The Leshii

According to Russian folklore, ancient, beastial spirits guard the depths of the forest, raging with each other and punishing any human who might break the law of the forest. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss these haunters of the woodland depths.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
It was near sunset when the old man looked up
from his labors and saw the stranger approaching from the west,
And though his eyes were weaker than they once were,
he soon saw that the stranger carried himself like a soldier,
though he bore no weapon that could be seen, and
so the old man continued scraping his hides till the
stranger approached close enough to greet him. Hello, grandfather, Oh,

(00:28):
please don't let me disturb your labor. I just wanted
to ask, is this the way to the greenwood path? Hey?
It is, But what business have you in the woods?
Not the woods, grandfather, the lands on the other side.
You see, I'm returned from the war and I seek
my family's farm. It's been five long years, and I'm
eager to aid them with the harvest. There's no path

(00:48):
through the green forest, at least none blazed by the
likes of you or me game trails. Then, well, so happens.
I'm a gifted tracker and can make my own way,
your own way. If there are any land marks, you
might a lurt me too, well, I'd be most gracious.
But the old man didn't answer right away. He looked
out to the woods, and instead motioned back towards his hut,

(01:09):
where the old woman would have supper ready soon enough.
Tell you what stay with us tonight, and I'll tell
you of the forest. What the young soldier lacked in
caution he made up for in politeness. When he had
finished his bowl of rabbit stew, he thanked the old
man and woman a half dozen times. He cleaned the
bowls and scrubbed the pot. He split more wood for

(01:31):
the fire, and even produced a bottle of spirits, which
he shared with the old man. So tell me of
the forest, grandfather. You'll not find your own way through
the green forest, not by moonlight and not by day.
What little of either filters down to the tree tops.
The animal paths won't help you either. That only winds
you down into greater depths. There is neither your way,

(01:54):
you nor my way in the green forest. There is
only the law of the woods. And there is a leshy.
I don't think I'll be troubled by some forest dwarf
tis no dwarf. The less she has always been in
the old forest. He was there before human tribes roamed in.
He was there when strange animals still range these parts

(02:15):
and he is no man nor dwarf, but a shaggy
figure that casts no shadow, that stares straight through the
forest depths with eyes that burn like green fire. He
passes gigantic behind the great trees and sneaks meekly behind
the nearest blade of grass. Like that, he is on you.
And he who breaks the forest law is broken. Well,

(02:38):
then tell me the forest law so that I might
avoid him. The forest law is not like man's lot,
can't be told or written down. A very nature breaks
it as much as our acts. But you're a trapper,
how do you avoid the less? She's wrath. I do
not trap in the woods, but at its border, And
for that the less she spares me, and asked, but
one more thing that I worn wanderer, such as yourself.

(03:01):
The young soldier nodded and smiled, but the old man
could tell he was only being mannerly. He did not
believe his tale of the leshy, and would not be
swayed from his shortcut through the woods. And so the
next morning he thanked the old man and woman yet
again and departed into the green forest, no doubt, thinking
he'd found the makings of a path, or discovered some logic,

(03:23):
and the dead leaves beneath his feet. The old man
went back to his traps and snares near the forest edge.
He flinched when he heard the first startled scream from
the forest depths, then the howl of the leshy as
it wore the young soldier limb from limb. As he
walked back home, his spirit sapped by the sounds, he

(03:45):
caught once more the sense of something vast and shaggy,
walking just behind the great tree trunks, yet tiptoeing impossibly
behind the smallest shrub or mushroom, not like a thing
that moved through the woods, but like something reflected in
its substance. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production

(04:11):
of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick.
And hey it's still October. We are still going strong
with the monster stuff. And boy, I'm I'm excited about
today's episode. So, Rob, if it's okay with you, I

(04:33):
want to begin by reading reading a quote. You you
cool starting this way? Yes, let's do it. Okay. So
this quote is recorded in a nineteen book called Russian
Folk belief by a Penn State professor of Russian and
comparative literature named Linda j Ivantas. And this quote is
attributed to an old woman from the Kluga Province of

(04:55):
Russia describing what she believed to have witnessed during the
height of a forest fire. So she says, I looked
and bears and with them wolves, foxes, hairs, squirrels, elk, goats,
in a word, every sort of forest life, and each
in his own group, not mixing with the others. Thronged

(05:16):
out of the forest and passed me and the horses,
not even looking at us. And behind the beasts with
his knout over his shoulder and horn in his hands,
was he himself, and he was the size of a
bell tower. He himself tall as a bell tower, dragging
the horn and the nowt, and a nowt means a

(05:38):
whip or a scourge. Who is he? Who is she
talking about? She's talking about the leshy and awesome monster
of Slavic mythology, the demon of the woods, sort of
a malevolent trickster. NT. Yeah, I was, I was reading
about the leshy. I was not not really familiar with
it prior to our research. Here But according to Carol

(06:01):
Rose in her Excellent Spirits Fairies, lepre cons and Goblins
and Encyclopedia, uh, they're they're numerous different versions of the
spelling and and or pronunciation of the name. You see
it kind of like leshy but also lessovic or less
shak or less nor. Uh. So there are several different
variations on it. But just as just as the name

(06:22):
is kind of a morphous, uh, the you know, the
actual substance of the creature is also a fair bit
of morphous, to which one might expect with folklore, traditions
and any kind of entity that arises out of out
of out of old beliefs and old legends, old mythologies. Right. Yeah,
so the Leshy is not something that comes originally from

(06:43):
one canonical source. It it is a folk belief and
thus you're going to get lots of different versions of it.
And I think it's gonna be really fun to explore
where a lot of these different stories overlap and then
what the differences are. Yeah. So Rose points out that
the less She is essentially a Ussian nature spirit and
forest guardian. He's often described as a pale humanoid figure

(07:05):
with green eyes, green beard, and long straggly hair. He
wears a pair of of of boots, often made from bark,
which an he wears them on the wrong feet. It's
often said that he cast no shadow, and he's also
a shape shifter. And as we tried to reflect in
our opening, a bit of narration there a little or

(07:26):
dramatic opening. Uh. It's said that he can be as
tall as a great tree or as small as a
blade of grass. Likewise, he can mimic any sound in
the forest, which is a tool he might use to
lead humans astray. Sometimes, yes, and this is one of
the main threats that the less she represents that. There
again a number of stories, but the most common ways

(07:47):
that he represents a threat to human existence are in
making sounds or in laying sort of traps and tricks
that lead travelers off the path and get them lost
in the woods to wander hopelessly until they die in
the woods or die in a swamp. Or The other
thing is that he's often said to kidnap babies at

(08:07):
the edge of the forest, or to kidnap children, especially
unbaptized babies and children. Uh. And a lot of sources
mentioned this this idea of him luring wanderers off the
forest path by making noises. One of the sources I
was reading for this episode is a book by Elizabeth
Warner called Russian Myths from the University of Texas Press

(08:29):
in two thousand two, and Warner says, the less She
would quote hoot, roar, and howl, and the voices of
birds and beasts emit wild bursts of laughter, blood curdling shrieks,
and clap his hands loudly. Uh So, so it seems
like there are a couple of different ways that you
might catch the less She making sounds in the forest,

(08:50):
sometimes maybe mimicking the voice of an animal or human
in order to lure somebody off the path, or sometimes
just making a lot of noise, maybe to mess with
your head, kind of scare you or make you laugh.
Now picking up in the lessis appearance, there are several
sources that summarize the folklore. Again this is from Warner
and Russian Myths. Uh. The less She may and often

(09:11):
does look and dress like an ordinary human being. Like
there are some stories where the less She leaves the
forest and interacts with humans as if he looked like
any other human. But in fact, again, he is a
shape shifter, so he can mimic the appearance of not
just all the animals of the forest. Those are common
forms he takes, especially the form of a wolf or
a bear, But he can also mimic the appearance of

(09:34):
any particular person. So a child might be lured into
the forest by a vision of their own grandfather offering
them fruits and sweets. Or a person might be you know,
antagonized or lured off the path in the woods by
the shape of their own father or mother, or husband
or wife, or even their child. But much like the

(09:56):
succubus who appears as a seductive, beautiful woman but with
say a duck's foot, the less she in disguise will
usually have a detail out of place, and that detail
will be noticeable to the observant. Hero you mentioned the
idea that the less she might cast no shadow, or
have their shoes on the wrong feet or backwards. Warner

(10:17):
gives the examples that the less she might be wearing
a calf tan like a like a Russian traveler might wear,
but the calf tan would be buttoned backwards, or his
eyes might be extremely pale, or he might have no
eyebrows I like that one, or again, he might cast
no shadow. And and and then finally, this one seems particularly

(10:38):
relevant in his role in confusing travelers in a forest,
he might leave no footprints. I love how common this
detail is across so much different folklore, that the monster
or the trickster demon will have some kind of detail
wrong that allows you to spot it. Yeah. And it's
the kind of myth, that kind of legend that that

(10:58):
appeals well to our our nature, you know, because when
when we're just encountering people for the first time, situations
for the first time, the suspicious mind is always looking
for for some sort of a tell, right, like what's
weird about this person, what's weird about this place? Yeah?
And and it also it makes the myth more fair,
I mean, unlike just the less she being a a

(11:21):
power that cannot possibly be overcome, and it just takes
whoever it wants and does whatever it wants. The fact
that there's some detail often wrong with it allows the
observant hero, the virtuous protagonist of the story, to to
catch them, to be like, hey, wait a minute, there's
something wrong with you. It makes you It makes you
think that maybe if you are clever enough, if you're

(11:43):
observant enough, then you could best the leshy. Now, Warner
agrees with what we already talked about about the less
She being able to dramatically change size, and it's often
reported in these stories that he can become taller than
the tallest tree tops. Remember the story at the beginning
of the woman who says the less She is like
a bell tower. Or he can be small, small enough

(12:03):
to hide behind grass or behind a mushroom. Now in
his true form, Warner says that the leshies appearance betrays
his affinity for the vegetation of the forest. So his
skin might very much resemble the bark of a tree.
It will be rough and gnarly. And sometimes he's said
to be completely covered in hair, But sometimes he's just

(12:25):
got hair on his head and a beard, and in
those cases his hair and beard might be as green
as the vines and the grass. But some imagery of
the leshy is more classically devilish in the Christian sense,
or at least in the syncratistic Christian sense that that
combines sort of Satan with the god pan uh Warnt.
Warner says that many descriptions include shaggy hair, almost like moss,

(12:50):
but also cloven hoofs and horns on his head and
a tail like the devil's tail. And then finally she
mentions that the horns are golden in the case of
one particular killer Lessi known as the leshy Czar. Uh.
But anyway, I think this devilish appearances is interesting because
it uh, it makes sense based on something that Warner

(13:11):
talks about in her book, which is called the dual Faith.
This idea that after Christianity took over the Kiev and
Ruth state in the tenth century, Christianity and old pagan
practices kind of mesh together. They coexisted for hundreds of years. Yeah,
and we've discussed examples of this before with other other
legends and folklore and and even mythologies. Um where Yeah,

(13:36):
the new, a new faith comes along and it doesn't
just wipe out the old. It adds new wrinkles to
the old or and or exist alongside the old uh
in ways that that might not make sense if you
were to say, write them out or discuss them. You know.
It's it's always fascinating how even as modern humans, the

(13:56):
various conflicting worldviews and ideas of the natural and the
supernatural that can simultaneously exist in our minds. It can
be hard to enforce the borders of one supernatural picture
of the world, Like it can be hard to sort
of like beat into people like no, no, no, like
this part these supernatural beliefs are acceptable. But these other

(14:17):
ones that your grandparents believed and their grandparents before them,
you can't believe those anymore. Yeah, Like, I remember, when
I was younger, there was a time when I was
at least a bit afraid of the prospect of both
aliens and ghosts, which rationally, it seems like, you know,
now I'm looking back and like, well, surely I should
have just picked one or the other, like one would

(14:37):
seem more likely than the other, and that should be
the one to be afraid of. I can't be, you know,
I can't just be afraid of everything that's on Unsolved Mysteries.
I have to pick, you know, like obviously be afraid
of the criminals, but then choose aliens or ghosts Like
I shouldn't have to, I shouldn't take both on. But no.
Unsolved Mysteries presents a perfect synchrotistic view of the world,
where all paranormal phenomena exists simultaneously now. Additionally, as Rose

(15:01):
points out, each forest is said to have its own leshy,
unless it's a very large forest, and then then you
can have more than one lessie. I guess it just
comes down to It's kind of like having park rangers, right,
depends just how big the park is, right. They gotta
like a range a territory, right. Furthermore, the less she
may have a wife in some traditions, which is a lessovica.
And then there are sometimes leshy children or l shunky.

(15:25):
And there's also a variety of leshy sometimes described as
a as a zoi, a bots schnick that takes on
the guys and sound of a baby gurgling in the treetops.
So in that in that case, a quality that is
sometimes ascribed to the leshy in general is sometimes pulled
out and made its own particular thing. Yeah, and I

(15:48):
think it's interesting the idea of giving a leshia family
allows you to to sort of add in more dynamics
that would explain natural phenomenon potentially, Like, for example, one
of our sources was saying that if you saw a whirlwind,
I think mean you know, whirlwind or even a tornado,
that was the leshy dancing with his wife, so adding

(16:08):
the wife in you know, they're twirling through the forest.
But this dovetails with another interesting belief, which is that
sometimes fallen trees found in the forest were said to
have been knocked over by fights between leshies. But you know,
you put those two things together kind of dovetails into
this interesting idea that I wonder if people at some

(16:28):
point maybe came across the path that a tornado or
whirlwind had cut through a forest, and you know, it
looks like something is just like come through and mode
this this shaved line out through the middle of the woods,
and what happened here? What was less She's fighting or
it was less she's dancing. Yeah, because there are no tracks,
and you know, there's no there's no sign that animals

(16:50):
did this, and yet something large has has trampled the
woods now like the forest itself. You know, at least
from a folkloric standpoint, the less she is said to
die with the advent of winter and then emerge from
his winter death in the spring. And it's during this
time and once the lessies have come back that has

(17:11):
said that the that the leshies of the forest rage
over their autumn deaths. They realize that they had died previously.
Now they're mad about it, and this raging produces storms
and floods in the process, but then all that settles
down again. So here we see an idea of the
leshy is a way to explain not only specific storm
damage but also just the general pattern of like spring storms.

(17:36):
On top of that, the the lesh she is a
bit of a bit of a trickster again, sometimes calling
out to human travelers with the sounds of the forest
to lead them astray, even taking the form of a
fellow traveler to give them bad advice or guidance, disappearing
and laughing once they managed to get them lost in
a bog or worse. Um, and uh, you'll have other
individuals though, that are wise to the ways of the leshy,

(17:59):
that they'll know how to out smart them or and
we'll get into an example of that. It's smart them
in a bit, but also making offerings to them such
as salt and bread. Yeah, Elizabeth Warner points out how
there was some kind of division. Like She starts by
saying that, of course, you know, for many Russian people
living at the edge of the forest, the forest was

(18:19):
itself an image of of great bounty but also great
chaos and great danger, and that is of course true,
Like you know, becoming lost in the forest, you can
quite easily die. This is something I think a lot
of people don't really remember these days. Maybe they go
out and experience the forest in say nature trails that
have forged paths that you can follow, but like, it's

(18:40):
really easy to get lost and die in the woods.
And I want to talk more about the science of
that later on. But but then there are these professions
where people would have to go into the woods in
order to make a living, for example, and there would
be herdsman and hunters like you mentioned, and herdsman very
often in medieval Russia would not graze their cattle in
open pastures, but would graze them through the woods. They

(19:03):
would have to find, you know, like little patches and
openings throughout the trees, and so it would require them
to go into the domain of the leshy and and
risk risk all these dangers. And so Warner writes, quote,
protective measures could be taken against the leshy, making the
sign of the cross, uttering a prayer or spell, and
more interestingly, reversing one's clothing or retracing one's steps backwards

(19:27):
out of the forest, reversal of the normal back to frontness,
upside downness, left as opposed to right. We're all signs
of the supernatural and Russian tradition. Yes, I I absolutely
love this. Uh this example, the idea of wearing your
clothes backwards or walking backwards as a way to to
outsmart the leshy um and we see we see versions

(19:51):
of this pop up in other traditions as well. For instance, Uh,
I read that you see this in Irish folklore, sometimes
concerning encounters or potential encounters with dangerous varieties of fairy um. Uh.
And the idea here, it seems, and this is gonna vary.
There's not like you know, anybody wrote wrote this down
and came up with necessarily a straightforward reason that this works.

(20:12):
But one one interpretation is that it's just about confusing
the spirit. Like the spirits like, oh, I'm gonna I'm
gonna get this woodsman now, and then he realizes, oh
that what's going on here? His clothes are on backwards.
I don't know what to do. I guess I'll just
watch him for a bit. Or it tricks the spirit
or fairy or leshy in this case, into thinking you're

(20:33):
leaving rather than arriving. And I love the twisted logic
of this, where it's like the lest She shows up,
it's like, all right, it's time to time to to
to unleash some havoc. Well, look at this guy coming
into my far Wait. Oh, the way they're clothes are
or are based. I can tell it looks like he's
walking away. All right, He's good, he's leaving. Carry on.
You know, it's just fabulous. This is really funny because

(20:55):
it kind of connects to the idea of wearing eye
spots on your back to deter preditors in the forest. Yeah, yeah,
which is which is something that has been been done.
We've discussed this in the show before too, with varying
degrees of success with both humans and also putting eye
spots on the back of cattle to deter lion attacks
and in parts of Africa. Now, as Rose points out

(21:16):
that the lest She can be very generally classified as
a guardian spirit, which we see in various and far
flung cultures. Many versions of this revolve around the protection
of individuals, uh, and these should be pretty familiar with
a lot to a lot of people. You have like
the guardian angels of Latin, Greek and Russian, Orthodox and
Anglican churches. These are assigned from the hour of an

(21:39):
individual's birth. Uh. Interestingly, one that Rose describes in her
book is the grind a gin of in the folklore
of Morocco. That's described as kind of inhabiting a parallel world.
So it's not that they're assigned to an individual, but
they're they're born at the same moment in this other world,
and so there's this bond between the two. Likewise, you

(22:00):
also have just Damon's and lend Lars, you know, getting
into ancient Greek and Roman tradition, and one also sees
this concept in the traditions of say Uh in Native
American tribes, Native Australian cultures as well. There there are
a lot of these to list, and she has a
lot a lot of them in the book, ranging from
the ab gal to the zoa. But then as an

(22:21):
extension of this, there's the idea of a protector spirit
that looks after particular places such as standing stones or mounds,
or certain natural places and or animals. And so clearly
this is going to be the kind of guardian or protector,
that the lesti is not of a person, but of
a place, which is the woods. Right, Yeah, the protector

(22:42):
of the forest very very much in keeping with such
woodland or vegetation spirits as the Gandharva's of India, which
are described as being like shaggy half animal beings and
some tellings, or the green Man of ancient European traditions,
a quote pagan image of a grotesque severed head with
emergent foliage from the mouth, beard, and hairline. We find

(23:07):
him in Christian churches from the sixth century onward. He's
a he's a wild man of the woods, a guardian
spirit of the forest, and like the leshy, is prone
uh you know to two tricks and meanness in the
woods and you know, leading people astray, etcetera. He is
also the genesis of both the Green Knight of Authoritian
legend and of Robin Hood. Yeah. I think one traditional

(23:29):
interpretation of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green
Night is of a conflict between the Christian chivalric virtues
represented by the Arthurian Chord and by Sir Gawain, and
then on the other hand, the sort of pagan embodiment
of nature and the wilderness, that is the Green Knight
a k a. The Green Man. Now, of course, we
have various modern versions of this tale as well, the

(23:52):
most the most obvious, at least to me, being the
character swamp Thing UH, which is very much a guardian
spirit and the tradition of the green Man and the
Leshy the more of a noble twist as a pure
protector as opposed to a trickster. And this is especially
the case and the Alan Moore run of the character
UH in the comic books, but you also see it

(24:12):
in most UH cinematic and TV incarnations like that. I
kept thinking back this time and time again reading about
the Leshy Uh. The nine nineties TV show version of
Swamp Thing had this um, this catchphrase that that the
swamp Thing would always say at the end of the
intro to the TV episode. It was do not bring

(24:33):
your evil here. What was the evil? It was like
a like a polluting factory or something. Oh yeah, polluting factory,
just general mad science from Dr Anton Arcane, you know
that sort of thing. Um. But but yeah, the swamp
Thing is very much in line with this tradition. I
think one of the interesting things if you start thinking
about modern standards versus um versus these more archaic versions

(24:58):
of the myth. And this is something I tried to
just sort of get at in that dramatic opening, the
idea of to what extent humans can understand the law
of the forest. And I think these these more recent versions,
like swamp thing, they tend to imply they kind of
take on, I think this environmental message of like, yes,
we can understand the law of the forest at least

(25:19):
to some extent, and we can do good for the forest.
And and I and I believe I agree with that.
I think that is part of our responsibility to the
forest as as protectors. We are kind of we have
to take on the mantle of the swamp thing and
the leshy and the green man, but the are I
think the more archaic version of this is again, like

(25:40):
you said, the forest is a place of chaos. If
it has a law, it is a law that we
cannot really understand, and it's a law that is not
written and maybe you know, it can't even be comprehended
by us, and therefore there's even more danger in running
a foul of it, because you you can't really comprehend
all the details of that law. Yeah. I think it's
kind of like the law of the hidden folk. It's

(26:02):
the law of the other world, and these uh, these laws,
I think sometimes in a lot of folk traditions can
be understood by but only by certain special kinds of people,
people who have a often people who are in some
way considered otherwise not normal. Yeah. Like another modern take

(26:22):
that gets into this is um Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro,
which of course is inspired by Japanese and Shinto traditions,
but the totoro that we encounter, they're very much forest
guardian spirits, and in Miyazaki's version of this, the only
ones who can really who can certainly see them and
to a certain extent understand them, are children. Like children

(26:44):
have that privileged insight into the rules and laws and
existence of this other world. It's almost like we're born
with an understanding of the law of the forest, but
the process of socialization and maturing beats it out of us. Yes,
uh yeah, So this is one of the reasons at
the beginning I said that the less she is kind
of like a malevolent trickster. Int It's like if the

(27:06):
nt were a demon, because it makes me think of
the scenes in Lord of the Rings where the orcs
are punished for hacking down the trees of Fangorn Forest.
You know, the the trees get revenge and the ants
get very angry to see their forests destroyed. This is
something that that does come through in some of the
folk tales. For example, Warner talks about how there were

(27:28):
certain things you could do in the forest or near
the forest to really especially bring on the leshies wrath.
And these things might involve whistling, swearing, making a noise,
willful damage of flowers or trees, or hunting on certain
church festivals, which that last one seems kind of incongruous

(27:49):
with the other, isn't. Maybe it's tacked on a bit
by the by the by the priests. I agree with
all of those go ahead and going on a lot
of nature hikes these days. I feel like, I like
we need a leshy enforcing all of those rules plus
social distancing norms. Yeah, but that's just me. No. I
wonder if I ever needed to get another job, could
I get a job as a kind of leshy, like

(28:11):
in a state park or something. I just wander around
the forest. If I find somebody carving their name into
a tree or some you know, littering or whatever, I
make them wander off the path into a bog, you know.
I had my family actually had a very recent experience
on a hike which kind of felt akin to running
a foul of the forest. We never got off of
a paved path because it had just been a very

(28:32):
rainy weekend and uh, and so we knew that, you know,
we needed to get like a paved path to walk on.
But we still on this one particular road, we encountered
first a stretch of the road where mud had washed
over everything, so suddenly we were tramping through mud. And
then immediately we were set up on by by by
a whole cloud of mosquitoes, despite being kind of late

(28:53):
in the year, and I could you not. At the
very same moment, two deer showed up and a snake
crossed the road in front of us, like very close
to us, so like suddenly it just felt like like
the woods were opening up and speaking to us and
saying that we should not proceed any further, and in fact,
we turned back. He's about to come out in belltower
form with the nowt over his shoulder. Yeah, leave this place.

(29:17):
Do not bring your evil here. All right, Well, I
think we need to take a break, but when we
come back, let's talk about Grandfather Mushroom. Thank thank, thank, Alright,
we're back. So we know as usual that the listeners
to our episodes, you know, are far flung, and some
of you are going to have a great deal of

(29:37):
familiarity with these various Russian folk tales that were discussing here.
For for others of you, though, you might only be
familiar with them through some of the more popular, you know,
mainstream Western treatments. Like one thing that comes to mind
is once Again Jim Hinson's Storyteller series. The first season

(29:58):
of that relied heavily on and folk tales. I actually
haven't seen that first season. I've only watched some of
the Greek episodes, so maybe I should go back check
that out. It's like it's like Slavic folklore. Yeah yeah there, um,
you know, the czar shows up in one of them.
So there's several really good good tales in there, like
that whole season is worth watching. But there are some
really good ones like The Soldier and Death is a

(30:20):
great one. That that one in particular is wonderful. But
another place that a lot of you might be familiar
with Russian folklore is from a particular nineteen sixty five
film titled Moral's Goal or Jack Frost. And there's a
very good chance you're familiar with this film because Mystery
Science Theater three thousand famously featured it in one of

(30:44):
their episodes. So this is how it's certainly how I
discovered it, but I've I've had conversations with people like
I was this is years and years ago. I was
talking to someone from the Czech Republic and they pointed out, oh, yeah,
they would show that every year for Christmas. That was
our Christmas film, Like is that is a part of
our holiday culture? And uh and and and and at

(31:05):
this point I would say Jack Frost is also part
of my holiday culture. I rewatch it every year. But
you know, it's it's it's a little bit different coming
at it from this lampooning direction, but it is a
very beautiful film. And if you've only seen, like, you
know this this really degraded quality version of it as
far as like the video quality goes on Mystery Science

(31:26):
three Mystery Science Theater three thousand. I I challenge everyone
out there to check out a pristine cut of this.
Either I think there's a version as of this recording
available on Amazon Prime, or you can also sometimes find
uh you know, versions of it on YouTube that have
just the full glorious quality of the film. It is
a beautiful movie and even without the riffing, extremely watchable

(31:48):
and extremely enjoyable. This is why I've never thought about
the idea that this was a commonly viewed Christmas film
for lots of people. So like here in America we've
got bumbles balance, and then maybe throughout Eastern Europe they've
got we will rob them. We won't rob them, we
will beat them. We will be beaten. Yes, yeah, I
mean really, it's it's not fair because we have like

(32:11):
Charlie Brown Christmas, which is awful, but but they have
Jack Frost, which is wonder Oh man, we're we're going
to get hate mail now. It's it's fine, I risk
it's it's it's it's perfectly okay. It's just not my thing.
I mean no, this is a wonderful movie. It's got
it's it's so imaginative. I love when Ivan gets the bearhead.

(32:32):
I love Grandfather Mushroom, I love the bandits, I love
the the creepy girl. It's it's fantastic, Yeah, it's it
has so many It actually has so many wonderful elements
of Russian folk tales, so just straight out of Russian
folk tales that really you could you could watch that
film and you already are in a great place to
begin reading more Russian tales and exploring them from yourself,

(32:56):
because it has you know, you have the the you
have Ivan Tsarovich is the you know, the blonde guy
who gets his head turned into a bear in the film.
He is a staple of Russian folk tales. You have
Boba Yaga, the the evil woodland witch. Again, just a staple,
the easy time and time again. Now you might be wondering, Okay, well,
where's where's the leshie in Jack Frost and I don't

(33:20):
We don't have a direct leshie, and we'll get into
some of the reasons for this, but we do have
an interesting character that pops up that I instantly thought
about in reading all of that this, and that is, uh,
the little grandfather Mushroom Father Mushroom character, the little diminutive
old man with a mushroom cap that shows up and
uh has a little bit of mischief in him and

(33:41):
teaches Ivan a lesson. Yeah, he is portrayed as sort
of a wise figure, a figure of the force, but
also like the less a trickster. You know, he's playing,
he's like doing, he's disappearing, playing hide and seek, sort
of taunting Ivan. Um. I don't know if we said
his his Russian name. I guess in Russian he's known

(34:02):
as Starry Chalk Borovia Chalk. Yes, that's what I've read
as well, you know, father grandfather mushroom. Uh. And and
again he has a very memorable um appearance in that film. Now,
one of the lingering questions that I'll get back to
again is I was never able to determine if he
has an existence outside of this film, like if he
if he pre existed as part of Russian folklore. I

(34:25):
did not run across him in any of the stories
I read, though I did not read all written accounts
of Russian folklore. And I didn't find him mentioned in
any of the academic papers we were looking at. But
that that doesn't mean anything either. Uh. And certainly that
film was such a big part of of several cultures
in sixty five of hints that you look and you

(34:47):
find like countless Christmas ornaments of him. So like now,
he is definitely a part of of our understanding of
Russian folklore to a certain extent. But I wasn't. I
was never sure if he was authentically something that existed.
But for that film, you know, there are some interesting
connections I was thinking about between this, this mushroomy character
and the leshy. Beyond just the fact that he is

(35:08):
sort of a a trickster guardian of the forest in
a way, uh, there are some other things. Like for example,
I was reading in one of our sources that the
wrinkles on a mushroom are often said to be the
marks of the Leshy's whip, remember the less she carries
the now it or the whip to show his dominion
over the forest. You know, it's like the I'm the

(35:28):
Boss stick. But apparently the all the little ribs and
wrinkles on the mushrooms are from him flicking the lash. Yeah.
I ran across that as well. Um, that that's that's interesting,
that that seems to be the that was the only, like,
I think, one of the only true leshy mushroom connections
I came across, but I was reading a fung Guy
folk Ways and Fairy Tales, Mushrooms and Nildews and Stories,

(35:50):
Remedies and Rituals from Oberon to the Internet by Frank M. Duggan,
which was published in North American Fun Guy in two
thousand eight, and Duggan rights that Eastern Europe and Russia
are generally microphilic in nature. Again going back to we
discussed this in a previous episode. How broadly speaking, some
cultures are microphilic and some are microphobic, and this is

(36:13):
often based just in how they describe and broadly view mushrooms.
Um uh and uh, and certainly listen to our Mushroom
Foraging episode for more insight on that. But yes, uh,
Slavic culture is Eastern Europe, from you know, Poland, through
Russia and Finland. I think it's widely viewed as uh
as a totally common and desirable thing to go out

(36:35):
in the forest looking for mushrooms. And yet at the
same time Dugan points out that there were there was
still often a taboo against speaking about certain kinds of
mushrooms due to sexual connotations associated with them. Huh. Likewise,
some sorts of mushrooms were also heavily associated with Baba Yaga.
That uh that that evil m haggish um which that

(36:59):
lives in the would uh in that that fabulous hut
with the chicken leg. There's a story about her hunting
for mushrooms and running into a hedgehog that was doing
the same thing. So the Bobby Yaga and the hedgehog,
they reach an understanding, and she later turns him into
a boy hero. And then there's also this really interesting
bit in light of mysilia. Quote Baba Yaga, he's also

(37:23):
an associate of magic and benevolent spirits who dwell under mushrooms.
Under mushrooms. Well, so you mentioned the massilia. Yeah, the
fibers that stretch out underneath the soil that are in
many ways the actual body of the the fungus, whereas
the mushroom part is just the fruiting body is the
reproductive part. Yeah. So I can't help but wonder if

(37:45):
that little nugget of folkloric wisdom is is touching on
this understanding that there's a you know, this is vast
network beneath the visible mushroom. I don't know. Now, speaking
of of Bobby Yaga, according to Andrea's John in Baba
Yaga the Ambiguous Mother and Which of the Russian folk tale.
In various Slavic languages and dialects, Baba derived words serve

(38:09):
as names for the butterfly, cake, types of cake, pears,
and certain kinds of mushrooms, as well as the pelican,
and she is sometimes associated with the Leshi. The author
points out that in the Mezen region, the less She's
wife is often said to be the yaga Baba. Wait,

(38:30):
did you mean to say baba or well, it was
written as jaga baba, so I'm not entirely sure if
we're I mean it's it seems very close. We either
either dealing directly with Bobba Yaga or some regional twist
on it. I'm imagining the inverted Baba Yaga. Yeah. John's rights.
Uh Melantinski, referring to an author and his colleagues feel

(38:50):
that Babba Yaga became associated with a forest hut later
than figures such as the forest spirit or the bear. Presumably,
Baba Yaga is a later kind of forest demon because
of her anthropomorphic and therefore less archaic form, whether or
not she is the original owner. Baba Yaga is probably
the most frequent and popular inhabitant of the forest hut

(39:13):
in Eastern Slavic fairy tales, so in that you know
the author is talking about like forest huts, and now
they factor into these various folk tales. But it also
points to this idea that that that you have the
Bobba Yaga coming along after pre existing ideas of forest spirits,
because she's very much a forest spirit. She's very much

(39:33):
an encounter you have when you go into the magical
Russian forest. But there seems to be this idea that
the leshy is in essence something more archaic, and perhaps
I see this reflected in other sources, perhaps less story shaped,
less less fitting for a proper narrative, and therefore you
actually see less leshy than you might think in in

(39:56):
at least known and recorded Russian tales. Maybe the less
she more often a figure than a character. Yeah, yeah,
you do see see him pop up, but less as
like a key antagonist. But we will touch on some
examples here in a debt. Now. I also looked around
for tales concerning Ivan Tsarevich, the hero in Jack Frost,
and a traditional Russian character, and I did find a

(40:18):
tale concerning concerning Ivan and the leshy. Yeah yeah, and
this is collected in a fabulous collection titled an Anthology
of Russian Folk Tales by Jack V. Hainey. Okay, let's
hear it all right. So the story mainly concerns Ivan
and the immortal antagonist uh Cosha, the deathless who's this

(40:40):
this like evils are like being that is encountered in
a lot of these tales, Like he's he's kind of
the big bad. For instance, Boba Yaga is sometimes sometimes
like you know, more of the primary villain, but she's
often just this weird character you encounter on the way.
But but the death List is just all evil and

(41:01):
and and terror and uh and and it's just you know,
the ultimate bad is he's sort of sort of a
low pan sort of yeah, just you know, he can't die,
but there's some sort of secret to his immortality that
the hero has to figure out, and in this case,
that's what Ivan is doing, trying to figure out how
he can deal with this deathless enemy. But in one
part of the story, Ivan and basically Ivan goes into

(41:23):
the forest and his typical in Russian tales, has encounters
in the forest that help and hinder. So in the forest,
Ivan encounters three leshy in the woods who are searching
for their grandfather's buried treasure. And these three treasures are
an animate fighting club. So it's like a club and
you say, hey, go hit that guy over the head,
and the club goes and does it. Um there's a

(41:43):
hat of invisibility, which I don't have to describe because
we have versions of this in every folk lord tradition
I believe. And then you have the fabulous self laying
table cloth that seems not as good as the other two,
and yet it's it's amazing thing, especially I guess if
your dungeon master is very particular about making sure you're

(42:04):
you're you're eating properly, because the self laying table cloth
is a table cloth that you whip out and spread
on the ground and it is instantly set with food
and beverage. Oh so it's it's kind of like a
Loaves and Fishes multiplayer absolutely. So the less she are
fighting over the rights to these treasures, which Ivan has

(42:24):
already found, by the way, and and Ivan tricks them
into running a foot race instead of fighting. He says, hey,
don't fight each other over this, Why don't you run
from here to that? See that far tree that you
can barely see over there and mid the horizon, go
run at that. Whoever gets to that first wins and
the less you're like, that's great, let's do it, And
they go off to run the race, and so Ivan

(42:46):
slips away while they're far away from him. From there,
he encounters the Baba Yaga at her hut, who he
who's seeking for answers on how to achieve cos the
deathless how to achieve death? And of course the the
answer ends up that there's an egg in a box
hidden under a mountain that he has to gain access too.

(43:07):
So anyway, this is a fun encounter in and of itself,
but it also makes me think back to the Jack
Frost film and remember the sort of dwarf like bandits
that Ivan encounters and I can't help but wonder if
they are sort of serving as a version of Leshi
in that regard. Yeah, like a dangerous chaotic force in

(43:27):
the forest that that Ivan has to interact with. And
Trick I can't remember in the movie, doesn't he Arthur
clubs in their scenes as well? Like they have to
they end up throwing clubs up in the air and
then later the clubs come back down and hit them. Yes,
they do. That seems to connect to like the automatic
fighting club that the less she was arguing over. Yeah,

(43:50):
I was, I was wondering the same thing. Um now
now again this this. I read this in the Anthology
of Russian Folk Tales by Jack V. Haney, who I
believe that this particular volume has ninety nine different folk tales,
some very small, someome a little bit longer, and also
commentary on them, and it's it's a wonderful read. I
recommend it. But he also had like several volumes on

(44:13):
top of this that he had compiled and these were
just like the best or most, you know, helpful to
share with readers. But he adds later in in this
particular volumes, his stories featuring the forest speech, spirit, the
leshy are uncommon, and perhaps this again speaks to the
more archaic take on this being a more archaic take

(44:33):
on spirits of the forest, which are less narrative compared
to other embodiments of the forest and wildness, such as
Baba Yaga or even you know, Father Frost Morosco himself,
you know, who's very much an embodiment of of the
winds of winter. So it seems that maybe the less
She and these stories are less going to be like
the main villain of the story and more kind of

(44:56):
an environmental threat. I mean, the less She might be
something kind of like a like a particular monster encountered
along the way, or almost like a like a pit
of quicksand like just something that you've got to worry
about in the in the wild environment. Yeah, yeah, I
think so. Now I want to share some other points
that that Haney makes about Russian folk tales in general,

(45:17):
because I think these can help us understand Russian folklore
a bit more and also understand the less She's place
in these tales. So Haney contends that there are there
are more folk tales that may have emerged out of
the Russian people than any other. He says, due in
part to the fact that well into the twentieth century,
Russia quote remained in illiterate and basically peasant country where

(45:40):
folk traditions were strong and carefully maintained. Okay, so is
the idea that if the culture was more literate, the
folk tales would have been less less retold. Um Well,
I guess the idea is like, once you start writing
them down right, then you have like a total a
different energy takeover regarding the folk tales, and then you

(46:02):
also have different influences on the shape of those tales.
But in Russia, he's arguing that they remained um like
the property of of the common Russian people, and they
were speaking of this sort of Russian existence that had
not changed a whole lot, you know, throughout their history.
But then he points out that the twentieth century comes

(46:23):
along and this is an exceedingly hard time on the
Russian people and it ends up disrupting their storytelling traditions.
He also points out that Russia has the second largest
number of tale types according to the International Classification System
for Folk Tales UH. And this gets you know, when
you get into the the scholarly study of folk tales,

(46:43):
you find it, ye other, there are all these different
classifications for the different types of tales you encounter in
cultures around the world. He points out that there are
a lot of animal tales. UH. The frequent villains you
encounter are, of course the Baba Yaga, which is nasty dwarves,
shape shifting the shins. However, Bobby Yaga is also sometimes
a donor or helper. Frequent characters in general, you have

(47:06):
Bobby Yaga and or Hut, you have the Firebird, the
deathless Prince, Ivan's are of Itch. We already mentioned Princess Elena,
and of course generic Czar is often involved as well. Uh,
you know, the king that is. And I believe that
the exact nature the king depends, uh, you know, sometimes
a little more on the cruel side, sometimes a little
more in the bedevolent side, kind of like just sort

(47:27):
of the generic king you encounter in other folkloric traditions. Now,
it does seem that a huge number of these tales
do involve having to travel through the forest, right, absolutely
that the hero frequently wanders through the woods and at
some point receives help in his quest from an animal
or some other sort of supernatural aid. And uh, and

(47:51):
sometimes the charactery encounters is a devil or the devil
or the devil's offspring. Uh. This this was interesting. Um,
this is a whole category of tale. Ivan the fool
versus the devil or the devil's offspring. And it's not
really Ivan as a fool, but Ivan. I think it's more.
You know, he's clever, but in kind of a a

(48:11):
roguish way. And in these tales, Hainey writes, it's important
to recognize first the satire, but then also that the
devil is not really a Christian devil, but quote rather
a figure derived from the various malevolent spirits that inhabited
the Russian peasants universe, the forest spirit or Leshy, the

(48:32):
water spirit or Vodiana, and others too numerous to mention.
So again the idea of the devil comes along and
it ends up kind of absorbing these other ideas of
evil things in the wild wood. This is just another
one of the many interesting ways that the concept of
Satan or the devil has evolved over the centuries. I mean,

(48:53):
like if you go back to the earliest versions of Satan,
even like in the in the Jewish tradition, Satan then
is not even presented as as monstrous or evil, like
in the Book of Jobs. Seems to be one of
the earliest references to Satan. Satan is like one of
God's angels, you know, he kind of works for him.
He he's sort of like a prosecutor or a like

(49:15):
a detective doing you know, trying to sniff out disloyalty.
But later on you incorporate more and more into this
adversary figure of the monstrous, of the evil, of the
all that's wrong with the world. And I think this
is one of the reasons that the devil figure accumulates
the monstrosity of every particular location and every culture that

(49:38):
absorbs him. Now hany does have some some other stories
with Leshy popping up. One of them that that was
really good is a story called A Prince and his Uncle,
which features an old trapper in the woods who serves
the farest spirit or leshy. When a greedy king shows
up looking to squeeze more money out of the commoners,
he asked the old man how he catches his beasts,

(50:00):
and the old man says, well, the forest spirit sets
out snares and the beast is stupid and gets caught.
So the king hears this and he gets an idea.
He bribes the old man with wine and money for
the location of these snares that again were set by
the leshy, and then the king orders the less she
caught and fettered to an iron post. Meanwhile, the prince

(50:20):
is a decent lad and listens to the less She's
please for release. He instructs the prince in how to
obtain the key to his irons and distracts the others
uh while he's being released. Afterwards, the king is enraged
and sends the Prince out on an excursion into the
far corners of the world his punishment, and he sends
his old uncle with him to guide him. This uncle

(50:41):
figure who it's always in quotations, so it's like not
really his uncle, um, but then again it's not super
important to the story. Seemingly, eventually, the prince and the
uncle switched places, and at one point the less She
meets the prince again and gives him some magical items,
which include once more the self setting table cloth, but
also a magic mirror that shows you whatever you want

(51:02):
to see and a magical musical instrument that kind of
plays on demand. And then he later provides him with
a horse and magical vodka to give him strength against
a terrible monster. Now, sadly the story doesn't really involve
the less she Be on this point, but we see
the less She kind of serving this role uh in
the later portions of the story as this magical forest

(51:23):
creature that shows up and provides assistance to the hero.
But then he goes on to share what I think
is my favorite leshy story that I read um Hain.
He shares this story titled The Forest Spirit, which hinges
on this notion that you have a leshy or some
or various other creatures like a like a coldn which

(51:44):
is a type of male sorcerer. If you if they
are not invited to your wedding, they may show up
anyway and find some way to spoil it. Wait, so
you are supposed to invite them, apparently, that's that's one tradition,
is go ahead and invite the leshy. It's it would
be rude not to because if you don't invite the leshy,
he will show up and he might cause chaos. But

(52:05):
I guess if you do invite him, he won't show
up there. You know, they're fickle, chaotic creatures. It's reverse psychology.
So this, this The Forest Spirit, is a fun little tail.
There's not much to it, but this is how it
goes down. Basically, So there's an old peasant who grows
and threshes grain, but then he suddenly keeps coming into
the drawing shed to find that the grain he just

(52:26):
harvested is already threshed. Now, basically this means somebody is
doing half his work for him for free. But you
know he's he's he's an old cadger, you know, probably
a bit grumpy about things. He wants to get to
the bottom of this. He doesn't want unexplained threshing going
on and his his his drawing shed. So he asked
an old woman for help, and she says, well, I'm
just an old woman. I can't help you. You're gonna

(52:47):
have to go ask the local witch. So he goes
to the local witch and she says, well, look, it's
a leshie that's doing this. Uh, but if you want
to stop him, you want to catch the leshie. This
is what you do. Stake out your shed and then
you sneak up on him and you loop a necklace
with a cross around on it around his neck and
that'll capture him, making him your servant. And so the

(53:08):
old man does just that. Uh. The lessie, of course
immediately asked for release and offers to help the old
man build a new slip to haul grain on in
exchange for his freedom. The old man agrees, but then
keeps asking for more work in exchange for the less
she's release. So he's like, yeah, well I need some firewood.
Maybe after you get me some firewood. And he's like, well,

(53:30):
you know I need the firewood chopped up as well.
I am altering the deal. Pray I alter it no further, right,
But then finally he says, you know, Lee, she says,
all right, how about now can I go free? I've
chopped your wood. I made you this slip. You know what,
what else do you want? He's like, no, my niece
is getting married next week and you're coming to the
wedding with me. So the old man is just straight

(53:56):
up taking the less she to a family wedding as
his plus one. Does it explain why he wants the
less she to go to the wedding? Is he just
trying to like pad out the attendants. I don't know,
Like he doesn't expressly say in this book, or doesn't
you know, interpret it expressly in this book. So I
don't know if it's a sense where like I'm supposed
you're supposed to invite unless you to the wedding, So

(54:17):
I will I'll just straight up bring him Like maybe
he is misinterpreting the tradition being an old man who
lives in the woods or um or maybe maybe he's lonely.
I'm not sure. I kind of like the idea that
he's lonely, and it's just like he's spending so much
time with the less She's like, now, I'm come to
this wedding with me. Come hang out. I may need

(54:39):
you to chop some wood during the ceremony. Yeah. So, anyway,
they attend. The less she seems at first to be
standing back and minding his own business in the corner
of the room, standing by the doors, out of sight,
not even partaking of the food in the drink. But
then the less she sees a pretty maid bringing out
the soured milk the cup, which, by the context of

(55:02):
the story seems to be just part of the ceremony.
So the less she immediately takes her, spins her around,
and then she falls down, spilling the milk all over
the place. And unless she begins to clap and laugh
at this loudly so everybody hears it, the guests do
not find this amusing at all, and they chastise the
old man for bringing such a guest with him to

(55:24):
the event. Oh so this is the first time they've
noticed there's a Lessi here at the wedding. Well, yeah,
he's standing over there by the door. Nobody noticed until
he started, you know, making a spectacle and spoiling the wedding.
So everyone is displeased, and they curse him and all
and cuss at him. Uh, the old man and unless
she go home the less she asked once more for

(55:46):
his release, and the old man grants it to him.
And I love the way that Haney winds this up. Uh.
He attributes this tale the telling him this tale to
a sixty two year old peasant who related it in
n and the The final quote at the end of
the tale is in olden times, they believe this, but
now they don't believe anything. Those darned kids no longer

(56:10):
believe in the leshy. Yeah, I just yeah, I love
the the grumpiness of the tale, like the tale that like,
I'm going to tell you this story. Kids don't believe
it anymore, but it happened. This is actually similar to
another tale that I was reading, at least summarized in
in one of the sources we were looking at for
this episode, which is the Encyclopedia of Russian and Slavic
myth and legend by Mike Dixon Kennedy. And in this

(56:34):
entry there was a story where there's a there's an
old man who lives by the forest, and one day
a traveler appears and asks if he can rest in
his hut, and the old man says, yeah, sure, you
can rest in my hut. Now, the old man is
a is a cattle herdsman who has to, you know,
take his herd of cattle through the forest to graze.
And after giving the traveler a good night's rest in

(56:57):
his home, he is told it's like review old that
the traveler was a leshy and was like, you know what,
You're not going to have to worry about your cattle anymore.
You don't have to follow them around. You just let
him go out and roam in the morning, and then
they'll come back full of and and give plenty of
milk at the end of the day. And this happens
for a while until the traveler gets curious about what's

(57:17):
happening during the day, so he follows his cattle out
and then finds that they are being shepherded in in
or I guess not shepherded. I don't know. What the
term for a person who heards cattle would be a
cat cattle herded by some old crone. I guess the
the ideas that she's a witch or a helper of
some kind of the leshy and when he finds her
and tries to speak to her in the forest, she vanishes,

(57:40):
and then the basically the blessing is lifted and he
has to keep toiling with his cattle again after that,
like they're no longer self servicing cattle. Uh, and so
his curiosity breaks the leshies goodwill. Yeah, yeah, that does
seem a very similar story that I did. The let
she might just spontaneously start helping you. You out, but
if you get too greedy about it, Uh, then it's

(58:02):
going to backfire on you too greedy or too curious. Yeah, well,
I mean, ultimately, I guess one way you could take
the moral of that story is just like, don't go
in there, don't look too close at what's happening in
the woods, don't inquire about the law of the woods.
Just let the woods do its thing. Yeah. Alright, on
that note, we're going to take another break, but we'll
be right back. Than alright, we're back, so clearly a

(58:28):
lot of the folk tales about the leshy come from
anxieties people have about the idea of getting lost in
the woods. Again, remember one of the main threats that
the the leshy and his demon or monster form uh
you know, represents threats in a couple of different ways.
One by like kidnapping children or unbaptized babies at the
forest's edge, but also by causing people to become lost

(58:52):
in the woods. You're traveling through the woods, maybe you're
trying to stick to the path, but then you're lured
off the path by the call of the leshy, or
by the she pretending to be somebody you know or
you know, or or mimicking the sound of a distressed child,
and then you get lost in the woods. You you
can't find your way home, and you perish out among
the trees. I wanted to talk about an article that

(59:13):
I was reading about the real life sort of like
science and history of people getting lost in the woods. Uh.
This is an exerpt adapted from a book called From
Here to There, The Art and Science of Finding and
Losing Our Way by Michael Bond, published by Harvard University Press.
This excerpt was published and wired and I thought this
was really interesting. So a lot of the article focuses

(59:35):
on the story of Geraldine Larkay, who was a sixty
six year old retired nurse from Tennessee who died in
the forest after becoming lost just off of the Appalachian
Trail in and once her body was discovered, details from
her diary and her phone clarified what happened. She had
been hiking the Appalachian Trail and she moved just slightly

(59:59):
off the path in order to go to the bathroom.
It was that she wrote that she went no more
than eighty paces off the path, but then afterwards was
nevertheless unable to find the trail again. She survived for
nineteen days before dying of the effects of exposure and starvation,
and when her campsite was discovered, it became clear that

(01:00:20):
she was actually less than half a mile from the
trail as the crow flies, and that search and rescue
teams with dogs had passed within a hundred yards of
her campsite while she was still alive. She was also
really close to some railroad tracks that could have led
her out of the forest if she had known about them.
And in this case and others like it. There are

(01:00:43):
there's some really kind of like cruel and unsympathetic and
and and dumb ways that people react to this by
saying like, oh, how could you know? How dumb? How
you know she could have survived? How could you get
lost when you're that close to the trail? But Bond
points out that experienced hiker don't talk like this because
most of them know actually how easy it is to

(01:01:05):
become hopelessly lost in a forest, and how powerful is
the urge to do all of the just exactly the
wrong things in that scenario. For example, one common piece
of advice is if you're lost in the woods, you
should immediately stop moving, Like, as soon as you realize
that you don't know where you are and you don't
know how to get back where you came from, immediately

(01:01:27):
stop moving. Stay in place, and you're more likely to survive.
While you're in place, you can come up with a
plan if you need to, and not exhaust yourself moving
around or getting more lost in the process. You can
wait for rescue without worth without wandering further and further
away from where you were. However, the stop and wait plan,

(01:01:47):
while actually very good advice, is extremely difficult to actually follow. Uh.
What people with experience report is that the moment you
realize you're lost in the woods, you are overcome with
a powerful sense of panic that compels you to keep moving,
in fact, to start running all over the place. Bond

(01:02:09):
quotes a British psychologist named Hugo Spears from another work
about his experience of becoming temporarily lost in the rainforest
in Peru. So Spears writes, quote, so I didn't go far,
but it's the jungle, and ten meters into the jungle
is enough to be completely disoriented. I was lost in
this jungle for two hours. They sent a dog out

(01:02:32):
to find me. I wasn't the first person to have
a dog sent out. It was terrifying. My brain just
wanted me to run, just run, just keep moving. I
was very aware that that was not the right strategy.
Keeping moving in the jungle is not going to save
your life. So I tried to calm down and think
carefully and not react at high speed, and look at

(01:02:53):
my environment. And I realized I was going in circles
exactly like in the movies. I is using a machete
to mark big trees, laying down a thread to know
if i'd come that way before that was starting to work,
I'd mark a tree with three slashes, and if I
ended up back at that tree, I knew I'd gone
in a circle. I was nearly back at the camp

(01:03:15):
when they sent the dog out, but it was a
huge relief. It just made me very aware that being
really really lost is quite terrifying. It is not a
normal thing. I think being lost in the woods is
one of those types of scenarios where your imagination of
it really does not capture what the experience would be like.

(01:03:36):
People imagine they're like, Okay, you know, I've I've I've
gotten turned around disoriented before, maybe you know, in a
in a in a city or in a neighborhood or something.
You don't know exactly where you're going, but it's pretty
easy to find your way back when there are roads
and sidewalks and landmarks. Oh yeah, there's that house. Being
lost in the woods is not like that. Being lost

(01:03:57):
in the woods, I think could it could be argued
that it is a form of an altered state of
consciousness that is terrifying and completely short circuits your better
judgment in multiple ways. Oh absolutely, And you know I
I have my friends who have been lost in the
forest before, and they were not like as lost as

(01:04:19):
like one can truly become lost in the forest, or
certainly as lost as one could in the times of
these folk tales, because they at least had not lost
cell coverage for their phone and we're able to to
use that. You know, they were still tethered to the
into the civilized world via their their device, and it
was still a terrifying experience. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean, try
to imagine it without those devices, without even a compass. Again,

(01:04:43):
this is there are so many ways that imagining what
it would be like to be lost in the forest
does not really cut it. Like, you're not likely to
predict a lot of the ways that your normal powers
of navigation fail. For example, of course, now, uh, if
you are lost in the woods, it is generally advised
that you should just stop and wait for rescue. But

(01:05:04):
if you are going to walk, you need to have
a good idea where you're going and try to travel
in a straight line. You might think that going straight
is easy, right, I can walk a straight line. We all,
you know, we walk straight lines all day, But actually
it is not easy without landmarks, without trails or a
compass lost people really do, and this is proven by research.
They just walk in circles. There was research in two

(01:05:28):
thousand nine by by Jan Suman who used GPS monitors
to track volunteers while they tried to navigate in a
straight line through a couple of natural environments without the
aid of external landmarks or signs. This was the Sahara
Desert and Germany's buy and Walled forest, and it did
not go well. When they couldn't see the sun, people

(01:05:51):
could not travel in a straight line at all. Small
initial errors in orientation would just quickly grow wider as
they piled upon themselves. And people actually truly did just
walk in circles. I know, it sounds like that wouldn't happen.
You're like, no, no, no, I could. I could go
into straight line, but you probably couldn't. You just go
in circles. Uh. And to read from the article quote,

(01:06:13):
Sumon concluded that with no external cues to help them,
people will not travel more than around a hundred meters
from their starting position, regardless of how long they walk for.
That's so hard to believe, but apparently it's true. Yeah,
that the path in the forest is not just a
suggestion you know it is. It is a lifeline. But

(01:06:35):
another big part of this article, Bond talks about how
being lost in the forest it doesn't just make it
hard to navigate. It does that, but it also affects
the way we reason. He says being lost as a
cognitive state in that the woods make it extremely difficult,
sometimes basically impossible, to form a mental map of your
surroundings because woods just kind of look like woods if

(01:06:57):
you're if you're not used to being in them, uh,
he says, quote, nothing in your spatial memory matches what
you see. Your normal mental equipment for navigation becomes close
to useless. But even more so, Bond argues that being
lost is an emotional state. Quote it delivers a psychic
double whammy. Not only are you stricken with fear, you

(01:07:18):
also lose your ability to reason. You suffer what neuroscientists
Joseph LaDou calls a hostile takeover of consciousness by emotion.
Of people make things a lot worse for themselves when
they realize they are lost by running, for instance, because
they're afraid they can't solve problems or figure out what
to do, they fail to notice landmarks or fail to

(01:07:40):
remember them. They lose track of how far they've traveled.
They feel claustrophobic, as if their surroundings are closing in
on them. Uh And Bond also says that there are
chemical signatures of this lost in the woods panic. He
quotes a search and rescue specialist named Robert Kester who
argues that being lost is in terms of neuro by allergy,
similar to a panic attack. The body floods with catechola

(01:08:04):
means and the standard fight or flight behavior patterns get triggered.
So in a subjective sense, it often feels kind of
like a break with reality. You know, you're you're just
kind of you feel like you're losing your mind. And
this can even last after a person gets out of
the state. He also quotes Ed Cornell, who's a psychologist
who studies the behavior of people who get lost. And

(01:08:26):
and Cornell says that it can be really difficult to
get information out of a person who's been lost. They
often have trouble communicating their experience and can't remember quite
what happened to them. And uh And and the type
of disorientation and panic and stress that's brought on by
being lost in the woods causes people sometimes to experience

(01:08:46):
delusions and hallucinations. Even in otherwise healthy people or seemingly
otherwise healthy people. They will sometimes report hallucinating interactions with
people in the forest. And given all this, it's not
hard at all to see where stories and other oldly
demon who lives in the forest and lures people into
becoming lost where they would come from. You know, you
can easily imagine somebody becoming lost in the forest in

(01:09:10):
medieval Russia and then by chance they managed to find
their way back or get rescued somehow, and what is
their experience. It might be kind of hard for them
to remember what happened, that's strange, and they may be
experienced like stress based hallucinations while they were out there,
hearing voices or hearing sounds, maybe even seeing people who

(01:09:30):
were taunting them or luring them this way and that, Uh,
it becomes quite clear how stories like this could come
out of real experiences. Yeah, and I think it's also
interesting how you know, we can compare this to the
leshy and the idea of the leshy being both gigantic
and small, hiding behind blades of glad grass, and also

(01:09:51):
being the another size of a bell tower. There's this
kind of this idea of the nature of the leshy
warps physical space in a way that's ms to line
up well with this um that the experiences we're describing here. Yeah. Absolutely,
I mean, I gotta say researching this episode has has
made me think kind of differently. I mean, I'm somebody

(01:10:12):
who I love to go hiking in the woods on
a on a path of course, and in the past
I think I might have been, i don't know, more
likely to to say, like, oh, there's something that looks
cool over there, maybe I'll go off the path. I
think that's something people should genuinely be cautious about, Like
it is much easier to lose the path and lose
your way in the woods than you might think. Yeah,

(01:10:34):
certainly keep in mind for anybody who listened to our
episode on mushroom foraging and decides to get into it,
because you know, often is the case that you you
spot the you know, the the tempting Chanterrell's just a
little off the path, and you may go out to
them and and may that may work out just fine, uh,
you know, for you, but it also might not, especially

(01:10:54):
if you then see the next patch of Chanterelle's or
what might be Chanterrell's, but also might be just some
some you know, orange ish colored leaves on the ground,
and then before you know it, uh, the lesh she
has led you astray. We will eat them. We won't
eat them, we will saute them in butter. We will
be saute in butter. I I do you know again,

(01:11:16):
I have to to really recommend that that Haney book
for anyone who wants to read Russian folk tales. But
I have to drive home again just how good that
sixty Jack Frost film. You know, it's not only in
terms of just what a beautiful production it is, but
it seems to really capture the nature of those Russian
folk tales, because there's this like whimsy and danger and magic, uh,

(01:11:38):
that is inherent in a lot of these beings, like
for instance, the Baba Yaga herself is in the tails
often described you know, is being you know, having these
qual qualities of of a woodland monster spirit, but also
of just like a ridiculous, farting old woman, you know,
and and all that I think is reflected very well.
And that whimsical performance in the sixty five film. Yes,

(01:12:01):
Tom petty riffs society. It is haunted by peasant genius.
It really is. You know. Another interesting point than Haney
made in his overview of Russian folk tales is that,
aside from the fact that the hero very frequently goes
into the forest and has an encounter, also the hero
always prevails, Like Haney really underlined that, like that the

(01:12:23):
hero is going to win in these stories. So again
we can think back to so many of these tales
dealing with like the the chaotic nature of the woods
and it being they being stories about how humans can
and do overcome the chaos of the wilds. Though it's
funny because the story is also uh, they don't encourage

(01:12:44):
what in the modern day at least is generally the
best behavior if you become lost in the woods, like
the you know, Ivan Sarovitch does not sit down and
wait for rescue. He does not hug a tree, which
is actually the smartest thing to do if you get lost.
He's like, no, forge ahead, Yeah, it always works out
for him eventually. If you get lost, don't be like Ivan.

(01:13:06):
I guess unless you've got a self setting table cloth,
then you might be okay. Oh yeah, I mean, if
you've got a self setting table cloth. That's really gonna
help you out in the long run. I mean that
that means you don't have to worry about food and water.
Do you think the food from the self setting table
cloth was good or was it just like you know,
kind of yeah, you know, it's bread or whatever. Is
it like really nice scourmet stuff? Um? I mean I'm

(01:13:28):
assuming it was probably like basic like everyday food. Uh.
I guess it was pretty good. I mean, there's a
section where where Ivan's dining from it. Um, And I
don't know, it's just not I don't think it was
mentioned in that particular retelling of the tale, but I
imagine it as being like typical like typical Russian people's

(01:13:49):
food borshed in morals. Yeah, I guess. So you know,
all right, we're gonna go ahead and close this out here.
Obviously there there's there's so many other things we could
talk about with Russian folklore, a tremendous amount of material
out there. You know, who knows if if you all
enjoyed listening to this episode, perhaps we could return in
the future, but we would love to hear from you

(01:14:11):
in the meantime. Some of the key questions, Um, I
would regard, of course, did you grow up watching Jack Frost.
If so, tell us about that and it's impact on
your you know, your your your holidays, or your just
a sort of appreciation of cinema in general. I understand
it was quite influential on some filmmakers. By the way,
I also am interested if anybody has any definite answers

(01:14:34):
regarding father or grandfather Mushroom. Does he have an existence
in Russian Russian folklore prior to that nine film? I
would I would love to have some clarity on that question.
And of course, if you have been lost in the woods,
either just a little bit lost or like majorly lost
in the woods, if you would like to share your

(01:14:57):
your experience with us and tell us how it relates
to both the you know, the studies that Joe mentioned
and also the folklore we've discussed here. We would love
to hear from you totally. In the meantime, if you
would like to check out other episodes of Stuff to
Blow your Mind, you can find us wherever you get
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(01:15:17):
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(01:15:38):
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