August 7, 2024 • 17 mins
This week's theme is abandoned cities. Edwin tells us about the actor Daniel Stern (the tall robber from the "Home Alone" movies) and his wife's vacation to a strange English village. Michelle's story is about the exclusion zone around the Chornobyl nuclear disaster and how it's a tourist attraction. Would you go?
Do you have an idea for an episode theme? email us: hello@campfirestory.com
Get ad-free episodes and support the show at CampfireStory.com
Hosted by Michelle Newman and Edwin Covarrubias. Episode edited & sound designed by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound
Scary Mystery Surprise (Campfire Story) is no longer being updated, but be sure to check out our other shows from Scary.fm for more scares!
Do you have an idea for an episode theme? email us: hello@campfirestory.com
Get ad-free episodes and support the show at CampfireStory.com
Hosted by Michelle Newman and Edwin Covarrubias. Episode edited & sound designed by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound
Scary Mystery Surprise (Campfire Story) is no longer being updated, but be sure to check out our other shows from Scary.fm for more scares!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
And that's when he heard someone screaming for rescue from
the fire inside. He ran up the stairs to tell someone,
and they said when he entered the control room, he
was the first person to open that door in three years.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Get ready for a campfire story.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I'm Edwin, I'm Michelle, and we'll share spooky stories with
playful banter that'll keep you up at night.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
So throw some wood on the fire and put a
wiener on a stick. We're telling you a campfire story tonight.
So a little while back, I listened to this one show.
I already told you about it, Celebrity Go Story.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
I thought you were going to explain the Office to me.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Well, that's the other show I guess that I watch,
like aside from the Office, it's this one. Anyway, he
really got me thinking about how all these stories develop
a haunted mansion, Like all these plays are so like
rich people, and you know that I'm not really into
celebrity stuff, right, Like I'm.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Not into you don't know who anyone is?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, I can't identify them. I think I can identify
Jennifer Lopez most of the time. Shakira, Shakira, I don't know.
But anyway, like Basically the show is this person sits
in front of a camera and just tells a story
that they had, like a ghost story, and they do
you know, they get actors and they do the whole re.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
When you cite celebrity, I mean, what level are we
talking about. It's not j Low on this show.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
No.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
For example, this one's from Daniel Stern. You know who
that is.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Oh yeah, he's the He's one of the robbers in
Home Alone. He also did the grown up voice on
The Wonder Ears.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I had no idea.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Have you watched The Wonder Years? No, then it doesn't
matter to you.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
So anyway, this guy begins his story of a trip
through the English moors with his wife. This is in
the eighties. Sometimes they rented a car and they were
gonna dry through the countryside. They wanted to go to
a town called Tavistock to stay at a bed and breakfast,
and they end up at this town called Whittacombe to
see a church there. They get there, there's nothing much around.
(02:12):
They pull in and then they see a church. So
they were excited about it. They're like, wow, cool, let's
go check it out. Whatever, right, so they start walking
around they're exploring and they suddenly begin to notice that
people are walking around, but they're walking very like awkwardly
looking straight ahead like zombies. That's what he said. Nobody
was talking and they were being completely ignored, like they
(02:35):
were just walking past them. Everybody's slow and everyone dressed
in black. Of course, they decided to get the heck
out of there, like we need to find out how
do we get to Tavistock to the bed and breakfast.
And that's when they see a woman that she's standing
kind of by the church and they want to ask
you for directions, and she's turning away from them. She
(02:55):
turns around and she stares at them with white eyes
like no color in the circley part of the high
and she begins to speak in tongues. They both stand there.
They're just like like they're kind of freaking out, but
she's still talking, so like they're kind of there. You
don't want to be rude because they're in England. And
(03:16):
then they take off straight to the car. They start
driving away and just a few minutes later, like they're
driving like if they're about a mile away, probably a
tire pox the guy this straight up movie scene, right
like the guy says, hey, we should probably head back
and get it fixed, and the wife is like, no,
(03:39):
we're driving like that right, So they keep driving like
they drive on the rim, like they're not stopping. So
they finally make it Tavis Stock and they late to
the reservation and then it tells them, yeah, we were
at this place called Whittocomb, and the attendant it's like, Whittocomb,
you say, that place is a ghost town. Don't go there.
There's a lot of dead people walk around. And then
(04:01):
he tells the story of a church, the actual church
that they wanted to see. Turns out that one night,
this is back in like a long time ago, on
a Sunday, there was a lot of thunder lightning and
there was service at the church. There was a terrible storm.
Lightning suddenly struck like the roof and the steeple felt
it was burning. Four people died, and it was like
(04:25):
the story of the town. It was kind of like,
we'll put it on the map. They have artist depictions
of what happened the burning of the church, but since
then they say that place is haunted. Celebrity Gold Stories
had runs and reruns and I just kept playing because
it was a really popular episode. Of course I looked
it up to see what about whocomb is it haunted?
It turns out that the local town historian was overwhelmed
(04:48):
with these requests. They're like, you know, who are you
or whatever? They kept replying. So instead what he did
to all these replies, all these people reaching out to him,
He replied in this like blog post and in his
repply he put hello America, like basically talking to America.
On Sunday, twenty first October sixteen thirty eight, when the
(05:10):
church was full for a service, the terrible thunderstorm threatened
the valley. One of the four pinnacles of the church
tower was struck by lightning, with a result that it
came crashing through the roof of the church and killed
four people, one an ancestor of mine, Susannah Beard. Parts
of the tower were found in the manor house garden
(05:30):
four hundred yards away to the north, and considerable damage
was done. The schoolmaster at the time was a Richard Hill,
and he wrote a detailed summary of the event. We
understand that his manuscripts in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University,
regarding the people dressed in black. In rural areas of Devon,
(05:51):
when there is a funeral of someone local or well known,
most of the local people turned out to pay their
last respects to the departed. It is possible that when
the TV presenter was in the village an event of
this kind was taking place and we would all have
been in solemn or somber mood. Our church is dedicated
to Saint Pancras, and due to its large size, it
(06:13):
is affectionately known as the Cathedral of the Moor. In
its present form it dates from the fourteenth century, but
there is little doubt in my mind that there has
been a church here for much longer, even to the
point that it was a religious significance in pre Christian days.
There is a great deal of prehistoric evidence here in Dartmoor.
I personally collect prehistoric implements and tools. In the earliest
(06:35):
that I have dates from eight thousand BC. There is
no Roman evidence here, but there was Roman activity within
eight miles of here, and of course in Exeter, our
county town. On the second Tuesday of September each year
we hold the annual Whittacombe Fair. People come from all
over the world to this special day when animals are shown,
(06:55):
sporting events take place, and the history of the area
is on display. Whittacombe Fair was anupperty for farmers to
sell stock when it was begun several hundred years ago,
but now it is more of a fun gathering on
dark murth. There are many ghost stories, the Harry Hans,
Black Dogs, specters, all mixed up with the legends. As
I mentioned earlier, our History group has written a small
(07:16):
book about Whittocombe and other about Whitcomb Fair, and these
are obtainable through our website. There are several more of
you that have written to us, and I hope that
I have answered most of your queries in this letter.
Thank you for your interest in the Whittocomb and we
would like to send you all seasons greetings in all
the best for twenty eleven. Yours, sincerely, AE Beard, Honorary Secretary,
(07:37):
Whittocomb History Group. So he was defending his town. It's
not a ghost town.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
No, there was just a funeral, which I kind of
thought from that story you said it was a funeral,
and then like them talking to that woman, she probably
just had a thick British accent and they.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Just probably.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
You know, the accents get a little weird in the country.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
It's speaking in talk and the eyes probably the old people,
you know, you get.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, Cateractionlind.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
What this told me is that, Yeah, sometimes we can
hear you know, ghost story, an abandoned town or a
ghost town. In reality, it might just you know, you
might get there on the wrong day, like when you
get to Seattle most of the year.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Yeah, everyone's just not talking or acknowledging you.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
But they're not dead. You're not dead. That's just the
way it is there.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
So don't always believe what you hear. Sometimes people just
get there on the wrong day.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Now, we're going to a real abandoned ghost town, abandoned
for a very good reason, and it has a very
dark history and will stay abandoned. I think they'll probably
start to clean up in two thousand and sixty five.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
We might be alive.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
We might be alive when they start to clean up.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
We'll update, we'll update if we're still alive.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Then picture this doors banging open and shut in the wind.
Hastily abandoned amusement park rides creak noisily. Snowy boulevards are
dotted with wolf boar and fox tracks outside decaying apartment
high rises. Nature has begun to creep through the gaps
(09:21):
in the concrete, but at night, that's when the animals
come and any sound echoes all over the city. These
are the ruins caused by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that
left the city of Pipya and the surrounding farms and
(09:42):
pine forests a ghost town.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Scarier still is.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
That the streets are stalked by an invisible killer radiation
sickness and cancer that will kill a person slowly and
you never.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Know when it'll strike. So here's what happened.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
In nineteen eighty six, the Chernobyl nuclear plant went into meltdown,
located in the Soviet Union at the time, which is
modern day Ukraine. So during this meltdown at least twenty
eight people were killed in the original disaster, but thousands
more have died from cancer as a result from the
radiation that's spread after the explosion and the fire that
(10:22):
leaked radiation into the air.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
WHOA isn't that crazy?
Speaker 1 (10:27):
WHOA? Yeah, The abandoned area is now called the exclusion zone.
It's frozen in time and in panic.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I never understood radiation, honestly, like I remember learning about
it in school, but like never really got it, got
it right.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Well, I mean it's kind of hard to grasp because
it's invisible, right, but like it's an invisible thing melting
your skin off depending on or it's the other kind
where you just get a weird.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Cancer emissions of like little waves that are like they
can get waves.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
And they can can daminate everything. Like the animals are
so interesting they don't allow people back in. So the
first ten years after the accident, the animals were all
being deformed and weird and like not living a long time.
Stuff was happening. But now all the animals that are
still there, like rats, cats, dogs, cows.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
There's wolves.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
There's a lynx that's come back, like nature's actually healing itself.
But they're all radioactive. So there's radioactive wolves.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
That's a cool name for a band.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
So now animals are more normal looking, but they're still contaminated,
Like there's still a bunch of cows that have contaminated
milk in the area because it was farmland. Like there's
still a threat of contamination. If you just do the
wrong thing, go to the wrong place or lean against
the wrong object, it could kill you like, there's still
(11:52):
that going on in this town. As with all eerie
sites where a number of people have lost their lives,
Yah is rife with ghost stories and strange folklore. And
there's this guy named Andre Karsov, a nuclear physicist from
New York, basically told one of these stories because he
was visiting the area in nineteen ninety seven. He went
(12:15):
to the power station at seven thirty am and went
into reactor number four. Also, the reactors weren't fully shut down.
They sarcophagus the one that had the meltdown, but they
didn't fully shut down the Chernobyl site until two thousand,
So FYI, that's pretty crazy. But anyway, so this guy,
he's a scientist, he's going to do research. So he
(12:36):
went to the number four reactor sarcophagus, which is where the.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Explosion had occurred.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
You can't go in due to radiation, but he took
radiation readings and that's when he heard someone screaming for
rescue from the fire inside, and he ran up the
stairs to tell someone, and they said when he.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Entered the control room, he was the first to open.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
That door in three years, and that the only way
someone could get inside the old reactor was through the
doors he had come through, and you know, the reactor
door requires a password to handprint. Yet someone or something
was inside.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yelling, uh uh, that's a ghost.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
So later that evening they were eating dinner. The scientists
were all eating dinner and outside the building by the
river next to the plant, a flood light turned on
in the room of the installation. There was no way
anyone could be inside. They figured it was a power
surge or something. And one of the colleagues said that
it was like, oh, it must be a power surge.
(13:44):
And then the second they said that, the light turned off.
That's terrifying. Yeah, but even more than that. In the
days leading up to the Chernobyl disaster, several workers in
the control room of the nuclear power plant claimed to
have seen a creature that became known as the Blackbird
of Chernobyl.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
These are the coolest names, I.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Know, right, They really did it. They really did it
with the naming. Those unlucky enough to see the creature
were said to be plagued with terrifying dreams and threatening
phone calls, which I'm like, how did this thing called them? Hello?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
It's being radiation.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
The terrifying creature rose above the horizon of Chernobyl and Pipya,
a hideous humanoid with giant wings, a black, headless body,
red glowing eyes, sending a message of doom to all
those who gazed upon it. Sound familiar, Yes, people have
come to believe that the Blackbird of Chernobyl is actually
a form of a creature we all know and love,
(14:46):
the moths Man. But also the presence of the moth
Man only means one thing disaster. Disaster, Although these days
the Blackbird of Chernobyl is something more of an Internet legend,
similar to under Man. And also some people believe that
the authorities and Pipya actually invented the story to prevent
(15:07):
people from entering the radioactive areas, as looters are still
a security problem, which is horrifying.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
They're still trying to get in there, yes.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
But anyway, weirdly enough, before the Ukrainian War they open
it up as a tourist location, so you can go,
you go visit and you know, let us know how
it goes. If you're already and you know you're late
in your lifetime, you'll probably be dead before cancer gets you.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
If you're going to go explore it, I can swim
with sharks. Go cat, Yeah, nalligator, let's go for it.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
You know, I saw this thing Life After People. Did
you ever watch that documentary?
Speaker 3 (15:47):
No?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
I think you'd really like it because it just shows
you environments and how they're going to like decay after people.
But they use Chernobyl, like there's this great footage of
Chernobyl because nature is really reclaiming it. And so it's like, oh,
here's a study of how nature can heal itself after
a huge disaster. I don't think I need to see that,
(16:10):
but I loved watching it on the TV. I don't
need to go there. But once again, all this was
before the war. We'll see what happens after the war.
Fan corner, Fan fan corner.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
This is from night Guard.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Yeah high night Guard.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Nightguard says, from what I can remember, there is a
railroad where I live that said that what looks like
a lantern goes down the track without anyone holding on
to it. Can you imagine that.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
That'd be spooky to see and also a great story
for tell me a ghost story. So please call in
or leave a voice message somewhere.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
And so did to me.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah, says my Bible teacher. Said he saw not one
but two lights at once, which no one has seen
before and from what he could gather and even get
a picture of it in the acron of a picture
with his youth group. Thanks a lot, Nightguard, and for
also your other comments in the other episodes.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yeah, thank you. You're a frequent commenter and we love it.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Thanks for your comments. Send in your comments, questions, suggestions, ideas,
anything you got for us so we can talk about
it in the next Campfire Story episode.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Okay, we gotta put out that fire that never goes out.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Campfire Story is hosted by Michelle Newman.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
And Edwin Komarubias. This podcast was edited and sound designed
by Sarah Worhez Wendel, a VW sound
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Make sure you follow us wherever you get your pod
And that's when he heard someone screaming for rescue from
the fire inside. He ran up the stairs to tell someone,
and they said when he entered the control room, he
was the first person to open that door in three years.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Get ready for a campfire story.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I'm Edwin, I'm Michelle, and we'll share spooky stories with
playful banter that'll keep you up at night.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
So throw some wood on the fire and put a
wiener on a stick. We're telling you a campfire story tonight.
So a little while back, I listened to this one show.
I already told you about it, Celebrity Go Story.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
I thought you were going to explain the Office to me.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Well, that's the other show I guess that I watch,
like aside from the Office, it's this one. Anyway, he
really got me thinking about how all these stories develop
a haunted mansion, Like all these plays are so like
rich people, and you know that I'm not really into
celebrity stuff, right, Like I'm.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
Not into you don't know who anyone is?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yeah, I can't identify them. I think I can identify
Jennifer Lopez most of the time. Shakira, Shakira, I don't know.
But anyway, like Basically the show is this person sits
in front of a camera and just tells a story
that they had, like a ghost story, and they do
you know, they get actors and they do the whole re.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
When you cite celebrity, I mean, what level are we
talking about. It's not j Low on this show.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
No.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
For example, this one's from Daniel Stern. You know who
that is.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Oh yeah, he's the He's one of the robbers in
Home Alone. He also did the grown up voice on
The Wonder Ears.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
I had no idea.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Have you watched The Wonder Years? No, then it doesn't
matter to you.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
So anyway, this guy begins his story of a trip
through the English moors with his wife. This is in
the eighties. Sometimes they rented a car and they were
gonna dry through the countryside. They wanted to go to
a town called Tavistock to stay at a bed and breakfast,
and they end up at this town called Whittacombe to
see a church there. They get there, there's nothing much around.
(02:12):
They pull in and then they see a church. So
they were excited about it. They're like, wow, cool, let's
go check it out. Whatever, right, so they start walking
around they're exploring and they suddenly begin to notice that
people are walking around, but they're walking very like awkwardly
looking straight ahead like zombies. That's what he said. Nobody
was talking and they were being completely ignored, like they
(02:35):
were just walking past them. Everybody's slow and everyone dressed
in black. Of course, they decided to get the heck
out of there, like we need to find out how
do we get to Tavistock to the bed and breakfast.
And that's when they see a woman that she's standing
kind of by the church and they want to ask
you for directions, and she's turning away from them. She
(02:55):
turns around and she stares at them with white eyes
like no color in the circley part of the high
and she begins to speak in tongues. They both stand there.
They're just like like they're kind of freaking out, but
she's still talking, so like they're kind of there. You
don't want to be rude because they're in England. And
(03:16):
then they take off straight to the car. They start
driving away and just a few minutes later, like they're
driving like if they're about a mile away, probably a
tire pox the guy this straight up movie scene, right
like the guy says, hey, we should probably head back
and get it fixed, and the wife is like, no,
(03:39):
we're driving like that right, So they keep driving like
they drive on the rim, like they're not stopping. So
they finally make it Tavis Stock and they late to
the reservation and then it tells them, yeah, we were
at this place called Whittocomb, and the attendant it's like, Whittocomb,
you say, that place is a ghost town. Don't go there.
There's a lot of dead people walk around. And then
(04:01):
he tells the story of a church, the actual church
that they wanted to see. Turns out that one night,
this is back in like a long time ago, on
a Sunday, there was a lot of thunder lightning and
there was service at the church. There was a terrible storm.
Lightning suddenly struck like the roof and the steeple felt
it was burning. Four people died, and it was like
(04:25):
the story of the town. It was kind of like,
we'll put it on the map. They have artist depictions
of what happened the burning of the church, but since
then they say that place is haunted. Celebrity Gold Stories
had runs and reruns and I just kept playing because
it was a really popular episode. Of course I looked
it up to see what about whocomb is it haunted?
It turns out that the local town historian was overwhelmed
(04:48):
with these requests. They're like, you know, who are you
or whatever? They kept replying. So instead what he did
to all these replies, all these people reaching out to him,
He replied in this like blog post and in his
repply he put hello America, like basically talking to America.
On Sunday, twenty first October sixteen thirty eight, when the
(05:10):
church was full for a service, the terrible thunderstorm threatened
the valley. One of the four pinnacles of the church
tower was struck by lightning, with a result that it
came crashing through the roof of the church and killed
four people, one an ancestor of mine, Susannah Beard. Parts
of the tower were found in the manor house garden
(05:30):
four hundred yards away to the north, and considerable damage
was done. The schoolmaster at the time was a Richard Hill,
and he wrote a detailed summary of the event. We
understand that his manuscripts in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University,
regarding the people dressed in black. In rural areas of Devon,
(05:51):
when there is a funeral of someone local or well known,
most of the local people turned out to pay their
last respects to the departed. It is possible that when
the TV presenter was in the village an event of
this kind was taking place and we would all have
been in solemn or somber mood. Our church is dedicated
to Saint Pancras, and due to its large size, it
(06:13):
is affectionately known as the Cathedral of the Moor. In
its present form it dates from the fourteenth century, but
there is little doubt in my mind that there has
been a church here for much longer, even to the
point that it was a religious significance in pre Christian days.
There is a great deal of prehistoric evidence here in Dartmoor.
I personally collect prehistoric implements and tools. In the earliest
(06:35):
that I have dates from eight thousand BC. There is
no Roman evidence here, but there was Roman activity within
eight miles of here, and of course in Exeter, our
county town. On the second Tuesday of September each year
we hold the annual Whittacombe Fair. People come from all
over the world to this special day when animals are shown,
(06:55):
sporting events take place, and the history of the area
is on display. Whittacombe Fair was anupperty for farmers to
sell stock when it was begun several hundred years ago,
but now it is more of a fun gathering on
dark murth. There are many ghost stories, the Harry Hans,
Black Dogs, specters, all mixed up with the legends. As
I mentioned earlier, our History group has written a small
(07:16):
book about Whittocombe and other about Whitcomb Fair, and these
are obtainable through our website. There are several more of
you that have written to us, and I hope that
I have answered most of your queries in this letter.
Thank you for your interest in the Whittocomb and we
would like to send you all seasons greetings in all
the best for twenty eleven. Yours, sincerely, AE Beard, Honorary Secretary,
(07:37):
Whittocomb History Group. So he was defending his town. It's
not a ghost town.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
No, there was just a funeral, which I kind of
thought from that story you said it was a funeral,
and then like them talking to that woman, she probably
just had a thick British accent and they.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Just probably.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
You know, the accents get a little weird in the country.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
It's speaking in talk and the eyes probably the old people,
you know, you get.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, Cateractionlind.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
What this told me is that, Yeah, sometimes we can
hear you know, ghost story, an abandoned town or a
ghost town. In reality, it might just you know, you
might get there on the wrong day, like when you
get to Seattle most of the year.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Yeah, everyone's just not talking or acknowledging you.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
But they're not dead. You're not dead. That's just the
way it is there.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
So don't always believe what you hear. Sometimes people just
get there on the wrong day.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Now, we're going to a real abandoned ghost town, abandoned
for a very good reason, and it has a very
dark history and will stay abandoned. I think they'll probably
start to clean up in two thousand and sixty five.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
We might be alive.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
We might be alive when they start to clean up.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
We'll update, we'll update if we're still alive.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Then picture this doors banging open and shut in the wind.
Hastily abandoned amusement park rides creak noisily. Snowy boulevards are
dotted with wolf boar and fox tracks outside decaying apartment
high rises. Nature has begun to creep through the gaps
(09:21):
in the concrete, but at night, that's when the animals
come and any sound echoes all over the city. These
are the ruins caused by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that
left the city of Pipya and the surrounding farms and
(09:42):
pine forests a ghost town.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Scarier still is.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
That the streets are stalked by an invisible killer radiation
sickness and cancer that will kill a person slowly and
you never.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
Know when it'll strike. So here's what happened.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
In nineteen eighty six, the Chernobyl nuclear plant went into meltdown,
located in the Soviet Union at the time, which is
modern day Ukraine. So during this meltdown at least twenty
eight people were killed in the original disaster, but thousands
more have died from cancer as a result from the
radiation that's spread after the explosion and the fire that
(10:22):
leaked radiation into the air.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
WHOA isn't that crazy?
Speaker 1 (10:27):
WHOA? Yeah, The abandoned area is now called the exclusion zone.
It's frozen in time and in panic.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I never understood radiation, honestly, like I remember learning about
it in school, but like never really got it, got
it right.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Well, I mean it's kind of hard to grasp because
it's invisible, right, but like it's an invisible thing melting
your skin off depending on or it's the other kind
where you just get a weird.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Cancer emissions of like little waves that are like they
can get waves.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
And they can can daminate everything. Like the animals are
so interesting they don't allow people back in. So the
first ten years after the accident, the animals were all
being deformed and weird and like not living a long time.
Stuff was happening. But now all the animals that are
still there, like rats, cats, dogs, cows.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
There's wolves.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
There's a lynx that's come back, like nature's actually healing itself.
But they're all radioactive. So there's radioactive wolves.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
That's a cool name for a band.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
So now animals are more normal looking, but they're still contaminated,
Like there's still a bunch of cows that have contaminated
milk in the area because it was farmland. Like there's
still a threat of contamination. If you just do the
wrong thing, go to the wrong place or lean against
the wrong object, it could kill you like, there's still
(11:52):
that going on in this town. As with all eerie
sites where a number of people have lost their lives,
Yah is rife with ghost stories and strange folklore. And
there's this guy named Andre Karsov, a nuclear physicist from
New York, basically told one of these stories because he
was visiting the area in nineteen ninety seven. He went
(12:15):
to the power station at seven thirty am and went
into reactor number four. Also, the reactors weren't fully shut down.
They sarcophagus the one that had the meltdown, but they
didn't fully shut down the Chernobyl site until two thousand,
So FYI, that's pretty crazy. But anyway, so this guy,
he's a scientist, he's going to do research. So he
(12:36):
went to the number four reactor sarcophagus, which is where the.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Explosion had occurred.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
You can't go in due to radiation, but he took
radiation readings and that's when he heard someone screaming for
rescue from the fire inside, and he ran up the
stairs to tell someone, and they said when he.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Entered the control room, he was the first to open.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
That door in three years, and that the only way
someone could get inside the old reactor was through the
doors he had come through, and you know, the reactor
door requires a password to handprint. Yet someone or something
was inside.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Yelling, uh uh, that's a ghost.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
So later that evening they were eating dinner. The scientists
were all eating dinner and outside the building by the
river next to the plant, a flood light turned on
in the room of the installation. There was no way
anyone could be inside. They figured it was a power
surge or something. And one of the colleagues said that
it was like, oh, it must be a power surge.
(13:44):
And then the second they said that, the light turned off.
That's terrifying. Yeah, but even more than that. In the
days leading up to the Chernobyl disaster, several workers in
the control room of the nuclear power plant claimed to
have seen a creature that became known as the Blackbird
of Chernobyl.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
These are the coolest names, I.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
Know, right, They really did it. They really did it
with the naming. Those unlucky enough to see the creature
were said to be plagued with terrifying dreams and threatening
phone calls, which I'm like, how did this thing called them? Hello?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
It's being radiation.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
The terrifying creature rose above the horizon of Chernobyl and Pipya,
a hideous humanoid with giant wings, a black, headless body,
red glowing eyes, sending a message of doom to all
those who gazed upon it. Sound familiar, Yes, people have
come to believe that the Blackbird of Chernobyl is actually
a form of a creature we all know and love,
(14:46):
the moths Man. But also the presence of the moth
Man only means one thing disaster. Disaster, Although these days
the Blackbird of Chernobyl is something more of an Internet legend,
similar to under Man. And also some people believe that
the authorities and Pipya actually invented the story to prevent
(15:07):
people from entering the radioactive areas, as looters are still
a security problem, which is horrifying.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
They're still trying to get in there, yes.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
But anyway, weirdly enough, before the Ukrainian War they open
it up as a tourist location, so you can go,
you go visit and you know, let us know how
it goes. If you're already and you know you're late
in your lifetime, you'll probably be dead before cancer gets you.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
If you're going to go explore it, I can swim
with sharks. Go cat, Yeah, nalligator, let's go for it.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
You know, I saw this thing Life After People. Did
you ever watch that documentary?
Speaker 3 (15:47):
No?
Speaker 1 (15:48):
I think you'd really like it because it just shows
you environments and how they're going to like decay after people.
But they use Chernobyl, like there's this great footage of
Chernobyl because nature is really reclaiming it. And so it's like, oh,
here's a study of how nature can heal itself after
a huge disaster. I don't think I need to see that,
(16:10):
but I loved watching it on the TV. I don't
need to go there. But once again, all this was
before the war. We'll see what happens after the war.
Fan corner, Fan fan corner.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
This is from night Guard.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Yeah high night Guard.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Nightguard says, from what I can remember, there is a
railroad where I live that said that what looks like
a lantern goes down the track without anyone holding on
to it. Can you imagine that.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
That'd be spooky to see and also a great story
for tell me a ghost story. So please call in
or leave a voice message somewhere.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
And so did to me.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Yeah, says my Bible teacher. Said he saw not one
but two lights at once, which no one has seen
before and from what he could gather and even get
a picture of it in the acron of a picture
with his youth group. Thanks a lot, Nightguard, and for
also your other comments in the other episodes.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yeah, thank you. You're a frequent commenter and we love it.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Thanks for your comments. Send in your comments, questions, suggestions, ideas,
anything you got for us so we can talk about
it in the next Campfire Story episode.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Okay, we gotta put out that fire that never goes out.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Campfire Story is hosted by Michelle Newman.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
And Edwin Komarubias. This podcast was edited and sound designed
by Sarah Worhez Wendel, a VW sound
Speaker 1 (17:37):
Make sure you follow us wherever you get your pod
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