Hey everybody, this is Joshua Heston.
And I'm Lisa Martin.
And this is the Dark Ozarks on the Branson Podcast Network.
We're an exploration of everything that's dark in history, mysteries, the paranormal,
and everything else.
We explore the noir, the unknown, cryptozoology, UFOs, paranormal, and all the dark stuff that
happens in the Ozarks.
You can find Dark Ozarks on Branson Podcast Network on Facebook under Dark Ozarks, as
well as our YouTube channel, Dark Ozarks.
We'll leave no stone unturned to bring you the dark history, mysteries, and legends of
the Ozarks.
Welcome to the Dark Ozarks.
There's monsters from the British Isles to the Ozarks.
Monsters from the Celtic past are roaming around the 21st century.
We will get back to that in a minute.
But first we want to remind you that the Dark Ozarks podcast is now available on Branson
Podcast Network, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, Substack, or
about any other podcast platform.
So what monsters would the Celts recognize in today's Ozarks?
I think it's fair to say that there are so many that the Celts would recognize a number
of them, or certainly forms of them.
And as we were doing our research a week and a half ago, of course, last week's episode,
we realized there's so many monsters and beasties to consider that this makes part two of our
material.
So from old gods to mischievous supernatural beasts to monsters of a more mortal kind,
there's a lot to cover and more than a few familiar faces here in the Ozarks.
And of course, that does include the Ozarks howler.
We will return to what might be hiding in the dark or lurking under your bed.
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large section on the paranormal, history, and more.
Not to mention, the building is haunted.
Tell Bob and Elise that we sent you.
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Great beer, great food, in a historical building with a noir past.
And yes, their building is also haunted.
Tell Nate and Tiff that we sent you.
So we are back to monsters in the Ozarks.
And you really cannot contextualize monsters in the Ozarks without dealing with monsters
in Appalachia and monsters in the British Isles.
That's true.
They're sort of a straight line over time between the three places for immigration as
well as the beasties, whether they be of the mythical or the mortal kind.
Or a combination of the two.
I think that's a weird moment of intersection.
Well, and that really kind of goes back to where the word monster comes from.
It has a different meaning generally today than it did originally.
It originated in the 1300s in the British Isles, actually.
But it meant an unnatural event or being.
So when we think of monsters as being a large animal or even a monstrous storm of a natural
kind, that is a more modern conception than what originally a monster was.
It is.
And what I would invite people to do and to consider is just how the shift of words changes
our perception and explains or contextualizes the world around us a little bit differently.
We have grown up with a very, I would say, strictly compartmentalized definition of the
word monster.
That's even dating ourselves into this mindset of Scooby Doo, which I love.
But Zoix is a monster.
It simply is a thing.
And of course, the monster gets unmasked.
And we find out that it's Mr. Sneedle, the banker.
But I really like coming back to this Middle English definition of a portent, an unnatural
event or a being that is associated with the portent or the unnatural event.
And for some of us, I think probably more of us than a popular culture gets prudence
to.
Some of us have had these experiences in which we realize that we are within proximity of
something unnatural.
True.
Often in today's society, there's been a reaction of trying to explain that away or it has to
be something natural.
But certainly a lot of people have had those kind of experiences.
In fact, we had one come to us, an event we were at this weekend, about encountering a
canine type of monster that was viewed as much larger than any even wolf or anything
else that left the impression that it was aware of them and that it was not an ordinary
animal.
And I mean, that fits into a lot of the lore in the region, whether it's phantom dogs,
booger dogs, or almost a shapeshifter or one that we're going to talk about tonight is
the snarly yow.
It is.
And what I really just encourage listeners to think about as we delve into so many of
these beasts, this compendium, that a commonality for many of them, not all, but a commonality
for many, is that sense for those who have experienced it, that sense in the back of
your mind, this resonance that what you are encountering or what has been encountered
is outside of normal.
Yes.
And normal being a corporeal world where things work as we can gauge and measure and anticipate
and suddenly something happens and it might be a physical manifestation of the being,
it might be something physical, it might be phantom-like, but something that so many people
walk away from these experiences saying is it was just, it was, and sometimes the word
is wrong.
There was something about it that was wrong.
There was something about it that was weird.
I love the reference used by Shakespeare, the weird sisters.
There's something about them that is, if you're a Star Trek fan, you would call it interdimensional.
It's the idea that it is vastly and genuinely other.
Yes.
Something of the other is probably a really good way of putting it, that all of those
things kind of fall into that basket.
In that sense, it really, the idea is continuous with the original meaning of what a monster
was.
It is.
And that for those who've encountered and then walk away from it, that they are left
with a very strong sense of being deeply unsettled.
Yes.
Or a changed type of awareness or worldview.
Of course, you can't talk about these type of experiences and we'll get to this first
beastie here in just a second, but these type of experiences, I would say it's fair that
it is difficult for the human psyche or the rational conscious mind to fully understand
is something that oftentimes what is behind our conscious mind recognizes and reacts to
the environment, whereas our conscious mind is just trying to keep up.
Exactly.
And something that I think, and this is not to weigh in on one side or other of the quote
unquote alien debate, but that there's a strong similarity, individuals experiencing something
that is quote unquote wrong and not able to be understood oftentimes gets lumped into
alien sightings, whereas years ago it would have been perhaps the fey or something else.
Very true.
But again, just on their own terms as alien sightings and the experience, it still fits
into that same definition.
It does.
So the starly owl is actually from Appalachia and bears some interesting comparisons, some
direct ties with beasties here in the Ozarks, as well as beasties in the old world, specifically
the British Isles.
Yes.
If you go back to the Isles, you have all kinds of canine beasts, the black hounds and
then phantom booger dogs and various sorts that those tales all came to the New World
with settlers.
And the starly owl actually goes back to colonial times back east.
And to be honest, I think it's kind of a continuation of the old tales, but garnered this new name.
And I think starly owl really came from the fact that when it's encountered, it tends
to snarl at you and have large fangs and interestingly, a red mouth.
Correct.
And it is an interesting one to start with in terms of our compendium, because it is
both physical and non-physical simultaneously.
It appears and gives every indication that it is physical when it is manifested and then
it vanishes.
Yes.
And sometimes without a seeming reason, it seems to appear to kind of terrorize the witnesses
and then just disappear, which almost has a bit of a trickster aspect to it as well.
But it is described as a massive four-legged beast that for all intents and purposes, appears
rather canine.
Now, it tends to...
It would...
Oh, and it is spirit in the essence that when it's shot at, bullets pass through it.
Right.
Which is interesting.
It's something that came to my mind just in terms of a couple of things.
One, it appears to manifest and dissipate of its own will.
It appears to target randomly.
In this case, it could exist as a death element, but it doesn't specifically appear to exist
as a death element.
No, it seems more like just to cause havoc.
Traditionally, it would appear and scare horses so that they would throw the riders off and
then it would disappear.
It didn't attack the riders.
And my more suspicious nature in terms of someone being targeted but snarling out and
then saying, I don't know why this happened, the possibility that they might actually have
done something to cause this and they might actually know what that is, but it might be
something that they don't want to talk about.
That's true.
Almost a bit of karma in action.
It's something to consider.
That's pure conjecture.
But in terms of a cross tie to the Ozarks, the snarly owl does have a lot of comparisons,
obviously, with what we call a booger dog.
Black phantom dogs of enormous size and fearsome presence.
Interestingly, and a little bit separate from the snarly owl, booger dogs are traditionally
death omens here in the Ozarks.
The snarly owl does not appear to be a death omens.
And you can also trace, as you mentioned, all of this black hound or black beast lore
in a pretty direct line back to the British Isles.
The one that is particularly for me is going straight back to Scotland, which is the kushi,
the phantom dog.
Yeah.
And I think that's likely what probably, especially in colonial times, it was compared to or reminiscent
of for settlers.
I do like the fact that the snarly owl is keeping up with the times and it will now
chase cars.
Yeah.
As dogs do.
But causing accidents, causing startling the drivers, causing them to swerve and crash,
and that it will signal around long enough to intimidate the driver before disappearing.
Which is admittedly terrifying.
There is an aspect, and coming over to the Scottish Highlands for just a moment with
the kushi, the kushi is essentially a fairy dog.
And I think that that's an interesting term because we don't typically put those two words
together in modern American culture.
But in terms of being monstrous, the kushi is oftentimes described as being the size
of a small cow.
And it comes in a variety of colors, sometimes dark green.
And the aspect of fey, I think, is particularly of note in regards, and you could argue, or
at least conjecture, that in terms of phantom, spectral, corporeal, non-corporeal hounds
that we're dealing with several different manifestations, the snarly owl really does
fit the personality of the fey.
It does.
I mean, it's more mischievous instead of attacking or death omen.
And it occurred to me that one thing that will happen, even if they don't cause a car
wreck, they'll chase cars and then just disappear.
And this fits squarely in a report that we have out of the Rolla area of a woman driving
down the highway and this monstrous black dog starting to chase her car and keeping
up at highway speeds and did so for a couple of miles and then suddenly just disappeared.
And she never saw where it went.
Is frightening on all counts.
Yes.
She was definitely freaked out and said that it took her several weeks before she would
drive that way to work again.
And I believe that's fair.
That is again, something that is important to understand about the fey, about the traditional
nature of the fairies, where it's difficult to even say that word without bringing along
a lot of 20th century and even 19th century baggage that we do not associate with the
traditional lore.
And so the idea that the kushi, the fairy dog, is terrifying, monstrous, a bringer of
chaos, although not necessarily a death omen, is an interesting side to this.
And I like it because it begins to unravel one's perception of the term fey or fairy.
And what we're directly dealing with, so whether this is our first person or documented account
near Rolla, whether it is some of Vance Randolph's lore with booger dogs, whether it is the Appalachian
snarly gal or whether it's the kushi, we are looking at something that in terms of the
lore traces its lineage to the ancient Celtic god, the Tuatha de Danann.
And these are beings that exert an enormous amount of power when they manifest and have
a lot of potential chaos to create when they decide to show up.
Very much so.
And this is just a good illustration of that.
I'm also interested, of course, in an aspect of British history, the history of the British
Isles, that is an important tie-in because it affects Appalachian lore and it affects
Ozarks lore is the varying quote unquote mythologies that were brought together and I feel that
with the snarly gal and the kushi, we're looking at a decidedly Gaelic root of belief structure,
but the Gaels, the Celts of the British Isles are not the only peoples to be bringing their
belief structures and their ideas into the mix.
And we have the Anglo-Saxons, the Germanic tribes, originally from Western continental
Europe across the North Sea, from Britain bringing theirs as well as later waves of
Vikings and of ancient Scandinavian lore.
And what I'm conjecturing is that the Black Hound as a death omen may trace its roots
back to our Germanic and Scandinavian lore and to the ancient gods of northern continental
Europe separate from the ancient gods of the Celts.
I think that fits with the ancient lore of those groups very well.
But it just speaks to the fact that there was this mixing of cultures in the British
Isles and then of course once over in North America even more groups being mixed in that
you do have these themes that are more dominant.
And I think personally that there's a reason for that, that they resonate because over
time and we're talking hundreds of years going on, thousands of years, that they resonate
because there are types of experiences that people have had over generations that they
recall this and yes that's what happened, that's what I saw, that's what happened to
me.
And that really brings up a interesting intersection of ideas because and I have my preferences
are a mix of all of them but one aspect of this is that there is a standard genre of
unnatural events that we have not been able to effectively catalog.
And so that around the world certain types of strange and difficult to document or impossible
to currently document phenomena occurs, certain manifestations, certain things going on and
that each original culture, each primitive culture or ancient culture that has encountered
these things that are all very similar created their own lore to explain a singular phenomena.
And I think that's reasonable because it does explain a certain aspect of similarity of
lore in the sense that so many cultures around the world have a similar types of stories
in their ancient structures and so that one is the reasonable one.
Me not being a reasonable person also likes to jump over to the other which is that each
indigenous people groups gathering of lore perhaps their gods and their supernatural
entities and beings are unique to them and not dissimilar to the quantum mechanics argument
of many worlds but rather than just many physical worlds the idea of many other worlds that
somehow resonate and connect with certain people groups or certain people of ancestral
lines.
What does seem to be consistent is that certain manifestations of lore follow certain people
groups or certain peoples of ancestral lines from one geographical location to another
sometimes against their will and so it brings up the question for example the Scots Irish
with their cosmology largely intact albeit framed within a hearty Calvinist Presbyterianism
coming over to the new world quote unquote coming over to North America and setting up
shopping in Appalachia and later the Ozarks but that certain aspects of the essentially
the old beliefs the manifestations of the old gods still following from generation to
generation and there is a there's an aspect to that possibility that I like because it
is very very textured and very complex and it exists within it exists outside of time
and space.
I like that and maybe just me being me but I think it's almost a little bit of column
A and a little bit of column B. I think there's aspects of both of those arguments that make
sense to me.
And honestly for me too I from a from a from an ancestral perspective there is a part of
me even though some of these manifestations are frightening for us oftentimes as mere
mortals there is something to me that is very comforting and structural but unique to many
individuals the idea that that these things follow it reminds me of a and it's a funny
story it's not it's not meant to be fully taken seriously but as with many folktales
I think there's a lesson thereof and it deals with the Scottish Boggart the old Scottish
name for what we now would call a poltergeist and the Boggart is deeply mischievous and
is haunting this poor family passing about pots and pans breaking things in the kitchen
constantly raising a ruckus and they finally have had it they finally the Scottish father
farmer has had it up here he says that's it we're moving we're leaving the house I'm not
going to deal with a haunted house anymore we're done packs up all their stuff moves
to the opposing side of the valley they've packed up all of their their pots and pans
and all of their belongings and shove them in the wagon they go to the other side of
the mountain valley to move into a cabin there and just as they arrive and they get ready
to unpack things the voice of the boggart comes from one of the the big jars that they
had pulled out of the kitchen and the voice says why did we move
I think that is apropos and in a bit of how this does function in reality almost to the
point that people are not conscious of these things coming with them through time and through
family lines etc but why some of this resonates and it might not resonate with with someone
that doesn't have the same background right and along with this I think something that
is important to consider is that backing up with the industrialization of the 20th century
it's an industrialization that we've taken for granted we we love the amenities we love
the communication of the speed at which things occur we are we are so inured within the industrialization
that we actually become nostalgic about past iterations of pop culture's marketing and
I do that because I like save old magazines and crap and look over them and go oh wow
that's how they did that but we do and something that we do not I believe fully take into consideration
is that that mass marketing that mass industrialization of the 20th century stripped many of us of
the conscious aspects of our ancestral ties yes but on a subconscious level I think it's
still there and that's why why these experiences resonate or perhaps even why they still exist
and still happen even which is you know certainly I find you know an interesting cosmology in
Neil Gaiman's American Gods the idea that as the as an individual pays homage to a god
it gains power the god gains power and is less common to pay the god weakens and certainly
there's a there's an interesting psychological energetic manifestation concept within that
worldview I and for the record I love Neil Gaiman's work and I love the novel American
Gods as well as many other Gaiman's works but I personally something that resonates
with me is that this cosmology or these many cosmologies simply exist and we experience
varying degrees of awareness but that for example the Tuatha de Danan you know full
disclosure this is my moment of confessional for myself I believe the Tuatha de Danan exists
and I believe they exist in the other world whether I pay them homage or not but there
is there are these points of intersection when we might encounter an aspect of them
that the world around us seems to shift and and shimmer and change and depending upon
the nature of the particular beings involved that could be a very good thing or that could
be a very terrifying thing and we we proceed at our own risk but also that something that
perhaps explains the popularity of the ghost hunting shows it explains perhaps explains
the popularity of this interest in aliens and even you know just paranormal subjects
in general including us is that we we're dealing with a mass population that perhaps in a subconscious
level or spiritual level or a net you know slightly removed level we understand that
there's more out there and that it's associated with our past and our ancestry but we've
all to some degree been the cords have been cut consciously by modern society that's true
and ironically as you were discussing that made me think it made me think that this process
or this concern is is not even unique to modern culture if you go back to the ancient Egyptians
their belief was that you would you would exist years your you would exist in the afterlife
only so long as someone remembered your name and so that there is a even you know three
five thousand years ago the idea of this continuity through time and what does it mean to continue
or not continue as is something that has been on the minds of people for thousands of years
in which also is why ancient Egyptian pharaohs tended to often destroy things erected by
their predecessors or to remove their names from temples so that those other pharaohs
wouldn't be remembered and they would essentially destroying the competition pretty much but
it just in a sort of in a different way it's the same concern that our idea that our beliefs
our beliefs our our gods our our beasties exist and follow us through time and generations
and and what does it take for that to happen or not happen so I always find it interesting
when you have a a theory or a mode of thought that has lasted that many thousands of years
and some fashion there seems to be something to it there there are resonances within the
the idea resonances within the cosmology and and you know and I I think that there's our
very media-driven pop culture product driven society at this point does strip us of our
ancestral ties it does and and then of course just the notion
of being a melting pot and so forth tends to do that on some level as well forget that
in that yeah and and we we definitely see that and and in in micro the Ozarks plateau
is an interesting space for that because we have seen cultures come in and be drastically
changed in in various forms and for various reasons the the one for me that is most striking
is the considerable German immigration in the particularly in the 19th century into
Arkansas and quote-unquote assimilation was so successful that a number of anthropologists
seem to be unable to recognize the the German influences of particular mountain communities
even as they continue to exist yes I found that odd as well
it's oh go ahead I was just saying it it can be particularly helpful to approach it from
a bit more of an embedded standpoint and a bit more of a gentle nuance and it also helps
if you know what you're looking for and a clue is look for the food yes the food the
barns the quilts I'm going to throw you a curveball okay since we we're talking about
you know monsters and monsters of a portion of a natural nature the monster of current
of infamy in those arts of course is the howler yes and to chagrin of many followers of the
howler I think it's pretty clear that it's not a natural monster it's not a natural animal
how would you surmise that Ozark howler in terms of being a monster and being a monster
well it has its own fan fiction and its own fan art it it does the the howler existed
as is its own fearsome critter back in the day for a variety of reasons but the lore
associated with the original Ozark howler is comparatively limited and stable and has
been somewhat domesticated just within the structure of the legend you know the the legend
itself is is pretty compartmentalized as as what it was as what it said it was and as
far as what it was used for it was used I believe from what I can tell for doing two
things one telling original stories that would cause a shiver to run up your back as you
were out in the wilds of the Ozarks in Missouri and Arkansas being delicious deliciously creepy
to tell around the campfire and also as a bit of a cautionary tale just to remind us
that there certainly in the early era of of pioneer settlement that there were large predatory
animals that were quite dangerous particularly nocturnal ones and that there was these unknown
dangers that simply existed and you needed to be on the on the lookout for them that
is a reality where the Ozark howler then became more of a folk motif is when our original
Ozarks families of settlement began to interact with tourism predominantly brought in by
local our regional tourism in the 1920s and 30s things like the land of a million smiles
marketing campaigns and then extending into the white river country marketing campaigns
a table rock lake marketing etc and bringing a unique conflict as a cultural conflict between
your urban development people your suburban landowners and the traditional people who
have been in the hills for generations so we see that and what we see is very traditional
Ozarkers telling wild stories to see if they can fool the outsiders into believing them
and in these cases we see the the howler grow in proportion it becomes the size of a bear
it starts to have horns it has gigantic fangs or maybe tusks its eyes glow red it does impossible
things not unlike the snob us and and it starts taking on these qualities but it up until
recently up until the internet the Ozark howler existed in that same category as say a jackalope
you go out on the prairie and hear the stories of the half jackrabbit half antelope sometimes
with wings those types of things and it's not that far removed from bathe the blue ox
it's not that far removed from just this Americana folklore that has a larger story to tell in
terms of early American settlement and coming into untamed spaces and finding new challenges
and creating a unique Americana folklore that is that has resonance with the old world but
is also decidedly and uniquely North American and it and and and I think you know Paul Bunyan
and you know and babe the blue ox and these kind of stories from the north woods from
the Minnesota region etc. is powerful because it creates it begins to create a folklore
that's established in a sense of place and this is this is establishing a sense of place
that not very long far beforehand was untamed space was a territory in which no one was
in suddenly the space has its own lore its own new ideas that are connected with the
past that are connected with the land that are creating a sense of idea and a sense of
space and a sense of this is from whence we came and and and you see that with with Paul
Bunyan in the association with the north woods logging and I think with the howler you see
that association of place with Ozarks hillbillies with the you know the tall tails in the rugged
mountains of the of the upland south these kind of things and so the howler traditionally
existed within that fabric and the and thanks to the internet a handful of people plucked
it from its fabric nest its cultural tapestry pulled it out and then expanded it into something
entirely larger and more grotesque in the sense that it then began to get individuals
creating its own fan art its own cyber art online and it grows in proportion its hair
gets longer its eyes become more red its horns become more dramatic it it becomes terrifying
it becomes troubling and it starts stalking people etc it becomes drastically more dramatic
because it has been pulled out of just as a just as I think real life flora and fauna
keeps itself in balance within an ecosystem you pull one of them out and you know give
it lots of unnatural hormones and it could grow into something scary you know or you
know basically a monoculture and that you know you feed it in water and give it all
sorts of love and attention and it might take over the lab in the the the the tapestry of
lore the same thing I think is potential is potentially possible with our folkloric beast
you remove one from its contextualized tapestry around it that keeps it in balance because
you if you you know the the the the howlers contextual cousins the jimplicute a gigantic
ghost dinosaur the snoffus a a white great white deer that has dogwood blossoms growing
out of its antlers and it flies to the treetops and makes sneezing noises the side hill hoof
or which is part antelope but its legs are shorter on one side of its body than the other
so if you get it on the flat line it tips over these um folkloric cousins kept the howler
contextualized and when it gets pulled out by itself it takes on a life of its own and
before long people begin associating it and and inflating it into something that it realistically
is likely not which is for example the physical spiritual corporeal bay manifestation
I I agree I agree with you in large part I I find it interesting that um in a lot of
cases with quote monsters they back you know in the aeons of time started out as quote
you know I wrote monsters something of an unnatural nature um and then over time people
try to explain them in a natural way I think with those are howler it's flipped because
originally the tails you had the tall tail aspect but it came out a very real physical
animals mainly bears large cats etc that that's where the stories came from and now as you
said in the internet age it has morphed into something that when you just look at the current
incarnation of the lore would appear more of that uh traditional monster definition
of something that's unnatural it's that or flip it on its head the sort of the renderings
that are coming out about the howler currently have a definite big foot quality to them and
that is that is a really interesting intersection because big foot lore goes back in the Ozarks
pretty much forever well those are wild man you know goes back at least to the 1830s um
even with um notions that original you know that um the first sightings in the early 1800s
in northeast Arkansas were feral feral people who had left the new Madrid area after the
earthquakes and then over time have turned into big foot uh lore aside from other unique
big foot lore like the blue band and Momo and the fout monster and I do find it interesting
that as as the the monstrous quality of the howler is growing it's taking on connotations
visually as it's depicted that most people especially if you were not as aware of quote
the howler you you look at the renderings and you say oh that's some sort of mid-foot
type creature that one is just to me is a fascinating uh conceptual shift that we see
because in its in its original state and the howler was a large fearsome beast that was
in the mountains that howled or howled honestly um is strongly associated with being a big
cat and and as you noted it has in pop culture it has begun this morphing process uh it's
transmogrifying into the big red monster with uh with sneakers on from bugs bunny
well in some in some versions a little a little more vicious version of a monster
I will love him and hug him and squeeze him and give him joy it uh I I love lindy tunes
for anyone listening but but yes and it is it for me it's a weird juxtaposition because
I initially never contemplated that anyone would actually take the howler seriously that
is my point of fascination and mixed with consternation uh because I really never thought
uh from from studying the lore that anyone would take that seriously there are uh physical
cryptids that I do take seriously um and the many aspects of big foot is something I do
take very seriously same too many uh too many first person reports uh to not say that there
is something very solid in terms of an unknown uh physical manifestation going on there are
many aspects of the paranormal as as anyone familiar with the channel knows that we take
very seriously I take it very seriously and uh just in terms of me associating with my
own ancestral cosmology of the kelts the legends and the lore of the tuatha didana um are or
something that I also take seriously I have not traditionally taken the howler seriously
because I am seeing the howler through the lens again with its uh contextual cousins
uh the the the jimpli koot and the snobbish come to mind a giant ghost vampiric ghost
dinosaur and a uh and a large white deer with wings that uh has dogwood blossoms growing
out of its antlers that's where I traditionally put the howler and then in times past not
terribly far removed suddenly getting calls from uh uh sub assistant uh reality tv show
producers with uh south california phone numbers asking me have I seen the howler do I know
anyone who has seen the howler could I put them in contact with an individual who might
have encountered a howler and it's probably a good thing that it wasn't a video call because
I was just sitting there with a look on my face going what on earth are you talking about
yes and then you sent them to me to answer the question I did I I feel the time to begin with
for the record I feel that someone else to begin with then I just started sending them to you
but I I do find it I do find it interesting that I you know uh you know in fact there's a
billboard on highway 65 going to branson with the howler on it and for a tourist coming through
and seeing that it's like oh okay that let's kind of like midfoot it does
and I think too I think honestly we we do get input in our various outlets of people who seem
to generally genuinely think that the howler is a I guess this is the Aussie moral but a legitimate
cryptid in the Ozarks and I think it's you know it really is for people who have
their their connection to the stories is internet only from the internet only
yeah yes it largely its own on the internet it does and within that
highly public but compartmentalized subgenre something that happens very quickly is that
individuals interested in the howler can and and it's an important topic because this happens with
lots of other things as well that it can create its own mini psychological weather pattern amongst
those interested but for those of us on the ground those of us interacting with real people
real living breathing face-to-face people that the howler has comparatively little impact on
Ozarks developing lore or ancestral lore but if you get out into talking with everyday people
particularly rural people in the mountains and you start bringing up bigfoot you start bringing up
black panthers you start bringing up large cats in some cases you start bringing up
you know ufos or unidentified flying objects you start bringing up paranormal
paranormal experiences you very quickly start encountering lots of people who either had
personal experiences with these or they know someone personally and have had a first person
account told to them of these experiences very much so very much so and and that that is sort
of the dichotomy with the howler is that i've yet to have to encounter encounter anyone who's had an
experience with the howler no and and hearing a large cat or a bobcat howl is not the same as
experiencing the cryptid the howler right but it does kind of uh dovetail into a couple of other
interesting monster type stories out of the Ozarks one doesn't fit the traditional definition
but is certainly interesting that there is a fairly long line of sightings of hyenas in arkansas
in arkansas yes i'm i'm very interested in this i have not spoken personally to anyone who's seen
a hyena but it is the classic not a cryptid but an animal out of place yes i i do also wonder if it
does account for some uh chupacabra type sightings i was going to say that oh my gosh
oh my gosh i was gonna say no no no it's it's good no there are no such thing there's no such
thing as an Ozarks hyena that is ridiculous they don't exist the answer is very simple we're just
seeing chupacabras and maybe we are maybe we're seeing both i think full just just when you thought
it got simple um yeah so arkansas.com actually had an interesting from what i could tell more
of to say oh look at the fun folklore and the legendary monsters but included in that was uh
reports that were interesting in terms of they appear to be first person on the ground reports
uh of individuals seeing a thing and the thing looks like a hyena yes and from from
you know using deductive reasoning from from the accounts they they appear that size wise etc
it would be in line with a hyena um and
and except for the fact that it's in arkansas it would seem like a natural animal sight
right right and this is something i can't help but draw some comparisons to the
Ozarks or borderlands of the Ozarks animals out of place stories can be very interesting
um thanks to uh sek paranormal uh one of the great groups uh southeast kansas paranormal that we have
the opportunity to work with at times uh have collected stories of lions out of place yes
and in multiple places yes uh and and there's a there's some very unique aspects that we can
conjecture about that and i also can't help but tie in the uh springfield missouri cobra scare
uh in animals out of place nobody is arguing that lions cobras or hyenas do or do not exist
but what is deeply unsettling to individuals who've had these experiences is yes they they exist
but they're not supposed to exist here and in this way so what the heck is up right right um
it is certainly is an interesting interesting um example that um it is so what what do you think
i mean we have we have a lot of different possibilities in terms of
explanations we have the um the animal got loose from the zoo we have the animal got loose from the
circus we have the animal got loose from an exotic animal breeder but we have the all of which tends
to be more realistic and i believe someone in springfield actually came forward many many years
later and says yeah i was responsible i you know i kicked the the door off of the cobra cage
at the pet store i'm still trying to figure out why the pet store had anyone yeah that's one part
that i'm not convinced on that that story but yeah yeah i didn't claim responsibility but
uh the long list of things that were for the pet store how about a cobra
several of them i nothing could possibly go wrong with that well it was earlier it was a simpler
earlier time pet stores had cobras um not something i personally have on my top 10 wish list when i go
to the pet store same um saw him in the window i just couldn't come home without him um i think
but the uh you know those those reasons existing the other is the idea of a lost or hidden
indigenous population of the animal well personally i i i don't ascribe to the relic population
theory sometimes it sometimes it could make sense where you had an animal that may have
survived up to a few thousand years ago i think you know maybe there could be a breeding population
that survived in remote areas but north american hyenas died out hundreds of thousands of years ago
like over half a million years ago so i i doubt that's the case um and for me i i doubt that they
escaped from the circus you don't see too many hyenas and circus circuses and traveling
circuses um could not have not found anything to indicate that were there were escaped hyenas
zoos or whatever um that would account for this uh so my my guess is that an exotic breeder
uh you know that they got got away however the reports are over a decade you know a number of
decades so we're not talking about one animal or two animals this if people really saw hyenas
at these various times over close to 50 years there had to be a breeding population which is
even a little more far-fetched to believe but i don't know but if it's half a million
i don't know but if it's happened my guess is that they've gotten away from exotic animal breeder
yeah and and realistically i think that's the the the answer the other one that is fun
that is on the opposing spectrum is the idea of some sort of portal that things are coming through
from some place or some other time well i mean and that does kind of go along with the
with the lion pride of lion sightings in various places that all happened at the same time
that they were seen even going down the street or whatever and then vanish almost like it was a
interdimensional thing or time warp or whatever uh almost as if you know they disappeared from the
savanna and then appeared in the middle of kansas and then disappeared and so if something like
that happened maybe maybe the hyenas came through similar time it'd be interesting to know if if
there were any sightings of hyenas at the same time that the lions were maybe they came through
the lions i don't know they they might have uh the the thing that i like about these type of
conjecturings although some people may find it really unsettling or sometimes preposterous is
that it forces the mind to accept the at least even remote possibility that things in the world
don't work the way we expect them to all the time and that the world itself may actually be much
vaster and much more dramatic than we are led to believe that's true we we tend to like our little
chinese boxes and everything it fits into a pigeon hole and and these stories do remind us that
as much as we think we control our world we may not and we may not and that is
not necessarily a bad thing because it forces us to develop a greater awareness and it also forces
us to approach sometimes approach life with a bit more trepidation but at least with a bit more
sense of wonder than we've we've really been essentially indoctrinated into
agreed now sense of wonder how about let's talk about the felt monster for a second
i love the monster of course i've not met him personally
but the the the felt monster
to me is particularly fascinating we're dealing with essentially we're dealing with a big foot
sighting pretty much now uh you know one thing that's a little different is that that supposedly
it has three toes instead of five so some people say they can't be a primate can't be good but
and that may mean that it's a hoax but i mean there are similar accounts of bidfoot like creatures
with three toes further south in the swamps and the marshes and so forth so who knows
who knows um and maybe just a large population with some sort of mutation
you know you just want to throw something out there right i i i love the fact it
the for me the the fat monster is actually a lot more fascinating than power same same i i agree
and and this is something again that you know they're sightings that go back to the 1850s and then
periodically since up until the last the last time i actually researched it i think the last
reports that i had had verified were just like three or four years ago so
which for for more corporeal cryptid sighting that makes sense
the idea that that that we are so i mean the the basic conjecture is that we are we're dealing with
um a bigfoot type um a cryptid that existing in and around boggy creek and uh in south arkansas
which is is close to texarkana and close to the louisiana state line right it's in the borderlands
but the same creature has been seen in other areas around there too so it's not just quite that far
south it but around falch is where the sort of a clut the clustering of sightings are and where
the more famous sightings are um so this could be a more wide-ranging creature just like um the blue
man has been reported through a pretty large swath of north central arkansas and south central
missouri so um for those friends someone's saying well falch isn't really the osiris well
i i really i it's the it is the borderlands and the sightings and so forth are not just pinpointed
on that dot correct and once uh you know you look at the the aspects of
of of borderlands it's it's really important because it helps contextualize the osarks and the
osarks also help contextualize the borderlands particularly in terms of lore and history yes
and the two do not exist without the other and there are the on so many aspects the osarks are
a crossroads which is in and of itself interesting from a hoodoo perspective
one big crossroad one giant conjuring crossroads in the middle of the united states i probably am
going to regret having said that um but it really you know that i'll take credit for it so you don't
have to regret it the the the the the lore that is associated with thought monster is not dissimilar
to the lore that's associated with so many of the other uh primate cryptid experiences or
phenomena sightings that have taken place for close to 200 years in the region exactly and
you know and one reason it you know it is tends to be a little more input infamous is because it
was turned into a docu drama horror movie by charles pierce um yeah and um since the
uh and um centering around probably the most famous uh encounters uh the ford family had
with the creature in 1971 um and uh and i think one thing that's you know that is kind of interesting
about this is that a lot of the the bidfoot encounters and tales in the ozarts region
tend to be of a fairly reclusive creature that tries to avoid for the most part avoid contact
with people that i mean there are some exceptions there are some early accounts of the ozark wild
man attacking people although they were chasing him at the time and the blue man
being aggressive towards loggers in southern missouri in the 1860s
but from what perspective that may well have been
as a consequence to
them coming too close to habitat or what was perceived as aggression from the men it's hard
to know but the fowl monster tends to overall be seem to be a little more aggressive and certainly
more perhaps careless in attacking animals you know in the open that kind of thing
that you don't get with a lot of the other accounts um mutilated hods etc
and then apparently just taking offense at the ford family quite quite
possibly and for the record i the original films i really like i do too i i love i actually love
the cinematography and they were shot on location they they they were many many of the individuals
who were extras in the film are are just folks who live in the region and they were very
extras in the film are are just folks who live in the region and uh monster aside it is to me
a really beautiful film or beautiful films just showing the region and showing the the what i
would consider to be the very stately quality of this um of this ecosystem as a whole and
and in an interesting uh sometimes cliche but sometimes in my opinion very positive
uh representations of some of the the the locals i i do have to admit my introduction to um
and the fowl monster
monster uh actually comes from the fact that buggy creek 2 and the legend continues was featured in
mystery science theater 3000 and is one of my all-time favorite episodes of mystery science
theater 3000 with some of my favorite line from uh pro t robot and uh and tom servo because i'm
a huge fan but it doesn't it doesn't change the fact that there is an enormous
compendium of lore that is associated with with this region and i think that it is
skeptics aside reasonable to say that there is something in the swamp that there's there does
seem to be something in the swamp i mean and you have recurring accounts now of about about 170
years um and so this isn't something that just happened once and did the these people make it
up or exaggerate and it and nothing ever happened uh there were sightings after that up to the
current time as well as going back a very long time so something seems to be going on definitely
um and and here we did the movie um was actually um had an encounter as a child and then when
the story about the ford family came up that's when he ended up doing the movie but part of it
was because of his own experience um that had stayed with him which i i i find very interesting
and your comment about the ozards being one big crossroads uh kind of makes me think one thing
that always kind of gets me is in the movie they they show driving down highway 71 you know
you know down in arkansas and one of the more famous reportings of the monster is
it walking across highway 71 which is very interesting for me because you know i live
i live a couple of miles away from highway 71 and just to think that you know it's literally the same
road right you know that we're we're not that we're not that disconnected and disjointed um and uh
i just find that sort of a romantic notion i guess it is and and i like it and i think it's
and and i like it and uh yeah and we've seen um similar uh it's it's just a a moment of
numerological uh synergy but highway 61 uh going up the mississippi in northern missouri
uh is is also associated with the momo which is another missouri monster that's true
uh again not dissimilar to the uh the falcon monster very true and sort of the and the and the
and the main sightings for momo were
not too far different in time than than the forward sightings for the fault mount monsters
that's very true that is very true unrelated it's also within the time frame of the the piedmont
ufos but i don't think that yeah i'm not actually tying this together at least not today no please
we're not going there tonight i have the baseball cap i have the black baseball cap that has has
a ufo and bigfoot on it so that's all the proof i need is a great baseball cap i will wear it for
the next episode wonderful
and i know you will that's the thing i know i am nothing if not predictable
maybe
um maybe now what beastie oh well i'm i'm always up for for the uh the compendium of celtic beastie
and just looking for for uh frost references of things that happen in the azarks also some uh no
full i think it's it's important to properly contextualize the lore in association with the
osarks we've talked about how the 20th century largely robbed us of our ancestral lineage
when it comes to folk and consequently the
um and consequently there are
mythological and other beasties of the british isles that may inform lore in the osarks but the
connective tissue um is often lost
i agree i agree um and for some that tends to mean oh there is no connection you know
um two different things two separate things um but i i i agree it's not that simple
no it isn't and what i what i you know as we just begin this portion of the discussion what i
encourage people to do is consider these aspects that the the cosmology that we're dealing with
for lack of a better term the cosmology of the lore that we do have documented in the british isles
informs elements of this supernatural world view that you see in the
supernatural world view that you see in appalachia and you see in the osarks although again as i
mentioned some of that connective tissue has been lost and sometimes mixed with uh with other
traditions so it is fascinating as points of comparison just as you can't really wrap your
head around all of the lore in the osarks without including germanic lore without including
cherokee lore without including african-american lore these all connect these all inform the the
the development of of traditional osarkian folklore but they are also set they are connected
they are also separate and you you have to play in that middle ground to to really develop a larger
perspective what we do know though in terms of creating that recreating that connective tissue
between the british isles and the osarks is that enormous numbers of early european settlers into
or americans into the osarks as for example missouri was becoming a state in 1921 as uh
arkansas was following suit not terribly long afterwards the individuals coming in these were
largely tennessee and kentucky settlers these were largely scotch irish and on an ancestral
level and sometimes on a literal level they were bringing with them these stories very much so
so where do you want to start oh i think the
just jumping over on our notes to page 14 just very briefly the concept of the fairies of the
fey which we've talked a little bit about already and just time initially into the fairy trees
predominantly the Hawthorne this overarching idea that certain trees have great spiritual meaning
and that certain trees exist as gateways into the other world and that they have to be regarded you
you walk lightly within these spaces and as as with much of the osarks uh and it's just with the
story of humanity this is an existing um a simultaneous contradiction because on one hand
osarkers made their living out of logging which certainly is a is a contradiction with the idea
of the fey but at the same time there there are moments in which certain trees are regarded
as particularly special uh interesting strange cursed the the two points that i think would be
interesting one um is that even into comparatively recent times certain cedar trees were noted as
attracting an infestation of copperheads
and we still don't actually know why and it could happen in somebody's yard and you go out and
usually in i think i think around august and for whatever reason ever copperhead in the country
has decided they love this tree and so your your friendly cedar tree in the backyard is dripping
with copperheads and that's unsettling that's unsettling and then the flip side is that
cedar particularly with native americans in the region um is used for protection and cedar boughs
put over doorways etc for protection and so it's almost you know the antithesis of its normal use
yes which in terms of the witch fairy motif that it comes to be expected the thing that is the
the ward also becomes the point of power true and that and that follows through with some of the
Cherokee lore as well it makes for a very for for our contemporary sensibility it becomes very
confusing because the thing that's supposed to protect you becomes the weapon of the thing that
is ostensibly endangering you yes tread lightly yes uh or vice versa the
the and and that's when it gets into that that really interesting space of it depends um and
along with that just just jumping off for a moment this isn't specifically a beast but it is a
a folkloric manifestation that i find really interesting this is jumping up into your part
of the oaks is the um the the hanging tree that was not cut down yes and actually i was thinking
about that earlier in time about the trees and their meaning um um traditionally uh and this and
this isn't just endemic to the osarts but a tree that was used for hanging was viewed as unlucky
and that it would draw hauntings to it um which has overtones of the fey just there too that that
would draw spirits to it so the remedy was to cut it down and um this although it's a traditional
belief it became more prominent during the civil war because you had a number of lynchings
um in the burnt district during the war and so uh tails would kind of grow up around those
hanging trees and uh they tried to cut them down there is one that isn't too far from where i live
the the lore was that um uh soldier was lynched along the stage road and the tree was not cut down
mainly because there weren't too many people around at the time because it was depopulated
and then over time it's become a matter of debate of where exactly was the hanging tree along the
road is it still there and the general area tends to have a number of hauntings and there's some
conjecture that perhaps the reason there's so many hauntings in that area is because the
is because the hanging tree was not cut down yeah yeah and it it's and i think i really
you know this this speaks to something that is incredibly difficult to document other than
identifying the area and seeing if you can gather evps etc right um
but you know i i can say that there are a number of hauntings in in that vicinity that very close
vicinity it is a matter of you know talking even to elderly residents and hearing what they say from
you know their parents and grandparents that you know there's disagreement what was it this tree
this tree or was it down the block or was it a block over exactly where and then some say
well it the tree's dead now it's gone some say no it's still living which there certainly are
trees in that area a few trees in that area that would have been there during the civil war in
large enough to have been the hanging tree at that time so um
um we we may just have spirits floating around looking for it i'm not sure
and it it brings up a an unsettling aspect that that messes with us because it goes beyond
um basic corporeal science right but the idea and and i personally believe that this idea
holds merit in certain circumstances and locations is that at at points of violent death
that there is a resonance created that does something within the space
i agree and maybe not in every instance but certainly in a number i i do think that's true
based on my experience investigating yes and so you you know and and going along with that
and this does date back to to the old world there is a um
and i i wish i could find the documentation of this it was very fascinating to me because it was
a it was in a an engineering magazine that my dad got in the early 90s and i wish i had saved it
and i wish i had saved it because it was detailing some 1990s early 90s um essentially
emf evp and electromagnetic field and electronic voice phenomena and early digital camera work
that was done in a reportedly extremely haunted castle in scotland interesting and it was this was
published sort of as a um you know interesting out of the ordinary piece but it was detailing the
the the the hack that was being involved but it was also being presented in this magazine from a
serious standpoint it wasn't you know this was this wasn't uh this wasn't a tabloid magazine this was
a magazine that traditionally dealt with things like you know a turban function and
though and you know those types of things but it detailed that a number of very unsettling
phenomena had been recorded
the what appeared to be disembodied voices some some words coming through on the evps that were
um uh not friendly and the the particular space within the scottish castle and i now that i'm
talking about this i'm i'm like trying to figure out how we can narrow it down to find which one it
was but it was a a particular dungeon well in which a number of people had been able to get
to the dungeon well in which a number of people had been executed oh i think i know i think i do um oh
i i i i have read and actually seen documentaries about that about a castle that fits that
description with the dungeon well um but i i can't think of which castle it is off the top of my
head but yes um and yeah and particularly rather gruesome um gruesomely built so that when they
threw people into it they were impaled yes yes yes and uh so some really interesting documentation
was done in the early 90s um that was recorded in this engineering magazine and just thinking
about that uh i can't help but draw comparisons with with very aspects one uh spilled blood
spilled blood seems to be a focusing point for creating this sort of almost rift within space
uh that that seems to for example attract hauntings as well as potentially uh be a haunting
it seems to attract hauntings as well it also and and for people who are like wait a second
you're talking about ghosts you're not attacking bad beasts uh so it's it's it's it's it's
uh or fantastical or mythological beings there is in the lore a very interesting intersection
between ghost and fey and fey beast those things tend to to exist sort of not just alongside each
other but within the same matrix yes at times yes and along with that another
thing that i i can't help but just draw some comparisons i'm jumping subjects i know but
from the hanging tree is haunted operating rooms
that is a jump but yes it's got yeah and my my my my thought on this just as i'm going is um
individuals having not um deliberately having a similar type of death which creates a resonance
which may attract more than just ghosts um but regardless of the type of death that we're
talking about but regardless of the intent the idea that dying in surgery is not unlike a violent
death well that's true i mean it's i mean i mean if you look at it from the third person
as someone perhaps on the other side the veil or the fey etc would um it really is the same
um it's and i i guess you could say that the difference would be whether or not there would
be the emotions involved at the moment of death but i'm not sure that for all those beings that
that is the crucial point i'm not sure that's interesting and certainly operating rooms do tend
to be extremely haunted areas in hospitals um almost on on par with mords i've always found it
sort of interesting in an odd way that mords have so many hauntings associated with them
um as well as cemeteries although i find that cemeteries tend not to generally be haunted
although they're reputed to be haunted there are some exceptions um i've also in investigating
areas that had mords uh have not really encountered one that had any activity that i experienced or
it's investigators with me experienced although there are certainly stories um
but more more operating rooms than mords
and and again my my theoretical conjecture on this is yes we are dealing with uh with
spirit hauntings but we're also running the possibility that other aspects of the other
worlds may be attracted to these points and i i do think that is i i do think that's reasonable
and in a possibility especially some of these these creatures or monsters that tend to have
a almost a vampiric or or a werewolf type aspect to them uh tend to be drawn to
and are seen in areas of death
of death and that and this is um so you know the the larger overarching point for our listeners
is that there's a number of people who've experienced phenomena that doesn't quite seem
to all make sense right or necessarily just be explained by a pure haunting right and so this is
sort of our our mind-bending episode to take into account that uh there are potentially
lots of things that could be coming into play on our notes on page 28 there was a a particular
uh entity um that that i found interesting in terms of tying in which is the gladiator
which is the gladiator is a scottish ghost that often appears as a beautiful woman in a green dress
with a gray visage and long yellow hair however her attire is in part disguised because the lower
half of her body is that of a goat interesting a bit like deer woman that's what i was thinking
and that's exactly what i was thinking and there's uh also a little bit of a tie even in the
note in the the notes uh the the cross ties her to the battle and she uh which is a an irish um
um vampire ghost woman fe manifestation well yes and and and dear woman in Cherokee and
lore and kapao lore has similar characteristics um not quite so much the vampiric per se but certainly
um a quality of stealing uh energy stealing life even uh even if it's not through blood
yeah and and there is a there is the aspect um well while not vampiric in the idea of
i'm you know there to to you know drain someone of their blood um the deer won't deer woman
exist as a cautionary tale because um she kills men she does particularly men that have not treated
women well yes which is
has some some very strong similarities with irish folklore and in in that regard
in in that regard it is interesting you know coming back to one of our previous points
this particular bit of lore with a glass jig and comparing her with deer woman
does strongly substantiate the idea that we're dealing with um sort of a in this case we might
be dealing with a a singular plane of phenomena and uh as each people group is interacting
they begin to create their own lore to contextualize it but they're contextualizing
essentially the same type of phenomena yes and and and dear woman's a good example that i've
heard versions of it where she she is the ghost of a woman that's been murdered by a man uh as well
as versions where she is more of that other type creature um that is interacting but she's not a
human ghost right and that is is distinctive um because again we're we're so oftentimes now
dealing with a a being that is simultaneously corporeal and non-corporeal
um the idea is that with a ghost um is almost always is simply regarded as much as we can
compartmentalize anything that a ghost is non-corporeal right and that on the opposing end
of the spectrum for example the concept of a cryptid like bigfoot is that bigfoot is always
corporeal and then we're now in this really interesting territory of somewhere in between
yes well and even in in um native lore in this area uh the quapa the ee-wah fits that category
it it does and let's talk about that just for a moment because of that connection with the osars
uh the concept of the ee-wah because the ee-wah is there's there's a couple of things i really like
just in terms of the discussion of the ee-wah and the first one is that the ee-wah is not an
ancestor spirit yes specifically not an ancestor spirit ancestor spirits are entire are just spirit
um the ee-wah are are seen as a tritster uh mischievous in some cases even more benevolent
and that it is spirit and a physical entity at the same time
and that again if you're if you're not accustomed to this type of lore doesn't seem like it should
be possible right but um and i i really like that lore because it is it it it very much pairs up
uh with a lot of celtic lore as far as concept um which i like because it shows that that idea is
not just endemic to the calcs right i think that is that is very very reasonable um and
something that you know just from a from a cultural standpoint something that we saw that
many people don't realize took place is that our many of our celtic forebears when they ended up
in apple atcha and later when they ended up in the ozars there was a lot of cultural similarities
between the celt and the Cherokee as an example yes they they they were not entirely entirely
um amiss from each other um no as well as well with some of the culture the osage would as well
correct and and i think that we see um you know aspects of that that cultural um cross-pollination
uh taking place that's really really interesting and of particular interest to me which again i
i really think is beautiful and fascinating and just a extraordinary in its complexity of the human
story is that there's for example a number of of individuals i know who have uh first of all are on
are on the on the roles um in in oklahoma with enough uh native american ancestry to qualify them
to to be able to carry their their uh american indian or first nation cards to qualify for
for example for health care etc in oklahoma with uh with the tribes and these are individuals
oftentimes with uh blue eyes some cases sandy blonde hair um complexions that are lighter than
mine and that was uh one one conversation i had with a friend who does have a native strong
native american background and looking at me coming judge you're darker than i am and i'm like well
i'm welsh so there you go um but again it's it it it reminds me of that conversation i had years
and years ago with the merchant artist in actually it's silver dollar city it was 20 years ago and
she's blonde blue blue eyes and she's talking to me about how important her cherokee ancestry is to
her and mentioning um from from an ancestral lineage point and from a non basically a spiritual
manifestation point that in her words she heard the drums i've heard that before and i found that
really beautiful and that was the first time that i'd ever heard that term and i had to like say
hello time out what are you talking about and and and at least from from my conversation with her and
i uh may need to further contextualize this with the idea that certain people uh of cherokee
ancestry at certain times in their life particularly moments of high portent will hear uh ancestral
drumming that that is distinct in some cases they may be the only person to hear it but it
speaks very profoundly to them yes which is goes right back to the definition we started with
yes yes it does um on on our notes on page 35 at the bottom uh the cubly and i is uh is a bit of
welch uh lore in regards to essentially gnome miners uh not not too terribly far removed from
the tommy knockers yes yes and that the that basically they they came with the welch to america
and were encountered by miners here yes and it to me this particular interesting um of course the
the tri-state mining district is a crucial part of the the osars and the osars story and not part of
the separate not part of the osars but my ancestors landed in southern iowa which is in at the time was
coal mining country again lots and lots of mining associated and a lot of lore wrapped around that
and it's something that i that i think bears a little bit of discussion is aspects of mining
because of its um conflict with nature essentially like the the individuals who are mining were
putting themselves into extremely high risk environments uh is not in a weird sort of way
in a folkloric sort of way is not dissimilar from sailing uh the the great sailing lore
that and the superstition surrounding it that's true that's that that is an interesting parallel
i hadn't thought about but very true um lots of danger lots of risk um and the need to be able to
figure things out in a crisis um it's many the uh some of the lore with the cobley and i
are that they would be helpful to the miners and they would knock in places where there were
uh rich veins of mineral or metal flavor they were mining for and it reminds me of a of a of a story
in the tri-state district of um a mining engineer particularly uh arthur vendilari who um
um was known to just have that touch um um an uncanny ability to find
mines and to sink holes in the right place and in fact the uh how the picture mining field
uh which is in the tri-state district just over the uh oklahoma line and became the richest
lead district in the world um really fits this lore because um they had um gone down to around
veneta oklahoma thinking that they that there might be a vein down there and this is in about 1914 1915
um and so all the mining equipment it's on wagon this is that long ago and they um
struck out didn't find anything so they were coming back towards joplin and almost suddenly
they found almost as if someone knocking or whatever they had they have a wagon break down
and so they have to fix the wagon before they can move on so vendilari decides what the heck
i'm going to sink a sink a a test hole while he's waiting and so by accident hits the the largest
lead found in the world uh they probably know i may have been talking to them
that's what made me think of because it was like it was just completely unplanned you know uh
almost you would think off the cuff but perhaps there was a reason the wagon broke down where it
is which is is vastly interesting and and you know when you look at pitcher oklahoma today
the
sort of the the modern retelling that what the what the fe give you they also take away
very very true very true um now of course is is uh advertised as you know ghost town etc technically
technically isn't because there actually are a few people still there but um the town has been
bought out because of of leg contamination from the chap piles um and i can still remember people
you know coming through and and people driving through weren't from the area who thought they
were mountains so wow yeah it's again the the there's a something that i think we lose when we
when we lose our ancestral ties what we often lose with it is the cautionary tale to remain in balance
very true often what happens is in some way we end up having to relearn that lesson
over and over and over um the the understanding that we must exist in balance in order to
move on to the next generation successfully often stands in the way of mass profit
true which i think is interesting because how many times does uh the lost treasure and the fairy gold
play a role in these stories
often often they do and and then in modern life they do in reality so to speak so i think that
there's there there are some strong parallels um the the cross all of these boundaries all of these
lines and we can learn so much whether you believe in the fey or not whether you believe in cryptids
or not there is so much that you can learn in terms of our ancestral past i agree and
be informed for lessons for the very real modern world that may be a good place to end tonight
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