Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's Saturday. Time to go into the vault for an older episode of the show. This one was called Ghosts of Wind and Rain. I believe it was about weather oriented ghost lore and and other creatures. This was originally published on October. Let's let us Unleash the Storm. There's a storm coming. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And Rob correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is finally the year that you've gotten full blown into Rocky Ericson. Is that right? Uh? Yeah, yeah, I would guess. So, yeah, I got. I listened to him a little in the past, and in this year I got even more into it. Yeah, okay, So Rocky has long been one of my favorite rock and roll vampires, and one of the things I love about Rocky Ericson Monster songs is how much they're about the weather. Um. So you may remember the line from his great, his great anthem, The Night of the Vampire if it's raining and you're running, don't slip in mud, because if you do, you'll slip in blood. I mean, that's just logic, and there's a really infectious glee to that kind of logic. But also I enjoyed the weather weather represented in songs like the Wind and More, which I know compares sort of the voice of Lucifer to to the storm winds that are battering through the house. Yeah. Absolutely. And And if anyone out there is not sure who we're talking about, um, you should look up Rocky erricks and who also was the other group like Man from the late sixties early seventies based in I think Austin, definitely out of Texas. Uh, fantastic psychedelic rock. But then Rocky Ericson had had a long solo career after that of all different kinds of music, you know, he he um so some of the stuff he released, uh he he had a lot of troubles with mental health and at some points he was in psychiatric institutions. But even in those periods would sort of make these little demos of UH songs recorded it sounds like just on a tape recorder that are very simple. But but strangely beautiful, and then at other times he would make full blown, uh monster rock and roll albums. There's one called Evil One that's just fantastic, that's got a kind of Credence Clearwater Revival style rock production. But all the songs are about demons and ghosts and and fifties atomic age monster movies. Yeah, and it's pretty hard stuff too, Like it's like it's it's it's got a hard rock vibe that I think might surprise some people. So it's I think was produced by somebody from Credence. If never so, I think so. Yeah. But but but but harder than Credence, Uh, in my opinion. Well, all that is preamble to the fact that today we wanted to talk about the intersection of ghosts and weather. Yeah, and I have to stress that we absolutely won't be able to cover everything here because there are just too many storm monsters and storm deities out there storm related ghosts and other creatures. But we're gonna be covering various examples that seem related to some of the core ideas that we were kicking around for this episode. And uh and and really, the the central idea has to do with a recent trip you went on. Oh yeah, so I was recently in coastal South Carolina. Rob, have you been to coastal South Carolina? I assume probably, oh yeah, yeah. And and of course South Carolina placed with a lot of ghosts, tons of ghosts everywhere you go there, Like you can find a little local visitor center that's got a local uh self published ghost author who's collected all the lore and they've got it in a in a book that the font of the book is usually times New Roman, uh, but it's but it will have lots of great, you know, local ghost stories in it. And so there's one that I was reading about from a particular place on the South Carolina coast, a little island called Paul's Island. And so to explain this, so on refer to an article that was published by Myrtle Beach Online. So it's a local news article from the Myrtle Beach area that's also coastal South Carolina by a writer named Tyler Fleming. The article says it was last updated in September nineteen. I'm not sure if that's when it was originally published, but it's this local news article trying to track down the origins of a bit of ghost lore from this area of the South Carolina coastline, and specifically this is the story of a being called the gray Man. You know, I'd say it's used a lot, but I'm still a sucker for for that formulation of a creature name just the blank man, especially if whatever the word in the middle is is a single syllable. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like the Green Man, the tall Man. Yeah. So, according to the legend, this is a spirit that wanders around on the shore on and around this small island called Poly's Island, South Carolina. Uh, usually appearing just before the landfall of terrible storms as a translucent gray figure stalking the beaches and boardwalks in a long cloak. Sometimes he's literally described as dressed like a pirate. Uh. And one one funny I think a little little justified accusation of his identity is that he is black Beard. He is, Uh. I don't know how you're supposed to say his last name ed Edward Teach or Teach or Thatch, however it is yeah yeah, with the with the burning brands in his beard. Yeah. This this gets into an interesting area that I would like about about ghosts of this nature because uh, and this is all thoroughly non scientific, of course, but we have this idea that you know, that something bad happens and the ghost is like a lingering after effect of that thing. Um. And then certainly there's also this idea that a ghost, it's a Blackbeard's ghost or just this mysterious gray man, would have potentially insider information about what's going to happen. Maybe you know, they died at sea and therefore they know the sea a little better and they can they can warn us about things. But then there's also an idea of the of of hauntings as being uh, you know, things that work in both directions and time, that they can be harbingers of of the terrible events. Um. You know, perhaps they're even attached to events that have yet to come. Well, yeah, and that is exactly the case with the Gray Man. So contrary to what you might assume about this spectral figure, you know, crunching along through the sand, in the in the in the storms and the wind, local legend usually describes the gray Man as a nine or even a helpful spirit, and the purpose of his hauntings is to serve as a warning to people who live nearby that the coming storm is going to be especially destructive. So as a few examples of this, uh this belief among locals, I was looking at a article in Southern Living by Megan over Deep about this ghost legend, and it describes how there were locals in in South Carolina who claimed sightings of the gray Man just before Hurricane Hazel in nineteen fifty four and Hurricane Hugo in nineteen eighty nine. But as a more recent example, also this this article embedded tweets like people tweeting grainy photos of alleged gray Man sightings ahead of Hurricane Florence in ten. So Rob, I've embedded one for you to look at here. Listeners, you can go look up this article in Southern Living if you want to find these tweets. But m this one embeds a photo that is allegedly taken at boardwalk that goes over the beach on Pouli's Island, and there is I don't know, so it's a it's a very grainy photograph. It's got a lot of what looks like digital artifacts and pixelation in it, and then there's this big sort of pale gray smudge in the middle. Of it that looks, oh yeah, maybe like it could be some kind of vertical object on the boardwalk. But some people apparently looked at that and said, hey, it's the gray Man. Well I have to point out that the tweet that is shared in this article, uh, the tweeter does have a blue check mark. So this is verified. This is this is verified. It proof of the afterlife confirmed as usual. Why decidings of the paranormal so strongly favor low fidelity documentation. I think I'm not positive, but this looks like it's from some kind of like uh uh, stationary live camera that sort of documents, you know, foot traffic on the beach. I think that you can tune into and see what's going on there. I'm not positive that's what it is, but I know there is stuff like that around there, and so that that's what it looks like to me, But it could be something else anyway. Yeah, it's very grainy, it's got all you know, it's got the pixelated artifacts in it, and I just want some high definition gray Man, but I can't get it. Yeah, I mean, obviously, I think that gets down to just the fact that sightings occur when things are obscured and uncertain They emerge out of uncertainty and uh and and and and depleted the visual efficiency. That'll come back later with something I want to get into in a minute. So to quote from this article by Tyler Fleming here quote, not only does he warn people, but he's also known to protect their property from a storm. A woman in nineteen fifty four claimed to see the Gray Man ahead of the infamous Hurricane Hazel hitting the area. She said not only was her house spared from the devastation, the beach towels she left on her balcony were still hanging up. So the ghost is like, oh, Madam, I I I those those beach towels are just too beautiful. I can't stand to see them swept into the store. I'll protect your house, but what about all the people who died? I mean, you shouldn't the ghost of priorities the people instead of the beach towels. I've seen people, but these beach towels, my god, they're beautiful. So this article in Myrtle Beach Online goes on to list some of the local speculation about the alleged origin of this ghost. It does not mention black Beard that one might be a kind of spurious allegation. Uh well, I mean, I think all of these are probably just made up later legends. But but trying to track down at least what are the earliest of the legends. Um. So, the source that the article sites on these is the Georgetown Museum. Georgetown is a city near A. Pauli's Island. Um, And so they've got to, I guess a museum that has some stuff about this local legend. And one story, this, this appears to be the dominant one, is about a man who perished in the South Carolina low country in eighteen twenty two. And the tale goes that this young man had been traveling abroad for two years, and in September of eighteen twenty two, he decided he wanted to come home so he could see his fiancee uh back in South Carolina and they could set a date for their wedding. And he was apparently in such a hurry to get back and see her face again that he took a shortcut through the marsh and he ended up stuck in quicksand, which spelled his doom and then his fiance she's grieving over the fact that I guess. I don't know if she found out that he died or if he just never showed up, but she's grieving for some reason. And she goes out walking along the shore and she's treading through the sand, and while strolling alone on the beach, she sees a dark silhouette. It's a it's the figure of a man, and she realizes that it's the soul of her would be husband who died in in the marsh. And she's so troubled by this vision and others like it. She has later that that her family decides to relocate inland. They move away from that house, and the very next day after they leave, a hurricane sweeps through, leaving a path of destruction that would have killed them had they not left. And it's apparently this legend that that could give rise to this this common belief that the ghost appears to people to warn them of storms. And as a quick side note, I wanted to mention I love that the story involves quicksand, which of course is one of my favorite plot devices, but that does have an environmental reality to it. You might not want to call it quicksand, but the South Carolina low country, especially the marshes. It's sort of like the mouth of the what they could usually call the creeks, you know, the little uh the tributaries of water that eventually drained out into the ocean. Um. These areas will form this build up of fine sediment that is known as pluff mud and uh So I was reading at least one article from the I think it was the Hilton Head area that was all about the story of a lady who goes out walking in the marsh for some reason and she ends up stuck in the pluff mud. And she's there until like into the evening, and they have to send rescuers and to dig her out. Because you can very easily get stuck in this stuff. You can sink into it. It's a there are a lot of myths about quicksand and uh and and things like it that you would like sink down under your head and drown. That's usually not a very common thing to happen, if it happens at all. Really, I think the risk of of quicksand and even pluff mud is just that you would get stuck in it and have trouble getting yourself out. Yeah. I've certainly been in I don't know if it constitutes pluf mud or or if it's just you know, very wet sand. But I've been in I've noticed some coastal situations where you have a real, real bootsucker or sandal sucker of of a situation, you know, where the sand is just the right consistency that if you you step into it, you might be pulling a bare foot back out. Yes, And it's it's almost it's wonderful that it creates this um, this almost untouchable terrain, because there are a lot of areas around in the low country where you can, like if there there will be a nature preserve and you can take a board walk out over the marsh and if you look down on it, I see all kinds of life. You know, things are happening down in the pluff mud. There may be these big colonies of oysters, and you can see fiddler crabs popping up out of holes and running around and all the birds hunting them. But yeah, it's the kind of place where you wouldn't really want to go down and venture yourself, at least not without some special equipment, maybe like weight displacement boots or something. Now apparently there's some alternatives for the origin of the gray Man legend um uh. To quote again from the Myrtle Beach Online article quote uh. Other theories tell a different story. One still has a man returning from c but this time his fiance decided to marry his best friend instead. He throws himself into the wacam All. This is the Wake Them All River, which is a nearby river, and then later his fiance and friend do the same. Other stories say he was an unknown sailor who washed up on shore and died shortly after. Some believe he is the original owner of Polly's Island, George Polly, who lived there in the early seventeen hundreds. Thank you, thank you. Now. Of course, this would be far from the only legendary supernatural being associated with weather phenomena. You know they're there are tons of ghosts and monsters and creatures and gods that may not serve exactly this purpose, saying like, hey, a storm's coming, but there in one way or another associated specifically with storms or other transient weather phenomena. And so while poking around on the subject, I came across what I thought was an interesting and kind of funny article. So this was on. This was a weather news article by Michael Cune on ACU weather Dot Calm with the headline quote ghost hunter colon thunderstorms cause an increase in paranormal activity. Well, I mean, certainly, if you've watched enough horror films and ghost movies, you know that this is the case. You've got to have a thunderstorm going in the background, right, I mean, it's it's a classic of horror fiction. Right. So you could argue about the the order of causality there, but uh, yeah, you know you got the classic what's the bulward Lytton line? It was a dark and stormy night, and then the idea that it seems that stormy conditions have long inspired Gothic modes of thought. I mean, you know, there's the classic story of, Uh, how did Mary Wilston craft Shelley come up with the idea for Frankenstein. It was during that summer when when she and Byron and the whole crew were sort of like stuck inside due to this this dark and stormy summer sort of it was the year without a summer, which, uh, in a weird twist of fate, I think was likely due to volcanic activity on the other side of the world. Um, that that was the summer where she worked out the ideas for the story that would become Frankenstein, sort of a foundational text of modern horror. And so it's kind of hard for me to believe that the dark and stormy summer didn't in a way play a role in the formation of that story in her mind. But um, but anyway, so so this article about the paranormal activity in the thunderstorm. So the article consults a paranormal enthusiast named Mark Keys, who at the time of this article at least was director of the Pennsylvania Paranormal Association. I looked him up and it seems like he's featured on some kind of some ghost hunter type TV shows. The one that was I forget the name, is called like Paranormal nine one one or something, And based on his quotes, I think, I think this guy seems to uh take a sort of ghost realist position, at least like he he uh he cites, for example, the advice of a of a spirit medium as if he believes this is likely to contain information. And so do you think there are skeptical ghost hunters who you call them they show up at their door and you're like, hey, I think I've got a hunting and their first thing as well. Look, first of all, ghost aren't real well there and there could be. There could be open minded but skeptical ghost hunters. I mean, I don't know, Like I I feel like that's the attitude I would try to take. I would say, you know, I probably I think most ghost sightings are probably all of them are not really a spectral beings from another play, and they're probably something about the perception of the person experiencing. But you don't know for sure. I mean you at least look and see, you try to find some out. I mean, it would be beneficial to have more people in that in that mode where like they're an expert you consult and they're like, okay, there are no said there's there no ghosts, but here a list of things that that could contribute to this this very real and potentially frightening experience that you have. I'm sure there are some people like that, but I guess I would assume this may not be fair. I don't know, but I would assume if you've got like TV shows, you're you're probably at least at least for the cameras, meaning into embracing the sort of ghost realist position. Yeah, nobody's watching. I guess you could watch it. I could. I guess I could imagine a ghost Hunter show with this kind of a theme, like we're here to bust the ghosts, but not only the ghost themselves, with the idea of ghosts that that could be fine kind of a pin and teller um, you know, kind of approach to it. Yeah, yeah, sure right. I don't know, it could be done well, Like I feel like like most things, you know, it could be done well if it was done well. But coming back to this article, the thing that really got a hook in my brain about it and that I thought was really interesting was that the article made an attempt to posit a physical mechanism by which thunderstorms allow ghosts to appear. And I think basically the implication is that ghosts need to get charged up by lightning. It's not said explicitly, but this does appear to be the implication given by the guy sided in this article. So to quote from the article, Some bel that apparitions or spirits needs some source of energy to manifest their presence into the physical plane. In order to communicate with the living. This could include drawing energy from electrical circuits and even batteries. And then this is quoting from Keys, if a spirit is trying to manifest, that is, become physically visible, it will pull energy out of the environment to do that. This could include heat, as cold spots are commonly reported, as well as in areas where haunting has been reported. It seems to be shortly after a lightning storm that they do notice an increase, he said. And then then this is the part where Keys claims that his psychic medium will back up the fact that after a thunderstorm there is quote a lot more activity. Um. Now, you know, as as I think, uh, we'll be clear if you've listened to us for a while or even from our earlier discussion, I would say we generally take a you know, broadly open minded, but specifically skeptical position on the physical reality of paranormal reports like this. So so while we're not going to embrace the ghost realist position, I would be potentially open to the claim from the the experience of a paranormal investigator who says that thunderstorms are correlated with increased reports of ghost sightings, poulter geist hauntings and so forth. So I think that could well be true, and that could well be informed by experience, because there would be nothing supernatural in that. You just have to say, well, yeah, people do say they get haunted more often after there's been a storm or around the time of a storm. Um, But I would tend to think that if this is true, the mechanism would more likely be the thunderstorm somehow causes the perception of ghosts and wandering spirits rather than literally conjuring them. Yeah, I mean we have to remember that what is what does lightning do? But but very briefly illuminates the darkened world, um, and just a flash and gives us a chance to sort of fill in in the gaps there with whatever you might you know, expect to be there in the storm. That's a really good point, and it's further informed by some of the stuff that's quoted in this article. Is like, what are the most common things people report as evidence of hauntings in their homes? According to this paranormal investigator. He says that, Okay, so first of all, you've got I think, you know, visual evidence such as people witnessing shadows and spectral human forms, which I mean seems like the darkened sky, and then like briefly illuminated flashes of lightning. That seems like, okay, that's sort of perfect conditions to create illusory perceptions of strangely shaped shadows and things like that. But then another thing that it identifies, and this is something that I think from my reading, is is a very common, UH source of paranormal reports, what what I would call appliance phenomena. UM. So the the article says, quote reports of lights flickering and electronic equipment turning on and off on its own even when unplugged is common. Other people report more physical activities, such as doors opening or closing, lights or TVs turning off by themselves. Believe it or not, we've had a lot of reports of stereos radios turning themselves on when they're not even plugged in, and so, you know, it's hard to judge just from generalizations like this, but it's funny to me how much like everything that was just listed, except for the unplugged part UH is stuff that would be pretty much perfectly explained by the physical effects of a storm. So like doors opening and closing by themselves. Of course, during a storm, you have wind and pressure differentials that can blow a door one way or the other. And then the appliance phenomena, that's the the anomalous activation or deactivation of electrical appliances, which I know from personal experience and probably most of you do as well, that this can happen due to storms affecting the power grid and the power lines leading to your house. And Rob, I don't know if you've ever had this happen in your house, but sometimes, like power supply issues during a storm don't affect the entire house at once, you know, so like you can have um uh, you can have like a power outage where just everything goes out. We usually recognize what that is, but we we occasionally have stuff happen where, you know, like some parts of the household kind of flash on and off and other things won't. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Now I think that would not explain issues where people are claiming that appliances that are not plugged in start turning on and stuff, Like a lot of the reports emphasize these extra levels of implausibility. You know, the stereo wasn't even plugged in and it started playing Whalen and uh, I have no way of knowing this, but part of me just kind of suspects that the appliance was unplugged. Claim In particular, it seems like a like a just a very likely exaggeration place to go, like maybe you witness some apparently anomalous activation or deactivation of an appliance, an electrical appliance, and it feels notable when you first notice it, but then thinking back on it, uh, oh yeah, sometimes things do just turn on and off. This kind of needs some extra beef. And it's like, well, we're we even sure it was plugged in. It might not have even been plugged in. Yeah, I mean, we have so many things plugged in these days. It's sometimes it's hard to keep count of what's what's plugged in, what's unplugged. And you got to unplug one thing and actually unplugged the other. So plenty of room for misunderstanding and altered memory there. Yeah. But so the other main fork of the storm causation here on on the hauntings I would think would tend to be um. The effects of storms on human psychology is storms or even atmospheric conditions before or after storms yeah, I mean this makes perfect sense. You know, ghosts are often associated with darkness. Lightning again momentarily illuminates the dark. And even if it's not nighttime. Uh, you know, you have a storm roll in, what does it do? It brings a certain level of darkness and shadow with it, throwing the rain, uh, some booming thunder, and you have just a cree the environment not just creepy. But I'm thinking about the informational and sensory effects of storms. Coming back to that grainy photo we were talking about earlier, I would argue that stormy weather reduces the sensory resolution of your environment. Um, So there's darkening due to cloud cover. They're less light means less visual information or certainly less certainty in your visual information. And then once you get mist and rain, visibility is further reduced. And wind and thunder and rain also reduced the auditory clarity of your environment. So imagine, you know, turning up the volume on a staticky radio channel. It's harder to discern the true signals sound signals around you, and it's easier to mistakenly perceive a signal within the noise. And I think this would fit with what I said earlier about ghosts so often appearing these days on low resolution film, video and audio recordings. Yeah, if I'm not sure what I see, if I'm not sure what is recorded in one form or another, then that creates an opportunity to lean into some sort of supernatural understanding of what it might be. Now, I was trying to think about other things here where, um, could could there be other sensations people get maybe when a storm is approaching that puts them in an alternative, an alternative state of mind, or has some detectable effect on humans that could lead to paranormal experiences. Um, I'm not convinced on this one, but there there are at least some questions I would like to pose. Um. And So, for example, one of the things I was thinking about was barometric pressure. So we all live under atmospheric pressure at sea level. Under normal conditions, you walk around with about fourteen points seven pounds per square inch of atmosphere pressing down on and around you. But we don't normally perceive the weight of the atmosphere because were equalized to it. Uh. And in fact, if a significant amount of that weight were to be removed, we could probably notice it like if you go high up enough, if you go to a high altitude, you can feel a difference in the reduced air pressure, obviously, because you know the higher up you go, the less atmosphere there is two is above you to press down. But air pressure at any surface altitude is variable, so at sea level, changes in the weather, changes of the heating of the Earth's surface can cause imbalances in barometric pressure. So as you have a region of the Earth's surface that gets hot, that hot air rises, you can almost imagine it being sucked up into the upper atmosphere by a giant vacuum. This forms a vacuum below it. It forms a low pressure system. And when you have a low pressure region, pressure is falling. That means air from the surrounding regions of the Earth's surface will flow into that area of falling pressure to compensate and perceive this flow of air as wind. This is what wind is uh. And then the rising warm air in a low pressure system also carries with it water vapor content, which condenses into clouds and eventually has to fall back down as rain. So falling barometric pressure is generally taken as a sign that storms are coming. If your barometric pressure is going down and your wind speed is increasing, you can be pretty sure there is a storm headed your way. So that's generally factual. But I guess what I was wondering about was, well, okay, so do signs like that, Does low or falling barometric pressure have any effect on humans that could lead to sort of different states of mind or behavior? This one seems uncertain to me. I'm not sure psychological studies have tracked all kinds of effects of weather on mood, cognition, and behavior, and it seems to me that while there have been a few studies finding some effects of barometric pressure, if those effects are sound, they appear to be a lot more subtle than the stronger effects of factors like temperature. But to cite just a couple at least of the reported effects. For for one example, I was looking at a study called a Warm Heart and a Clear Head, The Contingent Effects of Whether on mood and Cognition. This was published in Psychological Science in two thousand five. This was a study of weather as a as a function generally of seasonal changes, and and looking somewhat into questions about seasonal effective disorder. But the authors here right in their abstract quote in two correlational studies and an experiment manipulating participants time outdoors pleasant weather, this would mean higher temperature or higher barometric pressure was related to higher mood, better memory, and broaden cognitive style during the spring. As time spent outside increased, the same relationships between mood and whether we're not observed during other times of year though, and indeed, hotter weather was associated with lower mood in the summer. Uh of course, obviously you know you can have hot weather in the summer that is associated with low pressure regions that lead up to to a storm. And to further elucidate their findings that they're right in their results section that quote. As in some of the previous research, and they cite Clark and Watson in nine and Watson in two thousand, neither temperature nor barometric pressure was directly related to mood valance. However, the interactions of time spin outside with temperature and with barometric pressure, we're both significantly related to mood valence in the expected direction. As time spin outside increase, the temperature, mood and pressure mood relationships became more positive. So basically, if you have participants, if you tell them they need to spend more than thirty minutes outside. Higher temperatures and higher pressure are associated with better moods and outcomes, um and uh and but if you have people spend less than thirty minutes outside, then the relationship is actually reversed. So like good weather outside and having to stay indoors apparently has has a negative effect on mood and cognition. In this finding, R Yeah, I think most of us can relate to that. You know, if you if it's a nice day outside, but it's a day where you only get to experience that whilst moving from one indoor environment to another, yeah, that's kind of a bummer. But if you get to be outside the whole day or a large portion of the day, and that's great. But unfortunately, so while this did look at barometric pressure as one of the things informing the the weather states, it was looking at this combination of temperature and barometric pressure. What they were really looking at was like, what are the effects of good good you know, so like high pressure, high temperature. Is there anything that directly tests for no? No, no, what is it? What is it about low pressure? Specifically? You know that state when you would expect a storm to be heading your way. Uh. There are some other findings that seem potentially more directly informative on this question, but I also feel somewhat cautious about them that they don't feel uh, super conclusion of. So, for example, one study I came across was published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry in two thousand three by Thomas Shorey at All, and it looked at documented emergency psychiatric visits to a city psychiatric emergency room in the year ninet in a mid sized city, and they also looked at city police department data and suicide data, and what they found was, quote, the data suggests that total numbers of acts of violence and emergency psychiatry visits are significantly associated with low barometric pressure. But then they found that psychiatric in patient admissions and suicides were not associated with any of the weather variables they investigated. So that's one of those things that's okay that that's a bird's eye level observation of something that happened in one city that might mirror it further investigation. But I don't think we could say anything conclusive just based on that, um, so I would be skeptical about drawing two many conclusions from from ideas about the relationship between barometric pressure specifically and psychology, but the conditions that precede a storm, both the obvious and cognitively recognized conditions like clouds, darkening skies, and thunder, and then perhaps some subconsciously perceived conditions like dropping barometric pressure or increasing winds. I think it could possibly give rise to a different state of mind when a storm is approaching, certainly the cognitively recognized ones. Thank So, I think these are all excellent ideas to keep in mind as we proceed through the rest of the episode. Where I thought we might just look at some various ghosts and monsters and sometimes divine or partially divine figures from around the world that have something to do with with whether or in or at least in one in one case, has nothing to do with what there but gets into the idea of a ghost harbinger. So, um, first of all, we'll go ahead and get the one out of the way that doesn't really seem to have anything to do with weather. Um. Well, actually, I guess I have a couple of them here, and the first one here is is her name the Hunter. Have you heard of this particular ghost, not until you introduced him to me. So this is apparently a ghostly phosphorescent mounted hunter said to ride through the woods surrounding Windsor Castle in the UK. He's covered in furs and his head is obscured by the skull and antlers of a great stack. Now when I when I heard about this, I had to, of course look it up in in Carol Rose's encyclopedic volumes on monsters and fairies and whatnot, and she makes a possible connection here between this legend and older Celtic beliefs in a particular horned fertility god whose name was Sir nunus Um. That's c e r in you in an Os. That's at least one modern spelling of it. But this, uh, this particular their apparition was was referenced by Shakespeare, and in the twentieth century at least has come to be seen as a harbinger of disaster, not of storms, but of economic and political disaster, which I found interesting. So sightings of the Hunter here have been attributed to the ninety one economic depression, the nineteen thirty six abdication crisis, the nineteen thirty nine Declaration of War and the nineteen fifty two death of George the sixth. Another version I've read is that her name the Hunter always appears when a monarch is close to death. Well, this raises a question for me about a distinction we could make about Harbinger deities, or maybe not deities. I don't know if if her name here is a is a god or just a creature being of some kind, whatever you would call it. These Harbinger beings, you could say that, okay, if they appear right before a disaster of some kind, whether that's a hurricane or or an economic depression or the death of a monarch, are appearing in a benign spirit saying like, hey, i have divine fore knowledge because I'm of the other plane. I'm not of this world, so I'm not bound by time, and I'm just giving you a warning, like I'm here to let you know so you can prepare. Or are they on the sort of uh, disastrous causation side is like, you know, are they an ill omen is seeing them in some way part of the causative structure of the disaster that comes, or do they even directly bring it about? By appearing. Yeah, yeah, you see various interpretations I guess of what exactly is going on. Um, and and well we'll keep discussing this. But another little tale that I read this was in Roses book, referring to work by folklore's Ruth Tongue. Um, it's a story Tongue rights of the this tale that was circulating about three British youths who are decked out in the teddy boy style of the nineteen sixties with up if if you need a visual of what that would look like. Uh, they were they were, you know, up to I don't know if they were up to no good, but they were. They were out. They were hanging out in the woods and what do they find? A horn? And um, I believe the story goes that they're thinking, oh, well, there must have been some sort of a film shoot going on here, and they left a prop. Uh, we've got this horn, let's go ahead and blow it. So they blow the horn and then sure enough, the unseen spirit begins to pursue them through the woods and you know, getting closer and closer, and finally an arrow seems to fly uh and slays one of them dead. But there's not a single physical wound. It seems to have been some sort of a ghost era. Uh so that's that's a that's a fun little tale as well. And of course this all relates back to other traditions of the wild hunt myth of some sort of of a ghostly being or beings sometimes in the company of of of hell hounds that goes out on strange hunts in the night and you don't want to on a foul of them. Something is incongruous between that and the teddy boy thing. I'm hung up on the teddy boy detail. Is this a commentary on the teddy boy fashion trend or I think it's just, you know, on the youth of the day. So it's like whatever the youth. You can imagine various youth fashion trends in Britain and h and then being reflected in versions of this story. It makes it seem very cinematic. I can imagine the cinematic version is so if her name has a stag skull on top of his head and you look up teddy boy hairstyles, I mean you could see some certain basic shape and contour similarities where their pompadours look kind of like stag skulls. Yeah, yeah, I guess without horns. But now as far as his ghostly harbingers go, I know some of you are probably thinking of this. Um, this is more in the realm of cryptids and and ufo ology. But um, there's the the alleged supernatural harbinger of the Silver Bridge collapse of nineteen sixty seven. There's the bridge that spanned the Ohio River. The Mothman. Uh. They've been books and movies about this, but the connection, the original connection between the collapse and sightings of the Mothman, I'm to understand, are largely due to the writings of ufo ologist John Keel. I think this story is the inspiration behind the plot of that Richard Gear movie The Mothman Prophecies, isn't it It is? Yeah, I've never seen it, but I am familiar with you know what, so we watched it a few years back. We'd like to revisit, Uh, not just classic horror films, but you know, Rachel and I sometimes watch like Fallen by the Wayside, horror films that nobody really talks about anymore, And so this one was what did this come out in the early two thousands, or something. Um, I think that sometime around then has Richard Gear and it's about this whole situation, and you know what, I gotta says, It's not perfect, but there it's got some good ghostly atmosphere and it was actually pretty spooky, A pretty solid thumbs up. Now, there are some other Harbinger spirits of note. There's the Chirath, which is a harbinger spirit. It in the folklore of whales. It's a bandshe like being that whales and groans as she passes through the city streets at night, warning of impending disaster, including epidemics, which of course is interesting. And then, of course, speaking of there's the Banshee of Irish legend that whales under the window of a family member to portend that family member's death. I guess this comes back to the question I brought up a minute ago, because I think I've read about this in the context of the band sheet before, where it's not really clear to me whether the belief is that the band she knows the death is going to happen and is sort of informing the family of such by their behavior, or whether or not it's intentional on the Banshe's part the banshees letting them know, or the bandshe's presence is somehow causing the death. Yeah, yeah, so unanswerable questions about the strange doings of of weird creatures. And I guess that's one of the reasons that makes them weird in other world is you don't know what their role in the whole scenario is. Uh, you know, what are you doing here? Are you're feeding off of the the of the misery of the bereavement, or are you here as an agent of death? What exactly is going on? Are you're trying to warn us or is it something to be on any of these interpretations, they're here on ghost business. That's all you know. Now, let's get back into just ideas of storms and rain and water and cataclysmic weather. So plenty of cultures have major flood storm and cataclysm myths and and China is no exception. There's, of course, the story of You the Great who overcomes the day lose with drainage channels and earthwork. Uh. There's also the Chinese flood myth concerning the water god Uh Gong Gong Uh sometimes relegated as one of the four perils. So this is a vast serpent with a human head red hair, and Gong Gong is said to have caused a great flood by bumping into Mount Bouzio, which caused the sky pillar to collapse, resulting into cosmic disorder. You end up having to have the goddess nuah Uh step in repair the sky pillar in order to bring order back out of chaos. And sometimes this myth and the myth of You the Great are are linked together. And then there's the myth of whole Ye the Archer. You may remember him from his key row in the Myth of the Surplus Sons, or his part in the lunar myth of Changa and the Potion of Immortality. But to refresh. During the time of the Ten Sons, Emperor Yau calls upon Ye to shoot the nine Surplus Sons out of the sky, and he does so, saving the earth from fiery desolation. But the time of the Ten Sons is also a period of great disruption, and many unnatural beings roam free to commit great offenses against the gods, and so Emperor Yao charges Ye with the destruction of these monsters as well. He has to hunt them down and slay them in order to protect the people. So is this after the sun shoots down the nine surplus sons and then goes to he has to clean up afterwards with the monsters, right, yeah, yeah, because the cosmic disorder, it kind of is You've left with the idea that it kind of unleashed these beings or it created an atmosphere in which they could thrive, and now they need to be put back and check rounded up the loose ponies. Yeah. Now, according to the translator's John Major at All in two thousand tens the Hawaii non Z, a Guide to the Theory and Practice of Government in early Han China, these monsters, these monsters that that Ye has to has to hunt down. Um. They pop up in various warring states and Han works and seem to represent destructive forces of nature. One of these monsters you'll learn about next week on The Monster Factor or Wednesday Shorty episode UH. And that one I think you can also make. There's also a strong evidence to support the idea that it represents some sort of natural disaster as well. But there's one uh in particular that's very connected to the idea of storm, and that is the wind bird daufing, So this literally means a strong wind. Sometimes I see it translated as typhoon. It's a giant, ferocious bird of prey that brings with its strong winds whipped up by its mighty wings, so everywhere it goes it brings destructive winds with it. So of course he has to has to hunt it down, and he uses the Interestingly enough, he basically just uses the techniques that one would use in hunting birds, especially during this time period. He attaches a cord to his arrow and shoots the mighty bird out of the sky. He holds the cord firmly so that he can, you know, sort of keep track of it and kind of bring it down, and then he follows that chord to the site where he has grounded the mighty uh Daufing, and then he cuts its head off with his sword. In other tales, he also exacts revenge on the damaging river god he Bow, who he blinded in one eye. And then he also hunts down or seeks a vengeance the wind god thing Bow, who he shot in the knee. So you might be a win god on a chariot pulled by dragons, or a or a god who actually takes on the form of a dragon. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have a receipt for you if you caused a bunch of storm damage. So this raises a thought for me. I'm thinking about, um, what are the different influences that determine sort of what level the embodiment of the storms uh represents within the pantheon, or maybe not even the pantheon. These sort of the supernatural theater of a mythological belief system, because I'm thinking about these cases where you can have a specific monster or creature. In this case, it is a ferocious monster being that represents a kind of disorder. It is that it is a pony that has gotten loose from a from a unharmonious phase of the universe, and it has to be slain and set right. So this is the embodiment of storms in this one type of mythology. But you have plenty of other mythologies where storms are not only part of the natural divine order, but they are particularly the power of the like most powerful god or the King of the gods. Think of you know, the storm associations with with Zeus or Jupiter, or the storm associations with the some of the chief gods of the ancient Near Eastern pantheons. Yeah, it's it's it's interesting to think about this. Yeah, because you can there's a huge difference between the storm that is caused by the high god or a particularly powerful deity, one that is worshiped, and a storm caused by various monsters that are rampaging. Uh. You know, things that represent cosmic disalignment, um and uh. And you know you can have ramifications based on how you view that. But uh, it's it's interesting to think about, even in our modern times, what do we do with hurricanes and tropical storms. You know, we aim them and of course they're they're very good reasons to name a storm, to give it a human name. It it helps, uh in communicating things about that storm and tracking them and making sure that people are prepared for this particular storm and not approaching it like you know, the last storm. You know, each each hurricane that makes landfall is coming in a difference in different intensities, and it's gonna infect a different area in a different way. It does seem interesting that I could be wrong about this, but my gut feeling is that people have an easier time knowing which hurricane you're talking about when they have names attached to them than they would if you were just referencing it by like a year or something. You know, yeah, yeah, the storm of ninety seven or something. But if you if you give it a human name, yeah, you're you're anthropomorphizing it a little bit. Just you know, there's no way around it. Uh, But people are going to remember it, people are going to know it's coming. It seems to me that, like when you say Andrew, that conjures up like specific imagery that you recall from being associated with that name. Verse is like if you were just to say the year number. I don't know, maybe it would be different if we were referred to it by years, but that's my feeling on it. Thank now to move elsewhere in the world. Another one that I ran across the Blue Men of minch Uh. So. There are a lot of mr Folk myths and legends out there that involve the creatures having some degree of control over or knowledge of weather and storms, and they're ultimately just too numerous to go through. There's a lot of similarities between them, but this one stood out to me. The mer people were said this particular variety of people anyway, were said to haunt the Minch passage of the Outer Hebrides off of Scotland. Uh. This body of water is known in Gaelic as uh thruth nap fear Gorma, the channel of the blue Men. Uh. So this is also interesting Conserdaly, we're talking about gray men, and here we are with blue men. So they were said to look like normal humans, except up with entirely blue skin and gray beards. And it's a treacherous passage of water apparently. And so the legend was that the blue men would rise up from their deep caves and they would summon fierce storms against trespassing human ships and wreck them. But wise captains knew that the blue men loved rhyming contests, so they could earn the ship's safety across the passage if they just had some great rhymes up there at sleeves. Now. Carol Rosen in her book she she shares that the myth is thought to be based on Moorish slaves marooned by Vikings in the area during the ninth century. And the idea here is that, uh that these these individuals would have worn long blue robes and gray blue veils. Huh. And incidentally, the Tuareg people of of Saharan Africa, uh, apparently do wear these fashions like these are the traditional fashions of the tire people. Now do you know if that's more of a kind of legendary explanation or is that thought by any modern scholars to have any likely explanatory power in the origin of the myth? Well, I was looking into it a bit, and apparently Scottish folkloreist Donald A. Mackenzie, who lived eighteen seventy three through nineteen thirty six, it was kind of the the individual who really popularized this hypothesis. And today I think there's some individuals who think that the true origin might just be accounts of the Tireg people, although the Saharan Africa that traveled, um, you know, some sort of you know, communication of this idea, maybe that you have some sort of a murfulk tradition and you combine that with with uh, you know, some sort of knowledge of Tareg people and what they wore. Or if not the tire people, then perhaps um predecessors to them that had similar fashions and similar uh you know, dies and use. But another suggest explanation is that this belief in the blue people, the blue men, and that it refers in some fashion to tattooed pitts. Uh. These were have been uh uh you know, people who were known for their tattoos, uh. And that the Latin origin of picks is painted people. I seem to recall this from the Roman period at least some author talking about the idea that there would be people in um. I don't know what they called it at the time. It was at Caledonia, you know, the area that is now Scotland, you know, north of England, so you would have had Roman Britain, and then at a certain point that you have Hadrian's Wall, and then there are tribes that live north of that that they regarded as very barbaric, and I think they there's some reference there to these people being painted in blue, or their warriors being painted in blue. Yeah. So ultimately, you know, we don't we don't know exactly what the blue men of min is referring to, or what indeed what which what influences or what combination of influences led to this tradition, but it was said they can control the weather, so it's certainly worth mentioning here. Now another one. I have to get into the realm of yokai here for a bit um and. And I'm especially excited to talk about this because I recently picked up a fun little book to read with my son titled Yokai Attacked the Japanese Monster Survival Guide. Um. This is by Yoda and Alt and illustrated by by Tatsuya Marino. And it's a fun little book with uh that that has some wonderful illustrations but also some great information in it. It's well cited and very informative and very fun for young readers. Uh so. Uh. I was looking through that and I was like, okay, I know there's some yokai that relate to the weather or to the water, so there's got to be something good in here. It on me. Well, there's one by the name of Umi bo Zoo. Uh. They're known as the Sea Monks, Japanese yokai said to resemble great black bull black beings with glowing eyes emerging from the water. Uh In. The black may or may not be fur if you could touch it, depending on the the account. Also depending on the account, they might be vengeful ghosts of the sea. Uh. And in this they have much in common with some Chinese ghost traditions uh the boat's spirits or fun yura, which you'll find illustrations off as well. But in anyway, the the umu boz are said to rise from the surface of the ocean even during the day. Even so, even if they're there's there's nothing going on, you know, with darkness and storm, but they bring with them atmospheric disturbances and storms. Um. And of course this means that ultimately what they're trying to do, of course, is they want to bring down vessels. They want to cause your ship to sink, drag it to the bottom of the ocean. And the smaller ones you might be able to drive away, but the larger ones are just too powerful. Okay. So this would be more in line with the type of creature like the in the bird from from Chinese legend that literally brings the storm and weather disturbances by its own like it directly causes them. Yeah, yeah, it would seem to be the case. Um. And these are these are fun ideas to get into as well, because first of all, the idea of any kind of enormous being certainly, um. You know this, this black creature emerging from the water. Uh, it instantly makes us think of whales. And indeed, there may be some connection there between between these legendary creatures and whale sightings. And I also there's the possibility that there's some sort of atmosphereic ghost lighting involved as well, which is, you know, something worth remembering anytime you're dealing with ghosts of the ocean. But one of the interesting takes I was reading about the fun yuri that the Chinese version of this the boat spirits uh, is that they were sometimes attributed with ladling water into ships and causing them to sink, or or just by their very presence causing compasses not to work. But they were also said to simply hold ships in place, and some have theorized that this might occur due to dead water. So this is a nautical phenomenon which UH you see take at least a couple of different forms. UH. For instance, you see it in in far northern um environments. You see this situation where slow moving vessels can become stuck due to a thin layer of fresh water spreading over the sea from melting ice. UM. But then also you see the situation with internal waves due to shallow brackish water and the upper layer of the water column, making it where if ship will feel stuck in the water, as if something is holding it there. So it's been hypothesized that this could be a possible one of the possible reasons for this kind of myth, like something is holding the ship in place. What is it? It must be some sort of ghostly presence. Oh yeah, I think the snake spirit. It might have been. In our episodes about the sarcassom seaweed that we uh discussed other other supernatural ideas about the dull drums and ways that your ship can become stuck in water without a propelling wind. Yeah, of course that's interesting too, right because because the the idea of a terrible storm can be devastating to the ship at sea, but also uh a complete absence of weather can be equally disturbing. Yeah. Now here's another creature that came up when I was looking around, and that's uh Um the Alps an interesting lake monster at this time from the folklore of Switzerland centered on the lake um uh Sellsburg see near lucerne uh sidings are recorded from eighty four through nine six. Kind of a bulky, multi limbed dragon creature that may suddenly surface alongside boats and scare people. Also may rage sheep herds at night and leave disturbingly mutilated bodies in its wake. Um, but there are arians in the water. Was said to foretell a powerful storm. Um. And so I had to look this wake up. I wasn't familiar with it. Uh. It's also known as Seeley and it covers forty four acres and reaches depths of thirty seven meters or one feet. Now, in Irish mythology, you also have the Fomorians. Um. These were said to be the original occupants of Ireland who were defeated by the invading fur Bags and then transformed into grotesque monsters or giants. And then of course the to offend Dan and come along and they invade and they defeat the defeat the fur Bags. And so the Fomorians are sometimes attributed with power over weather, over storms, as well as given the power to blight crops. Oh yeah, we we We talked about Fomorians in the context of Kuhlan or Kukullen. Yeah. Now, another interesting monster that is that is definitely tied to the wind. At least in its origins, are the Harpies. And I think harpies are interesting because I think a lot of modern monster fans probably think of of maybe two or three different things when you imagine the harpy. First of all, they're Ray Harry Housing's harpies from Jason and the Argonauts. Do you remember these, Oh, yeah, these terrible blue women with the with the large blue bat wings. Yeah, they have bat like wings in uh, in Jason and the Argonauts. But they're they're pretty creepy, very gargoyle esque. Um. Outside of this tradition, they're they're pretty weak enemies and dungeons and dragons, uh, not very impressive, but there's some cool illustrations of them. And then of course there's the harpy in um the last Unicorn, which is a terrifying and powerful creature that is is pretty much the direct opposite of everything they are in Dungeons and Dragons and so in. I think, you know, generally, in our interpretation of the harpies, we think of grotesque hybrids of vultures and women, sometimes with the other influences thrown in. I've seen accunts where they say that they have bare ears and in wait, bare ears, bare ear, it's like the ears of a bear. I can't even picture bare ears what a bear ears look like. I don't. I mean, that's why I'm I think we we often just just whittle it down to just uh, you know, an old woman plus uh vulture, you know, because you throw in these other influences. Yet, what does it even mean? Okay, I just time barriers. They're little nubs. I mean like barriers. Do not seem like especially notable kinds of animal ears. Yeah, well maybe an admant more during the time when when this was attributed to their to their their these these monsters. That's such a funny choice. I love it. Now. In Greek and Roman myth the number of the harpies it it varies. There may be as few as one or as many as five. And in origin they are linked to traditions of wind spirits, and we see that in the various names that have been attributed to them. So in theogeny Hessiod rights quote and Thomas wedded Electra the daughter of deep flowing ocean and she bare him swift risks and the long haired harpies a yell o storm, swift and nosepates swift flyer who on their swift wings keep pace with the blasts of the winds and the birds for quick as time they dart along. By the way, Dungeons and Dragons gives harpies a laughable forty foot flying speed. Come on, that does not sound as fast as time? What is it? Okay? So I don't know flying speeds usually what is fort Oh? I think I've got a I think my character, who's kind of a whimp, has a thirty foot walking speed. Is that right? Yeah? Yeah, thirty foot walking walking is like a general humanoid walking speed. So the harpie can fly just a little further than a human being can walk. Uh in Dungeons and Dragons, which is clearly this is a creature that needs a needs a reboot. In the Monster Manual, now A Homer also wrote of harpies, particularly the harpy podar j which means a swift foot, and this is said to be the mother of Balius and xanthus the steeds of Achilles, And in a more general sense, the harpy is a human bird hybrid. Of course, and we see a lot of these and global myth cycles, and it's often pointed out that this sort of particular hybrid between humans and creatures of the air, it often has some sort of connection between earth and sky, between the world of mortals and the abode of the gods. Uh. The harpy also specifically is often brought up as an example of the monstrous feminine uh in in myth, making so an imagined creature used to convey negative attitudes about females and female bodies. Yeah. I think of it as a kind of standard genre of misogynist comment to to compare a woman that you don't like to a harpy. Yeah, but it seems that in their original form, in their origins, they were more like minor wind gods or or wind demons, perhaps more in keeping with the furies who might descend on a mortal at the behest of a god. By the way, an interesting wrinkle on all of this, I think we've discussed before is that the sirens, who we often think of now, and this is represented in our you think of mermaids, or you think of, you know, beautiful veiled women emerging from the surf, but they were originally bird female hybrids as well, and so ancient depictions of what we might think of as harpies in the modern sense, Uh, might have been sirens or in some cases, uh, just we're something else, some other kind of bird human hybrid. For instance, there is a tomb, the tomb of Xantha's found uh and uh there's a carving from it, various carvings from it, I think that you can find in the British Museum, and it's it's been referred to for a long time as the harpy tom. I mean, you see this winged female figure. Though it's it's far from certain that these were sirens, but they were probably not harpies either. Uh. So I think it's still an open question exactly what this particular being is supposed to be, you know, bringing this back to the special poe and see of weather mythology and weather monsters when it comes to sailing and ocean going. This reminds me of a few years ago I had a conversation with the author Chet van Douser about his his books about the history of depictions of monsters on maps and um and one of the surprising things about that is if you had to guess, okay, what are the most common types of sea monsters, you would imagine depicted on a map. Uh, you would probably guess what's some kind of like ocean dragon type thing, or maybe the the kraken, or like a snake like sea monster. No, by far, the most common type of monster, at least depicted throughout the Western history of maps, is the siren. If you're gonna have one type of monster on there, it's going to be a siren. And and do you remember if it was the more mur folk style siren or the winged I'm cautious to answer that because I'm not positive, but I seem to recall representations both ways. Um, so I guess the wing adverse Asian would probably be closer to this association with weather events, Yeah, I would, I would think so. Yeah, they and certainly the the the curious nature of winds and winds at sea. And I guess that's where a lot of this comes back to, like how how do we today and how have people throughout history thought about weather patterns, particularly destructive weather that seem out of the normal. Uh, you know, that are unique and dangerous? How do we think about those? Are those the work of strange creatures that we can't quite understand? Are they cosmic? Anomalies. Might there be some sort of magical being that would warn us if these are occurring? Is there some hero that could protect us from them, because they could slay these monsters and return the world to to some sort of normality. Um, yeah, it's it's fascinating to think about. I wonder about something else, coming back to gray Man type sightings of you know, the being that would warn you about about a coming storm. I wonder to what extent legends like that could also sort of be going the other way in terms of our internal mental causation, meaning like how much of it is based in People have some kind of experience, you know, they see what they think is a is a spectral figure or spirit of something or something, and they want it to mean something. They don't want to just be I saw something weird and there's no reason for it, so they try to connect it to something significant. It's trying to tell me X. This means why when we have unusual experiences. I think it's very natural for us to try to say no, no, no, that was not just an unusual experience. It was an indication of something. It was somehow informative, It meant something, and it seems like possibly the single easiest place you could go to there is connecting it to external environmental events like the weather. Yeah, I mean, I think this is one reason there's so much weather lore where people can say, oh, you can tell the storm's coming when I don't know when cow sits down at night, or something like. You know, there's a million sayings like that, and it's because weather is constantly changing. So there's just like constant opportunities for you to observe one thing and then something happens with the weather and you make a connection there. Yeah, And our mind is constantly looking for those connections. We want to make those connections, and often with whether the stakes are are enormous, particularly when we're talking about highly destructive weather patterns. So of course we're looking for some sort of connection between the things we see in the world and what's going on in the weather. And that includes, uh, things we don't completely see, you know, or we we we miss see, or we misinterpret or hallucinations and so forth, and so yeah, I think that Uh. One I guess one place I was going with that is that perhaps that selective sort of meaning seeking whenever you have a strange experience could lead to a form of selective reporting that informs So, you know, somebody thinks they see something weird in a photo or thinks they see something weird on the beach, and then nothing happens the next day. Well, maybe I don't know who they really tell about that. But if the next day the hurricane hits and you think you've discovered some kind of uh, informative correlation there, you might be much more likely to tell everybody this story. Yeah, and and if it's not, if not the weather, then perhaps there's something else that occurs. You know, you see something strange and then the next day a monarch dies or yeah, storm occurs, or a family member grows sick. Then you can make that connection. You'd be like, ah, this is what that was about. It didn't happen for no reason. It was a warning. It was a communication. But yeah, it's funny because if you broughten it that much to just like basically any significant event. I mean, there's always something in the news, you know, it's like something happens every day. Yeah, I mean stuff happens. It seems to happen for no reason. And if that if that's the case, you know, you have nothing, but if you have ghosts, well then you have everything. Right. Very nice, very nice to bring it back to Rocky Well, you know they say the moon to the left is a part of my thoughts, and a part of my thoughts is a part of me is me? Uh So, so maybe before our fangs get too long, we should cut this episode off, all right, But of course we're going to be discussing losts of ghostly and monstrous things for the rest of this month, and it probably a little bit beyond We're we're we're we're well into the season now, so stay tuned. It should be fun. Uh. In the meantime, if you want to listen to other episodes of Stuff to Blow your mind, Her core episodes are on Tuesday and Thursday, we have an artifact or a monster fact on Wednesday. Monday is a listener mail. Friday is Weird how Cinema. That's our time to just unwind and discuss a weird film, and of course we have some very spooky films to discuss this month as well. And then on the weekend we do a vault episode, which is of course a rerun from the previous year. I just want to give a teaser that this week's episode of Weird House Cinema I think is without a doubt, can be our longest most epic episode of all time, and uh may may remain that way because I don't know if it can be outdone. I wonder if it's longer than the movie itself. I think that at least once. Okay, yeah, all right, we'll tune in to find out what that is. Huge. Thanks as always to our wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. Four four ninbre numbers nine