Eerie News with M.P. Pellicer | STORIES: The Legend of the Dark Watchers and MORE - Eerie News

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, everybody.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
This is Marling with your news and today is July eleventh,
twenty twenty five. Friday, July eleventh, twenty twenty five. First
story out of Strangers in fiction stories and this is
titled the Missiletope Ride of Talbot Block. On January first,
nineteen twenty nine, an old structure in Nashua, New Hampshire

(00:23):
was being demolished. Underneath the floor of the attic of
what had once been a rookery, workmen were standing in
when they discovered a human skeleton. The one hundred year
old building at Old Union Block at high in Main
Streets faced demolition from the top floors down since it
had been condemned for the past fifty years. Stores occupied
the first floor, officers were on the second floor, and

(00:47):
four small apartments apartments were on the third floor. Even
a Universalist church had been housed in the top floors
of the buildings seventy five years before. However, by contrast,
some other business were of a dubious nature. New Hampshire
was a dry state and suffered from speakeasies and bootlequers
long before prohibition was the law of the land. The

(01:09):
Old Block was reputed to be the longest bar in
the state. A crew started to knock off the roof
and rip up the attic floor. The workmen knew that
knocking out these old buildings sometimes yielded a stash of
valuable items, including coins, and the time honored custom was
finders keepers, So every time the rotted planks yielded to crowbars,

(01:30):
they looked carefully through the debris to see what lay below.
Suddenly one of them came across a board that resisted
his pool. Any side had been double nailed. What the
man saw caused him to drop his tool and swear
an oath. The others surrounded him as a foreman came
up the stairs, but they beheld with the skeleton of
a human foot. There was no mistaking what it was,

(01:52):
so many men gathered on that part of the flooring.
It gave way with a crash, and from the plaster
that fell to the story below, more bones were found.
Police were called, and then the medical examiner came to
the building. The cavity was explored and a leg bone
came to light. The bones that fell from the ceiling
were part of an arm at a pelvis. Whoever hid
the bones took great pains to erase ways of identifying

(02:15):
of what turned out to be a woman. He removed
her clothing and stripped of flesh from her bones. What
was confirmed the skeleton was not one that was ever
used by a medical school or physician. Access to the
attic of the building was by a steep stairway in
a quarter running between the apartments. It was unused except
for storage of personal belongings of the occupants of the building.

(02:39):
A space of about three feet in height separated the
ceiling of the apartments from the floor of the attic.
It was in this space where the skeleton was found.
The strangest twist in the discovery in the case was
the discovery of a photograph of a woman in an
old fashioned dress left close to the human remains. The
photograph was identified as a young bridal Vanish from Nashua

(03:00):
twenty seven years back. What a strange thing to find
among those dissected bones. Was it a sentimental mistake on
the part of the murderer or just a decoy to
lead police astray. There were other reports of a book
found near the bones which dealt with the white slave traffic.
Police supervised the rest of the demolition. They sifted through

(03:23):
debris sent down by the chute and found among them
pieces of human vertebrae. From this small collection, the medical
examiner determined they belonged to a woman in her twenties.
As the work progressed, a skull was pulled from the
bottom of a partition wall with a tattered newspaper from
the Nashua Press dated March twenty eighth, nineteen oh two.
The newspapers had long since closed its doors. Police examined

(03:47):
records of who rented the building, but the spaces had
been let and sublet to numerous people, including bootleggers, which
usually gave false names and addresses. The police turned to
the photograph and found only once to You in Nashua
that dated back to nineteen oh two, but he had
changed hands five times. Most of the old plates had
been thrown in the trash, and those that remained did

(04:09):
not match the unknown woman. However, a citizen of Nashville, A. G. Tipping,
had been a partner in the Nashua laundry during nineteen
oh two and recognized the girl. He said her name
was Blanche mentor Blackmon. She came from Boston and worked
in the laundry. She married and suddenly quit her job.
He remembered her well because she was one of the

(04:30):
prettiest girls that ever worked there. Police reviewed the laundry's
records and it showed that Blanche left without notice in
nineteen oh two. However, most thoughts she left because of
her recent marriage. Mister Tipping remembered her as being in
her early twenties, which corresponded with the medical examiner's findings.
Others came forward and confirmed the identification of the woman

(04:53):
in the photograph as being Blanche Mentor, or the Boston Beauty,
as she was called. Everyone agreed that she left town
abruptly and never wrote to any of her friends. Was
blanched the victim, and Spector McCarthy, who was in charge
of the investigation, thought the clue was too good to
be true. He knew that whoever killed this woman had

(05:13):
kept her somewhere else and took the time to deflesh
her bones. He probably minced the meat and disposed of
it in married ways. The eyes, the hair, and even
the brain had been removed, leaving only clean bones that
appeared to have been boiled as well, and Spector MacCarthy
knew this took a lot of time.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
And patience, and.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
Only a calculating mine knew exactly how to plot each step,
including scattering bits of the skeleton through the floor and walls.
Could someone this meticulous have left behind a photograph? The
main motive for stripping the flesh away from the bone
was to prevent odors that soon would have betrayed the
strange burial. Once he was sure this would never happen,

(05:52):
he felt sure the building would never be demolished.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
In his lifetime.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
The inspector said, no, that job was done by a thorough,
hard headed, practical man who must have thought of every contingency,
including the fire hazard which might have caused the block
to be torn down at any time. That murderer did
not knowingly leave anything that would help, and he was
certainly not a careless fellow. Police diligently continued in the

(06:18):
investigation and found Blanche's husband in Billa, Rica, Massachusetts. Mister
Blackmun came to Nashua and said he divorced his wife
in nineteen eighteen, and she immediately remarried a man named
Edward C. Marshall and moved out to Denver. She died
later that same years, and he received a letter informing
him of the death of missus Marshall, your former wife.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
The inspector was.

Speaker 2 (06:43):
Not surprised and has come firmed his suspicion that killer
new Blanche left town suddenly and that people would be
wondering what happened to her. Somehow he got her picture
and thought that by dropping it with the bones, the
search would be led astray. He knew of any of
this scovery was made, he would read about it in
the papers, giving him enough time to make his escape,

(07:04):
that is, if he was still alive. The biggest obstacle
was how much time had elapsed since those bones were
hidden away. If they could learn who owned the picture,
they could trace how he acquired it, perhaps follow his
movements and find them in some neighboring town a young
woman went missing. However, like some mysteries, the more you know,
the more it deepens. Even the many people identify the

(07:27):
picture as the Boston beauty, Mister Blackmunt said the woman
was not Blanche. Jenny Mentor Anderson, a cousin also denied
it was her. Now, what was the fate of the
Boston beauty. Investigation into the fate of Blanche Mentor Blackmun
Marshall proved that indeed she was not the mistletoe bride

(07:47):
of Talbot Block. She was born in eighteen eighty seven,
and despite her title of the Boston Beauty, happiness.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Was not in her stars.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
She married Rouelle Blackmont, as recounted by the citizens of Nashua,
on April fifth, nineteen thirteen. She gave birth to a
premature baby, and in October sixteenth, nineteen fourteen, she gave
birth to a stillborn son. As well told police. They divorced,
and she married Edward Marshall and moved to Colorado. She

(08:16):
died in childbirth, along with her daughter, at a may
in nineteen eighteen. She was thirty one years old. Considering
the inspector had two credible persons confirmed the picture was
not Blanche Mentor, he had to wonder how this killer
had been able to find a picture of a woman
who looked remarkably close to the likeness of a woman
who conveniently left Nashua abruptly. It also matched Blanche's height

(08:40):
and weight. He never found the answer to those questions.
Neither the name of the lady hidden the attic, no
more importantly, the name of the one who put her there.
Now it seemed that murderer had visited the apartments at
Union Block building in the past. In October nineteen oh nine,
the body of Roxy Baker, whose real name was Arzelia

(09:02):
or Zelia Chicoyne, was found in her apartment at the
Union Block. A janit had smelled the bad odor coming
from her room. Roxy's decomposing body was found with a
loop of rope around its neck, which was tied.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
To a bedpost.

Speaker 2 (09:16):
However, her windpipe was untouched. Described as a PREPA's hazing
blonde about forty years of age. Her face was drenched
with blood and there was a bloodstained cloth over her face.
The bed clothing was also blood stained. Besides this, there
was no sign of disorder in the room. The bed
had not been slept in, but there were indications of
a person having lain upon it. Roxy Baker had appeared

(09:39):
before the Superior Court two weeks before her death on
a charge of keeping liquor for selling an apartment and
was fined fifteen dollars. The police believed this was murder. However,
they were mystified as to the motives since two valuable
diamond rings were found, one on her finger and the
other on the floor near the body. Little was known
of the woman's background, except that she had a sister

(10:01):
living in Claremont. She had once been married to a
man named Frank Baker, but his whereabouts were unknown. As
to whether Roxy Baker committed suicide was murdered is unknown.
There was reference made to prior murders in the building,
but it seems a union Block at a reputation first
called duggery long before the Mistletoe Bride of Talbot Block

(10:22):
was found in her attic tomb, and it was so
commonplace the stories were not covered by the local newspaper.
So this is the question where those two murders or
those two women's that were they connected?

Speaker 1 (10:39):
Did they have some.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Serial killer even though back then they didn't use that
word serial killer.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
Doing away with women? Hmm? But again.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Nobody knows whoever he was. If that was the scenario,
he got away with it and maybe there were other
women all right, Okay. Next story is titled the Legend
of the Dark Watchers dark Watchers, and this is from
Stranger Them fiction stories. Dark Watchers are being described as tall,

(11:22):
featureless silhouettes. Not always, but sometimes they wear a brimmed
cat hat or carry walking sticks. Most often seen between
dusk to dawn. They appear as emotionless figures that watch
travelers from afar. The legend originates in the Santa Lucia
mountain range, and if you try to approach them, they disappear.

(11:43):
In fifteen forty two, Juan Rodriguez Gavino was the first
European to cite the Santa Lucia Mountains, and they were
named by cartographer Sebastian Viscayino sixty years later. The first
accounts of these figures date back to the eighteenth century,
when the Spanish settlers refer to them as lov he
lantes oscuros. There was no reference to the dark watchers

(12:07):
from the Schumash who lived in this area prior to
the arrival of the Spanish. Signings of these silhouettes have
been reported for three hundred years up to present day.
They are seen on cliffs where no human could climb,
looking out to sea. Some of them describe him as
being only three feet in height, akin to fairyfolk. However,

(12:28):
most reports described him as being very tall, between seven
and ten feet in height. They had been sighted in
the area from Avida Beach to Monterey. John Steinbeck described
the dark Watchers. In his nineteen thirty eight short story
flight Quote, Pepe looked suspiciously back every minute or so,
and his eyes sought the tops of the ridges ahead. Once,

(12:49):
on a white barren spur, he saw a black figure
for a moment, but he looked quickly away, for it
was one of the dark Watchers. No one knew who
the Watchers were, nor where they lived, but was to
ignore them and never to show interest in them. They
did not bother one who stayed on the trail and
minded his own business. Steinbeck's son, Thomas Steinbeck, would report

(13:11):
later in adulthood that as a child, he had seen
the dark Watchers with Benjamin Brode as illustrated he wrote
in Search of the Dark Archers. In it, he described
with the dark Watchers sense or smell the presence of
gun oil and other modern day materials like plastics, which
in part is why they are so elusive. They appeared
to before hikers who carry only low tech old school gear.

(13:33):
They also appeared to have exceptional hearing and impeccable eyesight.
Thomas Steinbeck described by his grandmother, Olive Hamilton Steinbeck, believed
she had contact with the Dark Watchers who stay hidden
in the forest. She told her family she left fruits
and nuts in a basket in a shaded alcove east
of a trail on Mule Deer Canyon. She would walk

(13:54):
this path on her way to teach school in Big Sur.
After a couple of weeks, she would return and the
food was gone, and in its place where seashells and feathers.
She believed they were trading with her. In modern times,
hikers tell a feelings of being watched and away they
turn only a few leading glances caught of a tall,

(14:15):
dark figure. Some say they are omens of bad luck, excited,
perhaps because they resemble the Grim Reaper. Others say they're
benign and only watch humans from afar. Their reports of
dark watchers in Canada, Texas, Alabama, and the eastern Sierra
Nevada Mountains. A pilot reported seeing seven of them while
flying north of VanderBurg Air Force Base in twenty eleven. Okay,

(14:38):
little cat, come here, Wait a minute, I have here.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
A helper. Here we go.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Even those traveling along the Pacific Coast Highway at dusk
have looked out their car window and seen those lonely figures.
Excerpt from Robin Jeffers' poem Such Council As You Gave
to Me, originally published in nineteen thirty seven.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
He found might be one of the watchers who are
often seen in this length of coast range, forms that
look human to human eyes, but certainly are not human.
They come from behind ridges to watch. He was not
surprised when the figure turning toward him in the quiet
twilight showed his own face. Then it melted and merged
into the shadows beyond it.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
End quote.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
The following are stories told by those who have disquieting
sightings of what they believe are dark watchers. Quote. My
lady and I were walking along the beach in Malibu
one night, and when we were walking, she stopped and
just kept looking up ahead. I looked where she was looking,
and I saw something crouch down and stand up. It

(15:40):
stood taller than an average person. And I heard her say,
you saw that thing stand up. Right after she said that,
we saw another climb down a big rock on the coastline.
These things don't look natural and had no features to say,
there were just other people. We turned around and just
headed back toward the car. Okay, next story. Okay, I

(16:04):
live in the countryside of Madera about two years ago.
I saw a tall, thin figure standing in the shadow,
staring at me. I couldn't see the face, what up
of clothing it had on.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
Nothing.

Speaker 2 (16:17):
I frozen, kept my eyes on it. My cousin saw
it too, and she dragged me inside the house. I
didn't want to keep my eyes off it. I thought
if I turned my back on it, it would get me.
Just today, another cousin came out last night to have
some drinks. He said while he was outside, he saw
a tall, thin figure watching him. He also froze, he said.
When he blinked, it vanished. He ran inside to us,

(16:40):
and we all ran outside looking for the shadow.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
Other story.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
I was driving home from a beach trip with my
girlfriend in twenty sixteen, going through Kuyama. It was pitch
black outside. We saw a large shadow figure glide across
the road in front of our headlights. No notable features,
just a large, dark shadow creature. If she wasn't awake
to come from what I just saw, I would have
chalked it up to me being tired. But she saw

(17:07):
what I saw. We let it go into a few
days ago, when we brought it up again, searched up
shadow people in Cuyama and learned about dark watchers in
Santa Lucia. This is so crazy to learn we aren't
alone in this experience. Next one, when back when I
was a teenager, I used to go hiking in the
desert A mountain range where I lived, seven miles outside

(17:29):
of Lyth, California. One afternoon, I went deeper into the
mountain range than I had ever hiked before. When I
felt like I was being watched, the hairs on my
arm stood up. I quickly started looking around, fearing a
mountain lion was nearby. When I looked up towards the
top of the mountain and saw a small cave like
opening at the top of a sheer wall. There, looking

(17:51):
out towards the valley, I could see a hooded human figure.
I could not see its face sins. It looked like
it was covered by a thin veil, but the hood
and looked tattered and ripped.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
The figure made no movement.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
I turned around and started to walk back the way
I came and never went back to that area of
the mountain range. The area was not well traveled, since
there were no dirt roads or tracks, so who knows
what was up there. All I know is they was
not human and I've never been back since.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
This was back in the mid nineties.

Speaker 2 (18:23):
Next one, I've camped a few times in the Santa
Lucilla Range near to Cone Peak, right near the coast,
and the one, I take it that would be US
one or a highway one. We're camping up on some
of the coastal ridges. They're overlooking the ocean. I definitely
experienced a very strange energy by first time up there.

(18:44):
There were three of us, including myself. One person and
myself both actually spotted one of the watchers up on
a high ridge, partially obscured by low flying clouds. Neither
was for familiar with them at this time, and chalked
it up to a tree. When we slept that night,
we felt an indescribed discomfort and decided to keep driving
north the next morning. Next story, my boyfriend and I

(19:07):
were driving from our royal grande to Stockton. About on
an hour outside of a royal Grande, we saw a
dark hument figure in the hills. It was several hundred
yards away from the road and seemed to be trudging
laboorously uphill. In the ninety five degree sun. Despite rubber
necking multiple times to try to get a better look,
we could distinguish no identifying marks, no seams of clothing,

(19:27):
no hint of shoes or anything, just solid black. Walking
up the hill under the burning afternoon sun. There was
a small station with a tech and satellite on the
opposite side.

Speaker 1 (19:38):
Of the road.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
I wondered if we didn't see some strange ritual. Next story,
I was hiking up a remote trail up to thirty
three and OJ. I was about an hour up the mountain,
no people, no cars in sight. As I was hiking,
I had this eery feeling I was being watched. I
looked up at the top of the mountain. It was

(19:59):
a black figure. I waved jokingly, not really thinking the
object was a person. It waved back, thing I was
maybe tripping, or that it was a tree waving in
the wind. I took a puff of my cigarette only
to see the figure blow out a plume of smoke
as well. I started seeing it flowing, and I say flowing,
almost floating vertically. I ran like help back to my car,

(20:22):
spraining my knee in the process. Next story, I live
in the country in Canada. I saw seven foot man
very slowly walking along the fence line. He seemed to
be a solid shadow, but because he appeared to be
behind the six foot fence, I didn't get a good
look at him. Every time at his twilight, I look
at all the fences to see him again to confirm

(20:43):
what I saw, but I haven't seen him since.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
Next story.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
I'm a long distance runner and most of my training
is in up the good old Californian mountains. I had
a long run scheduled, so I headed out. I headed
to Veterans Park here in the San Fernando Valley. Time
of day was twenty eight p m. I was running
and up in the area where no human could climb
without gear, I saw black figure in plain daylight. I

(21:10):
have never seen anything like it up the mountain. It
was as darker than dark, and I could not explain it.
A year passed and I sat again and in the
same spot. Next story, I saw a dark figure about
seven feet tall in one of the mountains by vernal Utah.
It was a late winter, lots of snow. The moon

(21:30):
was full and the light reflected off the snow, so
I had no problem seeing. I worked nights for a
seismic Company as a troubleshooter. I heard a crew member
say on the radio that he saw Jeeper's creepers and
he dropped everything he had and ran back to his truck.
We thought that he was up to up too long
without sleep, so they sent me to his location to

(21:51):
finish what he had to do, or walking on top
of the mountain to fix the problem. I saw it
twenty feet in front of me. My heart started being fast.
I tried to run, but it was hard because of
the snow. As I was running, it seemed to float
on the snow and moved really fast and started to
circle me, then stopped.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
All I had on me was.

Speaker 2 (22:10):
A pocket knife. I pulled it out and started to
pray for God to help me fight it. I started
to run towards it. I got about ten feet from
minute and started to move back fast. I lost sight
of it in the dark. I never saw its face,
and it had a robe like the Reaper. I don't
know what it was.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
Next story.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
I remember one day my friend and I were coming
back from Los Angeles. We passed the San Luis Obispow
Reservoir and we drove on the road and as we
drove on the road, I saw something at a distance
down at the end of the mountain. It was a
really big human figure, but it wasn't. It had a
black cape, kind of like a grim reaper, and it
was leaning over holding onto a staff at a puddle

(22:52):
of water, so that it is what it seemed to
be at a distance. It was in daytime, too, so
I could identify wasn't a person even in midlight. He
was very black and reminded me of a raven. I
told my friend that was driving to look over at
the mountains, and surprisingly she was able to see a
glimpse of it. I asked her what she thought what

(23:13):
she saw, without giving her my details, and she said
exactly what I saw. She only looked at it for
about five seconds, but she was able to see it.
She almost lost control of the car too when she
looked away at it, and I begged her to go
back and see it, but she was very tired of
driving already.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
These dark watchers are real.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
Next story, one early morning when my car was in
the shop and my sister was taking me to and
from work and Salina's over San Juan Great Road we
were coming down. We were coming home to the San
Juan Baltista hollister side when we saw a very large,
dark figure standing at the edge of the mountains, which
is extremely weird since I've never seen anyone cross over

(23:54):
the barbed wire fence and I traveled that road daily
and at all hours, slowly behind the figure, noticing it
staring off into the distance valleys and mountains, which is
Fremont's peak. It appeared to have a large cape with
straight shoulders that were very broad. It seemed to have
a hunch on its back. At for a distance, I

(24:16):
thought it was a condor. When I got closer it
stood almost ten feet tall. It did not notice us
driving behind it, but when we found a spot on
the cliff rode to turn around and get a better look,
it was gone. Next story, many many years ago, I
was with a friend driving through a dirt road and
Merino Valley near Alessandro, the old East part, near what

(24:38):
I believe were old abandoned barns that I always had
heard were haunted. When my friend's car broke down, this
could have been coincidence. It was a beat of Volkswagen bug.
It was dusk at best, and there was no way
we were going to make it out of the field
before it was pitch black, and instead of chancing getting
retardedly lost and or hurt in the dark, we decided

(24:59):
to in the car and set out in the morning
to go get help to toe the car. This was
way before the days of everyone having cell phones and
quick help. As we were killing time in the pitch
black now we're hanging out inside and outside of the car,
sharing smokes, and we started to distinctly see what looked
like black shadows. Even they distributed completely encircling us.

Speaker 1 (25:21):
They did not move.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
They stayed motionless, but were of significant size and based
on the distance I would say at least the size
of a small car like the bug where we ourselves
were in whatever these were seemed hunched over, perhaps kneeling.
Time passed, they never moved, and though we walked around
the car and got in and out of the car
to see if what we were seeing was some sort

(25:44):
of optical illusion, yet we couldn't explain the discredit what
we were seeing.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
To this day eracs my brain. Next story.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
Up here in the eastern Sierras, we see the dark
watchers all the time. They are always out at dusk
and dawn, ah, you see, it's just a tall, dark silhouette.
They almost look like horses standing on their hind legs
with the assistance of a walking stick. It's pretty creepy
and nobody has ever seen them close up. They disappear
the moment you try to get closer. So there you go.

(26:17):
Has anybody seen a dark watcher? I mean a lot
of people think of hat man or shadow people, but
these apparently are mostly seen outside on cliff on a
cliff face. Okay, next story, you'll also have a stranger
in fiction stories is titled The Orange Farm Murders.

Speaker 1 (26:37):
Let me take a quick sip here.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
In South Africa, most modest estimates are the more than
fifty people are murdered every day. Children are not special
and are not spared, especially since they are a high
demand to be used in dark rituals or mooti murders.
In April twenty twenty, The South African reported on the
murder of a young boy believed have been sacrificed in
a mooty ritual. Five year old Miss Wandili Sitho was

(27:07):
reported missing by his grandmother Go Go no no Mumpumelo Zitho.
She'd been bringing up the boy since he was five
months old. When the grandmother went to the police station
after several fruitless hours searching for her grandson, she found
the neighbor, who owned a nearby tavern already there. She
was shocked to hear that he told police he found

(27:27):
the boy's body in his tavern and he didn't know
how it got there. Community member Anna Mukubu, who injured
the tavern, described it thus quote when we got there,
we found Maswandili naked, standing in an upright position. His
hands and feet were bound. There was a mooty bottles
and a handkerchief that had small ropes in it. End quote,

(27:48):
there was a red rope tied around the child's neck.
This is evidenced the child was used in a mooti murder. Later,
the grandmother said he the neighbor, was telling me not
to go to the police station, that we would find
Wandi by the end of the day. He was so reassuring,
but I was concerned and wanted to find my grandson.
I feel betrayed because he was one of the people

(28:09):
of the first people to start a search party for Wandi.
When I told him he was missing. He didn't tell
me that my grandson was in his tavern the whole
time we were looking for him. He said he also
didn't know what that Wandi was there.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
A post mortem.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
Report found that Misswandili died due to suffocation. The township
south of Johannesburg was plagued with cases of missing children
and cruel child murders. By September twenty twenty, four children
were killed, the first being on Zili Zethiol. A few
days after the discovery of the boy's murder, Ponso Muchalanka

(28:47):
twenty nine was charged with the boy's murder. She along
with her husband, were arrested. The tarn they owned was
located less than one hundred feet from wa Wasandili's home.
Charges were not placed against them man since the prosecutor
said there was currently no prima facie case against him.
The charges against a woman were drawn on August twenty eighth,

(29:08):
but before Mazzondili's murder. On June eighteenth, twenty twenty, a
wastepaker came across a plastic bin. Inside was the body
of Ancia Keja, three, with a stab wound to her
upper body. Police and vecided the case, but with no
success in finding the Culprit Mofo Makonpo Makondo eight and

(29:29):
Simbiwe Mencina six, two friends, were found dead on September nineteen,
twenty twenty, only hours after being reported missing. The electricity
had gone out in the neighborhood that night, but neighbors
searched for the girls, nonetheless calling it off. At four am,
the naked bodies were discovered at five thirty a m
outside of tavern On Extension four, the same where Mazon

(29:51):
Dilixitos murder had taken place. The girls had several Mutique
implemented implements placed on their corpse. Post morten report found
that both had died due to suffocation. Pons Molacca, the
same woman suspected in the murder of masuandili Zito, was
re arrested. Police spokeswoman Peter's revealed she was illegally in

(30:13):
the country and had killed the girls three days after
being released from crostody. Peter said police can confirm that
this is the same suspect who was arrested in April
twenty twenty for the murder of another child, a boy
who was her neighbor, after the child's body was found
in her house. The boy had been reported missing earlier
in the day on April fifteen, twenty twenty, and the

(30:35):
search led to the woman's house with a child's body
was found. The woman and her partner were both arrested,
but charges were withdrawn against the male's suspect. The murder
case of April twenty twenty has been temporarily withdrawn in
corpending the outcome of the toxicology report. The twenty nine
year old woman was released from custody on September sixteen,

(30:56):
twenty twenty, three days before the murder of the two children.
In September twenty twenty two, Ponso Molaka Molanka was sentenced
to three life terms for the crime. Every year, approximately
three children per day are killed in South Africa, according
to official records. Many believe the figure is undercounted. Shanna's Matthews,

(31:18):
the country's leading expert on child homic side, thinks there
are many victims that are completely missed. There is no
investigation nor prosecution into the crime.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
She said.

Speaker 2 (31:28):
Violence has become entrenched in the psyche of South Africa.
How do we break that cycle? The number of children
killed are not going down, if anything, they are going up.
Joan van Nykirk, a child protection expert, recounts numerous cases
tainted by police ineptitude and corruption. Even though some children

(31:48):
fall victim to their own family members, there's a large
number which are killed in use of medicine, murders which
they are mutilated, and tortural lives since their agony is
believed to increase the juju of.

Speaker 1 (31:59):
The body parts.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
These blood rituals are mostly used to invoke prosperity, riches,
and good luck. Some believe political correctness has allowed the
practice to flourish since it is one part of indigenous
African culture which the media is not particularly eagle eager
to let the public know about. Tribal healers hold a
wide belief in the power of human sacrifice, and some

(32:24):
have been known to kill their own children in ceremonies.
In twenty eleven, there was a ten year moratorium on
crime statistics. In two thousand and one, approximately twenty five
hundred South Africans were caught in possession of human parts,
many of which were traded through the hospitals Africans with albinism,

(32:45):
which means that all binos are especially at risk since
their body parts are highly prized due to their supposed power,
Their organs can cost tens of thousands of dollars, leading
investigators to believe that human sacrifice is practiced in some
of the highest circles of African society. In two thousand
and nine, according to the Red Cross, at least fifty
albinos were.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
Murdered for their body parts.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
The belief in the powers of the Mouti is not
a recent phenomena. A testimony described in Mooti Ritual Murders
and natal from Chiefs Commoners, which was between nineteen hundred
nineteen thirty, proof that victims, especially children, were slaughtered in
order to meet the demands of san gomas to complete
their rituals. The Torso and the Thames case from two

(33:30):
thousand and one is not to be the first muti
murder in England. In twenty thirteen, it became known that
a brisk black market trade of human body parts and
organs was being operated at Raleigh Fitkin Memorial Hospital in Swaziland,
a South African country. It was described as an open secret.
Buyers came from all parts of South Africa to buy bones, hearts,

(33:52):
brains and other organs. It is not between sixty and
eighty five percent of South Africans believe in witchcraft and
black manns and in the medicinal effects of mooty to
cure them or improve their lives. South African crime figures
show that the six months from April to September twenty
twenty two, five hundred and fifty eight child murders and

(34:14):
two hundred and ninety four attempted child murders were committed.
It suspected many of them were tied to moody rituals,
even though statistics do not differentiate on motive. Gerard Labous
Shagnay of the South African Police Services Investigative Psychology Unit
investigated dozens.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
Of mooti murders.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
He come from the removal of genitals is the hallmark
of mooty killings and that is normally before death. Writing
in the Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling in
January of two thousand and four, he explains the underlying
belief system of mooti. In traditional African beliefs, it is
assumed that there is only a certain amount of luck

(34:54):
in society. Each individual receives a portion of that luck.
It is therefore believed that if another person is successful,
they have obtained an extra portion of luck via devious means,
usually with the intervention of the supernatural. Setbacks or calamities
such as drought or illness are signs that the natural
and social order have been disturbed. One means of obtaining

(35:16):
this extra portion of luck or restoring the natural order
is to the use of strong moody. It is with
the strong mooty that mooty orders are often associated. Mooty
made from human body parts is considered to be exceptionally powerful.
In Swaziland, there seems to be an increase in grave robbing,
where the body parts removed are similar to those used

(35:36):
in mooty. Also, theft or sell of body parts from
hospitals and mortuaries has occurred. Is uncertain whether or not
the traditional healer would be able to tell if a
body part is removed pre or post mortem endot. There
are so many crimes tied into moody that a special
unit called the South African Police Force Occult Related Crime

(35:57):
Unit was created nineteen eighty one by doctor Kobis Hound
of god Yonker. We want to there's a separate article
on him and what his efforts were over here on
Stranger than fiction stories is a link to its very
interesting and very very concerning all right. Next story is

(36:18):
out of Mysterious Universe. This is titled Abductions by Fairies
and Fairy Impostors. Fairy lore goes back centuries and can
be found in a wide variety of diverse cultures. Although
the modern image of fairies is that a benevolent, glittering
winged beings flitting and cavorting amongst the trees of a forest,
the attitude towards fairies also vary greatly from tradition to tradition.

(36:42):
In some accounts, fairies have a rather mischievous, even malevolent undertone,
and in some lore these entities are seen as being
very real. Indeed, an early account of a fairy abduction
involves a young woman named Anne Jeffreys or the parish
of Saint Heith, Cornwall in England. Born in sixteen twenty
six to a poor laborer, she had always been a

(37:04):
bright and inquisitive girl with a wild, in active imagination.
One of the things that really captured her attention and
became almost a sort of obsession for her, were all
the various tales of fairies that were all around her.
The lore of her area was steeped in such tales,
but for her this was more than mere stories. As
a child, she would spend much of her time out

(37:25):
in the woods trying to find the elusive entities and
commune with them, and this habit would continue right up
until she was a young woman, when she came to
live as a servant in the family of a mister
Moses Pitt and his wife joan Or. She did domestic
duties and also served as a nannian nurse to the
couple's two young children. At nineteen years of age, she

(37:46):
was still going out into the forest all the time
after a chorice in her free time, looking for fairies
and pixies, singing out to them in the hope of
some sort of response to validate her belief that they
were in fact real. Little did she know that her
efforts were not completely in vain, and that she was
being watched. According to the tale, one day Anne was

(38:07):
out knitting at the pit home when she suddenly went
into a convulsive fit that left her ill and bedridden.
Several days passed with her in an unconscious date, and
when she awoke she would have quite a tale to tell.
She would relate to her family and those around her,
that she had been out there knitting when she had

(38:27):
heard laughter, and had looked around to find six diminutive
men in green outfits and hats and with unusually bright eyes,
led by one with a red feather in his cap,
had crawled out of the bushes to approach her. The
leader of the group had been unafraid of her, jumping
into her palm and then up onto her shoulder to

(38:48):
kiss her neck and hair, and before long all of
them were calling all over her. That was a One
of them had put his hands over her eyes, after
which she had felt a pricking sensation. Then all had
gone dark. The next thing she remembered was waking to
someone shouting tier tear, and when she looked around herself,

(39:09):
she saw that she was upon a grassy knoll in
unfamiliar fantastical land of palaces, temples, and lush gardens, as
well as azure lakes and a plenty to the brightly
colored birds and other animals frolicking about. She was then
dressed in an ornate, flowing silk dress and led to
a palace where there were fairyfolk everywhere, eating, drinking, and dancing.

(39:32):
It would seem that she was there in this strange
land for many days, during which time she fell in
love with a fairy with a red feather.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
In his hat.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
This made the other fairy men jealous, and they followed
them around everywhere they went. One day, among of these
fairy men would surround them, and as her fairy lover
tried to defend her, Anne once again found herself losing consciousness,
fading to black as she was immersed in a thrumbing
vibration that shook her entire body and a buzzing in

(40:01):
her ears. The last thing she saw before leaving, before
everything went dark, was her fairy lover, lying wounded on
the ground. When she awoke, this time, she was back
where she had started, the fairies nowhere to be seen.
She was at that time disoriented, and when her family
members found her, she was going into convulsive fits. Oddly,

(40:23):
though many days had passed for Anne, it seemed as
if no time had passed in the real world. For
the next few weeks, she would be ill in bed,
moving between unconsciousness and lucidity, and she would demonstrate some
side effects of her bizarre ordeal. It seems as though
she had developed a certain clairvoyant ability, such as reading
the future and knowing who was at the door. She

(40:44):
also said that she frequently saw the fairies lurking about,
although no one else could, and she had also gained
the ability to heal people by touching them. On one
occasion during a person's injured leg, just by laying hands
upon it, and soon people were coming from barn wide
coming to be held by her hands. Such was her
purported powers, as she was kept as a prisoner at

(41:06):
the house of the Mayor of Bodmin for length for
a time on charge of being a witch. Although she
never formerly charged with witchcraft, she was what was whispered
rumors were saying. Interestingly, another power she apparently had was
to go without food for long periods, yet remained healthy
and vigorous, insisting that the fairies were keeping her fed.

(41:27):
The case made quiet astir back in the time, and
Anne herself would go on to marry a man named
William Warren and fade from the spotlight, refusing to duck
about her experience or perform any more healing magic. The
story would go on to be spoken of throughout the
area ever since. With a letter from Moses pid her
benefactor's son to the right, Reverend Doctor Edward Fowler, Bishop

(41:48):
of Gloucester, setting it in stone and Jeffreys would dine
sixteen ninety eight, taking any secrets to the grave with
her and having avoided stalking about her experience for most
of her life. What was going on here? Is this
just a folk tale? Or is there something more to it?
It is unknown and the case has become embedded in

(42:09):
local myth without a real answer in sight. Was this
actual fairies, interdimensional interlopers, or possibly an alien abduction? Or
was it just a hoax and the ramblings of a
misguided young woman, or even just pure folk hit lore.
There is no way to know, and whatever the case
may be, it remains one of the weirder tales of
fairies there is. In some cases, it seems that the

(42:33):
targeted victim of a fairy kidnapping manages escape. In eighteen
thirty nine, there was a woman by the name of
Annie McIntyre who seems to have just been saved by
her brother from being abducted by the fairies.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
Her report would read quote.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
Yes, by good luck, my brother happened to be coming
home from Cardanog that night and heard the fairies singing,
and saw them dancing round me in the wood at
carrow Keel. He had a book with him and he
threw it among them. They then ran away. One early
and quite sinister account with alleged evil fairies happened in

(43:07):
nineteen eleven when Walter Yielding Evans once published a book
called The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, in which there
is an interviewed seventy three year old Neil Colton, who
claimed that as a youth in eighteen fifty three he
had had a rather strange and frightening fairy encounter. Indeed,
Coulton claimed that one summer day he had been put

(43:30):
with his brother and cousin gathering berries out in the
countryside when they heard some inexplicable ethereal music wag wafting
through the air from beyond some nearby rocks, and the
group went to investigate. They claim that they had come
across a band of fairies dancing in a clearing, and
when his little folk o woman dressed in red, suddenly

(43:51):
noticed they were being watched and rushed forward with decidedly
aggressive intent. The mysterious woman claim is claimed to have
searched forth with a stick or rush in her hand
to strike the cousin across the cheek, after which she
reached out to grab Colton's brother's arm to keep from falling.
This sent the group scurrying away in a panic, and

(44:12):
at some point on their flight back to their home,
Colton's cousin collapsed to the ground, seemingly dead. The girl's
father and a priest by the name of Father Ryan
then came to the scene, and Ryan said a prayer
over her body, after which she slowly and grogili awoke.
The priest would conclude that it had only been her
grabbing Colton's brother that it kept her from being taken

(44:33):
by the fairies forever. In nineteen twenty five we also
a reportable woman who was pixie led, told by Missus G.
Herbert of Dartmore, England.

Speaker 1 (44:45):
In nineteen twenty.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Five, Herbert was riding a horse on the moors of Dartmoor, England,
on a fine sunny day, in the area of the
moors that she knew well when she suddenly and inexplicably
became confused and lost her way. Oddly, she recognized her surrounding,
but some persistent fog in her mind was befuddling her
and preventing her from navigating any of it. She seemed

(45:07):
to know that this was a result of fairies trying
to lead her astray for the purposes of abducting her,
so she tried a trick to protect herself, involving turning
her pockets inside out. Apparently this work and she was
able to continue on her way without further incident. Indeed,
some of the strangest reports of fairy abductions come from

(45:28):
those who have managed to come back to tell the tale.
A very weird early report also has to do with
what is called a fairy circle, a sort of portal
between the land of the faye and our reality, which
in this account supposedly existed near the farm of Lewin
and Phinin near the Vale of Neath in South Wales

(45:49):
and seventeen fifty five, two servants on the farm Rice
at Morgan and Llewellyn Walter, were walking towards the farm
one evening with Rise stopped and told his companion he
could hear music playing, although Llewellyn could hear nothing. Rice
told told the Llewellyn to continue back home while he

(46:11):
went to search for who was playing the music and
talk to them. It was all very odd since only
Ryce could hear the alleged music, and Llewellyn suspected that
he was just trying to get out of work, finally
just leaving his friend to head home. When morning came,
Rice was nowhere to be seen, and so Llewellyn told
the boss what had happened the previous night. The area

(46:32):
was searched, and they even searched the nearby alehouse, but
there was no sign of Rice, and suspicion began to
fall on Llewellyn that he had done something to him.
This would continue for a full year before the story
found its way to a local farmer who thought it
might have to do with fairies. He asked Llewellyn to
take him and some friends to the exact spot where
Rice had disappeared, and the farmer claimed that it was

(46:53):
a fairy circle and that Rice had been snatched away
within it. At that moment, Llewellyn could allegedly he harp
music that no one else could, and the farmer noticed
that the servant's foot was partly within the circle. When
all present placed their feet within the circle, they found
that they too could hear the music, and they could
also see little child size figures dancing about along the

(47:15):
missing Rise. Llewellyn then grabbed his friend and pulled him
out of the circle, after which Rice told said he
wanted to dance a little more, as he had just
gotten there. When asked when he meant, Rice's claim to
have been there for scarcely five minutes, even though a
whole year had passed, Indeed, he had no inkling at
all that he had been gone so long, and he

(47:38):
also found himself unable to clearly remember his time with
the little people in that circle. The next morning, the
circle was checked to find that it was trodden down
and filled with triny footprints the size of a person's thumb. Oddly,
after leaving the circle, Rise's health would rapidly deteriorate and
he would die not long after what happened here. Some

(47:59):
of these cases can be quite harrowing, such as an
account also written in the nineteen ten book The Fairy
Faith in Celtic Countries by why I mean w y
Evans Wentz. The case revolves around the witness who says
that when he was a boy, he was out with
his brother and cousin when they were not almost abducted
by a group of fairies. He says of the bizarre experience, quote,

(48:23):
one day, just before sunset and midsummer, and I and
a boy, then my brother and cousin and myself were
gathering bill Berri's or wardleberries up by the rocks at
the back of here, when all at once we heard music.
We hurried around the rocks, and there we were within
a few hundred feet of six or eight of the gentlefolk,

(48:43):
and they dancing when they saw us. A little woman
dressed on in red came running out when they towards us,
and she struck my cousin across the faith with what
seemed to be a green rush. We ran for home
as hard as we could, and when my cousin reached
the house, she fell dead. Father saddled a horse and
went for Father Ryan. When Father Ryan arrived, he put

(49:06):
a stole about his neck and began praying over my
cousin and reading psalms, and striking her with a stole,
and in that way brought her back. He said, if
she had not caught hold of my brother, she would
have been taken forever. In the same book is a
story of a man who tells of his frightening encounter
with what he calls the gentry another word for fairy.

(49:29):
One day, as he was out near a place called
ben Bulbin, hid a curious encounter with a fairy that
seemed about to ducton. He says of the rather odd
series of events. When I was a young man, I
often used to go out in the mountain over there
to fish for trot or to hunt. And it was
in January, on a cold dry day, while carrying my gun,

(49:50):
that I and a friend with me, as we were
walking around ben Bulbin saw one of the gentry. For
the first time I knew who it was, for I
had heard the gentry described her as since I could remember,
and this one was dressed in blue with a head
dress adorned with what seemed to be frills. When he
came up to us, he said to me in a
sweet and silvery voice, the seldomer you come to this mountain,

(50:12):
the better. A young lady here wants to take you away.
Then he told us not to fire off our guns,
except it is a gentry dislike being disturbed by the noise.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
And he seemed to be like a.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
Soldier of the gentry on guard as we were leaving
the mountains, he told us not to look back, and
we didn't. Another time, I was alone trot fishing and
nearly the same region when I heard a voice say,
it is barefooted and fishing. Then there came a woodslike
music and a noise like the beating of a drum.

(50:45):
And soon one of the gentry came and talked with
me for half an hour. He said, your mother will
die in eleven months, and do not let her die unanointed.
And she did die within eleven months. As he was
going away, he warmed me, you must be in the
house for sunset. Do not delay. Do not delay. They
can do nothing to you until I get back in

(51:06):
the castle. As I found out afterwards, he was going
to take me, but hesitate because he did not want
to leave my mother alone. After these warnings, I was
always afraid to go to the mountains, but lately I
have been told I could go if I took a
friend with me end quote. In some cases, people have
been reported as being gone for a length of time,

(51:28):
only to somehow find their way back, usually days, confused
and with no clear memory of what has happened to them.
One report from the fairy Faith in Celtic Country speaks
of this and explains how something about what is called
fairy land is a place in which time runs differently,
and which has a way of preventing the abductive from

(51:49):
being able to speak of it.

Speaker 1 (51:51):
It explains quote.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
Persons in a short trance state of two or three
days duration are said to be away with the fairies
enjoying a festival. The festival will be very material in
its nature. It may be purely spiritual. Sometimes one may
thus go to fairy for an hour or two, or
one may remain there for seven, fourteen or twenty one years.
The minor person coming out of Fairyland is usually a

(52:16):
blank as to what has been seen and done there.
Another idea is that the person knows well enough all
about Fairyland, but is prevented from communicating the knowledge. A
certain woman of whom I knew, said she had forgotten
all about her experience in fairy But a friend who
heard her objected and said she did remember, and she

(52:37):
wouldn't tell. A man may remain awake at night to
watch one who has been to fairyland, to see if
that one holds communication with the fairies. Others say in
such a case that the fairies know you are on
the alert and will not be discovered. Similarly, we have
a case that relates to the bizarre ordeal of a

(52:58):
woman who disappeared near a fairy fort, usually a mound,
cairn of rocks, or boulder that draws in fairies and
has great significance for them. The report reads finally, as
an example of this darker aspect of fairy encounters, this
account of the Irish folklore archives demonstrates the upset and
the confusion which many feel before they could even speak

(53:21):
about what they believe happened to them. In this case,
a family happened to live close to an ancient fairy fort,
and one morning, as a woman is using a speeding wheel,
she noticed a tiny person standing by the door of
the house. When the woman stood up and walked to
the door to investigate, she was taken away by a
group of small people. When the family arrived home and

(53:42):
noticed their aunt had vanished, they searched everywhere in the vicinity,
but found no sign of her. They searched the drains,
the ditches, and even the fairy fort itself. It was
on the third day of her disappearance. That one of
the family was walking by the fort when they saw
the ant kneeling next to it. She had vanished while
holding a carving knife, and this was stuck in the

(54:04):
ground next to her. The aunt could not speak for
days after her return, and was only then that the
family learned of her abduction.

Speaker 1 (54:13):
End quote.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
In most cases the person is just a sort of
whisked away, and this often happens to the very young.
Another case concerned a young woman by the name of
Annie McIntyre, also from Ireland. According to an account in
a nineteen oh nine edition of the Preston Herald, quote,
Annie McIntyre, a venerable County dairy woman, has a sublime

(54:37):
faith in the fairies, and being examined at a meeting
of the Limovidae Pension Committee as to her age, she
fixed the time of her birth as Halloween in eighteen
thirty nine, giving for a recollection of the fact the
startling reason that she has been stolen by the fairies,
and replied to the chairman of the Woman And replied

(54:59):
to the chairman of the a woman said that she
was as certain of her abduction by the fairies as
she was alive. After carrying off the infant. She continued
the wee people indulged in rebels and dancing in the
woods at karro Keel, which were fortunately overheard by her
brother when returning from Cardomog. The brother had a book

(55:19):
a bible difficult to see the fairies being frightened off
by a penny treadful, which she threw into the wood
and scattered the fairies. When he lifted his baby's sister
in his arms and carried her back in triumph for
the question. The witness that her mother relatives were overjoyed
at her safe return and gave themselves up to feasting
and merriment. This was the only incident by which witness

(55:41):
was able to determine her age, of which no record
appeared in the senses of eighteen forty one or that
of eighteen fifty one. Fairies that have supposedly displayed an
alarming habit of kidnapping human beings, in particular babies, and
there made such reports. One account, Litta on the Fairiest website,

(56:02):
details the reportable woman, when eighteen forty four, gave birth
to a baby. Some time later, the infant was lying
in bed with the mother and followed when the mother
awoke to find the baby gone. She would soon find
that it had been taken by the fairy folk, and
the report would say of the incident thus quote, Uttering
an exclamation of fear lest the fairies or fairies should
have taken the child, she jumped out of bed, and

(56:25):
there sure enough a number of the little sandy things
had got the baby at the foot of the bed
and were undressing it. They fled away through the hole
in the wall in the floor, laughing as if they
were shrieked, and snatching up her child. On examination she
found that they had laid all the pins head to
head as they took them out of the dress. For
months afterwards she always slept with the child between herself

(56:46):
and husband, and used carefully to pin it by its bedclothes,
the pillow and sheets, that it might not be snatched
a hastily away. This happened in the old house which
stood with a new one now stands at the south
side of the the vicarage gate. A woman, as she heard,
tell how the child changed and one a poor thing
left in its place. But she was very kind to it,

(57:08):
and every morning, on getting up she found a small
piece of money in her pocket. My informant firmly believes
in their existence, and wonders how it is that of
late years no such thing have been seen. Indeed, babies
are traditionally prime targets for fairies, and to protect their infants,
people would often sprinkle them with holy water or hang

(57:32):
bars of rods of iron over their cribs, as iron
was said toward fairies off with even adults often carrying
around iron when venturing into a fairies territory. This was
among many precautions mothers would take to protect themselves, both
themselves and their babies from fairies. Twentieth century fairy researchers

(57:55):
wy Evans Went said of this quote, the fairies were
wont to take away infants and their mothers, and many
precautions were taken to safeguard them till purification and baptism
took place when the fairy power became ineffective, placing iron
about the bed, burning leather in the room, giving mother
and child the milk of a cow which had been eaten,

(58:19):
which had been eaten of the mothin peer wart, a
plant of virtue, and similar means were taken to ensure
their safety. If the watching woman neglected these precautions, a
mother and child are both respirated away to the fairy power.
This does not seem to work. Always work, though, And
in another account, we have a case from the eye

(58:40):
from the site Irish Central, from a witness called Grace.
She writes, quote, don't believe in fairy abductions, Mike. Granny
would have us sit down with you and soon set
you straight. From the very day of her birth, Granny's
parents carefully lay their iron fire poker across the basket
she slept in. They were believers, you see, in the

(59:01):
good people. Well, wasn't everybody back then. But times have changed,
and now there are fewer belief.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
Who knows, Maybe the good people like it that way.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
My Grannie thinks so, And she says she should know.
I've lived one foot in our world and in the
other foot in theirs. So she says. You see, when
Grannie was but a few months old, the good people
tried to steal her a way while a drop of
whiskey on her breath. She'll tell you that she was
asleep in her wheat basket when there was a commotion
out back of her parents cottage. They lived in County Limerick.

(59:33):
At that time it was a farm with mainly sheep,
she says, and anyway, all hell had broken loose tween
sheep and dogs, and Grannie's Mam and pop up and
ran outside to see the damage.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
As it happened.

Speaker 2 (59:46):
There was nothing to see, nothing at all. I'd been
nothing but bluster, for the sheep and dogs were only
calm and dozy, which was strange in itself. Grannie's ma'am
was pretty canny, and she high tiled it back to
the to find Grannie still tighten her blanket, laying at
the threshold of the front door, fast asleep, across the

(01:00:07):
room from her basket. When she was older, Grannie was
told by her parents that the good people had distracted
them so they could steal her way, for she was touched,
having one blue eye and one green eye. Only they
couldn't get her up from the cottage and account she'd
been baptized. Grannie will tell you the iron bar did
nothing to keep the good people from reaching in her basket.

(01:00:29):
And what's more, it wasn't true her being baptized. It's
what her parents told anyone who asked, But in truth,
she was yet to be baptized. And only a day
or two after the visit, as Grannie calls it, her
parents took her on the quiet to the priest for
her to get the job done.

Speaker 1 (01:00:45):
So we can only.

Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
Guess that the good people. There's good people, and there's
a bad cat back here. So we can only guess
that the good people dropped Grannie to the ground when
they heard her Mam approaching I think Grannie and telling
the story. And whereas as a kind of badge. Actually,
it is remarked by many who have known Granny that

(01:01:07):
she has lived a charmed life on account of her
touch by the good people. There can be something to that.
She is nearing one hundred years old, after all, as
bright and feisty.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
As ever before.

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Were some traditions of fairy abductions in which the little
folk were said to leave behind an entity called a changeling,
which was a fairy impostor who merely looked like a
person who had been abducted, to act like a placeholder
and take the abductee's place. In the lore of numerous
countries in Europe and beyond, a changing was more or

(01:01:39):
less a copy of a child left by usually fairies,
but sometimes elves, trolls, or some other spirit, depending on
the culture, to replace a human child that they abducted.
The fairies would sneak into home spirit away the human
child and leave an imitation version a changeling in its place,
and this would be done for several different reasons, depending

(01:02:02):
on the lore of a specific region. Sometimes it was
because fairies coveted human children and wanted one for themselves,
and indeed some human children were said to live out
the rest of their days in the fairy realm. Another
occasion was said to take a human child as a
slave or servant out of malice or revenge, or even

(01:02:22):
as no more than a prank. Fairies might also take
a human child if they thought they weren't being cared
for properly, or in because a changeling itself had requested
to grow.

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
Up in the human world.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
For instance, some older fairies supposedly requested to be made
into changelings in order to become young again and start
life anew in the human world. The children taken were
almost without fail, the most beautiful, which is why in
some traditions, such as those of Ireland, it was seen
as bad luck to look.

Speaker 1 (01:02:53):
At a baby with envy.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
Or praise it's beauty too much, because this was thought
to draw the fairies attention into it and make the
child a target. Although they looked indistinguishable from a human child,
once a child was replaced by changeling, there were varying
ways to tell if they were an imposter. Again, depending
on the region and many traditions, changing children were likely

(01:03:18):
to look pale and sickly, and may not grow up
to be normal size. They were often said to have
long teeth, scraggly hair, or some hidden physical deformity or
birth defect, such as extra toes. Change things were said
to have enormous appetites, eating for more than a human
normal human child of their size would. They are also
typically said to be more intelligent than a normal human

(01:03:40):
child of their age. Was also said they would demonstrate
skills or abilities that their human doppelganger had not possessed,
with psychic abilities often mentioned. They were often said to
have an uncanny offness about their outward appearance, which was
hard to put one's finger on, but would be un
settling to all who looked at them. Other traditions speak

(01:04:03):
of the changely becoming uglier with age. For instance, in
Wales's believed that the changeling would start out beautiful but
become even more hideous as it grew up. People around
the changeling child might also suffer physical effects, such as
being unable to move their limbs, which is called being
very struck. Changeling children were also commonly described as acting

(01:04:25):
very oddly, as well as never smiling or laughing when
people were watching, although they would do so when they
thought they were alone, and many times changelings were mute
or spoke very little. The English poet and topographer George Waldron,
who lived in the Isle of Man during the early
eighteenth century, would claim to have seen a changeling child

(01:04:47):
and described it as follows quote, nothing under heaven coul
have a more beautiful face. But though between five and
six years old and seemingly healthy, he was so far
from being able to walk or stand that he could
not so much as move any joint. His limbs were
vastly longer for his age, but smaller than infants of

(01:05:08):
six months. His complexion was perfectly delicate, and he had
the finest hair in the world. He never spoke nor cried,
ate scarcely anything was very seldom seemed to smile, but
if any one called him a fairy elf, he would
frown and fix his eyes so earnestly on those who
said it, as if he could see through them. His mother,

(01:05:30):
at least his supposed mother, being very poor, frequently went
out a charring and left them a whole day together.
The neighbors, out of curiosity, have often looked in at
the window to see how he behaved and alone, which
which whenever they did, they were sure to find him
laughing and in the utmost delight. This made them judge
that he was not without company, more pleading to him

(01:05:52):
than any mortals could be. And what made this conjecture
seem the more reasonable was that if he were left
ever so dirty, the woman at her return saw him
with a clean face and his hair combed with the
utmost exactness and nicety. For a long time, changelings were
seen as a very real threat, with many families constantly

(01:06:16):
on guard against their child being abducted and replaced by
these doppelgangers, and, as with many other supernatural creatures, they
were various methods to keep the changeling away. A common
theme in many regions was a use of iron. Thought
of a powerful repelling effect against the creatures, with iron
objects such as knives and scissors left around the child's

(01:06:38):
caught to keep them at bay. Others always included constantly
watching the child, laying the father's clothes on the bed,
keeping a fire constantly lit in the room, baptizing the child,
and other strange customs such as placing urine around the bed.
Most traditions also feature various charms, amulets, herbs, or salves

(01:06:58):
that could be used to keep changing away as well.
But despite all of these precautions, there was never any
certain guarantees that a child wouldn't be taken every place
by the fairies, and almost every tradition of changelings, they
were not seen as a desirable or benevolent presence, mischievous
at best, importance of misfortune, death and ruin at worse.

(01:07:22):
For this reason of a changeling was spotted in a family,
besides the parents just wanting their child back, it was
in their best interest to get rid of it before
problems came their way, and there were various traditions for
how to do this. In many countries, the thought that
torturing and changeling until it laughed would do the trick,

(01:07:43):
causing it to leave and bring the human child back
and Ireland, it was thought that throwing the changeling into
a fireplace would cause it to jump up the chimney
and return the human child. Indeed, many countries hadrod tradition
of using fire otherwise heeding the changeling, such as in
an oven, in order to banish it. They could also
be beaten and mistreated to force them to admit their

(01:08:04):
true nature. In other traditions, enough to simply trick the
changeling into speaking or laughing by any means necessary, and
there were certain rituals that could be carried out as well.
If a family was lucky, the changeling would just get
bored and go away on its own, although there were
no guarantees that the human child it had replaced would

(01:08:24):
ever be returned. Yet, even with all these deterrents and
weapons against the change thing's threat, many families felt compelled
to care for it simply because they were afraid that
something bad would happen to their real child if they
did not. On occasion, this could lead to the thankful
change lee giving back the human child as a reward

(01:08:46):
for their kindness, but usually the changeling would remain. In
some cases, the changeling would be raised as the family's
child through to adulthood, with a changeling, sometimes even forgetting
what they really were and believing themselves to be human.
In this case, the human child they had replaced would

(01:09:08):
live with the fairies forever and would sometimes themselves forget
that they had ever been human at all. There are
many historical tales of changelings that grew up in human society.
King Charles the First of England was reported rumored to
have been a changeling, and there is also the tale
a woman named Bridget Cleary who was murdered by her

(01:09:28):
husband in eighteen ninety five when he suspected her of
being a changeling. In this particular case, from March of
eighteen ninety five, a young woman by the name of
Bridget Cleary disappeared in Ireland, and after an extensive search
for the woman, her body was finally found not far
from her home. Police would finger her husband Michael Cleary,

(01:09:50):
her father Patrick balland her aunt Mary Kennedy, her cousins
Patrick William James and Michael Kennedy and John Dunn as
the killers, but under questioning they would weave a very
strange tale. Indeed, according to them, the real Bridget had
in fact been abducted by fairies who had then left
behind a changeling in her place, a fact they uncovered

(01:10:13):
when the creature became very ill for no reason. They
then tied up the changeling and tortured it to find
out where the real Bridget had been taken to, but
it died from its injuries. According to them, the police
had found the changeling's body and not that of the
real Bridget. It was a colorful story, but the police
weren't buying it, and they were charged with murder. The

(01:10:35):
stories of changelings reverberate throughout the low of many European countries,
including the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Poland, Spain and others, and
similar tales stretched out to Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
Why is it that such similar stories have managed to
warm their way into these far flung lands. One of
the main theories in modern times is that this was

(01:10:56):
a way of explaining and dealing with infants born with
defects or deformed, developmentally disabled or neurodivergent children, as well
as those with autism. In an age when there was
little theomatically or scientifically explain such things. This could have
perhaps been a way to rationalize such children. The parents

(01:11:18):
would see these effects and convince themselves that this couldn't
possibly be their child, but rather an impostor left by
supernatural forces. It is horrifying in a sense, as such
folklore beliefs likely led to countless instances of innocent children
being mistreated, tortured, abandoned, or even killed. We may never
truly know how such stories evolved, or whether they remain

(01:11:40):
so early similiar across geographical and cultural divides, but they
certainly play into every parent's fears that something might happen
to their child, every metacurious area of strange lore with
deep roots and mystery. Here we have looked at just
a small selection of the many accounts through the ages

(01:12:01):
of fairies with decadedly dark agendas. Is there any truth
to the tales? Are they strictly mythical constructs confined to
spooky lord legend? Whatever the case may be, it all
adds extra layers to the phenomenon of fairies and shows
that they are not always of the kind e manevolent type. Wow.

(01:12:24):
You know when you listen to that story, A lot
of the abductions almost sound like ET abductions. People forget
the they forget, or time moves differently from them, Very
similar to some abduction stories.

Speaker 1 (01:12:45):
Pretty interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
Huh? Are fairies ets or ET's or fairies?

Speaker 1 (01:12:51):
What do you think?

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
All right, guys, till next time, let's see what else
we could dig up in this weird world of ours.

Speaker 1 (01:12:58):
To take care

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