What uh, what are your thoughts on cannibalism?
Um, I don't know.
I mean I would assume that I'm against.
Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm against.
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of Cryptid Cocktail Party, a show
where we have a few drinks, share a few laughs, and take a dive into the unknown.
You like that?
I just came up, that was a good one, right?
Ooh, on the spot?
Yeah, that's gonna be the new intro, it was good.
Uh, joining me today is uh, is fan favorite Colby Clark back again.
What's up bud?
Fan favorite says, ooh, the fans?
Yeah, I mean all the reviews on uh, Apple Podcast seem to think that you're just the
co-hosts.
Like the co-hosts are great.
So yeah, how you doing bud?
It's good to have you back.
I'm doing good, I'm doing good.
Piecing it together today.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Time went on last night?
Well, you know, just you know, writing some tunes.
Yeah?
Trying to stay creative.
How's that going?
Yeah.
It's going great.
Yeah?
We two freshies in the books last night.
Oh, dang.
Bangas, bapas.
So for everyone listening, uh, Colby is a guitar player in uh, New Hampshire Metalcore
band.
We say it's a metalcore band.
Yeah.
Uh, Lanterns Last Light.
Uh, you got a single out called uh, Mitochondria.
What's it called?
Mokuhiki Kamaha.
That's what it is.
Alright.
Um, yeah, go check that out.
I'll put a link in the description of the episode.
So if anyone...
We've said it so many times.
I can't.
We've said it so many times in that episode with...
Oh, with Carson from Kalis Dabois?
With Carson that, yeah, I don't think I'll ever...
Well, I'm not supposed to forget it in the first place, but...
I was gonna say, it's your song.
You should...
No, I definitely won't.
Alright.
Well, yeah, I'll put it in the description so people can check it out if you guys are
fans of metalcore.
Um, but Colby, I have one question for you.
Sure.
Shoot.
What uh, what are your thoughts on cannibalism?
Pro, against, indifferent?
Uh, I mean...
There I go saying I mean again.
Um, I don't know.
I mean, I would assume that I'm against.
Yeah, I'm against.
Now what if, let's say...
I'm anti-cannibalism.
Let's say it was like a brutally harsh winter and it was you and Maddie and, I don't know,
Rob, and you were snowed inside for like weeks on end.
You're desperate.
Rob dies.
This is like a 70 days on an island kind of thing.
Yeah.
But with cannibalism.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, oof, that's a tough one.
Um, I don't think I have a choice at that point, right?
Doesn't my hunger take over?
I don't know.
But the reason why I asked is because today we're gonna be going over the cannibalistic
spirit known as the Wendigo.
Are you familiar with the Wendigo at all?
Dang, I am not.
No?
Mm-mm.
Oh, you're about to learn today, baby.
The Wendigo is one of my favorite all time.
I don't want to say cryptids.
It's a, I guess a spirit, like an evil spirit, malevolent spirit.
And the folklore behind it and the legends is fucking awesome.
I've never heard of it.
I'm pretty bad with time management.
I never know when to go.
Oh, yeah, you had to take a sip right after that just to really punctuate it.
Yep.
All right.
Those are for the fans.
They can't see you.
No, no, no, the joke, the pun.
Oh, okay.
Pun daddy.
Pun daddy Clark here.
All right.
Well, you ready to dive right into this?
Always.
All right.
Well, I think that it's important to mention right off the top two very important things.
First, I am not a scholar or like a learned person on Native American or First Nations
beliefs, their traditions or cultures.
And I don't believe you are as well, Kobe, right?
I am not, no.
Okay.
So what I'm saying, we're just a couple of dudes with microphones.
So if anything I say or we say in this episode is wrong, misguided or in any way offensive,
just know that I'm doing my best to accurately and respectfully tell this story to the best
of my abilities with the resources I had available with to me.
And okay.
Yeah.
So if anything I say is wrong, just please feel free to reach out with any corrections
or information and I'll be sure to make a note of them in the next episode.
The second thing I want to stress that's very important is that the Wendigo is not a cryptid.
I see this misclassification a lot and a lot of like subreddits and like internet message
boards and stuff as well as like pop culture.
And I think it's to dispel, it's good to like dispel that right away.
Now to loosely go off what a redditor said in a subreddit, a cryptid is an animal that
is claimed to exist, but has never been proven to exist.
Like a Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster, Mothman, that kind of stuff.
They all fall into that category of cryptid because they're claimed to be like flesh and
blood creatures, but they've never been proven to exist.
The Wendigo is a spirit.
It possesses those that engage in certain behaviors and it is not a physical animal,
does that make sense?
It's a being.
It's spiritual in nature.
Sure.
I would say it's spiritual in nature.
Everything's in nature.
Yeah, it's in nature.
But it's a spiritual representation of desperation, greed, isolation, and it's also not a skin
walker.
I see a lot of people say that it's a skin walker.
I don't know if you know what a skin walker is.
Something walk around with skin?
Yep.
It's a fucking attitude.
Shot in the dark.
Oh, hey.
I'm proud of you.
Thanks, bud.
Yeah, no, hey.
Appreciate it.
I'm not familiar with the skin walker.
Oh, well, it's not relevant to what we're talking about, so maybe I'll have you on for
another episode to talk about skin walkers.
I don't know.
Okay, all right.
All right, so now that that's out of the way, I think we're ready to dive right in.
Yeah?
Oh, yeah.
Any questions so far?
No.
Okay.
Where does it take place?
Well, I'm glad you asked.
We're about to find out.
Now, the Wendigo has been a staple of pop culture for three years now.
TV shows like Supernatural, Hannibal, movies like Antlers and The Wendigo.
It's also been featured in video games such as Fallout 76 and Until Dawn.
And if you're like a super nerd like me, you might know it from the trading card game Medizoo,
where it was basically the mascot for their Nightfall release.
But none of those portrayals are really accurate.
And the reason why is because for some reason, modern tellings and depictions of The Wendigo
portray it as this tall, gaunt, like 20 foot tall, giant man beast with the face of a deer
skull and antlers.
I'm going to send you some pictures.
And I want you to let me know what your thoughts.
So this is what the modern representation of The Wendigo is.
It's pretty fucked up looking.
It's pretty awesome.
Not going to lie.
Like I understand why people think this is a badass representation of it, but unfortunately
we'll find out that it's not quite what it is.
Okay.
All right.
Yep.
Did you get it?
That's that's pretty cool.
Yeah.
I got them both.
That's pretty cool.
I think that's a good one.
Yeah.
I don't even like why?
Why only hair somewhere?
Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know why.
He's getting old.
He needs to get himself some creeps, not creeps, keeps.
Jesus Christ.
He gives me the creeps, but he needs some keeps.
Oh, man, you got to love when shit like that comes together.
That's good.
Ed, you can't make that stuff up.
But yeah, but so yeah, so like I said, the portrayal of it looking like that isn't very
accurate.
The one thing that they do get accurate, though, is that it has an insatiable hunger for human
flesh.
So what is the Wendigo really, you might be asking?
This is when you ask me that.
Well, like what is the accuracy based off of?
If it's not in nature?
Well, the Wendigo is an evil, malevolent and cannibalistic spirit that has been part of
the Native American and First Nations folklore for centuries, specifically in the Algonquin
language group, which was located in the Great Plains region of the United States, as well
as the Great Lakes and northeast regions of the U.S. and Canada.
So basically right where you live, Colby, right up in New Hampshire.
Dang.
That was you said you weren't a scholar.
Shit.
I'm a scholar.
I did my research.
I try to do this as like fucking to the T as possible, but it's hard.
It's good work.
There's so much lore behind it that it's hard to really condense it into like a 30 to 45
minute episode.
So I did my best.
Sure, sure, sure.
But it's believed that the Wendigo is a manifestation of all the worst and darkest parts of the
human spirit.
So greed, gluttony, cannibalism.
And it was described by native ethnographer and author Basil Johnston in his book, The
Manitoba.
I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, but I hope I am.
It's pronounced Basil.
When it was Basil, he described it in his book.
The Wendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tightly over its
bones with its bones pushing out over its skin, its complexion the ash gray of death
and its eyes pushed back deep into the eye sockets.
The Wendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave.
What lips it had were tattered and bloody, unclean and suffering from separations of
the flesh.
The Wendigo gave off a strange and eerie odor of decay and decomposition of death and corruption.
He's just perfectly described to me.
It does, you gaunt fuck.
I got chapped lips lately too.
They're not bloody, but I get the sunken eyes.
I'm unclean.
Let's be real.
I'm a little dirty at most times.
I don't think what it said, its lips were tattered and bloody.
They meant chapped.
I'm pretty sure they mean that it chewed them off in a fit of hunger.
OK.
But basically what he's describing is wildly different than what the modern representation
of the Wendigo is.
To me this sounds more like either like a walker from The Walking Dead, you know what
I mean?
Right.
Or like a less skinny version of Christian Bale from the movie The Machinist.
Right, less skinny.
Less skinny.
Yeah.
Because he's pretty fucking thin in that movie and it's unnerving.
Also probably pretty unhealthy.
It is.
But yeah, I mean, actors are just like us.
Oh yeah, just regular salt of the earth.
But now that you have that description to go off of, I'm going to send you two more
pictures that probably more accurately describe what is going on.
So take a look at these.
Let me know what you think.
Also these pictures, I haven't been doing this, but I'll post the pictures that I've
been sending to you on Instagram.
So anyone who wants to see them, they can check them out.
That's a good call.
Okay, yeah, I've seen this one.
It's like that dude from The Hobbit.
Like the head orc?
Yeah.
Actually, shit, yeah, it does kind of look like that.
He's a little thinner, but it kind of does.
Yeah, much thinner.
It's pretty badass.
Dang.
And that other one?
Shoot.
Yeah, I don't like that one.
That one's a fucking nightmare.
Holy smokes.
Do you want to describe the second one to the audience and then what you're looking
at?
It's half man, half elderly man with beard, graying hair, widow's peak, I think.
I don't know, it's a side view.
It's hard to tell.
But yeah, he's Christian Bale skinny.
He really is Christian Bale skinny.
Very long spindly fingers with very long nails at the end, blood in the teeth, obviously.
The nose is a little crunched in there.
It's like flat face.
Kind of Voldemort-y.
Yeah.
A little bit.
Yeah, lost some of his powers way back when.
It's looking for the boy who done it.
The boy who done it?
The boy who did it?
It's scary, man.
That's some nightmare fuel right there.
Yeah, it's not ideal, dude.
Like, I don't want to fucking run into one of these in the woods.
Good thing I live in the city.
Yeah, very far away from the woods.
You never catch one of these in the city.
They get spooked like a bear.
All the motion sensor lights.
You wouldn't think it, but these creatures are more afraid of you, Dave, than you are
of it.
You know, just to put things in perspective.
Yeah, no, you're...
Yeah, that's...
All right, well, moving on, Colby.
Basil goes on to say that the word Wendigo derives from the Ojibwa word, ween-de-go,
which means solely for self, because once you are possessed, you are no longer you.
You are the Wendigo and are now solely fixated on one thing, the insatiable hunger for human
flesh.
Yes!
It's pretty metal.
That's so badass.
It kind of is.
Absolutely.
Now, mostly associated with the winter months when desperation, isolation and starvation
were real threats to those communities.
Like, for example, the Donner party, that one soccer team from the movie Alive that
ate each other in the Andes.
Or was it a rugby team, something like that?
You know what I'm talking about.
Right, right.
I didn't see it, but yeah, I've heard people talking about it.
And also the doomed Franklin expedition that we know that starvation and desperation oftentimes
can lead to cannibalism.
And once you start having those thoughts, that's when you're most vulnerable to possession
of the Wendigo.
So basically, Colby, let's say you're a hunter, but you're not really good at hunting.
Okay?
Right.
You just think the outfit's cool.
You know, you're like, fucking, you know, just gonna dive right in.
No training, no sort of anything like that.
You're just basically a shit hunter.
You go out in the woods, all of a sudden you're out there for months.
Winter rolls in.
It's especially brutal, harsh.
And your only resort for survival was to eat your family, your neighbor, or just some dude
you found in the woods.
Now you, Colby, are vulnerable and most likely now are a Wendigo.
How do you feel about yourself?
No, he got me, man.
It wasn't me.
It wasn't like me, me.
It was the Wendigo.
Man, what a scapegoat.
He kind of looks like a goat, too.
Well, funny you should say that.
Just blame it on the Wendigo, man.
I ate my buddy.
It wasn't me, it was the hunger.
Now in the late 1800s, there was a Cree man named Swift Runner.
Now he was a tracker for the Canadian Mounted Police and everyone said he was a really nice
dude.
Everyone in the tribe loved him until he kind of became an alcoholic.
He got really big.
They said, quote unquote, he was a really nice dude.
No, but no.
So he kind of took a liking to whiskey and eventually became pretty much a dickhead overnight.
He got fired from his job.
He was abusive and just aggressive.
So the tribe was like, fuck you, get out.
We don't want to deal with this anymore.
So him and his family, I believe it was his wife and I think he had like six kids or something
like that.
I'm going off memory with this.
But so, yeah, so he went out into the woods with his family, set up camp.
And then during the winter, it was like especially brutal.
Once after a few months, he came back, like stumbled out of the woods and told everyone
like, hey, my family all starved to death.
Like I need help, blah, blah, blah.
And right away people were calling bullshit on his story because he said his family was
all dead and dying of starvation.
But he looked pretty well fed, if you know what I mean.
So they got a party together and they went into the woods to go to his camp.
And when they got there, they found a grave.
So they dug it up and it was one of his sons.
And he clearly died of starvation.
Like there's no way around it.
But the other five members of his family, he was kind of cagey about.
So the police and some other people started searching around the camp where they found
the bones of his entire family stripped clean of the meat with the bones cracked open and
the marrow sucked out.
So they immediately arrested him for murder and cannibalism.
But as you said, the Wendigo did it.
It wasn't me.
I was possessed by the Wendigo.
So right, right, right.
He even went for the marrow, too, you know, drew Native American.
He used every part of his body.
You can't say that.
Shit.
It fit right in though, right?
It was good.
Fuck me, dude.
All right.
So he went on trial and you got a choice here, but leave it in or take it out.
But he.
So he went on trial and obviously the jury's like, nah, dude, like I think it took like
30 minutes for the jury to go and deliberate and find him guilty.
And I believe if I read the story correctly that that was Alberta, Canada's first legal
hanging like by the government.
Whoa.
So they hung him.
And so, yeah, so Canada stepping it up.
Yeah.
Super late to 1890.
Like we're not going to go to war, but we're still hanging people.
Yeah.
Wild.
But anyway, so yeah.
So you saying that it could be a scapegoat.
Now was he possessed by the Wendigo?
I don't know.
I don't buy it considering that if he was really in a state of such desperation, it turns
out that 20 miles from where he's camp was, there was a outpost where you could go and
get supplies.
So he easily had like, he easily had access to, you know, food and supplies and just chose
instead to cook and eat his entire family.
Dang.
And that is the story of the Swinburne.
Not even just like some humans, like his people.
It was his humans.
Wow.
Fuck.
Like Wendigo got him, man.
Got him good too.
Yeah.
Sucked out that marrow.
No.
Once a person in the tribe is found to be a cannibal, they're immediately banished for
good reason.
You can't really trust anyone who would eat their kids, but also because it was believed
that once you got a taste for human flesh, you won't be able to eat anything else.
And you're consumed by that hunger and are no longer the person you once were.
Could you imagine still having them around town?
Like, Hey, back the fuck up, dude.
Almost got me on that.
You almost got me.
They gotta put a cone around his head like a fucking dog.
Just like that.
But you know, what's funny is that literally every video I ever watched, even some articles
and podcasts that I read and listened to, when it gets to the part where they're talking
about how you're consumed by the hunger, they always bring up, and this seems to be a running
theme on our show as well, the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode where Dee and
Charlie eat Frank's meat.
And Frank convinces them that it's human.
And then the entire episode, they're basically consumed by the hunger for human flesh.
And then it turns out it was just raccoon and the hunger they were dealing with was
tapeworms.
So, right, right.
But that tapeworms get you.
Dude, we did it though.
We found a way to fucking shoehorn in.
It's Always Sunny, which has been in every single episode.
Every single one.
I did catch the little clip from the one you do in Kirsten.
That was good.
Yeah.
So, I think we're gonna keep that theme going.
I'm gonna try and find a way to shoehorn that in.
Yeah, I mean, you know, looking for that sponsorship, baby.
From It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Yeah, I don't know.
They're doing the podcast these days, right?
Maybe I'll just try and convince Danny DeVito to come on.
If anybody would come on.
You think it would be Danny DeVito?
It would be Daniel DeVito.
I don't think so.
But anyways, let's move on, Colby.
Okay.
So, there was an interview with a Cree elder that I had found while researching for this.
I actually found it in the resources section of a John Solo video, which is really fucking
good if you don't know who John Solo is.
He's a YouTuber that does a lot of folklore stuff.
He does it really well.
Way better than I ever could.
Because he takes the real time to do it.
But um, sure, sure.
Basically what the Cree elder said in his interview, and this is kind of summarizing
a little bit.
He said that basically, once a person is consumed by this hunger, they are no longer human and
that over time, if he continues to eat human flesh, he becomes numb.
Basically a husk with no feeling and that quote, his heart becomes like ice.
There is no sympathy.
There's no right.
No human richness.
That's all that counts.
So basically, if you become a Wendigo, you're fucked.
There's no turning back.
It just turns your mind into zero empathy.
Into what?
To tapeworms.
Zero, zero empathy.
Because of tapeworms.
Because of tapeworms?
I don't think that's it.
Yeah.
But uh, but yeah, so basically, Wendigo possession is a corruption.
It's a corruption of the mind, the soul, and the body that comes from desperation, isolation,
starvation, and selfishness.
And the transformation of a person into a Wendigo is more of an internal one than a
physical one.
So really, you don't eat a person and become a 30 foot tall Cronenberg monster with a deer
skull for a head.
The description of it being a former human and now gotten emaciated is usually due to
the circumstances that forced you to become a cannibal in the first place, like starvation
and malnourishment.
That's why those pictures that I sent you the second time around is more human, just
clearly not well.
Right.
Right, right, right.
Now, mmhmm.
Mmhmm.
Yep.
Check this out.
Mmhmm.
Yep.
Now, as for the origin of the Wendigo legend, I don't really know where it came from.
One story I read says that the first Wendigo was a hunter who became lost in the woods
during a particularly harsh and brutal winter.
Starving and out of options, his intense hunger drove him to cannibalism, and once he consumed
human flesh, he transformed into the Wendigo.
He was cursed to roam the forest in search of more people to feast upon.
Others tell a similar story with slight variations on the Wendigo's ability.
Some say that it grows larger with every person it eats, and it can control the weather, bringing
blizzards, hurricanes, and drought upon regions in order for people to be put in those type
of trying and desperate situations in order to bring them to do the things that cause
you to become a Wendigo, if that makes sense.
So basically, the Wendigo is creating more Wendigos by controlling nature to make you
become a Wendigo.
Also, if you're listening to this, start the episode over.
Take a shot every time I say the Wendigo, because I'm pretty sure I've said it at least
47 times by now.
Okay, alright.
I'll hop downstairs and get the whiskey.
Well, not now, but...
Does anybody ever eat part of themselves?
See, I don't know.
I don't think so.
I mean, the Wendigo eats its own lips, apparently, because it's fucking starving for human flesh.
But I don't think it'll eat itself.
Right, right, right, right.
I don't...
Chop off a leg.
Is it cannibalism at that point, or is it like auto-cannibalism or something like that?
I don't want to eat myself.
No?
Well, there was a story of that dude.
I don't think so.
Kyle actually sent me this story that some guy lost his leg in a motorcycle crash or
something like that, and he asked the doctor if he could take it home, and he did, and
he made tacos out of it, and him and his friends all ate his leg.
Oh, wow.
You wouldn't do that.
If you lost my leg, you wouldn't have some of my taco meat, like?
Yeah.
Slow cook?
Yeah, I would.
Slow cooker?
Pulled pork sandwiches with a coleslaw?
It's once in a lifetime opportunity.
Dave's sandwiches.
Oh, god damn, dude.
That'd be so good.
Some Dave's law.
Yeah, we're kind of...
Dang.
I'm hungry.
I did have a burrito today that...
I know for taco.
No, I had a burrito today that...
I hesitate to say that it had French fries on it.
Let's just say it had deep fried potatoes in it, and god damn, was it good.
I've never had anything like it in my life, and I was all about it.
Man, who knew an episode about cannibalism would get us so hungry?
I'm going to need a baked potato after this.
That's where your mind goes, baked potatoes?
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Well, stories and legends of the Wendigo vary slightly from one region to the next.
One thing that I think both you and I can both agree on is that it stands as a cautionary
tale.
Much like the Kappa in Japan was to deter children from getting too close to the water
unsupervised, or the hook-handed maniac at Lover's Lane to stop teenagers from having
premarital sex, it's basically a story that teaches conservation, willpower, and selflessness.
Right.
Or the demon that comes out to tell you not to swim 30 minutes after you eat.
Yeah.
Or something like that.
Yeah, he's just holding an alarm clock or something.
So you know, is that a thing that you were told as a kid that there was a demon?
No.
I really hope that I just learned something super fucked up about you.
It's like, cool, you know that's not a real story, right?
Explains so much.
Fuck.
Now, to-
My life is a lie.
How many lies have you been telling me, man?
To quote from an essay I found on phdsa.com with no credited author, it says that, quote,
winter is a time of scarcity in both food and warmth, and was considered by the natives
to be one of the most necessary times for a community to band together to survive the
harshness.
A scarcity of materials would give rise to hunger, forcing people to either share what
they had with each other for the good of the group, or hoard what they had for their own
sakes.
It goes on to say that, quote, the choice to hoard an act of selfishness was seen as
an act of defiance, not only against the group, but the creator himself.
So basically to have these legends, it's pretty crucial for not only oneself to live as a better
person, but for the whole tribe, living as one and taking care of each other, which I
think is what the Wendigo role was supposed to play, if that makes sense.
I don't know, like, I mean, this is just me.
I mean, again, if I'm talking on my ass, someone please let me know, but that's what I took
away from the folklore of the Wendigo.
I appreciate the personal touch and the, you know, popping that in there.
I mean, it's not a, it's not a, you know, physical being, right?
It's more of an entity folklore.
So it's, it comes with that, right?
You got to make your own, you know, determination, right?
Sure.
I guess.
I like it.
I like you.
Thank you.
You look good.
Dude, so do you, man.
I mean, you look like a vampire, but it's fine.
Yeah.
If you see me next time, I know what my lips is because of this episode.
Yeah, I know.
Well, so now we're going to get into something that we didn't really go over, but I feel
at least needs to be mentioned, is the concept of Wendigo psychosis, which is recognized
by the APA, which is the American Psychological Association.
And it is described as a severe culture bound syndrome occurring among Northern Algonquin
Indians living in Canada and the Northeastern United States.
The syndrome is characterized by delusions of becoming possessed by a flesh eating monster,
the Wendigo.
It is manifested in symptoms, including depression, violence, a compulsion for compulsive desire
for human flesh, and sometimes actual cannibalism.
Now, the way I feel about this Wendigo psychosis, I feel like it kind of delegitimizes the beliefs
of Native Americans and the First Nations.
And it's kind of just a way for like white dudes in like lab coats to be like, nah, y'all
are kind of crazy.
This is what it is.
You know what I mean?
Right.
But at the same time, the human brain is a piece of shit.
And I'm sure in some cases, if you grew up hearing the stories and then found yourself
in a situation where your face was such desperation, or maybe you had like an underlying mental
health disorder already, like on top of hearing these stories, and then you had some sort
of psychotic break, I can see the psychosis being very much a possibility.
You know, you're letting your mind get the best of you.
So that's where I kind of stand on that.
I mean, yeah, it's real, but at the same time, I feel like you're just delegitimizing the
whole community.
But I don't know.
Talking on my ass, I don't know.
Yeah.
What do you think, Colby?
I think I've been talking forever.
I feel you on that.
I feel like that's been most of my comments is like trying to logic my way out of this.
And that's not the point of it, right?
The point of it is to, you know, bring about, you know, a certain understanding of this.
You know, I mean, a mental, you know, break is like something that's not like tangible,
right?
So in order to explain something like that, maybe you need something that's not tangible
as well.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I'll buy by that.
Are you part of the APA?
Yeah, I mean, you know, I used to be, you know, they still send me packets.
All right.
Yeah.
Okay.
No.
What the fuck are we doing here?
I feel like we're not qualified to talk about this, but I feel like we're I think we're
doing okay.
Yeah, I think so.
I just got one.
I mean, the jokes are on point.
I mean, you're killing it tonight.
I just got one more, one more little bit and then we'll close out the episode.
One thing I found that was kind of neat and I have no idea if this is true or not, but
the modern Wendigo interpretation, like that I sent you is always this emaciated, super
tall figure with a deer skull and antlers, right?
Well, yeah.
Yes, yes, it is.
Well, according to some stuff I read, the deer in some Native American cultures is like
a symbol of growth, regeneration, fertility and life.
So some people are saying that the modern portrayal of the Wendigo is like a bastardization
of that.
Death, greed, famine, starvation, the skull of a deer instead of the head of a deer.
I don't know if that's the reason some people chose to portray it that way, but I thought
it was just like a neat little explanation for why it may have transformed into that.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Oh, I think the portrayal of skulls in a lot of metal music is to show that, you know,
like humans are all the same regardless of skin color and yada yada yada, right?
So maybe they were trying to say that about, I don't think that's eating humans, eating
deer.
It's the same thing.
You know, we're all bones on the inside.
Cannibals are people too type of thing.
Yeah, they are.
You know, they may have had a psychotic break and ate their whole family.
But you know, you know, we got to look after them.
Who are we to judge?
I don't know.
Fair enough.
All right.
Well, that's I certainly won't.
That's the story of the one to go the best that I could tell it.
That's a good story.
I think we did OK.
You did great.
You said is your sources.
You had Basel in it.
Yeah, Basel is a fucking bad ass, dude.
Dude, I never read his book.
I should probably read it, though, the front line.
I know, dude.
Yeah.
But yeah.
So what did you think?
Basel is scary and definitely has its place in, you know, teaching people about the.
The the.
That's what I'm looking for here.
Importance.
The importance of not.
Eating your own kind, you know, and maybe it's holding a mirror up to mental health,
you know.
I don't know.
It's just spitball in here.
There's a good story, though.
Right.
It's definitely.
So I always grew up with the.
I grew up with, but I've always seen the interpretation of the one to go as the deer skull guy.
So after doing all this research and finding out that basically my whole entire understanding
of the one to go is completely wrong.
And that it's not a cryptid and that it's actually like a spirit.
Kind of fucking.
I don't know.
Took the wind out of myself because I feel like because I like I always shared pictures
or stories or whatever of real like real when to go sightings to find out that it's all
bullshit, dude, in my.
So doing research, I did.
I watched a lot of YouTube videos because reading is a nightmare.
But put you right out, dude.
The amount of fucking like top 10 real when to go sightings.
And it's just like a blurry deer standing on a rock.
And it's like, dude, fuck off with this nonsense.
Like, what are you doing?
Right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was annoying clicks.
Yeah, it was awful clicks.
But yeah, so that's the story of the one to go guys.
We did it.
That's cool.
Thanks for setting the record straight, bud.
Yeah, I feel like not a lot of people do that.
There's a couple of cool podcasts that I listen to.
And like I said, the John Solo video was really fucking good.
He did like an awesome job really dispelling any sort of like misnomer misnomers.
Is that the right word?
Yeah, that sounds correct.
About the about the one to go.
But then there's this podcast called Graveyard Tales, which I listened to that had a lot
of really good like information to resources attached to it.
Dude, this podcast is the fucking best.
All right.
Yeah, please listen to my podcast.
But if you don't like who we are as people, go listen to this one because it's two dudes
from I think from Texas.
I don't know, but they're from the south somewhere and they have the most angelic voices I've
ever heard in my entire life.
Like, oh, it's like nice cowboy Texas accent.
You know what I mean?
You can definitely tell that they have like work spurs for their boots and then like dress
spurs.
They have the one pair of like really nice blue jeans that they wear to both weddings
and funerals.
Right.
They definitely have bolo ties that match all of their different cowboy hats like they
call they call every woman ma'am and every man sir.
But not in an offensive way.
No, it's the most like you call a lady.
You call a woman ma'am around here.
You're going to get some shit for it.
I bet they tip their caps all the time.
But no, they do a really good job.
They're really good.
Like cryptid paranormal folklore podcast.
But yeah, it was good.
I think I think we had a good time.
I think we did it.
We did it.
We did it for sure.
And I'm better for it.
Really.
You are.
Because now you know the truth.
I can be on the lookout.
Yeah.
I'm looking for what I'm looking for what I'll be.
Now I know if I go into a mental psychosis, if I start chewing on my flash, I'll know
what it is.
It's not me.
It's the when to go.
All right.
Well, on that note, I think it's time for us to when to go.
Hey, hey, I did a Colby.
Thank you so much for listening, everyone.
I appreciate it.
Everybody.
Yeah.
Thanks, Colby, for being back on.
If you guys listening, if you wouldn't mind, it'd be awesome if you could rate and review
the show on Apple podcast, but also leave us a rating on Spotify because you can do
that now apparently.
But also I found out that I can add questions to the episodes on Spotify and you guys can
respond.
So if you think this is all bullshit and I did a terrible job, please tear me a new one.
You guys think I was nice, did OK, and I got the story across the best I could respectfully.
That would also be very comforting because this is nerve wracking for me.
All right.
No, Colby, I'm going to say goodbye.
We're going to go.