say Toad, take that which
you will. Oh my gosh, I will wear this
(02:13):
title proudly, Sir. You also try to come up with
names of streets in Asheville and then things that are part of
it. Well, today we are going to
continue our journey into Unusual Deaths in History Part
2. We'll be getting back to the
conclusion of the Sewin Murders and Palmyra Atoll next week.
(02:36):
So let's get back into our journey throughout Unusual
Deaths of history because I alsofound so many good ones that I
wanted to do the second episode of this.
So let's jump right into this, since it's summer, kind of the
end of summer, and I want to tryto scare you out of the water.
(02:56):
Our first story of unusual deathtakes place in early to mid-july
of 1916. So at this time it happens in
the most cultural of all places,the New Jersey shoreline.
It was a big situation. What happened to the old Jersey
Shoreline? We are talking about a mass
(03:18):
shark attack so on July 1st at Beach Haven which Why do these
places always have to have such a nice name?
Oh nice and Beach Haven a bunch of sharks attack people which is
located on Long Beach Island. A man named Charles Van Zandt
(03:41):
was vacationing at a hotel with his family.
Shortly after he decided to go for a pre dinner swim, which is
important because as we know from our young days, you can't
swim up to an hour after you eat.
Make sure you do not swim an hour after you eat.
Shortly after entering the waterVan Zandt started shouting and
people thought he was calling for his dog but a lifeguard,
(04:04):
usually the only one realizing stuff going on in this
situation, realized what was going on and ended up pulling
Van Zandt out of the water. As as the lifeguard was dragging
him out of the water, the shark was following him.
So the shark bit him on the leftthigh and it stripped his leg of
flesh and sadly he bled to deathat the manager's desk.
(04:27):
Nowadays this this is like easily saveable.
A lot of times most people don'tdie because of shark attacks and
I think This is why this is suchan unusual thing.
I will also say the reason why these shark attacks are crazy is
because a lot of them happened in the span of like 5 days and
so everyone was talking about itbut before like to make it even
(04:49):
crazier is before this there wasnot really any known shark
attacks like a lot there. Was because the sharks killed
the person that was keeping track of them.
Yes, yes, they went after the. This is note taker.
This is the exact same reason, the exact same shit of why I've
been deathly afraid of manatees for going on 15 years now, ever
(05:14):
since. And it had nothing to do with me
being on LSD, somebody explaining swimming with
manatees with me and like, you know, just all the visuals that
came with it. But I realized that these slow
lumbering elephants of death arejust, they're basically, they're
sloth ninjas of the rivers in myopinion.
(05:36):
And yeah, and I've looked it up.I've tried so hard to find any
recorded deaths of people killedby manatees and there's nothing
now there's like 40 people a year that get killed by vending
machines. All right.
There is no way in hell people aren't getting massacred on a
daily basis by manatees. I'm just saying why did they get
(05:57):
so close to the boats that they get chopped up?
I think it was self-defense on the boat drivers.
Might be, might be a big thing, but I'm pretty sure they are.
They are hunting down and killing all the statisticians.
And so, yeah. You know what?
Go. I love every other animal
manatees. Stand.
Finally. I'm taking a stand against you.
(06:18):
So this is it. Well, I'm taking the I'm taking
the gloves off. You are gonna sit here and bad
mouth the cows of the sea. The sweetest animals that never
attack a human being. Sounds like they have a good PR
team. I don't know man.
The ones that are the only ones that can sell T-shirts.
(06:41):
Manatee Oh my gosh man, only ones step on up and get.
Your Mana T-shirts. The only one that can sell
T-shirts to people and not kill a human being.
Because unlike Shamu and all thekiller whales, orcas that murder
people that sell a trillion T-shirts, it's true.
(07:02):
Yeah, well, they're just they'rejust putting on that that good
that that good guy persona. And Joey, I think that this is a
perfect time to segue into today's episode.
Sponsor Manatees T-shirts located in Tampa, FL 336 fake
Highland Drive. If y'all are in the mood to get
(07:22):
killed by a manatee, go there ordon't we don't care.
They already. Paid us?
Yeah, you already got your T-shirts.
So T-shirts. Why, why, Why is the T-shirt my
son sent me from his trip covered in blood?
So yeah, there's. There's also a funeral
invitation. They said they're still looking
for the killer. No, I thought he would be safe
(07:45):
as a statistician and. It's just a manatee doing this
with a dead body. Fucking cleaver.
Yeah. With the cleaver in his hand.
Yeah. I mean, that makes sense.
That tracks. And by the way, when you started
saying manatee, I thought you meant, like, a, a, a Stingray
(08:06):
and I so I was just like, oh, obviously they've killed people.
They killed Steve Irwin, one of the most famous animal people in
the world. The only St. of our generation.
Truth. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, well, the next shark attack happened on July 6th in
Spring Lake, which is not too far down the coast from where
(08:27):
the first one happened. But there in Spring Lake, there
were a lot of reports coming in of large sharks swimming off the
coast from sea captains. So a bunch of people were
sitting on the a bunch of sea captains were, you know,
maneuvering their boats in the air, being just like there's a
bunch of sharks over there. And so people are just like,
it's fine, we're just going to swim anyways.
(08:51):
They're harmless. They're harmless manatees.
Did you hear what they've been doing down in Florida?
Eating. Legs that's I did want to say
real quick, and this can get edited into whatever random area
later, but the reason everybody thinks that all the scars and
mantes bodies are from boat propellers, right, They're
(09:14):
actually from knife fights. So it's another way to look at
it. And I do want to also point out
what Laura said. I bet they blame the sharks.
I think we've got a honestly ABCRE ecology conspiracy
happening here. I'm for it.
The manatees are the ones blaming the sharks, are they?
Yes, that makes. Sense we need to look into who
(09:37):
funded JAWS. That's what I'm saying.
I will get into that in a few minutes.
The end of this story. Manatee International.
OK. Yeah, yeah.
Well, a man named Charles Brooder was attacked by a shark
that bit his abdomen and then severed his legs, right.
So basically severed this guy almost in pretty much in half.
(09:57):
And again, a lifeguard figured out what was going on and got
him and pulled him out of the water.
Dear God, he saw it in half. Yeah.
Yeah. Dammit, Johnson, we knew you
were sorry. You were smart when we hired
you, but we didn't know you werea fucking genius.
Thank you. Thank you.
You're promoted to lifeguard, leader of the lifeguards.
(10:19):
You're promoted to Zac Efron. You're promoted to Zac Efron.
Well, and he bled to death on the beach.
And if you don't know the reference, he was in the new
Baywatch movie, The remake of Baywatch.
For some reason, I don't think our general listener demographic
(10:40):
saw that. Joey and I, if they come after
us, I'll defend you so. Thank you, I guess I could take
it in some more. Back in the day, tunes.
Was Patrick Swayze in the original Baywatch, no?
No, no, no. That was a.
Oh. My God I have he was in the
(11:02):
SpongeBob movie. He was in God damn it why am I?
I have his face up hops. Dustin Hoffman, Dustin.
Hoffman, Dustin. Hoffman fucking Oh my God,
somebody's going to pop in in the chat here in a.
Moment somebody's got it, we will figure it out.
Later I I literally can see him.David Hasselhoff.
(11:25):
David Hasselhoff. Well yes, he got promoted to
David Hasselhoff. There was our long winded joke
that now we have to love. He was David Hasselhoff's
grandfather. Yes #2 deaths.
Out of that, then in one day in Matawan Creek near the town of
Keyport, which is also again along the strip of the islands
(11:48):
or the little beaches along New Jersey.
On July 12th, a group of local boys noticed a dorsal fin in the
water, which is normal and whilethey were swinging with their
dog and as they were trying to climb out of the Creek.
So this one is different. It's it's kind of a Creek.
It's not actually in the open ocean.
The shark pulled one of the boysunderwater and was eventually.
(12:12):
The boy was eventually recoveredupstream when the other boys
went to run to get help. An older man came to investigate
and when he dove into the Creek he was also bitten by the shark
and then he bled to. Damn.
So that shark got two people in like 1 little part of the day.
Jesus man, See this is what happened before we all started
(12:34):
polluting more. The sharks didn't have anything
to eat. They were.
This is just an anti environmentepisode.
They didn't have anything to be afraid of.
They didn't have. They couldn't be afraid.
Of us heavily sarcastic, everyone was.
They weren't afraid of us yet because we didn't know what
plastic was. The last victim of shark
attacks, which is on the same day, July 12th, was a man named
(12:59):
Joseph Dunn. Nearly 30 minutes and a half
mile from the other attacks thatday, feasibly the same shark.
The shark bit Dunn's left leg, stripping off the flesh.
He was the last leg. Fetish.
But luckily he was the only one to survive.
(13:21):
He barely survived. He didn't bleed to death, so he
was the last victim of being bitten by the shark.
OK. I do want to say these deaths
nowadays, like I said earlier, are very rare, but we also don't
see a lot of victims bitten in the same area.
There hasn't been one of these since then.
Usually they're like one bite. You know, we get one bite and
(13:44):
nobody really dies because most of the time they just kind of
get out, you know, get out and they're like have a chunk of
their leg missing. It's mostly surfers, and we know
why. It's because they're surfers.
They're like surfboard is kind of shaped like a seal.
So a lot of times it's surfboards or like a person that
shark bites because it's trying to feel that's how it feels what
it's looking for. So what is kind of funny about
(14:08):
this is it's all along the same line.
And what's unusual is that they thought, and eventually they
figured that it actually is probably the same shark that bit
all of these people. And so when people were asked,
they said they didn't know what kind of shark it was because it
bit. And they were kind of, you know,
most of them died. Folks from Jersey aren't fucking
(14:30):
snitches. No, exactly.
Yeah, you're right. They're not going to snitch on
that shark, and neither were theother sharks in the area, No.
No, nobody's snitching. What are you, a game warden?
You said about a force cop That here?
Yeah. Well, the thought though, that
(14:51):
it was either a bull shark or a great white shark.
And one of the reasons they theydon't think, well, I'll get into
this, but they don't think it was a great white shark is
because one of them was in the river.
It was like right up the stream a little bit.
And great white sharks can't getupstream, but bull sharks can
and have been known to go into, into river like little areas
(15:14):
where obviously it's not all theway up the river.
Yeah, it's not all the way up the river, but it was close
enough to be like great white probably wouldn't be in this
area. But this mass shark attack in
New Jersey became the influence for Peter Benchley's book Jaws
and the subsequent movie Jaws, because of it all happened at
the time in like the 60s and 70's.
(15:35):
The idea was that it was a greatwhite shark.
So when the when the book was written, they thought it was a
great white shark. So they were like, oh, obviously
this is a town and in obviously in the movie it's New Jersey,
right? Yeah.
Yeah. So it makes sense.
I also, I need, I need to point something out that kind of goes
with your data earlier, your statistics, wondering where you
(15:59):
got those. But as the number of shark
attacks have gone down, so too has the manatee population
throwing it out, just putting itout there.
I'm just calling it like I see it.
A complete, widely UN unresearched piece of data that
(16:19):
Gil threw out there. I don't know, buy your tease
from Manatee. We get money every time we say
it, so we got to say it a few times during the episode.
Well. We are we are manatee shells at
this point. We are, I know.
And Gil, even though Gil was trying to throw them under the
(16:40):
bus earlier for all the deaths, that's part of it.
We got they. Paid me a lot of money.
Like I had to take it, that's true.
I had to take it, that's true. I almost had enough for like a
cheeseburger at that point. Like I can't say no to that.
Yeah, that's true. You know, they do say though,
and is is basically, you know, if you have very strong feelings
on both sides of the the argument, you know, it'll get
(17:00):
more traction. You know, if you have one that
hates it and one that's for it, you know, argues together
probably blow up a little bit more on the Internet.
That's what they say. Well, due to the amount of shark
attacks in such a small time period, it got all the way to
the federal government. So I think that's what makes
this most interesting is also the reaction to the shark
(17:22):
attacks. During the following days and
weeks after the attacks, people started patrolling the beach and
motor boats with weapons and huge Nets, trying to catch any
shark they could and kill it. Fuck yeah America, this is the
fucking way we respond to shit. They were shooting wildly into
the waters without finding out if it was a shark or not.
(17:45):
So it was just like, I mean. I don't know, yeah.
Yeah, we're a small child. They didn't know, so they just
be like. And it's people from New Jersey,
too. One of them sharks shot this
kid. God damn we were just over here.
I know. How'd we miss it?
Yeah, well, it didn't stop therebecause residents of the place
(18:08):
where the second bite happened, they started patrolling the
waters with Nets and started using dynamite to blow up
anything resembling a shark. So they're just tossing dynamite
into the water. Oh my God.
This is I could just hear. I'm proud to be an American
blasting the whole time. Yeah, Lee Greenwood blasting.
(18:35):
People are just like going out there selling hot dogs.
They're they're selling a Shark Hunter T-shirts.
There's already somebody who's made shirts.
They're just like, they're like,and my mom called me crazy when
I spent my inheritance on this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Now who'll show her? Yep, bite the sharks, be a
manatee. Well.
(18:59):
It was actually just manatees out there with fake mustaches on
being like. They're also selling TNT, the
The Manatees, The Most DangerousGame, and.
This episode is not to you. This episode's also brought to
you by Manatee and T Your place for?
(19:25):
Oh, it's pretty good. Located on Located in Tampa, FL
next to Manatees. T-shirt.
Wow. As they were going through the
area and blowing up the shoreline, obviously they the
government also had a shark bounty in the area.
(19:47):
For anyone who killed a shark, there was $100 reward.
So in 2024 dollars that was about $2900 per shark.
So that's a fair bit. What's funny is that it was
reported. That there were absolutely no
sharks killed or captured in thearea at all.
(20:12):
There no one claimed the reward for killing any sharks in the
area, so no one got the bounty. They were just tossing dynamite
and TNT into the into the water,blowing shit up for no reason.
It's because there were no sharks.
It was manatees the whole fucking time I've been trying to
tell you. Yeah, yeah, it was manatees.
(20:36):
Well, after that, after they hadbasically employed a bunch of a,
what would we call them, like a militia of shark hunters.
Yeah, Manatee militia of shark hunters, the New Jersey House of
Representatives started a shark hunt, deploying the Coast Guard.
So they started putting the Coast Guard out on this.
(20:59):
The Coast Guard, however, was matched better at killing
sharks. I.
Was going to say the Coast Guardjust called back and be like you
expect us to outperform a bunch of people from Jersey Shore?
Wait, what day is it? Is that April first?
I don't the governor wants to stand there but just cracking up
laughing. Yeah, yeah, damn it.
(21:20):
So they were better though somehow.
The Coast Guard actually killed hundreds of sharks, I imagine.
Christ, Yeah, I imagine the Coast Guard was able to go
France or Yeah, I imagine the Coast Guard was able to go a bit
farther out. And so I imagine the people, the
the New Jersey representatives from the shark hunt were
(21:40):
probably getting on the shoreline where there probably
wasn't that many sharks in the moment, or in the river where
there was no sharks at all. And then they were blowing up
the river And the Coast Guard was like, well, why don't we
just go a little farther out? Or most likely there are sharks
in enough room. And so they killed hundreds of
sharks. It eventually was called the
(22:01):
largest scale animal hunt in history.
Holy fuck is this? This is bigger than the Emu
wars. Yes, because of how many were
killed. Well, to be fair, nothing really
came out of it besides killing hundreds of sharks, which is
really. Two inconspicuous businesses
(22:22):
that opened in Tampa, FL. Manatee and manatee and tea.
It was also likely just one shark that got a taste for flesh
and trolled the shoreline and found a few people to snack on.
I doubt that shark was even killed.
I doubt they ever found the realshark that did it.
And I imagine just by the way everything happened, it was one
(22:44):
shark that just started eating people.
You know, yeah, I got nothing. You know how I feel about it.
I think the sharks, the sharks are completely innocent.
Yeah, we know who the real culprits are.
The real culprits? Murder shark Doo Doo Doo Doo
(23:04):
murder shark. Doo Doo Doo.
Murder Shark. Baby's Aww.
Poor man. And you know what?
The sharks were the unintended victims of this.
The manatees were the true haters.
I'm. Just saying follow the money,
(23:26):
follow the money. The two the two businesses that
opened up right after this. You know, it's also odd I looked
into their records. The only day they didn't go into
work in 2001 was on 9/11 at their office in downtown
Manhattan. That's scary now.
(23:51):
We're going to look into this there.
That's true. My weather manatees.
We're gonna get assassinated forthis.
Oh, I know. They're already on their way.
They're already on their way. Man, TTTTT, shut up.
Well, yeah, you should. Have seen that.
Story for the end cuz that's just stuck in my fucking.
(24:12):
Good. You'll just sing it through the
rest of the episode. Just hum it through the rest of
the episode. Well, the next unusual death is
truly, maybe I'll say out of this world, but kind of in this
world, maybe pulled out of the air.
It involved an ancient Athenian and father of the modern
tragedy, A Scylus, a Silas. So I can never really say this
(24:36):
right. AI think it's a Silas.
Yeah, a Silas was born in eithera Scylus.
A Scylus. I don't know how to say Athenian
names. I don't think you know they make
much. It's, it's whatever A Silas was
born in either 525 or 524 BC. Always kind up in the air.
(24:58):
We don't really always know whenpeople were born before, you
know, a long time ago, because it's not always made clear.
He was born in a small town northwest of Athens, not Ohio,
but in near Greece. He was a playwright as well as a
soldier and a commander. Thanks for the clarification
(25:19):
Joey. You're welcome.
I don't know why we would have records of a Greek person born
in the non existent state of Ohio. 5/24, 5:20. 4 You never
know, but well in 490 BC he fought and helped defeat the
(25:40):
army of Darius, the first of Persia at the Battle of
Marathon, which obviously is howwe got the modern day so much of
the marathon battle. Yeah yeah on 480 BC he was sent
into battle again this time withXerxes, the first invasion at
the Battle of Salamis. This is all to say that he was a
(26:00):
pretty prolific warrior. His military prowess wasn't the
only expertise he had. He shone so brightly as a
popular playwright and as I saidearlier, he created the idea of
the modern tragedy a. Silas kept winning the Dionysian
competitions for playwrights andhe had in between 70 to 90
(26:23):
plays, a tribute to him throughout his life, which is a
lot of plays. That's a lot of plays.
To be fair, though, plays were kind of a new concept back then
and it was mostly just like a guy walking up on the stage and
being like, I am a chicken, can I vote?
(26:46):
And then they just walk. Brilliant, brilliant.
Everybody from Sparta's in the crowd are just like, fucking
philosophers over here fucking are weird.
Kill him, kill him, fight him. Kick him in the pit kick.
Him in the pit, yeah, Yeah. But out of those 70 to 90 plays,
only 7 actually remain intact, like 7 full plays that we still
(27:11):
have. The plays are the Persians 7
against Thebes, the Suppliants and the trilogy known as the
Aristea, which is basically the three tragedies of Agamemnon.
The three tragedies. Of Mark Scorsese titles.
Yeah, right. The Purge.
(27:32):
The three tragedies are Agamemnon.
I mean, it's a lot of names. I'm sorry for mispronouncing
them. There's like crazy names in here
that I don't know how to pronounce but.
No, you're doing great. The artistea which is basically
3 tragedies, the Agamemdon, the libation bearers and the
(27:54):
amenities. The libation bearers are just
people who bring in your drinks.And Agamemdon 2 Electric,
Agamemdon Louvre had something Iforgot.
It's OK, and Prometheus bound was the last one, the last of
the seven that was like saved. That's a dope title.
(28:15):
That's a really fucking dope title.
Prometheus Bound. Well, besides all his cool
backgrounds, he actually had a unusual death, and we'd call it
the most unlucky death you couldprobably ever have.
A Silas when he was about 67 wasvisiting the city of Gala in
(28:38):
about 456 BC and he was sleepingoutside because his head was
bald. An eagle mistook his head for a
rock and dropped a turtle on hishead trying to crack open the
turtle shell so he could eat them.
The turtle shell killed him instantly and he he died because
(29:03):
an eagle dropped a like really high up dropped a turtle on his
bald head. Why did?
Why didn't you open with this? I don't know.
That's a good, good one. Well, what's funny is it's not
really. It's pretty funny.
It's funny. It is funny.
(29:24):
I mean it's really funny, but there is a tiny Side Story about
why he was sleeping. About the Turtles adventure.
No, no. That would be great if they had
the tourist adventure. But why?
He was sleeping outside, right? So normally everyone, you know,
obviously at this time they're already asleep.
He was sleeping inside, but he was told by like a fortune
(29:46):
teller of some sort that he was going to be killed by something.
A life if you sleep outside thisevening.
He was going to be killed by something falling off and
hitting him in the head. And he just, he thought that,
like, because if he slept outside, he would have way less
of a chance of something fallingoff like a shelf or falling off
(30:08):
the roof and hitting him in the head.
So he's like, well, let's go Where?
Like, not much can follow me. I mean, besides rain, besides
hail, besides ash, besides, you know, lots of stuff besides a
full grown turtle. Yes.
Yeah. And he died, and that is the end
of his. Story the second the second he
(30:31):
thank you so much, Mystic. I really, I really appreciate
this. You know, I'm, you know I'm a
huge fan. I'll be I'll be putting your
I'll be putting your your tip over in this jar.
Thank you. Thank you again so much for your
time. Walks out the door, the door
slowly, Mystic turns around ripsoff the veil.
It's a fucking manatee holding the deck of Killed Turtles
(30:54):
T-shirts ready to start sailing.Dude, I'm telling you they know
how to market. They just, they're, they're kind
of like arms dealers for like the genocide of other animals.
That's, I think that's the best way to really picture manatees.
That's true. I guess there's a lot of animals
(31:14):
in these desks for these ones because the next one involves an
animal too. What do you think?
So, Gracias, what do you think happened to them?
I don't kill the turtles. Kill the turtles.
Got your shoes over here, Sir? Sir.
Do you know what happened to him?
What? The guy who got killed by a
turtle? How do you know?
How do you have these shirts so fast?
(31:34):
You look good in Excel. Has anybody?
Yeah, you'd look good in an Excel.
This is turtle green too, so this is going to be perfect on
you. This is nice.
It's said to help repel eagles as well.
I like eagles, but I'd like to repel them.
Well, he died. Erica was assassinating people
(31:57):
in other countries before it even existed.
Dude, that's the CIA for you. They were implanting.
They went back in time, implanted Eagle's brains on how
to murder people. Time travelling eagle drones.
That sounds like a Danger 5 plotline if I've ever heard one.
Actually it does. Yeah.
(32:17):
We need to bring that show back.They do.
Well. Our next story is another short
one, but also has another animalin it.
So this is the first three are going to be some animal ones,
which is, you know, they are pretty interesting.
It's one of the weirdest storiesI think I've heard, actually,
with all these ones we've done well on August 25th.
(32:38):
It's actually a recent one, August 25th of 2010, a Let L410
turbolet passenger plane flown by Fillair took off from the
Badondu Airport in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo. And you remember, as I told you
recently, I was looking up all the African countries.
This is also one of the reasons why this passenger plane was
(33:00):
able to hold about 19 passengersand it was sold out.
So there was 21 people on board of this, you know, 19
passengers, 2 pilots. As it was on its final approach
to the airport to land, it started losing its stability to
the point that it started rapidly falling and just crashed
(33:21):
just short of a runway directly into a house, directly into a
house. So, Gil, I can imagine you had
lots of fears when you lived underneath the airport in Ohio.
No, the gas has kept me pretty pretty calm.
Pretty high, yeah. Yeah, the gas is in the
pollution. Yeah, something something about
(33:42):
all that lead in the atmosphere trickly above where I was
raised. Just glad they proved there were
no long term side effects back when I was a kid.
Due to this plane crash, luckilythe house was empty.
The house that the plane crashedinto was empty.
Luckily nobody was in the house.No one died OK after the plane
(34:02):
crash, 20 out of the 21 people died in the crash.
And just like the recent plane crash in India, where there was
exactly one single survivor. Seat. 11 E remember.
Yeah. Everyone made the joke about
like, now I'm sitting in 11 E because it seems like that's the
(34:23):
only place that people survive. Actually, the middle of the
plane is always the place where you survive.
Except for these specific cases.Well.
I mean when manatees are involved.
The plane crash in the Andes, the people in the middle of it
survived. Everybody in the front died.
Everybody in the back flew out the back.
(34:43):
So it was kind of like a very interesting.
Yeah. Anyways, yeah, if you're in
first class, you're going to be first dead.
So that's the well, I like them.The crash was crazy because, as
I said, it just fell short of the runway.
But when the one person who survived was questioned after he
(35:05):
like kind of recovered, kind of got back his senses, they
questioned him like, do you knowwhy this happened?
You guys were right really closeto the runway.
He said that somebody smuggled acrocodile aboard and it got
loose. As the crocodile made its way up
(35:27):
the aisle to the front of the plane, everyone started running
towards the cockpit, which caused the loss of balance in
the plane because they are very balanced to have people in all
parts of it. It crashed, it pulled the nose
down as they were getting there and crashed into the ground.
(35:47):
It's really terrible, but it takes the snakes on the plane
movie, which I thought should have been Crocodiles on a Plane
movie. I'm.
Going to have to go rewatch thatand be like this.
This movie is based on a series of actual offense or whatever.
No, I I too, like many, many Americans, feel that the the TSA
(36:14):
is a little bit overboard with their security and safety checks
and what you can and can't bringon a plane.
I think this is the one time where I'm gonna I'm gonna have
to side with them. You should not bring your
emotional support large reptile onto a plane with you.
(36:34):
It's really interesting that there was no crocodile carcass
found, but I'm pulling up some images here.
I don't know if I'll be able to show them.
Did you get a look at the corner?
It's a man, It's really. It's a manatee standing there in
a robe with like a very cheap crocodile costume hanging out of
(36:55):
a dumpster next. It was the manatees all.
Along I fucking knew that they keep going so much sense well.
Let's get into our first one that doesn't have to do with
animals, and our next two don't have to do with animals.
So oh wait, no, well, it's the only one today that doesn't have
(37:17):
to do with animals. So we almost got through it.
Well, this one is an unusual death that you might have
actually heard of and it be sureto get you out of your seat.
The outbreak of this started in July of 1518 in Strasburg, which
was at the time part of the HolyRoman Empire and became part of
(37:38):
France. Eventually it changed the hands
a few times during wars and eventually reverted back to
France after World War One and then to Germany obviously during
World War 2 and then back to France after World War 2.
This story actually, while it has nothing to do with animals,
is entirely based off of nation state lines that this is the
(38:00):
murder that we're talking about.Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah.
Well, in July. 15th is Constantinople, Yeah, Sorry,
yeah. A woman named Frau Troffe and
her daughter Frau Line Emma Gotts, started dancing in what
would be called an uncontrollable and fervent
(38:21):
manner. So just picture someone, and I
know you probably don't know what I'm saying, and this is
completely tripping their mind off at Coachella just just
flailing their bodies fervently,continuously.
They are having the time. If you need to see an example of
(38:42):
what these folks were dancing like, go look up some some crowd
footage from Grateful Dead show.It's pretty much exactly the
same, but. It is exactly the same.
They're having the time of theirlife, but it is actually kind of
scary, the kind of tripping thatif you stop dancing, you feel
like you'll die. Well, they were dancing on a
(39:03):
small. Staying alive was.
About it was right. Have been wondering God Saturday
night fever staying. Dude these songs make so much
more sense now. They had dance hysteria.
They had dance hysteria. Yep, fucking shit.
They were dancing on the small cobbled St.
(39:24):
Outside of their homes. So at the beginning there was no
music playing while they were dancing, just completely.
Out of their. Mind.
Yeah, the tune of life. Well, as people were passing by
and noticing those two continuously dancing, jerking,
jiving, they started to mimic her.
(39:46):
Yep. Yeah, they started to mimic her.
Is that? Is that old Misses Wilson
twerking on a crumpet just the crumpet?
Kind of jealous I am too. Do you think anyone care if we
joined? We'll bring some alcohol.
OK, let's go. Then it became a fucking party.
(40:06):
It did, and they didn't stop fora week.
And people stopped. Joining in, more than 30 people
started dancing alongside her and her daughter.
Yep, Yep, it's literally Saturday Night Fever.
This started in early to mid-july and it lasted all the
way until mid August because, well, they probably weren't
(40:30):
drinking enough water or eating at all because they were burning
calories like this. I mean if you ever dance you get
tired after like 15. Minutes these we're in a bunch
of time travellers from the disco era that just all like
just boogieed so fucking hard that they went back in time
while they were hopped up on coke.
(40:51):
They got yeah, they coke themselves up.
That's the true secret to time. Travel.
Literally time travel. Yeah, yeah.
Makes sense? They pooled with sweat drenched
in it, basically ringing all thewater out of their bodies, and
due to their probably terrible clothes and shoes at the time,
(41:11):
blood started discovering in their shoes and all over the
ground. So just imagine how how
horrifying this and and funny insome ways, but horrifying this
is. If you just watch somebody
continuously dancing, you're like, Oh yeah, for the first
couple days you're like, damn, they're having fun.
(41:33):
And then like, they're smiling, but they're almost like not
smiling. The victims were starting to cry
and scream for help while they were dancing because of weeks
they couldn't get and they couldn't eat enough food and
they couldn't stop. The lucky ones were dying of
(41:53):
heart attacks. The lucky ones were dying of
heart attacks. The other ones.
Exactly like the disco era, Joeythinks.
True. Yeah.
No, it's true. Back when Coke was considered
fun, before they knew that caused problems.
The lucky ones were dying early from heart attacks while
everybody was in polyester suitsand very uncomfortable platform
(42:16):
shoes. Their feet were bleeding, they
were sweating. And who sold those suits
anyways? Manatees, we're back right
around well, during August, the town actually started
constructing a stage and broughtin musicians and professional
dancers as these people that couldn't stop dancing were
(42:41):
dying. They were like, pull, there's
blood on the ground, blood in their shoes, blood on the
ground. And the government was like, you
know what, let's take advantage of this fever and let's make
everybody dance and they're like, they're going to dance.
At least we'll get rid of some of them, you know, in a so
government thing to just let people dance to their death with
(43:02):
not caring. Jesus Christ.
So they sent in the New Jersey National Guard.
Yes, so they sent in the New Jersey National Guard to take
care of them once it hit its. Peak.
That is how Guido's came to be. It's the origin story, Mama.
(43:28):
I mean it was kind of near Italyat the time.
That's true. Once it hit its peak, there were
15 people dying per day dancing themselves to death, which is a
shit ton of. People in this town.
It's Strasburg. It was a pretty big town in the
Holy Roman Empire. Yeah, but like back in the day,
like I pictured, like that's a shit ton of people.
(43:50):
And yeah, yeah. There's a good amount of people.
I mean, I imagine there's thousands, honestly, I imagine
there's thousands in this town. Well, there are no exact
concrete, like numbers of death tolls.
So I did a little wild stab in the dark of like how many people
I think died during this time. Because I would say if you die
(44:12):
within three to five days without water, right?
So you're dying, you can only gowith three to five days.
I imagine the first few days they had.
So. It had some water for I'd say if
you started on July 11th, you give it four days.
That's the 15th. It would have taken about, in my
opinion, around 800 lives if it was about the correct count at
(44:35):
15 per day. So 800 people in my estimate
died of dancing to death. Dance, dance.
Fever. Dance, Dance fever.
And now you did. Well, during the time there was
no known cure for. I call it dancitis or maybe
(44:55):
flossitis. The physicians said they would
have to dance themselves free ofit.
So they basically said these people just have to dance
themselves to death because theydidn't know there was an.
Excuse me, Doctor. Doctor Dog and Doctor Funk.
What do you think we should do? Well, they're just going to have
to dance themselves through it. Yeah, yeah.
(45:18):
Well, they didn't. They didn't know what was going
on and it was a bad idea. Obviously they, I mean, who
knows? So just like they interrupt.
Somebody while they're dancing, what else could they do?
Well, this, they can do this. So obviously, like governments
(45:39):
do, because people started dyingdoing this, they banned public
dancing. The government is Rosenberg
banned public dancing. And when that didn't stop it, I
mean, obviously what are they going to do?
Those people are going to probably die anyways because
they don't know how to fix it. So they just after that, they
(46:00):
went, well, nobody's not stopping dancing.
Now we have to ban the music. They're breaking the law.
They banned the music. They could die dancing.
Yeah, yeah. They banned the music that they
had brought in themselves, so and the dancers that they had
brought themselves, because I remember they brought in pro
dancers and pro musicians to play.
(46:20):
And so after that they banned both of those and it still
didn't stop anything. This is you're right, this is
the most government shit possible.
You're like, fine, if you're notgoing to follow the law that we
made-up, we're just going to take away all the shit that we
gave you that made your shit worse.
How do you like them apples? See, we are tough on crime.
(46:41):
Yeah, I mean, maybe for part of it, it made it nicer because at
least in the background of you, someone dancing to death, they
had a nice backbeat to it, you know, Like as they're bleeding
to death on the ground, there's like boom, boom, boom.
Boom. There would be like a
hysterical, like, wails and likecrying and like all sorts of
really bucked up sounds coming out.
(47:02):
Yeah. And then not just in New Jersey,
but also here too, there would be hysterical wails and there'd
be crying. And also that was a bad joke
but. Yeah, yeah.
But. But yes, I mean, honestly, the
music made sense, but I think what happened is too much of
their tax. The government's tax revenue was
dying off and they couldn't afford to pay the band anymore.
(47:24):
That's that would be my assumption.
Oh yeah, that could have been. Yeah, that's, that might be true
actually. Well, obviously none of that
worked. So like, obviously banning music
and banning dancing did not workand eventually they took the
people who were afflicted with it to a monastery in the hills
and either restrained them or just let them dance until they
(47:48):
died in the hills. The.
Monastery Mariachi line in history.
All right, let's go. Yeah, let's go every.
Time they go like done, like hitleft or hit right, there's just
another body falling out and rolling down there.
Exactly. Yeah, so, so what's crazy?
(48:11):
So there is some like there is some interesting stuff well
about this, right, so. If you need to know about the
chemical behind it. Ergo, poisoning.
Ergot poisoning. Ergot.
Yep. Yeah, LSE.
Baby, they don't know if it was really that they they did say it
(48:32):
could have been ergot poisoning because obviously that happened
a lot during this time. Take it from someone who's taken
ergot, this sounds about right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But a lot of people, yeah. I guess, you know, basically,
yeah. LSD eventually what it would be.
Yeah. Some people thought it actually
(48:52):
could have been just like some kind of mass hysteria in the
time they call it like a a dancing curse too, which
actually became a disorder that they figured out.
But we've talked about that after you go.
I'm starting to wonder here about all these moments in
history where it's like they were first labeled mass
(49:14):
hysteria. Like every fucking time
something an anomaly happens, instead of saying it's a
phenomenon, which is like the term you would use for, you
know, not currently understood, right?
Yes. They say hysteria and it kind of
like downplays that. It makes the people involved
seem like they're stupid. Oh, they're crazy.
Or they're crazy. Or there was there was so many
(49:36):
things going on you would understand if they lost their
wits. It's hysteria.
And I just wonder about who has been traveling through time
constantly labeling things at the moment of events is hysteria
and then disappearing before they lose their medical license.
We're taking a road trip to Tampa anyways.
(49:59):
Well eventually it became labeled as St.
Vitus Dance, which was name of the disorder that what they
think it called that actually got renamed to Sydenham's Korea.
Wasn't it? I thought it was a was it Saint
Elmo's fire? That's a neurological disease.
(50:24):
No. Maybe Saint Anthony's fire.
I don't know. Saint Elmo's fire sounds right,
but but Saint Vitus's dance is what it's like, what it became.
And so the reason that's the name St.
Vitus is because St. Vitus was actually a in the
Middle Ages, he was counted as one of the 14 Holy Helpers in
(50:44):
Germany. And he had a feast that was
celebrated with dancing before his statue.
And dancing became synonymous with St.
Vitus. And so they added this.
He became the patron St. of dancers and of entertainers in
general. And he was also said to protect
against lightning strikes, animal attacks and oversleeping.
(51:05):
So all the other people in her other stories could have used
St. Vitus as hell.
That St. Vitus itis that's damn so I
don't think you got. Are you getting into where ergot
pops up and why they got exposedto it?
They don't think for the most part that it was ergot
(51:27):
poisoning. They think it was probably just
the neurological damage that they had from Korea from sorry,
relook at what it says, 'cause Ialways forgetting it.
The Sydenham's Korea, That's what they really think that it
was. They didn't think that it was
because of the idea of the way that they jerked and their
(51:49):
bodies moved and that it wasn't ergot because it wouldn't have
it would have eventually gone out of their system because they
weren't eating. That is, they weren't eating and
so. The reason why we're having this
debate, though, about the ergot is that ergot on untreated rye
(52:12):
and like grains, bread grains, cereal grains, ergot's a type of
fungus that can naturally appearon the grains themselves.
And it's not necessarily easy tonotice that it is on grains.
And especially when you're goingthrough and just kind of like
processing shit tons of shit tons of grain to turn into flour
(52:32):
to turn into bread. And back in the day when towns
only had like one or two bakers and everybody got their bread
from the same place, it's kind of like wherever the hell those
one or two bakers managed to source their raw materials to
make everybody's bread. That's the ingredients
everyone's getting that day. Ergo ergot.
If a batch of of rye came in, for instance, that was infected
(52:57):
with ergot, Baker made a whole batch of bread and sent it out
to everybody. An entire town or neighborhood
or a city could like all start experiencing very intense
hallucinations and things very similar to to this mass dance
craze here the first the first disco era, but.
Yeah. Yeah, and I got to throw it out
(53:19):
there, actually. No, Save that.
Save that for a bonus about how LSA and LSD ergot led to LSD.
Yeah, nice. Well, this wasn't the only
example of this either, because in the 11th century, in Saxony,
it happened as well as in Italy in the 15th century, The Italian
(53:43):
one happened because a woman wassupposedly bitten by a tarantula
and the venom was working through her body, made her jerk
and move until the. Yeah, until the venom succumbed
her. So basically that wasn't it.
It found out eventually that that wasn't part of the same
thing that happened in the Strasburg.
Strasburg dancing plague is which it became called and it's
(54:08):
just venom that eventually killed her.
But these people from again, like it's not always cut and dry
what it is. So could have been some ergot
poisoning, could have been the Saint Vitus's dance or what it
is now called is Sydenham's Korea neurological jerking and
like move, uncontrollable movement of your body.
(54:31):
So could have been either of those things.
But again, it's in the past. A lot of times it's not super
well notated. It's kind of hard to for us to
figure it out. Well, these last two stories
that we're going to hop into aregoing to be rather short, but I
wanted to get them in here because just how ridiculous they
(54:51):
are. The next story is that of Samuel
Spencer. Samuel was from Connecticut and
born in 1734. He became a lawyer and
eventually a politician, as whatwould normally happens, I guess,
because most of the time in those days, if you become a
lawyer, eventually become a politician happened a lot.
(55:12):
He moved from Connecticut to Anson County, North Carolina.
Anson is right in between Charlotte and Fayetteville, so
not super far from us. Maybe like 4 hours from us.
Well he was elected to the stateCongress in 1774 and 1775 and
then become one of the three judges appointed to the first
North Carolina Supreme Court in 1777.
(55:36):
He eventually became a leader inthe anti federalist NC
conventions prior to the revolution.
He became a Colonel in the localmilitia and eventually became a
commandant on the American side of the Revolution.
Well, the reason we are introducing him is not because
of the things that he did, but the things that were done to
(55:56):
him, just like we always talk about in the most unusual death.
Well, he died in 1793 while resting on his front porch, kind
of like a Scaly's. Well, in between court sessions,
he was taking a nice short snooze in a rocking chair right
on his front porch. He was wearing a red cap on his
(56:20):
head. A large Turkey gobbler, thinking
that the moving red cap was a challenge, attack the man and
threw him from his chair. Sam, covered in pecks and
scratches, develops basically Irisciplus.
Irisciplus and died in the firstknown case of death by Turkey
(56:43):
that wasn't on Thanksgiving. So he was murdered by a Turkey.
Oh my God, I love that so much. Yep, I'd never actually heard of
a Turkey killing someone except on Thanksgiving.
You know, when it gave people choked on a Turkey or something
(57:04):
like that. Turkey leg or?
You know they deep fry it and their house burns down.
Exactly, Yeah. Damn I love that story.
I I don't I don't have anything funny.
This is clearly not manatee related.
Nope, that was a Turkey. Yeah, that was that was 100%.
I'm just gonna I'm, I'm over here.
(57:25):
I'm trying to find space. I've been keeping score of how
many people manatees have killedand I I don't have a lot of room
left for turkeys, but. Yeah, I don't know why this this
turned into death by animals mostly, but that was just a lot
of those stuff, funny stuff thathappened.
Well, the last one, it's probably the saddest one, right?
(57:45):
So I know the last episode I kind of lifted us up.
I lifted us up with the guy who won the horse after, won the
horse race after he died, remember?
And we were just like, yeah, that was fucking died in the
saddle. Yeah, he died in the saddle.
This one didn't. Settle.
I'm going to depress of all of you until we get to our next
episode. We're going to be depressed.
So what? The fuck Joey?
(58:06):
Don't do that too. I know.
I'm sure a lot of people that are listening to this would
accept an unusual death in this way.
A man named Giacomo. I should know, this is Diane.
A man named Giacomo Ciaparini owned a cheese warehouse.
(58:27):
It's pretty recent too, as it happened in August of 2023.
As Giacomo was walking and checking in on the massive,
massive amount of ripening cheese in his warehouse, he
entered the area where a roboticarm was cleaning the cheese
rounds during the aging process.So basically, it's like cutting
(58:50):
off all the bad parts? Well, the ripening wheels that
are stored on metal shelves which go up to about 33 feet
high, right? The whole warehouse itself
stored up to 25,000 wheels of delicious, beautiful Grana
Padana cheese. As he was checking in on the
(59:15):
cheeses, one of the shelves broke in the warehouse and
created a domino effect, knocking over every shelf and
wheel of cheese. Giacomo was crushed by Grana
Padana cheese, and at 74, they basically had to go in there by
(59:35):
hand, pulling out each piece of cheese to uncover his dead body.
And that's the saddest way to go.
Death by cheese, not by cholesterol.
Well, thank you so much for listening to Black Cat Report
and Episode 1 36. Yes, 136.
(59:55):
You can catch all our cool new stuff and other mini sods and
game nights on patreon@patreon.com/blackcat
Report. Most of the stuff is literally
free. We just like to use it as a nice
way to give you all of the updates and new stuff that we
do. One solid place for
communication. You can also catch me or Gil on
(01:00:19):
one of the weekly Paranormal Happy hours, which is our Beer
Booze, an affiliate podcast. It's not really affiliate.
I just like calling an affiliate.
It's the same podcast. It's just two out of the four.
Yeah, this coming week will be probably K Booze and I Yeah,
(01:00:40):
we'll be doing it. And now we can get to our thank
yous for all of our gracious andgenerous and gratuitous Patreon
followers. If you haven't.
You hold on. On Patreon Do we have other
news? Yep, there's somebody we need to
give an extra special shout out to that I copied and pasted a
screenshot of at the very top ofyour script before the word
(01:01:03):
welcome, but you ran right through it.
But. I did.
But we're gonna do it right now.We're gonna do it right now.
Yes, we're gonna do it right now.
Yes. Give it.
Right now. We do want to thank The Nice
Vegetarian for their great review on iTunes.
Very cool and informative. Thank for y'alls hard work.
(01:01:25):
Thumbs up. And made us feel great.
Yeah, we do really appreciate you.
Thank you so much for taking thetime to review us.
If you haven't, please take the time to go on wherever you're
listening to us. It's Apple podcast, Spotify,
anything. Just give us a little review,
five stars and a little review or however you feel we're doing.
I feel we're not doing great. Message us on Instagram.
(01:01:45):
We'll fight you, but I won't look at it.
We'll look at it. He'll fight you.
He's the fighter of the group. All right, if you haven't taken
the time to follow us on Patreon, please do
patreon.com/blackcat Report. You can get all of our cool
stuff there and we are ready to give our shout outs.
(01:02:06):
You ready? Yes, Sir.
Good time do. You want me to read the shout
outs? If you want to, I can.
OK, when you ask, nevermind. Please continue.
You're confusing me. Go for it, Joey.
We want to thank Oscar Amandine,Stephanie, Harry Carey, Tristan,
(01:02:29):
Bud, Don Thomas, Little Mystery,Bobby Betsabay, Lucas, Tim D,
Max, Ian Morgan, Dragon Paul from the Star Blood Chronicles
Podcast, Tim Miller from Miller's Monsters, Marissa
Gavin, Fearless Leader of the Chicken Cult, Rachel AB Jayden,
(01:02:52):
Jackie, Yellow Bear, Dwayne AKA Snatch Twat, Alyssa Breed, A
Michael, Extreme Kristen from the Paranormal Girl Podcast,
James, and most importantly our sexiest producer.
Sexiest one? Yeah, copy.
Kitty. Girl, thank you all so much for
(01:03:16):
listening and we'll see you nextweek.
Paul Meyer Atoll in the Sea WindMurders part face I'm.
Like that? Love you all, bye.
Bye.
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