← Haunted Cosmos
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- [00:00]
Ben
This episode is sponsored by gray toad tallow. Pure and natural nourishment for all skin types.
- [00:06]
Brian
In this episode of Haunted Cosmos, we discover that Germans are the goats of naming things and that the reptilian semi dragon cyclopean cryptid being that haunts the woods of Maryland is the result of people who won't stop fornicating. There are two creatures that come to us out of the lore of the Germanic peoples. The Lindwyrm and the Druid. These are their stories. First, the Lindwyrm. At the beginning of the Middle Ages, the the land around the lake, now known as Werthersea in Austria, was remote and wild. To the north and south were thickly wooded mountains. To the east and west were marsh valleys also covered by forests of trees. And the darkness of the overwhelming forest was a good indication of what you might call the soul of the land. For its entire history up to that point, it had only known the falsehood of paganism. It was a wilderness both physically and spiritually. A remote region where the very wind seemed shadowy and malevolent. Much of the time, the prevailing light during day and night, especially under the canopy of leaves, came only from oil lamps carried by the odd traveler or rare residents on the edge of that old lake. Beyond those lamps, it was gray and solemn. Clouds frequented the sky overhead during the day. At night, the moon's pale silver was less illuminating and more afflicting. It drove the mind mad. The land and its people sat under this divine malediction for countless years. And as each year passed, the conditions grew only worse. But then, far away on a hill east of the Mediterranean, a man died on a cross. Following that fateful event, the whole world changed within a few generations. The wild lands of Werthersea, though still wild and strange, were nearly ready to be brought to order. Thus was the state of things at the beginning of our tale. In a less hostile place, the Duchy of Carinthia, a man rose to power. His name was Herman. Upon taking his seat, he focused on expanding the commercial power of his duchy. He had visions of his humble province becoming a bulwark of profit and prosperity by the end of his office. His dreams were not unfounded either. It was a time of explosion for the West. Technology was advancing with the victorious church, and new opportunities for trade followed in the wake of both. But he faced a problem. The only option for expanding trade was via the dreaded Lake Worthersee and the enchanted forest that surrounded her. He would need to settle that place if he had any real chance of Success. Apart from the practical difficulty of clearing and ordering the marshland and mountains, Herman's attention was reserved for the more preternatural threat that was said to linger at the mouth of the lake. Travelers had come through for years, telling stories of a terrible monster that lived in the marsh. But it was not only travelers who told the story. Migrants from the marshlands, rural folks unused to the life of Christendom cities, confirmed the dreaded rumor. A beast of horror and violence that surpassed imagination.
- [03:46]
Ben
It was.
- [03:47]
Brian
They said that it always cloaked itself in shadow, but had eyes that glowed beet red. Its shriek stung the ears of anyone within a few leagues of it. Some even claimed to have seen the leftovers of its aggression. Maimed corpses of humans and horses and deer, all of whom must have suffered in insane torment before their death, by the look of their remains. Herman considered these stories. They frightened him. Of that there is no doubt. But after years of trying to find some other way to enrich his people, he resigned himself to the truth that the monster, who the townsfolk had named Lindwyrm Winding Dragon, guarded the only possible way. Thus, he plotted the demise of the monster. The duke enlisted the help of brave knights and city engineers, all volunteers aware of the risk. With a cache of food, clothes, weapons and lumber to build a shelter from Hermann, the team began the short but arduous trek through the uncharted badlands of their country. A journey of only six miles took the stout men five days to complete, with no trails and few beasts of burden to carry the load over the terrain. But finally they were faced with the wall of darkness, muggy air and black trees that guarded the way to the home of the Lindwyrm and the shore of the Werther Sea. As a first order of business, the knights went on a scouting party to find where the monster lodged. It was on that trip that the men saw firsthand what they had only heard tell of before. They unanimously agreed that the stories had not done justice to the grotesque horror of the thing. Its serpentine body was as thick as the thickest hornbeam tree. Its two legs were heavy with muscles whose sinews could be descried even beneath the layer of scale. Its wings were dark and strong. They stretched out wide enough to bend the trees away anytime the monster beat them. But the mouth. The mouth was the thing that set them shaking. It was a gaping maw far too big for the already massive monster, that dripped with blood as black as night. Ribbons of viscera from its previous meal hung from the teeth made visible by the constant gape. And a steady, low rumbling growl filled the air and rang in the ears of the men. At every exhale, they caught sight of the beast, and it sent them running back to the small fort the engineers had built. There, they told the men how hopeless a venture it was, how none of them seasoned veterans of medieval war, could stand before such a great thing. That night, the camp was dour. Few of the men spoke. Most of them were content to stare into one of the several fires they had lit around their fort. But as everyone slept, one man stayed awake, unable to rest his mind. He was an engineer whose name is lost to history. He could not reconcile his faith with his circumstances. Had God not charged him to take dominion in the world? Had man not tamed all the beasts? He wondered if perhaps this monster was no mere animal. He wondered if anyone could ever tame it, should that be the case? But in a moment of clarity, he decided to take up the shield of faith and act as though he could not be stopped, even if a power of hell stood in his way. He bent his will toward deception and shrewdness, and by the first light of morning, had his plan. He presented it to the other men. They were skeptical, but he called them to action. He called them to honor and love for their home. He answered their objections and made his scheme clear until they finally agreed to try his idea. Thus it was that the engineers set to work building a massive gallows with a great iron hook hanging from its top. The knights then raided a field not far from the marsh and stole a fat bull from the already thin herd. By the morning of the fourth day, the trap was ready. All morning they labored to push the gallows into position until it finally straddled both banks in a steep section of a creek that fed the Werther Sea. Then it was time for the blood work. They slit the throat of the bull and drove the iron hook into its chest until it hung high above the water by its ribs. It twitched there for many hours before finally going still. In those hours, the men waited in the COVID of shadow and trees for their foe to take the bait. With daylight fading, their wait finally ended. The beast lumbered through the bog, leaving a ditch in its wake. It smelled the dead bull and seemed to marvel at its odd placement for a moment before chomping down on it. The engineers sprang out from behind the gallows and cranked on a wheel to set the hook. And the hook was set well. Knights charged from all sides with lances and arrows and covered the monster and wounds. Its hide was thick, but not impenetrable. With the hook still lodged in the roof of its mouth, it let out a terrible shriek that stung their ears. But it was a throe of death. Within the hour, the lindworm was done squirming, and by the first light of the following morning, the men were done dismembering it. In the following weeks, Herman saw to it that the swamp was drained. He built levees around the perimeter to keep the rich land safe from future flooding. On that side, a port city for Worthersee was built. Klagenfurt. The name means ford of lament. To this day it is a prominent city in Austria. The Druid's lore differs slightly but will sound familiar to listeners of this show.
- [09:28]
Ben
She.
- [09:29]
Brian
Yes, the Druid is always a she is a night witch. Legend places her in the land of Bavaria before any human settlers arrived. She acts at the behest of bitter, hate filled souls who operate beneath her shadow. Her attacks unfold not in the waking world, but in the realm of spirit and thought. Long ago, a man walked a muddy path through a Bavarian town. The day was miserable, cold and wet. The wind flung sheets of rain sideways, turning them into icy needles against the skin. Naturally, the man sought shelter and found it in a public house just inside the township's gates. Inside, he stepped into a warm orange glow cast by candlelight. And the sound of neighbors laughing over drinks filled the room. He walked toward a table where one of his closer friends waited. But before he got there, a young woman stepped into his path. She was lovely. She looked up into his eyes with a soft smile, one filled with unspoken hope. He didn't know her name, and her name doesn't enter this tale. She spoke with nervous energy, her eyes darting down and then back up, asking if he would sit with her. He understood the subtext. He was young and knew himself to be handsome. She was inviting courtship. Though not opposed to her, he wasn't in the mood for anything serious. His morning had been long and miserable. He only wanted to share a drink with his friend. He declined her gently. He was neither unkind nor arrogant and walked past without looking back. That night, with the storm still raging, he couldn't sleep. He tossed and turned, sighing in frustration. Eventually he lay staring up at the timber framed ceiling, exhausted and annoyed. But somewhere between this restless wakefulness and what followed, he must have slipped into sleep. His next memory was of looking at that same ceiling. Though the world had changed somehow, it still resembled his home. But it had become dark and ethereal. As though the walls shimmered and shook. The room looked more like mist than a real place. He sat up. Everything around him looked like a doppelganger of his home. Familiar, but wrong. Dread settled into his chest. A low, droning sound filled the air, and anxiety gripped his heart. A bead of cold sweat traced his brow and cheek as terror mounted inside. He turned toward the doorway. Now wide open, it gaped like a black hole, leading only into the abyss. From that darkness came a faint, cruel laughter. The sound grew louder as the shadows in the doorway began to shift and swirl. Then, borne on gusts of night, a figure floated across the threshold. It looked like the woman he'd refused at the tavern. But what a terrible change had overtaken her. She was no longer delicate or lovely. She was skeletal and grotesque. Though she hovered above him, she moved with a jerking, unnatural motion. Cloudy bat wings, slick with viscous blood, sprouted from her back. He stared in horror as she stared down, still laughing that maniacal laugh. Then she opened her mouth, but it didn't stop opening, her entire head inverted into a cavernous maw lined with row upon row of sharp fangs. From the throat at the center of that abyss, a terrible scream erupted, piercing his mind and making him sit bolt upright in his real bed, grasping and screaming. It had been a dream. The next day he visited the parish priest and told him everything. The priest, still not far removed from the paganism of his youth, prescribed an iron shoe to be nailed above the man's front door. The man thanked him, took the shoe, and nailed it up. That night he lay down and again felt that same involuntary stiffness in his limbs. But eventually, as before, he fell into a kind of sleep. At the witching hour, he awoke, not dreaming this time, to scratching at his front door. The claws that scraped for entry must have been long and sharp, for the wood groaned against its hinges and the iron deep valleys carved themselves into the opposite side. Between each scraping sound came a scream, the same scream from the nightmare. This scratching and shrieking continued for an hour before it abruptly ceased. The man, suspicious, stayed awake the rest of the night, waiting for the thing to return. But it never did. The next morning, on his way to see the priest again, he noticed a hooded figure walking ahead of him. He caught up, and when the figure turned, he saw the young woman from the tavern. She looked weak and withered, bent, as if drained of all strength. Before she turned away, he noticed her face scratched and bleeding. He sprinted ahead as she scrambled off, almost animal like, into the woods. She was never seen Again, this second encounter confirmed the priest's suspicion. The man had fallen prey to a drood, a primordial demoness who possessed virgins to lure young men to their doom through night terrors. The priest blessed him and sent him away. Later, the priests wondered how such a being could still operate in a land supposedly Christianized. He prayed and asked God for strength, continued his day's work. The man, however, never recovered. Despair overtook him, and not long after, he took his own life. Thus the Lindworm and the Druid solidified themselves in Europe's Christendom. One a monster of outspoken horror, one a conniving servant of hell that inspired heartfelt and unyielding panic. For generations, Christians thought them to be fairly unrelated to one another. But that mistaken assumption was set to change soon enough. In the early 1700s, large numbers of immigrants from Germany began settling in the Appalachian region of America. One of the areas that received a large number of these immigrants was western Maryland. They came from a modern Germany with modern bents. They were a casserole of Lutherans, Reformed Protestants, atheists and mystics. Their reasons for coming were as varied as their philosophies. An escape from war, the promise of profit out of poverty, and a fear of famines that had recently plagued their homelands. They came. Should we be charitable? With the purest of intentions, both for themselves and the New World, they joined. But with these pure intentions, they brought something else along with them. An inset knowledge and unease of what types of things find their homes in the remote places of the world. They knew the stories of the monsters that their ancestors fought and dealt with. Monsters like the Lindwyrm and the Druid. And I imagine that if they were being as honest with their own hearts as they could be, many of them would have admitted to fleeing those things for hope of younger and less evil lands. It is unfortunate, then, that upon their arrival to the farther west, they discovered similar evils lurking in the shadows here too. Similar evils. Similar. But if the stories are true, maybe even worse. What horrors can man find in this mysterious world? What cracks of dark and doom open in the Pandora's box of wild places when man comes knocking? These Germans, though they wish not to, we're about to find out. The year was 1735. A German immigrant awoke to a picturesque morning in early autumn. He descended the stairs of the home he and his sons had built together. It had only been completed the year prior, and found the home buzzing with the lovable routine of country life. His wife masterfully worked the coal oven and stove, cutting and frying bacon to go with the eggs already done. His older sons were already in the fields, moving their herds of sheep to new pastures and pens. His younger children were finishing breakfast and hopping to the morning chores, sweeping the porch and cleaning the chicken run and all the rest. He sat at the table, and as he did, he could hear the youngest brother and sister bickering over who had to do which job. We've all been there. His wife poured black coffee into his cup and smiled at him. He smiled back and stood partially to kiss her cheek. The coffee was full of dregs. He drank and ate, then made for the front porch. There he pulled on his boots, kissed his little children, now playing in the yard, and headed for the fields. In the distance, he could already see his older sons looking down at something. When he reached them, he immediately studied what they had been and still were mulling over. It was a dead sheep. He thought little of it at first. Losing one of the herd was unfortunate, but it wasn't unheard of. For a few seconds he remained half curious about how the sheep died and half puzzled over why his sons were so fixated on it. Then he looked closer. Something just wasn't right. Without a word, he knelt down. No wounds, no signs of struggle. On the ground, the visible patches of skin looked pale and waxy, like a hollow shell of a sheep or a wax figurine of a sheep. He looked up at his sons and they shrugged. One of them bit his knuckle in thought. He asked them to help him turn the animal over, and they did. The carcass was stiff, betraying that the death had occurred later in the night. They still assumed it had been caused by something natural, sudden and acute. But the moment they saw the other side, they knew that that was not true. In the middle of the sheep's bulk was a clean hole, as big, round as a toddler's wrist. It was clean in every sense, precise and free from any blood or viscera. A perfect circle from the hair, neatly trimmed around its edge. Almost sterile, or so the man thought. He moved aside to keep his shadow from blocking the hole and looked again. With sunlight shining through, he could see the organ still inside. The man unsheathed his knife and set to work cutting out a larger square of the sheep's skin. When he peeled it away, more mystery emerged. All the organs were present except the heart, and there was no internal trauma. Stranger still, there was no blood. None in the grass, none pooled inside the body. And so they cut into the larger arteries and found them completely dry and empty. It was as if the sheep had come under the blade of the most careful vampire in the world. In the 1750s, a group of German settlers trekked through the woods of South Mountain, Maryland. It was nearly dusk, but they didn't mind. A full moon would rise that night. Another half hour of walking before turning back posed no danger. The sky remained clear, showing no signs of clouding. Some time passed. The sun dipped halfway behind the distant hill. Suddenly, the wind picked up and ripped through the valley with force. Even beneath the trees, they had to brace themselves. Themselves. They quickened their pace until they emerged into a natural bald where a creek ran through. Only a sliver of sunlight now remained. Then the first man looking up at the treetops across the bald stopped dead and recoiled with a gasp. His companions followed his gaze and froze. Perched atop the farthest tree was a creature unlike any they had ever seen. It coiled around the thin upper trunk and clung to branches with clawed feet. The tree bent under its weight, though its size remained unclear. Wings like polished leather folded on its back and shimmered in the fading light. It stared back at them with a black face and lantern eyes that burned red. All at once, the creature leapt from the tree and unfurled its wings. They spanned wide and clapped with a sound like thunder. It sped through the air towards them. The settlers bolted back into the woods and looked up just in time to see its serpentine form fly overhead, Red eyes glaring down. It opened its unnatural mouth and let out a banshee scream that forced each man to plug his ears in pain. In the following weeks, more settlers spotted the same monster patrolling the treeline near South Mountain town. Parents forbade children from going near the woods. The the beast, like a man, a bird and a dragon all rolled into one, had made its presence unmistakably known. In 1783, a thunderstorm tore the night apart as a family sat reading around their fire in South Mountain. Inside, peace held until a new sound shattered it. A terrible screech echoed through the storm. Something out of Dante's hell. A harpy hungry for blood. The father stood with a start and and moved to the window. Through the rain, he thought he saw a bird like figure standing atop the family's chicken coop. Wasn't quite sure. He stepped outside to the porch. Lightning lit up the scene and gave him a clear view of what haunted him. An eldritch horror. From 100 yards away, he saw what had to be a beast. Six feet tall with wings spanning 10. In the flashes, he watched it go from standing to hovering, though the wings the of never flapped. Several feet off the tin roof, it flew toward him with fire bright eyes and the scream piercing the air once more. The man froze. In a final crash of thunder and lightning, the thing veered away. Tentacles like gory entrails flopped from its chest and writhed as if with minds of their own grasping for prey. The man walked back inside and told his family it was nothing, but they could see the truth etched on his face. No one slept that night. The next morning, when he timidly approached the coop, dreading the creature's return, he found the ground littered with the bodies of his pigs and hens. All of them, to the last drop, had been drained of blood. The stories scattered over nearly a century of encounters in the same region began to converge. The people talked and named their demonic oppressor the Schnelgeist Quick Ghost in English. To them, it was the return of the evil they thought they had left behind. In the Rhineland, in Bavaria. Had it followed them? Or was this something new? The sighting? These attacks didn't stop. They increased in frequency and severity. More Americans began witnessing the monster. Over time, its German name became Americanized. Eventually, this forgotten demon cryptid, from the shadows of American lore, took on a new name, the Snallygaster. Join us as we explore its twisted story and tales of other strange creatures that may yet wander the wild places of Earth. Hey Ben, I just read that our great grandparents probably experimented with butter on their dry skin as a moisturizer. Is that why you look so radiant?
- [24:33]
Ben
Maybe it's Grandma's butter recipe. Or maybe it's Gray Toe Tallow.
- [24:37]
Brian
Their tallow products are 100% organic and naturally contain the good stuff your skin craves. No mystery there.
- [24:45]
Ben
So say Sayonara Sammy to kitchen experiments. And say hello to Healthier Skin Great Toad Tallow Trusted by Skin Envied by Great Grandma's Butter Recipe.
- [24:57]
Brian
For more information and to get a sample pack, check out gray toad tallow.com don't forget to use the code COSMOS15. That's all caps COSMOS15 for 15 off your order. Why is it that most soaps and cleaning products ironically don't contain clean ingredients? Indigo Sundries Soap Company is helping families stay clean and healthy by starting with the most important step in cleanliness. Soap. Their cold pressed soap bars, including clay bars and tallow bars, are made from all natural ingredients that don't have any harmful chemicals. And they smell great. Visit indigosundrysoap.com and order today and hey. Subscribe for regular shipments and get 10% off every time. The nighttime is crawling with dangerous creatures. Bigfoot, sleep paralysis demons, the Mothman. Now imagine what would make them even more terrifying. That's right. Guns. Cryptids with guns. That's where Armored Republic comes in. They equip law abiding citizens to stand against the unthinkable. Even if it's a gun wielding devil worshipping Bigfoot. From combat tested coatings to high performance carriers, every piece of their ballistic armor and tactical gear is built to protect. Visit armoredrepublic.com or text join all caps J O I n to 88027 to get involved in the preparedness effort.
- [26:28]
Ben
For too long pagans have held claim over the art and design world. It's time we as Christians realize what time it is and fight to take back the good, true and beautiful of God's created order. That's the fight Jenkins is waging at New Dominion Design Company. He arms Christian entrepreneurs, ministries, churches and culture makers with brands forged in timeless iconography, not fleeting trends. Every brand built is made to endure for generations. See what he's built for others and book your free brand consultation at new Dominion Design Company. Mention Haunted Cosmos and you'll receive 10% off. Hey everybody. Welcome to to season six of Haunted Cosmos. Woo woo. Screech. Let's go. Really happy to be here. Just real quick before we get into discussion about the Snallygaster and the Druid and the Lindwyrm and all this great German stuff, the Schneier. I want to give a quick word of thanks to our patrons. Patrons on Patreon and Supercast. This show is possible because of all of you. So shout out to you guys. Y' all are a big help. If you want want to get early and ad free access to main shows then you should consider becoming one of our top tier patrons. Those top two tiers get early access to all of our main shows totally ad free. In fact I think that our patrons have had access to this show for months.
- [27:44]
Brian
Oh yeah, for quite a while.
- [27:45]
Ben
For the general public is hearing it and even those lower tier patrons. We really appreciate you guys. You get access to a weekly special exclusive show called the Dusty Tome that I Write and it's where I just get to go full on weird and basically say whatever I want.
- [27:59]
Brian
He's locked in like this is this.
- [28:01]
Ben
Has been lifeguarded by Brian.
- [28:04]
Brian
Yeah this show.
- [28:05]
Ben
If you want to see Ben utterly unhinged Ben Unleashed which is just me talking a lot about the Silmarillion it's the Dusty tome.
- [28:12]
Brian
It is the dusty tome.
- [28:13]
Ben
Then listen to the Dusty tome and weekly show. As an incentive for people that want to become a patron either on Patreon or Supercast, we are going to send five random signups from this day of the episode dropping on this date, we're going to send them a book. What's the book called, Brian?
- [28:31]
Brian
I'm going to pull it up right here so I don't get it wrong. It is a really fun hardcover book. It's got beautiful illustrations, really cool illustrations. It's called Unite. No, it's called the United States of Cryptids, A Tour of American Myths and Monsters by JW Acker. So we're going to randomly pick five people who sign up the day this episode releases only. So you have to sign up for Patreon or Supercast, any tier. We'll put them in a pool, we'll randomly select five and we'll send you this book for free so you can enjoy it. It's not like a Christian book or anything.
- [29:04]
Ben
No, it's kind of a cool coffee table. It's just a cool. Yeah, coffee table book. You know, you can have your gallery, pictures of oceans and mountains and log cabins and then.
- [29:12]
Brian
American Cryptids. American Cryptids, yeah. And just to explain the two ways to support the show there, if you'd like more of a native app experience, like you download an app, it's all right there, that's Patreon. If you'd like more of an embedded podcast feed style, then Supercast is the place to go. Both of them support us really well and allow us to do everything we do here at Haunted Cosmos. We've got Evanescence, we've got Martina McBride here helping with every episode. And kind of the elephant in the room, Ben, is that. No, you've lost 45 pounds.
- [29:46]
Ben
Elephant in the room is actually Brian's mom, who, even though she's not here, is still somehow here.
- [29:51]
Brian
Her bulk is still here, gravitational.
- [29:54]
Ben
It's insane. She has her own zip code. No, you know this.
- [29:56]
Brian
My mom is very trim.
- [29:58]
Ben
She is. And she's a lovely lady, but she's also enormous.
- [30:01]
Brian
She thinks these are funny. Just for the record.
- [30:03]
Ben
Okay, good.
- [30:03]
Brian
The elephant in the room, I was gonna say, is that we have a brand new studio.
- [30:07]
Ben
We do.
- [30:07]
Brian
And if you're listening on podcasts, first of all, great, love it. Keep listening on the podcast. But we have a YouTube channel, Haunted Cosmos. We recently, as of the recording of this episode, broke 50,000 subscribers. And what we're gunning for is 100,000. When YouTube is contractually obligated to send us a plaque, that means they agree with everything we've ever said. Exactly. The silver play button.
- [30:28]
Ben
And my dad, you know, my dad always used to say, hey, hey buddy, be an honorable man, give credit and take the blame. So I want to give credit where it's due. I did all of this. I'm kidding. If I had done it, we'd be like in a dumpster.
- [30:40]
Brian
It was Eva Longoria.
- [30:41]
Ben
Yeah.
- [30:41]
Brian
It was evident. Amy Lee. Lee.
- [30:43]
Ben
Our guy. Amy Lee. Martina. Yeah. Shout out to those guys.
- [30:47]
Brian
They killed it.
- [30:47]
Ben
They did a bang up.
- [30:48]
Brian
So just go on YouTube, check it out. Because the thing is like all of our claims of being handsome are either vindicated or they fall apart there on YouTube.
- [30:57]
Ben
Yeah. And we're not going to say which is which.
- [30:59]
Brian
Hey, last thing before we. Before we. Before we move into the snallygast.
- [31:04]
Ben
Our book is.
- [31:04]
Brian
Our book. Haunted Cosmos Doing your duty in a world that's not just stuff. Premium hardcover edition as another just. We're salvoing stuff out in this opening episode of this season.
- [31:16]
Ben
This is a numinous episode.
- [31:18]
Brian
This episode is cornucopic.
- [31:21]
Ben
Oh my goodness.
- [31:22]
Brian
With freebies and giveaways. We're gonna give 15% off to anybody who uses the code SNALLY. SNALLY. Haunted Cosmos doing your duty in a world that's not just stuff. Just head to newchristenimpress.com cosmos or. Or the links in the description and any listener that will be open. Use that code snally and you get 15% off the book. It's free shipping in the US premium hardcover edition. Where Ben and I go through a taxonomy of the seen and the unseen world and investigate not only what it is, what God made, but how to do your duty in it. And that's another great way to support the show. To go pick up the book and leave us like a 5 to 10 star review. Whatever's the max anywhere that you can good read.
- [32:06]
Ben
Or a one star review.
- [32:08]
Brian
If you hate it.
- [32:09]
Ben
If you hate it.
- [32:09]
Brian
Don't.
- [32:10]
Ben
Don't give us this like two to four star nonsense.
- [32:13]
Brian
Do not be. Be neither. Like don't be neither hot nor cold.
- [32:16]
Ben
Right. Like go all the way. Go all the way now.
- [32:18]
Brian
All the way.
- [32:19]
Ben
I think with that we can get into this.
- [32:20]
Brian
Let's get down a bit. Let's get down to some German rooted American cryptid demon dragon people related Cyclopean.
- [32:32]
Ben
I could not have said it better myself.
- [32:34]
Brian
Let's do it.
- [32:34]
Ben
Brian. Really the first thing I want to hear from you is because I think this is the first episode of the season. It's a good opportunity to revisit some of these foundational ideas and distinguishing categories. So we're talking about this cryptid monster thing, preternatural thing. We'll describe what preternatural is called the snallygaster. But what I really want to hear from you first is what is a cryptid?
- [32:57]
Brian
Yeah, a cryptid is just. It's simply an unknown creature. It's a creature that's unknown to classification by scientists or it hasn't been captured and we haven't figured out what phyla and geno, you know, genus and kingdom.
- [33:10]
Ben
And family and class.
- [33:11]
Brian
And class. And all those that I forgot.
- [33:13]
Ben
Xylem and flow them trees. Actually I remembered that I went to.
- [33:17]
Brian
Public school halfway through that sentence.
- [33:18]
Ben
Yeah.
- [33:18]
Brian
It's like, oh, no. But it's a creature like that. Now, there were basically two types of cryptid really out there. One of them is simply an unknown animal.
- [33:29]
Ben
Yeah.
- [33:30]
Brian
And. And these are discovered all the time.
- [33:32]
Ben
Yeah. We like to call these like library cryptids because they're boring.
- [33:36]
Brian
They're just boring. It's like, oh, we discovered a new type of shrimp.
- [33:40]
Ben
Yeah. Now it's got a different whisker on it. Yeah. It's not actually boring. Read Hana Cosmos. Doing your duty.
- [33:45]
Brian
Yeah, it's not actually.
- [33:46]
Ben
But then there's. There's the really exciting cryptids, right?
- [33:49]
Brian
Yeah. These ones are like cryptids that seem to be almost chimeric, where they bring in a chimera is something that brings together multiple different types or categories of creature. They're all smashed together like a lion combined with a hyena combined with a bird combined with Ben's mom.
- [34:05]
Ben
Yes.
- [34:06]
Brian
And some of these even have almost supernatural or preternatural elements to them. Like the Bigfoot is an example where there's a debate. We know the Bigfoot's real. Is Bigfoot just an unknown ape like creature?
- [34:18]
Ben
Yeah.
- [34:19]
Brian
Or is it some kind of preternatural supernatural fae like creature that has the ability to cloak that can bring supernatural dread upon people that discover it. That might even. See our previous published work, might even be able to heal people.
- [34:33]
Ben
Yeah.
- [34:34]
Brian
And there might even be some kind of demonic or unclean type of aspect to it.
- [34:39]
Ben
Yeah.
- [34:40]
Brian
The Snallygaster certainly lives in this category.
- [34:44]
Ben
Yeah. Because the Snallygaster, if you remember from the Cold Open, we started with two different cryptids from Germanic lore. And one of them, the Lindwyrm, was much more just like, hey, this is Your basic dragon.
- [34:56]
Brian
It's your basic dragon.
- [34:57]
Ben
Everybody loves it. Knights love to kill them. Damsels love to get kidnapped by him.
- [35:02]
Brian
Harry Potter loves to battle it.
- [35:04]
Ben
Exactly.
- [35:04]
Brian
In the Triwizard Tournament, 100%.
- [35:07]
Ben
But there was nothing overtly like demonic or unseen or spiritual about it really. But then there was the Druid. And the Druid was much more of what we might think of as like a night hag, succubus lilith type thing where it's almost purely spiritual. Then there's this physical connection to it where that woman that was trying to court that man seemed to have like the scars and the scratches that the Druid experienced when it was trying to get into that guy's house. And so there's almost like a possessive aspect to it where there's this familiar spirit, demonic possession, things like that. And then the snallygaster appears to be a combination of the two. There's an existential dread that the snallygaster is inspiring in people. There's these Eldritch horror aspects like H.P. lovecraft aspects where there's tentacles flaring out everywhere and it's vampiric.
- [36:03]
Brian
You looked really convincing when you do that. I was a little scared.
- [36:06]
Ben
That was actually my Snallagaster costume that I'm using for this year's Halloween 2026, 2025. Excuse me, Harry Potter, the boy who.
- [36:17]
Brian
Lived come to die.
- [36:20]
Ben
We're just saying things now.
- [36:22]
Brian
We recently went on Ninjas or Butterflies.
- [36:24]
Ben
Yeah, shout out to those guys.
- [36:25]
Brian
It's come out for a little bit. Dude. What a fun. What a fun time. But all around their studio they have the Sunday cool. Which is this great amazing company screen printing company. They employ 150 people in Florida there where they're located. Christian company guys.
- [36:40]
Ben
Like great guys.
- [36:41]
Brian
Ninjas are butterflies. Great show on Instagram. YouTube podcast We Went on there. And one of my favorite things about their whole set was that they had just everywhere Owen Wilson posters just with the caption wow.
- [36:51]
Ben
Yeah, they really are kindred spirits in a lot of ways.
- [36:54]
Brian
Yeah. So thanks to those guys for having us on.
- [36:56]
Ben
Yeah, very much fun. Hopefully more collab in the future.
- [36:59]
Brian
That was fun. Here's our claim to fame now. We Ron Ninjas are butterflies whose Instagram account is followed by Joe Rogan.
- [37:07]
Ben
Yes.
- [37:07]
Brian
Therefore like such as the Iraq. We are friends with Joe Rogan. Yes, Joe return our calls.
- [37:14]
Ben
And also Joe believe in the one true Christ.
- [37:16]
Brian
I mean that's actually. Wow, way to one up me.
- [37:19]
Ben
Yeah, you're welcome.
- [37:20]
Brian
I'm like Joe, network with us.
- [37:21]
Ben
And you're like, no, Joe, Brian, repent.
- [37:24]
Brian
Let's share the gospel with Joe Rogan. I agree. Hey, Wes Huff did a great job. He did on Joe's show. You know, can I call you Joe on Joe's show recently? And yeah, dude, I would.
- [37:34]
Ben
How.
- [37:34]
Brian
How sick would it be for Joe Rogan to convert?
- [37:37]
Ben
Wes Huff, Can I call you Hufflepuff? Thank you. All right. I appreciate. I'm glad we're on those terms. I want to get just. Just real quick to get back a little bit. Back on task. Yeah, sorry. So one of the things that I wanted to. To make sure and define is this preternatural thing. So if. If you've seen our fairies episode from season three, I believe we talk a lot about this category of preternatural. And in the world now, Brian and I are a little bit, I think, on a different page with this.
- [38:05]
Brian
Maybe. I don't know.
- [38:06]
Ben
The way that I generally see the categories of the world are there's natural, there's preternatural, and then there's supernatural. Supernatural again. This is my paradigm that I like to use is reserved for God alone, because he's the only one that's truly outside of nature. But within the preternatural, you have the unseen. And the unseen is angels, demons, things like that, unless they manifest themselves. And that's where you get into this preternatural category where there seems to be one leg in the visible world and one leg, spiritually speaking, in the unseen, more spiritual world. Now, man kind of lives in that category because we're an embodied soul. Our soul is unseen, but our soul is attached to our body until we die, in which case it then hopes to come back to our body in the resurrection. But there seems to be a category of being like a fallen angel, an unclean spirit that can manifest visibly, but is more naturally at home in this kind of unseen world. And I think that that's where the snallygaster lives. Like the snallygaster. If you take a look at those stories that we read at the end of the Cold Open, we just gave, like, a drive by of some of these early encounters with the snallygaster. Its appearance almost seems to change or evolve over time. So it starts as this, like, bird, dragon, lizard thing.
- [39:33]
Brian
Cyclopean. Right. At that point even, yeah, it had one eye.
- [39:36]
Ben
It's like the Mothman, but instead of a man bird, it's like a dragon bird. But then it eventually became more horrific with these tentacles and. But all the while it has these spiritual aspects to it, like I mentioned before, this existential dread. And I think that that's where we really want to hone in on the categorization of this cryptid is that it seems to be like, we would say Bigfoot is preternatural, where there's a big unseen aspect to it, a demonic aspect, we would say. But then it manifests itself regularly in ways that can be seen and even felt economically, where it's like killing livestock and it's destroying homes and things like that.
- [40:15]
Brian
And these are the category in some, some, some of these creatures are in the category of ancient demonic, unclean type of beings that not only terrorized people because they hate God and they hate his image, bear man, but. But even seek their worship.
- [40:30]
Ben
Yeah.
- [40:30]
Brian
And set themselves up as sort of gods in the way that in the last battle you have Tash, the God of the calormens who are just Muslims. Like C.S. lewis is like, I want you to understand these are Muslims. They have their God Tash, who's a chimeric sort of man, bird, demonic creature. And there are these calormens who don't believe in Tash. They, oh, he's just a symbol, he's just a myth, blah, blah, blah. And they start to call on him. But then lo and behold, there in the apocalyptic events of the last battle, Tash comes, and to Tash you have called, to Tash you shall go. And it's to their destruction. And if you are a long time or even not that longtime listener or watcher of Hana Cosmos, you know that we believe that much of this mytho history is garbled, imperfect accounts of real encounters that people had worshiping real beings who manifested themselves in real ways in the real world, sometimes in chimeric forms or in man type forms or giant form or different forms, but that these are actually real beings. So the snallygaster, I'm not saying is on. I think there are tiers of these beings and the snallygaster probably lives on one of these tiers and that it. There's a. There's another wrinkle to this that I want to go into, but I think it'd be better if we did an. If we added the next story.
- [41:52]
Ben
Yeah.
- [41:53]
Brian
And then continued this discussion. So they have a little bit more contact. Dude, I love with the snally.
- [41:58]
Ben
Let's leave some on the bone. Some preternatural meat on the preternatural bone.
- [42:04]
Brian
Yeah, let's do it.
- [42:04]
Ben
And I'm sorry, dude, hey, don't let. Dude, hey, don't Let me stop you.
- [42:07]
Brian
Why don't you take us in to the next story of the Schnel Geist? The quick ghost?
- [42:12]
Ben
I would love. I would love nothing more. The valley of Middleton, Maryland, experienced continuous turmoil after its founding. At first, it faced the terrible dread of an unseen monster that became known as the snallygaster. Even after more than a century and a half of snallygaster encounters cooled down, a new stress fell upon the area. The American Civil War. Middleton Valley became a hotbed of activity for both the Union and Confederate armies, who exchanged sovereignty of the region until the decisive year of 1864. After the war, the racial tensions that marked the American postbellum south spread into Maryland's Appalachian region. But throughout each infamous episode in history, one lingering common denominator of fear gripped the backwoods of Maryland. That same shadow of the snallygaster. Despite the flashy distractions of world events and technological innovation in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Germanic immigrants living in that small corner of the world did not forget the devil that haunted them. Part of the reason they didn't forget the monster was because it apparently had not grown tired of them yet. Like a dragon harpy hybrid, the snallygaster made itself known often enough and to enough people to ensure it kept its place atop communal anxiety. Anyone who truly lived in the Hill country knew the monster was destined to return someday. And then, In February of 1909, that day came. In the dark hours of the morning, a man named Bill Gifferson walked along a back road after a swing shift at the mill. He was no stranger to the tales of terrible monsters in the area, though he never cared enough to believe they were true. So he walked alone at night through a narrow corridor of thick forest on either side. After about a half hour's journey, Bill suddenly stopped and stood like a statue. He had been deep in thought, barely paying attention to the world around him, but a sudden moment of lucidity made him aware of an overwhelming silence. Nothing in the once lively forest made a sound as far as he could hear. Even the river which fed the mill he worked at, usually audible near the road, was quiet. The world seemed frozen in time, and Bill alone stood alive, bathed in the quicksilver light of a full moon in a place that suddenly felt foreign to him. A sharp wave of fear washed over the man, but the fear was only about to grow sharper. Just as his nightmare began, Bill realized he was, in fact, not alone. From the fog ahead, he watched a red glow emerge. It quickly grew brighter until Bill could make it out. A rich red orb bobbing up and down in the air, speeding toward him. He marveled at the strangeness. He had never seen an orb before. Before also noticing something else. Dark shapes shifted in the fog behind the red orb. He could barely make out what looked like massive wings in the moonlight, but he was sure that they were there. Suddenly everything was upon him. The red light, the wings a terrible mass of bloody scales and horrible talons. He looked up long enough to see the red glow came from a single bulging eye in the head of a monster. More terrible than anything he could imagine. It was the Snallygaster. In the time it took to process his horror, he felt massive talons stick into his back and side. The monster lifted him off the ground in a single flap of its wings, and Bill screamed in terrible pain. He looked up at his captor and saw nothing but blackness punctuated by that single eye glaring down, piercing and red. Then, still flying, the beast opened its mouth. Dozens of rows of razor teeth gleamed white before Bill, helpless as he was, felt them clamp down on his shoulder. He thought it was the end, that death would come at the hands of this awful creature from hell. Amidst his cries for mercy, he closed his eyes and went. Waited for death to take him. But it never did. Something drove the Snallygaster to lose his prey. Perhaps it was an inconvenience in flight. Perhaps it was a sinister attempt to inspire yet more fear. Whatever the reason, Bill woke hours later, lying in a hospital bed. His shoulder and back were wrapped in bandages. His body was the sorest it had ever been, and his head pounded with a headache. Within minutes, reporters stormed his bedside, begging for his story. And strangely, Bill had no trouble reliving the event. He was cool and calm, almost apathetic about the whole thing. The following day, February 12, he saw his face on the front page of the Middleton Valley Register next to a detailed account outlining every point of his encounter with the dreadful monster. What came of that single newspaper article could hardly have been predicted, for Bill was not the only one to suffer the wrath of the undead and nearly forgotten monster of Maryland. A letter arrived at the Middleton Register office from an Ohio man who claimed to have seen something matching Bill's description of the Snallagaster flying swiftly and silently across the sky of his pasture the evening before Bill's attack. He said it resembled the winged serpents that attacked Israel in the wilderness. The difference was the Ohio man never thought those serpents could be so large and so terrifying. A flying snake is One thing, but a serpentine bird as long as an automobile with bat wings and a cyclopean red eye was something else entirely. He presumed that the monster's re emergence marked a period of coming woe for the Appalachians. After Bill's story hit the shelves and the corroborated Ohio report went public, a wave of snallygaster encounters flooded the valleys around Middleton. Farmers watched the terrible harbinger fly over in twilight hours, screeching its awful call for the world to hear and fear. They discovered animals missing, many found days later mangled and drained of all blood. Dozens of such reports came into police stations in Frederick and Washington counties after only three days. Parents were urged to keep their children indoors after sunset. A curfew was imposed, with exceptions only for essential personnel. Unfortunately, these safety measures added to the hysteria and pushed more people out on the hunt for the creature. Local men, fearing for their family's safety, formed teams to hunt the beast. Their efforts more closely resembled the demise of the snallygaster's forebear, the Lindwyrm, than anyone realized. While these hunting parties had no success, the beast didn't target them as prey. Instead, it focused on the few fools who tried to kill it all on their own. One such encounter involved a man named George Jacobs. Hidden in the darkening tree line of a clearing, he watched the snallygaster fly into the open from overhead. Its disgusting and frightful appearance froze Jacobs for a precious moment before the monster noticed him. When he regained his wits, the beast was already flying toward him. He raised his rifle and shouted angrily while a shot rang out. Then Jacob stepped back in dismay. He had heard the impact. Dead center mass. But the beast didn't even seem to notice. What kind of hide covered this demon? Jacobs took no time to ponder the question. He sprinted into deeper cover and dove into thick brush just as massive jaws snapped at emptiness behind him. He scurried further away and then turned around. The snallygaster flapped its wings, hovering just out of reach. The red eyes stared into Jacob's soul and gave him the most despairing premonitions he ever knew. Long spiked tentacles like squid arms, hung like living entrails from the creature's chest and stomach. That image of the predator, so close, so uncaring and unmoved by the struggle of the man, haunted Jacobs forever. Such an ugly thing. Still, he was glad to be alive. Such went the reign of the snallygaster over Maryland for an entire month before one day, it all just stopped. A man working at a railway station Bent over his work when a sharp but unthinkably strong talon gripped his shirt and yanked him upward. The snallygaster had grown sloppy. It only hung onto the man by a suspender. And so a co worker bravely ran to help his friend. He pulled on the man's ankles until the suspender snapped and both men fell in a heap. But the monster wasn't satisfied. It descended and stood tall before the men, supporting itself with a thick coil of serpent at its base. Then, marvel of marvels, the three beings fought. The two men guarded against the beast attacks while it lunged this way and that, Beating its wings and stirring up dust. A third man rushed into the chaos and fired his pistol at the glowing red eye. This, of course, did little more than annoy the snallygaster. It breathed scorching fire from its nostrils and consumed the bulk of each man's clothing. As they patted themselves down, the monster just flew away with a deafening screech like a night demon. And it was never seen again by that generation.
- [51:23]
Brian
Dude, that is crazy. I mean, the snally gaster be terrorizing people.
- [51:28]
Ben
Dude, the snally is. I almost made a 911 joke. That would have been inconsiderate. So I'm. Dude, the snally's crazy.
- [51:34]
Brian
I want to thank you for. For not, but kind of still doing it.
- [51:37]
Ben
Well, I didn't make the joke.
- [51:39]
Brian
Here's the thing we said before we left the store, before we left and departed into that story break, that we'd continue the discussion from previous. And I wanna do that and sort of pick up where we left off. But first I wanna read a list and it's gonna illustrate the point that we wanna make here.
- [51:56]
Ben
Okay?
- [51:56]
Brian
All right, so we've got the snallygaster, obviously. Frederick County, Maryland, 1730s. To present.
- [52:03]
Ben
Yes, to present.
- [52:05]
Brian
We've got bigfoot, Pacific northwest. But I mean, we've got skunk, ape. We've got all sorts of bigfoot like creatures around mothman Point pleasant, West Virginia in the 60s. The Jersey Devil in the pine barrens. More on the jersey devil, by the way, in a little bit. 1735 to present. Remember that date? We've got the chupacabra in the southwest in texas, We've got the wendigo, the great lakes region, especially Minnesota and Wisconsin. Skinwalker. That's our stomping ground here in the west.
- [52:33]
Ben
That's right.
- [52:34]
Brian
In Utah and the southwest. The thunderbird, the great plains in the Midwest. 1800s to present, we've got the flatwoods monster in west Virginia in the 50s. Champ Lake Champlain from the 1800s. We've got the Loveland Frogman of Loveland, Ohio. The Goatman of Maryland. We've got the Dover Demon in Massachusetts. The Puckwudgy, one of our old time favorites from Massachusetts. And the Wampanoag lands. That's pre colonial. We've got the Ozark Howler from Arkansas and Missouri. And the Ozarks. The Melon Heads of Michigan, Ohio, Connecticut. The Lizard man of South Carolina. The Dogman of Michigan. Just remembering some of the jokes that you have historically made about the Dog.
- [53:16]
Ben
Man in the Midwest and how it's actually just one of their ladies.
- [53:20]
Brian
It's just Midwest women, according to Ben. I'm so sorry. Midwest.
- [53:25]
Ben
Brian's words that.
- [53:25]
Brian
That happen. Brian's words, apparently. My words. We got the Wampus Cat. We could keep going on here. So America is full of these. All of these various cryptids. Every region.
- [53:35]
Ben
The Wampus Cat did.
- [53:36]
Brian
The Wampus Cat.
- [53:37]
Ben
I wonder if he's catty. Wampus.
- [53:41]
Brian
They.
- [53:41]
Ben
Come on.
- [53:42]
Brian
That was. You were so real for that. This is not just a North American phenomenon. It's not just something that we see in the deep past. It's not just something we see now. This is the type of thing that we see everywhere in the world, ancient times through today. Hundreds and thousands and millions of sightings of different various strange things like that.
- [54:04]
Ben
It's common in geography.
- [54:06]
Brian
Yes.
- [54:06]
Ben
And in time.
- [54:07]
Brian
Common in geography and in time. And we've. We've already traced in this snallygaster legend some creatures from Austria and Germany where these German immigrants had come from. Now think when they're coming to North America, they're coming to a land there in the 1700s that has been largely unreached by the gospel.
- [54:25]
Ben
Yeah.
- [54:25]
Brian
A land that is mainly inhabited by animism and people who are worshiping various land spirits and creatures.
- [54:33]
Ben
Yeah.
- [54:34]
Brian
The Native American people, stretching back for thousands of years at that point in North America. And they have all of this lore of creatures and gods and demons and bad and good spirits that they had worshiped or lived with or fought against. And one of our big theories that we've promoted here on the show that want to reiterate and connect to the snallygaster now is that you should expect to see this kind of thing, especially whenever the gospel goes to a new land.
- [55:02]
Ben
Yeah.
- [55:03]
Brian
You could think about the kingdom of God radiating out like in the cold open. You talked about this man in the Mediterranean who's crucified and it changes everything. Christ is crucified he dies and he's buried. He rises, he's enthroned in the heavens. And from there he commissions his people to go out and to baptize the nations. To go out to all of the nations, baptize them in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit. Teach them to obey all he's commanded. And that's what happens in history. From that moment radiating out from that epicenter, we see waves of conversion and nations and peoples turning from their old gods to the true God through Christ. Now when that kingdom goes out, you have a dynamic that plays out through history that Irenaeus is even talking about in the second century, which is that where the borders of that kingdom go out, we see great conflict with the gods, not just with the peoples, but with the powers and principalities. We see miraculous conversion, we see miracles and signs, we see demonic possession and we see supernatural encounters with dragons and with demons and unclean spirits. And we should expect that wherever the borders are, the war rages.
- [56:15]
Ben
Yeah.
- [56:16]
Brian
Now the kingdom within can be subverted and you can have apostasy happen.
- [56:19]
Ben
Yeah. Which I have some thoughts on that. Yeah, just put a pin in that.
- [56:22]
Brian
But North America in the 1600s, 1700s, even, you know, pre colonial through colonial through the founding of America, even then, the settling of the west and westward expansion and, you know, manifest destiny. What we're seeing in this period is the, the borders of the gospel of the kingdom expanding and the Christian peoples coming into conflict with the demon gods of the old world and bringing them under the foot of Christ. Right now I think we see them crop back up in times and places, and maybe that was one of the things you wanted to talk about. But when I think of the snallygaster and creatures like it now, some of it's mythic, some of it's merely folklore, but I think at least a significant core of these types of things are actually documenting real encounters that people really had. And that's the nature of them. Yeah, it's border warfare as the conquering kingdom goes forth.
- [57:16]
Ben
Yeah, guys. We hope you are enjoying our incredibly lively discussion on the snally. But before we continue, we need to hear a quick word from our sponsors. Today we are observing a wild Bigfoot as he raids the Kings Ridge elderberry farm in Indiana. Bigfoot knows that cold and flu season is just around the corner and he must prepare to boost his immune system. The Kings Ridge elderberries are packed with antioxidants and vitamins which will be essential for helping him survive the cold winter. You too can fortify your natural defenses with elderberries by using code haunted for 10% off your first order at TKR farm.com that's TKR farm.com.
- [57:58]
Brian
Ben have you heard of the Jake Mueller Adventures?
- [58:01]
Ben
What's that?
- [58:02]
Brian
A Christian audio drama. Zombies, vampires, global conspiracies and faith at the center. I was up all night on the edge of my seat.
- [58:09]
Ben
Is it fully immersive sound effects and cast and everything?
- [58:12]
Brian
Yes, full cast cinematic sound. It's like you can hear the danger coming.
- [58:17]
Ben
Ooh. So kind of similar to Hana Cosmos but no your mom jokes and more drama.
- [58:23]
Brian
No mom jokes yet, but yeah, tons of drama.
- [58:26]
Ben
So it's kind of like your mom then?
- [58:28]
Brian
Not quite. Check it out@jakemulleradventures.com haunted for 10% off.
- [58:36]
Ben
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- [59:22]
Brian
Absolutely not. But I have wondered about what a dwarven forge smells like after I visit a gothic cathedral that sits right next to the alchemist.
- [59:31]
Ben
Whoa. Well hey then you're in luck because Mythology Candles has all of those scents in candle form.
- [59:37]
Brian
Even Sasquatch's smelly feet.
- [59:39]
Ben
Well, not really his smelly feet, but they do have a Sasquatch candle. So go to mythologycandles.com that's mythology spelled with ie at the end and buy one or more candle and get a free one on us. Just use code freecosmos. I think the thing that I was gonna say was we're living in a unique time where we don't live in a pre Christian land. Now we kind of do in Utah. It's a little bit of an exception, but I'm talking just America in general. We don't live in a pre Christian land. America had a Christian founding, although at that Christian founding there was a lot of weighty voices that were speaking that had very theosophic ideas, that had some mono like non trinitarian ideas. And so that's its own thing. But at any rate, the general population has been Christian for the bulk of the nation's history. But now we see America is apostatizing, so we're seeing a mass exodus from the faith, a rejection of the faith of our fathers, and a desire to seek materialism, agnosticism, atheism, paganism, witchcraft. There's a whole spectrum of this. My thing is we're post millennials, and so we believe that the nations will no longer be deceived until the enemy is released from the pit and given time for a time to deceive the nations, which I'm not convinced that that's right now. Okay, so then my question immediately becomes, so why are we seeing these things pop back up more and more and more? And I think one possible answer would love to hear your thoughts on this. One possible answer goes back to that thing that you mentioned from the last battle where the calormens are appealing to Tash, even though Tash is fairly inactive for a long time. And Aslan says you've appealed to Tash. To Tash you shall go. My question is, is there something with apostasy that when you invite back in those demonic monsters into the a rule of your life and world, even if you're ignorant about it, the Lord providentially at times to sanctify his people, to discipline the unbeliever and to judge the unbeliever, is saying, okay, you've appealed to that, to that you will go, that's what you're gonna get. If that's what you want, that's what you're gonna get. And so you see how, like the Mothman is a perfect example to me. You have in the Native American lore around the area of central Ohio and West Virginia this great grandmother spirit and then her son that are beneficent and they love their people or whatever. But then you have this third party called, and it's literally called the Matshi Minuto. Mm, Mothman, Matthi Minuto. That is terrorizing. And he's serving as the adversary for this religion. And then you see the Mothman come back and the characteristics are very similar in terms of their appearance and the dread that they inspire, fire and the destruction that they cause. And I'm wondering, like, could the Snallygaster be a similar example? If we start seeing more of him today, which we'll get into in a moment, some of these other more demonic like cryptids in the world and in America. Are these examples of a spiritual discipline taking place or judgment taking place, where God is essentially saying, you've appealed to Tash, to Tash, you're going to go, and we'll see how good it is for you.
- [63:07]
Brian
You know, one compelling argument in favor of that theory is in the list that I just read. The sheer number of very famous American cryptids that actually come up in the mid to late 20th century, 20th century. The 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s are when we have an explosion of this in a lot of these regions. Mothman, like literally half of that list, we see sort of two periods. There's a huge wave in the 18th century, in the 1700s, and some in the 1600s as well. But there weren't that many people here in the 1600s yet. It was really in the 1700s that we start to see large populations building up in North America, order being brought, the gospel taking root, the nation being founded. Then in the 1800s, with westward expansion, you see more of them, particularly in the West, Thunderbirds, skinwalkers, Native American, Southwest sort of region, through California, a lot of that sort of thing. But then there's a lot that just crop up in the 20th century. And the 20th century is the century in American history. It's sad how early it is in her history where really large scale apostasy, I think, started to take root in the soil of our nation.
- [64:20]
Ben
Yeah, I mean, you see, you had World War I, which was really the Great War to define all future wars. It was terrible. And it was the destruction, the mutual destruction of Christendom. That's where it began. And then right after World War I, what do you see in America? Well, you see the Roaring twenties, You see sexual degeneracy start to really take off. Now, it was covered in fancy dresses and some lingering chivalry and things like that. But it was, I mean, read F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was degeneracy. And that's really where the apostasy begins. And then after that, and then especially after World War II, where the apostasy is codified, basically. Yeah, you start to see more and more overt debauchery among the people. But then this lingering apparent threat of demonic spiritual encounters.
- [65:11]
Brian
And it's on every level, especially in the 60s and onward, America became a conquered people. Yeah, we see the Hart Cellar act with the massive influx of Third World immigration. We see people basically just beginning to make decisions for the nation, whether it's sexual decisions, decisions about the home and the state of the home. Decisions about our monetary policy, how we.
- [65:33]
Ben
See life with a widespread abortion.
- [65:35]
Brian
All these things inviting invasion of our nation from foreign lands. And we see America spiritually, physically, economically becoming an enslaved people. Or at least the fruition of earlier decisions really becoming gang. Like a small infection that becomes gangrenous. And I think it shouldn't surprise us that in that period you see two things. People are turning away from Christ and turning even to pagan occultism as well as materialism, which is just another form of evil spirituality, another way of man making himself God. Well, to Tash, they've appealed.
- [66:11]
Ben
Yeah.
- [66:11]
Brian
And the old gods, I do believe that when given root, they can and will return attempt to enslave people. And we will continue to see this until people repent and turn to Christ and re Christianize their land.
- [66:28]
Ben
And so it's not the nations being deceived again. It's the responsible parties within the nation, which is all of the humans deceiving themselves. And with that widespread self deception and apostasy and delusion, it's like you have to let the vampire into your house. You're saying, yes, please.
- [66:50]
Brian
Why do you come in? That trope is there with all of these different Iwatu here with the Pukwudgi dude, the vampiric legend.
- [66:59]
Ben
Go listen to our Fae episode from again, season three.
- [67:02]
Brian
So many of these things, they ask that you invite them in.
- [67:07]
Ben
Yeah.
- [67:08]
Brian
These are not merely physical beings.
- [67:10]
Ben
Even the Mothman does that.
- [67:11]
Brian
Even the Mothman does it. What are you seeing? You're seeing the manifestation of spiritual apostasy, of demonic and unclean spirits taking rule and of sin.
- [67:20]
Ben
And even by the way, like a word on that kind of materialism. Another word for materialism is pantheism. Because man is supposed to be a worshiping creature. We're supposed to have something to give ourselves to and give adoration to other than ourselves. And what materialism quickly becomes. We see this with the green movement and environmentalism that run, you know, run rampant is a form of pantheism where you just worship what you can see.
- [67:48]
Brian
Earth Mother.
- [67:49]
Ben
Yes. You give yourself and you give all of your efforts to the good of just what you can see. It's Romans 1.
- [67:54]
Brian
Yeah.
- [67:55]
Ben
And the thing is, pantheism is particularly pernicious because if we're right and there is this preternatural category, you know, of Fae and things like that. Well, they have that leg in nature and they. And they're fallen in nature. And so when you think that you're just giving like veneration to. Well, this forest needs to be saved despite all the good that we could get from like responsibly logging it because it's just a forest. But what if there is a spiritual presence within that forest that is for your bad and for your ill? Well now indirectly you're giving veneration to a demonic spirit that's over that forest.
- [68:34]
Brian
And you've taken off a Christian people where that gospel of the kingdom has gone forth and taken root into people and formed that people and made them prosperous and all these things. And then that people willfully removes the armor of God and they remove the breastplate of righteousness and the breastplate of salvation.
- [68:49]
Ben
That nation that's been baptized. The waters of baptism serve to judge and not to bless.
- [68:53]
Brian
Exactly. And so the warning of the snallygaster is to repent of your sin and trust Christ. Indeed, it's crazy. But what we've determined is that you should not follow the demons, but you should repent of your sin. Seriously, turn away from it and turn to Christ because these things follow. Hell follows sin and apostasy. Yes it does. It follows the rejection of Christ. It takes deep root in human society and warps them into wicked and twisted ways. You know, I said on ninjas are bodies butterflies, say it again here. The Aztecs didn't start with the slaughter of innocents and sacrificing their victims on their ziggurats. They didn't begin by plunging flint knives into the chests of their victims, carving their living hearts out and casting their bodies down the ziggurats in worship of their craven gods. They started with small sins. And those small sins unrepentant of for hundreds of years in a society peaked in the act of ripping the still beating heart out of victims. And then what did God do? He sent the rod of his judgment and correction in the Spanish conquistadors who.
- [69:58]
Ben
Said, congratulations, the human sacrifice will now stop.
- [70:00]
Brian
They said the human sacrifice is now over.
- [70:02]
Ben
It's done, no more. What's interesting too is it's not even, you know, the small sins that the Aztecs and the Incas and all these were walking in. It's not just that they were tolerated and unrepentant of, they were elevated to a status of virtue. And in the same way, like if you look at modern immigration America and we'll use abortion because it's a very visceral example, the millions of children that are killed every year. And who looks like the Aztecs now? Well, we do because we sacrifice children at the altar of convenience all day at the altar of Moloch. And now we look like the Aztecs. But we didn't start by slaughtering millions of babies. We started by allowing the destruction of the home, sexual degeneracy, the importation of different nations into our nation, and basically elevating them to a status of victimhood where whatever they said was virtuous. And we began to believe those lies, tell them ourselves, tell them to our children and their children, and so they become virtues. And now we have a nation that looks utterly foreign to the one that was founded and intended by the Founding Fathers.
- [71:08]
Brian
Well, with that, let's go into the next story of the Snallygaster. Let's and add some more wrinkles, because after this story I want to introduce one of my favorite wrinkles to this story, which is that the Snallygaster might have a mortal enemy haunting the woods.
- [71:24]
Ben
Oh my.
- [71:35]
Brian
In late fall of 1932, a married couple drove through the night on the winding roads of South Mountain in Maryland. Flanked on either side by trees, the only sky they could see was what the open road exposed. It was a beautiful night, clear, with a bright moon and a deep blue glow over everything. They drove on. Eventually they curved around a bend and saw a long stretch of straight road before them. They thought nothing of it and simply continued. But halfway down that mile or so stretch of clear view, the car was suddenly, suddenly jolted backward, as if the man driving had slammed on the brakes. His wife looked at him, puzzled. He lifted his foot and cocked his head to show that he too was confused. He hadn't done anything. Then, like lightning, a piercing scream echoed through the night, followed by a great mass slamming down on the trunk of the car. The man looked in the rearview mirror but saw nothing. He only heard the sound of scratching metal and felt the tires being squished to a near stop by some great force. Still, the car was not stopped yet, so he instinctively slammed on the brakes. The sudden stop resulted in the rear window being smashed again by something unseen. The couple sat in silence, waiting for something new to happen. After nearly a minute of anticipation, the wife tapped her husband's shoulder and pointed out the windshield. There, forming like an ice sculpture melting in reverse, a body appeared out of nowhere. It moved up and down slightly with the beating of enormous black wings. It was a bird like serpent, skeletal and writhing, with strings of flesh pouring from its center and wriggling around like worms in the sun. In the dark and faceless head, was a single eye that glowed red and green and blue with hands outstretched to the heavens. The monster let out another crash cry before flying off toward the moon. The couple made it home unscathed, but the car was totaled by the weight of the monster's bulk. Cloaked by some otherworldly ability pressing down on it, the Snallygaster, new and improved, was back. But just how was the monster new and improved? Well, that goes back to an oral legend passed down from early settlers and revived in the sightings of the early 1900s. Locals would occasionally claim to have found strange nests deep in the backcountry that contained dinosaur like eggs, only discolored and far larger than what scientists claimed for the extinct creatures. This only threw fuel on the fire of panic and foundational fear. The Snally would always be there, because somehow the Snally was reproducing. And so the fresh encounter of the 30s was thought to be made possible by the birth and maturation of an evolved monster. Part demon from hell, part creeping thing of the earth. After that initial encounter on the lonely state route at night, a new wave of reported sightings and attacks by the beast flooded law enforcement and newspaper offices over the coming weeks. It was the same old things, supernatural abilities, vampiric tendencies, and Lovecraftian grotesqueness that inspired transcendent horror in those who saw it. But then, just as suddenly as the wave some 23 years prior. This new string of attacks ended with the December 21st release of the article in Hagerstown Morning Herald entitled Death of Snallygaster is Reported. It outlined the following fantastic story. In Washington County, Maryland, there was a black market moonshine distillery known to locals as Frog Hollow. Being the height of prohibition, this operation was far removed from any other human society. It was, as much as one can be in the American east, totally remote. The bootleggers working there were therefore shocked and frightened to look into the sky one night only to see an ancient evil soaring toward them. They took to cover, thinking the monster was hungry for their flesh or blood, and watched its approach with hands gripping rifles and shotguns. But lo and behold, they never had to fire on the creature a single time for trouble. Just as they were about to spring out in their own defense, the monster plunged itself into the 2,500 gallon VAT of mash liquor. It was completely submerged for upwards of two minutes before what came next. Which was, of course, the coincidental raid on the moonshine distillery by local ATF predecessors George Danforth and Charles Cushwa. To the bootleggers, the timing was perfect. Their production was ruined by the monster presumably trying to drink all of their booze anyway. They Turned tail and ran in all directions into the wood as fast as they could, leaving the officers to deal with the monster. Free from the threat of jealous moonshiners. The agents approached the liquor vat with guns raised. They pushed the barrels of their firearms over the rim of the vessel as quickly as they could and started firing right away, Though Danforth knew it was to no use, the dreaded plague of Maryland, the snallygaster's vengeful offspring itself lay dead in the shine. It was determined later that it had succumbed to drowning after the rich amount of lye in the liquor sent it into shock. And that was it. That was the end of all Maryland's trouble from the lindworm and the drood. The schnelgeist, the snallygaster. George Danforth, who was an actual agent working prohibition cases, closed the case with a dose of lightheartedness when he told the reporter for the Register, imagine our feeling when our eyes feasted on the monster submerged in a liquor vat. He ended his interview with a belly laugh.
- [77:24]
Ben
So, Brian, what you're telling me is that if it wasn't for prohibition, the snallagaster would have drank himself to death long ago. So, basically, we have prohibition to blame for the propagation of demonic influence in our country.
- [77:38]
Brian
Really what we need is to make sure that we have large vats of crudely formed liquor available at all times so that the demon spirits who love the demon liquor will drown themselves in it, seeking their own drunkenness, because the.
- [77:53]
Ben
Demons are just, like, useless drunks.
- [77:55]
Brian
Here's what we're saying, guys. Stop fornicating or the snallygaster will get you. You need to stop being drunks, because the snallygaster, the demon spirit of wherever this is Maryland, is a drunk himself. Do you want to be like the snallygaster?
- [78:09]
Ben
Well, look, stop it. Don't be a drunk 100%. Don't sin. Don't be a drunk. But also, like, have alcohol on hand in case the snallygaster does show up, and then you can throw bottles at it and it won't be able to help itself. It'll just drink the start ghaz.
- [78:23]
Brian
Yeah, yeah.
- [78:24]
Ben
And then it'll drown.
- [78:26]
Brian
I think that really is the takeaway.
- [78:28]
Ben
So one of the things that I haven't gotten to touch on yet, but that I really wanted to, was a way that we can think through chimeras. So this idea of a chimera, which, going back to something Bryan said earlier, is a combination of different living creatures into one thing. We see this A lot in ancient myth. You know, you have Oannes with the Babylonians, who is a man with a fish tail. You have plenty of Greek examples, the Hecatoncheires, that are like these men monsters with a hundred hands and a hundred eyes. You have the Harpies in Greek myth that are ladybirds. And I don't mean ladybird, like a.
- [79:04]
Brian
Tiny little bird or like the British call or like.
- [79:07]
Ben
Or like the singer late ladybird.
- [79:09]
Brian
Well, the Brits call a ladybug a ladybird.
- [79:11]
Ben
Or the Jennifer Lawrence movie Ladybird. I don't think she was in. I don't know who.
- [79:14]
Brian
I actually don't know who Jennifer Lawrence is.
- [79:17]
Ben
Hunger Games. Which person in the Hunger Games was the main girl? Katniss Everdeen?
- [79:22]
Brian
The.
- [79:22]
Ben
Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
- [79:24]
Brian
Yeah, I know who that is. Yeah, yeah. So, okay, continue.
- [79:26]
Ben
Anyway, chimeras are all those things, including Jennifer Lawrence. She is a chimera. Jennifer, repent. But what I wanted to say was there's some ways that we can explain this biblically.
- [79:39]
Brian
So your mom's a chimera between a mountain and a person.
- [79:43]
Ben
Your mom's a chimera between a literal Carnival cruise ship and a hippo. So there's some ways that we can explain this. If you want to get like a really in depth explanation into these things, you can. You can read Doug Van Dorn's Giants. He has like an appendix about it.
- [80:02]
Brian
About chimeras.
- [80:03]
Ben
Yeah. And I remember thinking, wow, this is interesting. But I don't remember anything from it at all. So that's not really helpful. Thank you. But there's a much more basic thing that we can do, and it's that we can look at the physical descriptions of angelic creatures. In the Bible, the cherubim is the best example. Ezekiel talks about the cherubim. You know, they have these wings, they have four faces, you know, face of lion, face of a man, face of an eagle, face of an ox. They have legs like bronze iron that have hooves on the bottom. And then their torso is very mannish. And so that's a spiritual being in its essence. You know, the reformed tradition is that angels are pure spirit, but when it manifests itself physically by the decree of God, and I don't know how much malleability there is here, who just no one knows.
- [80:50]
Brian
We don't know.
- [80:51]
Ben
But we know that when it manifests itself, it is as a chimera. That's just how we would categorize it. And so it stands to reason. Like, it is speculative, but it's not A crazy leap to say that if those pure spirit beings fall and they want to manifest themselves physically more and more to rule over man in a more overt way, that they, too would have chimeric identities. And so that means that you can look at these mythological stories of the Harpy and Oannes with Babylon and say when you see a carving of a man fish on a Babylonian temple. Yeah. Maybe that actually just is what they saw.
- [81:31]
Brian
Yeah, right.
- [81:32]
Ben
He just was a man fish.
- [81:33]
Brian
Yeah, maybe he was a man fish or fishman.
- [81:36]
Ben
Let me ask you this.
- [81:37]
Brian
Yeah.
- [81:37]
Ben
If you could be any mythological chimera.
- [81:40]
Brian
Oh, dude.
- [81:41]
Ben
Unicorn, griffin, Pegasus, man.
- [81:44]
Brian
Merman.
- [81:44]
Ben
You'd be a merman for sure, dude.
- [81:46]
Brian
I would.
- [81:47]
Ben
I think you got mermaid.
- [81:49]
Brian
Like a mermaid. I would want to be, like, a worm man. So I had, like, the upper part of my body was an earthworm, and then I had legs.
- [81:57]
Ben
That would be terrifying.
- [81:58]
Brian
You know what I'm saying? Because, like, if I. And I'm the size of a person.
- [82:02]
Ben
Yeah.
- [82:02]
Brian
So, like, it's. It's a big, thick earthworm body on the top that's kind of like, you know, wiggling around.
- [82:07]
Ben
You're getting to eat dirt and.
- [82:08]
Brian
But I can walk around. I have all of the. The benefits of bipedal ambulatory movement.
- [82:14]
Ben
Yeah.
- [82:14]
Brian
So I can just absolutely flop my worm self and terrify people.
- [82:18]
Ben
Dude, that.
- [82:19]
Brian
I think you'd last about 10 minutes before you were shot by some Christian farmer. Doing the right thing.
- [82:23]
Ben
Doing the right thing. That would be my son's dream, to be a worm man. How about you? He loves to eat dirt.
- [82:28]
Brian
Perfect.
- [82:29]
Ben
Dude. I think, like. Like a centaur is pretty cool. You're like, body of a man, body of a horse. That's it.
- [82:36]
Brian
Because what if you had the upper body of a horse and the lower.
- [82:40]
Ben
Body of a man? Like a minotaur, but horse.
- [82:42]
Brian
Yeah. Like, people are always wanting the upper body of a man. But like, a horse. That's a powerful horse head. You get the mane. Yeah. But those horses, you get all that hair up there.
- [82:51]
Ben
Those horse. I could use the hair. I'd want a lion head. And then the. Everything else stays the same so that I can have a lot of hair. That's because I'm. I'm running low on hair, guys. I mean, look at this.
- [83:02]
Brian
But in your defense, you look like Henry Cavill.
- [83:05]
Ben
But I also. I look like. I. I look like the. From the eyebrows up.
- [83:12]
Brian
Yeah.
- [83:12]
Ben
Like a meth addict.
- [83:13]
Brian
That's true.
- [83:14]
Ben
Yeah, that's true. Yeah. That's so sad.
- [83:16]
Brian
So here's the thing, though, there is another chimeric sort of creature that may actually be the same thing as the Snallygaster.
- [83:23]
Ben
Dude, lay it on me.
- [83:25]
Brian
And. And then I have the mortal enemy that I teased. Oh, yeah, the Jersey Devil. The JD the crazy thing about the Jersey Devil is that it was first. The original legend starts in 1735, which is one of the biggest sightings of the Snallygaster was then. And it's not too far removed. Very similar chimeric dragon, like skate, like a lot of similar elements. Some people have said that these may have been a similar class of being that were. And now the origin story of the Jersey Devil is like the 13th child of some witchcraft. But a lot of the origin stories are very fuzzy, muddled.
- [84:03]
Ben
The thing. My big beef with that idea.
- [84:05]
Brian
Yeah, yeah, let's. Let's hear it.
- [84:06]
Ben
Is that the Snallygaster, one of its defining features is that it has no legs. It may have front paws.
- [84:11]
Brian
Right.
- [84:11]
Ben
If you front talons, but it doesn't stand upright.
- [84:15]
Brian
Maybe they're cousins.
- [84:16]
Ben
And the Jersey Devil has goat. Has goat hooves because goats are demons.
- [84:19]
Brian
Maybe they're. Maybe they're cousins. Maybe there was something weird with a goat and a Jersey Devil.
- [84:26]
Ben
And a Snelly Gaster.
- [84:26]
Brian
Oh, and a Snelly Gaster.
- [84:27]
Ben
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [84:28]
Brian
So I want to note two things really quick as we transition into the mortal enemy of the Snallygaster. That we actually had the appearance of a cryptid on the show moments ago. You can scroll back and see if you notice. The arm of Evanescence appeared in the shot not too long ago.
- [84:44]
Ben
The arm here on YouTube of Evanescence.
- [84:46]
Brian
The arm of the quick arm. The schnell arm. The quick arm reached in because someone left their water bottle because it was.
- [84:53]
Ben
A very ghastly arm. He's very pale. The geist arm.
- [84:56]
Brian
Very, very.
- [84:57]
Ben
He doesn't get out. You know, he doesn't get out on the ground golf course as much as we do now.
- [85:00]
Brian
What's crazy, though, about this story of the Snallygaster is that there is another wrinkle to it that is absolutely fascinating.
- [85:07]
Ben
Another layer of this onion.
- [85:09]
Brian
And it is that there was allegedly an immortal cryptid enemy of the Snallygaster that lived in the same region.
- [85:19]
Ben
Angel.
- [85:19]
Brian
And they warred with one another. Angel. And at first I was like, a house divided cannot stand. You know what I mean?
- [85:24]
Ben
Right, right, right.
- [85:25]
Brian
But then I thought, but at the same time, like on a pirate ship, there's probably a lot of mutiny.
- [85:29]
Ben
That's true.
- [85:30]
Brian
Okay.
- [85:30]
Ben
Because they're all prideful.
- [85:32]
Brian
They're all very prideful. So there was. There was a creature called the Dwyo is what they called it. And it was very much like the cryptid inversion of the snallygaster. The snallygaster is like a being of the air and the heavens and it would come down and rain death. It was reptilian and dragon like. But then there is a creature of the earth that's a. Is a wolf like creature, but a chimeric wolf like creature. Yeah, it was like, see, the Germans are so real when they name stuff. It's like somehow the perfect word for a thing. It was like the veld, the. The word Wolfenstein or something.
- [86:02]
Ben
The Wolfenstein. I can't remember the Wolfenstein.
- [86:04]
Brian
I just like love that it's the Schnell Geister. And then some, some guy in Maryland was like. You mean the snallygasterally Gaster? You mean. Are you talking about the snallygaster? That's what I heard.
- [86:15]
Ben
We don't talk European over here.
- [86:17]
Brian
So anyway, they had this other creature. It was. It was like a werewolf type creature, but there was. There's no element of it turning into a man necessarily, or the full moon part. But it's just a wolf like creature. Six to nine feet tall, very muscular, dark fur, very wolfish. And allegedly this creature would wage war. Dude, that is with the snallygaster in the woods. I want to read the main source, the main story from this that I took some notes here, I just got on my phone here. I'm gonna read this little anecdote. It said. Now, while the Snallygaster might be the most infamous monster of Maryland, it apparently doesn't have the hills all to itself. In fact, according to some locals, the Snallygaster has a mortal enemy. Another creature that prowls the forest, but on two feet instead of wings. It's called the Dwyo and it's basically a werewolf with a Maryland zip code. The first major sighting happened in 1965 when a man named John Becker claimed to encounter a massive upright wolf like beast near Gambrell State park, just west of Frederick. He said the thing stood like a man, but had the snarling face of a wolf, thick fur and glowing eyes. It growled at him, then ran into the forest. Becker reported the encounter to the police and local papers ran the story. Whispers spread. Some said that DWYO was the only thing that could find fight the Snallygaster that the two had battled in the woods for generations. The snake versus the wolf. The sky versus the earth, dragon versus dog. It's hard to know where the folklore ends and the myth begins. But if the Snallygaster is a winged terror of the night skies, the DWYO is its grim growling opposite in the flipping trees, dude.
- [88:01]
Ben
It's not. It's hard to know where the. Where the brute fact ends. Oh, wait, no, it's not hard to know. It's all brute fact.
- [88:10]
Brian
Ben's like, because it's cool.
- [88:12]
Ben
I believe it. And by the way, Dwyer is an angel, dude, Angels scare people all the time. Doesn't matter if that guy was.
- [88:19]
Brian
So. The Snelly gaster is getting uppity. And so God's like, hey, God's like Dwyer. And it's just an angel that's like, hasn't had a lot to do yet. And he's like, you're going to go wolf. Wolf it up on this thing, dude.
- [88:29]
Ben
It's like when it's like in the.
- [88:31]
Brian
Silmarillion, leaps its way in and it says, not today.
- [88:35]
Ben
It's like in the Silmarillion when Beren has taken the elves of Nargothrond to Minas Tirith because he needs to go steal a silmaril from Melkor. And then Luthien is like, he's never gonna make it. They get trapped in Minas Tirith, and then Luthien shows up with Huan, the Hound of Valar. The Hound of the Valar. And Sauron changes himself into a vampire, and Huan and is fighting the vampire.
- [89:02]
Brian
Yeah, it's exactly like that.
- [89:04]
Ben
So what I'm saying is Huan was an angel in. In a sense.
- [89:08]
Brian
I mean, angel, dude. So this connection being airtight basically explains the whole legend.
- [89:13]
Ben
Yeah.
- [89:14]
Brian
And I. I choose to believe that everything you just said is true.
- [89:17]
Ben
Yeah. And I think with that, it's time to round out the episode. Now.
- [89:21]
Brian
We're.
- [89:21]
Ben
We're going to go into the hot clothes here. Yeah. And what we want to do is just give you an example of how. How much these stories of these Cryptids that are apparently just, you know, super powerful material creatures, how much they rhyme. And so we're going to tell the story of one of the guys that you listed, one of the guys that you listed in that list of other Cryptids, and it's the Lizard man of Scape or Swamp in South Carolina.
- [89:46]
Brian
Yeah. So thanks for listening, guys. Like we said at the beginning, if you want to support the show link in the description, you can sign up on Patreon Supercast. And we're going to be giving away. A great book on American Cryptids for your coffee table to five lucky signers on the day that this episode comes out. If you're listening on audio, make sure head over to YouTube. Just subscribe to the channel if you ever want to see us. Yeah if you ever want to see the magic and not just be brought there with with our mystical soundscaping. Yeah join us on YouTube. We're having a great time over on YouTube. Yep we're having a great time on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. But leave us your your best five star review wherever you're listening. And guys, thanks for listening. We hope you enjoy this hot close.
- [90:28]
Ben
Enjoy season six. We're happy to be here. Ancient Mesoamericans believed in a two layered cosmos. The first layer was called tonal. It represents all that is known or knowable. It is the sensible world around us, the world we spend the vast bulk of our time and lives interacting with. The nagual, on the other hand, is all that exists but remains beyond our understanding. It is the underlying fuel that generates the cosmos and is therefore akin to the chaotic dis of Greek mythology from which the world emerged. In its essence it is pure act, but in its mystery it is only manifest to us as pure potentiality. Contained in the nagual are all the possibilities of man, all the planes he may elevate to, all the vastness of the imagination made into something real. To the shamans of that culture, a personal nirvana occurred anytime someone perfectly merged the tonal with the nagual and their own conception of reality. It grounded them in what was still real, while opening up universes of opportunity and even, some might say, a supernatural skill set. To those same shamans, however, it wasn't enough for someone to simply claim enlightenment. They had to prove it. They did so by performing an act reserved for the gods, a miracle of some sort. Over time, the most common miracle used as proof was shapeshifting. Depending on the personality of the individual, they would change physical form into what resembled either a chimera, a human animal hybrid, or a particularly beautiful animal with no humanoid features. The wicked were the ones that became chimeras, not by choice, but because the power of the nagual revealed their true essence in the image of something other than man. For the wicked, the chimera displayed the latent confusion, the tension, the animosity that the individual felt toward all of creation. The chimera was ugly, just like the participant's soul. But these rules were merely theory. It was only an idea that a pure soul would Shapeshift into a pure and almost heavenly creature. Because in the stories, shapeshifting always resulted in a chimera. Only the wicked ever achieved the enlightenment of the Mesoamericans. What had once been a prize human divinity actually became a curse over time, a monster that plagued the land. Thus the nagual, for that is what the chimeras were called, since they embodied that pure energy, were feared and avoided by all. They were oppressors and aggressors, hated and outcast by the people who should have worshiped them. They became demon beasts that fed on the peace of any creature unfortunate enough to be near them. Even today, this hatred of the nagual lingers in rural parts of Mexico. In the summer of 2020, in Soledad de Deblado, a scorching day gave way to a hot night as the small city slowed down and fell asleep. But into the sigh of its sleeping people came the cry of a mob, charging through the center of town with torches and weapons in hand. A crowd of a few dozen people ran in one direction, shouting and screaming. One man stepped out of his home to see what the commotion was all about. He spotted the crowd crowd and began to retreat indoors, fearing it was a riot. But as he glanced down the road just ahead of the mob, he saw something. Despite the fading light, he could make out the shape of some strange moving thing. It moved fast, but awkwardly, loping along in a klutzy, almost painful looking way. Its hide was a light gray, barely darker than steam. Standing out against the dark foliage. It dragged folds of loose skin through the dirt and ran, now on four legs, now on two. Curious, the man followed behind the angry crowd. After another quarter mile or so, the man saw the gray mass leap into a tree and climb to the top. The mob gathered at the base and began shouting up to it. They hurled rocks and kitchen knives and spades, anything they could find to harm the creature. The man stood nearby and just observed. Finally, one man approached the tree with a canister of diesel fuel. He emptied multiple gallons over the trunk and onto the wood piled around it. Then someone threw in a torch and the tree erupted in sudden flame. A moment later, the man saw the creature clearly for the first and only time. In the firelight and the moonlight, a monster unlike anything he had ever seen or imagined jumped from the top branch of the burning tree. It looked like a man, but still something more, or perhaps something less. Its limbs stretched unnaturally long and its frame was massive. It had bat like ears and glowing yellow eyes. It looked too human. To be anything else. But just as that thought crossed the man's mind, the creature unfolded its skin midair to reveal leathery wings. It flapped and soared off into the night, never to be seen again. The crowd erupted in cheers. They congratulated each other, certain they had just chased away a nagual. Several members of the mob streamed the entire event live on Facebook, and that video received over 35,000 views and prompted a response from Mexican government authorities. But what about us? What other snallygasters or naguals might still haunt the remote places of the US perhaps more than you think. On June 29, 1988, a 17 year old named Christopher Davis, a local of Bishopville, South Carolina, popped a tire on his drive home from work. It was 2am he had just finished a long shift at a fast food restaurant and was eager to get home and find fall into bed. You can therefore imagine his frustration when he had to pull off the road to change a flat tire in the middle of the night. The only silver lining, Davis thought, was that he had stopped near one of the only functioning streetlights on that stretch of road. At least he would be able to see what he was doing. But he also knew that that light stood there for a reason. You see, the scape, or swamp was just across the road, and the lamp was meant to warn motorists about animals that may be crossing. It was the swamp's closest point to any highway, so while Davis had light, he also needed to keep an eye out for curious swamp snakes. Davis really hated snakes. He turned off the engine and dug the tools free from his trunk. The buzz of the overhead light blended with the cicadas all around him. A quite nice night symphony were at a less annoying time for the boy. He slapped a mosquito on his neck and muttered to himself, still buggy, still muggy, and still hot, even in the middle of the night. He jacked the car, removed the damaged wheel, lifted the spare, and started tightening the lug nuts. Then suddenly he realized it had gone quiet. The cicadas, crickets, and frogs had all stopped. All he could hear was the low buzz of the lamp and his own increasingly heavy breathing. He couldn't help the breathing, and he didn't know why. It was quickening. Some alarm inside of him was going off. The silence felt wrong. Davis hurried. He packed up his tools and rolled the ruined tire back to the trunk and slammed it shut as he walked toward the driver's door. Fumbling with his keys, he looked up in the penumbra just beyond the edge of the streetlight's glow, he saw a figure walking toward him. It was tall, at least seven feet, he later estimated, and bulky. In that first moment, Davis panicked. Thinking it might be a carjacker or roadside killer. He grabbed the handle and yanked the door open. But as he stepped into the driver's seat and glanced up again, panic turned into horror. The figure was now sprinting at him. Now he could tell that it wasn't a man. Its skin was scaly and slick, smeared with mud and draped with dead tree branches, clumped with mud and soggy with water. Its silvery scales glimmered in the warm yellow light. Where its hands should have been were three massive, bloodied claws. Its head, shaped like a lizard's or a gecko's, was the size of a giant. Its soulless, glowing green eyes looked onto him as he ran, and its weight made the ground tremble with each pounding footfall. Davis slammed the door shut and cranked the ignition harder than he ever had. The engine roared to life, but not quickly enough. He looked up again just in time to see the creature mid air, leaping at the car. It landed on the roof with a heavy thud. He his claws scraped across the metal, trying to dig through. With no other option, Davis slammed the gas pedal. After the car gained a bit of speed, he slammed on the brakes, hoping to throw the creature off. And the plan worked. The beast tumbled down the side of the vehicle, leaving three deep claw marks across the driver's side doors as it did so. Davis sat in the silence for a moment, catching his breath and trying to calm his nerve. The creature lay stunned in the road, and when he saw the creature start to shift and gain its footing, he stopped, waiting for more. He swerved around it and sped home through the night, foot pressed hard to the floor the entire way. In the following days, Davis told the police what had happened. Surprisingly, they believed him. They examined the scratches and confirmed their strangeness. None of the officers had seen anything like them. They judged Davis mentally sound to provide adequate witness, and even administered a polygraph test to the boy, which he passed. Christopher Davis for sure had seen something he couldn't explain, that much was certain. In the days after his report, more calls came in. Locals, scared and with trembling voices, told the police of a creature that looked like a man and a lizard who was terrorizing their neighborhood, stalking their homes, attacking their animals, damaging their cars and storefronts. All the encounters took place all along the border of south, escape or swamp. These sightings continued for nearly 20 months. At least a dozen witnesses described a reptilian humanoid, seven feet tall, clawed, scaled, yellow or green eyes. Many said it had a tail. In every report, its glowing eyes stood out as the most terrifying detail. The detail that stuck with the people and provided lasting dread. Men. Just like that, the sightings stopped. The Lizardman of Skateboard Swamp faded into local lore and tourist brochures. Bishopville forgot the reality of its monster and made it into a fiction preserved on children's T shirts and novelty coffee mugs, much like Maryland with the snallygaster. South Carolina forgot its villain. At least they forgot that villains might actually be there somewhere. That was, until a man was attacked in the skateboard wilderness in the winter of 2008, and all those old fears rose to the surface again. Was it the same monster? Was it its offspring? Or something else entirely? I don't know. Perhaps those questions are better reserved for another day.
- [101:45]
Brian
Mothman in disguise Wolf man in disguise Giant angel cries we hear other lies Moon ey children here to steal your soul Bigfoot skin walkers are from my control Hunting God's fools I'm so scared.
- [102:06]
Ben
All this mystery pre I'm not prepared I take God.