June 14, 2016 • 36 mins
Between 2007 and 2016, 17 disembodied feet - still wearing shoes - have washed ashore between Washington and British Columbia. What's behind the sudden influx of Vancouver's mystery feet?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to you stuff you should know fromhouse stuff works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles to Be, Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there,
And there are six feet in this studio right now,
(00:21):
and all of them are exactly where they're supposed to
be attached to their lowered legs. Yeah, below the calf, Yeah, yep,
above the floor, facing forward to you, right. Yeah, that's
a big one too, because if it's facing backwards, you've
got problems or you're just going the wrong way all
day long, maybe some Um do you know where they're
(00:44):
not supposed to be Chuck feet? Uh, well, they're not
supposed to be on the armrest of the seat in
front of you on an airplane, yes, or a movie
theater yes, But I know you're not talking about common courtesies.
That bug me. No, but I agree with you wholeheartedly.
That is so wrong. And um, I meant to tell you,
(01:06):
I'm on, I've come over to your side about taking
shoes off on the plane. It's okay if I do it,
but um, you mean and I were flying somewhere and
this dude behind his head, nasty stinky feet, and he
had his shoes off, and like we're facing forward and
we could smell his feet but low our seats behind us.
(01:28):
And I kept turning around giving him the dirtiest looks,
and he was like, you had no idea what I
was doing. Did you look at his feet and then
and he still didn't get it? Did you look at
his feet his face and then clamp your head. I
think that still didn't work. I threw up a little
bit onto him. He just thought it was Yeah. I know.
People disagree with me. People wrote in We're like, what's
(01:49):
it to you? I thought it was to eat your
own to eat your own chuck. Yeah, yeah, all right,
So I'll tell you a place where feet aren't supposed
to be. They're not supposed to be off on their own,
on a beach somewhere, not attached to a body exactly. No, No,
(02:10):
that's not something that you see every day, No, unless
you're in Vancouver, and then it happens like almost every day.
It seems like not quite, but sure, there's something very
weird going on in Vancouver. You say there's no mystery.
I said, there's still a bit of a mystery to it.
But well, well, we'll start at the beginning. Okay, August
two thousand seven. It's kind of a cool and drizzly
(02:31):
day at a place called Jedediah Island Provincial Park up
in British Columbia, right near Vancouver, right lovely. Sure, of course,
that's why you would want to say, like go park
or camp at this park with your family, which is
what a twelve year old girl was you. And I I
couldn't find this girl's name to save my life, probably
because she's twelve. She wouldn't be good to say it. Anyway,
(02:54):
she was sure. She was walking along the beach with
her dad, and um, there was a bunch of like
flots them, you know, that's the term for stuff that
washes up from the sea, that the sea spits up
onto the shores. And um, she saw a shoe and
she picked it up, and she untied it and turned
it upside down and out fell a sock, and inside
(03:15):
the sock was a human foot yep, and she was
pretty surprised, size twelve. Yeah, it was a campus brand shoe,
which h ended up being not neither here nor there,
but it is manufactured in India, mostly sold in India. Um,
(03:36):
and we'll just park that right there for now. Yeah.
So the families like this is unusual. Sure. Uh. They
borrowed a radio from somebody else and they alerted the authorities,
and in very short order, the Mounties showed up, the
coroner showed up, the coast guards showed up. I bet
the Mounties were all over that foot. Um. So yeah,
they said, you know what, well, we're gonna take that
(03:57):
foot is if that's okay little girl, And she, through
her sobbing tears, said sure, but just give me a
little money, okay. Uh. And they said we're gonna send
it off for DNA examination, and um that did that
return nothing the DNA as far as I know, Yeah,
there was no there's no match. So that wasn't like
a clue the d NA. No, but it was the
(04:20):
first thing they tried the DNA. They also looked at
it to see what was going on with the foot
if if there was any kind of signs of what
the deal was. Yeah, they held it up to their
ear and pretended like it was a telephone. And one
of the other mount he said, that's not funny. But
they're like, oh, it is kind of funny, and they
said sorry. So um, they didn't. They just kind of
(04:42):
filed it away. It actually didn't make much of a
stir outside of the area. It was worth talking about.
It got a little bit in because it was just
so weird. But they put the foot away and at
the coroner's office and everybody went about their lives, right,
I would assume so. And then six days later, other
foot showed up in the area, not the same place,
(05:03):
but in the same in the same general area, another
right foot, which means it wasn't for the person's other foot.
Now that'd be weird. So there's two people missing feet. Now. Yes,
this is a men's Reebok size eleven, I think. And
the people who found it said that when they saw it,
they immediately knew that there was a foot in there
because it looked full. It looks pretty how they is
how they put it full of foot? Yeah, And they
(05:25):
picked it up and smelled it and they're like, yeah,
it's a foot, that's right. And the mountains came in
again and they got off their horses and uh, Corporal
Gary Cox said, you know, it is a little weird
to find two feet, especially within six days of one another. Yeah,
in the same area. It was Um, he described it
as a million to one odds. I don't think he
did the science on that, but it's just something you say.
(05:48):
But he said too is pretty crazy, Yeah, and I
agree with him. Yeah. So the first foot was in
on Jedediah Island. The second ones on Gabriela Island, which
is I couldn't find exactly how far away it was
across the water, but it's it's not that far. They're close,
but they're separated by some water. Um, and they're now
all of a sudden, there's two feet that were found
(06:11):
within six days. The media starts to catch drift of
this one. Right, there's feet uh shoe defeat washing up
on the shores in Vancouver. And at the time, at
that very time, UM, Robert Picton was on trial in
Vancouver for um murdering as many as forty nine women.
(06:31):
You've heard to him, right, I think so. He was
the notorious pig farmer who would like butcher women and
feed them to his pigs, and then butcher's pigs and
feed pigs to his guests. Yeah. One of the only
probably Canadian serial killers, right, Yeah, and one of the
worst of all serial killers. He was a horrible horrible
person because he wasn't crazy, you know what I mean,
(06:53):
he was just a just a horrible person. Um. And
so he's on trial at that time, got I think
twenty five years, which is like the maximum sentence you
can get in Canada, what come on Canada years for
for up to forty nine horrible murders. Um. So he
(07:13):
was on trial. There are also a lot of like
really high profile missing people in the area too, that
it just vanished without a trace in the four years
leading up to that. Yeah, and you point out because
you wrote this, I did, But actually I was pointing
out that Christopher Solomon pointed something. Okay, well the point is, uh,
and this is a little strange, but maybe not. I
(07:34):
don't know. I was trying to make sense of it.
British Columbia apparently just has a higher than normal rate
of missing persons than other parts of the world, which
is weird. Yeah, but I mean like a lot more, yeah,
more than people over a fifty nine year period. And uh.
Solomon compared that to Kentucky, which is about the same
(07:57):
size and population or same size population, they only had
five and fifteen people missing over that fifty nine years.
That seemed really low to med eight people a year
missing in the whole state like that remained missing, Okay,
unsolved forever, yes, because in Kentucky they'll just be like
he was Uncle Billy's on the road for a week,
(08:18):
right exactly. So like the the the idea is that
BC has almost five times the number of unsolved missing
persons cases over this fifty nine period compared to Kentucky,
which has about the same size population. It's a lot more. Yeah,
And I mean Solomon might have gone in and selected like, oh,
Kentucky's got the lowest of the same size population, so
that will really point it out. But it does seem
(08:40):
that BC has a large amount of missing persons now, uh,
I bet it has something to do with the terrain
and the wildlife, probably the abundance of water. Probably that too.
It's not a good good thing. A lot of heroin, yeah,
you know, sadly and probably go missing, you know. In
(09:01):
addition to the serial killer theory, one of them was
that these were like people who would either run a
foul of the local organized crime syndicates or um ran
a foul of like a fellow heroin organized crime exactly disorganized.
Remember that movie what movie Disorganized Crime? Was that a
(09:22):
movie with Who's the the Dude the Blonde Dude from
l A. Law Corton Burnson. Yes, it's actually a good movie. Really,
I haven't seen Mark in a couple of decades. Hey,
Summer School is one of the all time greats. Man,
it sounds like that kind of movie Disorganized Crime, like
a bunch of bumbling at criminals. Definitely, But I think
(09:43):
like or Fred Gwynn was in it, Herman Munster, one
of his last roles. All right, so you talked about theories.
One of the other theories, remember we mentioned India manufactured
that first shoe. Some people said, you know what, this is,
sadly just feat of tsunami survivors from the Indian Ocean
(10:07):
disaster December two thousand four, and they just years later
these like body parts are washing up on shore, which
is sort of plausible. It is. I mean, two fifty
people died in that tsunami, A lot, if not most
of them were never found. Yeah. Also we had people
point out remember when we said that modern disaster flicks
(10:28):
are bad. Uh, we had a bunch of people right
in say The Impossible it was a great movie. That's
the one about Yeah, and it was great, it was awesome.
But I think that's different because that was a uh
factual Uh, it's about a factual event. But and I
categorize it as a disaster now. See, I don't categorize
it as that because it was a real thing that happened.
(10:50):
Like disaster flicks to me are when you know, when
you invent some crazy disaster. Well okay, well let me
ask you this. If it were totally fictionalized but the
exact same movie, would you then can considered as a
disaster flick? Yes, okay, so it's like on that scale
and everything too. I had the impression it was much
more just like a human interest. Well it became that.
But they sho film the tsunami like it's it's not
(11:15):
amazing how realistic. It is. Very very tough movie, very
hard to watch. Have you seen Twelve Years of Slave yet?
I still cannot bring myself to watch that. It's pretty rough.
It's just staring at me on my DVR every night.
I'm gona it'll be soon. I'll let you know. Okay,
I'll just come into work crying. Okay, what did I do? Alright?
(11:39):
So the tsunami disaster they said, um, might have been
one of the reasons. But um, I think other people said,
you know, maybe that's not the best explanation. Other people said, well,
a lot of people just go missing from other things,
like planes go down in the Salish Sea, which is
the body of water between I think Vancouver Island and
mainland British columb to you, which is where most of
(12:01):
these were found? Is it Sailish? I think so, But
we'll hear from Canadians one way or the other. You
say Sailish, I say Salish. Who's right? Really? You know?
All right, well, let's we're getting all excited here with
these theories. But there were more feet to come, and
we'll get back to those feet right after this, So chuck.
(12:37):
The When those first two feet were found within six days,
made the rounds, people talked about it, and then it
just kind of drifted out of the news, right like
a foot in the ocean exactly. Um. And then a
third foot was found, and it came roaring back because
this is yet another foot, a totally different one. This
is a woman's foot actually a new balance size seven
(12:59):
I think, and Kirkland Island, same general area right right,
the same forty mile stretch along that coastal area. And
this is within ten months now five ft four people. Yeah, so, um,
the the other new balanced sneaker was found. That was
the fifth foot found. And then in between the Yeah,
(13:21):
they matched the foot to the you know, I don't
know if that's good or bad, but they found the
guy's other foot, right, the the woman that was the
woman that they they found her two ft yes, so
her feet were number three and number five to turn up.
And then in between an entirely different person's foot turned up,
men's like size eleven Nike, I think so. Yeah, within
(13:41):
within a ten month period, there were five feet belonging
to four different people that turned up on this little stretch.
That's right, that's significant. Then there was a six foot
the next August. This was in actually in Washington, so
I guess it had its h hey as in order
and made its way to the States. And so, like
(14:04):
you said, if you're following the story at home as
it's going on, you're starting to think, like, if I
go to the beach, I'm going to see a foot today.
And a lot of people did do that. A lot
of people around British Columbias started looking for disembodied feet.
They were turning up so frequently and I misspoke, you
were right. So the seventh foot to turn up was
(14:25):
the woman's other foot. That's hard to keep track, it
really is. So how many feet in total, sir? I
think the last two were found February of this year. Yeah,
and they actually belonged to the same person. But they
were found a week or two or so apart. And
I say last, I mean most recent. I'm sure more
feet will come. It seems that way because between so
(14:47):
the first foot was found in August two thousand and seven,
these most recent feet were found in February two thousand sixteen.
That total seventeen disembodied feet found within a hundred and
fifty miles stretch between Tacoma, Washington and British Columbia. That's unusual,
it seems like it, and there's a lot of theories,
(15:09):
but no one can say definitively here's what's going on,
right uh, And I know we're making a lot of jokes.
I realized these feet belonged to people who are no
longer with us. I just want to throw that out
there that we do a lot of comedy on this show,
so we did a coma episode that had jokes. I mean,
come on, I just wanted to see away there. Uh.
So from the beginning, the cops and the Mounties were
(15:31):
basically like, I don't you know, this seems really fishy. Uh,
but it's not. We don't think it's murder. We don't
think there's someone out there killing people and chopping their
feet off, which is what a lot of people thought. Yeah.
But and notably because their feet weren't cut off, and
you can tell right they were, They said that they
were naturally disarticulated, right, that's right. Um. So that first
(15:54):
foot that that girl found on Jedediah Island was identified
pretty quickly because the cops released a pick sure of
the shoe to the media. And remember it was a
Campus brand which has made in India, sold mostly in India.
And so the guy whose foot it was, his family
saw it on the news and identified him as somebody
who he was a longtime suffer of depression and he
(16:18):
was in a depressed state when his family last saw him.
So the cops came to the logical conclusion that he
had killed himself. So foot number one has been matched
to a missing person case. Clothes right, that's right. Uh.
So then the new balance shoes turned up on separate islands. Uh,
this is the woman and she was identified as a
(16:38):
lady who also was suffering from depression and jumped off
a bridge. I think they knew this for sure. Yes,
that's where the woman was last seen, was jumping off
a bridge. Yeah, this has been four years previous. So
now they're starting to get a pattern here where all right,
there was another man to the one on Valdi's Island
(17:00):
feet three and five. Uh, they determined either suicide or accident.
And then another couple of people who were accidentally killed.
And so they see this pattern now, all right, these
are people that just happened to die or die by
their own hand, um near enough to the water where
their feet were there. Yes, I'm just being vague for now, right, Yeah.
(17:24):
But the weird thing is is now, all of a sudden,
in a very short period of time, relatively short period
of time. Um, I mean because one of these guys
whose feet turned up was last seen after his boat
turned over. So in a very short period of time,
all these people who died at very different periods of time,
suddenly their feet were starting to turn up in this
area around the stylish sailorsh Sea. Yes, um and the
(17:50):
cops had a I guess, kind of a pretty good
idea from the outset. But to understand what was going on,
or at least what the cops say was going on,
you have to understand what happened to a UM. A
person who dies in the water. You think that people float,
you know, yeah, you kind of think that because in
movies that you know, if you're trying to get rid
(18:11):
of a body in the water, you always you know,
ty cement blocks to a submit shoes is the old joke.
You know, somebody turned up like that in New York recently,
like with submit shoes, not too many movies. But the
idea is that you have to weight the body down.
And I suppose if you were going to get rid
of a body that I'd probably do the same thing,
just out of you know, just cover my basis, just
(18:33):
to be sure. Well, the thing is, if you do
you cebment shoes on a person, you should never do that,
you know. But if you did, um, what you're doing
is you're not ensuring that they sink, right, then you're
ensuring that they don't come back up because that's what happens.
That's right, body that has gone unconscious or has drowned
(18:54):
and died, Um sinks pretty quickly. And it it usually
sinks so quick that if you are looking for a
drowning victim, you you should look on the bottom pretty
close to where they were last seen on the surface.
They sink that fast. Man. So a body sinks, um,
and it will sink faster and fresh water than saltwater
(19:14):
because saltwaters makes humans a little more buoyant. Um. I
guess overweight people, people with a lot of fat on
their bodies sink uh more slowly than people who are leaner. Um.
And then depending on the water temperature as well, um,
and how deep the water is, they'll sink faster and
(19:35):
faster as they get to the bottom. Yea. And depending
on what you're wearing, yeah, like a code or shoes
or something like that, or a backpack. It's it's definitely
gonna pull you down. But the point is once you
go under, once you submerge and you're dead or you're dying, Um,
you're gonna sink pretty quick. Yeah, there's more pressure to
the deeper you get in the body of water. Uh.
(19:56):
You mentioned the temperature was lower, but there's also more pressure.
That compressed is the air in your body, and that's
gonna make you less floaty as well. So the thing
the cool air or the cool temperature does down there
is it uh kind of preserves you for a little while,
longer than ordinarily because um, the bacteria that will eventually
(20:17):
consume your body or just gonna be slower do so
they just move more slowly. But that bacteria is eventually
gonna overcome the sinking of the body because your body
is an enclosed system generally roughly, I mean, you've got
a mouth and all that, you know, But as they're eating,
they're putting out as a waste product, um, gases like
(20:40):
methane and stuff like that. UM, and your body traps
that stuff and it begins to bloat. And I'm everyone
knows that once you bloat, you float. That's right, that's
the forensics bumper sticker. Yeah, eventually you're going to rise
to the top like a dirigible because those gases that
are trapped in your body or like like a submarine.
(21:06):
I guess do you mean they keep going into the
air like you float off and then your foot will
be found on the moon later. Uh, yeah, you're gonna float.
And that's why whenever they people discover like a dead
body in a lake much later, it's you know, it's
not a pretty thing. They're they're bloated and and puffed
out and decomposed. It's not pretty. But if you are UM,
(21:32):
if you're trapped, say like in a vehicle or something
like that, and all of this takes place, UM, eventually
your your body is going to be prevented from floating
away and it will eventually rupture. And once the rupture happens,
all that gas and the um, the buoyancy that's created
by it is all released, and you're staying there. You're
(21:53):
staying there. And I read this article about UM. Did
you read the article about the Oklahoma guy? Huh? Yeah,
it was really weird. Is so like the guy? There
was a guy who was um, whose brother went missing
in his Camaro and I think like nineteen seventy and
he um, he just never knew what happened to him,
(22:15):
and he used this boat ramp on this place called
Fosse Lake, and he found out later when the cops
accidentally discovered the car that his brother had been submerged in.
Just twelve feet of water for forty years. All those
times he was back in his boat into False Lake.
His brother was right below him, and they found him accidentally.
And then they found another car that had gone missing
(22:36):
I think the year before, just a few feet away.
And the moral of the story is that False Lake
is really murky. I mean twelve ft of water, two
different cars, Camaro, Camaro, and I think like a packer
or something like that, or buick Man. Unbelievable. Uh all right,
well let's take another little break here and we'll talk
(22:56):
a little bit more about what can happen to a
body under water and uh, what's the deal with all
these feet? All right? Uh, just this year there was
(23:26):
a study there's some criminologists at Simon Fraser, you outside
of Vancouver, and there have been a bunch of studies
like this over the years where they we've talked to,
you know, in our Body Farm episode, where criminologists and
forensics experts try to see what happens to bodies under
various conditions, including being sunk underwater. Uh So they took
(23:47):
a pig carcass in this case, not a human cadaver,
and they sunk it kind of nearer where uh in
the sailors Sea where these feet had been appearing, and um,
this these pigs carcasses were um, they were bones in
a matter of days. It was really really fast. Yeah,
they were really surprised, surprisingly fast because you know, conventional
(24:07):
wisdom is that this took weeks months maybe even and
the other studies have shown that right, and these things,
these pigs were like just bones in a few days. Um.
They think it's possible that the sailor c is um
an anomaly because this was an almost a thousand feet
of water, but it's really highly oxygenated, so there's a
lot of life down there, um, a lot more things
(24:31):
to eat a body exactly, Whereas if you took it
to another body of water and a thousand feet there,
there might not be as much oxygen, so it might
take longer. But for the sailors c, it's possible for
something to be reduced to bones in a few days. Yeah.
Here was my one problem with the way they did
this study. Maybe I overthought it, but they trapped it
under fencing, um, which presumably means that that was just
(24:54):
you know, kind of in one place the whole time.
I would have like, if you're going to stimulate a
hum and body, I would have uh maybe shackled a
leg and and put a long leader a hundred so
it could move around and see what the Yeah, because
a body can move on the bottom a little because
(25:18):
there's currents, you know. But yeah, have you seen did
you see the video of it? The time elapse video.
It's really something. It's gross. I don't need it. So
um there was another study that I found that really
kind of um ties all this together. It was from
and it was carried out by the corner of King's County,
(25:41):
which is where Seattle is, and um, he or she
I think it was he. Um looked at bodies that
have been pulled from the water, and he took the
amount of time they've been in the water submerged, and
then uh, the amount of body parts that were left
or exactly what body parts are left, and basically went
act and reverse engineered the process by which a body
(26:03):
comes apart when it submerged underwater. That's valuable information, it
really is, you know. And so what they what they
came up with was that the the skin, the thinnest
areas of skin typically cover like joints like your wrist
and ankles does get eaten away first, which exposes that
soft tissue beneath that holds your hand to your arm
(26:24):
or your foot to your leg, and then that gets
attacked by scavengers and all the other stuff that's eating it.
And so between the things eating that soft tissue holding
the bone together and the wave action of the currents
at the bottom of the body of water, the hands
and then the feet work loose, they disarticulate, so they
(26:46):
naturally will fall off the body as the body is decomposing,
submerged underwater, and they are among the first parts to go.
That's right. And if you're just a foot and you're
not wearing a shoe, um, then chances are that foot
will get consumed and you will never see it again.
Although one of these feet was a barefoot correct, which
(27:07):
seems to be a little bit of an outlier, a
little bit. But if you've got a shoe on that
thing that's tied up nice and tight, and you're disarticulated
at the ankle, that foot is still inside that shoe,
gonna make it really hard for a scavenger to get
in there. And it's very possible that that foot will
not decomposed or at least decomposed very slowly. Right, And
(27:31):
not only that, will it be protected once it disarticulates.
If it's wearing a certain kind of shoe, specifically an
athletic shoe that's made in the last like, uh twenty years. Uh,
it's gonna have air injected into the soul. And in
the case of like remember Nike air max Is, they
had actual air pockets like in the in between the
(27:52):
soul and the bottom of the shoe, and that actually
creates a buoyant effect that will lift a shoe, including
one that has a foot still inside, to the surface. Yeah.
So they started looking all these cases and they said, well,
almost all of these are athletic shoes, so that makes sense.
And it's gonna bob upside down because of that rubbery soul,
(28:14):
so it's gonna be protected even more from birds and things.
So what we have here is a case of people
that just happened to die and their feet happen to
come away from their bodies and be well protected by
these awesome running shoes and eventually made their ways to shore. Um.
But a little bit weird that they would happen in
(28:37):
this area in such a span of time, I would
still say, right, that's a that's to me the um
and and we should say that's what you just said,
that's the cops position. And it has been basically since
the outset, since the first foot was found. Basically nothing
to see here and there's not a lot there to
um to undermine it, yeah, or attack it like it's
a pretty sound position, but there is still a mystery
(29:00):
to it to me, and that why British Columbia like it.
It doesn't make sense. And there's a couple of explanations.
One is that the Sailors Sea is something like a
lagoon to where water flows in from the Pacific Ocean
from the south northward into the Sailors Sea, and once
stuff goes in there, it basically recirculates. It doesn't come
(29:21):
back out very often. Well that when you see the
sign that says sailor see it says feete flow in,
they don't flow out exactly right, So once you see
that sign, you're like, well, there's the explanation. Um. The
idea is that the Sailor Sea would experience higher incidents
of flots some of all types, including feet, which is
one explanation it could be right, Well, I'm sure that
(29:44):
has something to do with it. Sure. The other explanation
is um, one of my favorite things in the world,
which is a version of uh. Well, there's a couple
of names for it. UM. There was a guy named
Arnold's Wicky Uh in two thousand six and linguistics per
fessor at Stanford who coined the term frequency illusion UH.
And that's one of the cognitive biases. UM. We're basically
(30:07):
if you are looking for something, you're gonna find it.
All these people saw in the news feet washing up
on the shore, so like you said, they all started
looking for feet, and every time a foot was found,
it just supported the idea that yes, there's something really
weird going on here, which only increased the awareness and
the focus on this, which means that people started seeing
more and more feet. That's right. So frequency illusions specifically
(30:31):
is a mix of selective attention and confirmation bias. So
in this case, selective attention unconsciously keeping an eye out
for that new thing that you were just told about,
which is the feat uh. And the confirmation bias in
this case is the reassurance that it's just proof more
and more proof of its omnipresence more feet you could
(30:52):
see that happening here for sure. Pretty interesting. It's called
the bottom line Huff phenomenon too. Yeah. I didn't know
where that came from those ad until I looked it up.
It was just a comment or on a on the
Pioneer Press of St. Paul discussion board. And he had
heard about the bottom mine HAFF terrorist group a couple
(31:13):
of times and one day and for the first time, yeah,
and just said, you know, bottom MINEHFF phenomenon, and it
became a meme. I thought it was more. I don't.
I thought it was cooler than that. I thought there
was some cool explanation that wasn't just some dude online.
It definitely sounds cooler than it is. It sounds way
cooler than it is. But it's a common thing and people, Uh,
(31:35):
you talk about eleven eleven on the clock is a
big one for a lot of people say, you know,
I see eleven eleven all the time in the clock.
It's because you're looking for it. Sure frequency illusion. Yeah,
it's not actually happening more than it ever was. You know,
you're just paying more attention to it now. And this
is a really, really unnerving suggestion, man, because it's it
says that feet washing up on the shore is way
(31:59):
more common then, and of us realizing that if you
went over and picked up an athletics shoe on a
beach somewhere, there's a good chance that there's going to
be a foot inside. We just aren't aware of this
as as human beings and outside of Vancouver, right, So
that makes Vancouver the capital of the disembodied, the disembodied
(32:22):
feat capital of the world. I don't know that that
necessarily holds up, though. I don't think it's being to explain, yeah,
because I mean, I bet, I bet you it's frequency illusion.
I I disagree. I think it's something else. I think
it probably has to do with the hydrology or something
about Vancouver or British Columbia. There's this some database called
name US and it's like a catalog of unidentified remains,
(32:46):
and I did a search for disarticulated foot and out
of like forty thousand unidentified remains in the US, Vancouver
the only three were disarticulated feet, and one was found
in the Washington State area. So you could technically kind
of included in that weird Vancouver clump. One was in
(33:07):
Maryland and one was in Dallas. That was it. So
it does really seem like Vancouver has a higher than
usual incidents of this articulated feet showing up in its area.
WOWI which is weird? Are you on the case? No?
Not'm just a fan. So you got anything else? No,
(33:30):
I just realized I've been like rotating my feet around
and making sort of Uh. If you want to know
more about this, um, you can. Actually, there are three
really good articles that I read in addition to some
other ones, but three stood out. One was by Winston
Ross of The Daily Beast, one was on Pacific Standard
(33:51):
I didn't see an author, and then Christomers Christopher Solomon's
outside article. Those are all pretty stand out. Uh. And
since I said stand out, it's time for a listener.
Now I'm gonna call this Internet Roundup. I don't know
if people watch, but we have an Internet show called
Internet Roundup. Several people walk yeah, and it's like the
(34:12):
silliest thing we do. We sit down in this studio
on video and we just talked about a couple of
things on the Internet that we think our neat. So
that is a setup. Hey, guys, I was recently on
a Delta plight and they show these on Delta, and
this is not an advert Delta. I was recently on
adults plight from Atlanta at Austin keeping an eye out
for your hat, Chuck. I got very excited when I
(34:34):
remembered I could watch your Internet Roundup show on the
plane to pass the time. Because we began our descend
in Austin, sudden thunderstorms developed. It was quite bumpy, to
say the least. If you have never been on a
plane that unsuccessfully tried to land in a thunderstorm, I
don't recommend it. I just had listened to your How
to Survive a Plane Crash episode from two thousand eight
(34:55):
just that week before, and I remember thinking how grateful
I was that I was in the back of the plane.
Chuck said, I had a better chance of surviving that way. Uh,
it's not much of a chance, but sure. I just
thought you would like to know that despite the horrible
weather going on, and never lost connection with your show. Uh,
watching Internet round Up and able to listen and watch
you guys really helped me keep calm until our pilot
(35:16):
finally gave up trying to land and diverted the plane
to Houston. That's even scarier. You know, I'm not gonna
try anymore. Well, let's go to Houston close enough. Yeah. Uh.
In the end, everyone made it to Austin safely though,
So thanks for everything you guys do. And that is
from Lauren Sprouse. Thanks a lot, Lauren. Um. Have you
(35:38):
ever watched videos of planes that come in for a
landing but it's too windy so they have to like
immediately take back off? Now, this has never happened, like
they touched down and take off. If you watch those
waiting to get onto a plane, it's a really good
way to poke at your brain. Wow. Yeah, no, thank you. Uh.
If you want to get in touch with us, you
can hit us up on Twitter, s y s K podcast.
(36:00):
You can join us on Instagram at s y s
K podcast too. You can join us on Facebook, dot
com slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us
an email to stuff Podcast how stuff Works dot com
and has always joined us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works
(36:22):
dot com
Welcome to you stuff you should know fromhouse stuff works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles to Be, Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there,
And there are six feet in this studio right now,
(00:21):
and all of them are exactly where they're supposed to
be attached to their lowered legs. Yeah, below the calf, Yeah, yep,
above the floor, facing forward to you, right. Yeah, that's
a big one too, because if it's facing backwards, you've
got problems or you're just going the wrong way all
day long, maybe some Um do you know where they're
(00:44):
not supposed to be Chuck feet? Uh, well, they're not
supposed to be on the armrest of the seat in
front of you on an airplane, yes, or a movie
theater yes, But I know you're not talking about common courtesies.
That bug me. No, but I agree with you wholeheartedly.
That is so wrong. And um, I meant to tell you,
(01:06):
I'm on, I've come over to your side about taking
shoes off on the plane. It's okay if I do it,
but um, you mean and I were flying somewhere and
this dude behind his head, nasty stinky feet, and he
had his shoes off, and like we're facing forward and
we could smell his feet but low our seats behind us.
(01:28):
And I kept turning around giving him the dirtiest looks,
and he was like, you had no idea what I
was doing. Did you look at his feet and then
and he still didn't get it? Did you look at
his feet his face and then clamp your head. I
think that still didn't work. I threw up a little
bit onto him. He just thought it was Yeah. I know.
People disagree with me. People wrote in We're like, what's
(01:49):
it to you? I thought it was to eat your
own to eat your own chuck. Yeah, yeah, all right,
So I'll tell you a place where feet aren't supposed
to be. They're not supposed to be off on their own,
on a beach somewhere, not attached to a body exactly. No, No,
(02:10):
that's not something that you see every day, No, unless
you're in Vancouver, and then it happens like almost every day.
It seems like not quite, but sure, there's something very
weird going on in Vancouver. You say there's no mystery.
I said, there's still a bit of a mystery to it.
But well, well, we'll start at the beginning. Okay, August
two thousand seven. It's kind of a cool and drizzly
(02:31):
day at a place called Jedediah Island Provincial Park up
in British Columbia, right near Vancouver, right lovely. Sure, of course,
that's why you would want to say, like go park
or camp at this park with your family, which is
what a twelve year old girl was you. And I I
couldn't find this girl's name to save my life, probably
because she's twelve. She wouldn't be good to say it. Anyway,
(02:54):
she was sure. She was walking along the beach with
her dad, and um, there was a bunch of like
flots them, you know, that's the term for stuff that
washes up from the sea, that the sea spits up
onto the shores. And um, she saw a shoe and
she picked it up, and she untied it and turned
it upside down and out fell a sock, and inside
(03:15):
the sock was a human foot yep, and she was
pretty surprised, size twelve. Yeah, it was a campus brand shoe,
which h ended up being not neither here nor there,
but it is manufactured in India, mostly sold in India. Um,
(03:36):
and we'll just park that right there for now. Yeah.
So the families like this is unusual. Sure. Uh. They
borrowed a radio from somebody else and they alerted the authorities,
and in very short order, the Mounties showed up, the
coroner showed up, the coast guards showed up. I bet
the Mounties were all over that foot. Um. So yeah,
they said, you know what, well, we're gonna take that
(03:57):
foot is if that's okay little girl, And she, through
her sobbing tears, said sure, but just give me a
little money, okay. Uh. And they said we're gonna send
it off for DNA examination, and um that did that
return nothing the DNA as far as I know, Yeah,
there was no there's no match. So that wasn't like
a clue the d NA. No, but it was the
(04:20):
first thing they tried the DNA. They also looked at
it to see what was going on with the foot
if if there was any kind of signs of what
the deal was. Yeah, they held it up to their
ear and pretended like it was a telephone. And one
of the other mount he said, that's not funny. But
they're like, oh, it is kind of funny, and they
said sorry. So um, they didn't. They just kind of
(04:42):
filed it away. It actually didn't make much of a
stir outside of the area. It was worth talking about.
It got a little bit in because it was just
so weird. But they put the foot away and at
the coroner's office and everybody went about their lives, right,
I would assume so. And then six days later, other
foot showed up in the area, not the same place,
(05:03):
but in the same in the same general area, another
right foot, which means it wasn't for the person's other foot.
Now that'd be weird. So there's two people missing feet. Now. Yes,
this is a men's Reebok size eleven, I think. And
the people who found it said that when they saw it,
they immediately knew that there was a foot in there
because it looked full. It looks pretty how they is
how they put it full of foot? Yeah, And they
(05:25):
picked it up and smelled it and they're like, yeah,
it's a foot, that's right. And the mountains came in
again and they got off their horses and uh, Corporal
Gary Cox said, you know, it is a little weird
to find two feet, especially within six days of one another. Yeah,
in the same area. It was Um, he described it
as a million to one odds. I don't think he
did the science on that, but it's just something you say.
(05:48):
But he said too is pretty crazy, Yeah, and I
agree with him. Yeah. So the first foot was in
on Jedediah Island. The second ones on Gabriela Island, which
is I couldn't find exactly how far away it was
across the water, but it's it's not that far. They're close,
but they're separated by some water. Um, and they're now
all of a sudden, there's two feet that were found
(06:11):
within six days. The media starts to catch drift of
this one. Right, there's feet uh shoe defeat washing up
on the shores in Vancouver. And at the time, at
that very time, UM, Robert Picton was on trial in
Vancouver for um murdering as many as forty nine women.
(06:31):
You've heard to him, right, I think so. He was
the notorious pig farmer who would like butcher women and
feed them to his pigs, and then butcher's pigs and
feed pigs to his guests. Yeah. One of the only
probably Canadian serial killers, right, Yeah, and one of the
worst of all serial killers. He was a horrible horrible
person because he wasn't crazy, you know what I mean,
(06:53):
he was just a just a horrible person. Um. And
so he's on trial at that time, got I think
twenty five years, which is like the maximum sentence you
can get in Canada, what come on Canada years for
for up to forty nine horrible murders. Um. So he
(07:13):
was on trial. There are also a lot of like
really high profile missing people in the area too, that
it just vanished without a trace in the four years
leading up to that. Yeah, and you point out because
you wrote this, I did, But actually I was pointing
out that Christopher Solomon pointed something. Okay, well the point is, uh,
and this is a little strange, but maybe not. I
(07:34):
don't know. I was trying to make sense of it.
British Columbia apparently just has a higher than normal rate
of missing persons than other parts of the world, which
is weird. Yeah, but I mean like a lot more, yeah,
more than people over a fifty nine year period. And uh.
Solomon compared that to Kentucky, which is about the same
(07:57):
size and population or same size population, they only had
five and fifteen people missing over that fifty nine years.
That seemed really low to med eight people a year
missing in the whole state like that remained missing, Okay,
unsolved forever, yes, because in Kentucky they'll just be like
he was Uncle Billy's on the road for a week,
(08:18):
right exactly. So like the the the idea is that
BC has almost five times the number of unsolved missing
persons cases over this fifty nine period compared to Kentucky,
which has about the same size population. It's a lot more. Yeah,
And I mean Solomon might have gone in and selected like, oh,
Kentucky's got the lowest of the same size population, so
that will really point it out. But it does seem
(08:40):
that BC has a large amount of missing persons now, uh,
I bet it has something to do with the terrain
and the wildlife, probably the abundance of water. Probably that too.
It's not a good good thing. A lot of heroin, yeah,
you know, sadly and probably go missing, you know. In
(09:01):
addition to the serial killer theory, one of them was
that these were like people who would either run a
foul of the local organized crime syndicates or um ran
a foul of like a fellow heroin organized crime exactly disorganized.
Remember that movie what movie Disorganized Crime? Was that a
(09:22):
movie with Who's the the Dude the Blonde Dude from
l A. Law Corton Burnson. Yes, it's actually a good movie. Really,
I haven't seen Mark in a couple of decades. Hey,
Summer School is one of the all time greats. Man,
it sounds like that kind of movie Disorganized Crime, like
a bunch of bumbling at criminals. Definitely, But I think
(09:43):
like or Fred Gwynn was in it, Herman Munster, one
of his last roles. All right, so you talked about theories.
One of the other theories, remember we mentioned India manufactured
that first shoe. Some people said, you know what, this is,
sadly just feat of tsunami survivors from the Indian Ocean
(10:07):
disaster December two thousand four, and they just years later
these like body parts are washing up on shore, which
is sort of plausible. It is. I mean, two fifty
people died in that tsunami, A lot, if not most
of them were never found. Yeah. Also we had people
point out remember when we said that modern disaster flicks
(10:28):
are bad. Uh, we had a bunch of people right
in say The Impossible it was a great movie. That's
the one about Yeah, and it was great, it was awesome.
But I think that's different because that was a uh
factual Uh, it's about a factual event. But and I
categorize it as a disaster now. See, I don't categorize
it as that because it was a real thing that happened.
(10:50):
Like disaster flicks to me are when you know, when
you invent some crazy disaster. Well okay, well let me
ask you this. If it were totally fictionalized but the
exact same movie, would you then can considered as a
disaster flick? Yes, okay, so it's like on that scale
and everything too. I had the impression it was much
more just like a human interest. Well it became that.
But they sho film the tsunami like it's it's not
(11:15):
amazing how realistic. It is. Very very tough movie, very
hard to watch. Have you seen Twelve Years of Slave yet?
I still cannot bring myself to watch that. It's pretty rough.
It's just staring at me on my DVR every night.
I'm gona it'll be soon. I'll let you know. Okay,
I'll just come into work crying. Okay, what did I do? Alright?
(11:39):
So the tsunami disaster they said, um, might have been
one of the reasons. But um, I think other people said,
you know, maybe that's not the best explanation. Other people said, well,
a lot of people just go missing from other things,
like planes go down in the Salish Sea, which is
the body of water between I think Vancouver Island and
mainland British columb to you, which is where most of
(12:01):
these were found? Is it Sailish? I think so, But
we'll hear from Canadians one way or the other. You
say Sailish, I say Salish. Who's right? Really? You know?
All right, well, let's we're getting all excited here with
these theories. But there were more feet to come, and
we'll get back to those feet right after this, So chuck.
(12:37):
The When those first two feet were found within six days,
made the rounds, people talked about it, and then it
just kind of drifted out of the news, right like
a foot in the ocean exactly. Um. And then a
third foot was found, and it came roaring back because
this is yet another foot, a totally different one. This
is a woman's foot actually a new balance size seven
(12:59):
I think, and Kirkland Island, same general area right right,
the same forty mile stretch along that coastal area. And
this is within ten months now five ft four people. Yeah, so, um,
the the other new balanced sneaker was found. That was
the fifth foot found. And then in between the Yeah,
(13:21):
they matched the foot to the you know, I don't
know if that's good or bad, but they found the
guy's other foot, right, the the woman that was the
woman that they they found her two ft yes, so
her feet were number three and number five to turn up.
And then in between an entirely different person's foot turned up,
men's like size eleven Nike, I think so. Yeah, within
(13:41):
within a ten month period, there were five feet belonging
to four different people that turned up on this little stretch.
That's right, that's significant. Then there was a six foot
the next August. This was in actually in Washington, so
I guess it had its h hey as in order
and made its way to the States. And so, like
(14:04):
you said, if you're following the story at home as
it's going on, you're starting to think, like, if I
go to the beach, I'm going to see a foot today.
And a lot of people did do that. A lot
of people around British Columbias started looking for disembodied feet.
They were turning up so frequently and I misspoke, you
were right. So the seventh foot to turn up was
(14:25):
the woman's other foot. That's hard to keep track, it
really is. So how many feet in total, sir? I
think the last two were found February of this year. Yeah,
and they actually belonged to the same person. But they
were found a week or two or so apart. And
I say last, I mean most recent. I'm sure more
feet will come. It seems that way because between so
(14:47):
the first foot was found in August two thousand and seven,
these most recent feet were found in February two thousand sixteen.
That total seventeen disembodied feet found within a hundred and
fifty miles stretch between Tacoma, Washington and British Columbia. That's unusual,
it seems like it, and there's a lot of theories,
(15:09):
but no one can say definitively here's what's going on,
right uh, And I know we're making a lot of jokes.
I realized these feet belonged to people who are no
longer with us. I just want to throw that out
there that we do a lot of comedy on this show,
so we did a coma episode that had jokes. I mean,
come on, I just wanted to see away there. Uh.
So from the beginning, the cops and the Mounties were
(15:31):
basically like, I don't you know, this seems really fishy. Uh,
but it's not. We don't think it's murder. We don't
think there's someone out there killing people and chopping their
feet off, which is what a lot of people thought. Yeah.
But and notably because their feet weren't cut off, and
you can tell right they were, They said that they
were naturally disarticulated, right, that's right. Um. So that first
(15:54):
foot that that girl found on Jedediah Island was identified
pretty quickly because the cops released a pick sure of
the shoe to the media. And remember it was a
Campus brand which has made in India, sold mostly in India.
And so the guy whose foot it was, his family
saw it on the news and identified him as somebody
who he was a longtime suffer of depression and he
(16:18):
was in a depressed state when his family last saw him.
So the cops came to the logical conclusion that he
had killed himself. So foot number one has been matched
to a missing person case. Clothes right, that's right. Uh.
So then the new balance shoes turned up on separate islands. Uh,
this is the woman and she was identified as a
(16:38):
lady who also was suffering from depression and jumped off
a bridge. I think they knew this for sure. Yes,
that's where the woman was last seen, was jumping off
a bridge. Yeah, this has been four years previous. So
now they're starting to get a pattern here where all right,
there was another man to the one on Valdi's Island
(17:00):
feet three and five. Uh, they determined either suicide or accident.
And then another couple of people who were accidentally killed.
And so they see this pattern now, all right, these
are people that just happened to die or die by
their own hand, um near enough to the water where
their feet were there. Yes, I'm just being vague for now, right, Yeah.
(17:24):
But the weird thing is is now, all of a sudden,
in a very short period of time, relatively short period
of time. Um, I mean because one of these guys
whose feet turned up was last seen after his boat
turned over. So in a very short period of time,
all these people who died at very different periods of time,
suddenly their feet were starting to turn up in this
area around the stylish sailorsh Sea. Yes, um and the
(17:50):
cops had a I guess, kind of a pretty good
idea from the outset. But to understand what was going on,
or at least what the cops say was going on,
you have to understand what happened to a UM. A
person who dies in the water. You think that people float,
you know, yeah, you kind of think that because in
movies that you know, if you're trying to get rid
(18:11):
of a body in the water, you always you know,
ty cement blocks to a submit shoes is the old joke.
You know, somebody turned up like that in New York recently,
like with submit shoes, not too many movies. But the
idea is that you have to weight the body down.
And I suppose if you were going to get rid
of a body that I'd probably do the same thing,
just out of you know, just cover my basis, just
(18:33):
to be sure. Well, the thing is, if you do
you cebment shoes on a person, you should never do that,
you know. But if you did, um, what you're doing
is you're not ensuring that they sink, right, then you're
ensuring that they don't come back up because that's what happens.
That's right, body that has gone unconscious or has drowned
(18:54):
and died, Um sinks pretty quickly. And it it usually
sinks so quick that if you are looking for a
drowning victim, you you should look on the bottom pretty
close to where they were last seen on the surface.
They sink that fast. Man. So a body sinks, um,
and it will sink faster and fresh water than saltwater
(19:14):
because saltwaters makes humans a little more buoyant. Um. I
guess overweight people, people with a lot of fat on
their bodies sink uh more slowly than people who are leaner. Um.
And then depending on the water temperature as well, um,
and how deep the water is, they'll sink faster and
(19:35):
faster as they get to the bottom. Yea. And depending
on what you're wearing, yeah, like a code or shoes
or something like that, or a backpack. It's it's definitely
gonna pull you down. But the point is once you
go under, once you submerge and you're dead or you're dying, Um,
you're gonna sink pretty quick. Yeah, there's more pressure to
the deeper you get in the body of water. Uh.
(19:56):
You mentioned the temperature was lower, but there's also more pressure.
That compressed is the air in your body, and that's
gonna make you less floaty as well. So the thing
the cool air or the cool temperature does down there
is it uh kind of preserves you for a little while,
longer than ordinarily because um, the bacteria that will eventually
(20:17):
consume your body or just gonna be slower do so
they just move more slowly. But that bacteria is eventually
gonna overcome the sinking of the body because your body
is an enclosed system generally roughly, I mean, you've got
a mouth and all that, you know, But as they're eating,
they're putting out as a waste product, um, gases like
(20:40):
methane and stuff like that. UM, and your body traps
that stuff and it begins to bloat. And I'm everyone
knows that once you bloat, you float. That's right, that's
the forensics bumper sticker. Yeah, eventually you're going to rise
to the top like a dirigible because those gases that
are trapped in your body or like like a submarine.
(21:06):
I guess do you mean they keep going into the
air like you float off and then your foot will
be found on the moon later. Uh, yeah, you're gonna float.
And that's why whenever they people discover like a dead
body in a lake much later, it's you know, it's
not a pretty thing. They're they're bloated and and puffed
out and decomposed. It's not pretty. But if you are UM,
(21:32):
if you're trapped, say like in a vehicle or something
like that, and all of this takes place, UM, eventually
your your body is going to be prevented from floating
away and it will eventually rupture. And once the rupture happens,
all that gas and the um, the buoyancy that's created
by it is all released, and you're staying there. You're
(21:53):
staying there. And I read this article about UM. Did
you read the article about the Oklahoma guy? Huh? Yeah,
it was really weird. Is so like the guy? There
was a guy who was um, whose brother went missing
in his Camaro and I think like nineteen seventy and
he um, he just never knew what happened to him,
(22:15):
and he used this boat ramp on this place called
Fosse Lake, and he found out later when the cops
accidentally discovered the car that his brother had been submerged in.
Just twelve feet of water for forty years. All those
times he was back in his boat into False Lake.
His brother was right below him, and they found him accidentally.
And then they found another car that had gone missing
(22:36):
I think the year before, just a few feet away.
And the moral of the story is that False Lake
is really murky. I mean twelve ft of water, two
different cars, Camaro, Camaro, and I think like a packer
or something like that, or buick Man. Unbelievable. Uh all right,
well let's take another little break here and we'll talk
(22:56):
a little bit more about what can happen to a
body under water and uh, what's the deal with all
these feet? All right? Uh, just this year there was
(23:26):
a study there's some criminologists at Simon Fraser, you outside
of Vancouver, and there have been a bunch of studies
like this over the years where they we've talked to,
you know, in our Body Farm episode, where criminologists and
forensics experts try to see what happens to bodies under
various conditions, including being sunk underwater. Uh So they took
(23:47):
a pig carcass in this case, not a human cadaver,
and they sunk it kind of nearer where uh in
the sailors Sea where these feet had been appearing, and um,
this these pigs carcasses were um, they were bones in
a matter of days. It was really really fast. Yeah,
they were really surprised, surprisingly fast because you know, conventional
(24:07):
wisdom is that this took weeks months maybe even and
the other studies have shown that right, and these things,
these pigs were like just bones in a few days. Um.
They think it's possible that the sailor c is um
an anomaly because this was an almost a thousand feet
of water, but it's really highly oxygenated, so there's a
lot of life down there, um, a lot more things
(24:31):
to eat a body exactly, Whereas if you took it
to another body of water and a thousand feet there,
there might not be as much oxygen, so it might
take longer. But for the sailors c, it's possible for
something to be reduced to bones in a few days. Yeah.
Here was my one problem with the way they did
this study. Maybe I overthought it, but they trapped it
under fencing, um, which presumably means that that was just
(24:54):
you know, kind of in one place the whole time.
I would have like, if you're going to stimulate a
hum and body, I would have uh maybe shackled a
leg and and put a long leader a hundred so
it could move around and see what the Yeah, because
a body can move on the bottom a little because
(25:18):
there's currents, you know. But yeah, have you seen did
you see the video of it? The time elapse video.
It's really something. It's gross. I don't need it. So
um there was another study that I found that really
kind of um ties all this together. It was from
and it was carried out by the corner of King's County,
(25:41):
which is where Seattle is, and um, he or she
I think it was he. Um looked at bodies that
have been pulled from the water, and he took the
amount of time they've been in the water submerged, and
then uh, the amount of body parts that were left
or exactly what body parts are left, and basically went
act and reverse engineered the process by which a body
(26:03):
comes apart when it submerged underwater. That's valuable information, it
really is, you know. And so what they what they
came up with was that the the skin, the thinnest
areas of skin typically cover like joints like your wrist
and ankles does get eaten away first, which exposes that
soft tissue beneath that holds your hand to your arm
(26:24):
or your foot to your leg, and then that gets
attacked by scavengers and all the other stuff that's eating it.
And so between the things eating that soft tissue holding
the bone together and the wave action of the currents
at the bottom of the body of water, the hands
and then the feet work loose, they disarticulate, so they
(26:46):
naturally will fall off the body as the body is decomposing,
submerged underwater, and they are among the first parts to go.
That's right. And if you're just a foot and you're
not wearing a shoe, um, then chances are that foot
will get consumed and you will never see it again.
Although one of these feet was a barefoot correct, which
(27:07):
seems to be a little bit of an outlier, a
little bit. But if you've got a shoe on that
thing that's tied up nice and tight, and you're disarticulated
at the ankle, that foot is still inside that shoe,
gonna make it really hard for a scavenger to get
in there. And it's very possible that that foot will
not decomposed or at least decomposed very slowly. Right, And
(27:31):
not only that, will it be protected once it disarticulates.
If it's wearing a certain kind of shoe, specifically an
athletic shoe that's made in the last like, uh twenty years. Uh,
it's gonna have air injected into the soul. And in
the case of like remember Nike air max Is, they
had actual air pockets like in the in between the
(27:52):
soul and the bottom of the shoe, and that actually
creates a buoyant effect that will lift a shoe, including
one that has a foot still inside, to the surface. Yeah.
So they started looking all these cases and they said, well,
almost all of these are athletic shoes, so that makes sense.
And it's gonna bob upside down because of that rubbery soul,
(28:14):
so it's gonna be protected even more from birds and things.
So what we have here is a case of people
that just happened to die and their feet happen to
come away from their bodies and be well protected by
these awesome running shoes and eventually made their ways to shore. Um.
But a little bit weird that they would happen in
(28:37):
this area in such a span of time, I would
still say, right, that's a that's to me the um
and and we should say that's what you just said,
that's the cops position. And it has been basically since
the outset, since the first foot was found. Basically nothing
to see here and there's not a lot there to
um to undermine it, yeah, or attack it like it's
a pretty sound position, but there is still a mystery
(29:00):
to it to me, and that why British Columbia like it.
It doesn't make sense. And there's a couple of explanations.
One is that the Sailors Sea is something like a
lagoon to where water flows in from the Pacific Ocean
from the south northward into the Sailors Sea, and once
stuff goes in there, it basically recirculates. It doesn't come
(29:21):
back out very often. Well that when you see the
sign that says sailor see it says feete flow in,
they don't flow out exactly right, So once you see
that sign, you're like, well, there's the explanation. Um. The
idea is that the Sailor Sea would experience higher incidents
of flots some of all types, including feet, which is
one explanation it could be right, Well, I'm sure that
(29:44):
has something to do with it. Sure. The other explanation
is um, one of my favorite things in the world,
which is a version of uh. Well, there's a couple
of names for it. UM. There was a guy named
Arnold's Wicky Uh in two thousand six and linguistics per
fessor at Stanford who coined the term frequency illusion UH.
And that's one of the cognitive biases. UM. We're basically
(30:07):
if you are looking for something, you're gonna find it.
All these people saw in the news feet washing up
on the shore, so like you said, they all started
looking for feet, and every time a foot was found,
it just supported the idea that yes, there's something really
weird going on here, which only increased the awareness and
the focus on this, which means that people started seeing
more and more feet. That's right. So frequency illusions specifically
(30:31):
is a mix of selective attention and confirmation bias. So
in this case, selective attention unconsciously keeping an eye out
for that new thing that you were just told about,
which is the feat uh. And the confirmation bias in
this case is the reassurance that it's just proof more
and more proof of its omnipresence more feet you could
(30:52):
see that happening here for sure. Pretty interesting. It's called
the bottom line Huff phenomenon too. Yeah. I didn't know
where that came from those ad until I looked it up.
It was just a comment or on a on the
Pioneer Press of St. Paul discussion board. And he had
heard about the bottom mine HAFF terrorist group a couple
(31:13):
of times and one day and for the first time, yeah,
and just said, you know, bottom MINEHFF phenomenon, and it
became a meme. I thought it was more. I don't.
I thought it was cooler than that. I thought there
was some cool explanation that wasn't just some dude online.
It definitely sounds cooler than it is. It sounds way
cooler than it is. But it's a common thing and people, Uh,
(31:35):
you talk about eleven eleven on the clock is a
big one for a lot of people say, you know,
I see eleven eleven all the time in the clock.
It's because you're looking for it. Sure frequency illusion. Yeah,
it's not actually happening more than it ever was. You know,
you're just paying more attention to it now. And this
is a really, really unnerving suggestion, man, because it's it
says that feet washing up on the shore is way
(31:59):
more common then, and of us realizing that if you
went over and picked up an athletics shoe on a
beach somewhere, there's a good chance that there's going to
be a foot inside. We just aren't aware of this
as as human beings and outside of Vancouver, right, So
that makes Vancouver the capital of the disembodied, the disembodied
(32:22):
feat capital of the world. I don't know that that
necessarily holds up, though. I don't think it's being to explain, yeah,
because I mean, I bet, I bet you it's frequency illusion.
I I disagree. I think it's something else. I think
it probably has to do with the hydrology or something
about Vancouver or British Columbia. There's this some database called
name US and it's like a catalog of unidentified remains,
(32:46):
and I did a search for disarticulated foot and out
of like forty thousand unidentified remains in the US, Vancouver
the only three were disarticulated feet, and one was found
in the Washington State area. So you could technically kind
of included in that weird Vancouver clump. One was in
(33:07):
Maryland and one was in Dallas. That was it. So
it does really seem like Vancouver has a higher than
usual incidents of this articulated feet showing up in its area.
WOWI which is weird? Are you on the case? No?
Not'm just a fan. So you got anything else? No,
(33:30):
I just realized I've been like rotating my feet around
and making sort of Uh. If you want to know
more about this, um, you can. Actually, there are three
really good articles that I read in addition to some
other ones, but three stood out. One was by Winston
Ross of The Daily Beast, one was on Pacific Standard
(33:51):
I didn't see an author, and then Christomers Christopher Solomon's
outside article. Those are all pretty stand out. Uh. And
since I said stand out, it's time for a listener.
Now I'm gonna call this Internet Roundup. I don't know
if people watch, but we have an Internet show called
Internet Roundup. Several people walk yeah, and it's like the
(34:12):
silliest thing we do. We sit down in this studio
on video and we just talked about a couple of
things on the Internet that we think our neat. So
that is a setup. Hey, guys, I was recently on
a Delta plight and they show these on Delta, and
this is not an advert Delta. I was recently on
adults plight from Atlanta at Austin keeping an eye out
for your hat, Chuck. I got very excited when I
(34:34):
remembered I could watch your Internet Roundup show on the
plane to pass the time. Because we began our descend
in Austin, sudden thunderstorms developed. It was quite bumpy, to
say the least. If you have never been on a
plane that unsuccessfully tried to land in a thunderstorm, I
don't recommend it. I just had listened to your How
to Survive a Plane Crash episode from two thousand eight
(34:55):
just that week before, and I remember thinking how grateful
I was that I was in the back of the plane.
Chuck said, I had a better chance of surviving that way. Uh,
it's not much of a chance, but sure. I just
thought you would like to know that despite the horrible
weather going on, and never lost connection with your show. Uh,
watching Internet round Up and able to listen and watch
you guys really helped me keep calm until our pilot
(35:16):
finally gave up trying to land and diverted the plane
to Houston. That's even scarier. You know, I'm not gonna
try anymore. Well, let's go to Houston close enough. Yeah. Uh.
In the end, everyone made it to Austin safely though,
So thanks for everything you guys do. And that is
from Lauren Sprouse. Thanks a lot, Lauren. Um. Have you
(35:38):
ever watched videos of planes that come in for a
landing but it's too windy so they have to like
immediately take back off? Now, this has never happened, like
they touched down and take off. If you watch those
waiting to get onto a plane, it's a really good
way to poke at your brain. Wow. Yeah, no, thank you. Uh.
If you want to get in touch with us, you
can hit us up on Twitter, s y s K podcast.
(36:00):
You can join us on Instagram at s y s
K podcast too. You can join us on Facebook, dot
com slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us
an email to stuff Podcast how stuff Works dot com
and has always joined us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works
(36:22):
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