Cryptids and Curses: Spooky Week #1

The gang kicks off spooky week with a discussion of Bigfoot, The Chupacabra and the curse the California Parks service accidentally put on itself.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
Oh God is dead. I'm Robert Evans, Welcome to the podcast.
Were first episode of Spooky Week try to figure out
who murdered God and come to the conclusion that it
was almost certainly will Weep. I'm pointing my finger at
someone else. Actually, Robert, I'm fingering Bigfoot. And wow, you're

(00:32):
definitely okay. Now now, Daniel, Daniel, I'm gonna need you
to just cut that audioline out of the episode so
that everyone on the team can play it as a
drop whenever we need to. James admitting to fingering Bigfoot. Um, alright,
that's gonna be an episode everybody of a good week.
God bless you. This is it could happen here. This

(00:54):
is Spooky Week, right, we're recording our first spook crazed
b two God, Um, all right, what do we what
do we have for the ladies and not not the gentleman.
This one's just for the ladies. I'm gonna say that
right now, says hers and slurs. It's it's yeah, we

(01:17):
where we got today? What we got today? Robert Garrison
is some stories about cryptids. So I want to start
in the autumn of Garrison was not alive and Robert.
Now we're much younger, and I want to start in
northern California, where one night, three men set out to
execute a pretty routine We trade right, dropsyself, get some money,

(01:39):
come home. And it's not exactly a secret that at
that time and in that place there was a lot
of illegal girl operations and it's not exactly a secret. Yeah, yeah,
have you heard about this? I don't know. Yeah, yeah,
I mean, like it's number one once you hit about
anywhere in like the coastal northern caliph Fornia from like

(02:00):
and a cruise on up. Uh, bigfoot is like a
topic not even not even really of discussion. But there's
just big foot ship all over the goddamn place. Um,
from ARCADEA to like Grants Pass is probably the biggest
density of bigfoot ship. But it's all throughout or again,
all throughout Washington. You get a decent amount in Idaho,
I think too. Um, but yeah, people make a lot

(02:23):
of money of big foot. It's even a bigfoot highway
up there. But yeah, I was listening to a dogship
podcast recently. It's not very good. It's called wild Thing
and it's by some former NPR reporter the Squatches podcast. Right, Yeah,
she's doing like a Bigfoot thing. It's just not very good.
Like there's bits in there where she'll like quote one

(02:45):
guy who's like, there's a lot, there's so much evidence
for Bigfoot. If you type big foot into Google, there's
like a eleven million results, and that an actual scientist
will be like, there's no evidence for Bigfoot, and she
just as like, what are we to think? What? Both sides?
Both sides? Yeah, yeah, I did not find it very edifying.

(03:05):
I was listening to it while I was alone on
the mountain this weekend. There are two sides to a
Bigfoot story, Robert. It doesn't matter if one of them
is wrong. No, um, it's very fun. But yeah, because
I also, the parts of the West Coast that are
Bigfoot country are also the parts of the West Coast
that grow like more pot than anywhere else on planet Earth. Yeah. Yeah,

(03:28):
which is interesting, isn't it, Because these two things may
or may not overlap. Yeah, I think they do. But
please continue. Yes, so Hulu made I will use to
loosely use the word documentary here. Yeah, loose is is
good for this, So I again to use a few
words loosely here. So, according to David Holt house journalist,

(03:52):
which is again a word I'm using maybe loosely. He
does a pretty good job in what he's fine hold house.
So the interesting thing about him and what I do
kind of like about him, is he's like he worked
as a trimmer. Like so the pot industry. The there's
the people who moved the marijuana around the country, including

(04:13):
smuggle it into places where it's still fully illegal. There's
the people who sell it, either illegally or at dispensaries. Um.
There's the people who grow it. And then the largest
by number chunk of the weed trade, or the trimmers.
And those are the people every season, usually in the fall,
come down for three or four months, northern California's southern
Oregon mostly and they take raw marijuana that's been like

(04:37):
bucked and cut off of the plant and they trim
it into the kind of buds that you buy. UM.
And this guy was doing that back in the nineties,
and he ran into these stories about a big foot
murdering two or three Mexican guys. Yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah,
so I think he actually has a really good job
in this documentary. Yeah. I I actually didn't think it
was was bad. No, I was ready for it to

(04:59):
be bad, but I always quite impressed with So what
happened is, Yeah, like Crobert says said, they are these
probably migrant probably undocumented workers, right who come well, a
lot of them, there's a good chunk of them, probably,
I don't know by my estimates. Maybe are like mostly
white kids from various parts of the country. A lot
of them are folks who are either kind of seasonally unhoused.

(05:23):
Many of them like live in camp basically in places
like Arcada a big chunk of the year and then
we'll live on farms while they trim. Um. There are
a decent chunk who are undocumented. A lot are mong um,
Like a lot of are like first, like particularly older
among people who like came here after Vietnam and started
businesses and then like their kids and grandkids got into

(05:46):
the pot trade. And we're like, well, my you know,
grandma and my aunts retired, and they like they living
in the woods and are good at trimming, Like we
can make a bunch of extra money this way. Um,
it's all sorts up there. Yeah, it's kind of fascinating.
So these guys set out to do this deal, right
that they're three of the people who fall into the
undocumented labor category, and they never come back, and a

(06:08):
whole house is sitting in one of these farmhouses or
in a trailer or something, when when gouvern guys come
in and say, hey, those those dudes never came back
and they've been killed, right, they seem to have been
sort of pretty brutally murdered, but the we that they
were carrying was still there, so it wasn't like somebody
shook them down and stole the weed. Right. And yeah, you,

(06:30):
by the way, if it was a weed industry thing,
you probably wouldn't because everyone's got a lot of fucking weed.
I mean, people do steal weed, but if you're out
there doing a murder, it's probably because somebody's fucking with
your business in a bigger way than whatever they happen
to have on the fucking farm. Like, I wouldn't be
surprised if a pot murder would not result in whatever
ship they had in their trailer actually getting jacked. Okay,

(06:53):
right then, yeah, because the weeds the thing that everyone has,
so at the time, their deaths are largely, if not entirely,
factually attributed to bigfoot, right, it's put out there that
these people were murdered by Bigfoot. Now they are not
the only people whose deaths have been blamed on bigfoot.
Earlier this year, duly Seminole County Sheriff's Office reported the

(07:16):
murder of Mr Jimmy Knighton and the press release they said,
Larry Sanders has reported killing Mr Jimmy Knighton by the
South Canadian River. Sanders and Knighton had been noodling in
the river on July. Okay, now, yeah, so give it
to me, Robert, you're you're you're from this part of
the world. It's when you stroke a catfish you don't

(07:37):
stroke well, yes, basically, it's when you use kind of
your fingers as bait and you catch a catfish by
the mouth. Right, we call it what a country? Yes,
I mean James C. Robert to the kids these days,
catch a catch a catch a catfish by the north
being something very different. So does noodling, Yeah, or as

(07:58):
the Mormons call it, soaking. Sure, there's a great story.
This is off topic, but there was just an outbreak
in South Lake City of armpit crabs because so many
Mormon kids are having having armpit sex and protection it's awesome.

(08:20):
It's so funny. Really, it's not. That's just wow, we're
still doing this. We're still doing this, Gere. We're gonna
be doing this the rest of your natural life. Yeah,
never getting past this ship. This is what the future
halls feed decades of arm fucking. So, uh, sand Is
a knighting with They were old school noodling. They weren't online,

(08:42):
of course. Yeah, that's that's the best kind of noodling
in my opinion. That's what I've heard. So they're at
they're at. At some point, Mr sand Is becomes convinced
that Knighton has summoned Bigfoot to kill him. Now, that's interesting.
You don't hear that a lot. You don't because I
didn't Bigfoot was summonable. That wasn't on the table of

(09:03):
things that I thought one could do to a Bigfoot.
I mean, I've always thought Bigfoot was summonable, but not
for murder. For sex, sure, Okay, yeah, that's why his
armpits are so crabby. Well, that's what everyone says about Bigfoot,
so you can identify him in a crowd. So at
some point Sounders becomes convinced that Bigfoot is on his

(09:24):
way and he's going to kill him, and so he
unfortunately strangles his noodling partner to death. Well that's tragic,
and then noodling partly tragic. Well, guess gonna leave it.
We're it's gonna leave it. We're just gonna move straight on. Yeah, yeah,
So yeah, it does sound rather tragic. It does sound

(09:44):
rather sad. But he seems to have reported pretty openly
that he believed that Bigfoot was on its way and
if he didn't stop this ritual, that Bigfoot will kill him.
And a lot of as it turns out, things that
people can't really expla rain. Often the times when people
are in human to other humans tend to be explained

(10:05):
as the actions of monsters. Right, And I want I
want to quote from the documentarian, the director Joshua Rope,
who made that film. He says, the thing that people
should be afraid of is not the boogeyman in the woods.
It's our next door neighbors who will usually commit acts
of violence that will then terrify, you know, everybody on

(10:27):
the block or in the neighborhood. Said that working in
northern California was very scary. We did enter a sort
of underworld. You know, for lack of a better term,
and you know, we were really mindful to try and
not overstay our welcome there. So I want to get
into cryptichs a little bit, and I want to get
into some some of the more famous ones as well

(10:48):
as a curse. I've got a curse here. Yeah. The
curse is great because it's invented by the California Park Service.
But I want to explain kind of the social functions
that they sometimes serve as well as just having some
fun talking about cryptids. So the one that I thought
might serve a social function, and probably the most famous
cryptid aside from Bigfoot, is our friend the chupacabra, right

(11:11):
and yeah yeah In English, that translate to goat soccer,
which is okay, yeah, yeah, we're staying we're staying on
this bit. I see, yeah, yeah, we're on themes. Not
a bit garrison. Its culture, yeah, corporate, not a costume.
I'll say this. I'm reading a great book right now

(11:33):
about the goat soccer. No it's it's called The Last
Emperor of Mexico, and it's about that Habsburg who tried
to become the Yeah yeah, and they hung his assid
in like three weeks. It's very funny. Um yeah, good stuff.
Huge respect to the people of Mexico. So actually that
chupacabra doesn't come from Mexico, comes from Puerto Rico. But

(11:56):
oh I didn't know that. Actually, yeah, we get a
little bit about the chubercabra. The perhaps the best source
for this, as far as I can find, is this
guy Benjamin Redford, who has written a book about the
tuber carbre and he shows that nearly all of the
eyewitness accounts can be traced back to this one, the

(12:18):
first account, which was this woman called Madeline Tolentino in
the ninety nineties in uh in Puerto rican Right. So
it's also much more recent than I thought. Like, the
tuber Cabra is twenty seven years old. It is said
it's younger than me, which is quite remarkable given how
much cultural impact has had. Yeah, I thought I thought

(12:39):
it was much older. Yeah, be too. I thought it
was this like an old tiny border legend, and you're
a forty nine James, that's correct. Yeah, yeah, okay, just
making it No, Yeah, I'm just I'm just kicking here
for a couple more years before I can claim that sweet.
I heeart media Hitchen, get that air p go to
the be able to go to the fucking the Sizzler

(12:59):
and get five percent off. That's it, man. I'm got
to be issued in my nineteen eleven, which you get
when you're sixty years old. You get a you get
a nineteen eleven and you get a Loui's Gift card
and you get to evoke the Second World War whenever
anyone is rude to you, even if you weren't in it,
and you're you're allowed to drive your car into a
farmer's market in the state of California up to twice.

(13:19):
You have to try. After that, you have to move
to Oregon. M that's right. So yeah, I'm until my retirement.
They I want to talk a little bit about this
is tuper copter. So uh, they're fascinating because like with Bigfoot,
right there are, as you have mentioned, eleven million Google results,
but no actual bigfoots right now, no one's ever found

(13:40):
a big foot. No one can present to biggs feet
a big big feet? Is that? Yeah? It takes an eye, right,
So it's it's from the Italian big feet. That's ready.
That's right. Yeah, Okay, so there are a big feete.
But there are tuper carputers um. And the reason there
are tuperbras is that what people a chapter right, the

(14:04):
name goat sucker. And this this will shock you, Garrison,
especially that the way that they are sucking goats is
perhaps not the way you would expect. Interesting. Yeah, they're
very innovative in this regard. What is happening is people
are finding their goats, their chickens, their live stock, with
their throat ripped out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, so it
is the way you would most animals need throats, right,

(14:25):
it's one of the parts that yeah, they're not interchangeable,
they're not. Yeah, they're really it's good to know. This
is all really important information. Yeah, so throat free goats, cattle,
cheap chickens tend not to survive very long. So a
lot of a lot of times people come out in
the morning find their animals throatless and dead. Yeah, you could.

(14:45):
You could call it a deep throating. That's where they
get it right deep in the throat. So they these
animals are dead, and the people claim that they're drained
of blood, which isn't quite true. But of course there's
there's only there's only two possible explanations, one obviously being
vampires um, the other being this being this cript creature.

(15:09):
Well only possible things that could be that Subercabra is
a vampire. It's okay, okay, okay, so yeah, that's where
the ven diagram overlaps. It's this kind of it's it's
got goat like legs actually, but then it's bipedal. It
has kind of a human torso and a sort of
lizard meets wolf face. It's okay, so we're we're virgin
and like Jersey devil vampire terror. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,

(15:33):
but it prefers warmer climate. It doesn't like Jersey and frankly,
I mean me neither. So ye who doesn't think? Yeah, look,
I don't go east to New Mexico, and I don't
think anyone else should either. No, it doesn't. It doesn't
care for Bruce Springsteen, and it doesn't want to live
in New Jersey, so it stays out west. But it's
been reported all over the world. Actually. Now, the couple

(15:56):
of interesting things about these supercabra is one is that
people have found them, especially in Texas. Right, are you
familiar Robert with Texas blue dogs? No? Okay, I'll go
tell Robert something about Texas. So this lady, I don't
have her name right down here, she was a Texas nutritionist.
And but we do by the way, I will say,
when it comes to like cryptids people taught me about

(16:17):
in Texas, it was the chopercabra. Oh well yeah, we we.
I mean we're basically Mexico like yeah, yeah, not Ted Cruz,
who is the other famous Texas cripted Yeah, but unlike
Ted Cruz, this this tuper cabra had actually been to
a farm and it had been ripping out the throats
of these animals, right, And this lady had a problem

(16:37):
with with the animal's throats being ripped out. And then
one day she finds a corps of which she presumes
to be a chuper cabra. It is hairless, it looks
kind of like a dog, but it has pronounced glands
on its bumps, on its back, I guess, and it
has thick blue skin. Sorry, what why would you do,
Robert if you, if you were living in Texas you
come across a dead chuper cabra, I mean, fry it

(17:01):
up a little, you know. I hadn't even even some
green chili throw that ship on there and just kind
of friar. I haven't even makes sense that one didn't
even hit me, but yeah, having yeah, I know, there
was a couple of taco spots we went to in Texas,
which that might have been what was going on. Yeah,
you just get whatever can of me done man or
meets meat. Yep, so that's not what the study did.

(17:22):
She was a nutrition it is, perhaps so she was
a little little worried about nutritional content. She had it
stuffed and it's in her living room today. Okay, okay,
it's just like a coyote, like what like what what
is it? Well, that's an interesting question, isn't it. Garrison
is an interesting questions? Yes, what the what the blue
dog seems to be. It's some kind of hybrid of

(17:42):
a Mexican wolf and a coyote that has some kind
of mange which has made all its fall off. Nearly
all of the chupa cabras are are some sort of
canine with mange, because mange makes it look like a
fucking monster. Yeah, so like if you saw a giant
sphinx cat, you would also think that's the criptace. Yes, yeah,

(18:06):
and especially if they've been ripping the throats. Are you animals? Right?
Because these poor coyotes and feral dogs and search is
so weakened by the main so they can't prey on
wild animals, and so they tend to come. Okay, right,
it's pretty easy to catch chickens. You can get into
the coop, right, because they've got nowhere to go or
to catch goats. And so unfortunately, what's happening is that

(18:30):
these dogs, these various canids are getting mange and they
are unfortunately too weak to hunt, and so they're killing
things like captive goats and chickens. And that is where
the tupercarbra miss comes from. Going back to the bipedal
tupercarbra though, it's very interesting. That sounds a little bit
more fun. Yeah. So, in the year before the tuper

(18:50):
Carbra was seen, there was a film made in Puerto
Rico and it was called Species Oh man, Yeah, okay, okay.
So unfortunately, the the original eyewitness reports which began the
year after that film was released, Yeah, this I've heard,
they all perfectly described the creature. It's got the spines

(19:12):
on its back. Radford. Radford is a person doing right
in the book Radford said, the resemblance between the creature,
which is called Sill in the film, and the tuper
cabra is really impressive. So yeah, the the old quadrupedal
tuper cabra, it's a dog with Maine. The bipedal tuper
cabra seems to be exclusively explained by this this movie

(19:36):
and people's feelings about United States colonialism in Puerto Rico,
specifically the number of defense facilities and labs in the
un k Rainforest, and their feelings that maybe something like
this ship could come out of one of these US labs,
because if the US was developing a terrible creature that
sucked the blood of people, it would absolutely do it
in one of its colonial properties. Right, Yes, that entirely

(19:59):
makes sense. So there's there's in a sense, to chupa carbra,
according to Radford's theory, gives a physical manifestation of this
feeling of disgust with the the United States. And I
got a couple of other cryptids. I was going to
talk very briefly about the Beast of Procter Valley, and
then I want to talk about the Curse of Body,

(20:20):
which is a curse, not a cryptid, but First, Robert,
do you know which what will not ambush your lifetock
and rip its throat out? Um? I mean like a
like a good sheep dog wouldn't do that. That's right,
and that's why this episode is presented by border colleagues. Wow,
finally we finally got the big deal with the border collie. Yeah,

(20:41):
that's as real complex. That's good. Yep. Just use promo code,
Robert Evans when you're buying your border collie attempt and off.
Just walk up to a border collie and shout my
name in its face. Try to grab its food away
from it rapidly too. That's a good way to get
their attention and see what happens. Ye used to be herded. Yeah,
so see if it likes that. All right, we're back.

(21:13):
I hope you've all got your border collies because this
this next, this next crypted is it's a little local one. Okay,
So they're a crypted a bit like the Trouper carbro
all across the country. But the one that we have
closest to San Diego is called the Proctor Valley Beast.
And now to understand the Proctor Valley Beast, I think
you've got to understand Proctor Valley. Proctor Valley is exactly

(21:33):
the sort of dirt road that you go down when
you're sixteen years old when you want to go somewhere
with your date, pound a few beers and get away
from your parents. Right, these kind of exist all over
the country, all over the world probably, and there a
little closer. They're close enough to know about, but far
enough away to seem weird and distant. Right, And Proctor

(21:55):
Valley is a gravel road and you can drive down
at a regular carb. It's pretty washboarded. There's no lights,
there's no street lights, nothing like that. Right, these days,
your greatest danger when you're driving, riding a bike, or
walking or driving down Prompt Valdy Road is the Border
Patrol absolutely hauling ass in one of their Ford Raptors,
which they seem to have obtained. And I will never

(22:17):
understand their love for the Ford Raptor. Yeah it is.
I don't know how much those costs, but it is
an obscene amount of money to spend on a pickup truck. Well,
it's also like, look, if I'm going to be out
in the in the middle of nowhere and trusting an
off roading vehicle, my first pick is not going to
be the Ford goddamn rap. Well you've got to buy
American robot. Yeah. But the Border Patrol, of course they're
driving for it's unbelievable. Yeah. Well they always have a

(22:40):
predator drowne hanging out. It can come rescue him. Yeah. Yeah,
the Border Patrol and steroid abusers in my old neighborhood
in West l A. Shaking hands over the Ford Raptors. Yea,
Ford Raptors with illegal things. Yeah, Ford Raptors. The car
you can only drive if you have adult onset acne
caused as a result of actually hormones into your fucking

(23:01):
thigh every night. Yeah. They sell a lot of them
in the l A. Coming to Deny. Yeah, well you
already need one for, you know, getting down Beverly Hills.
But not the good hormones, like the ones you you
steal from the horses blood. Yeah. Yeah, the hormones you
take when you're wanting to be more match of but
maybe not quite, not quite achieving your gender insecurities. Okay,

(23:22):
So legend has it that young couple headed off down
Proctor Valley Road one night and their car broke down,
so the young man gets out this is a male
female couple, and he's going to fix the car, right,
And he says to the lady in a very chivalrous
way that she should lock the doors so she's safe. Right.
That's the last she hears him. So she assumes he's

(23:44):
gone off to get some help, and she nods off.
She's got the doorstops very safety knots off and she's
a welcome by a kind of scratching sound and the
winds howling. Every time the wind blows is a little
scratch on the roof. Scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch scratch, right,
wind noise. I'm not going to do the wind noise.
And she starts shooting herself right. She's very scared now.

(24:05):
Scratch scrat, scratch, win, win win, scratch scrat scratch. And
she stays there till sunshine when she's son up. When
she's woken up by the good people of the San
Diego Sheriff's Department, San Diego Sheriff's Department of shouting their
point of guns that they're doing their thing. Why are
they doing that? Because her boyfriend is hanging upside down,
dismembered from the tree above her and his nails are

(24:27):
catching the top of the car every time the wind
blows him. Right, he's been killed by the Procter Valley beast.
Now the producta valley beast is an animal of kind
of nondescript shape and size. The in the local radio
DJ organized a search for the Proctor Valley beast. Right,

(24:48):
people went out at night. Previously, the Proctor Valley beast.
Most of the stories it kind of looked like a
kind of winged, bipedal, half human, gobbling creature. It changed
in form in the seventies when people conducting it's just
kind of a teen radio thing. In the seventies, right,
people conducting the search reported finding a deranged cow. Okay,

(25:10):
the cow was probably not directed. The cow is just sleeping. Yeah.
I've known more cows than most people. I grew up
on a cow farm. I've seen them behave in a
variety of ways. I've never seen one appeared deranged. That's
because they're moving very quickly. Sometimes they're scared, sometimes they're sick.
Deranged is an interesting because cows don't really have enough

(25:30):
going on up there to be deranged. Because you didn't
grow up in the United Kingdom in a certain period
of time, Robert, when our cows became mad. Well, but
that's still I've I've seen cows that have mad cow
disease and they're like, they're ill, but they're I don't know, yeah,
they're they're not like yeah, yeah, that's they're like getting

(25:50):
the name of their eldest daughter, and like as they
lose their way home going on violent rampages, they're not
asking where their husband, who died twenty three years ago
is when they wake up in the middle of the
night anyway, a senile cow that they have to go.
They go and live on a farm when they get
all the cats. Why you haven't seen him, Robert, I

(26:11):
sure do like that, young Rodal Reagan. My cowboys. Yeah, yeah,
they they get they get, Oh, they forget things. They
vote for Donald Trump, they do a fascism. That's what
happens to cows is the only ways cows can die.
Otherwise they live very happy and fulfilled lives in the countryside.
So why why do we have this proct valley bes right?
Why is there a mad cow that murdered a young

(26:33):
man who was it was out late that with a
young woman. No one, No one knows who this young
man is right. I did trauma best to find reports
of any murders in Prompt Valley. And of course it
won't surprise you to learn that we have in fact
discovered dead bodies in Promptic Valley, because unfortunately, Proptic Valley
is just a few miles from the border, and and

(26:55):
I've spent quite a lot of time out in that area,
and that unfortunately, the people that we are finding their
Proctor Valley haven't been killed by deranged cow or a
bipedal beast, but in fact by the elements rights people
trying to cross the border and find a better life
for themselves and not making it as far as the
dirt road which leads to a small town, which leads
to a big road, which leads to a big town
that is close to there. And so what the Proctor

(27:21):
Valley Beast is a myth that serves to tell kids
to not drive down dirt roads late at night on
their own, right. It's two kids, fun your parents. Yeah, absolutely,
fucking send it. Your mediata can handle it, Get off road,
do some drifting. What's the worst that could happen? Maybe,
if you're out there, take a gallon of water, and

(27:43):
maybe maybe I'm not going to say that because there
might be a crime. Yeah, we can cut that. I
was going to say, a hand down with a single
bullet in case you get stuck off road, a silver
bullet and yeah, and a nail to hit it with.
So the last, the last case I want to get
to you is the Curse of Body State Historic Park.
Do you know, Joe, what at is? Robert? No, When

(28:05):
you said Body, I thought immediately about the movie Point Break. Okay,
I haven't seen it. Oh well that's okay, that Garrison
you've seen it. Point I'm sorry, I forgot this is
the Point Break. This is an audio medium. Yeah, I
can't shake my head. No, No, I'm not seen Point Break.
You haven't seen Point Break? Oh my god, Oh my god.

(28:27):
I watched the filmmaker's previous, far superior film that will
not be named. This is that like one person will
get who Well, we're gonna have to watch Point Break.
But there's a guy named Body on it and he
is kind of a crypted interesting so there Body has
a bit of a problem, right, Body is robbing all

(28:48):
those those banks anyway, this story does involve some robbing.
Oh good, Yeah, but I have a bit of theft
on the podcast. So what happened in Body is Body's
got a problem, right, But he has a problem specifically
with mail, because almost every week when the rangers from
Body travel into town to get the mail, they have

(29:09):
to collect half a dozen or so little packages containing
little things like rocks, pizzas of wood, fragments of pottery,
or coins. And all of those little packages have letters
attached to them, and I'm going to read from some
of those letters. Please find enclosed one weather beating an
old shoe. The shoe was removed from Body during the
months of August. My trail of misfortune is so long

(29:32):
and depressing it can't be listed here. Another one. You
can have these god forsaken rocks back. I've never had
so much rotten luck in my life. Please forgive me
for ever testing the curse of Body. Okay, so what
we got here, what we got here is a curse, right,
just a good old fashioned If you steal something from

(29:52):
the town, the town will come back and hurt you, right, Yeah,
And so Body popped up in the late nineteenth century
gold Rush rights in between Mono Lake a Lake Tahoe.
They it's it's named after a gold prospector, there was
some gold found there. In fact, at its height, body
hosted around ten thousand people, right, And for those ten

(30:14):
thousand people, there were sixty saloons, which is a pretty
good ratio. There's multiple documented gunfights on the main street.
But it seems like the stereotypical wild West town that
after the gold rushers are over, it wasn't such a
great place to live, so people abandoned it. And it's
now managed by the California Park Service, right, And the
California Park Service curates this ghost town in arrested decay

(30:38):
so that people can come and see this little slice
of history. And there's a lot we can learn from these,
like these places that have been abandoned, right, we can
learn a lot about the history of everyday life, like
what things do people have in their kitchen? Why with
this next to that? Why is there a knife here?
Why is why the beer bottles kept here? There's a
lot that historians can learn over time that they might

(30:59):
not find initially. So it's important to keep these things
in really pristine condition. Right. The problem that they had
was once they opened the park, you could just walk
around town, right, It's not like a museum there aren't
a little ropes that there aren't plexiglass dividece keeping you
away from stuff, and people took that as an invitation
to steal ship, and steal ship they did so. The

(31:25):
park's ranger, who I cannot find the name of anywhere,
but at some point a park ranger giving the walking
tours around Body, started telling people about this legendary curse.
And this curse, he said, made it so that anyone
who took anything from Body would be pursued by bad
luck for the rest of their life. Didn't really think

(31:46):
anything which didn't want people to steal ship, right, And
as a result, hundreds of people who had stolen things
from Body started returning them in their mail. Right. They're
blaming everything from cellulitis, cancer, failed relationships, so on the
thing that they stole from body. That this would just
be funny if it wasn't for the fact that every

(32:07):
single one of these items has been stolen from a
protected site. Right. The Park Service has now set itself
up with this huge administrative burden, which is reporting a
theft for every single shoe or piece of glass or
button that's stolen from body, So it's taking up a
huge in order amount of their time, and they no

(32:28):
longer will speak. I've tried to reach out. I didn't
get a response. I did. I did drop them a
Facebook message on their page trying to trying to talk
to someone about this. But they no longer talk about
the curse because it's created such a burden for them,
filing police reports and all these buttons. This is the
actual curse that they did themselves. Like this is this

(32:49):
is how most curses actually work. That you just actually
like the effect is what you turned the thing into
and now you're forced to all the police reports and
that's the actual effect of the curse. Yeah, I think
it's wonderful. I think it's great that they made just
this rod for their own bag. You know, you know
what won't curse you with cancer or sell you litis? Garrison,

(33:12):
I cannot There's there's a lot of weird stuff that
Excellent mobile will give you cancer. Yeah. Well, the gold
that we're about to plug, that's totally totally said. You
can huff that gold, you can melt it down, dip
your hand in, get a gold plate at hand, totally fine,
lick it, lick it, pop it. You know, it's that

(33:34):
to Garrison, sure. Shame was incredibly popular when I was
a kid. It was like everywhere. Alright, we're back and
having well received our little bags of gold for that

(33:56):
plug we did. Yep, I have mine right here. I
like to keep it with me in case the ship
hits the fan. I'm buried. I've buried mine in the
middle of the Organ desert. Smart, I've buried a couple
of things in the middle of the Oregon desert, none
of them gold. Well, that was a big sense on
your definition of gold. Bigfoot to arm pit, that's what

(34:20):
you buried out in your definition of that guy started
a barbershop in whatever. Continue Okay, yeah, yeah, we don't
need to talk about that on the podcast. Thanks Dan.
We don't want any more Robert's felonies on on Maine,
since only a felony if the police find the body,
that's true, But maybe you could put put some sh
it out there about a curse related to the body. Yeah,

(34:44):
I give it some Maine, yeah, and then stuff it.
So why why do we have curses encrypted? Obviously partly
because it's just fucking fun, and partly because some of
our beliefs, right, like if we if we look at
Dirk him or what Dirk him thought religion worth Religion
is kind of an outgrowth of society that unites people

(35:06):
based on a moral code. Right, and functionalists more broadly
in sociology, believe that these beliefs serve and function in society.
And I think a lot of these things help us
explain things that we can't otherwise explain, or give a
more palatable explanation for things that we don't care to explain, right,

(35:28):
or things and and like in nearly all of these cases,
there are things that ripped children away from their mothers.
There's another Mexican like shape shifting, which that ripped children
away from their mothers. Right. Unfortunately, there are things that
RiPP children away from their mothers, and your taxpayer dollars
pay for them. Right, But it it works a little

(35:50):
better to explain things that we don't that don't fit
with our other systems of belief through Like if we
fundamentally believe right that that I know that that the
world is good in capitalism is wonderful, and that gradually
things will trickle down so that everyone gets richer of
the rich get richer first, it can become very hard
to explain the state of the world unless you are

(36:11):
a member of the Conservative and Union As Party of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland of course, And so instead
we create these external things, right, these things that go
bump in the night, So sometimes they can be a
proxy for external forces, right. The chuper Cabra in a
way kind of explains as we get closer to nature
and nature pushes back on us a little bit, that

(36:34):
why that happens, right, rather than just saying what funk
we've given all these cooties Maine? How that? How on
earth are we in a state where there's a blue
dog walking around the The tuper caabre also serves as
a way to kind of personify for people in Puerto Rico,
either consciously or unconsciously, that the terrible impact of the
United States colonialism there right, which it's not very hard
to see, and even the Proctor Valley beast right that

(36:58):
says stay away from this dark road near the border
late at night. There were reasons to stay away from there,
but unfortunately there are there are also reasons to go
there and try and help people who are genuinely suffering,
and lots of people I know going go and leave
water out there. So these curses, they kind of let
credit scores right. They're not real, but they can sometimes

(37:20):
ruin your life, and so sometimes it's just easier to
pretend that it's magic doing that rather than its overarching
global system, which is not very nice. And that's kind
of where I want to finish up. I guess is this.
These are ways to explain things that we can't always explain,
and that's that's sometimes okay, because sometimes it can be

(37:41):
hard to confront these things. You've got anything else you
want to say about cryptids, Robert, I don't know. Um.
I think if you're in an industry that's adjacent to
illegal drugs and you murder someone in the woods, it's
probably a good idea to blame it on Bigfoot. So
that would be my advice for our listeners is to

(38:01):
blame your crimes on bigfoot. M hmm, I don't know.
Do you guys believe in Bigfoot? Let's let's end by
talking about that, like like actually like believe in the
physical ape like thing that's been dustly undiscovered that rooms
in force, say ape like Garrison primate, I think doesn't

(38:23):
necessarily mean ape like sure primate probably, and I do
I do do not do not think that there's a
physical one exists. Now. I think, like we've mentioned before,
like the words you know, you can say like a
curse isn't really, but it can still have effects based
on how we talk about it and how like we

(38:43):
can kind of make it real by our own actions.
And the same thing like I don't think bigfoot of
the primate exists, but as a cultural symbol that has
impact based it is real in some way. Um, but
it's not like not like except for I would say
it is real in a physical way. Um. And uh,

(39:04):
have you seen a big foot robber? Are you gonna
this is this way you drop in your big foot?
I actually I actually have. I've seen a couple. I've
seen a couple of large animals out in the woods.
I seen weird in the woods. I don't think I'm
not comfortable calling it a bigfoot, but well I am
weird weird things in the woods certainly. Certainly. Yeah, I've

(39:24):
seen a lot of weird things in the woods and
all of them were bigfoot, as far as has anyone
has ever been able to convince me. Um. And you know,
when you get right down to it, isn't that what
Christmas is all about Yes, half Happy Halloween, and Happy
Halloween everybody. It Could Happen Here as a production of

(39:51):
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool zone media dot com or check
us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or every listen to podcasts. You can find sources for
It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media
dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.