June 26, 2025 • 55 mins
There's plenty of fish in the sea! And one really, REALLY big one! In this episode, Ayden takes a deep dive, and a bite out of, the story of El Demonio Negro. A mega-sized shark said to inhabit and terrorize the Sea of Cortez.
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Want to hear your story on Susto? Fill out the Letters From the Beyond form or visit SustoPodcast.com to be shared on the show!
Become a Patron here!
Want to hear your story on Susto? Fill out the Letters From the Beyond form or visit SustoPodcast.com to be shared on the show!
Become a Patron here! Subscribe to Susto's YouTube channel!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
A cool friends, it's me Adrian or Aiden. Either way,
I am still your host and you are still listening
to Sousto, the podcast of paranormal folklore from Latin American
and Hispanic cultures. I hope everybody is staying cool. It
is starting to get very warm. It's been warm, not
starting to get it's been warm. It's officially summer, and
I am in that mode where I am thinking I
(00:47):
need to just do a batter recording of a bunch
of episodes so that I don't have to sit in
our apartment with the AC and fans everything off so
that we don't get all that background noise. That or
I find a studio and pay for in studio recording
because it is hot. It's warm, so I'm gonna brave
(01:07):
the heat right now, and that's me issue that. Hey,
you don't worry about it. That has nothing to do
with you. I will take care of it as always.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
If you are a.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Best cool friend on Patreon, you have the opportunity to
watch this video episode so you can see my lovely,
really cool shirt that is from and after that, if
you can't see it, it says abolish ice. So I
hope that you have been staying cool while you have
been using your First Amendment right to say buck ice
and abolish ice. A lot has been happening in the
(01:36):
world and in the news, and you all already know
how I feel. I at least I hope so, because
I say it often and I say it loud, and
I will keep saying it, and especially if you've been
following me on social media, at Cystal podcast, on every platform,
we got to keep these conversations going. So hopefully you
all are staying cool, you are staying safe, and you
are staying vigilant. That feels like a very strong word
(02:00):
to use, but there are there's some wild shit happening
right now. So pardon the French, but not really. I'm impassioned.
I'm angry, and that's how I'm choosing to express it.
And I hope that you are keeping saying, you're finding
ways to keep saying, and you're keeping cool and you're
keeping safe. Anyway, I don't know, I just I came
out here with some really strong energy today. It's the heat,
(02:20):
you know, it's got me all rattled up. You know,
It's not the extreme and horrific violations of human rights.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
It's the heat.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
With that being said, I will also say Happy Pride Month.
I hope that we are also remembering to celebrate, but
again to bring it all back. Remember Pride Month or
Pride was and is a riot. We must continue to
fight and honor those who came before us, those around
us currently, and those who will come in the future.
So again, you know, it's because we're also in cancer
(02:47):
season right now, so I'm really feeling myself. I'm really
feeling in my element that that strong water energy, you know,
like the waves of the ocean, those currents. I'm just
dragging and pulling things around. I'm feeling it, you know. Okay,
specifically about sustal major announcements or some announcements.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
That I have for you.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
You may have seen on social media already that we
have officially launched the Susto spell Book Club. So this
is a book club for listeners of Sustal, for followers
of SUSTOL. Huge shout out to my patrons on Discord
who helped me develop the idea for this. They actually
reached out and said, hey, you know, the last few
(03:25):
books I've read have been recommendations for you.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Would you ever do a book club?
Speaker 1 (03:29):
And I said, you know what, one person asked, that's
you already know me. That's all it takes for me.
So the spell Club has officially been launched. I want
to encourage you to use the time between now and
the beginning of July, which is when we will.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Start the book, to go out and purchase it.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
We are going to read Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Steven
Graham Jones, who you may also have read before. He's
written another really popular title called The Only Good Indians
and other acclaimed works of course, but we are going
again to be reading Buffalo Hunter Hunter. So the way
this is going to work is we will have the
whole month to read the book. At the end of
the month, I am doing a public Zoom meeting, so
(04:05):
for anybody who wants to join, feel free to join
on On that meeting, we'll have discussions about it. But throughout
the month. If you are a goolfriend or a best
Goolfriend on Patreon so that's the middle and the top tiers,
then you have access to the book club channel on Discord,
which means that you will be able to.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Discuss the book.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Hopefully spoiler free would want to ruin it for each other,
but we'll be able to discuss the book throughout the
reading and not just at the end during the zoom call.
If you have any questions about that, please let me know.
I have posted it on the Patreon and of course
we've talked about it on discord already, so if you
have any questions, please feel free to reach out. But
this is going to be something that you can participate
(04:44):
in without being a patron. Of course, there are additional
perks if you are signed up at patreon dot com
slash Sustal podcast.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Moving forward, so you have a couple of days to
get that together.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
If you haven't seen the post on social media, this
is your not your This is your heads up to
participate if you'd like to.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
If not, don't worry. Moving forward.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
I want to thank Austin Public Library for having me
at the Luise branch to do a live storytelling session.
I've done these events with the Public Library many times
and I always enjoy them. The crowd that showed up,
thank you so much for being there and for being
so engaged. It was so much fun. I hope you
feel that way that you had fun. I certainly did.
Getting to talk with you all and answer questions and
of course tell scary stories live in person with lights
(05:25):
and music and sound effects. So hopefully more events at
the library. Definitely for sure at least one. I will
be at the Austin Public Library the Luise Branch again
on October tenth for another of those events, and I
will be at the night Owl's Spirit Social on Halloween Night.
You can follow night Owl Podcast on Instagram and I
think on their other socials and on their website. They're
(05:45):
posting about the events already. I will be posting more
about it as we get closer. That's going to be
Halloween night. So this is also kind of heads up
if you know anybody, if you are booking for events
coming up in the spooky season, this is generally when
people start reaching out to me. So take our opportunity
reach out. Let's work something out before I get too
too busy. Last year was really, really fun. I had
(06:06):
several events throughout the month of October and I would
love to do that again. I think you had at
least one thing every weekend, So please feel free to
reach out to me if you're in the Texas triangle,
so the Houston, San Antonio, Austin area, Please please reach
out to me, and of course in the valley. I
am always looking for reasons to visit home, and if
there's an event going on that somebody wants me at,
(06:27):
that's more than enough for me. So again, please reach out.
Email me shustopodcast at gmail dot com, visit the website,
send me a DM on social media, whichever is easiest
for you. I will be patiently waiting and I am
excited to get out there this spooky season. It feels
like it's so early, but I mean, honestly, this is
when it happens every year. You got to start early
and get things locked in, right. Okay, let's go ahead
(06:47):
and get into today's episode, which is in honor of
the fiftieth anniversary of Jaws. Just a tiny quick thing
about it. Jaws was originally released on June twentieth, nineteen
seventy five, in a moderate amount of theaters, and after
it was a hit, a cult classic and instant success,
it was widely released all across the US and Canada.
(07:07):
And I'm not gonna lie. Although it is propaganda against sharks,
not intentionally right, that's not what they intended. It is
still the reason that I am afraid of big open
bodies of water. You know, I know, sharks are not
as dangerous as literal scientists say they are, but it
still freaks me out. So again, the Jaws Anniversary was,
I believe, on the twentieth, and Shark Week is actually
(07:30):
July twentieth. So this whole month right here, this month
span is all about sharks, and that is why we
have decided to do the story of Demonio Negro. San
(08:01):
Philippe in Baja California is the kind of town that
always smells like sea salt. Even in the dry heat
of the afternoon. You can catch the scent of the
sea blowing through the market stalls, mixed with frying oil
from the food stands and the sharp sweetness of mango
from the fruit carts. It's a place where people take
(08:22):
the time to enjoy life. Fishermen lean on dock rails
long after their boats are tied up, kids kick soccer
balls between pickup trucks, and the market stall employees treat
every customer like a long time friend. When the sun sets,
the lights come on string by string, little white bulbs
(08:43):
hanging across yards. Families gather, music plays, and the night
feels like it might never end.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
That night, it was.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Even more alive than usual. It was Lita's birthday, Domas's
youngest daughter, just turn to seven. She was wearing a
plastic tar from the corner store and holding a melting
ice cream cone in both hands.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Like it was treasure.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
His wife made Lita's favorite, theamalis, and hung papel picgado
across the patio. Everyone was there, neighbors, cousins, even the
old man from down the road, the one who always
said Domas owed him a beer but never meant it.
But Domas wasn't relaxed, not entirely. He kept checking his watch,
(09:30):
glancing toward the shore. His neighbor had come by earlier
and said there was a run, a school of Dorado
passing through Big Ones too, and plenty of them. The
Americans called them Mahi mahi, and they were always in demand.
That kind of opportunity doesn't come often, not this late
in the season, and Domas hadn't had a great month.
(09:54):
Engines breaking down nets, getting torn, bait not hitting the
sea hadn't been generous lately. So when his wife caught
him looking toward the shore again, she gave him a
tired understanding smile and nodded. Go. She said, bring something home.
Leetha pouted Damas, kissed her forehead and promised to bring
(10:14):
her back a goldfish big enough to ride. He didn't
know that he would not be able to keep that promise.
He set out just after ten.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
The night was.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Warm, the sky clear, stars so bright you could see
them for miles. His little boat, twenty feet long and
made of wood, rocked gently as he headed east toward
deeper waters. Everything felt right. He reached the spot around midnight,
tossed out his line, and within minutes tug tug, tug.
(10:47):
He had his first dorado, bright green and gold, flipping
wildly as he pulled it in, Then another and another,
For the first time in weeks. He smiled without worry.
The cooler filled, fast, fat, healthy fish the kind buyers
paid good for. He wiped his brow, cracked a beer,
(11:11):
and leaned back against the edge of the boat. The
moon hung low, The water was like black silk. A
good night. Then a shift in the water. He didn't
notice at first, just thought the fish had moved on,
But then he realized something else. The water had gone still,
(11:34):
not calm, still, no currant, no breeze, not even the
hum of distant insects from the shore, just silence and emptiness.
The sonar on his little depth finder was blank, no fish, nothing,
as if the ocean had emptied. Then the smell hid him, rotten,
(11:58):
metallic like rust and spoiled meat baking in the sun.
But he was miles from the shore. Nothing should have
smelled like that this far out. He turned to check
his bait cooler, and the boat moved, not from wind,
not from waves.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
From below.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
A thud like something brushing the hole. Then a scrape, slow, long,
like claws dragging along the underside of the boat. He froze,
held his breath, then leaned over the edge with his flashlight.
At first nothing, then movement, a shadow, long, wide, moving
(12:44):
just beneath the surface, maybe twenty feet long, no longer
much bigger. He backed up, grabbed the radio, clicked it dead.
He hit the radio again and swore till nothing, just
another part of his boat breaking when he needed it most.
(13:05):
Then Domas heard it. It started low, almost felt, more
than heard, a vibration in his bones, like standing too
close to a subwoofer.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
But it was coming from the water.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
The sea itself was humming, And then the tail rose,
a massive tail, black as tar, shot up from the
deep and crashed down across the stern of the boat.
The whole boat lurched sideways, supplies spilled into the dark
Domas was thrown against the side, shoulder cracking against the railing.
(13:43):
He looked up and saw the black fin. It rose
out of the water like a monolith, jagged, tall as
a man, not curved like a great white, not smooth
like a whale. This was wrong, primitive, covered in scars.
And then he saw an eye, one eye, just under
(14:04):
the surface, glinting in the moonlight. Huge, dark, cold, no
curiosity in it, no hunger, just awareness. It watched him.
Then it vanished, though Moss held still, barely breathing, prayed
to every saint he could remember. He waited one minute,
(14:27):
then five. The sea stayed still, no tail, no eye,
no shadow, just open water. He eased himself toward the console,
hands trembling, slipped his fingers around the key. The engine started.
He didn't cheer, didn't smile, just gripped the wheel and
(14:52):
steered toward the coast. It was still pitched black, but
he could just make out the silhouettes of land far
in the distance at least an hour away at this speed,
but it was something. He sped up. The boat began
to move, slow at first, then faster. Domas excelled, wiped
(15:12):
his face salt, water and sweat. He was going to
make it, but twenty minutes into his escape, the water
changed again. The surface behind him rippled once more, not
from the wind, something just beneath. He didn't look back
at first, didn't want to, but instinct forced him, and
(15:35):
there it was a giant dorsal fin, slicing through the moonlight,
maybe fifty yards back. No sound, no wake, just following.
Domas gunned the engine. The fin disappeared. He kept going,
jaw clenched, pulse hammering in his ears. Ten minutes later
(15:57):
he glanced back again, abe it had gone. Then something
bumped the hole, soft at first, then again, this time
on the other side, thunk, like something massive was nudging him,
toying with him. Then the engine sputtered. He hit the
(16:19):
gas again. The motor screamed, then stopped dead. No smoke,
no backfire, just gone. Domas stared down, wide eyed, then
dropped to check the outboard. Everything looked fine, but they
were dead in the water. And then he heard it
(16:40):
that hum again, closer, now deeper, bone chilling, as if
it was coming from inside him.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
He looked over the.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Edge and saw bubbles rising fast. Then bam, the tail
struck again, this time from the front. The boat pitched backwards.
Domas slipped, hit his ribs and caught himself just before
falling overboard. Another strike, this one not from below, but beside,
(17:10):
like it was circling, taking its time playing. He grabbed
a flare, his only one, and fired it into the air.
The red light flickered on the surface, revealing a shape
the animal just beneath the waterline, sixty feet long, maybe more.
(17:31):
Not like anything he'd seen before, something older, something monstrous.
Domas backed away from the edge. He whispered to the sea,
please no. The water calmed, too calm. Then the boat
lifted up. Domas screamed, grabbing the rail as the stern
(17:54):
rose beneath him, like something was lifting the entire vessel
from underneath. He didn't have time to pray. The boat
hung for a heartbeat, then the ocean let go. The
boat shattered as it slammed back down hole split in two.
Lomas hit the water hard, gasped, choked, kicked, upward through
(18:16):
floating debris and blood. Somehow he surfaced. Somehow he clung
to a half sunken plank and drifted into the dead calm.
The sea swallowed everything else, and Thomas blacked out.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
He was found the.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Next morning by the Navy patrol, alone, half frozen, eyes wide,
lips cracked. He wouldn't speak at first, would an eat,
just stared out at the horizon. When they got him
into the clinic, they found the marks on his back,
a semicircle of wounds, each four inches wide, as if
(18:57):
something very large had started to bite him but changed
its mind. Domas never fished again. He moved inland, bought
a repair shop. He doesn't talk about the sea, doesn't
talk about that night, But others have seen the same thing,
shadows beneath their boats, water going still, that low hum
(19:20):
from the depths, and every few years a boat never
makes it back. Welcome back, well friends, thank you so
(19:44):
much for tuning in to this episode. Again, we deeply
appreciate it, and by we I mean myself and of
course our resident ghost writer and research assistant, Jeffrey Doyle.
So we're going to go through the sources that we
have prepared for you today. The first one that we
have here is from a website called Nature World News
and its Nature worldnews dot com. This entry is called
(20:05):
El demonio negro what is the black demon.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Shark of Gortes.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
And of course all the direct links to these sources
will be in these Sustal Google docs on Patreon dot
com slash Sustal podcast. But once more, this is Nature
World News and this was published in twenty twenty three
by A Luis Franco and just to give you a
direct kind of not report, but a collection or kind
of what the general understanding of what el demonno negro is.
(20:32):
This is a source we wanted to include because the
story of Domas and being out in the boat that
is of course something fictional.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
It's an original that Jeff and I wrote.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
And this says El demonno negro, a Spanish term used
to describe a giant, fearsome shark, is stalking the waters
off Baja California in Mexico, prompting years of speculations, concerns,
and curiosity not only amongst locals but also internationally, responsible
for the alleged deaths of hundreds of wales and attacks
on boats. The legendary animal dubbed as the Black Demon
(21:04):
Shark of Cortez is still yet to be confirmed. So
this is one of those things that's very urban legend y.
And you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna figure this
out right now.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
What is an urban legend?
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Right a humorous or horrific story or piece of information
circulated as though true, especially when purporting to involve someone
vaguely related or known.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
To the teller.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I think this would qualify as urban legend as compared
to folklore or general kind of ghost story, because there
are people saying that they have had run ins or
they know someone that knows someone. It's one of those.
But this feels very also obviously related to one region,
so definitely this is like the urban legend realm of things.
This continues despite the uncertainty. Anecdotal evidence or eyewitness accounts
(21:48):
of the giant black Shark has been recorded in several
reports and documentaries, although different perspectives, so of course, there
again there's the idea of it being an urban legend.
Although different perspectives are provided, there is a resounding and
common theme. The accounts are implying the black demon or
the mono negado, as it's called in this region, has
a size of up to sixty feet in length and
(22:10):
similar to a school bus. You terrifying again. This again,
it's an urban legend. It's probably not real, right, but
you know, we know more about space than we do
about the ocean, our ocean floors, so this freaks me out.
This continues with this. The predatory shark is often compared
by many to the now extinct Megalodon or autodos megalodon,
(22:33):
which is like the scientific name. Others think it is
a new yet unknown species or is just a large
great white shark. Regardless of the monio negado has struck
fear to the minds of people, with some claiming that
it could exist and is scarier than the megalodon. The
oceans cover This is okay, This is the part that
really gets me.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
This is the creepy part.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
The oceans cover seventy percent of Earth's surface, and humans
have only explored five percent of the ocean floor, a
gradual exploration process that has stalled for a long time
due to the dangers and depth of the oceans. In
this context, marine scientists have not identified and described all
sea creatures out there.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
What is down there.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
It is for this reason that the existence of some
unknown species like the Black Demon of Gortees is possible. Again,
that really weirds me out. Okay, And there's a really
cool picture here on this website of a giant fin
with these near these kayakers. That is scary. This continues
long before photoshopped images and videos were uploaded online. Tales
(23:34):
of the Black Demon of Cortes are passed around locally
in Mexico. Stories alone of the gargantuan beast have been
terrorizing both fishermen and tourists alike for several generations. According
to the Shark Week program of the Discovery Channel, so
at lononno negadro. They know who who they are. They
know this shark. This shark is well known, shark is famous.
(23:55):
Has been featured on Shark Week and other shark related programs,
and this says. In this one episode entitled Mega Jaws,
the Discovery Channel covered the purported claims where it interviewed
several local fishermen who have allegedly seen the quote demon shark. However,
investigations revealed that the animal could potentially be a whale
shark or any other known animal species like a manta
(24:18):
ray or great white shark. And then this gives like
the core details of what this thing is. It says
the legend originated from local people who reported having seen
a large black shark in the Sea of Cortez also
called the Gulf of California, off the coast of Mexico,
claiming its jaws are wide enough to swallow a whale
as a whole. According to the website Azy Animals, so
(24:39):
shark in Mexico and not again the idea, Like, I'm
trying to comprehend the size of this thing. This says
about sixty feet long, so the length of a school bus,
the length of a school bus, a shark the length
of a school bus. And I think somewhere else they
say that Eddemonio negro is a equivalent in weight to
(25:01):
several elephants. I think it said six elephants. This thing
is huge, youw. And again the reason they call it
the mono negro, and why people say it may be
a whale shark or maybe a white shark is because
it's similar in size. Whale sharks get pretty big, great
whites get pretty big. I think the average is like
twenty to thirty feet. Again, this thing is much bigger.
(25:24):
But one distinctive feature about the monio negaedro is that
its skin.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Or do fish of skin? Sharks don't have scales. I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
It's I'm gonna say skin. Its skin is black, is dark,
and its eyes are dark. But I mean all sharks
eyes are black too, But anyway, so it's black in color,
and that's why people think it is its own thing.
And then we're going to talk more about the pigment
or the melonin later. In these other sources it does
come up. This continues. It says the attribution of the
monno negro of Cortes with the megalodon is hard to prove,
(25:57):
since the ancient shark went extinct around two points six
million years ago, so the megalodon has been long gone.
That rhyme was beautiful in which research is blamed due
to food competition with great white sharks that we see today.
So basically, the megalodons when extinct because they just didn't
have a sustainable diet or they just weren't able to
sustain their eating habits with other predators in the ocean.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
This continues.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
According to the National History Museum, the megalodon can grow
between fifteen to eighteen meters or forty nine to fifty
nine feet in length, which is three times longer than
the biggest recorded great white shark. So again, great white
biggest size is going to be like what twenty feet?
The museum added that the size of the megalodon is
comparable to today's largest whale sharks. Okay, so great whites and
(26:43):
then in terms of size, it's great whites whale sharks,
and then Megalodon or the Mono Negro if it was
a real thing, which I'm raying to God it's not
because I don't want to get in the water. This
next source is from Mexico Unexplained dot com. It's titled
the Black Black Demon Gigantic Shark of Mexico. And this
one takes a different approach of how we discover of
(27:05):
the Mono Negro. This is really interesting. This says, and
I'm sorry. This was published in twenty eighteen by Robert Beido.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
And this says.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
It was a cold winter day in London. The year
was fifteen sixty four. English sea merchant John Hawkins had
recently returned from a successful trading voyage that took him
from the West African coast to the Spanish colonies of
the Caribbean and South America. Hawkins made a considerable amount
of money for his London investors, and on that winter
day in fifteen sixty four, he knelt before his Queen,
(27:35):
a dour Elizabeth I, who granted him a seven hundred
ton ship to continue trade exploits. This says a few
more things, and then it picks up here it says.
In fifteen sixty seven, Hawkins embarked on his third voyage,
which took him from West Africa to the coast of
the Yucatan Peninsula and to the Spanish settlements in the
modern day Mexican state of Veracruz. While in the waters
around the Yucatan, Hawkins and his crew encountered a large
(27:58):
flesh eating fish they had never seen before. When Hawkins
asked the locals the name of this strange aquatic beast,
an indigenous Maya person replied shock or xoc, which was
the name for the gigantic fish in the Yucathec Maya language.
When Hawkins and his crew returned to England in fifteen
sixty nine, the seafaring Englishman added a new word to
(28:20):
the ever growing lexicon shark, so it went from shock
to shark, the word used to describe a creature not
seen in the waters around Great Britain, would be the
only word in the English language with its origins in
a Maya dialect. Few English speakers know of the very
Mexican roots of the word shark, or how it entered
every day English. So sharks or Mexican essentially is what
(28:42):
I'm hearing my people getting.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
But this was really quiet. Never knew this.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
History before, so again it was xoc or shark, and
then you know, they of course changed it to shark
for whatever reason. This continues while many varieties of sharks
exist in both Pacific and Caribbean waters around Mexico. On
the opposite end of the country from the first English
encounters with sharks exists a tell of terror which has
only garnered attention recently. In the waters of the Gulf
(29:09):
of California, also known as the Sea of Cortes, between
the Baja Peninsula and the state of Sonora, a gigantic,
dark creature is said to lurk for generations. Fishermen have
told tales of ed Demonio Negro, or in English, the
Black Demon, a massive, aggressive shark that overturns boats, attacks whales,
and swallows sea lions in a single bite.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Is this just a big.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Fish story or could a previously unknown species of gigantic
shark exist in the cold depths of the Sea of Cortez.
Am I saying species weird? I feel like species species.
I feel like I'm trying to hit that sea real fancy.
I don't know, but anyway, so this sentence here chilled
(29:52):
me a bit.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
It says a.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Massive, aggressive shark that overturns boats, attacks whales, and swallows
sea lions in a single bite. This is giving that
it's an intelligent creature, and as we mentioned in the story,
because of the influence of these sources, it is intelligent.
It likes to play with its food like killer wells,
and that freaks me out because it's aggressive and intelligent.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
That's very scary.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Kind of keeping that in mind is a terrifying thing. Also,
this next part freaks me out. It says of the
over four hundred types of sharks on Earth, only ten
pose a danger to humans. That still, I don't know.
They say it's only ten, but I don't know it's
only ten right now? Until an eleventh poses danger to people.
But I did not know that there were over four
(30:35):
hundred types of sharks on Earth, as I wonder how
many there are on the Moon. Just kidding, that was
a terrible joke. This says as an apex predator, sharks
tend to generate a great deal of fear, even though
shark attacks on people are very rare. In twenty twelve,
a twenty foot long, two thousand pound great white shark
was killed in the Sea of Cortez near the coastal
city of Guayamas, and was one of the largest great
(30:56):
whites ever seen off the Mexican coast. This is also
making me think of that scene in the Craft when
they invoke or when they call the corners and they
invoke men on it's on the beach, and then the
next morning they wake up and she's like, these are
my gifts and it's all the sharks. That scene always
made me sad. I feel bad for the sharks, although
I'm scared of them. It's like a respect thing, you know,
(31:17):
when people are shocked that they are attacked by an
animal in the wilderness. My first thought is, obviously I'm
empathetic to them.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
It's terrible. It shouldn't happen.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
But I'm also thinking you're in their house. You broke
into their house, and you're just having fun in their home.
So I don't know, it's not that I don't feel
bad for people. It's just that I'm not super surprised. Like, yeah,
of course water is wet. If you go swim around
these wild animals, there's no telling exactly what they will do.
And that's for any wild animal like bears in the
forest too. But I'm getting off track anyway. This continues
(31:49):
later in this piece. It says some cryptozoologists, or those
who research and describe legendary creatures, claim that the gigantic
black shark of Mexico may be a megalodon, a species
species species of large prehistoric sharks that lived in the
oceans from twenty three million to two point six million
(32:10):
years ago, So somehow a couple or one may have
survived and is still living on It says the megalodon
had seven inch long teeth and a bite force between
twenty four thousand to forty thousand pounds, more than three
times that of a t rex, So this thing was
stronger the or at least its bite force was stronger
(32:30):
than a t rex. The average length of a megalodon
was about thirty five feet. The black demon fits the
megalodon description pretty well, although some accounts by fishermen say
the Mexican shark may be even bigger than the megalodon.
So they're saying megalodon average size was about thirty five feet.
But remember earlier the other store said they could get
up to fifty nine to sixty feet, And now this
(32:51):
is saying the monno negro may be even bigger than
a megalodon.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
That's wild. This continues.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Mexican paleontologist Roberto Diaz Sibacha and his blog Paleos the
History of Life on Earth gives an explanation as to
what happened to the gigantic prehistoric fish. Translated from Spanish,
this says, quote, Megalodon became extinct, and we were talking
about this earlier. The food sustainability. This says, Megalodon became
extinct before the Pleistocene began, when environmental changes caused by
(33:20):
alterations in the circulation of marine currents.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Cooled the world.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
In this new world, the megalodon food sources began to
become scarce, some went extinct and others packed their bags
and they moved to the coldest waters away from the
shark that, when unable to adapt, perished so more tacnically,
that is what happened, according to an actual doctor or scientist. Sorry,
I was going to say ocean doctor, but that's also wrong.
(33:46):
But this palaeonologist, this this real scientist broke it down
and they said that when the world climate, when the
currents changed, the megalodon's food sources either when extinct or moved,
and the megalodons stayed there so it didn't have food anymore.
This happens when the creatures hyper specialize in the exploitation
(34:07):
of one.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Or very few resources.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
So essentially, what I'm reading here in my mind is
that the megalon died because they're a picky eater. That's
what that sounds like to me. They hyper specialize in
the exploitation of one and you know what for you
all who have kids out there, and I'm going to
use that for my nibblings and siblings, and next time
they're being a picky eater, I would be like, why
are you hyper specializing the exploitation of one or very
(34:30):
few resources? Wait a minute, why that hits really good. Actually,
that's it, y'all use that one. Thank you paleontologist Roberto
ds Cibaja for that banger. That's amazing. So this continues on.
I want to read the last part of muski Heads,
the last part of this entry, because this was also
(34:52):
very interesting. And this it's starting to teeter on conspiracy
theory a little bit. This says the Internet is full
of fringe theories and urban urban legends. There's that word again,
and sometimes these stories and legends intersect. An interesting comment
in the comment section of a YouTube video about the
Monon Negro tied to the sidings of the gigantic shark
with a supposed secret underwater base in the Sea of Gortees.
(35:17):
The alleged base was first described by researcher Scott C.
Waring after he discovered some anomalies on the ocean floor
when looking at Google Maps, and there's a.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Photo here, I'm going to put it up in the video.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
The seventy six mile anomaly, sometimes referred to as a
sunken city or alien underwater bass by fringe researchers, ironically,
is located forty five miles off the Baja Coast near
Lobos Island, the site of Eric Mack's famous siding and
the location of the filming of the Monster Quest show
about the Black Demon Shark. So we skipped over this
part in in this entry. I'm going to go back
(35:49):
to it Siana who Eric Mack is, because that is important.
My bad, But this continues. A possible connection to a
supposed secret underwater base brings up a whole host of
new theories, which it seems are only limited by the imagination.
Whether or not this creature exists cannot be determined at
this time. For now, the Moonno Negro plays into our
most primal fear as humans, and as all legends go,
(36:10):
the story will only grow and morph with time. So
this now is saying there is there are some theories
that intersect some conspiracy theories and this urban legend of
Nero that I don't know. Possibly there is some sort
of my mind is going to People are saying that
the government is involved in this, or it's tied to
a sunken city or an alien base. So this shark again,
(36:35):
Elmonnio Negro, very famous shark. You guys, this really now
can just go any direction, right, Okay? So jumping back
to Eric Mack and his encounter, because there are many. Again,
it's an urban legend. It's very much I heard that,
someone heard that, someone said they saw, or friend of
a friend, whatever, you know. It's it's always that Eric Mack,
(36:58):
I think is modern day someone who said they had
an encounter and who has gone on record to share
his encounter. This says, although there have been numerous stories
and intergenerational tales of the the mono neegatal shark, there
have been no verifiable incidents of actual attacks. No local
newspapers have ever carried stories about the creature with verifiable
names and dates of purported attacks. The stories say that
(37:21):
the shark goes after medium sized boats and then retreats
to the depths of the sea, which can go down
to below ten thousand feet in the Gulf of California. Again,
what is down there?
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Halvy in.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Remnants of whales washed ashore are often cited as evidence
of the shark's existence. One eyewitness account often cited in
the literature on this creature comes from American sport fisherman
Eric Mack, who was sailing off the coast of Baha
in July of two thousand and eight close to ten
years ago when he had his encounter with this gigantic fish.
(37:52):
Mack describes it as being around fifty feet long, dark
in color, and with an enormous hind flipper. The creature
hit and rocked his boat, flipped up its tail, and
descended rapidly underwater. Mac never saw this huge fish again,
but his story got nods from the locals and caught
the attention of the TV series Monster Quest, which dispatched
(38:13):
a film crew to the Sea of Cortez to investigate.
The crew set up near Lobos Island, about one quarter
of the way down the eastern coast of Baja. After
days of investigating and filming, the Monster Quest show came
up empty. They broadcast their findings on March eighteenth, two
thousand and nine, during their third season, on an episode
called Mega Jaws So Again. And this is how we
(38:33):
got back to that was because it was they what
were they say? They set up base near where those
underground anomalies are. So those anomalies appeared to be on
the ocean floor. And I'm guessing that's why people are
saying that the shark has something to do with it, because,
according to this eyewitness account, the shark just descends, and
to the other stories, the shark just goes straight down,
assumedly to the ocean floor. We're gonna go ahead and
(38:56):
move on to the next source. This is from shark
of dot com and it says a legend of the
Black Demon Shark. I really just wanted to bring this
one up because it says a lot of the things
that we've covered already. But I like this one because
if you all can find it, there was a movie
made about this. I feel like I remember watching this,
(39:16):
but I'm not quite sure. The movie is called The
Black Demon, and it looks like it's available to watch.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
On Paramount right now. I'm not seeing it.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Available anywhere else to watch, just Paramount, but the trailer
is on YouTube. It's called The Black Demon. It is
from twenty twenty three, and I watched the trailer in
preparation for this episode. Of course, I feel like I've
seen this movie before, but again, it's like it just
could be generic shark movie, creature feature, kind of horror movie.
There's so many out there now, and it doesn't have
(39:48):
great reviews.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
It has a three.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Point seven out of ten on IMDb and twenty eight
percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
But be your own judge, be your own reviewer.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Maybe we'll do this for the Susto movie night, because again,
this shark is famous. I want to be like this shark.
It has its own movie. So again, it's from twenty
twenty three. It's called the Black Demon, and this source
or this article published in twenty nineteen. They embedded it
in there at the top because you know it, it's
(40:19):
extremely relevant. Yeah, this doesn't say too much different from
the other sources, but it does reinforce or it does
restate that many cryptozoologists this has become kind of like
a cryptozoologist hot spot, this area of Mexico or of
the ocean, at least because people want to look for it,
which I don't know why you would go out looking
(40:40):
for that thing, but yeah, people are very interested to
try and prove if it's real. It falls into that
category of the Luckness Monster, Bigfoot. I feel like it's
more believable than those though, because sharks are real. Megaladon
sharks were real. This could be one that for some
reason is still here for a reason I don't like
or in joy and freaks me out. The next source
(41:02):
that we have this is from paranorms dot com. It's
titled the Black Demon Prehistoric Predator or Misidentified Species. That
word again, species? Am I saying it wrong?
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Someone?
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Okay, species is option one. I feel like that's coming
off with the ch. Species is just with the C
and I feel like I've been saying species with the
C instead of species. I don't know why I'm having
such a conundrum with this word anyway. This was published
by Catherine Karkainen. I believe is how that's pronounced into
(41:36):
twenty twenty three under Monsters and Cryptozoology. This says, is
the Black Demon Shark real? The Black Demon Shark or
the Monio Negado is probably not real? Since no verifiable
proof of the Black Demon's existence has ever come to light,
the creature's true identity may never be fully understood. Yet
those who insist upon the creature's existence may never be
(41:57):
deterred by the theories offered by scientists and skeptics. But
are there massive documented sharks in the coastal waters of
California and Mexico, Yes, youw Here are a few possible
theories on real life encounters with the Black Demon. So
this is explaining away what it may have been again,
well shark comes up, and I wanted to talk more
(42:18):
about this. This says, there is in fact a known
shark species that can grow beyond twenty feet, and it
just so happens to inhabit the Sea of Cortez. It
is known as rhine Codon typus, or the well shark,
a filter feeding, gentle giant that eats tiny shrimp and plankton,
a far cry from human flesh. And these, if you
(42:39):
can imagine, just to explain to you, these are the
ones that are they're spotted, so they're a darker color,
but they have light spots or dots all over them.
They're actually kind of cute too, and they're very gentle.
Apparently they're filter feeders.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
This says.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
The well shark is equipped with a large, wide mouth
fit for sucking up small organisms through its gill rakers.
As alarmingly huge as this behemoth's mouth may be, large
animals are not on its menu, though it usually sports
spotted patterns on its skin. The whale shark can be
noticeably dark and even black in color under certain lighting conditions.
(43:13):
It stands to reason that fishermen making trips out the
sea at night could just see a portion of the animal,
such as a tail or dorsal fin, and mistake for
belonging to a big, dark, and far more dangerous predatory shark.
This is an especially likely scenario considering most people would
be rightfully startled to see a large, ambiguous shape in
the water, and fear is well known to distort how
(43:35):
humans visually perceive their surroundings. That is a great observation.
Amped up on adrenaline, an eight foot long shark could
easily become twenty feet or more in length, and a
twenty foot shark could perhaps be mistaken for an even
greater size. I'm not gonna lie that would happen to me.
I would be scared, and I would see a goldfish
and I'd be like there were one hundred piranhas in
(43:56):
the water trying to kill me, because it would freak
me out. The next one here, it says, is great
white sharks, ranking right behind the whale shark. Great white
sharks are the second largest shark species that inhabit the
Sea of Cortez. Since reports of the black Demon tend
to point to a shark that resembles great whites, this
could be a potential candidate for the creature's identity. There
(44:16):
have been fully documented accounts of large great whites in
the region, such as the two ton specimen that was
hauled onto the shores near Guayamas by fishermen in twenty twelve.
I think we mentioned that one already. However, individuals never
seem to grow past twenty feet in lengths, so individual
great white sharks, they never seem to get bigger than
twenty feet and sharks scientists theorize this is due to
(44:37):
constraints on the animal's liver that would keep it from
reaching larger dimensions. Think goodness, the universe said, We're going
to give you a liver that can only make you
this big, because even then a twenty foot shark is
two big shark sharks should be like a foot in
length that most and then the last one here of
the three that it says people may be getting the
(44:58):
the monionegati confused with giant manta ray, it says. Another
theory includes the possibility that eyewitnesses are simply seeing Mobila
by rostras. Simply it's simply the Mobula birostris or the
giant mantray. These rays can grow up to thirty feet
in length, with their wingspans reaching a comparable size. That's huge,
(45:18):
though they look nothing like sharks while viewed in their entirety,
a passing glance at a giant manta ray's fin as
it glides through the water could easily be mistaken for
the tip of a large sharkfin or tael So, before
we move on to the next source, sorry, I'm all
over the place with these. I want to move back
to sharkophile dot com because I accidentally missed that thing
(45:39):
about the melanin that I mentioned. But this goes in
hand with people confusing other things with the mono neegro.
In a section here that says Unraveling the Mystery, it
says one common origin for the myth is that the
shark is actually a megalodon, a prehistoric predator that could
grow to lengths of up to sixty feet. The biggest
flaw with this explanation is that, despite its appearance in
(46:00):
pop culture, the megalodon has been extinct for over two
point five million years or so. They say that they
want us to believe we've seen the underground anomalies on
the ocean floor. Anyway, this continues another possible explanation is
that the shark is actually a hyper melanistic great white
that has been able to grow to its fullest adult potential.
(46:20):
Although we know now that typically the fullest adult potential
is twenty feet because of their livers. We are learning
biology today. We are all scientists. However, again, we also
know that when people are freaked out, when they're scared,
they tend to exaggerate or they really believe that they
saw something that big because the fear is influencing what
(46:42):
they're seeing. Anyway, this continues. Hyper Melanism is the overabundance
of melanin the opposite of albinism, which can cause animals
to have darker skin than usual, the hypermelonism it causes
animals to have darker skin than usual. This condition has
been observed in some species of cat, sharks and rays,
so it may be possible that it could occur with
(47:03):
great white sharks, which can reach over twenty feet, So
I'm guessing that on average twenty feet sometimes maybe over.
Melanism might also be a factor for whale sharks, which
normally have a very distinct skin pattern. Again, those dots
being mistaken for the legendary predator whale sharks can reach
lengths of over forty feet and often can be seen
(47:24):
creating massive waves with their tails at the surface of
the water. Well sharks, however, would not qualify as vicious predators,
as they are filter feeders which eat krill and other
tiny fish and pose absolutely no threat to humans. Again,
we know that well sharks are cute, sweet, big softies.
I would hug one, I would hugg a well shark.
I'm not gonna lie because I'm not a shrimp or
(47:44):
a krill. But again, if it has that hyper melanism,
it can appear much darker. Maybe it makes the spots
darker as well, so they're not as contrasted the pattern
of the whale sharks skin. Yeah, there's many reasons or
many ways that people could confuse an already existing animal
that is not.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
The the Ammonia negato with the ammonia.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Negato, or saying it's comparable to a megalodon, right, which
blows my mind that these animals are out there just
being big and huge. The next source here is from
Weird California dot com, and this one's a shorter entry.
This again just kind of goes over what the Demmonia
negato is it talks about Eric Mack and his alleged
(48:24):
run in with the Demmonia Negator, and just to get
specific about that one more time, I'm not sure if
I mentioned it, but it says he reported having Themonion
negatal rock his boat.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
So it ran into him.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
So you could say that our story, the story of
the Maas was based off of Eric Mack or inspired
by his run in. It also talks about here the
melanism with the whale sharks, the Great white sharks. But
again this is just another source that we wanted to
include just because again this is Weird California or WEIRDCA
dot com. The Black Demon, and the final thing that
(48:55):
we have here, this is from Discovery dot Com or
the Discovery Channel, and this is talking about It says,
behind the scenes mystery of the Black Demon shark or
the Monon Negro in Mexico, legends swirl around ed the
Mono Negro, a fifty foot shark that has terrorized fishermen
and tourists to like for generations. Is this an undiscovered
(49:16):
predator forrest gallant hunts for answers in the most rugged
and remote parts of the Baja Peninsula. And then it
says stream Mystery of the Black Demon Shark and all
Things Shark Week on Discovery Plus so as you can
sell here. A Mystery of the Black Demon Shark is
a TV show on Discovery where this person, Forrest Gallant,
is looking for him, and there's pictures of him in
(49:38):
this entry that we have here, just out there swimming
in the water, in the open ocean water in this
region where they're saying that Edemonio Negro is just looking
for him. This is either one of the most brave
or one of the most skeptical, or one of the
most both of those things persons I have ever seen,
because he's out there and there's really cool pictures.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
There's a picture here.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
Of the well shark and its spots. There's also a
picture of I'm assuming it is forest, yeah, forest next
to a large ray and this thing looks like it's
twice his size, like the wingspan. They're honestly really pretty
pictures too, but again terrifying. I don't know how people
do this, just go out there in the open water,
but this show was about Forrest looking for the Monna Negro.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
And again at.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
The top of this page it says that Shark Week
starts on July twentieth, which again I love that timing
that it's anniversary of Jaws and then Shark Week. Is
that intentional? Am I missing something? Welcome back well friends,
(50:50):
Thank you so much for joining us for another episode
of Soustal. Real quick recap of what we have going
on for Soustal again. Thank you so much to the
awesome pub Library for having me out. I'm looking forward
to October's event and to hopefully many more aside from
that one, and to all the other events in October
that will be happening or throughout spooky season. It doesn't
have to just be October. You know, we did win
(51:12):
in the summer. We can do events all year round.
So if you are booking for events, or if you
know anybody booking for spooky themed events, please feel free
to reach out to me any way you can. I
am always excited to work with people, but definitely for
Spooky season. We want to reach out as early as
possible so that we can lock in dates before I
get busy, because I will get busy. Aside from that,
(51:32):
we have officially launched Susto's Spellbook Club, so again we
will start the reading at the beginning of July and
then at the end of the month we will do
a public zoom book discussion that is open to any
and everybody. So if you would like to join the
book club, just pick up your copy of Buffalo Hunter
Hunter and have it read by the end of the
(51:53):
month and we'll do our book club meeting. And of
course if you are a Patreon subscriber, then you will
have access to the spell book Club discord channel where
we can have discussions or just kind of talk about
the book or oh my god, have you read this
part yet?
Speaker 2 (52:06):
Hopefully no spoilers.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
Will find a way to avoid spoilers, but that discord
channel will be open for discussion throughout the reading and
an addition of course to the public discussion at the
end of the month. As always, if you have a
scary story that you would like to hear on a
Letters from the Beyond episode, please visit sustopodcast dot com
or the link at my link tree that's link to
your dot ee slash sustal and click these submit a
(52:29):
story or tell me a Story button. Send in your story.
If you also have or instead of something written, you
just have a photo, video, audio, recording, anything. If you've
caught EVP. Feel free to send it to me and
I will post it either in a Letters from the
Beyond episode and slash or on social media, which is
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If you would like to support the show, the easiest
(52:51):
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(53:40):
desiree A, Carla Archer, Diricado, Vanessa, Mariza Yeves, Manor, maal Iris,
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Your support means the underworld to me. I will talk
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bye st.
A cool friends, it's me Adrian or Aiden. Either way,
I am still your host and you are still listening
to Sousto, the podcast of paranormal folklore from Latin American
and Hispanic cultures. I hope everybody is staying cool. It
is starting to get very warm. It's been warm, not
starting to get it's been warm. It's officially summer, and
I am in that mode where I am thinking I
(00:47):
need to just do a batter recording of a bunch
of episodes so that I don't have to sit in
our apartment with the AC and fans everything off so
that we don't get all that background noise. That or
I find a studio and pay for in studio recording
because it is hot. It's warm, so I'm gonna brave
(01:07):
the heat right now, and that's me issue that. Hey,
you don't worry about it. That has nothing to do
with you. I will take care of it as always.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
If you are a.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Best cool friend on Patreon, you have the opportunity to
watch this video episode so you can see my lovely,
really cool shirt that is from and after that, if
you can't see it, it says abolish ice. So I
hope that you have been staying cool while you have
been using your First Amendment right to say buck ice
and abolish ice. A lot has been happening in the
(01:36):
world and in the news, and you all already know
how I feel. I at least I hope so, because
I say it often and I say it loud, and
I will keep saying it, and especially if you've been
following me on social media, at Cystal podcast, on every platform,
we got to keep these conversations going. So hopefully you
all are staying cool, you are staying safe, and you
are staying vigilant. That feels like a very strong word
(02:00):
to use, but there are there's some wild shit happening
right now. So pardon the French, but not really. I'm impassioned.
I'm angry, and that's how I'm choosing to express it.
And I hope that you are keeping saying, you're finding
ways to keep saying, and you're keeping cool and you're
keeping safe. Anyway, I don't know, I just I came
out here with some really strong energy today. It's the heat,
(02:20):
you know, it's got me all rattled up. You know,
It's not the extreme and horrific violations of human rights.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
It's the heat.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
With that being said, I will also say Happy Pride Month.
I hope that we are also remembering to celebrate, but
again to bring it all back. Remember Pride Month or
Pride was and is a riot. We must continue to
fight and honor those who came before us, those around
us currently, and those who will come in the future.
So again, you know, it's because we're also in cancer
(02:47):
season right now, so I'm really feeling myself. I'm really
feeling in my element that that strong water energy, you know,
like the waves of the ocean, those currents. I'm just
dragging and pulling things around. I'm feeling it, you know. Okay,
specifically about sustal major announcements or some announcements.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
That I have for you.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
You may have seen on social media already that we
have officially launched the Susto spell Book Club. So this
is a book club for listeners of Sustal, for followers
of SUSTOL. Huge shout out to my patrons on Discord
who helped me develop the idea for this. They actually
reached out and said, hey, you know, the last few
(03:25):
books I've read have been recommendations for you.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Would you ever do a book club?
Speaker 1 (03:29):
And I said, you know what, one person asked, that's
you already know me. That's all it takes for me.
So the spell Club has officially been launched. I want
to encourage you to use the time between now and
the beginning of July, which is when we will.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Start the book, to go out and purchase it.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
We are going to read Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Steven
Graham Jones, who you may also have read before. He's
written another really popular title called The Only Good Indians
and other acclaimed works of course, but we are going
again to be reading Buffalo Hunter Hunter. So the way
this is going to work is we will have the
whole month to read the book. At the end of
the month, I am doing a public Zoom meeting, so
(04:05):
for anybody who wants to join, feel free to join
on On that meeting, we'll have discussions about it. But throughout
the month. If you are a goolfriend or a best
Goolfriend on Patreon so that's the middle and the top tiers,
then you have access to the book club channel on Discord,
which means that you will be able to.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Discuss the book.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Hopefully spoiler free would want to ruin it for each other,
but we'll be able to discuss the book throughout the
reading and not just at the end during the zoom call.
If you have any questions about that, please let me know.
I have posted it on the Patreon and of course
we've talked about it on discord already, so if you
have any questions, please feel free to reach out. But
this is going to be something that you can participate
(04:44):
in without being a patron. Of course, there are additional
perks if you are signed up at patreon dot com
slash Sustal podcast.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Moving forward, so you have a couple of days to
get that together.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
If you haven't seen the post on social media, this
is your not your This is your heads up to
participate if you'd like to.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
If not, don't worry. Moving forward.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
I want to thank Austin Public Library for having me
at the Luise branch to do a live storytelling session.
I've done these events with the Public Library many times
and I always enjoy them. The crowd that showed up,
thank you so much for being there and for being
so engaged. It was so much fun. I hope you
feel that way that you had fun. I certainly did.
Getting to talk with you all and answer questions and
of course tell scary stories live in person with lights
(05:25):
and music and sound effects. So hopefully more events at
the library. Definitely for sure at least one. I will
be at the Austin Public Library the Luise Branch again
on October tenth for another of those events, and I
will be at the night Owl's Spirit Social on Halloween Night.
You can follow night Owl Podcast on Instagram and I
think on their other socials and on their website. They're
(05:45):
posting about the events already. I will be posting more
about it as we get closer. That's going to be
Halloween night. So this is also kind of heads up
if you know anybody, if you are booking for events
coming up in the spooky season, this is generally when
people start reaching out to me. So take our opportunity
reach out. Let's work something out before I get too
too busy. Last year was really, really fun. I had
(06:06):
several events throughout the month of October and I would
love to do that again. I think you had at
least one thing every weekend, So please feel free to
reach out to me if you're in the Texas triangle,
so the Houston, San Antonio, Austin area, Please please reach
out to me, and of course in the valley. I
am always looking for reasons to visit home, and if
there's an event going on that somebody wants me at,
(06:27):
that's more than enough for me. So again, please reach out.
Email me shustopodcast at gmail dot com, visit the website,
send me a DM on social media, whichever is easiest
for you. I will be patiently waiting and I am
excited to get out there this spooky season. It feels
like it's so early, but I mean, honestly, this is
when it happens every year. You got to start early
and get things locked in, right. Okay, let's go ahead
(06:47):
and get into today's episode, which is in honor of
the fiftieth anniversary of Jaws. Just a tiny quick thing
about it. Jaws was originally released on June twentieth, nineteen
seventy five, in a moderate amount of theaters, and after
it was a hit, a cult classic and instant success,
it was widely released all across the US and Canada.
(07:07):
And I'm not gonna lie. Although it is propaganda against sharks,
not intentionally right, that's not what they intended. It is
still the reason that I am afraid of big open
bodies of water. You know, I know, sharks are not
as dangerous as literal scientists say they are, but it
still freaks me out. So again, the Jaws Anniversary was,
I believe, on the twentieth, and Shark Week is actually
(07:30):
July twentieth. So this whole month right here, this month
span is all about sharks, and that is why we
have decided to do the story of Demonio Negro. San
(08:01):
Philippe in Baja California is the kind of town that
always smells like sea salt. Even in the dry heat
of the afternoon. You can catch the scent of the
sea blowing through the market stalls, mixed with frying oil
from the food stands and the sharp sweetness of mango
from the fruit carts. It's a place where people take
(08:22):
the time to enjoy life. Fishermen lean on dock rails
long after their boats are tied up, kids kick soccer
balls between pickup trucks, and the market stall employees treat
every customer like a long time friend. When the sun sets,
the lights come on string by string, little white bulbs
(08:43):
hanging across yards. Families gather, music plays, and the night
feels like it might never end.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
That night, it was.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Even more alive than usual. It was Lita's birthday, Domas's
youngest daughter, just turn to seven. She was wearing a
plastic tar from the corner store and holding a melting
ice cream cone in both hands.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Like it was treasure.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
His wife made Lita's favorite, theamalis, and hung papel picgado
across the patio. Everyone was there, neighbors, cousins, even the
old man from down the road, the one who always
said Domas owed him a beer but never meant it.
But Domas wasn't relaxed, not entirely. He kept checking his watch,
(09:30):
glancing toward the shore. His neighbor had come by earlier
and said there was a run, a school of Dorado
passing through Big Ones too, and plenty of them. The
Americans called them Mahi mahi, and they were always in demand.
That kind of opportunity doesn't come often, not this late
in the season, and Domas hadn't had a great month.
(09:54):
Engines breaking down nets, getting torn, bait not hitting the
sea hadn't been generous lately. So when his wife caught
him looking toward the shore again, she gave him a
tired understanding smile and nodded. Go. She said, bring something home.
Leetha pouted Damas, kissed her forehead and promised to bring
(10:14):
her back a goldfish big enough to ride. He didn't
know that he would not be able to keep that promise.
He set out just after ten.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
The night was.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
Warm, the sky clear, stars so bright you could see
them for miles. His little boat, twenty feet long and
made of wood, rocked gently as he headed east toward
deeper waters. Everything felt right. He reached the spot around midnight,
tossed out his line, and within minutes tug tug, tug.
(10:47):
He had his first dorado, bright green and gold, flipping
wildly as he pulled it in, Then another and another,
For the first time in weeks. He smiled without worry.
The cooler filled, fast, fat, healthy fish the kind buyers
paid good for. He wiped his brow, cracked a beer,
(11:11):
and leaned back against the edge of the boat. The
moon hung low, The water was like black silk. A
good night. Then a shift in the water. He didn't
notice at first, just thought the fish had moved on,
But then he realized something else. The water had gone still,
(11:34):
not calm, still, no currant, no breeze, not even the
hum of distant insects from the shore, just silence and emptiness.
The sonar on his little depth finder was blank, no fish, nothing,
as if the ocean had emptied. Then the smell hid him, rotten,
(11:58):
metallic like rust and spoiled meat baking in the sun.
But he was miles from the shore. Nothing should have
smelled like that this far out. He turned to check
his bait cooler, and the boat moved, not from wind,
not from waves.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
From below.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
A thud like something brushing the hole. Then a scrape, slow, long,
like claws dragging along the underside of the boat. He froze,
held his breath, then leaned over the edge with his flashlight.
At first nothing, then movement, a shadow, long, wide, moving
(12:44):
just beneath the surface, maybe twenty feet long, no longer
much bigger. He backed up, grabbed the radio, clicked it dead.
He hit the radio again and swore till nothing, just
another part of his boat breaking when he needed it most.
(13:05):
Then Domas heard it. It started low, almost felt, more
than heard, a vibration in his bones, like standing too
close to a subwoofer.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
But it was coming from the water.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
The sea itself was humming, And then the tail rose,
a massive tail, black as tar, shot up from the
deep and crashed down across the stern of the boat.
The whole boat lurched sideways, supplies spilled into the dark
Domas was thrown against the side, shoulder cracking against the railing.
(13:43):
He looked up and saw the black fin. It rose
out of the water like a monolith, jagged, tall as
a man, not curved like a great white, not smooth
like a whale. This was wrong, primitive, covered in scars.
And then he saw an eye, one eye, just under
(14:04):
the surface, glinting in the moonlight. Huge, dark, cold, no
curiosity in it, no hunger, just awareness. It watched him.
Then it vanished, though Moss held still, barely breathing, prayed
to every saint he could remember. He waited one minute,
(14:27):
then five. The sea stayed still, no tail, no eye,
no shadow, just open water. He eased himself toward the console,
hands trembling, slipped his fingers around the key. The engine started.
He didn't cheer, didn't smile, just gripped the wheel and
(14:52):
steered toward the coast. It was still pitched black, but
he could just make out the silhouettes of land far
in the distance at least an hour away at this speed,
but it was something. He sped up. The boat began
to move, slow at first, then faster. Domas excelled, wiped
(15:12):
his face salt, water and sweat. He was going to
make it, but twenty minutes into his escape, the water
changed again. The surface behind him rippled once more, not
from the wind, something just beneath. He didn't look back
at first, didn't want to, but instinct forced him, and
(15:35):
there it was a giant dorsal fin, slicing through the moonlight,
maybe fifty yards back. No sound, no wake, just following.
Domas gunned the engine. The fin disappeared. He kept going,
jaw clenched, pulse hammering in his ears. Ten minutes later
(15:57):
he glanced back again, abe it had gone. Then something
bumped the hole, soft at first, then again, this time
on the other side, thunk, like something massive was nudging him,
toying with him. Then the engine sputtered. He hit the
(16:19):
gas again. The motor screamed, then stopped dead. No smoke,
no backfire, just gone. Domas stared down, wide eyed, then
dropped to check the outboard. Everything looked fine, but they
were dead in the water. And then he heard it
(16:40):
that hum again, closer, now deeper, bone chilling, as if
it was coming from inside him.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
He looked over the.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Edge and saw bubbles rising fast. Then bam, the tail
struck again, this time from the front. The boat pitched backwards.
Domas slipped, hit his ribs and caught himself just before
falling overboard. Another strike, this one not from below, but beside,
(17:10):
like it was circling, taking its time playing. He grabbed
a flare, his only one, and fired it into the air.
The red light flickered on the surface, revealing a shape
the animal just beneath the waterline, sixty feet long, maybe more.
(17:31):
Not like anything he'd seen before, something older, something monstrous.
Domas backed away from the edge. He whispered to the sea,
please no. The water calmed, too calm. Then the boat
lifted up. Domas screamed, grabbing the rail as the stern
(17:54):
rose beneath him, like something was lifting the entire vessel
from underneath. He didn't have time to pray. The boat
hung for a heartbeat, then the ocean let go. The
boat shattered as it slammed back down hole split in two.
Lomas hit the water hard, gasped, choked, kicked, upward through
(18:16):
floating debris and blood. Somehow he surfaced. Somehow he clung
to a half sunken plank and drifted into the dead calm.
The sea swallowed everything else, and Thomas blacked out.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
He was found the.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Next morning by the Navy patrol, alone, half frozen, eyes wide,
lips cracked. He wouldn't speak at first, would an eat,
just stared out at the horizon. When they got him
into the clinic, they found the marks on his back,
a semicircle of wounds, each four inches wide, as if
(18:57):
something very large had started to bite him but changed
its mind. Domas never fished again. He moved inland, bought
a repair shop. He doesn't talk about the sea, doesn't
talk about that night, But others have seen the same thing,
shadows beneath their boats, water going still, that low hum
(19:20):
from the depths, and every few years a boat never
makes it back. Welcome back, well friends, thank you so
(19:44):
much for tuning in to this episode. Again, we deeply
appreciate it, and by we I mean myself and of
course our resident ghost writer and research assistant, Jeffrey Doyle.
So we're going to go through the sources that we
have prepared for you today. The first one that we
have here is from a website called Nature World News
and its Nature worldnews dot com. This entry is called
(20:05):
El demonio negro what is the black demon.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Shark of Gortes.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
And of course all the direct links to these sources
will be in these Sustal Google docs on Patreon dot
com slash Sustal podcast. But once more, this is Nature
World News and this was published in twenty twenty three
by A Luis Franco and just to give you a
direct kind of not report, but a collection or kind
of what the general understanding of what el demonno negro is.
(20:32):
This is a source we wanted to include because the
story of Domas and being out in the boat that
is of course something fictional.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
It's an original that Jeff and I wrote.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
And this says El demonno negro, a Spanish term used
to describe a giant, fearsome shark, is stalking the waters
off Baja California in Mexico, prompting years of speculations, concerns,
and curiosity not only amongst locals but also internationally, responsible
for the alleged deaths of hundreds of wales and attacks
on boats. The legendary animal dubbed as the Black Demon
(21:04):
Shark of Cortez is still yet to be confirmed. So
this is one of those things that's very urban legend y.
And you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna figure this
out right now.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
What is an urban legend?
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Right a humorous or horrific story or piece of information
circulated as though true, especially when purporting to involve someone
vaguely related or known.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
To the teller.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
I think this would qualify as urban legend as compared
to folklore or general kind of ghost story, because there
are people saying that they have had run ins or
they know someone that knows someone. It's one of those.
But this feels very also obviously related to one region,
so definitely this is like the urban legend realm of things.
This continues despite the uncertainty. Anecdotal evidence or eyewitness accounts
(21:48):
of the giant black Shark has been recorded in several
reports and documentaries, although different perspectives, so of course, there
again there's the idea of it being an urban legend.
Although different perspectives are provided, there is a resounding and
common theme. The accounts are implying the black demon or
the mono negado, as it's called in this region, has
a size of up to sixty feet in length and
(22:10):
similar to a school bus. You terrifying again. This again,
it's an urban legend. It's probably not real, right, but
you know, we know more about space than we do
about the ocean, our ocean floors, so this freaks me out.
This continues with this. The predatory shark is often compared
by many to the now extinct Megalodon or autodos megalodon,
(22:33):
which is like the scientific name. Others think it is
a new yet unknown species or is just a large
great white shark. Regardless of the monio negado has struck
fear to the minds of people, with some claiming that
it could exist and is scarier than the megalodon. The
oceans cover This is okay, This is the part that
really gets me.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
This is the creepy part.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
The oceans cover seventy percent of Earth's surface, and humans
have only explored five percent of the ocean floor, a
gradual exploration process that has stalled for a long time
due to the dangers and depth of the oceans. In
this context, marine scientists have not identified and described all
sea creatures out there.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
What is down there.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
It is for this reason that the existence of some
unknown species like the Black Demon of Gortees is possible. Again,
that really weirds me out. Okay, And there's a really
cool picture here on this website of a giant fin
with these near these kayakers. That is scary. This continues
long before photoshopped images and videos were uploaded online. Tales
(23:34):
of the Black Demon of Cortes are passed around locally
in Mexico. Stories alone of the gargantuan beast have been
terrorizing both fishermen and tourists alike for several generations. According
to the Shark Week program of the Discovery Channel, so
at lononno negadro. They know who who they are. They
know this shark. This shark is well known, shark is famous.
(23:55):
Has been featured on Shark Week and other shark related programs,
and this says. In this one episode entitled Mega Jaws,
the Discovery Channel covered the purported claims where it interviewed
several local fishermen who have allegedly seen the quote demon shark. However,
investigations revealed that the animal could potentially be a whale
shark or any other known animal species like a manta
(24:18):
ray or great white shark. And then this gives like
the core details of what this thing is. It says
the legend originated from local people who reported having seen
a large black shark in the Sea of Cortez also
called the Gulf of California, off the coast of Mexico,
claiming its jaws are wide enough to swallow a whale
as a whole. According to the website Azy Animals, so
(24:39):
shark in Mexico and not again the idea, Like, I'm
trying to comprehend the size of this thing. This says
about sixty feet long, so the length of a school bus,
the length of a school bus, a shark the length
of a school bus. And I think somewhere else they
say that Eddemonio negro is a equivalent in weight to
(25:01):
several elephants. I think it said six elephants. This thing
is huge, youw. And again the reason they call it
the mono negro, and why people say it may be
a whale shark or maybe a white shark is because
it's similar in size. Whale sharks get pretty big, great
whites get pretty big. I think the average is like
twenty to thirty feet. Again, this thing is much bigger.
(25:24):
But one distinctive feature about the monio negaedro is that
its skin.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Or do fish of skin? Sharks don't have scales. I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
It's I'm gonna say skin. Its skin is black, is dark,
and its eyes are dark. But I mean all sharks
eyes are black too, But anyway, so it's black in color,
and that's why people think it is its own thing.
And then we're going to talk more about the pigment
or the melonin later. In these other sources it does
come up. This continues. It says the attribution of the
monno negro of Cortes with the megalodon is hard to prove,
(25:57):
since the ancient shark went extinct around two points six
million years ago, so the megalodon has been long gone.
That rhyme was beautiful in which research is blamed due
to food competition with great white sharks that we see today.
So basically, the megalodons when extinct because they just didn't
have a sustainable diet or they just weren't able to
sustain their eating habits with other predators in the ocean.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
This continues.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
According to the National History Museum, the megalodon can grow
between fifteen to eighteen meters or forty nine to fifty
nine feet in length, which is three times longer than
the biggest recorded great white shark. So again, great white
biggest size is going to be like what twenty feet?
The museum added that the size of the megalodon is
comparable to today's largest whale sharks. Okay, so great whites and
(26:43):
then in terms of size, it's great whites whale sharks,
and then Megalodon or the Mono Negro if it was
a real thing, which I'm raying to God it's not
because I don't want to get in the water. This
next source is from Mexico Unexplained dot com. It's titled
the Black Black Demon Gigantic Shark of Mexico. And this
one takes a different approach of how we discover of
(27:05):
the Mono Negro. This is really interesting. This says, and
I'm sorry. This was published in twenty eighteen by Robert Beido.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
And this says.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
It was a cold winter day in London. The year
was fifteen sixty four. English sea merchant John Hawkins had
recently returned from a successful trading voyage that took him
from the West African coast to the Spanish colonies of
the Caribbean and South America. Hawkins made a considerable amount
of money for his London investors, and on that winter
day in fifteen sixty four, he knelt before his Queen,
(27:35):
a dour Elizabeth I, who granted him a seven hundred
ton ship to continue trade exploits. This says a few
more things, and then it picks up here it says.
In fifteen sixty seven, Hawkins embarked on his third voyage,
which took him from West Africa to the coast of
the Yucatan Peninsula and to the Spanish settlements in the
modern day Mexican state of Veracruz. While in the waters
around the Yucatan, Hawkins and his crew encountered a large
(27:58):
flesh eating fish they had never seen before. When Hawkins
asked the locals the name of this strange aquatic beast,
an indigenous Maya person replied shock or xoc, which was
the name for the gigantic fish in the Yucathec Maya language.
When Hawkins and his crew returned to England in fifteen
sixty nine, the seafaring Englishman added a new word to
(28:20):
the ever growing lexicon shark, so it went from shock
to shark, the word used to describe a creature not
seen in the waters around Great Britain, would be the
only word in the English language with its origins in
a Maya dialect. Few English speakers know of the very
Mexican roots of the word shark, or how it entered
every day English. So sharks or Mexican essentially is what
(28:42):
I'm hearing my people getting.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
But this was really quiet. Never knew this.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
History before, so again it was xoc or shark, and
then you know, they of course changed it to shark
for whatever reason. This continues while many varieties of sharks
exist in both Pacific and Caribbean waters around Mexico. On
the opposite end of the country from the first English
encounters with sharks exists a tell of terror which has
only garnered attention recently. In the waters of the Gulf
(29:09):
of California, also known as the Sea of Cortes, between
the Baja Peninsula and the state of Sonora, a gigantic,
dark creature is said to lurk for generations. Fishermen have
told tales of ed Demonio Negro, or in English, the
Black Demon, a massive, aggressive shark that overturns boats, attacks whales,
and swallows sea lions in a single bite.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Is this just a big.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Fish story or could a previously unknown species of gigantic
shark exist in the cold depths of the Sea of Cortez.
Am I saying species weird? I feel like species species.
I feel like I'm trying to hit that sea real fancy.
I don't know, but anyway, so this sentence here chilled
(29:52):
me a bit.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
It says a.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Massive, aggressive shark that overturns boats, attacks whales, and swallows
sea lions in a single bite. This is giving that
it's an intelligent creature, and as we mentioned in the story,
because of the influence of these sources, it is intelligent.
It likes to play with its food like killer wells,
and that freaks me out because it's aggressive and intelligent.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
That's very scary.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Kind of keeping that in mind is a terrifying thing. Also,
this next part freaks me out. It says of the
over four hundred types of sharks on Earth, only ten
pose a danger to humans. That still, I don't know.
They say it's only ten, but I don't know it's
only ten right now? Until an eleventh poses danger to people.
But I did not know that there were over four
(30:35):
hundred types of sharks on Earth, as I wonder how
many there are on the Moon. Just kidding, that was
a terrible joke. This says as an apex predator, sharks
tend to generate a great deal of fear, even though
shark attacks on people are very rare. In twenty twelve,
a twenty foot long, two thousand pound great white shark
was killed in the Sea of Cortez near the coastal
city of Guayamas, and was one of the largest great
(30:56):
whites ever seen off the Mexican coast. This is also
making me think of that scene in the Craft when
they invoke or when they call the corners and they
invoke men on it's on the beach, and then the
next morning they wake up and she's like, these are
my gifts and it's all the sharks. That scene always
made me sad. I feel bad for the sharks, although
I'm scared of them. It's like a respect thing, you know,
(31:17):
when people are shocked that they are attacked by an
animal in the wilderness. My first thought is, obviously I'm
empathetic to them.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
It's terrible. It shouldn't happen.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
But I'm also thinking you're in their house. You broke
into their house, and you're just having fun in their home.
So I don't know, it's not that I don't feel
bad for people. It's just that I'm not super surprised. Like, yeah,
of course water is wet. If you go swim around
these wild animals, there's no telling exactly what they will do.
And that's for any wild animal like bears in the
forest too. But I'm getting off track anyway. This continues
(31:49):
later in this piece. It says some cryptozoologists, or those
who research and describe legendary creatures, claim that the gigantic
black shark of Mexico may be a megalodon, a species
species species of large prehistoric sharks that lived in the
oceans from twenty three million to two point six million
(32:10):
years ago, So somehow a couple or one may have
survived and is still living on It says the megalodon
had seven inch long teeth and a bite force between
twenty four thousand to forty thousand pounds, more than three
times that of a t rex, So this thing was
stronger the or at least its bite force was stronger
(32:30):
than a t rex. The average length of a megalodon
was about thirty five feet. The black demon fits the
megalodon description pretty well, although some accounts by fishermen say
the Mexican shark may be even bigger than the megalodon.
So they're saying megalodon average size was about thirty five feet.
But remember earlier the other store said they could get
up to fifty nine to sixty feet, And now this
(32:51):
is saying the monno negro may be even bigger than
a megalodon.
Speaker 2 (32:55):
That's wild. This continues.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Mexican paleontologist Roberto Diaz Sibacha and his blog Paleos the
History of Life on Earth gives an explanation as to
what happened to the gigantic prehistoric fish. Translated from Spanish,
this says, quote, Megalodon became extinct, and we were talking
about this earlier. The food sustainability. This says, Megalodon became
extinct before the Pleistocene began, when environmental changes caused by
(33:20):
alterations in the circulation of marine currents.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Cooled the world.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
In this new world, the megalodon food sources began to
become scarce, some went extinct and others packed their bags
and they moved to the coldest waters away from the
shark that, when unable to adapt, perished so more tacnically,
that is what happened, according to an actual doctor or scientist. Sorry,
I was going to say ocean doctor, but that's also wrong.
(33:46):
But this palaeonologist, this this real scientist broke it down
and they said that when the world climate, when the
currents changed, the megalodon's food sources either when extinct or moved,
and the megalodons stayed there so it didn't have food anymore.
This happens when the creatures hyper specialize in the exploitation
(34:07):
of one.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
Or very few resources.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
So essentially, what I'm reading here in my mind is
that the megalon died because they're a picky eater. That's
what that sounds like to me. They hyper specialize in
the exploitation of one and you know what for you
all who have kids out there, and I'm going to
use that for my nibblings and siblings, and next time
they're being a picky eater, I would be like, why
are you hyper specializing the exploitation of one or very
(34:30):
few resources? Wait a minute, why that hits really good. Actually,
that's it, y'all use that one. Thank you paleontologist Roberto
ds Cibaja for that banger. That's amazing. So this continues on.
I want to read the last part of muski Heads,
the last part of this entry, because this was also
(34:52):
very interesting. And this it's starting to teeter on conspiracy
theory a little bit. This says the Internet is full
of fringe theories and urban urban legends. There's that word again,
and sometimes these stories and legends intersect. An interesting comment
in the comment section of a YouTube video about the
Monon Negro tied to the sidings of the gigantic shark
with a supposed secret underwater base in the Sea of Gortees.
(35:17):
The alleged base was first described by researcher Scott C.
Waring after he discovered some anomalies on the ocean floor
when looking at Google Maps, and there's a.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Photo here, I'm going to put it up in the video.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
The seventy six mile anomaly, sometimes referred to as a
sunken city or alien underwater bass by fringe researchers, ironically,
is located forty five miles off the Baja Coast near
Lobos Island, the site of Eric Mack's famous siding and
the location of the filming of the Monster Quest show
about the Black Demon Shark. So we skipped over this
part in in this entry. I'm going to go back
(35:49):
to it Siana who Eric Mack is, because that is important.
My bad, But this continues. A possible connection to a
supposed secret underwater base brings up a whole host of
new theories, which it seems are only limited by the imagination.
Whether or not this creature exists cannot be determined at
this time. For now, the Moonno Negro plays into our
most primal fear as humans, and as all legends go,
(36:10):
the story will only grow and morph with time. So
this now is saying there is there are some theories
that intersect some conspiracy theories and this urban legend of
Nero that I don't know. Possibly there is some sort
of my mind is going to People are saying that
the government is involved in this, or it's tied to
a sunken city or an alien base. So this shark again,
(36:35):
Elmonnio Negro, very famous shark. You guys, this really now
can just go any direction, right, Okay? So jumping back
to Eric Mack and his encounter, because there are many. Again,
it's an urban legend. It's very much I heard that,
someone heard that, someone said they saw, or friend of
a friend, whatever, you know. It's it's always that Eric Mack,
(36:58):
I think is modern day someone who said they had
an encounter and who has gone on record to share
his encounter. This says, although there have been numerous stories
and intergenerational tales of the the mono neegatal shark, there
have been no verifiable incidents of actual attacks. No local
newspapers have ever carried stories about the creature with verifiable
names and dates of purported attacks. The stories say that
(37:21):
the shark goes after medium sized boats and then retreats
to the depths of the sea, which can go down
to below ten thousand feet in the Gulf of California. Again,
what is down there?
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Halvy in.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Remnants of whales washed ashore are often cited as evidence
of the shark's existence. One eyewitness account often cited in
the literature on this creature comes from American sport fisherman
Eric Mack, who was sailing off the coast of Baha
in July of two thousand and eight close to ten
years ago when he had his encounter with this gigantic fish.
(37:52):
Mack describes it as being around fifty feet long, dark
in color, and with an enormous hind flipper. The creature
hit and rocked his boat, flipped up its tail, and
descended rapidly underwater. Mac never saw this huge fish again,
but his story got nods from the locals and caught
the attention of the TV series Monster Quest, which dispatched
(38:13):
a film crew to the Sea of Cortez to investigate.
The crew set up near Lobos Island, about one quarter
of the way down the eastern coast of Baja. After
days of investigating and filming, the Monster Quest show came
up empty. They broadcast their findings on March eighteenth, two
thousand and nine, during their third season, on an episode
called Mega Jaws So Again. And this is how we
(38:33):
got back to that was because it was they what
were they say? They set up base near where those
underground anomalies are. So those anomalies appeared to be on
the ocean floor. And I'm guessing that's why people are
saying that the shark has something to do with it, because,
according to this eyewitness account, the shark just descends, and
to the other stories, the shark just goes straight down,
assumedly to the ocean floor. We're gonna go ahead and
(38:56):
move on to the next source. This is from shark
of dot com and it says a legend of the
Black Demon Shark. I really just wanted to bring this
one up because it says a lot of the things
that we've covered already. But I like this one because
if you all can find it, there was a movie
made about this. I feel like I remember watching this,
(39:16):
but I'm not quite sure. The movie is called The
Black Demon, and it looks like it's available to watch.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
On Paramount right now. I'm not seeing it.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Available anywhere else to watch, just Paramount, but the trailer
is on YouTube. It's called The Black Demon. It is
from twenty twenty three, and I watched the trailer in
preparation for this episode. Of course, I feel like I've
seen this movie before, but again, it's like it just
could be generic shark movie, creature feature, kind of horror movie.
There's so many out there now, and it doesn't have
(39:48):
great reviews.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
It has a three.
Speaker 1 (39:50):
Point seven out of ten on IMDb and twenty eight
percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
But be your own judge, be your own reviewer.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Maybe we'll do this for the Susto movie night, because again,
this shark is famous. I want to be like this shark.
It has its own movie. So again, it's from twenty
twenty three. It's called the Black Demon, and this source
or this article published in twenty nineteen. They embedded it
in there at the top because you know it, it's
(40:19):
extremely relevant. Yeah, this doesn't say too much different from
the other sources, but it does reinforce or it does
restate that many cryptozoologists this has become kind of like
a cryptozoologist hot spot, this area of Mexico or of
the ocean, at least because people want to look for it,
which I don't know why you would go out looking
(40:40):
for that thing, but yeah, people are very interested to
try and prove if it's real. It falls into that
category of the Luckness Monster, Bigfoot. I feel like it's
more believable than those though, because sharks are real. Megaladon
sharks were real. This could be one that for some
reason is still here for a reason I don't like
or in joy and freaks me out. The next source
(41:02):
that we have this is from paranorms dot com. It's
titled the Black Demon Prehistoric Predator or Misidentified Species. That
word again, species? Am I saying it wrong?
Speaker 2 (41:13):
Someone?
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Okay, species is option one. I feel like that's coming
off with the ch. Species is just with the C
and I feel like I've been saying species with the
C instead of species. I don't know why I'm having
such a conundrum with this word anyway. This was published
by Catherine Karkainen. I believe is how that's pronounced into
(41:36):
twenty twenty three under Monsters and Cryptozoology. This says, is
the Black Demon Shark real? The Black Demon Shark or
the Monio Negado is probably not real? Since no verifiable
proof of the Black Demon's existence has ever come to light,
the creature's true identity may never be fully understood. Yet
those who insist upon the creature's existence may never be
(41:57):
deterred by the theories offered by scientists and skeptics. But
are there massive documented sharks in the coastal waters of
California and Mexico, Yes, youw Here are a few possible
theories on real life encounters with the Black Demon. So
this is explaining away what it may have been again,
well shark comes up, and I wanted to talk more
(42:18):
about this. This says, there is in fact a known
shark species that can grow beyond twenty feet, and it
just so happens to inhabit the Sea of Cortez. It
is known as rhine Codon typus, or the well shark,
a filter feeding, gentle giant that eats tiny shrimp and plankton,
a far cry from human flesh. And these, if you
(42:39):
can imagine, just to explain to you, these are the
ones that are they're spotted, so they're a darker color,
but they have light spots or dots all over them.
They're actually kind of cute too, and they're very gentle.
Apparently they're filter feeders.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
This says.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
The well shark is equipped with a large, wide mouth
fit for sucking up small organisms through its gill rakers.
As alarmingly huge as this behemoth's mouth may be, large
animals are not on its menu, though it usually sports
spotted patterns on its skin. The whale shark can be
noticeably dark and even black in color under certain lighting conditions.
(43:13):
It stands to reason that fishermen making trips out the
sea at night could just see a portion of the animal,
such as a tail or dorsal fin, and mistake for
belonging to a big, dark, and far more dangerous predatory shark.
This is an especially likely scenario considering most people would
be rightfully startled to see a large, ambiguous shape in
the water, and fear is well known to distort how
(43:35):
humans visually perceive their surroundings. That is a great observation.
Amped up on adrenaline, an eight foot long shark could
easily become twenty feet or more in length, and a
twenty foot shark could perhaps be mistaken for an even
greater size. I'm not gonna lie that would happen to me.
I would be scared, and I would see a goldfish
and I'd be like there were one hundred piranhas in
(43:56):
the water trying to kill me, because it would freak
me out. The next one here, it says, is great
white sharks, ranking right behind the whale shark. Great white
sharks are the second largest shark species that inhabit the
Sea of Cortez. Since reports of the black Demon tend
to point to a shark that resembles great whites, this
could be a potential candidate for the creature's identity. There
(44:16):
have been fully documented accounts of large great whites in
the region, such as the two ton specimen that was
hauled onto the shores near Guayamas by fishermen in twenty twelve.
I think we mentioned that one already. However, individuals never
seem to grow past twenty feet in lengths, so individual
great white sharks, they never seem to get bigger than
twenty feet and sharks scientists theorize this is due to
(44:37):
constraints on the animal's liver that would keep it from
reaching larger dimensions. Think goodness, the universe said, We're going
to give you a liver that can only make you
this big, because even then a twenty foot shark is
two big shark sharks should be like a foot in
length that most and then the last one here of
the three that it says people may be getting the
(44:58):
the monionegati confused with giant manta ray, it says. Another
theory includes the possibility that eyewitnesses are simply seeing Mobila
by rostras. Simply it's simply the Mobula birostris or the
giant mantray. These rays can grow up to thirty feet
in length, with their wingspans reaching a comparable size. That's huge,
(45:18):
though they look nothing like sharks while viewed in their entirety,
a passing glance at a giant manta ray's fin as
it glides through the water could easily be mistaken for
the tip of a large sharkfin or tael So, before
we move on to the next source, sorry, I'm all
over the place with these. I want to move back
to sharkophile dot com because I accidentally missed that thing
(45:39):
about the melanin that I mentioned. But this goes in
hand with people confusing other things with the mono neegro.
In a section here that says Unraveling the Mystery, it
says one common origin for the myth is that the
shark is actually a megalodon, a prehistoric predator that could
grow to lengths of up to sixty feet. The biggest
flaw with this explanation is that, despite its appearance in
(46:00):
pop culture, the megalodon has been extinct for over two
point five million years or so. They say that they
want us to believe we've seen the underground anomalies on
the ocean floor. Anyway, this continues another possible explanation is
that the shark is actually a hyper melanistic great white
that has been able to grow to its fullest adult potential.
(46:20):
Although we know now that typically the fullest adult potential
is twenty feet because of their livers. We are learning
biology today. We are all scientists. However, again, we also
know that when people are freaked out, when they're scared,
they tend to exaggerate or they really believe that they
saw something that big because the fear is influencing what
(46:42):
they're seeing. Anyway, this continues. Hyper Melanism is the overabundance
of melanin the opposite of albinism, which can cause animals
to have darker skin than usual, the hypermelonism it causes
animals to have darker skin than usual. This condition has
been observed in some species of cat, sharks and rays,
so it may be possible that it could occur with
(47:03):
great white sharks, which can reach over twenty feet, So
I'm guessing that on average twenty feet sometimes maybe over.
Melanism might also be a factor for whale sharks, which
normally have a very distinct skin pattern. Again, those dots
being mistaken for the legendary predator whale sharks can reach
lengths of over forty feet and often can be seen
(47:24):
creating massive waves with their tails at the surface of
the water. Well sharks, however, would not qualify as vicious predators,
as they are filter feeders which eat krill and other
tiny fish and pose absolutely no threat to humans. Again,
we know that well sharks are cute, sweet, big softies.
I would hug one, I would hugg a well shark.
I'm not gonna lie because I'm not a shrimp or
(47:44):
a krill. But again, if it has that hyper melanism,
it can appear much darker. Maybe it makes the spots
darker as well, so they're not as contrasted the pattern
of the whale sharks skin. Yeah, there's many reasons or
many ways that people could confuse an already existing animal
that is not.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
The the Ammonia negato with the ammonia.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
Negato, or saying it's comparable to a megalodon, right, which
blows my mind that these animals are out there just
being big and huge. The next source here is from
Weird California dot com, and this one's a shorter entry.
This again just kind of goes over what the Demmonia
negato is it talks about Eric Mack and his alleged
(48:24):
run in with the Demmonia Negator, and just to get
specific about that one more time, I'm not sure if
I mentioned it, but it says he reported having Themonion
negatal rock his boat.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
So it ran into him.
Speaker 1 (48:35):
So you could say that our story, the story of
the Maas was based off of Eric Mack or inspired
by his run in. It also talks about here the
melanism with the whale sharks, the Great white sharks. But
again this is just another source that we wanted to
include just because again this is Weird California or WEIRDCA
dot com. The Black Demon, and the final thing that
(48:55):
we have here, this is from Discovery dot Com or
the Discovery Channel, and this is talking about It says,
behind the scenes mystery of the Black Demon shark or
the Monon Negro in Mexico, legends swirl around ed the
Mono Negro, a fifty foot shark that has terrorized fishermen
and tourists to like for generations. Is this an undiscovered
(49:16):
predator forrest gallant hunts for answers in the most rugged
and remote parts of the Baja Peninsula. And then it
says stream Mystery of the Black Demon Shark and all
Things Shark Week on Discovery Plus so as you can
sell here. A Mystery of the Black Demon Shark is
a TV show on Discovery where this person, Forrest Gallant,
is looking for him, and there's pictures of him in
(49:38):
this entry that we have here, just out there swimming
in the water, in the open ocean water in this
region where they're saying that Edemonio Negro is just looking
for him. This is either one of the most brave
or one of the most skeptical, or one of the
most both of those things persons I have ever seen,
because he's out there and there's really cool pictures.
Speaker 2 (50:00):
There's a picture here.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
Of the well shark and its spots. There's also a
picture of I'm assuming it is forest, yeah, forest next
to a large ray and this thing looks like it's
twice his size, like the wingspan. They're honestly really pretty
pictures too, but again terrifying. I don't know how people
do this, just go out there in the open water,
but this show was about Forrest looking for the Monna Negro.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
And again at.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
The top of this page it says that Shark Week
starts on July twentieth, which again I love that timing
that it's anniversary of Jaws and then Shark Week. Is
that intentional? Am I missing something? Welcome back well friends,
(50:50):
Thank you so much for joining us for another episode
of Soustal. Real quick recap of what we have going
on for Soustal again. Thank you so much to the
awesome pub Library for having me out. I'm looking forward
to October's event and to hopefully many more aside from
that one, and to all the other events in October
that will be happening or throughout spooky season. It doesn't
have to just be October. You know, we did win
(51:12):
in the summer. We can do events all year round.
So if you are booking for events, or if you
know anybody booking for spooky themed events, please feel free
to reach out to me any way you can. I
am always excited to work with people, but definitely for
Spooky season. We want to reach out as early as
possible so that we can lock in dates before I
get busy, because I will get busy. Aside from that,
(51:32):
we have officially launched Susto's Spellbook Club, so again we
will start the reading at the beginning of July and
then at the end of the month we will do
a public zoom book discussion that is open to any
and everybody. So if you would like to join the
book club, just pick up your copy of Buffalo Hunter
Hunter and have it read by the end of the
(51:53):
month and we'll do our book club meeting. And of
course if you are a Patreon subscriber, then you will
have access to the spell book Club discord channel where
we can have discussions or just kind of talk about
the book or oh my god, have you read this
part yet?
Speaker 2 (52:06):
Hopefully no spoilers.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
Will find a way to avoid spoilers, but that discord
channel will be open for discussion throughout the reading and
an addition of course to the public discussion at the
end of the month. As always, if you have a
scary story that you would like to hear on a
Letters from the Beyond episode, please visit sustopodcast dot com
or the link at my link tree that's link to
your dot ee slash sustal and click these submit a
(52:29):
story or tell me a Story button. Send in your story.
If you also have or instead of something written, you
just have a photo, video, audio, recording, anything. If you've
caught EVP. Feel free to send it to me and
I will post it either in a Letters from the
Beyond episode and slash or on social media, which is
you already know at sostal podcast on every single platform.
If you would like to support the show, the easiest
(52:51):
way to do so is by of course doing this
listening to it, thank you so much for being here,
by encouraging your girl friends to listen to the show,
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you are listening so liking, subscribing, leaving positive ratings and reviews. However,
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and explore the tears and figure out which one works
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episode's patrons, you are Liza, Sadie, Rachel, Alejandra Luther, April
d Josette, Sam, Mandy, Jules Lori, Genie, Desiree c Ashes, Nedessa, Rachel, Asusena, Marlene, Chata, Laney,
(53:40):
desiree A, Carla Archer, Diricado, Vanessa, Mariza Yeves, Manor, maal Iris,
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Your support means the underworld to me. I will talk
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