Do Go On - 304 - The New England Vampire Panic

Episode Date: August 18, 2021

In 1990 some children uncovered an unmarked New England cemetery dating back to the 1800s. One of the graves was different from all the others and it's discovery was another piece in the puzzle of the New England Vampire Panic of the 18th and 19th centuries, tune in to hear the story!Support the show and get rewards like bonus episodes: patreon.com/DoGoOnPod Get a ticket to our show at the Great Australian Podcast Festival on Nov 6: https://bit.ly/DGOgapfFor tickets to Matt's Live Shows: https://www.mattstewartcomedy.com/Buy tickets for our screening of The Mummy on September 10: https://www.lidocinemas.com.au/mummyStream our 300th episode with extra quiz (and 16 other episodes with bonus content): https://sospresents.com/authors/dogoon Check out our AACTA nominated web series: http://bit.ly/DGOWebSeries​ Check out Matt’s Beer show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej4TUguJL58 Submit a topic idea directly to the hat: dogoonpod.com/Submit-a-Topic Twitter: @DoGoOnPodInstagram: @DoGoOnPodFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoGoOnPod/Email us: [e-mail] Check out our other podcasts:Book Cheat: https://play.acast.com/s/book-cheatPrime Mates: https://play.acast.com/s/prime-mates/Listen Now: https://play.acast.com/s/listen-now/ Our awesome theme song by Evan Munro-Smith and logo by Peader Thomas REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING:https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-great-new-england-vampire-panic-36482878/https://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/new-england-vampire-panic.htmhttps://newengland.com/today/living/new-england-history/new-england-vampire-history/https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/podcast/vampire-panichttps://www.history.com/news/vampires-tuberculosis-consumption-new-englandhttps://www.history.com/topics/folklore/vampire-historyhttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/vampires-europe-new-england-halloween-historyhttps://www.britannica.com/topic/vampirehttps://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/were-vampires-buried-with-a-stake-through-their-heart/https://www.livescience.com/24374-vampires-real-history.htmlhttps://www.rimonthly.com/vampire-hunter/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Melbourne and Canada, we got exciting news for you. And we should also say this is 2026. Jess, what year is it? 2026. Thank God you're here. Right now, I'm in Melbourne doing my show with Serenji Amarna, 630 each night at the Cooper's Inn Hotel, having so much fun. We'd love to see you there.

Canada, we are visiting you in September this year. If you've somehow missed the news, we are heading up Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, and Toronto for shows. That's going to be so much fun. Tickets for all this stuff, I believe, are online. And I'm here too. Welcome to another episode of Do Go On. My name is Dave Warnke, and as always I'm here with Matt Stewart and Jess Perkins.

Howdy, Dave. Howdy, Dave. Howdy? Howdy. Big fan. Hello. Howdy. I feel like I say that all the time, don't I? Or maybe not. I've never, never once heard you say howdy.

Yeah, right. And now you're like, what do you mean? I say that all the time. Do I not say that every episode? No. Oh, okay. I thought that's just how I talked. Oh, I love it.

And I encourage it. I don't usually wear that cowboy had either, but, you know, it looks good on you. It works. Thank you so much. Now, howdy partner, Matt, can you explain to possible new listeners how this show works? Dan Tootin. Oh, I'll mose you on over here and have a little explain. In the saloon bar.

Yeah. I'll have a whiskey, thanks. And while you're putting that together, I'll let them know that normally one of the three of us goes away and we research a topic that has been suggested by the listeners. And then we bring it back and then we tell the other two all about it. And they don't know what the topic is. And we get onto the topic with a question. This week, I'm doing the topic so I get to ask the question. Jess and Dave don't know what the topic is, but they will soon when I ask the question, Jess and Dave,

What supernatural being caused a panic in 18th and 19th century New England in the United States? Supernatural being. Okay. New England. Okay, this is before David Attenborough's time. Who else? We got, is it like a werewolf type thing? Yes, you're very close.

Oh. Weirwolf, okay, likens. AKA vampires. It is. vampires. Well done Dave. Thank you very much. So today we're going to be talking about the New England vampire panic. This was suggested by Ben Ward of Southampton in the UK. Peter C. Kinesler from Wilmington, North Carolina in the USA. Quick fact about North Carolina that I learned recently. Oh, here we go. Apparently their fire engines over there are blue. They're not red. A real Shelbyville

type situation. Wild. Yeah. I also loved a share. out Sophie from Northcott who suggested it, as did Christian Every from Victoria and Ellie Nicholas from Somerset in England. A bunch of great suggestors there. I want to kick it off with the opening of this great article, Abigail Tucker wrote for the Smithsonian. I think this is one of the key articles about this whole scenario, and it really brought people's attention to it. It's from about nine years ago, this article. And it starts thusly. Children playing near a hillside gravel mine found the first graves.

One ran home to tell his mother, who was skeptical at first, until the boy produced a skull. Because that's like, mum's going, yeah, sure, you found a grave. And the boy's holding a skull by on his back, old, huh? Which hand, mum, left or right? is if you're not going to lead with that. Look, Mom, I found a skull. Where'd you find that in a grave?

I was hanging out. I was playing on a gravel hill. A different time in 1990. So that's when this was. 1990 in Connecticut in Griswold. And police initially thought the burials might be the work of a local serial killer named Michael Ross as they taped off the area as a crime scene.

But the brown decaying bones turned out to be more than a century old. The Connecticut State archaeologist Nick Bellantone soon determined that the hillside contained a colonial-era farm cemetery. New England is full of such unmarked family plots and the 29 burials were typical of the 1700s and early 1800s. The dead, many of them children, were laid to rest in thrifty Yankee style in simple wood coffins without jewelry or even much clothing, their arms resting by their sides or crossed over their chests. That is, except for burial number four. Belentoni was interested in the grave

even before the excavation began. It was one of only two stone crypts in the cemetery, and it was partially visible from the mine face. Scraping away soil with flat-edged shovels and then brushes and bamboo sticks, the archaeologist and his team worked through several feet of earth before reaching the top of the crypt. When Belentone lifted the first of the large flat rocks that formed the roof, he uncovered the remains of a red painted coffin and a pair of skeletal feet. So this is the only one I think that was painted red. All the other ones were just simple wooden grips and they were much easier to access. This one was really buried under a lot of stone.

It took a lot more effort to get to and then when he found it it was painted red. But it is a cemetery. It is a cemetery. It's an old school farm cemetery. So it's been covered over over the years. Oh, right. I just saw that they were surprised to find bodies. in a cemetery.

Yeah. What? We found another one. It must have been a serial killer. This is, guys, you'll live a bully. I've found another one. I think I know this one's name because it says right here who it is. I've started to figure out a system.

This serial killer was organized. This serial killer would love a label maker. I think the serial killer was a Virgo. So he finds these feet and they're imperfect. anatomical position, but when he raised the next stone, Bell and Tony saw that the rest of the individual had been completely rearranged. The skeleton had been beheaded, the skull and thigh bones rested atop the ribs and vertebrae, and it looked like a skull and crossbones motif or a jolly Roger.

I'd never seen anything like it, Bellantone recalled. So they found this one grave, different from all the others, even before they open it up and then once they open it up the bones have all been it's all been messed with in a way that looks kind of like it's a warning or something

yeah something's going on here the other skeletons in the grave at the gravel hillside were packaged for reburial but not J.B which is what this one grave came to be known as they think it was a 50-ish

male from the 18th and he was known as J.B. because they were the initials that was spelled out in brass tacks on the coffin lid. He was shipped to the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C. for further study. Meanwhile, Ballantone started networking. He invited archaeologists and historians to tour the excavation, soliciting theories. Simple vandalism seemed unlikely, as did robbery, because of the lack of valuables at the site. In the course of his far-flung research, Bellantone placed a serenial. indipitous phone call to Michael Bell, a Rhode Island folklorist who had devoted much of the previous decade to studying New England vampire exhumations. The Griswold case occurred at roughly

the same time as the other incidents Bell had investigated, and the setting was right. Griswold was rural, agrarian and bordering southern Rhode Island, where multiple exclamations had occurred. Many of the other vampires like J.B. had been disinterred, grotesquely tampered with and reburied. In light of the time, tails belt hold of violated corpses. Even the posthumous rib fractures began to make sense. J.B.'s accusers had likely rummaged

around his chest cavity, hoping to remove and perhaps to burn his heart. Pretty full on. Wow, rummaging around is like a funny way. Almost got it. There it is. Yep. Yeah, like you're in the dark

trying to find something in the back of a cupboard. My keys, I know they're down the back of this couch somewhere. I know they're down the back of this rib case somewhere. Yeah, this vampire heart. Just keep rummaging. So Michael Bell started investigating vampires of the New England era in the early 1980s. In the first 30 years of his career, he documented around 80 exhumations dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, most of which took place in the regional areas of New England. He's like the preeminent expert in this sort of folklore vampire field. One fun thing to be, Tucker describes him saying he wears his hair

in a sleek silver bob, and he has a strong Roman nose. He favours black sweaters and leather jackets. An ensemble he can easily accentuate with dark glasses to fit in with the goth crowd if research requires it. It's an adaptable outfit. Jack on the sunies, you're a goth guy. Oh look, I'm a goth now. Do goths wear sunglasses? Is that a thing?

Dave, come on. Everybody knows. Haven't you seen the Matrix? If you want to be a goth, You chuck on some sunnies. You could be wearing rainbow head to toe, but you put sunnies on, you're a goth. You know, there's so many goths down at the beach

and their boardies and sunnies. Oh, my God, goths everywhere in summer. Goths on the road on a glary day. Goths everywhere. I myself have been known to be a goths sometimes. Some are the goth's time to shine. Black sweater and leather jacket. That's a strong look already.

Yeah, he sounds like a real bad boy. Yeah. He's the bad boy of academia. Oh, yeah, wow. Yeah. He's a bad boy of folklore. Oh, yeah. And his business card says vampire hunter.

Yeah, that's true. He is described in, because he's in any article about this topic, he is the key featured expert. He's the one, either he's just, very available to chat to journalists? Or he is the guy, one of the two. I think it's a bit of column A, bit of column B. Yeah, business card says vampire hunter.

You flip it over, it says, I'm very available. Please, please call me. Don't hesitate. Sunglasses are optional. Bell doesn't really appreciate how fictionalised vampires have become pop culture darlings in shows such as Buffy the Vampire and the Twilight films, saying, vampires have gone from a sort of

of fear to a source of entertainment. Maybe I shouldn't trivialise entertainment, but to me, it's not anywhere as interesting as what really happened. Okay, well, I mean, have you seen the Twilight saga? It's pretty interesting. Sounds like someone who's like offended at their portrayal on screen. Is this man about it? Yeah, that's right.

Oh, you could be on with something here. Yeah, I'm hunting them. I'm tracking them down. I'm an expert in them. Yeah, just call me, call me. And he kept me, because he's like, no, no, they're not real. That'd be so, that's like crazy that you think that they're real. But no, I can't meet you for lunch during the day.

But I can hang out anywhere from sundown to sunrise. Wearing sunglasses. Oh, that's just because I'm a goth. Yeah, I'm a goth. I'm a goth. I'm a got. I'm a got. please.

So you guys might be wondering, what are vampires? Is that why you wondering? No, I wasn't wondering that at all, no. Yeah, I wasn't because I've seen twilights. Just recently, I've seen all the twilights. Yeah. Okay, well, for the listeners at home who don't know, this is from history.com. Vampires are evil mythological beings who roam the world at night

searching for people whose blood they can feed upon. They may be the best known classic monsters of all. Most people associate vampires with Count Dracula, the legendary blood-sublished. the legendary blood-sucking subject of Bram Stoker's epic novel Dracula, which was published in 1897. Same year that VFL football began. But the history of vampires began long before Stoker was born. Have you done Bram Stoker's Dracula for bookcheat yet, Dave?

No, it is commonly requested. I've got a copy on the shelf. I was just going through my book sheet hat the other day, and I think I might be up there in the top three most requested books. I reckon I'm going to get to it this year. You should get to it soon. Because people are, after this episode, people are going to go vampire crazy. They're going to be, they're going to feed on the blood of your book, so to speak.

Lost control of that. A little bit, didn't I? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You recovered. According to Becky Little, writing for National Geographic, the traits of modern-day vampires are pretty well established. They have fangs, drink human blood, and can't see themselves. and mirrors. They can be watered off with garlic or killed with a stake through the heart, and some, like Dracula, are aristocrats who live in castles. Some of those things are, like,

I think with vampires in popular culture and generally speaking, the rules change from text to text, but they're a lot of the common ones. I think sometimes they can see themselves in mirrors. And I was reading that the whole can't see them in mirrors came about because people, you know, trying to take a document them, they'd be like, oh, I'd try to take a photo, but they just don't appear in it. That's sort of like a loophole there. It's pretty fun. Little goes on, but vampires didn't start out so clearly defined.

Scholars suspect that the modern conception of these Halloween monsters evolved from various traditional beliefs that were held throughout Europe. These beliefs centered around the fear of the dead, once buried, could still harm the living. And vampire-like beings have had a long and varied history, according to Alison Eldridge, writing for Britannica, creatures with vampiric characteristics have appeared at least as far back as ancient Greece,

where stories were told of creatures that attack people in their sleep and drained their bodily fluids. Ike that's a bit vague, not blood necessarily, but bodily fluids. Bodily fluids. Oh, God. Suckin' piss dry.

They're suck at their piss. I mean, it's a weirdest thing, Barbara. Usually I go to bed. I've got to get up to take a piss two, three times. But last night, I didn't have to get up at all. I didn't have to get up at all. I didn't get it at all. Can you believe it?

Something was sucking out my piss. It's the only explanation. She goes on vampire myths. Vampire myths were especially popular in Eastern Europe, and the word vampire most likely originates from that region. Digging out bodies of suspected vampires was practiced in many cultures throughout Europe, and it is thought that the natural characteristics of decomposition,

such as receding gums and the appearance of growing hair and fingernails, reinforced the belief that corpses were in fact continuing some manner of life after death. You know, that idea that your hair and fingernails keeps growing, but it's really your body is receding rather than those things growing. That sort of makes sense. You know, the vampires with sharp fingernails and big protruding teeth. That's just people seeing a corpse that's half decomposed and going,

holy shit, I don't understand how this stuff works. The only explanation. Yeah, how it's teeth so big. Yeah. Also possibly contributing to this baloof and belief was the pronouncement of death for people who were not dead. Because of the constraints of medical diagnosis at the time, people who were very ill or sometimes even very drunk

and in a coma or in shock were thought dead and later miraculously recovered, sometimes too late to prevent their burial. Belief in vampires led to such rituals as staking corpses through the heart before they were buried. In some cultures, the dead. were buried face down to prevent them from finding their way out of their graves. I love that one.

You know what'll trick a vampire being upside down? So they're trying to dig their way out, but they're digging their way further deep down into the ground. Got them. That's pretty funny. That's interesting. That whole steak thing, I never thought about it before. I never sort of connected it, but the idea of staking them through the heart wasn't necessarily

started as a thing to the moving around vampire who's coming at you. It was about a real human was buried. They were worried was a vampire. They'd bang a wooden stake into them so that it sort of tethered them to the ground so they couldn't get up. And then that sort of... Oh, right.

So it's like a... Yeah, exactly. Isn't that interesting? Wow. And gross. I never thought of that either. Yeah, because obviously all these things have some origin and it's a weird one to come about you.

Obviously you kill a vampire with a wooden steak through its heart. that's just what they would have had as a tool at the time and they were worried that these... Yeah, like if they'd waited a couple of centuries, like they'd be handcuffing the body to the coffin. And then you'd be like, all right, to take out a vampire, you've got to handcuff it. You got to handcuff it. All right.

According to History Extra.com, the idea of staking the undead to pin them to their grave originates as a medieval southern Slavic practice associated with vampire epidemics. In these cases, exhumed bodies will are considered to be unnatural because they were undecayed, bloodied, or apparently fatter than in life, and hence not truly dead. Again, this is today usually attributed to a poor grasp of the processes of decay.

Sometimes they'd be fatter because sort of gases were, you know, growing inside them or whatever, so they look like they're bigger. But often these are natural things. Sometimes they'd move, the gases would fill up, so sometimes they'd even sit up, the corpse. They weren't sitting up when we buried them, so vampire. I think that one meaningful. Even today, if I saw one without reading that, I'd be like, well, that corpse sitting up, there's something in this.

That doesn't feel right. Yeah, something's a bit odd there. Something's a bit. I just can't quite put my finger on, you know. It doesn't seem quite right. Did he die sitting up? Was it some sort of alpine toboggan accident or something? He died doing what he loved,

tobogaining into a tree. Tobogging. The bargaining's fun. A fun word, anyway. Fun word, fun activity. Not often you can get the double there. Usually if it's a fun activity, not a fun word. Yeah, agreed.

Yeah. Like cricket. Puzzle. Fun word, not a fun activity. Yeah. Puzzle. Yeah, yeah. Fun word, not a fun activity.

Or vice versa, I'm not sure. Little writing for National Geographic continues on this theme writing. As a corpse's skin shrinks, its teeth and fingernails can appear to have grown longer, and as internal organs break down, a dark purged fluid can leak out of the nose and mouth. People unfamiliar with this process would interpret this fluid to be blood and suspect that the corpse has been drinking it from the living. Bloody corpses weren't the only cause for suspicion. Before people understood our certain diseases spread,

they sometimes imagined vampires were behind the unseen forces, slowly ravaging their communities. The one constant in the evolution of vampire legend has been its close association with disease, writes Mark Collins Jenkins in his book, in his book Vampire Forensics. Trying to kill vampires or prevent them from feeding was a way for people to feel

as though they had some control over disease. Because of this, vampire scares tended to coincide with outbreaks of the plague. In 2006, archaeologists unearthed the 16th century, skull in Venice, Italy, that had been buried among plague victims with a brick in its mouth. The brick was likely a burial tactic to prevent Stregor, Italian vampires or witches, from leaving the grave to eat people. It's interesting, depending on the culture, depending on the time and the place in history, these similar ideas about corpses coming back from the dead to kill or hurt people.

That's been an idea that survived through centuries, but depending on where it was, they deal with it in different ways. Either they'd turn them upside down, or they'd put a brick in their mouth, or they'd stake them to the ground with a wooden stick. Interesting. How big are their mouths in Italy? Well, how small are their bricks? You get a full brick in there? Little continues, not all vampires were thought to physically leave their grave. In northern Germany, the Naxeera. You familiar with these, Dave? Your German heritage. No, I never heard that. They don't talk about these at family get-togethers. Look, it hasn't come up yet. But I'll bring it up with the next reunion in Deutschland.

So they're the NACCZERA or after devourers. They stayed in the ground, these ones, chewing on their burial shrouds. Again, this belief likely has to do with purge fluid, which would cause the shroud to sag or tear, creating the illusion that a corpse had been chewing it. These stationary masticators were still thought to cause trouble above ground and were also believed to be most active during outbreaks of the plight, plague. In the 1679 tract, on the chewing dead, a Protestant theologian accused the

Naxeera of harming their surviving family members through occult processes. He wrote that people could stop them by exhuming the body and stuffing its mouth with soil and maybe a stone and a coin for good measure. Without the ability to chew, the tract claimed that the corpse would die of starvation. Tales of vampires continue to flourish in southern and eastern European nations in the 17th and 18th centuries to the chagrin of some leaders. While the mid-18th century, Pope Benedict 14 declared that vampires were fallacious fictions of human fantasy and the Habsburg ruler Maria Theresa condemned vampire beliefs as superstition and fraud.

Yeah, so for a long time they've been around, but for a long time people like this is silly, but even like the Pope and stuff. Oh, I found that interesting that apparently it became being. in New England because one of those areas weren't very religious. So they had they used these superstitions to explain things instead. But I always sort of connected

vampire stuff with Christianity because, you know, they used the crucifix to ward them off and stuff like that. It sounds like the Pope, even, you know, centuries ago, the Pope was like, nah, this is silly, this is silly everyone. Stop believing in vampires.

Yeah, it was interesting the way the German guy would stop the knack ziras by filling their mouth with with soil. It's pretty clever. Easier than a brick, I would have thought. Yeah. And more adaptable.

Like, it really, you know, like, if you have a small mouth and they're trying to put a brick in there, it can't fit. But, you know, soil, you just put as much as you can. Yeah, exactly. If it was done today in Australia, it would have been fill it with Sally's No More Gaps. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That'll just fill to whatever. the space is required.

Yeah, yeah. That's what's so good about Selly's No More Gaps. Yes. Leave it for a couple of hours and you're ready to go. Very product. And if you have a Nazi problem, if you have a vampire problem. Or a Nazi problem. Or a Nazi vampire problem.

Or a Nazi vampire problem. Honestly, there's very few problems as Sellie's No More Gaps can't fix. Name some problems. What about the gender pay gap? Get Sally's on the loan. We'll have this sorted out within the hour. Thank you, Sally's. Nack zero.

Not Nazi, knack zero, sorry. Very different words. There are a lot of German words with N and Z in them, Dave. Yeah. There's two right off the top of my head. There's just many, many, many words. There are. What was the literal definition?

words out there. That's what's so interesting. I think German, as a language, as a language, German has lots more. It's the translation. Yeah, the translation of the bearers. Beautiful. They love to slam two words together. There you go. A beautiful language. So obviously it wasn't the end of it, even when Pope Benedict the 14th and Maria Theresa were condemning vampire beliefs.

It was still kicking on in the United States. How vampire folklore made its way to America is still. debated. History professor Brian Carroll believes the anti-vampire rituals were introduced as a medical procedure at the time of the American Revolution by German doctors. And as such, he thinks the New England vampires were based on the German knack zero, the ones we talked, you know, the ones we were talking about before, the underground munches. But our man, Michael Bell, disagrees. According to Little, he believes anti-vampire practices in New England came from many places and that the suspected New England vampires were actually more akin to Romanian vampires than the Nax era.

Whatever the source of the beliefs in New England, they were driven by the same social concerns as those before them, a fear of disease and a desire to contain it. And it seems that the disease at the centre of the New England vampire panics was tuberculosis. You're familiar with tuberculosis? I knew the term and I knew it was bad, especially in the sort of, you know, century plus ago, but I didn't know that much about it. But this was, yeah, it was a big one. I was a big one, one of the big ones back then.

According to Tucker, though scholars today still struggle to explain the vampire panics, a key detail unites them. The public hysteria was almost invariably in the midst of savage tuberculosis outbreaks. Indeed, the medical museum's tests ultimately revealed that J.B. had suffered from tuberculosis or a lung disease very like it. Remember J.B., the skull and crossings, bones corpse from earlier. Yeah, so it sounds like, it's amazing that they can figure that out from bones from 150-odd years earlier. Yeah. So you may be wondering what is tuberculosis? Well,

it's a disease caused by bacteria that usually attacks the lungs. It was the leading cause of death in the US back in those times. Also known as consumption, it began to poison New England in the 1730s, and by the 1800s, according to Rhode Island Monthly, the highly contagious epidemic was to blame for nearly 25% of all deaths in the northeast. The name arose because the disease began to consume the physical being. With their ashen and withered bodies, victims resembled walking corpses, much the way vampires are portrayed in folklore. In fact, the afflicted was said to be in the vampire's grasp.

They copped up blood with an incessant hack, their breath was starved of oxygen. It felt as if someone was sitting on their chest. The healthier family members, it appeared that someone was sucking the blood, from their loved ones. Until a drug treatment was available in the 1940s, the diagnosis was a death sentence. The quack doctors would say they could cure Bell notes, while the honest ones declared it's in the hands of God. These dubious doctors were primarily Slavic and German immigrants who touted a remedy from Eastern Europe. Some were astrologers or herbalists. They were showmen who went from town to town, Bell explains. In the early days, few people were educated so medical advice was not scientific.

It was a role of the dice. What these docs proposed, he says, was an antidote more terrifying than Dracula's fangs draining the living. Yeah, so consumption, had you heard of consumption? I don't think I knew that those were the same thing. No, I didn't know they were the same, but I'd heard of consumption, yeah. Yes, I did. And it's also called TB.

Do you know what that stands for? No. I reckon I could have a guess. I couldn't guess. We'll never know. I think it's the bud. Nate, no one knows. The bug.

That would be my best guess. This boy. This boy. It's this kid's fault. He did it. Which boy did it? TB. They're pointing at this boy.

TB. Which is only one letter away from J.B. Is there a possibility that they just misread the letter J? It's possible. Capital Jana, capital of Taylor. They really were saying, don't open this coffin. Don't open this coffin because he died of TB and you'll get it. Mm.

According to Nathan Chan, family writing for how stuff works. No one understood how diseases spread back then. All they knew was that consumption victims perished and their surviving family members would begin to fall ill one by one. Neighbours would be afflicted too. So frightened villages began to believe that the first to die were perhaps vampires of sorts. At night those sharp-toothed blood suckers would wriggle out of their graves, stalk their families and slowly but surely suck the life out of them until they two died horrendous deaths. Terrified, villagers reasoned there was only one way to halt the vampire attacks, but first they had to dig up the bodies and examine them. If the corpse appeared to be less

decay than expected, they'd slice the bodies open and sift through their internal organs. Have a rummage. If the organs contained liquid blood, the person was deemed possessed. The theory seems to have been that the corpse was being inhabited by some sort of evil spirit that was sustaining itself by draining the lifeblood from the living, says Bell. This spiritual possession had to be destroyed and the evil bond between the living and dead needed to be broken, usually by burning the infected organ and sometimes feeding the ashes to those who were ill.

To be extra sure that the vampire wouldn't rise again, sometimes the corpses were beheaded, some of their bones shattered and rearranged in a skull and crossbone symbol, as with the case of J.B. As Tucker continues, the particulars of the vampire exhumations vary widely. In many cases, only family and neighbours participated, but sometimes town fathers voted on the matter, or medical doctors and clergymen gave their blessings or even pitched in. The bodies would be dug up and inspected for signs of vampiric activity.

If they found supposed evidence, they would go about making sure the undead was proper dead again. Just like in Europe, how the exhumations were conducted varied depending on the region. For instance, Tucker writes, some beheaded suspected vampire corpses while others bound their feet with thorns. I said it's hard to walk as a vampire if you've got thorns band around your feet. It's hard to walk as a person if you've got thorns bound around your feet. Ow! You know? Yeah, that would suck.

In New England, some communities in Maine and Plymouth, Massachusetts, opted to simply flip the exhumed vampire face down in the grave and leave it at that. In Connecticut, Rhode Island and Vermont, they frequently burned the dead person's heart, sometimes inhaling the smoke as a cure. Often these rituals were clandestine, lantern lit affairs, but particularly in Vermont, they could be quite public, even festive. One vampire heart was reportedly torched in 1830 on the town green in Woodstock, Vermont. Your favourite state there, Dave.

Yeah, I mean, were any of the hearts turned into creamies? Maybe that's where the creamies started. They ran out of hearts and they started using dairy products instead. Just so creamy. Apparently, depending on the state, some places were, you know, the graves were all these little farm graves so they could do it with a small group at night and you don't have to get the whole town involved but um i think vermont was more like communal graves so they kind of had to get everyone on board to do it you couldn't sneak in there all right in the center of town so you have to just get everyone

on board make a fucking man make a party of it all right it's a festive event uh in manchester hundreds of people flocked to a 1793 heart burning ceremony at a blacksmith's forge and this is written at the time. Timothy Meade officiated at the altar in the sacrifice to the demon vampire, who was believed was still sucking the blood of the then-living wife of Captain Burton. It was a month of February and good slaying, playing as in tobogganing. Ah. Oh. Not as in vampire slaying.

Or is it? Different spelling. But, I mean, the English language has changed. It's evolved. Maybe the two came from the same place. They used to do it around Christmas time. Santa's annual slay. Oh, no, Santa's coming.

Yeah, it used to be a very different tradition. Santa, vampire slayer. Oh, what fun it is to ride Slaying Song Tonight. Is that what it is? Santa. Yeah, it is a slaying song tonight. Oh, ah! Santa, please.

Santa. Stop digging out mom. Begging Santa for you life. Santa, please. I saw the corpse of mummy kissing Santa Claus. Santa, what are you? I'm not digging up my relatives. Probably the most famous story of the New England vampire panic

was the case of Mercy Brown. You guys familiar with Mercy Brown? No. No, but it's a great name. Sometimes known as America's first vampire. Mercy Brown, known as Lena to her family, lived in the farming community of Exeter, Rhode Island in the late 1800s. According to Tucker, in the late 19th century,

entry, Exeter, like much of agrarian New England, was even more sparsely populated than usual. Civil War casualties had taken their toll on the community and the new railroads and the promise of richer land to the west lured young men away. By 1892, the Yelina died, Exeter's population had dipped to just 961 from a high of more than 2.5,000 in 1820. And tuberculosis was harrowing the remaining families. People dreaded the disease without. understanding it. So Robert Koch had identified the tuberculosis bacterium in 1882. News of the discovery did not penetrate rural areas for some time. And even if it had drug treatments wouldn't become available until the 1940s. So actually it was known. They'd figured out exactly what tuberculosis was

at this point. But even still, some areas were still thinking, nah, it's vampires. Either they hadn't heard or they didn't understand the medical discovery, I guess. century cures included drinking brown sugar dissolved in water and frequent horseback riding. I mean, that cures anything, doesn't it? I mean, if you're down on your luck, I mean, let's have a bit of fun. And it's got to be frequent. You don't think you can have the occasional horseback ride and cure this thing. You've got to be doing it nonstop.

Yeah, frequent. Like you were taped to the back of the horse. You are now living on horseback. I'm going to live forever on this horse. As long as his horse lives, I live. I'm feeling better. If they were being honest, Bell says, the medical establishment would have said,

there's nothing we can do, and it's in the hands of God. That's something he said of it. He's like, they were giving false hope and they sort of quack different people giving these different possible ways to fix it. I guess they're offering hope, but really they were offering false hope because they just had no way of treating it.

and like I said, there would be no way to treat it properly until the 1940s. The Brown family, living on the eastern edge of town, began to succumb to the disease in December 1882. Lena's mother, Mary Eliza was the first. Lena's sister, Mary Olive, a 20-year-old dressmaker, died the next year. A tender, obituary from a local newspaper hints at what she endured, writing. The last few hours she lived was of great suffering, yet her faith was firm and she was ready for the change. the whole town turned out for a funeral. Within a few years, Lena's brother Edwin, a store clerk, sickened two,

and left for Colorado Springs hoping that the climate would improve his health. Basically just going to a warmer climate. Lena, who was just a child when her mother and sister died, didn't fall ill until nearly a decade after they were buried. Her tuberculosis was the galloping kind. It's all horse stuff, isn't it? Can't trust him? And that means that she might have been infected but remained asymptomatic for years.

only to fade fast after showing the first signs of the disease. When it came on, it came on fast. She was like a carrier. Yeah. Kind of. Honestly, that sounds like a better way to go. Yeah, I think so. That's true.

I guess, yeah. The other people lingering. There's also one of those diseases that some people just had a natural shield against for whatever reason and their dad never got it. I think I've got that. Yeah, you've naturally TB proof. I've never been consumed yet. Yeah, honestly.

And I've scared. of horses, riding horses, so if I get it, I'm fucked. Especially if it was the galloping sign. Why are you scared of riding horses? I got bucked off as a child. At a rodeo? I did. No.

When I was in prep, so six years old here, we all went to the local farm. There was like a small local farm in Eltham, and everyone got to take it in terms of a horse being led around a circle, and then when it was my turn, the horse cracked it And then what did you say the horse, Dave? And then the lady, yeah, I was whispering, you're a piece of shit. You're the worst horse I've ever seen. Call yourself a horse. You're more like a glorified dog.

I've seen donkeys more impressive than you. That really pissed him off. So I got bucked. And then the lady had to say, this is one of my earlier prime school memories, she had to say, oh, I'll have to get the farmer. That horse got shot because of you. I'll have to get the farmer means get the farmer and he's gun.

No, they told us they just took him to the farm. Is that a full-sized horse? No, I imagine it was a small horse. It was a Shetland pony and... It was probably a Shetland pony and I was bucked. The only other time I ever rode a horse was in grade six at a camp. So it's been a while. It's been a while.

But I respect them too much to ride them. And I'm so scared that they won't listen to me. It is mostly about talking to them. Yeah. Well, the thing is when you panic, they tell you, like, oh, don't dig your feet in. Like, that makes them want to go faster. But of course, like when you're freaking out, you're like, oh, tensing up. And then it's just, it's like saying, like, if you're out of control on a motorcycle, do not hit the accelerator. But then just freaking out and just revving it. It won't stop for some reason. That's why Dave scared of motorbikes as well.

Yeah, that's right. Bucked off. So Mercy slash Lena Brown, she had the galloping kind of consumption or TB. And a doctor attended her in her last illness, the newspaper said, and informed her father that further medical aid was useless. So they told him straight at this point. And she died. Who told her, sorry? A doctor.

Oh, sorry, I thought you said it. Sorry, you were talking about quoting from a newspaper. but I thought you said a newspaper visited and said, look, she's got no hope. No, no, yeah, that was what the newspaper wrote at the time. They're listening to the local tabloid. The town doctor did, it seemed to be one of those science doctors who knew what was going on with tuberculosis. So she died, she was 19.

Her January 1892 obituary was much terseer than her sisters writing, Miss Lena Brown, who was suffering from consumption, died Sunday morning. It's a lot colder. Oh, yeah. Maybe because they think they're writing about a vampire at this point. Maybe. I'm not sure. I'm not sure why.

Maybe it was just a different person wrote it. Maybe Lena was the one who wrote the last one. She was the one with the talent for pros. As Lena was on her deathbed, her brother was, after a brief remission, taking a turn for the worse. Edwin had returned to Exeter from the Colorado Resorts in a dying condition, according to one account. If the good wishes and prayers of his many friends had been realised, friend Eddie would speedily recover and be restored to perfect health and other newspaper wrote.

But some neighbours, likely fearful for their own health, weren't content with prayers. Several approached George Brown, the children's father, and offered an alternative take on the recent tragedies. perhaps an unseen diabolical force was praying on his family. It could be that one of the three brown women wasn't dead after all, instead secretly feasting on the living tissue and blood of Edwin, as the Providence Journal later summarised. If the offending corpse, the journal uses the term vampire in some stories, but the locals seem not too.

So yeah, that's something, the people who are talking about this aren't calling them vampires. They're just thinking it's like this other thing. Vampires, that'd be silly. But they're treating them like vampires and it's just easy to talk about it in that way now, I guess. I've got to say this is not that long ago. Yeah, that's the wild thing, isn't it? Like George Brown. It's not that long.

George Brown lived until 1922. My grandparents said were kids then or, you know, just been born, some of them. Wow. Wild. So if Mercy Brown lived, you know, if she lived a full life, she would have lived till like 1950 or something. later even, you know, isn't that? Yeah. Hectic. So, so this is what

they were saying. The locals are going, we find the offending corpse, we destroy it, then Edwin the brother, he'll recover. The neighbours asked to exhume the bodies in order to check for fresh blood in their hearts. George Brown gave permission and on the morning of March 17th

1892, a party of men dug up the bodies as a family doctor and a journal correspondent looked on. George was absent for unstated but understandable reasons. So obviously he didn't want to be there. He actually didn't want to do it. He didn't believe in the vampire stuff, which is wild. But according to the Providence Journal, he asked the doctor to perform an autopsy at the graveyard and he only authorized the exhumation to

satisfy the neighbours who were according to another newspaper account, worrying the life out of him. He basically just got pressured into it. Yeah. So anyway, the group dug up the bodies of Lena as well as her sister Mary Olive and her mum, Mary Eliza. As the Marys had been dead for nearly a decade, they were understandably a long way decomposed. Lena, on the other hand, was looking similar to the day she died. Some sources even say that her body had turned over in the grave.

Though unlike her sister and mother, she'd only been buried for a couple of winter months. And as the ground was extremely cold, it was as if she had been preserved in a cool room. So it made a lot of sense that she didn't look decomposed because she was buried a lot more recently and it was freezing cold. So in the ground, you know.

The doctor conducted an autopsy and he found that her lungs showed clear signs of tuberculosis, which he told the villagers, but they weren't convinced. They found that when the heart was removed, blood was inside. Liquid blood in the heart of an exhumed corpse was viewed as unnatural since it was interpreted as fresh blood, says Bell.

People understood that blood, coagulates following death, but they didn't know it can liquefy again depending on the circumstances of death. For example, the blood of a person who died suddenly has a tendency to re-liquify. Convinced she was a vampire, the villagers took her heart and liver and burnt them on a nearby rock before mixing the ashes into a tonic for a brother, Edward, to consume, believing this would save his life. So his brother, not only is on his deathbed, He's now being made to drink or eat his sister's heart. Oh.

It didn't work and he died a couple months later. Oh, I'm shocked. Yeah, I really thought that was going to do it. It was so recent. You know, the Saints are already a football club at this point. He knows what they were already at half time. Yeah. Yeah, it was a while before they thought about cut up oranges.

So 120 years after this, grim occurrence, Tucker and Bell went out to visit Mercy Brown's final resting place, and she wrote, She lies beside her brother who ate her heart and the father who let it happen. Other markers are freckled with lichen, but not hers. The stone looks to have been recently cleaned. It has been stolen over the years, and now an iron strap anchors it to the earth. People have scratched their names into the granite.

They leave offerings, plastic vampire teeth, cough drops. Once there was a note that said, you go, girl. Today, there's a bunch of trampled daisies and a dangling butterfly charm on a chain. People still believe that she was a vampire. You know, they're still this. That's why some people visit. And they noticed that hers is the only grave where the grass doesn't grow. And they're like, that's true.

And Bell's like, nah, that's just because that's the only grave everyone's visiting and they're walking on top of it so grass isn't able to grow there. Walk all over it. Yeah. Tucker finished her story on Mercy Lena Brown writing, Lena hasn't left entirely. She is said to frequent a certain bridge, manifested as the smell of roses.

Isn't that fun? If people find you as a, see you as a ghost, but they don't see you, they smell you. And they don't smell you, they smell roses. There she is. It has nothing to do with the fact that roses are nearby. Yeah, the bridge is over a rose field. But that's got nothing to do with it.

She still appears in children's books and paranormal television specials. She murmurs in the cemetery. say those who leave tape recorders there to capture her voice. She's rumoured to visit the terminally ill and to tell them that dying isn't so bad, which is nice. It's a nice way to use, like, you know, you hear of hauntings, but you're haunting people to say, hey, death isn't so bad. That's kind of nice.

Yeah, if you're doing it to comfort the dying, that's all right. Yeah. You'd freak out, though. Death ain't so bad. Join us. Yeah, that's true. That is true. Don't worry, darling, it's not so bad over here.

You're going to eat that, bit of jelly. Ghost love jelly. You said before that they leave cough trops at a graveside. I guess because you cough so much during tuberculosis, but it's like, leave some fucking antibiotics for cuts. Yeah, that's right. Help us out. Yeah, come on.

Yeah, that's funny, isn't it? It's interesting that people leaving tape recorders out and hearing, why wouldn't she, if she was there, she'd probably say words, murmuring. She sort of murmurs. Almost sounds like the wind. I don't know how she does it. Yeah, she sounds a bit like a goat. There is a goat that lives in a wide, but I think that's coincidental.

It's all coincidental. Her story lives on in many other ways. She's referenced a lot in pop culture, including in previous topic, H.P. Lovecraft's The Shunned House. Lovecraft himself was born in Rhode Island in the late 1800s. So he was living in Rhode Island when this happened as a young child. But these stories, I guess, would have been swirling around somewhat. It's interesting because at the time, this area was right near, like,

a lot of intellectuals would go around there to Newport nearby for summer holidays. And this is like, you know, intellectual times. They're all, and it's so strange that nearby, you know, just down the road, people are digging up what they think of vampires while like the great minds of the era drinking shandies by the beach. Is that what intellectuals do? Big shandy drinks. Oh, yeah.

So I've heard. I love shanty. You might be wondering, Dave and Jess even, possibly as well. Was Brown any influence on the most famous vampire story of all? Bram Stoker's Dracula. Is that why you guys were wondering? I was personally wondering that a lot. Yeah.

Jess, to a lesser extent? To a lesser extent, yes. I was thinking about it, but also thinking about cheese. Yeah. Oh, man. To a large extent. I was mainly thinking about cheese too, yeah. Well, the answer to your question is maybe a clipping of an 1896 article.

The answer is, I don't know. I didn't look into that. Why'd you ask? Yeah, stop bugging me. A clipping from an 1896 article about Mercy Brown was later found amongst Stoker's Things. Soka was touring America that year as a theatre company's stage manager, and his Gothic masterpiece, Dracula, was published the following year in 1897. According to Tucker, some scholars have said that there wasn't enough time for the news accounts

to have influenced the Dracula manuscript. Yet others see Lena in the character of Lucy, her name being a very tempting amalgam of Lena and Mercy. A consumptive, seeming teenage girl turned vampire who was exhumed in one of the novel's most memorable scenes. Fascinatingly, a medical doctor presides over Lucy's disinterment, just as one oversaw Lena's. So there's definitely parallels there, and he definitely knew about the case, because he was found that he had a clipping of a news article about it, whether or not there was time for him to write that into the book or not. People disagree. I did see somewhere else, Someone said that he was actually touring the year that it happened,

so which was about five years earlier, which would have given him heaps of time to write it into the story and be influenced by it. But I think either way, that makes sense. You could rewrite something even if it was a year out, surely. How long does it take to rewrite? Yeah. For me, minutes.

And I've written quite a few Gothic masterpieces. With sunglasses on, obviously. Very hard to see the page with sunglasses on. Interestingly, Stoker is thought to have found inspiration. and two other historical figures that we've done previous reports on, including Vlad the Impaler and the Blood Countess, and they were episodes 107, 155 if you're interested. According to Little,

vampire panics died down in the 20th century as these fictional monsters replaced folk beliefs and also medical knowledge improved. However, there was a strange resurgence in the late 1960s when Sean Manchester, the president of the British Occult Society, said that a vampire was causing people, able to see strange things in London's Highgate Cemetery. This story,

I already told back in episode 162, the show was called Unbelievable Urban Legends. So I didn't realize it, but we've done a lot of vampire-related stuff over the years. Yeah, wow, that's amazing. Are we a vampire podcast? I think we might be a vampire podcast. Is there a category for that on iTunes?

There should be. Yeah, we're top of the vampire charts. Imagine that we weren't. Yeah, that'd suck. So anyway, that's basically the end of this report. But I did want to finish with a possible fun fact for new listeners. For some reason, only Jess is allowed to decide if a fact is fun or not. Can't remember why that is?

Because I'm the only one who can. It's my cross to bear. You write a thesis on that, Matt, and you get to be the expert. Yeah, that's a fair point. You're like, oh, for some reason. But any time you're like, is that fun? You're not sure. I know.

Every time there's a vampire panic, that bloke turns out. Every time there's a fun fact, how Jess Perkins turns up. She says in all the docos, all the articles, they reference her on Fun Facts. Yeah, that's on my business card. Fun factologist. Very available. I'm very available. All right, so let me know, Jess, what do you think about this one?

This comes from a live science article written by Benjamin Radford. I assume live science. It could be live science. It's one of those words. It's about how to find. a vampire. So this is what you need, according to Benjamin Radford's research. According to one Romanian legend, you'll need a seven-year-old boy and a white horse. The boys should be dressed in white, placed upon the horse, and the pair set loose in a

graveyard at midday. Watch the horse wander around, and whichever grave is nearest, when it finally stops, is a vampire's grave. Do you think that's what happened when I was in prep? Yeah. They put me on the back of that horse, and then I was bucked off because they found vampire. Yeah, that's the only explanation. Right here, get him off. Just wherever the horse stops. Yeah, where the horse stops. That's dumb. You really hope that your loved ones haven't, like, dropped a bouquet of delicious flowers on your grave.

Yeah, or some apples. It would make sense why Brown's grave has no grass on it, though. The horse keeps stopping there. Oh, that makes sense, Dave. Just saying. Holy shit. You've cracked this case. open, Dave. So that is the end of my report on the New England vampire panic. Love that.

And was that a fun fact? Yes, we didn't get a ruling. Yeah. That's pretty, it's a, I don't know if I'm allowed to claim a new category because I've got boring facts, but to me that's a funny fact. I was going to say, it is funny.

It's funny. Which I guess, I guess, you know, half of the word funny is fun. So, all right, I'll allow it. It's a fun fact. Right. We did it. That's a great tale there, Matt.

It is amazing that multiple reports of ours have crossed over. Yeah. And something that a lot of people mentioned was, you know, it wasn't far from the area of the Salem witch trials, but it was a couple hundred years later, that Mercy Brown story. Amazing that such things were still happening. Although someone did mention,

I think our man Michael Bell said, one of the key differences was at least this time they were only accusing dead people, you know, whereas in the witch trials they were killing people for being witches. So it wasn't as full on, I guess. That's arguably worse, arguably. Yeah. But yeah, just, yeah, fascinating. Fascinating stuff.

Very much so. All right, well now it's time for everyone's favorite section of the show where we thank a few of our supporters. and you can become a supporter by you know patreon.com slash dogoonpod or do go onpod.com. And there's a bunch of different levels, all sorts of different rewards. You get bonus episodes. You get to vote on topics. Like this week's episode was voted on.

I should say it was so close. One by one vote against another topic, which I have to put up for another vote. And I'm talking like hundreds of votes. And it came down on margin of one. So, yeah, one of the big rewards you can get is. on the Sydney-Shaunberg Deluxe Memorial Edition level, rest in peace. You get to give us a fact, a quota, or question. This section has a little bit of a jingle that goes something like this.

Fact, quote, or question. Ding. Anyways, remembers the ding. And so, yeah, you go to the, you sign up on that Sydney-Shaunberg level. You give us a factor, quote, or question. You also get to give us, or get to give yourself a title, and I read four of them out. I read them out for the first time on the show, that we all get to live, learn and laugh together.

This first one comes from Sof Waldron And Sof has given herself the title Photographer of Live Shows Long Past Sof is a... I think Sof must have been to more live shows than anyone else. I think if the world record is held. Absolutely. Because she's been to like nearly every Australian one we've ever done

And didn't we see her in England or somewhere? Yeah, in London, I believe. So that's how she got that title. And Sof has given us a quote. Here it is. I'm currently reading John Green's The Anthropocene Reviewed. Highly recommend it, by the way. And in it, he quoted a poem by Paige Lewis that I can't get out of my head.

Here is that quote. I feel as if I'm on the moon listening to the air hiss out of my space suit, and I can't find the hole. I'm the vice president of panic, and the president is missing. John explained that he loved it because it gave voice and form to the angstance. anxiety that dominates so much of life. That's so much of his life and I can't help but agree. That's great.

So I love that. Should I try and read it again more fluidly? I feel as if I'm on the moon listening to the air, hiss out of my space suit, and I can't find the hole. I'm the vice president of panic and the president is missing. That is really great. I love it. I like that. Reminds me of one of my favorite Troy McClure movies, the president's neck is missing.

That's good stuff. Thank you so much, sir. The next one comes from Tom Goodall, who's given himself the title of fact checker in chief, who knew it with Matt Stewart. Checker in chief of who knew it with Matt Stewart, which is my spin-off podcast, which is bound to come out.

I'm going to start making it sometime this year, I reckon. So it's good to have a chief fact-checker ready to go and Tom Goodall. Yeah, very important, yeah. All right. Tom's also, oh no, he's offered us a, fact and his fact is. It better be right, Tom.

Oh, and I wonder if it'll be fun. We'll find that out. We'll find both those things out soon. The two most played songs ever by the BBC are, I don't know if you guys want to have a guess of these. I don't think you'll get them. Yesterday by the Beatles? No, I think they're both British,

but one of them is a previous topic, or the band was a previous topic. Queen. Yes. Sucked in, Dave. Bohemian Rhapsody? Yes, Dave. Oh, Jess.

Delivered it to him on a platter. No, I'm taking that point. Oh, I'm taking it. Is the other one like the BBC theme song? No, it's a wider shade of pale. That is a good guess, though. And I reckon you might have him on a technicality there, surely. He's asked me to pause while you sing both, Jess.

No. Both songs were jointly also voted best pop songs by the Britta awards are in the Grammy and rock and Royal Hall of Fame and featuring the Rolling Stone top songs of all time. But the weirdest thing they have in common is that both songs reference the fandango dance. That's funny. What are the odds of that?

Yeah. I mean, the BBC know what the people want. They want a fandango. More fandango. I did not see that coming. Thank you very. much, Tom. This next one comes from Rachel Johnson. She'd be

up there with the record for most live shows, I reckon. Rachel's given herself the title of President of Pipes and Pavlova. A couple of very important roles there. And Rachel has offered us a quote.

Short one here, what if I fall? Oh, but my darling, what if you fly? That's from Aaron Hanson, an Australian poet. Great quote. Love that. Are you familiar with her work, Dave? Aaron Hanson?

No, but it does also sound like famous last words, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah, someone's egging you on, jumping off a cliff. What if I fall? No, what if you fly? What if you fly? Oh, no, no, she's fallen.

Yeah, no, she was right to be fair. Yeah, yep, yeah. I think it's a more hopeful quote. Well, that's a lesson for me for next time. Yeah. Yeah. I recognize the question. quote. Oh, you know that one? Yeah, I know that one. I didn't know who it was, so that's nice.

Yeah, thanks for that, Rachel. Finally, last one we've got here is from Daniel Headley, whose title is It Me, the Dickhead. And Daniel has asked us a question. His question is. Jess recently had a segment on Triple J doing the weekday show, Hobber and Hing, where she got people to call up and tell us their absolutely useless shit skiske. What are yours? Oh, God, this was like, this was last week. This was, no, this was fresh. Yeah.

So, Daniel, he didn't do the, I normally say, if you're asking a question, you've got to answer your own question. Do you want some context on what I was doing on radio? So what we were doing, what I was doing was, because the Olympics were on, and I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, I'm sick of seeing. I was joking. It was tongue in cheek, but it was like, The Olympics is all about people, you know, they are the best in their field.

They are achieving athletic greatness. They are the elite. They're like the Michael Bell of sport. Exactly. A perfect analogy. Thank you. But I was like, whatever, let's celebrate the useless skills that we have. Like, so the producer I was working with can identify where someone who's

from in the UK with 90% accuracy based on their accent. That's very good. That's great. Variance. That's, I find that hard. Are they English? No. Wow, that's an amazing skill.

Very impressive. I've said to people before like, I'm like, well, we're in Scotland. Do you from? And they've been from Newcastle or vice versa. And it's always embarrassing and I don't even guess anymore. If you're asking a Scottish person whereabouts in England, they're from. from, that is a faux par. They do not.

Yeah. They're like, I'm Irish. Yeah, I get Irish and Scottish confused sometimes. I normally have to really stop and think and concentrate. And these are like the big famous broad accents, let alone regional ones. So that producer, that is a, that's a great skill.

Yeah. And 90% is high. Yeah. My mum can always look at what, at leftovers, and pick the perfect Tupperware can. container for those leftovers. She'll nail it every time. It's those kind of like useless skills.

I'm pretty good at catching things in my mouth, Skittles specifically. Yeah. That's a good party trick. Yeah. And from a distance as well. Like, you know, if somebody threw... If you throw skittles at me, I'll catch them. Impressive.

So that's just some context there, if that helps. All right, Jess, what about this skill? Whenever someone's talking, a little bit, a little fragment of what they've said will start my brain singing a song with a similar lyric. Like you just said from a distance and then my head started singing, I think Bet Midler. That's a pretty shit skill. Yeah? It's pretty shit. Like it's useless.

It's useless. But it's, yeah. You didn't say unique. It's just, it just. No, no, that's great. It doesn't have to be. How could it, how could, I mean, like, it doesn't have to be unique. I mean, none of the Olympians are unique, are they?

There's a bunch of them there doing the same thing. Yeah, that's right. Oh, I'm actually really good at jumping over a stick. Yeah, so's like 10 of these other people and you're all going to have a crack at it. Who cares? That's a good point. So it doesn't have to be unique. Just something that's probably a bit useless.

Yeah. I've got a really loud click. Oh, me too. And very consistent. That's my left hand. Yeah, I can't click. Left hand, pretty useless. Right hand on the UK. Could Dave go?

So it's visual. Yeah, it's going to be very confusing to tell who is clicking. Who is clicking? You're all very good or very mediocre. That's me. Jess and Dave are the good ones. That's me. Both bad and slow.

Yeah. Yeah, the other one that, I don't know, I think it's faded a bit. but Alcad Trambo Bertranda used to always get me to do this, he'd go he found it interesting that I could remember where I was the first time I saw movies and he used to get me

and be like, oh, the Lion King I'd be like, oh, my 10th birthday party, I saw it with Damon, Damon bought me a block of cabri hazelnut chocolate for my present and yeah, he stayed over that night, that sort of stuff.

I love that. It's a very wholesome skill. It's cute. A wholesome skill, yeah. But I think as time goes on, my memory is fading a bit and I can't. I'm losing those memories, unfortunately. Try me. Try it.

Give me an old movie. Armageddon. I haven't seen it. What? You've got to see Armageddon. Oh, really? Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park.

So it was Nicholas in Cyneton with his dad. I was back visiting Ceyton for junior school holidays. I love it because we can't fact check it. That's my favourite. Yeah, exactly. You could be making all this up. It wasn't actually in Ceyton because I don't think Ceyton had a cinema, but I was staying in Ceyton.

We went to the closest cinema there. See, the lies. The lies unwraggling. So that's the fact quote and question section for this weekend. Any other ones, Jess? What was the best one that a caller in came up with? Um, oh, that's a good, that's a good question. I can't really remember.

Not one of your skills. I can't remember at all. Yeah, remembering, not up there with mine, with my skills. Oh, this is actually quite visual, so don't want. I can do that thing where, and I've never met anyone else who can do that, where you put your arms out like this and then lock your arms in like this. Oh, man. Yeah, you're right, it is quite visual, isn't it?

But then you can put your head through the hole in the middle. I can put a photo up every need to. all you've said is where you can put your arms like this and then you can do this and then you turn them around like this. It's where you, when you lock your arms and then you bring them back towards yourself and then there's a little hole formed in between your four arms and usually it's really quite small and I've heard people say no one can put their head through there but I can. That is, that's not a skill. No, that's a good. Yes. That'll come in handy. And that's why, and that's why I think you should vote for me. I should be the next prime minister. Thank you.

Maybe you'll have to be reborn sometime and you'll have to get your head out of small. All right. So the other thing we like to do is thank a few of our other Patreon supporters. And Jess, you normally come up with a little game here that's related to the topic. Any thoughts on this one? Yeah, I'm struggling a bit with this one. Could give them a different mythological creature. Yeah, that's good.

Yeah. All right. They're part of a something else, panic. Yes. Yeah. Right. All right. Well, shall I kick us off?

Yeah. All right. I'd love to thank from Rockdale in New South Wales, Beck Lehman. Beck Lehman. What about the Slug Girl panic? Slug Girl. So we're not starting with any that are already known. We're just making ones up, are we?

What? What do you mean? No. We're going with like, this is like top five. Slug girl. Slug girl. Probably the fifth most famous cryptid, creaturey type thing. Yep.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What does the Slug girl do? Slugs around. Leaves like that horrible trail and you're like, oh my God, the slug girl's been here. Look, the hallways, an absolute mess. We're going to have to mop that. So, yeah, they exhumed bodies to try and stop that horrible mess in hallways.

Yeah, fair enough. Imagine a full human-sized version of that. Yeah, oh, that'd be, oh, yuck. Take up the whole hallway. I just fucking watched that last weekend. I just watched that hallway. I'd also love to thank from Englewood in Western Australia, Bonnie Larson.

What's she panicking about, Jess? The demon horse. Oh, yeah. Love it. Panic. Yeah. Lucifer. Yeah.

Lucifer. Yeah. that demon horses with glowing eyes and they will buck small children off them. It's like that saying, she's a real demon horse in the sack. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's not a good thing.

It is not good. You will die. Thank you very much, Bonnie. And finally for me, I'd love to thank from Hamilton Hill, also in Western Australia, Jesse Wormold. Jesse Wormold.

It's got worm in the name there. Yeah. It being Jesse. Sorry, Jesse didn't mean to hit you. Jesse Wormold. I reckon Jesse was a part of the upside down cupboard panic. Oh, no. All your clothes are topsy-turvy.

Yeah. And they didn't know why it was happening. but all the cupboards were upside down. Whoa. Until they buried a small set of drawers, the curse was then broken. Wow. Yeah, confusing one.

But they all are. Exactly, yeah. They're all complicated. And, you know, with hindsight, we go, oh, how kooky. But back then, this was 15 years ago, It was a different time. 2006, very strange. Strange time.

Would you like to thank a few people, Jess? Yes, I would love to thank from Clinton, MA, Massachusetts. Is that right? Yeah, surely. Nah, probably not. No, Massachusetts. There's also a main possibility. It is Massachusetts.

It is Massachusetts. Yes, Jess. Never doubt yourself. From Clinton, I would love to thank Katie. Oh. I think. Yeah. I would love to thank Katie McEwen.

Katie McEwen. The sinkhole witch. Oh. Causing all those sinkholes. Yeah. Swallowing up. And a witch. Yeah.

Yes. So there's a few things on the go there, isn't there? That's right. Bringing it back. There's a lot happening in that one. Famous history. with sinkholes and witches, I believe. Yeah, wow.

How did they fix that one? They filled the sinkholes with bricks and dirt. Right. Right. Don't you just keep making more sinkholes? Well, they topped it off with a bit of sallies. Problem solved. Yeah, that'd be fine then, yeah.

No witch can get around sellies. No one can. I would also love to thank from Bell Park in Victoria, Brianna Nash. Rihanna Nash, obviously, or famously involved in the Swallowed a bottle, panic. Yeah.

Oh, no. Have I swallowed a bottle? They would say. Everyone thought they'd swallowed bottles. They weren't sure. That's why it was a panic. There was one missing bottle in the town and they thought, well, someone must have swallowed it.

Someone busted. There's no other possible explanation of where this bottle could go. So somebody's bloody swallowed it. Who swallowed the bottle? Who was it? Dennis, the mechanic found. Oh, hang on. I put it in the wrong bin. Here it is. Dennis. You started a swallowed

bottle panic. We've cut again. Half the town. Dennis. Okay. Fucking Dennis. Dennis. So yeah, a big panic there in Bell Park. And I

I would also love to thank from Westfield, I-N. Indiana. I want to say Indiana, yeah. I've been watching a lot of parks and wrecks, so Indiana is on the brain. Westfield, I would love to thank Rinaldo Scalzi. Ronaldo Scalzi. Fantastic name, Renalda. What are they panicking about in Indiana, Dave?

It is the fly fishing coyote. Panic. Panic. That's right. no one could quite get their fly fishing technique working. And the morning, the last time someone did a good one, they'd seen a coyote. So they figured that the coyote must have cursed their fly fishing technique.

So they had to go around and kill every coyote in the state, I'm afraid. Oh, my God. Geez. All coyotes. It's a bit full on, isn't it? Well, it has a happy ending. Oh, yeah. The fly fishing technique returned to.

full ability and then everyone had a great day fishing. That is good news. It's great news. There you go. Rinaldo Scalzi. Thank you so much for your support. I'd love to thank now from Columbia in Maryland, Jocelyn Cravitz.

Jocelyn Cravitz. Thank you so much for your support. The... The... The... Picture frame bandit panic. Oh. Okay.

Picture frame. Is there someone stealing picture frames or like making them off centre or? Both. They would steal them from one person's place, put them up at somebody else's place, crooked. Very weird. You'd wake up in the morning and on your wall would just be family portraits of strangers. And it would be crooked. It was very unsettling.

Oh my goodness. It's a crooked portrait of a stranger. Who's this family? Why are they all in the same coloured jeans and white t-shirts? It's weird. You are these weirdos. It looks so staged and unnatural. Well, thank you so much, Jocelyn Kravitz.

I'd love to thank now from Location Unknown. And I can only presume that means it is deep within the fortress of the moles. And that is, big thank you to Sarah Horton. Mold people panic. Mole people panic. Which was a dance craze. Everybody do the mole people panic. Bam, ba, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

It was actually quite similar to the Fandango. Was that the original lyric? Can you do the mold people panic? Doesn't quite fit. Yeah, so that's a rework it. Wow. That's a great name. Sarah Horton.

A lot of great names here today yet again. One final to thank in that is from Florenceville, Bristol. That's a hyphenated place in Canada. I would like to thank James Allison. Warewolf panic. The werewolf panic. Yeah. How are we spelling where on that one?

W-E-A-R. W-E-A-R. Is it a fashion panic? Yeah. Wolves are going around wearing everyone's clothes. Oh. Oh. I like that's better.

This is part of the panic, though, because people couldn't work out what they were panicking about. Yeah. One day the town woke up and all the humans were wearing wolf skins and all the wolves were wearing human skins and clothes. It was weird. That's weird. No good.

Oh, that's. That would make me panic. Yeah, that's calls for panic. Yeah. It's the only one that we've listed that I'm like, I understand the panic, to be honest. What? Upside down cupboards.

You're not panicking? No, I'm going, that's a bit odd. But waking up in a wolf skin and seeing a wolf wearing my skin, yeah, I'm panicking because that's fucked. Yeah, that's no good. Yeah, that's no good at all. No good at all. That's crook.

That is crook, but a beautiful tribute to James Allison and the support you've given us over the years. So thanks again to James, Sarah, Jocelyn, Rinaldo, Brianna, Katie, Jesse, Bonnie and Beck. The only thing we've got left to do now is to induct a few people to our Triptage Club. Just a small handful today. The way this works is if you support us on the shoutout level or above for three straight years, you get inducted into the club. It's a beautiful space.

You can always, once you're a member, you're always a member. And it's just a fun place. It's physically, it's located this week in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but it is also always located in our hearts. So welcome in. And butts. Thank you. To these five inductees this week.

I'm standing on the door. I've got the velvet rope ready to lift it. I got your name written down on my clipboard. I'm going to say your name. Then Dave's going to hype you up because you're being welcomed in this club. It's important that you feel right at home straight away. And then because that takes a bit of effort from Dave Jess and gives Dave a little bit of hype himself.

Jess is also behind the bar. Normally comes up with a little cocktail, anything this week, Jess? Yeah, lots of vampire themes, obviously. So we've got garlic bread. We've got steak. And we've got cocktail-wise, we have blood, orange mimosas. Oh, delicious.

And Dave normally booked a band. Who have you booked this week, Dave? We've actually got a rotating lineup of every artist on the Twilight soundtrack. Wow. Are we going to get Muse? Our muse is there? Muse. We've also got Paramour.

I'm looking at a list here. Robert Pattinson, that's obviously a spoken word bonus on the belief, but he's going to do it. Collective Soul, mute math, Lincoln Park, and more. Whoa, that's pretty good. All right, well, the inductees this week are... From Cooper Pedy in South Australia, it's Chris McDougall. Oh, come on in and grab yourself a Cooper Feedy. A bit of steak.

Woo! From Greensboro in Victoria, Australia, it's Toby Gaul. Oh, the gall of this guy, because he's so cool. From Geelong in Victoria, Australia, it's Jamie Boros. Oh, one of the boros, boys, boroughs. It looks better written down. I'm sorry, I realised I just nodded at you at the last. I was like nodding approvingly, but it wasn't audible.

Sorry about that. He gave me nothing. You gave me nothing. Audibly, audibly. Yeah, okay. But yeah, Jamie Borros, one of the boroughs, I should have said, Borrose. Yeah, love that, love that. The third Victorian inducted in a row here, representing the Big V from Beaumor's Victoria, Australia.

It's Peter Holburton. Holburton. Well, Holburton, hold my beer, Holburton, and come on in. Yes. That was something all right. Yeah. And finally, from Cologne in Deutschland, in Deutschland, Germany.

It is Verena Limpa. Oh, can you smell that? A beautiful Cologne from Verena Limpa. Come on in. Yes, he's done it. He's done it again. Thank you so much, everybody. You're all my burros.

Welcome in Verena Peter, Jamie Toby. And Chris. That brings us to the end of the episode. Dave, you want to boot this baby home? Yes, I do thank you so much for everyone who has listened to this episode. We will, of course, be back next week with another episode. But to keep yourself occupied in between, you could support the show on Patreon or do go onpod.com

and unlock all those bonus episodes. Or you could buy some merchandise, or you could suggest a topic or follow us on social media, and there's links to all those things on do go onpod.com. We also have an email, do go on pod at gmail.com. But I guess until next time, I'll say thank you for listening and goodbye. Later.

Later. Bye. I would just say ladies. Yuck. Bye. Bye. Don't forget to sign up to our tour mailing list so we know where in the world you are and we can come and tell you when we're coming there.

Wherever we go, we always hear six months later, oh, you should come to man. Manchester. We were just in Manchester. But this way you'll never, it'll never miss out. And don't forget to sign up, go to our Instagram, click our link tree. Very, very easy. It means we know to come to you. And you'll also know that we're coming to you. Yeah, you will come to you. You come to us. Very good. And we give you a spam free guarantee.