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Happy Holidays. It's the time of year I want to bundle up in my big sweater with a hot cocoa even though it's like 80 degrees here in LA and listen to a podcast that's even more chilling than cold weather. Here's one of my favorites, the Tape Library. They present real stories of the strange, paranormal and unexplained. And they have got a brand new episode. We're Happy Holidays. Go. Thank you very much. You might recall this year on Conspiracy Theories we explored some stories from Antarctica, but we didn't travel to the other.
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End of the globe.
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Turns out it's just as mysterious. This episode from the Tape Library is a chilling exploration of the Arctic's most haunting legends, from phantom trappers to the doomed Franklin expedition as they uncover the truth behind the frozen North's darkest mysteries. We'll be back with new episodes of Conspiracy Theories next week on January 7th. And thanks again for an incredible 2025.
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Welcome to the Tape Library. Think of this as a slow paced exploration of the dark and the unexplained, the terrifying and the unbelievable. A place where we explore the real life cases that defy what could be possible as well as the folklore that carries through our history. I like to call it cosy horror, a safe place for your mind to think about the terrors that lay just beyond our perception of reality. Just don't stare into the darkness for too long and you'll be fine. I hope you enjoy tonight's show.
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Spectrovision Radio.
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Cold. It's so cold it would freeze the nuts off a jeep. What had happened? The pain blinded him, taking a few moments to come back to his senses. He had been walking through a snowstorm, desperately trying to get back to shelter, when something gave way underfoot and the man went tumbling down a hill. He hadn't even been able to see due to the thick white powder. He didn't scream until he looked down. The bone was protruding from his leg, the snow around him soaked to deep crimson. No one knew he was here, he was so far north. The man understood the dire situation he was in, but his body was already beginning to fail him. Consciousness came and went and the world around him became hazy, like slipping in and out of a dream. He couldn't even string words together when he felt a hand reaching around his body and hoisting him out of the snow. He remembered something tall, covered in fur. A man, but he couldn't see his face. The sounds of dogs racing through the blizzard before the darkness returned to him. The next thing the man knew he was waking up in a wooden room lit only by a gas lamp. His leg had been set by the local doctor. A man named George sat across the room from him. He was the owner of the small village inn and had been the one to find the man. The man thanked George, but he wondered what George had been doing so far out in the wilderness like that. But George clarified that he hadn't found him there. George had found him on the steps of his bar, unconscious and caked in blood. Confused, the man began to explain the fractured memories he had of a man in pure white furs rescuing him. Of the dogs. How strangely he couldn't recall the man's face. Why would he rescue him just to leave him on the steps of a bar? George's eyes went wide as he heard the story. Then he went silent. After a few moments, George said to the man, you met him then? Esau. Esau, the man replied. He asked if he was local. The man was keen to thank his saviour. But George just shook his head before telling the man, you can't thank Esau. He's dead. He's been dead for a long, long time. George hesitated, but he knew he owed the man an explanation. So he began to tell him the story of Esau. Esau was a trapper who had operated in the area many decades prior. But he found it difficult to find enough animals to hunt and skin, especially with the amount he was making for each one. So he turned to another line of work, producing moonshine in a small forest in the north of Labrador, Canada. But Esau was not a popular figure in the local area. Often drunk and violent, he would be chased out of town once his skins and moonshine had been sold, leaving countless sick and dead people in his wake due to the poisonous nature of his homemade booze. Eventually it all caught up on him. One community turned on him and informed the authorities of this man who was brewing moonshine in the forest. He was arrested and spent some time in jail. When he was released, he had nothing to his name, but soon started up his old tricks. This time, however, he managed to collect a handful of huskies. He would then dress himself in all white fur and travel quickly from town to town, selling what he could before disappearing back off into the wilderness. But one day, as the police gave chase, Esau was forced into a snowstorm that he would not come back out from. Someone did hear Esau in the howling winds. A distant voice could be heard screaming for help, pleading, saying he didn't want to go to hell. He would do Anything not to go to hell. But with the viciousness of the storm and his camouflaged white furs, they couldn't find him. Eventually, the screams went silent. Esau was found weeks later, frozen solid. He had been thrown from his dog sled and left injured. In the freezing temperatures, he never stood a chance. But that didn't mean he wasn't seen again. It started off with people just hearing the sounds of dogs running past, often when the weather got bad. But soon people would see it. A team of dogs running into the distance. At times, people would report a man dressed all in white furs riding them. But what was strange is that the sled and the dogs never left any tracks. When people would call out to the man, he would never respond. Some even said it seemed like they could almost see through him, as if he wasn't quite there. Initially, it was all chalked up to a mirage or local superstition. But over the years, more and more reports kept getting made, the most intriguing of which were those who actually interacted with the silent trapper. People would report becoming lost on their own dogs in the snow when they would see a man in white who seemed to almost lead them home before vanishing. Others left injured out in the middle of the wilderness, claimed that this man would appear out of nowhere and take them to the nearest town. These claims seemed to originate in Labrador, but became widely reported further north into Nunavut and deep into the Arctic Circle. The man sitting there listening to George wasn't the first, and he certainly wasn't the last. The locals believed that Esau's final plea was answered, that he wasn't sent to hell. Instead, he was kept in Arwell, left to make amends for his wicked actions in life by saving those who find themselves lost in the snowy abyss. Dare to make sure they don't suffer the same fate he did. They call him the Phantom Trapper and he is just one of the horrifying legends of the Arctic.
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Good evening. The festive period is well underway and I wanted to do a Christmas special of sorts. So I thought this would be a good chance to have another entry into our horrifying legend series and explore some creepy tales to the north. Yes, I will be playing it a little fast and loose for what stories we are counting as connection connected to the Arctic in the North Pole. But it's Christmas. Let it go. In case you haven't listened to one of these before, these are episodes where I take a look at a specific area and we get into the various mysteries and legends connected to that place. Obviously, when dealing with the Arctic, we're actually looking at a wide range of different countries and cultures, but I think that's what makes this one so fun. We're firmly in the world of legends and folklore here. While there are some stories I'm going to talk about here that maybe are a little more verifiable, a lot of it is more stories that have been passed through the years by word of mouth. That being said, I think I've put together quite a nice selection here, covering a wide range of the strange and the unexplainable. So hopefully this episode will have something for everyone. From Inuit legends that I will undoubtedly butch the names of, to haunted hotels, tragic events, to a giant cat that eats people on Christmas Eve. Get yourself a warm drink, dim the lights and get comfortable. These are the horrifying legends of the North Pole for one last time this year. Welcome to the tape library. In the farthest reaches of the Northern hemisphere, there is a land where the world seems to pause. A place where the sun vanishes for months at a time, leaving only darkness, drifting snow and the howling of wind moving across empty ice. For centuries, this polar wilderness lay beyond the boundaries of the known world. Early maps marked it out with A blank space. Sailors spoke of waters that crushed ships like eggshells. Explorers described night so silent they felt as though sound itself had frozen in the air. And indigenous communities told stories of creatures born from ice and spirits that wandered the wastes, unable to find their way home. Due to its harshness, the Arctic became a proving ground. Men chased glory in these lands and seas. Driven by the promise of new passages, new discoveries begin. But history remembers those men for different reasons. For their disappearances, for their madness, for their stories of darkness. This is a land where reality thins, where anything can happen. Most people growing up hearing about the North Pole as if it's a singular point at the top of the world. But in reality, there are two North Poles. The first is the geographic North Pole, the northernmost point in the planet. It's a fixed point, but the ice beneath it isn't. It sits in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, on drifting sea ice that shifts and cracks and reforms constantly. There is no land at the geographic North Pole, only water hidden under a frozen shell. The second is the magnetic North Pole, the point the compasses actually point towards. Unlike the geographic pole, the magnetic pole moves. It shifts. Historically, it's wandered through the Canadian Arctic. In recent years, it has been migrating rapidly towards Russia. Surrounding both poles is a vast boundary called the Arctic Circle, made up of at least parts of northern Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. And out in the middle of it all, thousands of kilometres of drifting ice, frigid seas and uninhabited islands. The Arctic is home to over 40 different groups of indigenous people, cultures who learned to thrive where others struggled simply to survive. And it was them who would tell stories of what lay in the darkness before any explorers showed up. The controversial American explorer Robert Peary made several expeditions to the Arctic around the turn of the 20th century, even claiming to have reached the North Pole in 1909, although this is disputed. As such, he was one of the first to report the strangeness of being in this vast, frozen world. Peary saw unexplained lights on the horizon during a polar night march that he described as a faint glow, like a lantern that hovered above the ice where no camp lay and no man could have stood, and saying that shapes would come and go on the horizon, wavering like living things. Likewise, Norwegian explorer Fridjof Nansen apparently reported strange sounds on his trip to the Arctic, saying he heard a sound of distant voices, a babble of indistinguishable words, as if the ice itself were speaking, and also describing a low metallic ringing that Started and ceased without calling. Then there was Roald Armandon, the first man to fly over the North Pole. Legend says that Armansen reported seeing tall human shaped silhouettes crossing frozen ground miles from any people. As well as strange lights in the sky. There were also claims decades later of Soviet drifting stations picking up voices on their radios. Something that could have easily been dismissed as interference. But seemingly something about the content of those voices seemed to unnerve countless radio operators. All of this could be explained. The various reports of the explorers encountering strange events have likely been twisted over time, their words misconstrued, or people simply putting their own spin on what they actually said. Equally, the strange sounds could be chalked up to the ice moving. The lights in the sky could be the northern lights. And of course, countless explorers in such draining missions have encountered mirages or full on hallucinations. But as I said, the people who were there long before any explorers have their own stories to tell. The Inuit people alone have countless creatures in their mythology that are said to stalk on the icy abyss of the Arctic. There is the Qalupalik, described as a green skinned figure, human shaped but wrong in every way. Its skin pale and rubbery. Long black hair that clings to its face, its fingers tapered into claws. Some stories say it wears an amayute, the traditional Inuit mother's parka with a large pouch on the back. The Qalupalik's goal is to steal children, often those that wander too close to the edge of the icy water. It will at times entice them towards it with a strange humming sound before reaching out of the black water to grab them. Some say it eats the children, others that it keeps them feeding off their energy from a long time. There is a piece of folklore about a grandmother who couldn't keep all the children fed, so she gave one up to the Kadu Palik. Then there is the Idliviri song, which might be one of the most terrifying mythological creatures I have ever learned about. There are a few different interpretations of this story. Some say it's actually a demonic creature that stalks the icy plain. Others say it lives in a world beyond our own, in a house in the sky that tests the recently deceased in a rather twisted manner. First, I'm going to go with the version that takes place in our reality, which is seemingly the lesser shared version. But God, is it creepy. The Idlir V re song approaches its victims by mocking their shadows. If a traveller walks across the ice and notices their shadow behaving strangely, moving when they're still lagging behind or contorting into shapes that make no sense. It is said that the Idler v? Ri song is close, and if the shadow begins to laugh, then the spirit is already upon you. The laughter is its calling card. The Idlir vi? Re song is sometimes called the Laughing Spirit or the Shadow Jester. Its laughter is said to scrape at a person's thoughts, eating away at their sense of direction, their memories, their understanding of time. Those who hear it too long may wander aimlessly until they collapse in the snow. In some stories, the Idler vi risong appears as a human figure wearing tattered clothing, its face hidden behind a distorted grin. In others, it's simply a shadow with no source, stretching impossibly long across the ice. Some say it can mimic the voices of loved ones. Others that it whispers commands in the wind, urging travellers to stray from the safe paths or walk out onto thin ice. The most commonly reported version of its appearance, though, is said to be like a clown with its nose turned on its side. The spirit's purpose is to cause disorientation, confusion and eventual doom. It delights in mischief that turns lethal, tricking hunters into chasing phantom animals, leading travelers in circles for hours, or guiding them towards deadly crevices hidden beneath new snow. But the most chilling part of the legend is this. If the ID Lir v? Re song laughs at you, you must not laugh back. To do this is to invite the spirit into your mind. Elders warn that anyone who returns from such an encounter, if they return at all, may be changed. Their behaviour becomes unpredictable, their thoughts scattered, as though part of their soul has been replaced with something cold, something alien and amused by suffering. I'm unsure if that version of the being is possibly a twisted retelling of a few different entities in the folklore, though, or even a modern reimagining of the idli of Iri song. The more commonly told afterlife version of the Idler Veree song is just as twisted, though. The story goes that after death, you may find yourself in the clown's home in the sky. There it keeps many dogs. When the newly deceased person arrives, the clown begins to dance and repeatedly chants that it's looking for food for its dogs. If the person laughs at the clowns dancing, the clown guts them, feeding their intestines to the dog. If they don't laugh, they are spared and allowed to move on. Interestingly, this idea of cruel tests in the afterlife is something that we have seen in legends surrounding the Great Lakes as well. In prior episodes, a little Less terrifying is the Tornit, a race of extremely large, strong, human like creatures that apparently lived in the eastern area of the Arctic, apparently predating the arrival of the Inuit people. Despite their size and strength, they were said to be timid beings. The Tornit were said to be scared of the Inuits and one of the reasons given for this was a story about a boat a Taunit admired. An Inuit manned newly made kayak, a finely crafted vessel far superior to anything the Torn it could build. Wanting it for himself, the Tornit stole the kayak while the Inuit hunter slept. When the hunter discovered his missing kayak, he went after the Tornit. A confrontation followed and the Inuit man killed the Tornit. This event, according to oral tradition, frightened the remaining Tornit so deeply that they fled the region entirely. It is said the Tornit moved north into more remote uninhabited lands, some claiming that they still wander the far Arctic wilderness, avoiding human contact.
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There is also a legend from Greenland known as the Ki Vittok, which can mean mountain walker. These are often human like apparitions that are seen wandering on the horizon, said to be the spirits of those those who have been cast out from their communities. Some versions of the story are simply that people who have decided or been forced to leave the world behind and go out on their own. Some believe, however, these are vengeful spirits who can be blamed for misfortune or in some retellings, will come into settlements at night and take people away to eat them. We're going to put a pin in this legend of the wandering spirit for now though, as it will play an important part of our final story tonight. One of the most famous ghost stories of the Arctic region happened in Canada's Northwest Territories. Augustus Piers was a fur trader who was stationed at Fort McPherson. For some reason, Piers had written down that if anything were to happen to him during his time there, he did not want to be buried at Fort McPherson. Sure enough, Augustus did pass away while working there, and his supervisor ignored the man's wishes, burying him there anyway. Years passed before Piers widow got in touch and demanded her husband's remains be moved, something that the man's supervisor, Roderick MacFarlane, reluctantly agreed to do. Chillingly, when the men exhumed Piers body, he looked exactly the same as he had when they buried him. His body was transferred into a sturdier coffin to survive the trip to Fort Good Hope, the location his widow had requested her husband be transferred to. A trip that would take weeks, if not months. Just one week before the end of their trip, though, the men were sitting around a campfire when they heard a voice coming from the darkness, warning them that wolves were approaching. Sure enough, the glowing eyes were seen in the treeline. Luckily, the men were able to scare the wolves off, but they were left with the chilling realization that none of them had been the one to shout out about the approaching wolves. What's more, several of the men became convinced that the voice they heard sounded exactly like Augustus Pears. But they had been out there in the wilderness for weeks. Surely it was just the elements playing tricks on their minds. But just three days later, it happened again. This time, the voice warned of an approaching wolverine. The animals seemed to be being drawn towards the body the men were carrying. Roderick MacFarlane and his men finally arrived at Fort Good Hope with Piers body still intact, and the man was finally laid to rest. The night before their return trip, McFarlane was awoken by something. He wasn't sure what, but when he rolled over in his bed, he saw, standing there in his tent, as clear as day, Augustus Piers. MacFarlane let out a yell which awoke his roommate, who too saw Piers staring down at them. Both men pulled their covers over their heads, so overcome with fear that they were reduced to the actions of small children. But when they finally dared to peek back out, they realized he was gone. The men set off the following morning for the long journey back, hoping that Augustus Peers wouldn't be coming with them. This time I was searching for a good haunted house story from the Arctic and stumbled upon the story of a cabin in Lapland. The story goes that a young mother and her child were kidnapped by bandits and murdered in the remote cabin. Various people have used the cabin for shelter over the years and reported very similar events. The sound of wood being chopped, but with no one there. Items thrown around a room by an invisible presence, shadowy figures spotted through the windows, and a general sense of unease, like whoever stays there is being watched at all times. Another story claims that there was a Postman in the 1930s who would often seek refuge from the harsh winter nights there. He became witness to the phenomenon time and time again. Eventually, keen to get to the bottom of it, he searched the cabin from top to bottom. It is said that he found a skeleton in the cabin's attic, but no identification has ever been made, leaving the mystery of this strange little cabin in Lapland as just another legend. But there is a hotel just on the border of the Arctic Circle that has plenty of paranormal stories, as well as one of the strangest reported apparitions I think I've come across since I've been covering these stories. The Arctic Spring Hotel is situated not far from Fairbanks, Alaska. Built on a hot spring and opened in 1918, the hotel was originally designed as a place for the local gold miners to use. But over the years, countless weird reports were made. Workers would hear strange whistling sounds at night. Doors would open and close on their own. Footsteps would be heard on the stairs when no one was there, and the chandelier would swing from side to side even when there was no wind. The most persistent claims, though, were of people seeing a phantom woman in the library situated in one of the upper floors. Many claimed to see her when just passing the hotel. Just this strange woman looking out the window. A woman that no one could identify. The place changed hands many times over the years and eventually shut down in 2002. But while the owner searched for a new person to purchase it, he hired a caretaker named Bill to look after the hotel. When Bill took the job as caretaker, the strange activity was already well known. Doors didn't just close. They slammed hard enough to shake the door frames. Footsteps wandered the halls and staircases all hours of the day. Rugs were found pulled up from the floor and propped neatly against the walls, despite no one being nearby to move them to almost everyone else, the hotel felt hostile. But Bill insisted that the spirits left him alone. More than that, he believed that one of them kept him company. On the long, lonely days. He would misplace tools or small objects, only to find them returned to where he needed them, as if something unseen were helping him. His daughter, however, wasn't convinced. To her, the activity was terrifying. She feared her father had grown far too comfortable with whatever shared the building with him. Him. A fact that was backed up by Bill, who said he believed that whatever was in the hotel seemed to like him, but that it seemed to have a strong dislike of any women that entered. The most infamous figure tied to the hotel was a towering entity more than 7ft tall. At least five different people were reported seeing it over the years. That Bill was the caretaker figure, each describing the same strange detail. It had three heads. The descriptions varied slightly. Some claimed it had feathers along its head or body. Others said that one of the faces resembled a monkey. Another describes it as cloaked and reaper like. But every witness agreed on two key points. It had three heads stacked vertically and it radiated anger. Bill himself claimed to have encountered it. He estimated it at 7 and a half feet tall, with a strange combination of features. Feathers and a monkey like head and long arms. Oddly, he believed it wasn't malicious. To him, the apparition was simply part of the hotel. But other witnesses disagreed, and for at least one investigator, the creature's intentions felt anything but welcoming. Much later, psychic medium Amy Allen visited the hotel as part of the TV show the Dead Files and reported a few strange visions involving the creature. She claimed that there were multiple spirits in the hotel, but that many of those spirits warned her about a large, dangerous man haunting the building. She believed that this warning referred to the same three headed entity. Amy also felt pushed back from certain areas of the hotel, Especially the basement. She described the feeling as a deliberate attempt to frighten her away, Claiming that it was in the basement when the hotel eventually went up for sale. The owner blamed the swirling ghost stories for scaring off potential buyers. And although he publicly downplayed the haunting, privately, he admitted that he believed Bill's accounts. After all, Bill had lived with the spirits longer than anyone. To this day, the hotel remains closed. We're going to end with two rather dark topics tonight, but I just wanted to quickly mention two pieces of Christmas related folklore I stumbled upon while researching this. Both come from Iceland, which I can hear you people typing away in the comments. Screaming is not in the Arctic Circle. However, due to one of its northernmost islands falling within the Arctic Circle, Iceland is still considered an arctic state. So you get to enjoy these two short bits of folklore. The first has a name that I won't even attempt to pronounce, but luckily it is also referred to as the Yule cat, which makes things easier. It's a massive and fearsome cat from Icelandic Christmas folklore, said to stalk the snowy countrysides during the holiday season. According to tradition, it eats anyone it finds who has not received new clothing before Christmas Eve. Or in a slightly less disturbing version, simply eats their Christmas food. Then there is Greyla and the Yule Lads, which is a fantastic band name. Gryler is a terrifying ogres from Icelandic folklore who dwells in the remote mountains, feared for her habit of hunting misbehaving children. Legends say she captures them in a massive sack, carrying them away to cook in a gigantic pot for her gruesome Christmas feast. She is also the mother of the 13 Yule lads, each a mischievous prankster who descends from the mountains one by one between December 12 and December 25. Originally, the lads were depicted as tormentors and kidnappers, each with a signature trick or mischief of their own. This has, however, transformed into a slightly less vicious take in modern day retellings. Today they are said to leave small gifts in the shoes of well behaved children or a rotten potato for those who have misbehaved. In some versions of the tales, the Yule Cat is said to be another of Guyla's minions. So if someone buys you a boring jumper or some socks this Christmas, this is a much more thoughtful gift than you may have first thought. Dave just saved you from being eaten by a giant Icelandic cat.
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Okay, that's the fun out the way. Let's end with two darker tales of the Arctic wilderness. One that is often dismissed as nothing more than a legend, and another that is one of the most infamous historical events to take place in the Arctic region. In the winter of 1930, a small Inuit village near Lake Angecuni in the far reaches of northern Quebec became the site of one of the most infamous mysteries of the Arctic. The story begins with Joe LaBelle, a trapper working in the region. On a routine trip, he stumbled upon the village. He expected to find the usual signs of life. Smoke rising from chimneys, children playing, dogs barking in the snow. But the village was silent. Lebel found the cabins completely abandoned. Personal belongings were left behind. Clothing, food was still hanging over fire pits. Even the sled dogs were still tethered outside, although they had since starved to death. There was no signs of struggle, no evidence of snowshoe tracks leading away, and no footprints that might explain the sudden disappearance of the entire community. All of the estimated 25 residents were gone. Then, at the outskirts of the village, Lebel stumbled upon something far more unsettling. A freshly dug up human grave. The stones that once encircled the burial lay perfectly in the place, undisturbed. Whatever had dug it up had not been an animal. A human hand had done this. Authorities were alerted, but by the time search parties arrived, the village had already been picked over by scavengers and the harsh Arctic environment had erased much evidence. Various theories have been proposed over the decades. Some suggest mass migration or relocation, though no nearby settlements recorded a sudden influx of new residents. Others speculate natural disaster, though there were no signs of avalanche, flooding or other catastrophic events. And then there are the paranormal explanations which have captured the imaginations of many. Legends speak of the village being claimed by spirits of the land or swept away by invisible forces in the vast, lonely Arctic. Some say the disappearance was the work of mysterious beings, perhaps connected to ancient Inuit tales of shadow people or wandering spirits, figures capable of whisking away humans into the frozen wilderness. But there are other stories of the police apparently spotting lights in the sky over the lake, of course, leading to the inevitable UFO theories. Strangely, this entire event is seemingly questionable. While it is firmly cemented into Arctic folklore. There are claims that it didn't even happen, that it's a fictional story that has been treated as true, especially pointing to a lack of documented police reports. But of course, some just point to this being a cover up, that something truly disturbing happened here, something that we are not allowed to know. They were among the remotest people on Earth. A small group of Inuits that made up a hunting camp on the edge of the Arctic plain of King William Island. Most of the men had gone on a hunting trip, leaving behind one elderly man and all the women and children. It was just a few hours after they left that of the women looked out across the horizon and saw shapes moving towards them. At first she thought it was the men returning, but then she realized they were dressed strangely, moving strangely. They looked like people, but not any type of people she had ever encountered. The terrified woman rushed back to her group. She was shaking, as she apparently said, and they're not Inuit, they're not human. Terrified, they all huddled together inside an igloo as the crunching sounds of footsteps got closer and closer. Eventually it was the older man who stepped forward and out into the snow to see what was outside. There he found a man, his eyes glossed over, stroking the outside of the igloo like he had never seen anything like it before. Acting as though he didn't even know the older Inuit man was there. Hesitantly, the older man reached out and touched the other man's face, seemingly trying to figure out if he really were human. He pulled his hand back quickly. The skin was cold. Too cold for any person, he believed. The man didn't react to the touch. He just stared at the igloo, lost in his own mind. Oral history suggests that the older man later described the experience in these words. I've never in all my life seen a devil or spirit. These things are not human. They had never encountered Europeans before, but even if they had, this man was not behaving in a way he would expect. He was too far gone, lost to insanity, poisoning and starvation. No longer in control of his own mind. He was just one of several men who was walking what historians would later describe as a death march. Just walking, walking across the endless ice with no hope of salvation. In the spring of 1840, 45, two ships, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, set sail from England under the command of Sir John Franklin, a veteran of Arctic exploration. Their mission was one of Britain's most ambitious. To navigate the final uncharted stretch of the Northwest Passage, a fabled maritime route linking the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans through the icy lake labyrinth of the Canadian Arctic. Aboard were 129 men prepared to endure the most extreme conditions the world had to offer, confident in their skills, their supplies and their technology at their disposal. But the promise of discovery would give way to one of the greatest mysteries in polar exploration. Once the ships entered the ice choked waters of King William island. They were not spotted again. No messages reached England of any updates. We can't be sure what's happened to them, but evidence and eyewitness testimony has at least pieced together some parts of the story. The expedition had become trapped in the ice, unable to proceed, and forced to try and wait out a winter that seemed to never want to end. Despite there being food supplies that could have lasted for up to five years, this ended up not being the case. Poor soldering on the cans apparently led to much of the food becoming spoilt. What's more, it also caused lead poisoning amongst many of the crew. Lady Jane Franklin, the wife of Sir John Franklin, was a constant source of pressure upon the Navy to go out and find the men. She would never give up, and understandably, so. Soon a series of search expeditions were launched. As the months and years passed, hope faded, replaced by speculation and dread. It was during this period of uncertainty that the first accounts of the strange and the uncanny began to surface. Inuit eyewitnesses reported seeing pale, skinny men wandering the ice, their clothing in tatters, their movements sluggish and unsteady, and their eyes hollowed by hunger and exhaustion. To those that saw them, these men appeared neither fully alive nor fully dead, drifting across the frozen landscapes like ghosts. Even as the men of Franklin's expedition wandered the frozen waste, the Inuit watched. Yet it appeared the crew, despite the Inuit's superior knowledge of hunting, shelter and survival, never fully integrated with them. It is believed that Victorian pride and an almost fatal adherence to their own methods kept them apart, not to mention a lack of ability to communicate with one another. While there is some evidence to suggest that some did try to seek refuge with the Inuits, it appears, by and large, they didn't. The men clung to the remnants of their ships, to supplies that were slowly failing. They had been trained to rely on technology, rations and procedure, believing if they stuck to their ways, they would come out of this alive. By the time some made attempts to approach or follow the Inuit, the Arctic had already stripped them of their strength and clarity. Scurvy, starvation, cold and lead poisoning had hollowed their bodies and dulled their minds. Small groups broke away, wandering across King William island in a desperate, disorientated march. And it was during these wanderings that the Arctic itself seemed to claim them back home. The mystery captured the Victorian imagination. As hope of rescue waned, some in England turned to spiritualism and the popular practice of attempting to communicate with the dead. Seances were held in parlors and drawing rooms, and mediums claimed to receive messages. From the lost sailors, the communications were often cryptic. There were visions of men trapped in ice, drifting ships, of whispered messages. But they fed a growing narrative that Franklin's men were reaching out from beyond the grave or somehow still alive and sending messages through some sort of mental ability that we just didn't understand. Several expeditions were launched to try and find the Franklin party, with little luck. While several of these expeditions did engage with the Inuit people, their claims were largely dismissed. When reports came in that the Inuit people had seen the men and claimed that the survivors had been engaging in cannibalism, the English Victorian society would not accept such a thing were even possible. While by this point they could accept the men were likely dead, they did not believe the claims that they had been eating one another, with Charles Dickens himself famously dismissing it as, in his words, the vague babble of savages. But years later, various bodies were found. Remains showed signs of starvation and lead poisoning, and, sure enough, in some cases, cannibalism. It seemed in many cases, the hands, feet and heads were removed from the bodies before they were eaten, suggesting that even in this dire situation, the group struggled with the idea of eating one another, removing anything that would remind them that what they were cooking was a person, reducing them simply to meat. Throughout the years, various skeletons, belongings and remains have been discovered. Graves that were found in 1850 were actually exhumed in 1986. When the bodies were dug up, they were found in a terrifyingly well preserved state. I won't include those photos here for obvious reasons, but if you wish, you can see them online. These are images that will stay with you, though. In a disturbing echo, the summer of 1881 saw Lt. Greely lead the Lady Franklin Bay expedition into the far reaches of the Arctic, a mission named in honor of Lady Jane Franklin, the widow of Sir John Franklin. For a time, the expedition seemed to proceed smoothly. Yet the Arctic is indifferent to human ambition. Relief ships scheduled to resupply the men failed to reach them due to impassable ice, leaving the expedition trapped and isolated. By 1883, starvation and disease had begun to decimate the crew. Scurvy and frostbite claimed the weak, while hunger gnawed relentlessly at those who remained. In a desperate attempt to survive, Greely led his men southward, towards the anticipated rendezvous point with a rescue party. The journey was brutal. Temperatures plunged, storms raged, and ice and snow made travel slow and perilous. Supplies ran out entirely. By the time rescuers arrived in 1884, only seven men remained alive, with one dying shortly after rescue. They were frail, frostbitten and mentally scarred by their ordeal. Their recovered journals detailed the relentless suffering and the psychological torment of watching their friends perish while trapped in a frozen wasteland. The remaining survivors were treated as heroes upon return, but a dark cloud hung over it when it appeared there was evidence that the men had begun to engage in cannibalism. Something that the survivors denied passionately. But going back to the original Franklin expedition, eventually the ships were found. In 2014, HMS Erebus was found submerged, remarkably preserved in the icy waters. Two years later, HMS Terror was located resting in near pristine condition. The Terror was strangely found 92km away from where it had apparently been abandoned, chillingly in a place that had been named terror bay some 100 years prior, due to it being one of the locations the ill fated ship was said to have explored. Even today, the mystery of what exactly happened to these men is being pieced together. It becomes hard to see discern what elements of their story are backed up by evidence and what is folklore. But it does seem that if the claims of the Inuit groups who encountered the Franklin expedition had been taken more seriously, maybe it wouldn't have taken so long for these discoveries to be made. Artifacts that have been found throughout the years seem to suggest that at least some of the men walked for hundreds of miles, lost in the wilderness, starving, unable to find civilisation, unable to communicate with the rare people they did spot. It's hard not to imagine that if they hadn't succumbed to madness from the lead poisoning, then being lost in the wilderness for so long would have pushed them over the edge. Staggering through the snow, off on the horizons. Much like the fabled one group of Inuits claimed to come into contact with two men in what would have been Canada in the mid to late 1850s. After being shown pictures, they identified at least one of the men as Captain Crozier of the HMS Terror. If they were correct about this, Crozier and this other man had been walking and surviving hundreds of miles across years and still were not able to find rescue. Their final whereabouts are still unknown. It's hard not to see the Arctic as a place of mystery. Undoubtedly this is a place of great power. Many believe that there is something truly mystical about the place, that this really is a place, place where reality thins, where man is not meant to go. They might be right. But if that power is truly something beyond our understanding, or if it's simply the overwhelming power of nature, well, that's for you to decide. Maybe these stories we tell are just a way to rationalise the horror that the natural world can bring, a way to paint it as a evil, when in reality it's just indifferent to us. Either way, there are things hidden in the snow that we are not meant to encounter. That's all for this entry into the tape library. I really enjoyed putting this one together. Hopefully it's a good mix of terrifying and fun and a nice way to see in the festive period. I still have one final final episode of Night Drive Paranormal to bring you, but for the tape library at least that's it for 2025. I'm taking a short break to enjoy the Christmas period then I have a non tape library related project I need to finish up so I won't be back with you all until the second half of January. Before we wrap up tonight, I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported the show over 2025. This has been another insane year. Year one that has seen the show branch out beyond just YouTube and even saw it end up being in the top 1% of most listened to video podcasts on Spotify, which is something I couldn't possibly imagine happening as such. A lot of new people have found the show over the last 12 months, so welcome to all of you and I hope you stick around into 2026 for those who have been here longer. Thank you so much. Without you all, this is just me sitting in a room talking to myself about ghosts. There's always a lot of up and downs when you make something like this, so you have no idea how much I appreciate it when I see familiar usernames popping up in the comments month after month. I've got the first handful of episodes for 2026 planned out and we've got a real wintery theme to it all, so I think that will be a lot of fun. Enjoy the festive period if you celebrate it, and I hope to see you all back here for 2026 for more stories of the strange and the unexplained. Until next year my friends. Pleasant dreams. 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