Hey everybody.
Welcome back to another episode of Cryptic Cocktail Party, a show where we have a few
things, share a few laughs, take a dive into the unknown.
I'm your host Dave and today I'm joined once again by the creator and CEO of Metazoo, Mike
Waddell.
What's going on man?
Not much, not much.
I appreciate you willing to do this so late, especially since you're sick.
Yeah dude, it's fine.
I got to take the day off and just kind of sweat it out on my couch, but you know, it
is what it is.
This is the life of a podcaster, you know, you got to work through the ups and downs.
But how you doing man?
You doing good?
How's life in New York treating you?
Yeah, you know, it's supposed to be winter, but it is 60 degrees and rainy outside.
Yeah, I live in Philly and that's what it was like all weekend, it was just super warm
and super rainy.
I personally love the cold and I like when it snows.
So I grew up in Brazil and we never got snow.
So I love the four seasons and so it only snowed once last year and it was barely any
snow.
You know, when I moved to New York, I was promised, false prophets, that it would be
like a snowy winter wonderland and magical, but it's just gross here.
So anyway, it's what all the Hallmark movies promise that every winter is just snows and
Christmas trees, but it's not.
You know, I'm originally from New Hampshire, so we got all four seasons and then we moved
to Philly and I was like, oh, we're not that far from the Northeast.
Like it should, but no, it's been, I think it snowed once last year and it was like half
an inch of snow.
Yeah.
So my disappointment is immeasurable and I'm very upset, but you know, I'm going down to
Florida for Christmas at the end of the week and I suspect that of course it will snow
when I leave.
Oh, a hundred percent.
That's the curse.
That's always how it goes.
So before we begin, I have a story to tell you real quick.
Yeah.
I don't know if you remember the last time you were on, it was like the sixth episode
we ever did.
It was like in March, I think.
Yeah.
Geez.
So I think it was more just like discussing the story of Metazoo and it was chill.
Yeah.
But you want to hear a fun story.
So after that video, that interview concluded, I was like super stoked.
Like, hell yeah, I'm going to wake up in the morning.
I'm going to edit it, going to put it out.
And then that morning I go outside to get ready to go to work and my car is where I
parked it.
And I was like, oh shit.
Maybe I got towed because I do park it in the back of a grocery store parking lot.
So I called the number.
They're like, we have no idea what we're talking about.
Like you're talking about that car.
Never even get calls for back there.
And so I called the police.
Turns out my car was stolen either during our interview or directly after we got talking.
I'm not saying that I was involved.
And, you know, but I'm just, you know, if I were to be involved, I was just there for
distraction and I'm not liable for anything.
Well, that's what I was like.
He made me get my car down and he's the reason why my car is stolen now.
But yeah, so it was like one of the best days of my life.
Just followed up by like the most stressful two months of my life after that.
But were you able to find it or did you file police?
Oh yeah, I know.
They found it two days later and it was completely totaled.
They, whoever drove it, like was driving it over like fucking fire hydrants and shit.
And they like they racked up, I think, like almost a thousand dollars in like red light
camera bills that went to my house and I had to fight them.
It was all bad.
Geez.
Yeah.
I had a similar thing with my car, but it was my friends driving and my brother and
racking up, you know, red light fines and stuff.
So that was fun.
Yeah.
Geez.
The price you pay for living in the big city, you know?
Yeah.
Right.
Do you hear what they're doing with New York with the, I think it's like $17 every time
you pass over or something like that.
Yeah.
The congestion lights or whatever the fuck.
Yeah.
Good Lord.
That's gnarly, dude.
That's fucked up.
I don't know.
Yeah.
And so I'm never driving my car again.
And yeah.
Oh, hey, you know.
All right.
Michael, do you like Mike or Michael?
I don't even know.
Either or.
All right.
Michael, today I have an episode for you.
Now I gave you two options before we started recording and you chose the first option for
now.
We'll see if it leads into the second one.
But today I'm going to tell you, since it's Christmas time, one of my favorite Christmas
cryptid folkloric tales.
Do you know, are you familiar with any like, besides like Krampus, are there any other
ones that you're familiar with?
So I know some Brazilian ones.
Okay.
But I don't think there are too many here in the U.S.
Are there?
No, there's pretty much none.
Yeah.
I mean, other than like maybe the Dutch brought some over or something like that, but or maybe
some down in Louisiana.
But I'm pretty sure our Christmas folklorist is pretty much Santa and Coca-Cola.
Pretty much.
Yes.
Well, today, Michael, we're going to be going to Iceland.
Okay.
So Christmas time, it's a magical time of year where we gather with our loved ones, celebrate
the birthday of a demigod, get absolutely ripped on like spiked eggnog at the Christmas
office party and partake in rampant capitalism just to, you know, end up disappointing your
friends and family with a gift of like 7-Eleven scratch tickets you put in a car because you're
too lazy to wait in line at Target.
That's what Christmas is for me anyways.
I don't know about you.
But for the most part, Christmas time isn't supposed to be like a nightmare fueled murder
fest caused by hideous monsters that want nothing more to do than like torment your children,
at least not here in the States, like like we said.
We've all heard of Krampus, the humanoid horned goat demon of Central and Eastern European
folklore that likes to beat children with a switch and then put them in a wicker basket
as he should.
And then saving them for a late night Christmas snack or belchnickel of German and Pennsylvania
Dutch folklore.
So this one kind of is in the area and it was most famously played by Dwight on the
office and that seems to be like a running theme in the stories.
He also likes to beat children with a stick for misbehaving.
But as far as I know, he doesn't eat them.
So that's pretty good.
That we know of.
But there is one folkloric Christmas entity that I think has been wildly underrepresented.
And as far as I'm concerned, would have made a better horror movie than like Krampus did
because that movie was hot trash.
And that is the Icelandic ogres known as Gria and her 13 nightmarish children known as the
Yule Lads.
Are you familiar with them at all?
Like the Skygramor?
Like the...
I think so.
I've heard of the ogres, but not the 13 nightmarish.
The Yule Lads?
Oh man, we're going to get into it.
All right, so Gria in Icelandic folklore was first mentioned in the 13th century in the
Prósíða.
But in this telling, she wasn't associated with winter or the holiday season at all.
She was just like a big ugly troll lady that lived in a cave.
It wasn't until around the 1800s that she was first associated with Christmas in the
poem titled Poem of Gria, which got into the details of her and like her 13 children who
were just the fucking worst.
So Gria.
Ugly descriptions of her and there are many descriptions of her throughout the years.
Some say she has like two heads, 15 tails.
She has like two eyes on the back of her head.
I don't know.
But this one source described her as an ugly, wretched giantess who lived in a small hut
on the edge of town who would basically just mosey around the village and beg, trick or
trade parents for their children so she could boil them alive and eat them.
And the more that those children were basically just like little shits, the better they tasted
to her.
So.
Oh, not much Christmas cheer in that.
No, none of this.
There's no we'll get into it.
But most of these like monsterish Christmas creatures, there's like a reward and punishment
system.
With this, there's none of that.
It's just all bad.
So like we we get coal and Iceland gets a giant test, an ogress that eats your children.
Yeah.
You can barely get a Santa.
But we'll get into that.
Now it's said that she would be pleased with offerings of other food gifts.
But for the most part, the townsfolk just didn't like the idea of a giant cannibalistic
woman trying to eat their kids.
So they banished her to the Dimur Borgir lava fields in Iceland's northern region.
And just like Santa or Krampus or Belsknigl, Gria also has the ability to tell if kids
are being good or bad throughout the year.
And when the winter months come, she comes down from her lava cave to wander the villages
that surround it to just straight up kidnap small children from their homes.
So she can bring them back to the cave where she then boils them alive in her cauldron
to make children stew.
And like I was just saying, the thing about like Krampus, Belsknigl, those kind of things
is that there's a punishment reward system in place.
Like Krampus is Santa's right hand man.
And then Santa rewards Krampus punishes Belsknigl is both.
He goes, he does like both the rewarding and the punishing.
Gria, no rewards.
Just wants to straight up eat your kids and boil them into a stew.
So where are we at so far, Mike?
How you feeling about Gria?
I'm glad that I'm not Icelandic for various reasons.
But you know, I kind of like the cool system.
I mean, it's good to have like a reward punishment system, but I feel like the murder of children
is a little like.
Yeah.
I was I was terrified of getting cool as a kid.
I can't imagine the existential of potentially being eaten in gory detail.
Oh, geez.
Oh, yeah.
And we'll get into how fucked up it really is later on because there was a law put in
place at one point.
Well, I mean, like pretty metal that she lives in, like lives in the lava fields rather than
like the forest.
She's like, oh, yeah, no, my hut's in the lava fields.
And the name of the lava field is Demi Borgir, which is actually the name of like a really
like brutal satanic black metal band, which makes it even better.
All right.
So I think I need to clarify something.
And I know I said that the more they misbehave, the better the kids tasted to her.
But that doesn't mean she only took the worst of the worst.
If your kid, for example, let's say just one time out of the year, someone sneezed near
your kid and they didn't say, like, God bless you, fucking he's getting scooped.
And she will take any kid who wasn't pretty much like a saint.
And her goal is to get enough kids to make a stew big enough so that it lasts her the
whole year until it's time to do it again.
So she's basically this is like her meal prep phase of the year is just the Christmas time.
She likes canning.
She likes to can.
Yeah, pretty much.
She's a pickler.
She's a jammer.
You know, that kind of stuff.
So where are the lads coming in?
The Yule ads.
Oh, man, we're getting there.
So a fun fact about Gria is that for as hideous a monster she is, she did end up finding love
a few times, actually, because according to legend, she and her no good lazy bones third
husband named and I'm going to butcher this lapalootie.
And he is the father to their 13 children known as the Yule lads.
Now the Yule ads are basically 13 mischievous Santa Claus's that visit the home of children
during the 13 days leading up to the Yule.
So and each one gets their own day.
So what happens is the children will place their shoes upon their windows.
And for the good boys and girls, the Yule lad of the day like of today will leave candy
or a small gift if they decide your kid kind of sucks.
They'll stuff the shoe with rotting potatoes.
So it's kind of kind of like coal.
Right.
But like most horrible things over time, they've been kind of toned down over the years from
their origins, unlike Gria, who is still just like a straight up nightmare.
Were the like were the Yule lads mischievous back in the day?
Sure.
Were they also unhinged, terrifying, hag looking monsters capable of theft, lewd acts and maybe
murder?
Also, sure.
At least to the first two.
And here's what sucks is I couldn't really find anything on how creepy they used to be.
Just a bunch of like articles saying that they used to be nightmare fuel.
But apparently that's because the stories were so frightening that in 1746, parents
were officially banned by Icelandic law from, quote, tormenting their kids with monster
stories about these particular creatures, end quote.
So if anyone listening knows where I can find these stories, please email me because I need
to know.
It kind of goes to show like the the psychological terror probably had like a lasting impact
on society.
But what's wild is that that's in 1746.
There's probably so much worse things fucking up your kids back then.
Yeah, I mean, these stories and from like a I guess you could say like an anthropological
or like a societal viewpoint, it probably gave parents an excuse to use their kids to
probably.
Yeah.
And so I would imagine that that was kind of the reality of it, which is like some parents
are taking this way too far and then using the sort of it being, you know, Christmas
time and you lads say it's all good fun.
Well, they probably did some pretty horrible things.
Oh, 100 percent.
But also at the same time, it's 1746.
There was kids fighting in wars back.
You know what I mean?
Like I feel like people just not give a fuck about kids back then.
Yeah.
Being a kid, you know, one of my favorite.
I've ever seen an interview with a vampire with it, like one of the my favorite quotes
from it is like opening scene and Lestat is like I was 17 at the time and by then I was
a grown man.
And it's like, yeah, kind of, you know, back in the day, you were even before puberty.
Yeah.
Like depending on the household, you had adults duties even back then.
Like you if you might have been a man at 17, but you were like a full grown woman at 13
and like as soon as you could produce a child, you were like it was super fucked up back
then.
Yeah, I was.
And you see like videos and photos of one and four kids like on the streets.
Haggard.
They looked so old.
It's all right.
Well, let's let you know, dive into something a little less sad.
Sure.
OK.
All right.
Well, today, the you lads, they're basically just like Snow White Seven Dwarves.
And by that, I mean they have all the very distinct they have all the very distinct and
very specific personality and a pretty on the nose name that kind of accompanies that personality
like they like sleepy dopey, that kind of stuff.
Right.
So you want to find out what these dudes are all about?
Yes, sir.
All right.
So we've got sheep coat Claude.
His whole thing is that he likes to sneak into farmer sheep sheds and then suck on sheep's
nipples and he also has a peg leg.
Next up, we got Gulli Hawk and he enjoys stealing the foam from the buckets of cow milk.
Now we got we got we got stubby.
He's a short king that likes to steal food from frying pans.
Spoon liquor.
Pretty self-explanatory.
He's a thief and likes to lick spoons.
Pot scraper, a.k.a. pot liquor.
Again, he'll steal your unwashed pots and lick them clean.
And then we have a lot of these involved.
Licking.
We have bowl liquor.
His whole thing is that he will steal bowls of food from out from under your bed, because
I guess back in the day, Icelanders used to store foods like bowls of food under their
bed.
I don't know.
We got a door slammer.
This is the most annoying one, in my opinion.
All he does is stomp around and slam doors all through the night like a bad roommate,
just like keeping you up all night.
Skier gobbler.
He likes to eat your yogurt.
Sausage swiper.
Likes to eat sausage, especially stolen sausage.
So he steals and eats your sausage.
And then, fuck, we got window peeper.
He likes to creep around the outside of your house.
He's a leas popular one.
Yeah.
Then we got door sniffer.
He's got a big nose that he will use to sniff out bread from under doors.
Meat hook.
He carries a hook and steals any meat you got hanging around.
And then we got candle beggar.
He steals your candles, which apparently were super rare and sought after during the time.
But yes, those are the Yule ads.
And they're all kind of fucked up.
The window peeper.
The sausage stealer is annoying, but the window peeper, I think, is a menace.
Needs to be stopped.
He's definitely not an ideal character to have around, especially around your children.
Fuck, man.
This is technically a children's story.
It's like one's like, I steal the foam from milk.
I lick your bowls at night.
And then the guy's like, I peek into your house through your windows and stare at you
while you sleep in chain clothes.
It's like, jeez, I'm blind, dude.
Yeah, he's a deviant and must be stopped at all costs.
Now, there's another thing that I forgot to mention.
We talked about Mama Gria, the deadbeat dad, and the 13 nightmare children.
But to close out this segment, we have to talk about the family pet known as the Yule
cat.
Now, the Yule cat is the house pet of Gria and her sons.
And honestly, I think the Yule cat is the most fucked up part about this whole story.
So the Yule cat is a monstrously huge cat that appears on Christmas Eve and silently
stalks the villages while everyone is asleep, assumably dreaming about sugar plums or something.
Now, this massive black feline does not care whether you are young or old, good or bad.
It will just straight up fucking eat you.
Like this thing ventures out once a year and just chooses violence every time.
And the only thing that can assure you won't be getting disemboweled by a demon cat, and
I don't know, but somehow it knows this, is that if you receive at least one article of
new clothing for Christmas, he will not eat you.
So you know, I guess don't complain if you get socks for Christmas.
That seems to be the propaganda.
Because everyone complains about socks.
I love socks now that I'm older, obviously, but I can imagine if you're a kid in Iceland,
what kind of toys would they be getting?
It's like, here's a walrus tusk, or like, here's some socks.
I mean, socks have to rank pretty high up, right?
Like in terms of riveting gifts that you can get.
I feel like in like 13th century Iceland, I feel like any sort of survival, like basically
basic necessities would be like a godsend to anyone back then.
Yeah.
Maybe not so much now, but I mean, back then that was probably a huge get.
Yeah.
All right, Mike, well, that is the story of Gria and the Yule Lads and their fucking nightmarish
cat.
How you feeling about it?
I'm surprised I've ever heard of it.
You know, in the recesses of my mind, Yule Lads sounds familiar, but I'm sure that there
are other Yule Lads out there.
You know, it's just one of those names that is very Christmassy and describes elven like
creatures.
Yeah, they do look like, I don't know if you like the Icelandic gnomes, like they just kind
of look like that, but there's 13 of them.
So they do kind of look like little elves.
But also with the name Yule Lads, you think they'd be way more chill.
Yeah.
Like Yule Lads is such like, that's what you call your boys when you go out like for an
ugly Christmas sweater party.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, it's like a band that makes fun of Christmas songs or something like that.
Shit.
I bet that has to exist.
There's no way that doesn't exist.
The or like in OnlyFans, you know.
So no, I've never heard of that.
We definitely gotta be making that into a Christmas card.
That'd be cool little series.
And they have all 13 Yule Lads put on separate cards and have them somehow work in tandem
together if they're all in the field together.
Yeah, like go lick somebody's bowl or seal their socks.
Why do you have to make them so creepy?
That's my question.
I don't know.
I mean, it kind of goes hand in hand.
I feel like all of, because my grandparents used to live in Iceland and for some reason,
every year for Christmas, they would get my older sister these like Icelandic gnome troll
like carving statues and stuff like that.
And they were all fucking nightmarish and she's like 12 at the time.
Like nothing about it seems fun.
Well, I guess if you look at it, like Elf on the Shelf is kind of terrifying, right?
Like it moves like, what is it?
It moves if you, I see, I see TikToks of kids screaming in terror when like when parents
show them videos of like of them like off camera moving the Elf on the Shelf and like
the Elf is like stealing like cereal and stuff.
So like Elf on the Shelf is terrifying.
My dog's barking one second.
It's all good.
My dogs are doing that downstairs right now.
What is the, like there's a creepy aspect to it though.
What is it?
The only thing I know about Elf on the Shelf is that I think they're meant to cause trouble.
Yeah, yeah.
I think the point of Elf on the Shelf was that it was supposed to be like a baby cam
for Santa.
Like he's always watching you to make sure you're doing good.
But then he also gets up to mischief himself.
So I don't understand the point of it.
All right.
So I'm like once everyone goes to bed, the scout Elf, the Elf on the Shelf flies back
to the North Pole to report to Santa the activity is good and bad.
So he's basically Santa's eyes.
He's a fucking snitch is what he is.
And by hiding in a new spot around the house each morning, the scout play, the Elf plays
an envoy game of hide and seek with the family.
Guys, relax.
And gotcha.
So it's like he's a snitch.
Yeah.
He's the Christian version of this fucking window peeper you will add.
Oh, wait.
Well, so the magic.
Oh, he's magic now too?
There's only one rule that you have to follow.
So I will come back and be here tomorrow.
Please don't touch me.
My magic might go and Santa won't hear all I've seen or I know.
Yeah, that's terrifying.
If I were a kid.
Wait, so the kids aren't allowed to touch it or else it's not going to report back to
Santa if you've been good?
Yeah.
So that's kind of like that's like gaslighty shit.
And that thing is like living in your house and moving around the house as a kid.
So like if I were like six years old, I'd be terrified of it.
Yeah, that's not ideal.
Yeah.
So, so where we go in American tradition right there, something that's creepy and a nanny
state like and a little messed up.
And that's like relatively new, right?
Like that wasn't always a thing.
They didn't have that when I was a kid.
It's a 2005 book.
It's like a children's book from 2005.
Think about that.
It's not even 20 years old.
Do you think in like 200 years there's going to be a podcast like mine where they're going
to be going over the fucking creepiness of the elf on the shelf?
Elf on the shelf sniffing panties and and stealing Santa's cookies.
So Santa doesn't leave gifts and yeah, it's all messed up.
It's all bad.
But yeah, I mean that's.
It'll be creepy.
Oh, 100 percent.
Give it.
I mean, it's at least like 100 years and we'll all look back on it like, wow, that was a
really fucked up era in our in our society.
But yeah, man, that's the that's the story.
I don't know how much time you got.
But if you want to, we can either end it here or we can go into some questions from from
some followers.
We can do like 10 minutes questions here.
You want to do a couple of questions?
All right.
So the idea came from one of my followers on Instagram and I think it was Castor Crew
H.T.X. came with it.
So what I did is I asked some followers if they had any questions for you.
What I did is I put them on a big wheel.
So we're just going to spin the wheel, see what question comes up and then you can either
answer it or we can move on to the next one.
I know.
OK.
After a night out on the town, let's say you went out a couple of beers.
What's your what's your go to like?
I need to sober up drunk meal.
It's usually pizza.
Pizza is your go to one.
I guess that's just pizza everywhere in New York.
You can just walk up to any window and just get right.
Yeah.
There's a place right next to me that's like great.
Raise pizza.
Hey, Rocky, relax.
Raise pizza.
And it's decent drunk pizza food.
Or if I'm if I'm too lazy to do even that, I'll I'll just order like a bunch of stuff
from 7-Eleven.
Hell yeah.
There you go.
And, you know, and just make bad decisions with that food.
Oh, yeah.
That usually ends with like the worst gut rot you ever had in your entire life.
But usually that's the next morning.
So you don't have to worry about it immediately.
In the moment.
It feels great.
Yeah.
So, so, so sober you versus, you know, you in that moment.
They're separate people.
So really, you're not you're not undermining yourself.
You're undermining the person that wakes up in the morning.
Drunk me.
Drunk me is a completely different part.
We were not related at all.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
All right.
The next question is, is you've been to your fair share of cons, cryptic festivals and
like trade shows.
What's what's like the wildest thing you've ever experienced while attending one of those?
It's a good question.
So this happened at CryptidCon 2021.
There was a, you know, speaks to the kind of the the power of what Metazoo is doing.
But there's a woman there and we were handing out Nightfall cards there and booster packs.
There is a woman there with no connection.
I believe I think she was British to any of the underlying folklore that's associated
with the Wendigo who is very, very, very upset that we had Wendigo on our booster packs.
And she was like, you know, the power of it, like you're you're basically like satanic,
you know, it's not it's not a Satan thing, though.
But that but that level of like superstition, right, where it's like, yeah, where it's like,
you know, hey, you know, so the so that was pretty crazy, understandable, right?
Like a lot of people do take this stuff seriously.
And yeah, you know, we're tapping into that and trying to make it more accessible and
normalized because I think it's awesome to be able to do that.
And I think we are seeing a boom in the cryptid community.
Like Mothman Festival this year, I'd like twenty thousand people at it.
And the years before that, it was like a couple thousand.
Oh, yeah. So so, you know, but you're going to you're going to hit those awkward moments
where you come across somebody that truly, truly, truly believes this stuff and all the
associated mythologies. And they're mad that you're that you're invoking it and not like
treating it with the proper respect. Yeah. Right.
There's no way around that. You know, I'm sure that Pokemon had activists against and
I mean, I know they had people, they had PETA. Yeah.
Now I think about it. So so you're going to be able to please everybody.
But but to see that encounter in person was interesting, you know, because you hear about
it online. But I remember that.
I remember the whole thing. And they came out with some really fucked up like comic
book or like Webtoon or something like that.
And it was like super fucked up. And they were like marketing towards children.
Like it was like really bad. Yeah.
And they repeated. Interesting. And, you know, anyway, so I'm trying to think of other other
crazy experiences. I just thought that she was British.
She had nothing to do with like Native American, like if anything.
Yeah, no, she she's the reason why some of those mythologies don't exist.
I'm not sure. But like, yeah, the British are the reason why a lot of those things are
wiped out now. True.
And yeah, that survivor's guilt. That's what it is.
And this is so delicate. I mean, think about this, like fearsome critters, you know, tens
of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people know what fearsome critters are because of
medicine. Yeah.
Where before it was a dying folklore. There were only a few books published about it in
the early nineteen hundreds. And they probably they were disappearing like a lot of the lumberjack
war. So with how delicate these things are, it's almost like a forgotten language, right?
Like their languages are out because nobody speaks, speaks of anymore.
Right. Are you ever this isn't the next question,
but I do have a follow. Like, are you ever worried that the lore of Medezu is going to
get people confused with the actual lore of the actual cryptids in the game?
So I'm going to give that a lot of thought. All right.
It's good that you're it's good that you're bringing the cryptids to the forefront of
everything. But the lore of Medezu isn't quite what you.
Yeah, you continue. You know what I'm trying to say?
Yeah, no, it's it's a really good question, right? Because so there are a few ways of
handling that. One is by trying to stay true to the core of the mythology behind each cryptid.
So you know, representing it in a group like, you know, no, but nobody knows this. But like
in the manga, for instance, when we encounter Piazza Bird, he's still embedded in the or
recently escaped from the rock face that he is in Illinois. Right.
Like and so so you you touch on that and you kind of bring that story to life because a
lot of the stories for I would say 95 percent of these cryptids, they're not well fleshed
out. Yeah, there's not a lot there.
There's not a lot there. Right. Yeah. There was like an incident one night in like 1953
of a bunch of drunk dudes, you know, firing at empty cans. And they saw, you know, a little
critter fly across them and they're like, it's a cryptid. And that's the sense the story.
Right. That's pretty much the story of like the Enfield monster.
Exactly. Right. You know, so but then I also look at like, all right, where has this historically
happened in the past? Right. So you have something like Lord of the Rings, which has a lot of
ancient folklore in it from, you know, everything from elves to goblins and dragons, these things
predate Lord of the Rings by a considerable amount. Right. And they have mythologies and
history that predate, you know, the Lord of the Rings being written. Now, when people
think of orcs, do they think about Lord of the Rings? I would say, yeah, they already
do. Right. But they also might go Warhammer 40K. They might think of World of Warcraft.
They might think of any number of things that orcs have shown up in. But I think it all
just depends on what level of nerd you're at. But the understanding is that these things
are public domain and they're public domain because these are parts of the mythology of
Europe. Right. Yeah. Like no one's going to think that the concept of genie comes from
Aladdin. Right. Like the Disney movie. They, they, they, they probably most know like,
hey, the, the concept of the genie came from some mythology out of, you know, certain Arabic
countries. Right. Yeah. And so they, their mind goes to a well-written, well-known story
that is fictional first, but the underlying understanding is that there's something real
that backs it. So in order to facilitate that in the story, you know, the cryptids are all
named. We're thinking about adding things that are like, you know, the actual backstory
behind the cryptid, you know, newspaper clippings and stuff like that to the back of the manga.
But you know, what, what a lot of this stuff is going to be is, is they'll, they'll read
about it in the manga. They'll research the character and they'll see, oh shit, like the
Loveland Fogman is not just a, you know, wise mentor in this story. Like there's actually
a true story behind all this stuff. And there's even, you know, a museum and there's a castle
and the castle is real. Oh my gosh. And so Medazoo has that power where it's like, you
can actually look up the characters that you fall in love with in the, in the manga and
the story and the lore and, and realize that it's actually happening right now. Like it's
folklore in action.
That's a good, that's a great answer. I do, I do like that you're trying to weave in the
truth, like the actual story with the lore of Medazoo. Cause it is, I mean, I guess Medazoo
is a good, if you don't know anything about cryptids, you'd want to look, if you know
that they're already based off real things, if you're interested enough, you will seek
out the actual story.
Right. And, and just by virtue of the Google search, you know, Loveland Fogman might end
up being the first Google results or Moffat, you know, but when you, but when you search
for it, like the second, third, fourth, hell, even the first result might be, you know,
the actual story and links to all these different things. And that would, that's, that's again,
the kind of, so, so by connecting the dots or connecting it back to its actual backstory,
it actually helps us build a world that is much more like interconnected and deeply,
you know, emotionally like relatable because these things actually exist in the real world.
It's almost like if Pokemon were real, it's like,
if I search for Charizard or if I search for Bulbasaur and it's like, oh shit, like people
think that in Japan, this little Bulbasaur creature is actually running around and their
museum is dedicated to it. Like that would, that would have added so much more depth to,
you know?
Yeah. No, I get you. All right. Perfect answer. Now I have, and I do have a question about
Metazoo for real. Not that it wasn't, that wasn't about Metazoo for real, but, but as
sets are being developed, do some like cryptids, spells, et cetera, not make the final cut?
And if so, what were some of the ones that you liked that maybe didn't make it into a
set or maybe you ended up using them for like a different set instead?
So I think the sample cards are a good example of this, where you look at the sample cards
and I think it was up until UFO maybe, and maybe even Seance where some of the sample
cards didn't show up until then. Right?
Yeah.
So there's, with the base set, it was, there's no dominant aura, right? Where like it was
a base set, like what a base set should be was all the waras equally represented introducing
the game. And the game that I had to play on my part was like, all right, do I put all
the coolest cryptids and stories in this first set and leave, leave everything else, you
know, all the other sets that, that succeeded without either big bangers, right? But then
the flip side of that is you potentially neuter the base set by not making it cool. And then
no future sets exists because the first set wasn't cool enough, right?
Yeah. So you found like a good balance.
And then also want people like wanting more or else they wouldn't return kind of thing.
Exactly. Like, you know, what would, what would a nightfall be without, you know, the
Wendigo, right? Yeah. And yeah, Mothman made a second appearance, but like, you know, the,
or the headless horseman, imagine if those two showed up in base set and we took that
stopping power out of, out of nightfall, right? Yeah. And the same thing goes for, you know,
Wilderness and UFO. We had to, UFO, we had to essentially reprint like the Flatwoods
monster, right? And, but that Flatwoods monster is significantly less popular than the base
set one. Right. So I see. I love, I love the UFO Flatwoods monster, but it's not the classic
design though. That's the issue. Right. No. And I love it too, but, and also there's a
typo on the UFO one. Yeah. This is Washington instead of West Virginia. Yeah. We were notorious
for our, our geo info being, but you got it right on all the other Flatwoods monsters.
So I mean, you get a pass on that one. Yeah. But you know, it's so it's interesting, right?
Like the, every crypto that I wanted to show up, showed up. I mean, you think that we have
war and that's the final set of the, of the block. Yeah. And then are there cryptos that
were left out that would have been really cool? Absolutely. Did I discover them after
my initial research? Most, most of the, most of the cool ones I discovered happened after
actual research, right? And after this- That's not to say that you can't go back at some
point. You know what I mean? Well, the final block that we have planned, right? So we have
Crypto Nation, Yokai Island, Grimms Kingdom, and then we have Cryptid World, right? Which
is an amalgamation of everything. We're going to have all sorts of, of cryptids that are
North American based that didn't show up in the first block that show up in that. Right?
So there's always, there's always time, right? To do those kinds of things. But the reality
is is that the, the cryptid lore is, is continuously evolving. Like when we get to the world, I
mean, it might take us 10 years to get there. 10, 15 years, right? You're telling me that
there won't be new cryptids that show up in the mean? Of course there will be. That's
valid. There's always something weird happening. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, just look at the,
the Mexican government, I believe it was Mexican government and their little aliens that they
had like a congressional meeting about. Oh, the mummy thing. You know what I found out
about that? I found out that that wasn't actually a congressional hearing. It was basically
a town hall where anyone could go to. And that dude who presented those mummies, this
is like the third time he's tried to present quote alien mummies. And the two times before
that he was found out as a fraud and they were fake. So I do not trust that guy. But,
but it went viral and, and, and, you know, became a cryptid, right? Essentially functionally
became encrypted. So it's a living and breathing foot. Right. And so, you know, it's our job
over the years to keep track of these things and, and make sure that the coolest ones are
represented and the most important ones are represented. But, you know, the, um, moving
region to region allows us to kind of, to open it up a bit, open it up a bit, have a
base set. That's like, you know, the base set of Yokai Island will have to have that
same balance because the history of Yokai and, and, and Japan is as rich, if not richer
than cryptids in the U S right. So, cause those have been going back for centuries.
Yeah. Um, and, and, and, and so, you know, it's, it's, and people always ask like, are
we going to run out of cryptids? And the answer is absolutely not because it's a, you can,
the good thing about Metazoo too is that you don't focus solely on cryptids. You got ghosts,
you got, like you got the paranormal beings, you even got hat man who like is just like
a fucking dream demon. Like it's not just cryptids. I mean, there's the paranormal
world is so fucking vast and massive that, and everyone like, yeah, you'll never not
have something like, I remember, I don't know if you guys ever finished them, but there
was the, like the beastie ambassador thing where you had like, uh, Leona, the drop bear,
uh, Loch Ness, I think was another one. And the, did you, was there a gin one? Yeah, there
was. I can't remember, but like those were cool. And like, at least you, at least that
shows that, you know, that almost every region of the world has their own, you can't run
out. There's no way like it's impossible. Right. And, and, and if it ever gets to that
point where we're really, really scripting, scraping bottom barrel, that's not going to
happen for decades and decades and decades. Right? Yeah. There's too much out there. Yeah.
I mean, I mean we could do an entire set of blocks just on Brazil's folklore. Right. Like,
and I think that assumption that people have that we're going to run out, it comes from
a place of not knowing how complex other countries are and how rich their histories are. And,
you know, these, the underlying assumption where it's like, Oh, there couldn't possibly
be as rich a cryptid folklore in Brazil as there is in the U S. And it's like, like,
why do you say that? Well, Brazil is just, you know, beaches and coconuts. And it's like,
no, Brazil is an ignorant, right? But, but, but, but because the percent, they don't know
enough about these countries. Yeah. But if you sit back and you're like, Hey, these countries
are just as complex. Um, a lot of them been around for a lot longer than the U S has.
So it stands to reason that they have folklore mythologies just as rich and robust and extensive,
if not more than the U S has. And then once you realize that it really opens up the, the
world's for better, for lack of a better term, like we're never going to run out of cryptids.
It's never, it's never a possibility. And what's, what's wild about like other countries,
like America's cryptids and like paranormal stuff is relatively tame compared to a lot
of other countries, like folklore and stuff. Like we did an episode on like a Filipino
folklore called the Mononoke, which is like a nightmarish lady who rips herself in half
at night and just lets her entrails trail behind her while she sits outside your window
and uses a straw like tongue to suck out your brains and stuff. Oh, like American folklore,
as far as like cryptids and stuff goes is the most tame. So if they want like banger
folklore from other countries, you can easily, easily provide that forum. You know what I
mean? Like it's wild. Yeah. And so, you know, I think if people broaden their horizons about
what constitutes a cryptid, like in terms of its function in society, right. An unexplained
phenomenon that people believe to exist and to be real and usually with a creature associated
with it, be it a ghost, an alien, demon, or something that crawled out of the forest or
crawled out under the earth or fell from the clouds. All those are cryptids, right? I mean,
technically, kind of, I guess. Technically, right? Like in terms of their function in
society and society, right? That's fair. Like no one's going to say that, you know, a Yokai
that's a living sandal is the same as, you know, as as mothman, right. But if you step
back and you say, well, I mean, the sandal is a story that somebody told about a sandal
coming to life because it was really old and it did a bunch of high jinx around the house.
Not that different than people reporting that they saw, you know, the Enfield monster in
a rose bush, right? Like it's it's technically the same. And if people believe it and propagate
the story, it becomes part of the culture and then its function is the same. Yeah. So
I tried to do an episode on one of the Yokai's and it's my worst performing episode because
I've either people just it's so old that people don't they're like, well, no one believes
this now. But like the stories are so good. Like, why would you not want to learn about
it? Well, and that's the people in Japan, because it's so entrenched in their culture,
a lot of them actively do believe this stuff. Like the level of belief that people have
for something like Bigfoot. Yeah. That level of belief applies to so many more creatures
in places like Japan. Like you were talking about Iceland before. In a lot of those countries,
the active belief that these things are out and about, like fairies and stuff like that
in a lot of places in the world, they actually like it's collectively believe that these
things exist. And it's not like some kooky guy on the Discovery Channel or the History
Channel chasing Bigfoot. It's like you talk to any normal person and they might have a
story about a fairy that they encountered in the woods or their grandmother did or something
like that. Like, so it's much more normalized. Yeah, it's more it's more ingrained in their
culture and their cultures have been around so much longer than America. Like, you mean,
like we didn't grow up with Bigfoot. You mean that that didn't become a thing until like
the 60s. It wasn't a ingrained in our culture the same way it is like it was not in our
belief system. Other countries, these things are so embedded in their belief systems as
far as other religion or just like culturally that of course they're going to have put more
faith into it than we do say like a Bigfoot or a Mothman. And it's odd and with that age
comes with how that belief manifests, right? It shows up more in art. It shows up in more
in literature. It shows up in more in cultural festivals. And in all that perpetuates, like
imagine like we all learned about Bigfoot as a kid, but maybe like even the Chupacabra
wasn't around until like what, 2005? Well, that one's kind of iffy because there was
a story before that, like before the 90s with like a bat thing. I don't know. It's like
a vampire thing. It was a whole thing. But yeah, it was popularized, right? It was pretty
much late 90s, early 2000s. Yeah. And just now we're seeing it show up in beers. We're
seeing it show up in shows. You know, one of the first shows that very early on adopted
the idea of the Chupacabra was Venture Bros. And you know, on Adult Swim they had a Chupacabra.
It jumped out of the hangar or the landing gear of one of their planes. You know, it's
killed and then Brock Sampson's like, goddamn Chupacabras. Every time I go to Mexico, they
stow away, right? So now you have kids that grew up watching that and they know what the
Chupacabra is, right? And so with enough time, the stuff gets more ingrained. But just like,
what I do in my free time is I search for books that mention like the oldest books that
I can find in the US that mention cryptids and you know, cryptozoology is actually a
relatively new term, right? It's only been around decades. So what do you search for,
if not cryptids, if you want to find these old books? Well, yeah, Fearsome Critters,
that are part of the lumberjack lore. But then like, what about like before that? Well,
you could search like for folklore in the US, but those books only really started showing
up like in 1865 plus. And they're mostly like old wives sales. Like they're like, you know,
and some of them are outright just like racist. Like I have one book. I'm not surprised by
that one bit. I have one book, very, very popular book. I think it was published in
1873. And it's one of the first books on American folklore published. And they have an entire
chapter dedicated to the wandering Jew. And it's like, all right, okay. But you know,
and so that book is very much a product of its time. Let's just say. Oh, no, of course.
Yeah. And so it's interesting to, but it goes to show you that like it's stories like that,
that are like have vague undertones, if not outright overtones of racism, you know, involving
slaves involving indigenous populations. And think about it in the hundred, seven hundreds,
the most quote unquote, mystical stories you could find around were probably coming from
the local indigenous populations. Right. Yeah. I mean, even now though, like the legend of
the goat man, I think didn't he, wasn't he like a freed black man who had a goat farm
and then he was murdered just for being black. And now he just kills people on a bridge,
like his ventral spirit. Oh, the public. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's like, there's like, there's
like four different goat man bridges stories and they, they all pretty much have the same
store. You know what I mean? Yeah. So, so like this stuff is, is it's so new and people,
um, and it hasn't been popularized. I mean, like the, until recent, um, again, you look
at mock man festival and 20,000 people this year versus, you know, a couple of thousand
in the past tours. So I think that we're really, um, at the precipice of, of like a critical
mass movement, you know, um, like moist critical is starting his own cryptid podcast. Um, yeah.
And like, he's trying to steal my thunder, man. He saw your show, dude. He saw your show
and he's like, it's gotta be it. But, but, but, you know, it's becoming normalized in
a way where, and I mentioned this, um, a few times through the past, but like it's no longer
just a nerdy pursuit or shows watch on the history channel when you're traveling in a
hotel. Right. Um, has anything to do like, like, I know like for a while there's a huge
true crime boom when it comes to like content being like absorbed and like over the past
few years, it's slowly been declining. I wonder if people are tired of hearing about murder.
They just want more mystery in their life. I wonder if that has anything to do. It could
be, it could be, um, it could also just be the mass adoption of what people are starting
to receive as folklore that they feel kinship and ownership of because they're here in the
U S right. I don't know. I think we have an interesting decade ahead of us as these things
become more normalized and, um, it becomes less of a nerdy pursuit to, to actively like
them. Yeah. And, and there's, there's a, so many more like cryptid festivals popping up
just like, you get like squonk a Palooza, like one of, like, I know it's like a, like
a favorite, but like for the most part of that is the most not known cryptid to ever
exist. And it's, they're doing their second year now, like, and then, but there's also
like, it did, it took a while for a Loveland frogman to even get his own festival. Yeah.
And it's going to happen more and more. I mean, there's a, a lizard escape or swamp
museum that's popping up. And so, you know, it's, it's, you're going to see more and more
of these things popping up. And my hope is that, you know, Metazoo again, it'll be like
a lightning rod to that movement, which is why we're focusing so much more on cryptid
related conventions next year. But I'm telling you, man, like the past three years were just
the spark and like we're about to see like a raging fire when it comes to this stuff.
Full ignition pretty much. Yeah. I mean, think about like your, your, your podcast is at
the forefront of like you had your podcast a year before voice critical had his, right?
And so you're really one of those first movers. I wouldn't go that far. No, I mean, but you
are, I mean, cause the thing about like this, like it doesn't have critical mass appeal
yet. Right. Yeah. But it's voice critical mass appeal, but it's getting there because
of people like most critical because it was like Metazoo. And, and so I really just view
Metazoo now that I'm seeing this larger movement, I actually view Metazoo and my inclination
to use cryptids as the center of my game as more of a symptom of a larger movement that
I was seeing rather than a cause of it. If that makes sense. Yeah. No, that totally tracks.
Yeah. So, but when you recognize that you recognize that it's not Metazoo, like it's
not Metazoo's, I wouldn't say responsibility, but like this movement would happen regardless
of whether or not Metazoo existed. Metazoo is a byproduct of that larger movement that's
happening, which is interesting to think about. And if Metazoo didn't come up with the TCG,
like if we weren't the first ones to do it in 2020, somebody else, yeah, someone would
have done it. Yeah. But do you, do you, do you think that since there's more of a appreciation
and understanding for cryptids and folklore, like does that weigh more on your decision
to try and make the lore of the actual cryptids and folklore more on the forefront of the
lore of Metazoo just so that people don't come into it thinking they're going to get
the full story? It's certainly something that is top of mind for me, but you know, just
by virtue of the fact that all these stories are disjointed, right? I mean, Amorica is
a massive hunk of land, right? Yeah. People don't realize that. It's deceivingly big.
It's huge. And as that you have all these disjointed stories. And so in order to write
anything that's cohesive, I have to connect them in ways that, you know, what I call fiction
glue. And so they're kind of like Lord of the Rings. I'm going to be taking certain
liberties, but I'm also going to be expanding the story. And, you know, people might conflate
the story of Metazoo with Squonk, for instance, and what we tell with the actual story of
Squonk. There isn't much of with the actual story of Squonk. Exactly. Right. It's like
it was like one page in a book and there's barely any information on it. It's a paragraph
on it. Like it's. Yeah. You look at the original Fearsome Critter books, right? By I think
Henry Tyson or anyway. So yeah, it was William T. Cox and yeah, Henry T. Cox, Henry T. Cox
and William. William T. Cox. Published in like what 1911 in 1908 or something like that.
But they're each year, some critter gets half a page and then a really cool illustration
and a really cool illustration. Right. And so, you know, if if I can keep those stories
alive by expanding on them a little bit, but always point back to the original stories
that I'm thinking about a few different ways of doing that. Right. Like I want to put out
an atlas. So like a book of maps that have the original crypt of locations on them. It's
not connected to Metazoo lore. That would be fucking dope. But it'll be in Metazoo.
It'll be the Metazoo atlas. Right. Yeah. But you know, but it'll have so you can reinforce
the actual history and use the fictional history as a way of trumpeting, of championing that
that original story. Yeah. That's amazing. We're coming up on an hour. I don't know if
you want to do one more question or one more question to close it out. All right. So I
don't know if it's true or not, but I think I read it somewhere that when you were in
college, you used to go into the bunny man tunnel to try and hunt for the bunny man.
I went out there a few times with my friends. So my that wasn't the question. That was just
me making sure that it so that did actually happen. Right. Yeah. All right. Have you have
you ever personally had like a paranormal UFO or like cryptic encounter yourself? I've
had a few paranormal experiences. The most recent one being I was. It's gonna be funny.
I was I was cooking. I was cooking pasta for a friend of mine. We were drinking wine and
cooking pasta in my my apartment is in a building that was built in 1903. So it's old as all
hell. Right. Like, yeah. As far as like old buildings in New York City that are so up
and functional and that kind of stuff. It's it's it's one of the few. Right. So we're
cooking pasta and I I was like, you know, the the friend was Italian and I said, I'm
going to don't don't tell your mother this, but I'm going to break the pasta, the dry
pasta and so it fits in the bowl in the in the pan. My friend laughed. And then after
in the midst of that, right in between us, we heard a woman's voice say, no, that's not
how you do it. And at first and at first I thought that she said that. And I was like,
do you just say that? And she's like, no, but I just heard that. And then she repeated
what the the voice said in between. And we're sufficiently creeped out. Let's just say that.
I would have bailed out of it like, fuck this. I'm going to leave all my stuff and I'm just
going to move. The other thing that has happened in this apartment is I used to see it, but
I don't see any more is I used to see out of the corner of my eye whenever I was in
the kitchen a what I could only describe as like a black cat running out of the kitchen
into like the dark hallway that's like leads to my laundry room. And but I haven't seen
that in like over a year. So you have a ghost cat. You know, but it's funny because I got
my my new dog, Raven, is a pitch black, long haired, made dachshund. Yeah. And she does
exactly that. So I don't know. I don't know if 80 percent of the time I'm seeing Raven
or another 20 percent. I'm actually seeing the little ghost cat and I'm just like, oh,
it must be Raven. But you know, there's a chance now that it could still be happening.
You're just unsure. Exactly. I had another friend who who said when we had a slumber
party, the friend was very in tune with things and the friend said, you have four spirits
that live in your apartment. Oh, no. I'm like and my friend was like in there in the bedroom
like right now. And I was like, oh, dope. I'm going to ask him to leave, though. I'm like,
thank you. Yes, please. Don't worry. They're all friendly. They're just checking in on
us. I'm like, oh, great. I still don't want that. Yeah. Privacy, please. So. So, yeah,
there are a few instances in this apartment, but I've never gotten the bad feeling about
anything. Really. That's the extent of paranormal experiences I've had have all been in this
apartment, but none of them have been like malicious or or outright scary. Interesting
that the voice, though, that would have fucking sent me. I explained the way. I think it's
funny that like I'm imagining this like small Italian grandma ghost being like, oh, yeah,
that's not how you do the pasta. 100 percent what I was just kind of like hunched over
a little bit, just like a full on Nana. Basically, you never break the pasta. And you know, that
made me crack up. Right. But then also another explanation is the building has a bunch of
old intercom systems like I hear. Just listening into you or something like that. But like
I hear no joke. I hear like a 1920s phone that rings somewhere in the building. And
it's like an old, old type of ring. And so like these things are all still set up. Like
in my kitchen, there is an old intercom system from like the 40s that, you know, I mean,
there might even be like communication tubes. I forgot what they're called. But like, oh,
like the old like like for like servants and stuff like that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Either
way, that's still a nightmare, man. So creepy. So yeah, no. So so yeah, that's that's kind
of my experience. I have a few other ones, but they're not nearly as cool as that. And
they took place when I was younger. But we'll leave it at that. We'll leave that for another
interview with you. Yeah, no, those were good. Shit. All right, man. Well, I appreciate you
coming on. I really do. And I appreciate you putting up with my super horse disgusting
voice. I'm sure I'm not pleasant to look at right now. Hey, man, I have my camera off
for a reason. All right. Well, is there is there anything you want to plug or say before
we end this? No, I think I think we got it all. I appreciate you taking the time. And
let's let's do this more often. Let's do this. Like every time a set comes out, we'll we'll
do something like this and talk about the war and have a good time. Sounds good to me,
man. All right. Thank you so much for coming on. You want to say bye to everyone? All right.
Bye everybody. Thanks for loving Metazoo and hope to see the the Cryptid conventions next
year. It's going to be a really cool convention circuit. Hell yeah.