Episode 623: Fan Favorite: The Violent Deaths of Bog Bodies

Summary

Morbid Podcast Summary: Episode 623 - Fan Favorite: The Violent Deaths of Bog Bodies

Released on December 2, 2024, by Morbid Network | Wondery

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Introduction to Bog Bodies

In this captivating episode, hosts Drew and Ash delve into the eerie and fascinating world of bog bodies—ancient human remains preserved in peat bogs. These well-preserved bodies offer a unique glimpse into the past, primarily found in northern Europe and dating back thousands of years.

Drew sets the stage by explaining, “These are whole ass people, preserved for like thousands of years” (09:15), highlighting the extraordinary preservation that allows us to study them today.

The Preservation Process

The episode explores the science behind why bog bodies remain so intact. Drew explains the role of peat and sphagnum moss in preservation:

Drew: “Peat is a material created by the slow decomposition of organic matter... Sphagnum moss is actually one of the big reasons why peat is able to preserve” (14:16).

This combination creates an anaerobic environment that slows down decomposition, preserving skin, hair, and even clothing.

Ash adds humorously, “Yeah, I'm happy for you” (13:16), referring to the delicate preservation process.

Notable Bog Bodies

Elling Woman

Discovered in Denmark in 1938 by farmer Jens Zacharison, the Elling Woman is estimated to have been around 25 years old at the time of her death. She was found wrapped in multiple layers of sheepskin and cowhide, with a leather rope tied around her neck in a slipknot.

Drew: “She had long hair that had been intricately braided before she was killed... It looks like a wig” (29:10).

The Elling Woman is believed to have been a ritualistic sacrifice, possibly a fertility offering to the gods.

Tolland Man

Found 12 years after the Elling Woman in the same Danish bog, the Tolland Man is one of the most preserved bog bodies. Estimated to be between 30 and 40 years old, he was found naked with a pointed cap and in a peaceful fetal position.

Drew: “He looks like he is sleeping... his face shows every line and wrinkle” (31:16).

His last meal was identified as porridge with grains and bony fish, consumed 12 to 24 hours before his death.

Edie Girl

Unearthed in the Netherlands in 1897 by peat cutters, the Edie Girl was approximately 14 to 16 years old at her death. She was found mutilated with a large gash across her throat and had a significant lock of fiery red hair.

Drew: “They thought it was the devil because she had a big lock of fiery red hair” (33:33).

Despite initial fear and superstition, her remains were carefully preserved by the National Museum of Denmark.

Cloney Caven Man and Old Krogan Man

Both discovered in Ireland's Clooney Caven County Meath in 2003, these men exhibited signs of brutal murders. Cloney Caven Man had a styled mohawk-like haircut using plant oil, indicating a high social status.

Drew: “They were clearly of the upper echelon of social class... well nourished and well manicured nails” (44:25).

Old Krogan Man showed signs of torture, including hazel branches threaded through his arms, suggesting ritualistic abuse before his death.

Gr Bale Man

Found in Denmark in 1952, the Gr Bale Man was shredded by peat-cutting machinery but remained largely intact. He exhibited a gaping throat wound and signs of severe bodily trauma.

Drew: “A huge, very intense slice across the throat... carotid arteries and the jugular vein were severed” (64:14).

This case underscores the extreme violence associated with some bog bodies and the meticulous preservation despite such injuries.

Haldremose Woman

Discovered in 1879 near Haldremose, Denmark, this woman was around 40 years old at her death. Her remains showed evidence of severe mutilation, including a hacked-off arm and bound limbs.

Drew: “She was killed around 160 BCE... her left leg had been hacked at as well” (66:38).

Ritualistic Significance and Theories

The hosts discuss various theories regarding the purpose behind the violent deaths of bog bodies. One prevailing theory is that these individuals were ritually sacrificed to appease gods or as a form of punishment.

Drew: “They were being punished because by doing this they were remaining in the in-between place where their body couldn't even decompose” (21:44).

Ash humorously remarks, “It's like they were creating man-made purgatory” (21:44), emphasizing the grim nature of these rituals.

Scientific Insights and Discoveries

Advancements in technology have allowed scientists to extract more information from bog bodies over time. DNA analysis, isotopic studies, and advanced imaging techniques have provided deeper insights into their lives, diets, and the circumstances surrounding their deaths.

Drew: “As technology and science goes forward... they're getting more and more from these bodies” (46:23).

One intriguing discovery is the use of plant-based hair gel by ancient societies, as seen in the Cloney Caven Man, suggesting a sophisticated understanding of hair styling (41:34).

Case Study: Bog Body Mix-Up

A particularly fascinating segment covers a modern case where bog body remains were mistakenly linked to a recent murder:

In 1983, peat cutters in Cheshire, England, discovered a well-preserved female skull, initially thought to be a recent victim. This led to the arrest of Peter Rainbark for unrelated crimes. However, forensic analysis later revealed the skull was over 1,700 years old, debunking the link and exonerating Rainbark.

Drew: “It was a solid case of murder... but later determined to be a woman who died about 1,700 years ago” (56:26).

Conclusion and Future Studies

The episode wraps up by reflecting on the grim yet fascinating legacy of bog bodies. Drew and Ash express amazement at the level of preservation and the insights these remains provide into ancient human societies.

Ash: “I've never heard of those before” (68:16), highlighting the enduring mystery and allure of bog bodies.

Drew: “It's a very interesting thing... just so cool” (67:20), emphasizing the blend of horror and historical intrigue that bog bodies embody.

The hosts hint at future episodes that will delve deeper into more bog body discoveries, promising listeners continued exploration of these ancient mysteries.

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Notable Quotes

• Drew (09:15): “These are people who would only be able to study from things that we find. And if we find things, it's like, whoa. We found this ancient thing from 2,000 years ago.”
• Drew (14:16): “Peat is a material created by the slow decomposition of organic matter... Sphagnum moss is actually one of the big reasons why peat is able to preserve.”
• Drew (29:10): “She had long hair that had been intricately braided before she was killed... It looks like a wig.”
• Drew (31:16): “He looks like he is sleeping... his face shows every line and wrinkle.”
• Drew (33:33): “They thought it was the devil because she had a big lock of fiery red hair.”
• Drew (44:25): “They were clearly of the upper echelon of social class... well nourished and well manicured nails.”
• Drew (21:44): “They were being punished because by doing this they were remaining in the in-between place where their body couldn't even decompose.”
• Drew (56:26): “It was a solid case of murder... but later determined to be a woman who died about 1,700 years ago.”
• Drew (67:20): “It's a very interesting thing... just so cool.”

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Final Thoughts

Episode 623 of Morbid offers a detailed and spine-chilling exploration of bog bodies, blending scientific discovery with historical horror. Through meticulous research and engaging discussion, Drew and Ash illuminate the dark past of these ancient remains, making the episode a must-listen for true crime and history enthusiasts alike.

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For those interested in exploring more about bog bodies and other macabre histories, tune into Morbid on the Wondery app or your preferred podcast platform.

Transcript

[Elena]

Wondery plus subscribers can listen to Morbid early and ad free. Join Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

[Ash]

You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.

[Elena]

Hey everyone, let's talk about protein for a second. There's this rumor that getting plant based protein is tough, but listen, there are some amazing options out there even if you're not vegan. Adding more plant based protein to your diet is a fantastic way to nourish your body and support the planet. My good go to for tasty protein and superfood pack shake is Cachava. Every serving of Cachava offers 25 grams of 100% plant based protein. But that's not all this all in one shake has fiber, quality, fats, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and so much more. I love that I can tick so many boxes with just one delicious shake. If you know me, you know that vanilla and chai are my favorite flavors and I like to combine them. But they also have chocolate, they've got matcha, and they've got coconut acai. I'm a big fan of the coconut acai as well. After drinking Kachava first thing in the morning because that's when I always drink it, I feel satiated for hours. I feel focused, calm and ready to take on my day. Something that I really love to do if I even want like a little bit more protein is just add a scoop of peanut butter to the vanilla and chai concoction that I make and that oh is just scrum diddly umpious honey. Kachava is offering our listeners 10% off on their subscription for a limited time. Just go to kachava.commorbid spelled k a C H A V a and get 10% off your first order. That's K A C H A dot.

[Drew]

Com Morbid Peloton has a variety of workouts for wherever you are on your fitness journey Holiday era pre drop off meditation era dry January era. Whatever era of your life you're in, Peloton has the classes and motivation you need to get after it. I'm in my will you just get up and do something era. So I've been really focusing on Bradley Rose's cycling classes. I'm really getting into some yoga classes classes and it's been awesome because there's this little thing on each of the classes that you can tell how hard it is. And we're always running on time on Peloton because whether you need 10, 20, 45 minutes of you time to sweat or Just get grounded. Peloton provides flexibility with daily, on demand and live classes that fit your schedule and your life that has been immensely important to me. Find your push. Find your power. With [e-mail] hello beautiful people.

[Elena]

We hope that you all had a lovely Thanksgiving with your family.

[Drew]

I stuffed.

[Elena]

I hope you're stuffed. I hope shit didn't get weird at the dinner table and if it did, I bet you rocked that shit.

[Drew]

Yeah, I hope it got weird and you made it weirder.

[Ash]

Yeah, I hope you wore a shirt.

[Elena]

That was provocative and made people angry.

[Drew]

Let's go.

[Elena]

I hope it was great.

[Ash]

And I hope that you watched our.

[Elena]

Frickin video that we put out our freaking video.

[Ash]

Don't forget we're doing the listener Tales in costume.

[Elena]

In costume, on video every time. The one that we just did for November came out on Thanksgiving. So I hope you watch that with your family.

[Drew]

And then I hope you went and played the Sims.

[Ash]

Oh yeah.

[Elena]

And then watch Salad Fingers.

[Drew]

Hell yeah.

[Elena]

And we also hope that you enjoy this resurrected episode.

[Drew]

Kind of like the Sims one was resurrected and the beautiful Salad Fingers was resurrected. Exactly.

[Elena]

Everything is connected.

[Drew]

Yeah. Go listen to Bog Bodies because it's a good episode. I think it's a great episode.

[Elena]

I loved that one.

[Drew]

I immediately got imposter syndrome. Did you see that happen in real time? It's a good episode, I think. I don't know. Maybe not.

[Ash]

Actually sucks.

[Elena]

Don't listen to this.

[Drew]

Shut it off to it. Actually, no, it's a great episode.

[Elena]

It is.

[Drew]

It's one of those like really fascinating, spooky weird history ones that we just love to dive into.

[Ash]

Dare I say she's a morbid classic.

[Drew]

Oh, oh, oh, oh. Enjoy it, my friends.

[Ash]

We love you.

[Drew]

Happy Thanksgiving.

[Ash]

What the fuck is that?

[Elena]

What happened?

[Ash]

Do do do do do do don't do your job.

[Elena]

The TV just turned on.

[Ash]

Guys, leave this in.

[Drew]

You have to keep this. This is the way to lead into a rerun, okay? So enjoy.

[Ash]

Enjoy.

[Drew]

Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena. I'm Ash. And.

[Ash]

Whoop, there it is.

[Drew]

We are here.

[Ash]

And you didn't forget your name this time.

[Drew]

I didn't. I don't know what happened last time.

[Ash]

It was late at night.

[Drew]

Yeah, that's what it was. It was a late night recording. I zoned out a bit. I had a moment feeling Zony. I was just on a space level.

[Ash]

I know. Usually I feel like that's like a very me thing to do. But you were not here with us.

[Drew]

I was on an Ash level.

[Ash]

That's scary.

[Drew]

I was not. I was on a space level.

[Ash]

I was going to say, I don't think you've ever been on an ash level. Truly.

[Drew]

Truly don't think I ever have.

[Ash]

Most people have.

[Drew]

That's okay. Only ash.

[Ash]

But you know what?

[Drew]

Here we are, and we're gonna do something that is. It definitely is true crime, but it's like, ancient true crime.

[Ash]

Ooh. Leave it to you.

[Drew]

Because I've always been really interested in bog bodies.

[Ash]

And you said that to me the other day, and I said, I don't know what that means.

[Drew]

She said, huh?

[Ash]

I was like, are you talking about cranberry juice? No, not really.

[Elena]

No.

[Drew]

Although, who likes cranberry juice? I think doesn't. Drew. Yeah, Drew really like cranberry juice. I just thought of that.

[Ash]

Although, who likes. I thought you were, like, doing a poll really fast, like, hey, guys, who likes cranberry juice?

[Drew]

I also kind of was. I was gonna be like, show of hands. Do you like cranberry juice?

[Ash]

He. That boy loves cranberry juice. And, like, not even cranberry juice cocktail. Like, Regina George, like, yeah, cranberry juice.

[Drew]

That's a lot for me.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Drew]

Cranberry juice is. Is very aggressive to me.

[Ash]

It's tart.

[Drew]

Very tart.

[Ash]

Yeah. This is so yuccas. But I used to drink it when I was constipated when I was little. I got constipated a lot when I was little, and my mom would just give me some cranberry juice. So now I hate it.

[Drew]

And it would work, apparently.

[Ash]

Yeah. That shit makes you shit.

[Drew]

That shit will work.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Drew]

I can't do a cranberry juice. But you know what? This isn't about cranberry juice. This is about bog bodies, which are very far off from cranberry juice. Although I guess they're a little, like. Like, sour.

[Ash]

You should.

[Drew]

Their way of. Their way of being is very sour. Look at their face.

[Ash]

They can't.

[Drew]

I wish you could see the face. It's literally Ash is just making a tart face.

[Ash]

Like, my nose is all wrinkled.

[Drew]

So let's talk. I'm sure some of you have probably heard of bog bodies because they've been around. Like, there's been a ton of discoveries in the last, like, several years of these, especially in northern Europe.

[Ash]

Well, shit.

[Drew]

But they're not. Like, don't feel bad if you don't know what they are, because, like, it's weird. And, like, they're not making as big a deal out of these as I think they should, because they make a.

[Ash]

Big deal out of like the randomest shit. But like not the. I mean, this is pretty random shit.

[Drew]

But it's very random shit, but make.

[Ash]

A big deal of this. It's interesting from what you've. You've told me, like a little tidbit.

[Drew]

Yeah. These are whole ass people.

[Ash]

Yeah. And in fact. Oh, sorry, I interrupted.

[Drew]

Go ahead. Oh, no, I was gonna say that have been preserved for like thousands of years.

[Ash]

Okay, I'm glad I let you go because Alina was looking at like some pictures the other day, going through this, and there was basically like the remains of somebody. And I thought that they had put a wig on this person. I was like, did they put a fucking wig on them? And Elena said, nor. Nor.

[Drew]

Yeah, that's exactly what I said.

[Ash]

She said, that's his hair. And I was like, what?

[Drew]

And I was like, that's a 2000 year old hair.

[Ash]

That's so crazy.

[Drew]

Yeah, it's wild. So let's talk about what bog body. What bog barties. What bog bodies are.

[Ash]

I was in a place of like nor clear, and you were like, let's get to some bog baldies.

[Drew]

I don't know what's going on.

[Ash]

Okay, tomator tomater.

[Drew]

So we're gonna talk about bog bodies. I'm gonna tell you what they are, how they form. What is in a bog that makes these bog bodies stay the way they are.

[Ash]

That's my biggest question.

[Drew]

Because my first thought is the Bog of Eternal Stench from Labyrinth.

[Ash]

That checks.

[Drew]

That's literally when I hear Bog of Eternal Stench is my next.

[Ash]

I love that you think of that, because as we know, I think of cranberry juice. But like the two Ocean Spray guys.

[Drew]

Oh, yeah.

[Ash]

Whatever happened to them?

[Drew]

What happened to them?

[Ash]

I don't watch cable anymore, so maybe they're still there.

[Drew]

Yeah, maybe. Maybe they're still around.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Drew]

Just standing in the cranberry bog.

[Ash]

I bet they are.

[Drew]

They are.

[Ash]

Because bog bodies, bog bodies, preservatives, they're bog brothers.

[Drew]

Ancient. These are basically ancient. And I mean ancient like from the Iron Age. Old, like bce. So these are ancient bodies found buried in peat marshes and bogs. And again, like I said, in northern Europe mostly.

[Ash]

Okay.

[Drew]

We're talking people from as long ago as 8000 BCE.

[Ash]

My brain just like can't even wrap itself around that.

[Drew]

Outrageous. And by the way, BCE is before Common era.

[Ash]

Yes.

[Drew]

And is a newer convention to date things and one that I like. So that's why I'm using it.

[Ash]

I'm happy for you.

[Drew]

Thank You. A lot of them seem to come from around, like I said, the early Iron Age, which, like, whoa. And I think that's somewhere around 500 BCE to 400 CE, which is common era. Okay, like, this is wildly old.

[Ash]

We're in the common era. We're in the common era, right? Well, it's.

[Drew]

It's outrageously. Like, this is literally like before common era and then basically like after common era.

[Ash]

So we're in the after.

[Drew]

We're currently in the after, I would say.

[Ash]

Oh, shit.

[Drew]

Okay, so this. But this is 400.

[Ash]

So this is way long ago.

[Drew]

Whoa.

[Ash]

Like three steps ago.

[Drew]

Outrageously old is the moral of this story. Like, these are people who we would only be able to study from things that we find. And if we find things, it's like, whoa. We found this ancient thing from 2,000 years ago. Like, it's always this amazing discovery, but now we've discovered whole ass people, right, with their things still on them.

[Ash]

Are there any cool things that, like, we don't know about that we do now?

[Drew]

Well, the things aren't even what we're looking at here. It's more what happened to these people because a lot of these people died by straight up murder. Bogart bodies. I don't know why I keep saying.

[Ash]

Bardies, bog bordies, bog parties.

[Drew]

I don't know why it feels rat. Okay, but whatever. It's not bog bodies.

[Ash]

There you go.

[Drew]

It's hard to say. Yeah, these people were often violently killed.

[Ash]

Huh?

[Drew]

Like they're not just people who died by natural causes. Old age, you know, sickness, whatever. And then they were buried in these bogs, right? No, they were like ritualistically sacrificed or straight up just murdered for no ritual.

[Ash]

It's like some smiley face killer type shit.

[Drew]

It's intense. And due to the biological magic of their. Their very unique and specific environments, these bogs, they're found completely preserved, sometimes with all their hair, skin and clothing still intact.

[Ash]

Like, I thought you were done when.

[Elena]

It was the lady in the lake.

[Ash]

Like, I was like, oh, wow, I can't get crazier than that.

[Drew]

Never done.

[Ash]

Here we go.

[Drew]

We are always ratcheting it up that huge notch.

[Ash]

You are for sure.

[Drew]

Always trying to. At least. I read a book called Bog Bodies Solving Europe's Ancient Mystery by Miranda Aldhouse Green.

[Ash]

I bet you did.

[Drew]

And it's real good. I'm going to. I'm going to tag it in the show notes.

[Ash]

If I had seen that on a library shelf, I would have been.

[Drew]

Elena, that is for you.

[Ash]

That's for my girl I really like.

[Drew]

She had a very good way of describing everything she went into, like the violence associated with it. She covered so many of these bodies because there's so many. I'm only going to cover a little handful today.

[Ash]

Are we going to do like a couple parts?

[Drew]

I might do a part two.

[Ash]

Our lives.

[Drew]

Yeah. Talking about more of these bodies because there's just so many interesting ones. But the way that she described and referred to bogs is something I really liked. Which sounds weird, I know, but she described them like this. She said bogs were and are special places, miasmic and fearsome. They hover in the tween space between land and water. They are both and they are neither.

[Ash]

Oh, that's an author.

[Drew]

Right? Like a really beautiful sentence to me.

[Ash]

Also, can we just like take a moment to study the author shouting out the author? Like, check that out.

[Drew]

Author supporting authors.

[Ash]

Tinyrael.com TheButcher and the Wren the amount.

[Drew]

Of people that now say that to me, I'm like, yes, we should put that on a shirt.

[Ash]

I love it. You should tattoo that on your shirt.

[Drew]

There you go. Just tattoo that word.

[Ash]

I'll just tattoo it on my hand.

[Drew]

The link will forever be active. But yeah, that's just like a really beautiful way of describing a bog.

[Ash]

Yeah, it absolutely is.

[Drew]

Is something that is. You think of as like probably stinky and like gross. Like a bog.

[Ash]

Yeah. When I think bog, I. Other than like my guys. Yeah. In the ocean spray men. I also think of swamps.

[Drew]

Yeah, just like green, bubbly, stinky water. You know what I mean? Like just yuckiness.

[Ash]

It's so funny though, because cranberry bogs are beautiful.

[Drew]

That's true. But Bog of Eternal Stench, that's where we're at. Peat is what we're talking about here. So peat bogs. Now, Pete is a mat.

[Ash]

Well, I just thought you met a man named Pete. Just peat bo you were like, pete is what we're talking about here. And I was like, well, I was not up to speed then.

[Elena]

Pete.

[Drew]

P E A T. All right, I'm.

[Ash]

Going to take a seat.

[Drew]

Peat is a material created by the slow decomposition of organic matter and is often formed in these bogs. The bogs are what I described above. And a lot of things can't really thrive in or around them unless they're very specific to bogs. So they're formed when shallow bodies of water have plants and such that will fall into the bodies of water. And because there's a massive lack of oxygen in these Places, it will just lay there and decompose very slowly, like very like hundreds and thousands of years, basically hanging in a preserved state for quite some time. But making the body of water, a bog and making the layers of organic material building up over time and decomposing very slowly become peat.

[Ash]

Hmm.

[Drew]

Now, sphagnum. It's sphagnum. It's hard to say sphagnum.

[Ash]

No, you did great.

[Drew]

There it is. Sphagnum moss is actually one of the big reasons why peat is able to preserve, and it sounds like I'm saying a man named Pete. It does. It's why peat is able to preserve bodies and other organic material so well. Sphagnum lives in bog moss, and when the moss dies, it releases the sphagnum into the surrounding area. In the bog water, it actually turns. If there's an organic, like, a person in there or even like an animal body, it will turn the skin leathery and kind of brown, looking like it will tan it, essentially. And any hair will seemingly be dyed a coppery red color.

[Ash]

Oh, I thought that man's just had exactly some motherfucking flow.

[Drew]

That's because it's. It does. It turns it a beautiful auburn, like, coppery auburn.

[Ash]

I feel like it's the red that.

[Drew]

You look for that I go for, like. That is my. Like, I want that. Every time I see it, I'm like, that's the color.

[Ash]

My hairstylist girlies. It's like a 7, 3, 4 or like a 7, 4, 3.

[Drew]

There you go. Yeah. Next time I go to the hairstylist, I'm bringing a picture of a bog body and being like, that's the color I want.

[Ash]

Go off queen.

[Drew]

Can you do a sphagnum color?

[Ash]

Do it.

[Drew]

But either way, it's very interesting. So as you'll see, any bog body that you will see is a dark color because they've been tanned and their hair is that fiery, coppery auburn color, which makes it a little difficult to tell what their hair color was before that.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Drew]

But usually it ends up the more coppery it is, the more it was, like, light it was in real life, like a gray or. Or a blonde.

[Ash]

That makes sense. And then it. Is it like a darker copper if they had darker.

[Drew]

Exactly. Yeah. So bog oaks are the only trees that grow around bogs, and the oak that falls into the bog actually also helps with that preservation and tanning process as well. So it's like a mixture of things that need to come together, but when it does, it is, like, perfect. Preservation.

[Ash]

That's crazy. Isn't it wild? Just like the shit that we, that happens that we don't understand.

[Drew]

Science is wild. It really is.

[Ash]

I've always enjoyed science.

[Drew]

It's. It's so interesting. Like I was. This was blowing my mind while I was reading it.

[Ash]

You're blowing my mind.

[Drew]

I'm blowing your mind. Poof.

[Elena]

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. I feel like we all have, like, cozy moments in December, especially when the holidays are coming. Some people like to wrap up in a blanket, get a little mug of hot chocolate for me. I love decorating. And that's when I feel like I'm at my coziest. And you know, I love to curl up in a blanket, too. For some comfort, watch a little holiday movie. Therapy, though, you guys, is a great way to bring yourself some comfort that never goes away, even when the season changes. I feel like everybody can benefit from therapy, and I especially feel like this time of year therapy is so necessary. You're seeing your family a lot more. Maybe you have estranged family and that upsets you. It's a great thing to talk about in therapy. So if you're thinking of starting therapy, give better help a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. And all you have to do is fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. Find comfort this December with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.commorbid today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H E L p.commorbid could you tell me exactly how much money you spent on food in the last month? How about entertainment or travel? Probably not, but you know who can. Rocket Money Rocket Money categorizes all of your expenses and helps you set a budget for different categories like bills and utilities, dining and drinks, travel and vacation, entertainment, and so many more. With Rocket Money, you know exactly where your money is going. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that empowers you to save more, spend less, and take control of your financial life. With Rocket Money, you can see all your checking, savings, credit cards, and investments in one convenient place, allowing you to understand your spending trends. Rocket Money can help you actually set a custom budget by identifying your top spending categories and suggesting, you know, areas where you could adjust your spending habits. They'll calculate your monthly spending allowance and they'll even alert you when you're close to going over budget so that you can save more and spend less. I Feel like that's so helpful, especially this time of year. You know you need that extra cash for prezis. Rocket money has over 5 million happy members and has saved its users over a billion dollars across all of the app's features. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Get Rocket Money today@rocket money.com morbid that's rocket money.com morbid rocket money.com morbid.

[Drew]

So only when these bodies are discovered and then taken out and exposed to oxygen, because while they're under there, they're not getting any oxygen. Only when they're taken out and the oxygen comes in contact with them do they really begin to decompose naturally. But so many are still preserved today. They're able to keep them in like oxygen sealed tanks, you know what I mean? Like they, but they have to do it quick.

[Ash]

Yeah, yeah.

[Drew]

Like the, the transfer process for these things, it's super delicate, super fast. You don't want to like with this a lot because they'll start to just fall apart.

[Ash]

Right.

[Drew]

And they do. Eventually they will fall apart, but we can keep them for as long as we can. Now some people believe that a lot of these bodies were placed in the bogs as like a warning almost or some kind of a punishment, a warning to others. Because some of them would be staked down in the bog instead, like held down in the bog and sometimes through their limbs and sometimes while they were alive, they would be put in these bogs and then like stakes would be run through their arms while they were alive and then they would be left there and usually they were facing upward. So if somebody came to the bog, they would just see this pale face of a human dead and lying stake down in the bog.

[Ash]

Fuck. A whole bunch of that.

[Drew]

Yeah. And they were being punished because by doing this they were remaining in the in between place where their body couldn't even decompose. Okay, so this was a punishment. Like we're not even going to allow your body to decompose and your soul to leave. Oh. And if you're stuck in this bog, nothing's going to be able to remove your soul for the afterlife. You're going to be stuck here.

[Ash]

It's like they were creating like man made purgatory.

[Drew]

Exactly. Because bogs have always kind of been looked at as a place where evil spirits live and dwell and they remain. So this would be somewhere, this would be somewhere to place someone you wanted to punish. Putting them in that dark, evil and frozen in time place to never fully freely cross over to the other side.

[Ash]

Sometimes I feel like I'm in a bog.

[Drew]

Yeah, don't we all, man?

[Ash]

Do you ever feel like you're in a bog? There you go. Forever.

[Drew]

Sometimes. And sometimes they would even remember remove. A lot of times, actually, they would remove the person's head and they'd place the head in one part of the bog and the body in another. So they couldn't even come together. Come together together as one.

[Ash]

Oh, I was in a place of beetles.

[Drew]

I was in a place of ghost. As always, usually. So, yeah, so they would do that. So sometimes people will find these heads of bog bodies and sometimes they don't ever find the bodies.

[Ash]

What?

[Drew]

It's real spooky.

[Ash]

Okay. Are you going to tell me how, like the first bog body was found, like, who was just like swimming in a bog one day?

[Drew]

So I'm going to tell you about a few interesting bog bodies. What we can say is that every single bog body has been found by accident.

[Ash]

Yeah, I figured.

[Drew]

Yeah. Nobody's ever gone in search of a bog body that I can find.

[Ash]

There's no fish in bog.

[Drew]

I don't believe, like, many things can live in a bog.

[Ash]

Okay.

[Drew]

But I'm honestly not positive.

[Ash]

Okay.

[Drew]

But either way, it's almost always when people are doing peat cutting, which is like removing layers of peat because we do use peat moths for like, you know, landscaping and shit.

[Ash]

Yeah, I've heard of that.

[Drew]

You've heard peat moss?

[Ash]

I sure have.

[Drew]

Yeah. Like, people use it for things. So people will go and dredge it up like these big bales of peat, essentially. And that's when they find these peat bodies or bog bodies, because they'll find them in between the layers of peat.

[Ash]

Do they still use the peat?

[Drew]

Sometimes it happens, you know.

[Ash]

Gross.

[Drew]

You know, that's why I actually. This is a total sidetrack, but it's like somewhat in there.

[Ash]

You are in a place of ash.

[Drew]

I am, I am. I was watching a TikTok the other night and somebody was talking about. It's the. Who's the guy who does the. It was the nineties.

[Ash]

Oh, Kevin.

[Drew]

Kevin. He was talking about how he had out of a bone graft in his mouth and they put a cadaver bone in there.

[Ash]

Oh.

[Drew]

And that. He was worried. He wanted to know who it was from. And then he was talking about having a haunted. Haunted face.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Drew]

I also have a cadaver bone in my mouth. So I have a haunted face too. And I never thought about it.

[Elena]

That's cool.

[Drew]

So I just wanted to put that out.

[Ash]

I Have extra bones in my mouth.

[Drew]

There you go. But yours are just natural, not haunted.

[Ash]

Yeah, those are mine.

[Drew]

Yeah. They're just hers.

[Ash]

I'm haunted.

[Drew]

But by myself, my face is haunted. So that's fun.

[Ash]

What if it's like, a really shitbag human?

[Drew]

Well, I'm grateful for their bone.

[Ash]

Okay.

[Drew]

Is all I can say. But either way, this peat moss. Your peat moss could be haunted.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Drew]

Oh, absolutely. By a bog body.

[Ash]

I don't want any peat moss anymore.

[Drew]

I want all the peat moss that checks. Like, that's awesome.

[Ash]

I'm gonna call my landscaper after this and be like, hi.

[Drew]

Remove the peat moss.

[Ash]

My fucking imaginary landscape.

[Drew]

Yeah, there you go.

[Elena]

Hello.

[Drew]

Remove the peat moss at once.

[Ash]

I want to call someone and say that.

[Drew]

Just call a landscaper.

[Ash]

Just any landscaper. We don't have your phone number on our client, ma'am. This is a Wendy's.

[Drew]

I don't care. Remove the peat moss.

[Ash]

Get it out of here post haste.

[Drew]

All right, so we're going to talk about the Elling woman. Okie doke. She's. All of these bog bodies, none of them have names.

[Ash]

They don't.

[Drew]

You know, we can't really tell who they were, so they're always named after the area in which they were found.

[Ash]

Okay. I was gonna say.

[Drew]

That makes sense.

[Ash]

I was gonna say.

[Elena]

That sounds pretty.

[Drew]

It does. The Elling woman. She was found in Denmark in 1938.

[Ash]

I want to go there.

[Drew]

She is believed to be from 2:80 BCE during the Iron Age.

[Ash]

Shut up.

[Drew]

Shut up.

[Ash]

Okay. Just for like, my folks out there, what's the Iron Age? The Iron Age? Yeah. Well, according to Google self, it is a prehistoric period that followed the Bronze Age, when weapons and tools came to be made of iron.

[Drew]

Which makes sense.

[Ash]

Or in mythology, just for, like, my interested mythology folks out there, the last and worst age of the world, a time of wickedness and oppression.

[Drew]

Whoa.

[Ash]

So, like, two very drastic differences there.

[Drew]

Very much.

[Ash]

Sometimes there was iron and sometimes there was wickedness.

[Drew]

You know what? And there was a lot of wickedness in these bog body situations. Segue. Okay? We're talking about the Elling woman, and her discovery was made in. And I'm going to give this my best shot.

[Ash]

But who.

[Drew]

Boy, some of these pronunciations. Bejailed scuvdoll. I believe it bejailed scuvdoll by a man named Jens Zacharison, who was a farmer. She. So he was cutting and digging peat. Like everybody was like, everybody's all about the peat digging. Luckily, this was, like, kind of. It was a Good removal process. Because a lot of these bog bodies tend to get either like, kind of like cut apart by the peat digging, like on accident, accidentally or when they are removed from the peat. Especially like in the 30s and the 50s when the shit was happening, they didn't know what they were doing. They didn't know what the hell this thing was. So most of them thought they were recent murder victims. So they would pull them out, not knowing that these are very fragile and very old. Right. But luckily this one had a little bit of a, like, ease in transfer process. So this farmer, he saw this clear body and was like, oh, shit, this is a human. And instead of fleeing, or as we're going to find out, in another case, this happens. Allowing villagers to take pieces of the human being with them. No, that happens in another one. Luckily, in this time, it didn't happen. This guy Zacharias, he immediately called the National Museum of Denmark and they were able to remove her properly. So good job, Jens. Now, it was later determined that this girl was about 25 years old at the time of her murder. She was wearing a sheepskin cloak and a cowhide blanket wrapped around her and had more fabric made from cowhide wrapped around her lower body. A lot of these were wrapped in a lot of layers. There was also a woolen belt wrapped around her and there was a leather rope tied around her neck with a slipknot.

[Ash]

Ooh, shit.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Do you think that them being, like, having many layers helped with the preservation too?

[Drew]

Honestly, maybe. But to be honest, a lot. It's kind of 50. 50. A lot of them are found with a lot of layers, but a lot of them are found just naked. Oh, shit. With nothing on them. And they. And actually one of the most preserved bog bodies that we're gonna talk about, the Tolland man, he was completely naked.

[Ash]

Okay. So it doesn't seem to.

[Drew]

I don't really matter. I don't think it matters, but I'm sure it doesn't hurt. So there was the leather rope tied around her neck with a slipknot. And her back was almost perfectly preserved. And it was immediately apparent that she had long hair that had been intricately braided before she was killed, which this would happen sometimes in ritualistic killings. They would braid the hair.

[Ash]

Huh?

[Drew]

Yeah. Pictures of this you can find, and they're amazing. This braiding is perfectly preserved.

[Ash]

It was pleating back then.

[Drew]

Exactly.

[Ash]

I love that.

[Drew]

And it's preserved. Like, you can see every little bit of that braid. It looks like a wig.

[Elena]

Wow.

[Drew]

It really does.

[Ash]

And it's copper.

[Drew]

Her hair is a little darker, so I believe her hair must have been darker in life.

[Ash]

Oh, okay.

[Drew]

But it's wild. It's very amazing. It looks like it was done yesterday when you look at it.

[Ash]

I'm going to Google.

[Drew]

But her front of her body was a little more decayed, so it was a little tougher. Now, further testing done in the 70s, in the 1970s told scientists that she definitely had been hanged and that was how she was killed. There was a deep laceration around her neck from the hanging. She's believed to have possibly been used as a sacrifice to the gods by her village. Perhaps like a fertility sacrifice. Could be any number of sacrificial reasons.

[Ash]

Okay. Honestly, I'm looking at her hair right now. What?

[Drew]

Amazing, right?

[Ash]

It's insane. Yeah.

[Drew]

Now, the next one I'm going to talk about is the Tolland man. And I just mentioned him. You did One of the most incredibly preserved of the bog bodies. He was found by two pea cutting farmers May 11, 1950. He was also found in Baja Bejailed Scuvdoll bog in Denmark.

[Ash]

You did it.

[Drew]

He was found 12 years after Ellen Woman, Elling woman, in the same bog. Oh, isn't that interesting?

[Elena]

That is interesting.

[Drew]

According. Because these bodies are in like layers of peat. Right. So, like, you can sometimes miss them or you get pieces of them. Now, according to the book I already mentioned, she said, quote, as they worked, they suddenly saw in the peat layer a face so fresh that they could only suppose they had stumbled upon a recent murder. Oh, he is over 2000 years old, which makes his preservation even more incredibly impressive. Scientists believe he was somewhere around 30 to 40 years old when he was killed. Which 40 years old would have made him kind of elderly back then. Yeah, like, to be honest.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Drew]

And it was likely a ritualistic sacrifice. He was found with a braided leather noose wrapped around his neck. And he looks like he is sleeping. Oh, literally in a fetal position and has a very peaceful look on his face. Well, that's where you can see every line and wrinkle. Like he would just start breathing in front of you. He's naked, but he's still wearing a little pointed cap and you can see chin hairs.

[Ash]

What?

[Drew]

Legitimately, they were able to determine his last meal. No, 2,000 years ago, what he ate. So they. He ate porridge, a bunch of grains and some bony fish. And they said it was about 12 to 24 hours before he was hanged and then thrown in the bog.

[Ash]

Bony fish.

[Drew]

They also think someone may have positioned him Maybe it was like a family member or something, like kind of. Because a lot of these bodies are tossed in there. A lot of them have looks of anguish on their faces still because they.

[Ash]

Were like ritualistically killed.

[Drew]

Most of them I haven't even gotten into yet. Some of the worst ones, some of the ones that were tortured and abused before being killed, they are bad and. But this guy, the Talland man, he is so peaceful looking.

[Ash]

He is so I'm looking at him.

[Drew]

Right now and he was found on his side, like just sleeping.

[Ash]

He looks like he was like literally taking a little cat nap.

[Drew]

Yeah, it's wild.

[Elena]

Oh, wow.

[Ash]

I'm looking at the whole body now.

[Drew]

Isn't it incredible?

[Ash]

Oh, my God.

[Drew]

Now the next one I'm going to talk about is the. I think it's pronounced the Edie girl.

[Elena]

Okay.

[Drew]

I looked at several pronunciations for this. I believe it's Edie. The girl from Edie is a bog body from the Netherlands. She was found May 12, 1897. Stop it. By two peat cutters who were cutting through the peat in a bog that was just near the village of Edie. When they dredged up the layers of peat, they found her just lying there between the layers. Of course they freaked the fuck out and ran away because honestly, a lot of people probably would. And in the 1800s they were like, this is a daemon, the devil. And they also literally thought it was the devil because she had a big lock of fiery red hair.

[Ash]

Yeah, I actually just saw that.

[Drew]

So they thought it was the devil. Like they thought they had unleashed it.

[Ash]

My God. But they're like, he lives in the bog.

[Drew]

They're like, he's in the bog, guys. But they creeped back and then they just hid her under the peat again. Probably because they figured if they left her there, then the demon would stay in the bog or something. I don't know. Yeah, yeah.

[Ash]

Leave the devil in the bog.

[Drew]

But apparently she was dug up again over a week later. I think the mayor actually dug her back up.

[Ash]

He was like, let's see this.

[Drew]

Let's see this daemon in the bog. But she wasn't pulled out of the bog very carefully, unfortunately.

[Ash]

Oh, no.

[Drew]

Yes. When what they could determine was that she was a sick 16, maybe 14 to 16 year old girl and was killed over 2000 years before she was taken out of the bog in 1897. They used her remaining bones and also the fact that her wisdom teeth had not erupted or formed roots in her mouth to determine her approximate age.

[Ash]

Damn. Isn't it crazy that even back then people had wisdom teeth.

[Drew]

Yeah, wisdom.

[Ash]

Fun fact, I don't have them, but.

[Drew]

Look at that evolved. They estimate she was only about four and a half feet tall. She was very tiny stature when she was found. Like I said, she had tons of fiery red hair. Again, it's important to note that the sphagnum gases turn the skin brown hair red, but they believe she might have had light auburn hair. Okay, so maybe like closer to a strawberry blonde.

[Ash]

It was like using overtone.

[Drew]

There you go. She had a ton of hair though.

[Ash]

Yeah, she looks like Merida.

[Drew]

Yeah. And honestly though, the interestingly, the right side of her very long hair had been shorn off. Oh, and they believe it was shaved.

[Ash]

Off as like a weird punishment maybe.

[Drew]

Yeah, like this is a common thing in a lot of the bog bodies that the hair was shorn before their internment.

[Ash]

Basically.

[Drew]

Yeah, it's very weird.

[Elena]

Audible's best of 2024 picks are here. Discover this year's top audiobooks, podcasts and originals, all in your favorite genres. For memoirs and sci fi to mysteries and thrillers, from romance and well being to fiction. Audible's carefully curated list in every category is the best way to hear 2024's best of the year in audio entertainment. Like an unbelievably star studded production of George Orwell's 1984, which both honors and reinvigorates the terrifying classic. It's one of the best original dramatizations that we've ever heard. Or romance that hits the spot like Emily Henry's funny story, heartfelt memoirs like Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's lovely one. Listen to the year's best fiction, like the Women by Kristin Hannah and Percival Everett's brilliantly subversive James. Personally, I've been in a place of B with the best of the B titles, the Butcher and the Wren Butcher Game Bluebeard.

[Ash]

Great titles you should all check out.

[Elena]

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[Drew]

Now. Also, the villagers had come to the place where she was being taken out of the bog. They took several of her teeth. Teeth, locks of her hair, and even some of her bones. Why? Yeah, they just took them with them.

[Ash]

What? I'm like, you guys think this is a demon? And you're like, hey, let me get a piece of that.

[Drew]

Also, I hope they all got haunted as fuck, to be honest.

[Ash]

So weird.

[Drew]

Like, you deserve to have an Annabelle situation, you dicks.

[Ash]

Hey, red hair.

[Drew]

There you go. Annabelle, Annabelle, baby. Now, she was also wearing a heavy wool cloak which she still had on her when they found her.

[Ash]

I want a cloak.

[Drew]

And also, it appears that she was indeed murdered because there was still a cord made of wool that was wrapped three times around her neck.

[Ash]

Isn't it wild that, like, even bce we were just out here killing people?

[Drew]

Oh, so much.

[Ash]

Like, why from the dawn of time has everybody been like, kill, murder, kill.

[Drew]

Always? We've always been the worst.

[Ash]

Yeah. Like, what is up with this speech?

[Drew]

And this was so it was tied in a slipknot and was likely some kind of belt that they used. She also had a stab wound to her chest and it was near her collarbone or at the base of her throat. Damn. And the wound had been made by a knife.

[Ash]

That's like a shitty area too, Basically.

[Drew]

Going for the heart, I would think. Now, her face was actually reconstructed in 1992.

[Ash]

I saw that.

[Drew]

And it was using the body. It's incredible to look at. Richard Neave, who was the artist who did it. And like he. I can't believe that he was able to do that. When you look at the bog body, you're like, how the fuck did you do that?

[Ash]

Yeah, that was my instant thought.

[Drew]

Amazing. You can see Ed Girl and her reconstruction at the Drentz Museum in Assen, Netherlands.

[Ash]

We should go.

[Drew]

We should go. Now the next one I'm going to talk about is the cloney Caven man and the old Krogan man. Okay, so two different people, two different men.

[Ash]

Got it.

[Drew]

But discovered in the same bog.

[Ash]

Okie doke.

[Drew]

So in. In the same year too, in 2003. What? Two bodies were discovered within a three month span of time in Boggs in Clooney Caven County Meath and Croghan Hill. They were found by pea cutters, of course, which is, you know, starting to sound like a pretty high risk job. If risk includes finding ritualistically murdered corpses.

[Ash]

On the regular, that's a risk in my book.

[Drew]

Pretty risky. Yeah. The first, which again was called the Clooney Cave in man for obvious reasons, that's where he was found. Was actually accidentally cut in half. Half by the machine used to dig the peat.

[Ash]

Oh, no.

[Drew]

Yeah. But his upper body showed that he had been brutally murdered. His skull was literally smashed open. And his nose, the bridge of his nose was like destroyed. They believed that somebody used a stone axe to hit him in the head and in the nose.

[Ash]

That like gives me a headache.

[Drew]

It was three blows to the head and one across the body as well with the ax. He was also disemboweled. And this is where it gets crazy. His nipples were noticeably cut off. And this is important. I swear I'll come back to it. I'll come back.

[Ash]

Oh, it is.

[Drew]

He was from all the way back to between 392 and 201 BC.

[Ash]

Yeah. Where shit popped off apparently.

[Drew]

Definitely popped off with these guys, literally. When he was examined after being taken out of the bog, Clooney Caven Man's hair would actually looked like it was styled. Is that the one that I saw? No, that was a different one. Okay. This one is actually styled using plant oil they found. So it was intentionally styled. That's what they used, like literally like gel.

[Ash]

How cool is that?

[Drew]

Isn't that crazy?

[Ash]

Yeah. And cool that like the bog didn't mess it.

[Drew]

Didn't mess it up. And it was in what looked like a mohawk almost.

[Ash]

Oh, shit.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Ash]

He was fucking cool.

[Drew]

He was. And the makeshift gel was import had to have been imported from either France or Spain because that's where that specific plant grows. Yo, isn't that wild?

[Ash]

That is really so cool.

[Drew]

I was like, this is really cool. I'm really into this. This is a.

[Ash]

This is. I don't know.

[Drew]

It's a weird thing.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Drew]

So the National Museum of Ireland actually used samples of Clooney Caven's hair to determine that he ate a lot of. They were able to use hair to determine that he ate a lot of fresh vegetables.

[Ash]

Good for him.

[Drew]

And because they were recently ingested by him, they were able to say he was murdered in the late summer or early fall because that's when they would have been fresh.

[Ash]

Which, like, whoa, Summer squash.

[Drew]

That's just so wild. They used his crazy hair to say what he ate, and then they were able to determine when he died because it had to have been fresh and in season.

[Ash]

That's why Prose asks you what you eat.

[Drew]

There you go.

[Ash]

What your eating habits are like.

[Drew]

Look at that. Always able to take it back.

[Ash]

Hey, yo.

[Drew]

Now that was the. The cloney Caven man. In the Krogan Hill area, they discovered another body. This was the old Krogan man in the. In a bog. He was also brutally butchered and dumped there. He had defensive wounds on his upper arms where he had apparently tried to stop whatever was stabbing him, but he was stabbed in the arms instead. And apparently part of his torture was that he had hazel branches literally threaded through holes that had been cut out of his arms.

[Ash]

Girl, like, whoa, Are those, like, spiky?

[Drew]

I don't know. Yeah, they're just like branches. Like bendable branches. So they had cut holes in his arms and then threaded branches through them while he was alive.

[Ash]

That is so up.

[Drew]

And they did this.

[Ash]

They.

[Drew]

They put, like, threaded these branches through him to hold him down in the bog while he was being stabbed in the chest and neck. Oh, then. Then his head had been completely cut off his body, and he had been bisected, chopped in half. His nipples were also cut off.

[Ash]

Stop.

[Drew]

And he was from somewhere between 362 and 175 BCE.

[Ash]

Are we going to get any explanation about the Nip Nips?

[Drew]

We are.

[Ash]

Okay.

[Drew]

But also, they found a braided. I think he was actually naked, like, completely, except for a braided armband around his bicep. And it was made of leather and had a bronze amulet in it, which is interesting. He was somewhere between six foot. Foot six.

[Ash]

Holy.

[Drew]

He was a tall drink of water. Oh, honey, we love a tall man.

[Ash]

Calm down over there.

[Drew]

And he was well nourished, apparently, and taking Samples from his hair actually proved that he was wealthy enough to eat meat as part of his regular diet, which was rare.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Drew]

And meant he must have been in the upper echelon out there eating those turkey legs. So they agree. Scientists agree that both of these men were clearly of the upper echelon of social class. They were in their 20s, they were not laborers. They were well nourished and showed that they had eaten well in their lives. They also had well manicured nails, which could be noticed immediately. And this meant that they definitely hadn't worked for a living. They weren't doing manual labor.

[Elena]

Right.

[Drew]

This could also mean, apparently I found somewhere else that they could determine that maybe these people were thieves and that they didn't work for their living. They stole for their living, and that's why their hands were well manicured. Okay. But they don't believe that with these two, because along with how they ate in their hair and they were able to use styling gel, essentially imported from fucking fridge. Exactly. These were clearly not just like thieves. These were upper social class.

[Ash]

Wouldn't it be so cool if, like, eventually we got. I mean, I don't want, like, too many of these bodies, of course, but.

[Drew]

We have so many of them.

[Ash]

If we got, like, so many in the same place where we could kind of like trace lineage and everything, you know, like, that'd be so cool.

[Drew]

I feel like it. It could actually happen. Like, we have so much that we're getting from these, and it's like year by year, as technology and science, like, Right. Goes forward and just like, gets better and better, they're getting more and more from these bodies. Because some of the things that when they would first get them, either in the 80s and the 50s and, you know, even the 90s, they would think one thing. But then we get into the 2000s and everything progressed, and then all of a sudden they go, oh, wait a second, that wasn't the case. Because now we know.

[Ash]

Right.

[Drew]

Like, some of them. There was a couple that they were like, we don't know if this cracked skull is from the layers of peat, mosh crush, peat moss, crushing their skull or if it was a perimortum injury. Right, right. And sometimes they would say they think it's from the peat moss. And then later they would discover. No, that was actually done perimortem because we can see evidence of swelling around the wounds.

[Ash]

That's crazy.

[Drew]

Which shows that there was bruising. Which shows that there was blood flow while it was happening.

[Ash]

That is just, like, wild.

[Drew]

Which is just, whoa, Whoa, whoa, whoa. Now, the nipple thing.

[Elena]

Please.

[Ash]

So please no, but also. Please yes.

[Drew]

Please no. Please, yes. It was important because apparently this led a lot of researchers to believe that these men could have actually been failed kings or people in line of succession who failed to become kings.

[Ash]

So if you fail to become a king, that.

[Drew]

Oh, I'm gonna explain.

[Ash]

They rip your nips.

[Drew]

So are you ready to hear something a little shocking?

[Ash]

I mean, I'm gonna say, usually from you.

[Drew]

Yeah. I'm gonna say a sentence.

[Ash]

Oh, God.

[Drew]

That I didn't know I would ever say.

[Ash]

She's. She's looking nervous.

[Drew]

Apparently in Ireland, back in the day, our family. Our family, sucking on a king's nipples was once suggested as a form of submission.

[Ash]

Wait, what? Like.

[Drew]

Like to submit to a king? That is what you did. That's hot. I read something.

[Ash]

I read something that said, isn't it.

[Drew]

Easier just to kneel and kiss a ring? Like, isn't that just like. Like, kiss the ring, right? Kind of.

[Ash]

That.

[Drew]

Like, isn't that easier?

[Ash]

Like, you gotta get undressed. Well, that's. Expose your bosom. So kings are just whipping their. Kings are. Kings are just horny, is what's happening. Very Wiley. Wiley Coyote. Very wily, Wiley, Nipply Coyote.

[Drew]

So with that in mind, which. I'm sorry, you have that in mind now, I apologize. But now we're all here together.

[Ash]

It's just funny.

[Drew]

If you sliced off a king's nipples, then you have officially deemed him ineligible for kingship. So cutting them off this way maybe was a way to remove or even signify the failed kingship. Kings, or those in line would be ritualistically sacrificed at time. At times like way back in ancient times, because if crops failed or cattle got sick or something happened in the.

[Ash]

Village, it was the king's fault.

[Drew]

It was the king's responsibility to sacrifice himself through a ritual to bring back the prosperity to his village.

[Ash]

Did he have to cut off his own nipples?

[Drew]

He didn't have to cut him off himself, but he had to have him cut off. Oh, it's like, a lot.

[Ash]

Oh, gosh.

[Drew]

I gotta look.

[Ash]

I gotta go.

[Drew]

According to Ira, the Irish examiner, Ned Kelly, who is the Keeper of antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland, says, quote, cutting them would have made him incapable of kingship in this world and the next.

[Ash]

Well, shit, that doesn't seem fair.

[Drew]

Yeah. So you cut it all from here to the netherworld.

[Ash]

They're like, you won't even have nipples when you're a ghost. Motherfucker.

[Drew]

I'm saying. But he said there is also the possibility that the nipple cutting was just a degradation thing or a humiliation thing associated with torture and murder. I could see both either way, really bad. And they do believe that with these two, because of everything else, that these definitely could have been nobles and in line of succession or failure. Yeah. Now let's talk about a bog body mix up that ultimately led to a very or more very when in relative to these ones recent murder conviction.

[Ash]

What?

[Drew]

Yes. So this is a bog body mix up. Not to be confused with old Greg's downstairs mix up. May 13th, 1983, Stephen Dooley and Andy Molds were doing the old peat moss cut and dig thing.

[Ash]

Everybody out here, peat moss just all the time.

[Drew]

And they were in Cheshire County, England in the London moss bog. They ended up finding during this process a big ball of peat that was like stuck together. And they initially joked that it looked like a dinosaur egg or they were like, oh, it's like a burst football or something.

[Ash]

Spoiler alert. It wasn't.

[Drew]

It was not. But then they cleaned it off, off. It was actually a human skull that was later determined to be a female who was between the ages of 30 and 50 years old. It was so well preserved that everyone was like, holy. This is a recent murder victim. Like this is not a bog body from like ancient times. Of course. Authorities started looking into recent missing women in the area. This is the 80s, remember. And one in particular started to look like it could potentially fit this skull. A woman named Malika Maria de Fernandez, who had gone missing in the 60s and her case had gone cold. She had never been found. When she had originally turned up missing back in the 60s, her husband, Peter Rainbart was was interviewed and due to knowledge of their sour marriage and the fact that he lived feet away from this bog, authorities honestly thought he was possibly the one who caused her disappearance. But they just couldn't gather enough evidence to prove it or really to bring him in for much and keep him. Now they had done a full scale investigation and learned that Fernandez was gone traveling. The person who's missing had gone traveling a lot. Like they didn't really have a close marriage. Like things were going wrong. And during the time she went missing, she had threatened to tell British authorities that her husband was gay. Now in the 60s that was considered a criminal offense in the UK. Wild. So he would have been arrested. She had gone missing after this particular fight.

[Elena]

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[Drew]

Whether he was gay or not is not what's at stake here. Yeah, that is. Nobody really knows where he murdered. It was also the fact that she was going to go to the authorities whether he was or wasn't and say he was.

[Ash]

Right. Right.

[Drew]

So it had been decades and no one had found a trace of Fernandez. But Rainbark had been arrested in the interim and he had been released. He wasn't arrested for that. He was arrested on sexual abuse against several children. Oh, fuck this guy. So he's an actual piece of shit. Just keep that in mind for a second.

[Ash]

I was like, oh, I feel kind of bad for him.

[Drew]

And then I was like, you don't have to.

[Ash]

Wow. Bye.

[Drew]

That's why I was like, we don't know anything about this guy except that he's a piece of shit. Correct. And his cellmates had actually come forward and said that he bragged about killing his wife, chopping her up to pieces and burying her all over his yard. Yard. Now they dug up parts of his garden and yard and they found nothing of real importance. So they bring him in for questioning. Once they found this skull because it's in the bog next to his house. It's a woman and it's in the right age range. As soon as they begin to explain what they have found to him, he confessed everything. He completely admitted to murdering his wife.

[Ash]

20 something years prior.

[Drew]

Yep. He told authorities that he had gone into A rage when she threatened to go to the authorities. And he had grabbed her. And what he said he did was he had shaken her until she died.

[Ash]

Doubt it. Like, okay, like she's not a baby, sir.

[Drew]

He said he had immediately gone into problem solving mode and he decided he just had to dismember her entire body with an ax, including decapitating her. And he tried to burn parts of her, but it wasn't working. So he threw them in the bog. Oh, that's why they only found her head so far. He just figured it was a matter of time before they found the rest of her body parts. And that's why he admitted it. Either way, he confessed and they'd found her skull. It was a solid case of murder. Wow.

[Ash]

Where's the mix up?

[Drew]

So off they went to search and gather the rest of Fernandez's remains that were supposed to be in this bog. But searching for hours and days, they turned up nothing. Not one other body part was found. So authorities were like, shit, we, we really have to sure up this head. We have to make sure, you know, we really have to like confirm this is her. Because if we can't get the rest of her body parts, we gotta have this for our slam dunk. So Detective Inspector George Abbott had the. Had the heads sent to Oxford University Research Laboratory for archaeology and the history of Art to be thoroughly examined, thoroughly dated, thoroughly ID'd. When they returned their findings, they said, yes, yes, this is a woman between the ages of 30 and 50 years old. But it is also a woman who died about 1,700 years ago.

[Ash]

Dude. Whoops.

[Drew]

So when Reign Bart was informed of this, he of course was like, oh my God. Yes. I didn't kill her. Just kidding. Phew. Glad we cleared that up.

[Ash]

Bring out Ashton Kutcher because I just punked you.

[Drew]

Whoa. I was totally kidding.

[Ash]

I was playing the long game.

[Drew]

But they were like, no, you definitely did it, you piece of. And you can. You can admitted to it off. Yeah.

[Ash]

Bye.

[Drew]

And his murder charge stood and he was sentenced to life in prison.

[Ash]

Good.

[Drew]

They were never able to find Fernandez's real body.

[Ash]

Oh, I hope they do.

[Drew]

But he did go to prison for life. He definitely did it. He admitted it to several people, including the authorities. And he was. He admitted it based on a 1700 year old head that he thought was his wife's.

[Ash]

That. That's some witch.

[Drew]

That is some bog body justice right there.

[Ash]

That's exactly what that is.

[Drew]

That is some good vibes coming out and being like, we're gonna get some justice for this missing woman.

[Elena]

I like it.

[Drew]

While also finding a bog body.

[Ash]

I'm obsessed.

[Drew]

I thought that like blew my mind that case. Insane when I came across that. I was like, well shit, do you.

[Ash]

Think that he really buried her where like nobody would find her or do you really think he put her in the bog?

[Drew]

I think he might have put her in the bog, but it's so big and it's like layers and layers of peat moss.

[Ash]

So she might be found somewhere.

[Drew]

Who knows where she he put her? Who knows if he put all of the pieces in the bog and some of them are buried other places, like who really knows? He said he tried to burn some.

[Ash]

He also sounds like a liar too though, because they said that I think.

[Drew]

He killed her obviously, but.

[Ash]

But he said he put her in the garden and they didn't find anything.

[Drew]

Yeah, I think he's a lying section.

[Ash]

Yeah, he's a bullshitter.

[Drew]

Either way he's in prison for life. Good, that guy. Let's get on to more bog bodies, shall we? So let's talk about the Lindau moss bog bodies. So in the same bog that they found this body in, they found the remains of a very well preserved 20 year old man who later in 1984, the press apparently named Pete Marsh.

[Ash]

Not where'd they get the Pete?

[Drew]

Okay, Press. Yeah, like this is an actual person. Like maybe don't. Okay Press, let's just keep like the naming convention with where they are found. Like we don't need to add some like silly little like Pete Marsh.

[Ash]

No.

[Drew]

Okay, rude. Now this body was another one with manicured nails and a neatly done beard and a neatly done hairstyle.

[Ash]

Nippies or no nippies.

[Drew]

Honestly, this one, I don't know if he. I think he did have nipples actually, but he was well nourished and he was obviously of a higher class. He had been placed into the bog naked with only a leather armlet around his left bicep. Hmm.

[Ash]

Amulet.

[Drew]

I didn't see an amulet, but there was definitely a braided leather, like something around his back. Interesting.

[Ash]

I wonder if that was like a symbol of something back then.

[Drew]

I don't know. They could. This is what we get to find out. Like this is. Is what's so cool about these things, is we're seeing all these patterns and different things that are connecting people into like, well, this must be ritualistic because of this or this is what they did back then. It's just so cool. But according to BBC, he was killed with repeated blows to his head. He was Then garaded, he had his throat sliced open and he was forced to swallow mistletoe. Then, still alive, he was pushed with a very, like, severely violent knee to the back while he was kneeling, and he fell into the bog and drowned in the bog water.

[Ash]

Oh, my God.

[Drew]

Yeah. So the blows showed signs of swelling around two of them, which means he was very much alive when they were inflicted. The last blow was to the top of his head and it forced skull matter into his brain.

[Ash]

Ooh.

[Drew]

They believe, too, this is wild. They believe that the noose was tightened as they cut his throat so that it would force the blood out quicker and create more of a show, almost spraying it, like, basically spraying it out so brutally that they would bathe everyone around him and him in his blood.

[Ash]

Hygienic.

[Drew]

And what's wild is in the book that I was telling you guys about that I'll definitely tag in the show notes, she talks about how this also is really scary and, like, very interesting because it shows that they had a very good grasp on anatomy.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Drew]

And how the body worked. And they were able to, like, bring these people to the brink of death and then pull them back and then bring them again and pull them back. Like, it was very brutal, scary, very thought out, very intricate torture. And, like, to be able to know that if you squeeze on that certain vessel as you cut that, it's going to create that wild spray of blood and make it like a show, like, theatrical. That's so wild that they were able to think like that back then.

[Ash]

It's insane.

[Drew]

And, like, have that weird control over a human body. It's just, like, really creepy. And I hadn't thought of it until Miranda, the author of that book, like, brought it up in one of the chapters. And I was like, oh, you're right. Right. There was also evidence that he had inhaled sphagnum. So he was very much alive when he was pushed into the bog. He inhaled the bog water. A lot of overkill with this one.

[Ash]

Definitely.

[Drew]

So after that one, we're going to talk about the Gr Bale man. I believe that's how you say it. This is a wild injury preserved in time forever. April 26, 1952. Pete Cutters, shocking. Were doing their thing in a bog near Nebelgard Fern in the village of Graubale, Denmark, Ark, when they discovered what appeared to be a very recent corpse entangled in the bog. It was not very recent. They actually thought that this was, like, within the last, like, 10 years. They were like, this is a very recent Body. And they informed the village doctor and Ulrich Balsev, an archaeologist, of this discovery. They. When they came to see it, they were like, whoa, this is wild. And they in turn turned this over to the researchers at the Aarhus Museum of Prehistory. This man was over 2,300 years old.

[Ash]

Oh, my God.

[Drew]

And he was probably about 30 years old when he was brutally murdered. He was naked. He had a ton of hair that looks very fiery auburn. This is the guy that you saw that you thought had a wig on.

[Ash]

Okay. He reminded me of the professor from Harry Potter.

[Drew]

Yes, right. What hair? You're thinking of Lockhart, right?

[Ash]

Yes. Yep.

[Drew]

Yeah. Lockhart's like crazy hair. You're right. It's very much like that, actually. Wow, that's wild. And obviously we've learned that this probably wasn't his natural hair color. Maybe he had Lockhart's hair color, actually. Perhaps, you know, bog gasses and shit. He had well manicured nails, and his face had preserved. And this is the craziest part of him. His face was preserved in a horrifically pained expression. I bet he looks like he was grimacing and his mouth is wide open.

[Ash]

Yeah. Because what were they doing to him before?

[Elena]

Let's go.

[Drew]

Yeah. So what's most upsetting is the gaping wound in his throat. It's brutal, this wound. It's not a slice, it's a gaping wound.

[Ash]

What?

[Drew]

Someone did it with such force and savagery that they almost cut the head off completely. It was literally hanging on by skin.

[Ash]

What did they do, you think?

[Drew]

Well, according to Bog Bodies Uncovered that book, there was a huge, very intense slice across the throat. And then, quote, some small other cuts with a smooth, sharp bladed instrument that struck the cervical vertebrae, severed the pharynx, and made a large hole in the mouth. That's how deep it was.

[Ash]

My, oh, my.

[Drew]

It stretched virtually from ear to ear. Both carotid arteries and the jugular vein were severed.

[Ash]

Oh.

[Drew]

He was also stabbed from behind. And they believed that a sword or some kind of very big blade, like a machete type of thing was used. They also found an open wound and a break of his left tibia. Oh, they were sure this one occurred while he was being tortured and was caused by some blunt instrument being slammed into his tibia repeatedly until not only did it break the bone, but it opened the skin on top of it.

[Ash]

Ooh, Mama's getting nauseous over here. Mama's literally getting nauseous.

[Drew]

They were also able to find that in his stomach. He had last ate porridge with lots of herbs in it. And there were signs of him having it ingested. Ergot, which we talked about ergot in the Salem Witch Trials episode. It is a poisonous fungi often found in grains. It can cause, like, hallucinogenic, like, hysteria essentially. Damn. And sometimes they think they might have used that in ritualistic sacrifices. They would give this person this, like, hallucinogenic shit as part of the ritual. Oh, I'm sorry.

[Ash]

My tibia still hurts.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Ash]

You know when you get that, like, if you hear like, oh, it hurts.

[Drew]

I know it hurts. You're like, want to rub your leg?

[Ash]

I'm too much of an empath.

[Drew]

So let's talk about the last bog body we're gonna talk about in this one.

[Ash]

Is this like a crescendo type of deal?

[Drew]

Not real. I mean, it's. It's bad. It's definitely bad, but it's like, they're all pretty bad. I mean.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Drew]

So we'll talk about the Haldremose woman. She was discovered in 1879 near Haldremos, Denmark. I hope I'm saying that correctly. She was found by Niels Hansen, who was a teacher, and he was digging pete when he saw her. She was thought to have died when she was around 40 years old, which again, would make her pretty elderly. And she looks elderly, like, she looks like an older woman. And was killed around 160 BCE. She was wearing two what they called skin cloaks, but they were like animal skin.

[Ash]

Okay.

[Drew]

And a woolen cloak. And her hair was chopped off almost to the scalp. Oh. Her right arm had been viciously hacked off and was found lying next to her.

[Ash]

What are you doing?

[Drew]

She also had a long leather, like, leather type strap that was wrapped around her hair and then twice around her neck. Oh, wow. Her left arm had been bound to her body with another strap and her left leg had been hacked at as well.

[Ash]

Why?

[Drew]

And it's believed that she was drowned after being abused and mutilated.

[Ash]

My God.

[Drew]

Now that is the holder. Most women bog bodies are insanely fascinating. The fact that we can tell what they ate and how they lived thousands of years later is insane. Wild. Like my brain. We're like. Like my brain will not wrap around it properly when you look at them. And I'm going to cover more of these in another episode just because I can't not revisit this. It's like, very interesting when you look at them. You just can't come to terms with the fact that that is a 2000 plus year old human being. Not at all like, you can't do it.

[Ash]

Not at all.

[Drew]

Because they're not like mummified in the classic sense of mummification like we've heard about, you know, like, you know, under ice, some people are preserved for like, thousands of years, which is also wild.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Drew]

And, like, mummies are very well preserved. But, like, this is just, just. And this is water.

[Ash]

Well, and this is, like natural.

[Drew]

This is just when water.

[Ash]

Yeah.

[Drew]

Like, it's so crazy.

[Ash]

And just like, the weird, like, chemicals.

[Drew]

And like, and just the violence associated with the bog bodies is a very interesting thing.

[Elena]

My favorite part of the whole entire.

[Ash]

Thing was learning that even back then people were using hair gel.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Ash]

Like, obviously you know that because, like, as early as, like the beginning of time, people use berries and for makeup.

[Drew]

You don't think about it, but you don't.

[Ash]

Especially hair gel. Like, I would never think about that.

[Drew]

To style into, like a faux hawk kind of thing.

[Ash]

So cool.

[Drew]

Wild. So that is the beginning, at least of bog bodies.

[Ash]

That was really cool. I've literally never heard of those before.

[Drew]

Very interesting subject.

[Ash]

So I hope that you guys enjoyed it too.

[Drew]

Yeah, I hope you did.

[Ash]

And we also hope that you keep listening.

[Drew]

And we hope you keep it weird.

[Ash]

But not so weird that you make somebody suck your nipples to make you feel noble by kingship.

[Elena]

If you like morbid, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short [e-mail] survey.

[D]

Hello, ladies and gerbs, boys and girls, The Grinch is back again to ruin your Christmas season with Tis the Grinch Holiday Pod. After last year, he's learned a thing or two about hosting, and he's ready to rant against Christmas cheer and roast his celebrity guests like chestnuts on an open fire. You can listen with the whole family as guest stars like Jon Hamm, Brittany Broski, and Danny DeVito try to persuade the mean old Grinch that there's a lot to love about the insufferable holiday season. But that's not all. Somebody stole all the children of Whoville's letters to Santa, and everybody thinks the Grinch is responsible. It's a real Whoville whodunit. Can Cindy Lou and Max help clear the Grinch's name? Grab your hot cocoa and cozy slippers to find out. Follow Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Unlock weekly Christmas mystery bonus content and listen to every episode ad free by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.