Haunted Cosmos - Maritime Mysteries, Mermaids, & Monsters

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

In this episode of Haunted Cosmos, Brian and Ben begin Season Three by telling some of the most mysterious, fascinating, and gripping stories from the seven seas! The torture of loneliness, living islands, mermaids, and ghost ships all find their home in this episode!Love Haunted Cosmos? Get access to our exclusive show, The Dusty Tome, early ad-free access to main episodes, monthly AMA's, and livestreams with Ben and Brian by becoming a patron of the show: https://www.patreon.com/c/HauntedCosmosBuy the Haunted Cosmos book: https://www.newchristendompress.com/cosmos PS: It's also available as an audiobook!This episode is also sponsored by Squirrelly Joe's Coffee. Visit their website here to purchase your first bag!  Share Coffee. Serve Humbly. Live faithfully. This episode is also sponsored by Private Family Banking Partners. Email them at:  banking(at)privatefamilybanking.com . For a free copy of a new book "Protect Your Money Now!  How to Build Multi-Generational Wealth Outside of Wall Street and Avoid the Coming Banking Meltdown" by Private Family Banking Partner, Chuck DeLadurantey,   go to www.protectyourmoneynow.net . Or, if you want to make an appointment to talk to a wealth advisor, click on the calendar link here: https://calendly.com/familybankingnow/30min.This episode is sponsored by Gray Toad Tallow. Check out graytoadtallow.com and use discount code COSMOS15 for 15% off of your order.Support the show

This episode of Haunted Cosmos is brought to you by Gray Toad Tallow, Private Family Manking, Squirrely Joe's Coffee, and our supporters at patreon.com. Did you know that our top two patrons get early access to all of our main shows, and all of our patrons get our main shows ad-free? Patrons also get access to our exclusive weekly show, The Dusty Tome, only available on patreon.com. So, if you like the show, consider becoming a patron today to get access to all these benefits, and more. And now on with the show.

In Tolkien's masterful work, the Silmarillion, there is a story of great profundity, particularly for the reader who has stood on the shores of the vast sea, gazing off into the featureless horizon, chest filled with that odd feeling of attraction, the inexplicable temptation to go and find its end. It is the story of Airendil. Born on the shores of Belagir, this half-man, half-elf king, from a divine lineage felt the draw of the sea's mystery for his entire childhood. His father, Toor, and mother Idril were always telling him stories of their grand adventures at sea. He longed to take part, to add his own lines to the lays of their voyages, and it was doomed for him to do just that. Since Arendil was descended from both

man and elf, he was well acquainted with the sorrows and sins of both races. So it was that he grew to be the prophesied Lord, long foretold by the gods in the West, to bring a plea of mercy and aid across the great sea, directly to the feet of those gods, so that they might help the peoples of Middle Earth. Ayurindal pushed his timbered ship Vingalot off the shores of the Bay of Balar and journeyed into the sunset, forsaking kith and kin in the quest of the highest cause, salvation for the races of men and elves both. His journey was long and perilous. Many times the angry sea fought against him, knowing the truth of his quest. Many times he longed for respite from the strain of his journey.

The way to the undying lands was shrouded in a minefield of confusion and sorcery by the gods. It nearly cost Airendil his life. And yet, against all hope, he made it to the shores of light with his wife Elwing, still faithfully by his side. There is a palpable majesty that attends the lore of the voyage and the unknown, whether the voyage is real or not. One such voyage that happened in our own world was the first circumnavigation of the earth by Ferdinand Magellan,

or at least we think it was the first, but then again, who knows? Maybe some giant sea peoples had already done it in ages past before settling in Philistia in the Bronze Age, but since they don't come into these tales, yet at least, we will speak of Magellan for now. In 1519, Magellan began an expedition that would eventually conclude three years later under the leadership of another captain, Magellan having died in a battle in 1521.

The expedition completed the first documented circumnavigation of the entire world in only three years. After this groundbreaking feat of skill, endurance, courage, and fortitude, the floodgates of exploration broke wide open. Sir Francis Drake completed the second known circumnavigation of the world in a sense of single vessel in 1580 after pioneering a route through the treacherous and vindictive Drake Passage between Tierra del Fuego and Antarctica. For his exploits he won great praise for himself and for his sovereign Queen Elizabeth I of England. Thomas Cavendish was next on notable voyages across the globe. He did the whole thing a full nine months faster than

Francis Drake before him. The list continues on until the technological boost of the American civil and eventual world wars made global travel a thing that people barely considered a noteworthy anymore. What was the work of masters and men with courage bordering on insanity became a thing of apparent mundanity for those who follow. Aren't we so strange? We will toil for thousands of years to sail across a stretch of ocean, only to think of it as no big deal once we actually get there. At any rate, after global circumnavigation became Passé, the late 20th century world was in desperate need of a new limit to exceed. But luckily, a group of people had developed a cunning plan to save the high place that circumnavigation once had in the hearts of men.

A popular newspaper of the day, the British publication Sunday Times, sponsored a new and exclusive circumnavigation event that would prove to draw the attention of men. many and inspire adventure in droves of men who had never previously considered or thought about sailing. The idea was to have a race to see who could circle the world fastest by boat. But that wasn't all. The terms of the race stated that the entire voyage had to be single-handedly done in one non-stop push with absolutely no outside assistance whatsoever.

Can you imagine that? All by yourself on the open ocean, no ports to call, no family to meet until you finish circling the world alone. The race had no pre-qualification requirements apart from the obvious. All contestants needed a sailboat. To really church up excitement, the Sunday Times decided to issue prizes to the sailor who finished the race first and the sailor who finished the race fastest. Now, this may sound confusing, but it will be important later, so it's best to understand it now. The race would not begin all at once. Rather, sailors would be bound to set off on their attempt any time between June

1st and October 31st of the year 1968. So, you could have a sailor who leaves on June 1st that finishes before everyone else, while a racer who departs on October 31st finishes last but actually completes it faster than the rest. Hopefully that makes sense. The only other constraint placed upon the contestants was the requirement to start the circumnavigate, from the port of the British Isles near the English Channel. From there, sailors would head due south and cover the length of the Atlantic before turning east at the Cape of Good Hope. They would then hug the bottom of the world as they passed the Indian Ocean, Australia, New Zealand, and the boundless desert of water that is the width of the Southern Pacific.

After passing through the perilous Drake Passage near Cape Horn, the racers would turn north and travel the length of the Atlantic again to arrive back in the British Isles. And while all of this is fascinating, at least maybe to some of you in its own right, we should now turn to the question of why haunted Cosmos is talking about this race in the first place. What do we care? Do they see any dragons, crackens, or massive whirlpools? Did they see sirens and mermaids? No? Well, then who cares? Well, we care because one doesn't need a cryptid or a miracle to appear before them to encounter high strangeness. There is plenty of oddity, and wonder that is hidden within each of us, maybe some more than others.

We care about this race primarily because of one man who entered it, a very strange man, who met a strange and mysterious end. His name was Donald Crowhurst. Crowhurst was born in 1932 in British occupied India. His father was a railway worker, and his mother taught English at the local school. He was certainly cherished by his parents, though the love of his mother was often twisted and misplaced. She had wanted a girl so badly, you see, and was sometimes dressed Donald in girls' clothing to see what might have been had she gotten her wish.

This went on until the boy was seven years old. Despite this, he seemed to be a well-adjusted lad with friends and social skills and aptitude enough in school. Eventually, India gained her independence from Britain. When the dust finally settled on this deal, the Crohurst family packed up their lives and moved back to England. The arrival back in their motherland was overall uneventful. The family quickly settled down again and started a fresh life with fresh friends, an old family they had not seen in a long time. But tragedy was waiting close behind their every step.

And in the 1940s, it made its move. Crowhurst's father had wisely rerouted his retirement savings to invest in a promising new sporting goods factory in India. The returns were steady and higher than expected, which comforted the boy's father. He figured it would be a good job. be one less thing to worry about. But during the partition of India after their independence, rioting broke out in the streets close to the factory. Eventually, the rioters looted the place and

burned it down. It was a total loss. The Crowhurst nest egg was gone in a single day, and though he didn't know it then, young Donald would never really recover from this. His father eventually died in 1948, forcing the 16-year-old Crowhurst to leave school and start an apprenticeship with the Royal Aircraft establishment close to his home. The work would ensure his family did not starve since his mother could not support them on their own. Through diligence and hard work, Crowhurst worked up the ranks until he received a commission from the Royal Air Force as a pilot in 1953. Unfortunately, he was asked to resign his commission the following year for reasons that seem to be lost to history. Instead, he was commissioned by the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, but his troubles followed.

him there too. You know the old saying, wherever you go, there you are? It seems Crohurst failed to take this into account when reading the scales of provenance and asking why such sorrow kept dogging his steps. He left the army the same year he began with the Engineering Corps due to a disciplinary incident and was finally at the end of the rope of his military career. He needed to find something new, and he needed to do it fast. He moved to the Bridgewater Parish in Somerset and got married to the love of his life, a woman named Claire. The two grew very happy together, were able to have four children. All of this marked a turn for Crowhurst.

Thanks to the skills he had developed as a soldier, he was able to start a business called Electron Utilization in 1962. For many years, this proved to be a profitable business with great future prospects. Crowhurst was able to take a deep breath for the first time in many years. He built a quaint but very pleasant life with his face. family, became a well-respected member of his community, and was even elected to the Bridgewater Borough Council. Finally, things were looking up again. As part of his business, he tried to combine his work with his hobbies, the two great passions in his life, and so he designed and built a

radio direction finder called the Navigator. It was actually a very impressive device that could fit in a man's hand, and would allow its user to find his bearings quickly by using marine and aviation radio beacons around the world. The device showed a great deal of mechanical and electrical prowess in Crowhurst, no doubt. But ultimately, he was just one man. The rest of the industry leaders with their massive workforce and streamlined manufacturing systems eventually outpaced Crowhurst small operation. Though his product was good, it was expensive when compared to the other guys, and soon it was even having a hard time keeping up with their faster advancing technology. Crowhurst could read the writing on the wall as clearly as if it was an old friend he had not seen in ages but had never quite forgotten.

His business, and therefore his life, was once again in trouble. He fell into financial turmoil and quickly buried himself under a pile of business and consumer debt. The added pressure of needing to feed his family reached a boiling point. Crowhurst became desperate to find some way to fix this again. His happiness and peace and that of his wife and children were quickly slipping through his fingers. And then one day, he was reading his copy of the Sunday Times and saw the ad for their Golden Globe race. He, being a weekend sailor himself, was drawn to the recognition it guaranteed to whomever would be bold and brave enough to do it. A full circumnavigation of the world, unassisted, in a single push?

Seemed impossible. But it also seemed inspiring, and it got Crowhurst thinking. He had never done anything like that. His sailing experience was strictly limited to the coast of Dover. but how much harder could it really be if he was prepared in every other way? He could find a sponsor, he could get funding, he could save his family, and he could do it all while doing something he'd always dreamt of. Following this foolhardy and quick fix train of thought,

Crowhurst began to search for a sponsor and soon found one in the English entrepreneur, Stanley Best. He had already invested in Crowhurst's family business, and now, since Best still believed that he could pull all this off, gladly funded his Golden Globe attempt. In addition to this sponsorship, Crowhurst also mortgished his business and his own home. He was betting the house on doing this race, doing it right, finishing well, and becoming a famous explorer who would not have to worry about his kids' next meals ever again. The price of failure was more than everything, but that price would come to collect regardless, even if he did nothing.

The risk in his mind was worth it. Crowhurst built his own boat for the voyage, a trimaran named Tenmouth Electron. Though trimrans are very risky on the high seas and difficult to write if they ever capsize, Crowhurst was confident that the speed afforded by them would be a crucial need of his. He sought to improve the stability of the craft by adding a massive buoyancy bag to the top mast that would quickly inflate in the event of a capsizing. This would, in theory, make it very easy to write and get going again. In doing this, Crowhurst sought to kill two birds with one stone.

The new invention of his would be proved effective by his intrepresent. voyage, which would then give him immense business opportunity upon his return. His own adventure would be all the publicity this innovation needed. Crowhurst hastily worked until the very last minute to fully complete his ship. The safety devices he developed were left undone. He said he could finish them after setting off, and a not insignificant portion of his supplies were forgotten in the mad rush of the final days of preparation. And yet, he could not help but feel a sense of hope that everything would go well for him. He had not even begun yet, and already two racers had dropped out of the event due to technical issues with their boats. Maybe he actually had a chance at this thing.

The night before his Hail Mary began, he sat with his wife in their bed. Endless worry world in Donald's mind. The fear of being such a failure, a fear that weighs heavily upon every man, attacked him and stole away all of his focus. He just wanted everything to be okay for everyone. Claire, always supporting and loving, assured her husband that he had her whole heart. She was more confident than any could imagine in the genuine heroic nature of her husband. She let him know all of this. She let him know how excitedly she would await his return. A return sure to be heralded by shouts of praise and the flash of cameras.

She thanked him for risking so much for her good and the good of her children. She was a good wife, and Donald knew this well. On the morning of October 31, 1968, Donald Crowhurst set off from Tenmouth, Devon, and encountered immediate problems. In the first weeks of the attempt, he averaged less than half of his planned and required speed. It was also at this time that he recorded a diary entry, stating he believed his odds of even surviving the trip at all, having only just set off, were just 50-50. It seemed that Crowhurst had no illusions of grandeur after all. He was depending on fortune to bring him home from the beginning.

And these odds even assumed he was able to finish the innovative safety measures he had planned for his vessel. The loneliness crept in. The ever-undulating waves tossed his passions to bits with their slow churning. Disappointment in his boat grew. Confidence sank. The odds grew ever more against him. All at once, the ghastly cloud of hope he had held aloft with busyness came crashing down, no substance remaining. Kroher's spent the months of November and December

drifting into the southern Atlantic Ocean while his mind and heart sank into despair. But with despair came a last pang of cunning. If he dropped out of the race, the financial ruin he would face would tank his and his family's lives. He could not bring himself to face this music, though now he saw the truth of it all too clearly. He was the maker of his own bed,

hoping to save his dignity in the livelihood of Claire and the kids, he devised a plan. Kroher shut his radio down and put his boat into idling mode. He realized that the warm and calm waters of the South Pacific would provide a nice stage for some new theatrics. He was going to cheat. He remained in the calm seas while the other boats endured the long and difficult circumnavigation of the world in the far southern oceans. He was prepared to wait here until all of them finished their circling of the world and started the northern journey back to England. Then he would fall in, far behind them, having falsified his navigation logs,

entire time to make it appear as though he had done the real race and eventually finished the race in the last place. Finishing would ensure some kind of fame and fortune, but finishing last would make it easy to keep his false logs under wraps. He would take them to his grave. And he did. In the end of 1968, a total of five racers had dropped out of the race for various reasons, mostly mechanical issues.

This meant that counting Crowhurst, only four men remained in the running. Trohears lingered in the south and made regular, vaguely accurate logs for where he should have been, but certainly false radio reports of his location, while logging intricately determined location markers in his book that would impress even the best sailors in the world. He even stopped at a port in South America for a time to repair his boat in direct violation of yet more rules. He felt the ruse was going well and would ultimately not end up hurting anyone. But his extrapolated position logs, and the few radio positions he did report, proved too good for his own good.

By the early new year, Crowhurst was being lauded by the people at home as the unlikely first-place winner of the race. He wouldn't finish first. After all, he started on the last possible day, but he would finish the quickest. Or so they thought. In early February, the man who was on track to finish the race first, Bernard Montessier, started rounding the tip of South America

before making a shocking and principled decision. He decided to drop out of the race, and continue sailing on to Tahiti for another lap around the world. He was a true sailor. He didn't care about the money or the fame of the race. He just wanted to explore the world. So in defiance of the consumerist temptation, he did just that. Now, counting Crowhurst, there were only three racers left on the roster.

Crowhurst continued his ruse, but slowed his fictional pace slightly to help ensure that he would not finish faster than the other two men. On April 22nd, 1969, and after 312 days alone at sea, Robin Knox Johnston returned to the British Isles and was officially named the first finisher of the first ever Golden Globe race. Crowhurst was comforted by seeing someone actually finish. He had started to grow worried that because of his cheating, he would be the winner by default,

in which case he would have been faced with the impossible decision of retiring and tanking his family name and living or living a lie too great for his conscience. Knox Johnson ensured this at least partly would not be the case. But then, in May, the other remaining sailor, Nigel Tetley, suffered a severe storm in the North Atlantic, so close to the finish line and had to be rescued from sinking. He was now out of the race.

Crowhurst had at this point begun his slow crawl back north to England to wrap a bow on his lie and presented his truth for all. Now, though, he would almost certainly win the prize for the fastest total elapsed time, stealing glory and money from Knox Johnston that rightfully belonged to him. His heart sank and faltered and all reason left him. On July 1st, he wrote his last logbook entry, which reads as follows. Now is revealed the true nature and purpose and power of the game offense. I am what I am, and I see the nature of my offense. It is finished. It is finished. It is the mercy. It is the time for your move to begin. I am what I am. I am. I am

in. I have not need to prolong the game. It has been a good game that must be ended at the missing words. I will play this game when I choose. I will resign the game, 11, 20, 40. There is no reason for harmful. We never finish that sentence. The 10th electron was found adrift, a ghost ship in the warm blue on July 10th, 1969. Donald Crowhurst's body was never found. No one really knows what happened at Donald. As his days drew to their untimely conclusion, his logs began to take on a maniacal and philosophical nature. He grew paranoid at the prospect of his impossible decision to ruin those people in his care by telling the truth or to live a lie and know himself for the villain he would be forever. He began referring to life as a game that every man must play.

He felt as though he was nothing more than a spent pawn sitting beside the board during God's tea time recreation with the devil. Though he never explicitly mentioned suicide, the subtext screams that it was at the front of his mind. But again, we must ask, why this story? What does high strangeness have to do with Donald Crowhurst in his tragic life? Everything. Is there a stranger thing than a man alone at sea? It's not good for man to be alone, God says. This proved truer than we are comfortable admitting for Crowhurst. Claire was the helper fit for him. He left her with presumably all good intentions and quickly turned himself into something else.

What speed must the vast, flat, unending, unfeeling, unyielding, uncaring sea have lent to his descent into madness. Who can say? But I doubt anyone would argue that it contributed nothing. And so we come to it at last. Even in the absence of those things that go bump in the night, a strangeness lingers over the sea. By nature of the sea itself, it seems, a strange power lying ready to take hold of any unwitting mind that ventures too close to it. Welcome back to Haunted Cosmos. We're glad you're here.

Welcome back, everyone, to season three. Season three. Three. Tres leches. Of haunted cosmos. To one, two, three, three, four. We're declaring a thumb war on this season. If you know, you know.

If you know, you know. But welcome to see. Season 3 of Hontocmos, we're very grateful that you're all here with us. Thank you, everyone, for making this third season possible. Seriously. I mean, it's up to you guys, the viewers and the listeners, the patrons especially, that we're able to sit down here at this table that everyone seems to have a love-hate relationship with, including myself, and talk about 10 more pieces of high strangers.

Yes. How are you feeling, Brian? Ben, I am absolutely excited for season three of Hunted Cosmos, because I really, I really believe that this project is one that has importance that's beyond just telling spooky stories. Agreed. I think, you know, we've been getting feedback from folks all over the world who have, you know, some people even said, like, I wasn't a Christian, and then I started listening to Honest Cosmos. And I was like, they were like, wow, praise God. Like, wow, all of our GM King, you know, the Lord can use anything. By the way, GM Kings. GM Kings, it's so good to see you guys.

But this is, it's so important that we learn how to read the story that God is telling in the world. And that's why I love even stories like the ones that we touched on in the cold open that demonstrate that it's not just, we shouldn't just have, sometimes I think we prove that we don't actually have the maturity to handle the supernatural stories if we fail to take interest in the natural stories. The stories of just an image bearer of God who is either becoming a horror or a glory. Yep. Through the decisions that he makes and through the temptations and the the difficulties in his lives. And really, like, how many stories would be worth telling if we had eyes to see?

Yeah. One of the things I've been thinking about a lot lately is you can't properly love the things on the fringe if you don't actually properly love the thing that's in the very middle. Like, if you don't actually just love God and then under that, the world that God made appropriately, then who cares about Bigfoot? Who cares about UFOs? who cares about Lockedast Monster. Like, you're not actually going to understand those things well,

and so you're not going to appreciate them well. And so I think a story like Crowhurst is fascinating because here you have just everything normal, nothing crazy. He didn't even encounter any bad storms or anything. It was just a guy, just a guy, who went crazy, battling himself. And to me, that is really strange. Like, there's so much high strangeness that is actually there because it's a human soul that's being fought over

and giving itself over even to the losing side, to the side of darkness. Yeah, to the end of the day. That's a really strange thing, if you think about it. I mean, Paul says, we don't wrestle with flesh and blood, the powers and principalities in the heavenly places. The world, the flesh and the devil. And you just wonder, prohurst out there,

who was egging him on into the over the edge of the abyss? Mermaids? Maybe mermaids. I think, actually, we can say, with a hundred percent certainty. Defendive certainty. Did a mermaid knock the pen out of his hand and never let him finish the last sentence?

I mean, the thing is, it's not, here's what I always like to say. It's not. There's nothing that prohibits it. Which means basically it must have happened. Happened. I was going to say this too, just real quick, you guys. It's so over.

What's over? It's so over. Why? I don't have any tea today. I'm out of tea again. What is wrong with you? This is horrible. You like crow.

You didn't plan ahead adequately. And I'm like Crowhurst and that he probably liked tea because he was an Englishman. He was a queensman. He almost certainly liked tea. So anyway, I just want to get that out of the way. I'm not going to fuss for this episode. I'm just going to fuss right now. I'm just going to fuss right now.

I'm really annoyed that. Because you just did. Right, because I'm just fussing now. But I'm getting it out of my system. No future fussing. Now we can go on. No more fussing. I love it.

I appreciate it. Well, before we keep going on the episode, couple housekeeping things notes, welcoming you to season three here. Like Ben said, we couldn't do the show without all of our supporters at Patreon. Ben works full time for the show. We put a ton of work into all this, a lot of resources. And we just found out recently that Haunted Cosmos, at least as we record this, some weeks before the release, has crossed into the top

like 700 Patreon channels. Yeah, that's right. Of all of them. In terms of like numbers of supporters. And there's like 250,000 of these things or something crazy out there. 250 plus. So you guys put us into the top, deep into the top thousand. It's the top. 3.33%.

So just thank you. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. We appreciate that. And we, I do say with confidence, I think that our supporters get some of the best Patreon experience of anybody out there. Ben, every week.

Sometimes I step in 99% of the time just to ruin everything. but Ben makes a weekly show called The Dusty Tome. Yep. That is an amazing show. It's like 30 to 45 minutes, usually stories from a dusty tome of stories. That's right. From the world of high strangeness, just history, interesting tales.

It's really fascinating and well done. Every single week, just about of the whole year, we're putting out an episode of the dusty Tome just for to say thank you to patrons there on that platform. So thank you guys. We're going to be doing a giveaway, a really special giveaway. Yes. With this episode's release. Tell us about it.

I'm excited about this giveaway. We literally just came up with it before we sat down to film, and it's February 13th. Okay, so this is long before any of you guys are hearing this show. So for the first 24 hours of this show's release, so from midnight, March 6th, until 11.59 p.m., March 6th, if you sign up to be a patron, you will be in for a chance to win one of the coolest editions of Jules Verne's classic 20,000 leagues under the sea that there is. It's an Eastern Press, leatherbound edition, gilded pages. It's beautiful. Collectible. It's genuinely. No, it is collectible because they don't make these anymore. Yeah. It's a beautiful book. It's mint condition. And we're going to send that to you guys in a

haunted cosmos box with other stuff too. And when I say to you guys, I mean to you guy or girl. Here's the thing. That actually wins. Last time we gave away five books. But this is a book that you can't just go get as many as you want. It's a collectible. It's decades old. That's right.

And so we have one copy we were able to pick up at great expense. At great expense. And we are going to. One lucky patron. It's such a good book, too, 20,000. What kid didn't just like get in the Nautilus in their imagination and go sail under the oceans with old Nimo? Absolutely.

Cat and Nemo. We're going to put some fun stuff in the box and just, this time, just pick one lucky sign up from Patreon on March 6. And you don't have to be the first one to sign up for Patreon that day. We're going to do just a random draw. And, you know, the box will have things like a handwritten note from Brian and I thanking you. Maybe we'll write some poetry. Brian might write you a song.

I don't know. It's going to be great. Whatever it is, I can guarantee you that it will be fun. Yeah, some other really fun stuff. And then also, if you're already a patron, don't worry. We haven't forgotten about you. We're going to do something special for you too. do a giveaway for our existing patrons.

We'll announce it on Patreon. Hey, guys, we're trying to do this with each episode because we have a lot of fun doing it. Yeah. We like trying to come up with the perfect tie-in from the episode. So Ocean Mysteries 2.0. 20,000 leagues under the sea. Like it doesn't get much. We tossed around so many, but we landed on this.

This is the one that makes the most sense. It's going to be great. It's going to be amazing. Also, I was just really quick. Yeah, dude. Just to call back to what you were saying about people, believe it or not, typing in and saying, I became a Christian. because of haunted, first of all, praise God.

Yeah. That is astonishing to me. But we've also had some people, and I've been so encouraged by this, especially from the DMT episode, the last episode of season two. They've reached out saying, like, I have a friend or family member who is struggling with some psychedelic use. Yeah. And I haven't been able to talk to them for years because I just don't know what to say.

Your episode really helped. Yeah. Guys, that is an outcome that we did not expect. We've had people from that episode, particularly. particularly tell us that because of that episode, they repented of even insane use of some of these psychedelics and the Lord pulled them out of a pit that they were spiraling down into. So praise God. I want to give glory to God for that. And thank you guys for helping get the word out, sharing. Also, Indigo Sundries, our friends wanted to pass on thank you. Because you guys know

that they're one of our supporters. And they make great, great process. We really commend them just on the strength of their products, but they're also a brother and sister, family, Christian family. I use their soap. Yeah, we used this morning. Head-and-toe. And it's been such a good response from you guys that if it keeps up, if you guys keep regularly supporting them, buying their products, then we're going to be able, they're going to be able to make it more like their full-time thing. It's been a side business for them. So, cool.

Keep it up. Use code, haunted cosmos, no spaces, all caps. It'll be in the description. you can take 10% off in order if you're just interested in checking out their products. But again, we've been blown away by the support that you guys have given us on YouTube, on the podcast platforms for the sponsors that we pick.

The reviews that you guys leave. It's just blown us away. So thank you. We have two more things to talk about before we actually get into some more stories. The first is the new Christenum Press conference. June 6th, 8th.

Second annual. Get there because Brian and I are going to be doing a live show. We're actually going to be piloting this idea that we have of a truly live show that actually is a main haunted Cosmos show. Yeah. Like it's not phoned in. It's not... Done live.

Yeah, exactly. Done live, like music in the background and everything. So if that interests you, and we'll also be doing an unofficial Chili's meetup. Oh, yeah. That Thursday, June 6th at lunch, if you get here early. We'll just invite you to join us at the daily Chili's booth that we have reserved, that we're at 7. days a week. Well, not the Lord's Day, but six days a week. We aren't there six days a week. Otherwise, we'd be much fatter than we already are. Much fatter. Yeah, yeah. But yeah,

New Christenimpress Conference, June 6th through the 8th of this year, go to Newchristinandpress.com slash conference. Yep. You can get your tickets there. Got a lot of really fun events going on with that. Brian's even doing a live concert. Live concert, music. That'll be doing some Psalms, original music. I'll be doing some original music and psalms that have never been released yet. still in production. So you'll be able to hear those as well. Oh, I didn't know that. It should be super fun.

Oh, good. Wow. And then we have one more thing. Should we tease it? Do you think they're ready? I don't know, Ben, but I think we have to risk it for the brisket. I think we're going to risk it for the biscuit and the brisket and the gravy. Brian and I are writing a book.

We're writing a book. Yes. Again, this is February 13th, 1058 a.m. That I'm saying this. Yeah. We are writing a book. And it's about chilies. I'm just kidding.

Well, I mean, I repeat myself. I was going to say, these haunted cosmos, the world that we live in. Chili's is in the world that the book is about. And it's actually one of the most important parts of that world. It's central. It gets a whole chapter. It doesn't get a whole chapter, but it could. Actually, I don't think.

Let us know if you think it could. I don't think I've mentioned it at all. Let us know if it should. No, we're writing a book. It's going to be, we don't know the release date yet, but we're working on that. We'll let you guys know first when the pre-orders up. And here's our goal. What is higher than a New York Times bestseller?

A Pulitzer Prize. Isn't that for journalism? I don't know. No, because didn't Emmy. Didn't, who's the guy that wrote Lonesome Dove? Larry McMurtry. Didn't he want a Pulitzer? I'm looking this up.

Google it. Whatever is above the New York Times bestseller, I have it on strong insider information from another YouTube channel I watch. that it wrote a book, that if you can pre-order 15,000 copies, you will launch as a New York Times bestseller. Yes. So my goal is to somehow make the Haunted Cosmos just force the pagans to recognize. Because how funny would that? We live in a comedic world for some. It would be so funny. How funny would it be if we got to release? If it was like faith and spiritual out of the Rick Warren, John Piper, Haunted Cosmos.

The ghost show. Keeps going. You know, it just keeps going. By the way, it is a author can win a Pulitzer Prize. Larry McMurtree won a Pulitzer. Look at that. Look, I got news for you. Not going to happen for us, but the New York Times bestseller thing, like, it could happen.

Maybe. So let's try to make it happen. There's a chance. So you're telling me there's a chance. We'll let you guys know when that's coming out. But let's get on with the show. What is the point of this episode? Where are we going with it?

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Mermaids are real. That's actually not the thesis of the whole episode. We'll get there. But the point of this episode... It is kind of a byproduct. It's a byproduct. The point of this episode is that the story that God is telling both with and in this world is one in which the seas and the oceans play an intriguing role.

Indeed. If you pay attention as you're reading the book of scripture, the book of nature as well, but in the book of scripture, you find that the seas are these wild places. They are terrifying and strange and foreign, but they're also a thing over which the Lord rules in power and glory. like Psalm 93, one artist set that psalm and said, the Lord, he is mightier than the roaring waves. Wow. Which is actually just what the psalm basically says.

Wow. Wow. Harry Potter. When God divided the earth and water, this always fascinates me. When he was done, especially when we're talking about post-deluvian and all this world, it wasn't an even split. He decided to give the world a vast tracts of trackless and often terrifying waters. So the question that we're trying to answer in this episode is one we've touched on in several episodes,

but it's simply that do you feel the draw of interest in your chest when you consider the oceans? Because I do. I do. It's one of the most fascinating subjects to me, stories and tales from the breadth and the depths of the waters. If you feel that poll, then this episode is another one that's for you. simply be interested in the strange tales of God's vast seas. That's the thesis of the episode. Be interested in the tales and the stories that God is telling on his oceans. Hey, so true king. And what better place to start than with the devil whale of the 6th century Scots.

It's the first thing that comes to mind. That wasn't scripted. That was the first thing that came to mind. When you say oceans, I say devil's whale. You say oceans. I say devil will. I say devil will. Oceans. Devil whale. Oceans. Devil whale. All right. Ben, I'm so sorry. For all of you still with us, thank you for being here. Ben, take us into the story of the 6th century Scottish. I don't know if the whale's Scottish, but the story is kind of Scottish.

I will do just. Whale. On a cold Scottish day, circa 565 AD, the Irish abbot and legendary missionary, St. Columba, stood on the point of a riverbank, contemplating how he might best cross over. the raging torrent to reach the opposite shore. The air hung gray over the landscape that was, as always, covered in a fabric of mossy grass. Columba had already grown hardened by the task

this landscape and its people set before him. His mission, no small mission, was to bring the gospel to the heathen-picked people, a people notoriously violent and aggressive towards newcomers, partly due to their own dispositions and partly due to the environment they car out a living in. That and their history with the Northman was less than savory in their minds. They treated Columba with an air of, to say the least, suspicion. But they were not overtly

hostile to the man in this new message of salvation, at least not yet. As Columba pondered the river, with a small group of other monks patiently waiting behind him, he caught sight of a parade of morning-picked villagers, a short way down the riverbank and on his same side. Piety drove him, and so he abandoned his crossing for their sakes, to go and discover what he might of why they were so sorrowful. As he neared, he understood fully before a word was spoken. The group was placing handfuls of dirt on the top of a shallow grave. One of their countrymen, a dear friend held in love by all, had just died that day. His pale and stiff and cold body could still be seen between the patches of moist earth.

When Columba inquired into the means by which he died, the reply he got was a shock to both he and his companions. A water beast, they said. A water beast bit him, and he bled out in the water before we could reach him. Undaunted by the prospect of there being a man-killing lovecraftian monster in the nearby lake which fed the river, Columba, it is said, stretched out his staff across the dead man's partially exposed chest. and without any waiting, the man that was just dead miraculously leapt up to his feet. He was well in spry, with healed wounds and no fear of his recent living nightmare. Not content with one show of Christ's sovereign power, Colombo quickly ordered one of his fellow monks, a man named Loon Mokumen,

to swim back across the lake and return with a small boat that had been moored on the opposite shore. Despite the clear signs of there being a very real and very dangerous monster, in the lake, Loon removed his cossack and jumped into the cold water. The group of observers watched as Loon splashed and swam quickly across the lake. Soon after he began, they saw large ripples of water, heading directly for him, like a submarine cloaked just inches below the surface and moving fast. The monster lifted itself from the surface and roared loudly at the monk as he approached with his mouth agate. Everyone on shore cried out for the man to save him. himself. Everyone save Columba, who stood unmoved and unconcerned. At the last moment, the saint

stepped right up to the shore of the lake, set a prayer, and spoke in a clear and commanding voice, you will go no further. Do not touch the man, leave at once. In an unnaturally sudden stop, the monster ceased his attack when he was but six feet away from the scared monk. He shrank back into the depths of the dark water, terrified, and faster than if some ship were towing him backwards. The monster had been tamed by a fish hook from God, placed on his tongue and pulled into submission. The monk made it to the other side and rode calmly back to his master, completely unharmed. The Picks shouted the praises of the Christian God and converted on the spot. How could they not, given such signs of power and lordship over life and creature? One by one, each member of the

group was baptized by Colomba in the living waters of the river Ness, which flowed from the lake in which the monster dwelt, Lake Ness, or, as they say in Scotland, Loch Ness. And this is not the only supposed encounter with great sea and water monsters that the famous and faithful Irish missionaries encountered in their adventures for the kingdom. In fact, it was a close friend of St. Columba, St. Brendan of Clonford, who would go down in history as the great navigator and master of sea, an explorer of the living islands far in the northern waves. ordained a priest at age 26, Brendan began sailing along the coasts of Britain and even to France

in order to establish monasteries on all the islands he could find. After this first round of voyages, he returned to Ireland in order to establish a monastery at the foot of a tall green mountain that would someday bear his own name, Mount Brendan. After some time of seeing to the initial foundation of this monastery, an itch began to grow inside of Brendan, which forced him to begin planning his most ambitious voice. yet. Indeed, it would prove to be the most ambitious voyage in all of history. Brendan, with a bold group of 18 or so other monks, set out from Ireland in order to find the island of paradise, Eden itself. As a side note, many believe that our brother Brendan, as a result

of this intrepid voyage, was actually the first Christian to discover the Americas, but I digress. You see, Brandon had heard of the paradisal island from another monk. According to this other man, the land of promise and saints was a journey of a mere 40 days over the seas from Ireland. Brendan, 93 years old at the time, stoked the fire of zeal that burned in his heart at this report and cast off from his home shores for what would prove to be a seven-year-long journey. For the initial stretch, which we read about from biographers reporting the events long after Brendan's death, the team of monks followed God's stepping stones of islands stretching westward across the Atlantic. Finally, on Easter Sunday, the 36-foot-long Kurok landed on the shores of a vast island,

covered in rocks that had been smooth to a muted blue and gray by the ever-changing tides rising up against them. The sand was soft and cool. The trees were lush and green and filled with fruit. It being Easter Sunday, the monks were relieved at the chance to celebrate their resurrection mass on dry and firm ground. they quickly got to work collecting driftwood from the shore, in lighting a small fire with which they might cook some food. One can imagine how surreal it must have been for them, a land completely quiet, save for the rolling waves, feeling perhaps for the first time in its history,

the beneficent weight of God's children, taking what little dominion they had the means to achieve upon it. The fire started with uncharacteristic ease, as if the Lord's favor extended even into the flames. But as the team sat in reverent prayer, a change began to occur in the landscape. What had seemed a gently sloping island just moments before began to buckle and twist, as if pulled at its center from underneath, like a great mouth was opening in the island's heart, hungry to swallow the newcomers.

In the next moment it was changed again. The chasm exploded out to behave like a bubble inflating, making the gentle uphill slope steeper and steeper with each pass and second. The land slid beneath them, the whispered prayers turned to frantic screams, and the men struggled to keep their footing as they sprinted towards the boat sitting just offshore. Water poured onto and into the forest that had been well insulated from the waves by a wide beach. The Greeks speak of a living island called Oroboros. The Norsemen told horrific tales of the world serpent named Yorgamangunder,

who was bound to try and fail at all times to consterned. to consume himself, beginning at his tail. His mass often seemed still in the water, tricking the northern Vikings into thinking it was an island safe for a reprieve from the violent waves. Brendan called it Yasconius, the living island, the vindictive giant monster who, though generally indifferent to the affairs of men, had been awakened by the fire burning his skin that Brendan and his men had just lit. Skin so rough that many medieval's figured the living island for a massive turtle. In having been burned, the writhing beast sought to

buck the harmful, intrusive monks back into the waves. Brendan was humbled and frightened by the experience, for it seemed to him that yet again, man's poor memory was put on full display. Everyone knew this to be one of the greatest risks of seafaring. Even Alexander the Great wrote to Aristotle about his unfortunate adventure with the same creature, one he called Aspidocolon. Alexander states that having landed on an island and spent many hours making a rudimentary camp with his men, the entire vast land plunged all at once into the sea, leaving he and his men in a desperate state of swimming against the vacuum back to their ships. Even St. Basil the Great talks about these quote-unquote great whales or tannins in his hexamaran,

stating that their bodies are as large as many hills collected together as if it was a rolling plane. He claims that they have tricked many a weary mariner into thinking they are islands peppering the Atlantic Ocean. With so many accounts speaking to the truth of this Yaskonius, one must wonder if the monster is real. Perhaps we have driven them all away. Perhaps our eyes have become like unto our hearts hardened. Whatever the reason for their apparent lack of activity today, that doesn't preclude the validity of these past encounters that men share. According to legend, St. Brendan eventually did reach the shores of paradise at the even age of 100 years. He brought the boat through enchantment and mist and dangerous reefs against all hope

to the luxuriant and leisurely garden that was so full of flowers and crisp, cool air of day. After staying for 40 days, an angel bid he and his men to depart. The angel said that the seven-year journey had been long enough and so they must return. Brendan obeyed and sailed back to his homeland where he departed to be with the Lord soon thereafter. Which definitely happened. Like all of that. If you doubt that?

If you edit out us saying that it definitely happened, then I will riot when I listen. The other request I have of you is that right now I want you to play the refrain of a song that was written about this event. Oh, okay. And we. And we all. But you mute us completely right now.

We all. Okay, that's good. Brian wrote a song about St. Brendan in case you couldn't pick that up. It was our... This is the second shameless plug of his music. Listen, though, but this one's perfect because we named our school.

St. Brennan is one of our favorites. We named our school, the classical Christian school here in Argonne that our church founded is St. Brendan's classical Christian Academy, and we're called the Voyagers because of this story. that the school song is based on a sea shanty tune,

Roll the Old Chariot. Yeah, which is a great song, by the way. And the refrain is, you know, we all belong to Jerusalem above and we'll sail for Eden's shores. And you know what? We will. And you know what? We will.

We will. And you know what else? And he made it. And Brendan. It says right here in the outline that he made it. This with 100% uncertainty, St. Brendan, the Navigator, found the island of Eden after questing through dangers,

including landing on the back of a giant living island that named and almost bucked him off. But this is the thing, okay? Is it so much to ask? No. That there be a living island. Go ahead. Maybe it died. Yeah, it could have died.

Maybe Jesus killed it. I've heard a lot of people be like, oh, they were dead whales. Yeah. You know how whales float when they die? I know. People always do. There's barnacles. Dude, how dumb do you have to be to roll up on a dead whale and say,

look an island and land on it and not be like whoa they they had eyes is the thing like they had eyeballs look they it's either an apocryphal tale and hagiography and all hagiography is that hegeography whatever i hagiah is the greek word for saint yeah and so a hagiography is the biography of a saint where they do what the author of first chronicles did yes which is neglect to tell any of the bad stuff and tell all the Which is fine. That's a perfectly valid way of- And now it's colloquially like how people refer to any historical account of any historical figure, even in pagan literature.

Right, right. That just talks about how great they were. Right. And gasses them up. And it probably hyperboizes some. Listen. Do I think an angel told him to leave the Garden of Eden after 40 days? Yes.

Do I believe the Garden of Eden is just out there somewhere in Ireland? And the satellites haven't found it. Now, here's the interesting thing. Probably not. Dude, so we started the cold open talking about Airendel. Yeah. I mean, was it a mariner that tarried and Arvernean? He built the boat of Timberfeld and Nemberthel the journey.

Her salesy wove of silver fare. Of silver was her lantern made. Indeed, thank you. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Okay, the best part of Elron, by the way. The best part of that lay the Bilbo's translation, which it was Bilbo, it wasn't Tolkien. When he says that his shining shield was scored with runes

to ward all wounds and harm from him. God, that's so. What a good. That's so good. You know what I found out? Just bear with us. So I'm reading the history of Middle Earth. As one does.

The 12 volume set. Yeah. And I'm in volume one. I just started. Yeah. But originally, you know the two lamps at the beginning of the first age? Well, not before the first age even. Before the Great Sea had been formed.

The Valar lived in Middle Earth and they had built two lamps. Well, originally, Tolkien had the idea that Melkor had been asked to build the lamps that Al-Lay had been like, can you give me a hand? And Melkor's like, ooh, trickery, I'm going to make them out of ice. So they'll melt. And they'll all be mad. No, I don't notice. But interestingly

enough, the northern lamp was named Ringgill. Do you remember what remained named Ringgill in the Silmarillion? No, I don't. My guy, High King of the Noldor, Fingolfans sword. I saw

the map that said Ringgill. I was like, You're like, let's flip and go. Anyway. Guys, no one followed that. No, except the real ones. That's right. And here's the other thing. Go ahead.

So Tolkien drew a lot of inspiration from the story of St. Brendan for Aarendel, obviously. But what few people know is that he drew a lot of inspiration from Brendan for the whole original idea of Middle Earth in general, which is that an Englishman who's not as modern as us, but more modern than, say, like, Brendan. Yeah. Sails into the west, and he lands on Toll Eresaya, the lonely Isle, which is off the coast of the undying lands in Valenor, where the elves live. Also, where Frodo went to dwell, where Samwise went to dwell, where Bilbo went to dwell. He did eventually die. Common misconception. Right. He did die.

It does not give immortality to mortal men. But it healed his wounds before death. Anyway, and so the idea is that Brendan actually was the guy that found Toll Eresaia. and then sailed back and gave us the history of Middle-I'm ready to believe everything you just said that that literally happened. The Tolkien somehow knew that actually- Yeah, and he found it and brought it back. What I love about these stories, again, that are literally true in every detail,

is that take Columba, a lot of these stories, and not just in the Irish, modest, in the other, basically the gospel conquest of some of these old Germanic peoples with Boniface and then the Irish is the word I'm looking for, Irish, Scottish, these kind of plants. Took them to say Irish. Time to figure that out. Is that you see kind of both sides of the veil retreating before the advance of the gospel. You see the demonic and also creatures that are associated with the demonic like dragons and water monsters retreating before the gospel.

And then you also see because of the power demonstrated that Christ demonstrates over. the principalities and their servants, the peoples convert, and then you see the, you know, so not just the driving way of the devil, but also the conversion of the people. And again, a question that we always just kind of assume, or I think a lot of moderns assume,

is that you get to stories like St. George and the Dragon, and they're like, wow, that's just such an interesting, symbolic tale. What great symbolism. That people, because, you know, sin is associated with the dragon, and the gospel goes, and it's like, but hang with me for just, a second. What if, and I can't emphasize this enough, this is true. Okay. What if? What if? And I'm not

asking a question. What if? And this is actually, that was rhetorical. This is true. Wherever the gospel went, particularly initially as it conquered the world from the little Jerusalem on out, Jerusalem, Judea to the end of the earth, that it went to places that were particularly ruled over by demons and their servants. and creatures and even dragons and things like that. And that one of the things that happened as the gospel went forward is that it tamed and threw down literal dragons and sea monsters and that St. Columba is not a myth. Brian, you know how sometimes you wake up in the morning? Yeah, hopefully everybody does that.

Sure, maybe. But do you ever feel tired when you wake up? Well, yeah, Ben, I used to all the time. But then I started drinking this new drink. It's actually called coffee. and it helps you wake up. No way. There's a drink that does that. Man, I should give it a shot.

You definitely need to try this. And when you do, you should buy your coffee from Squirrely Joe's Coffee. They're a thoroughly Christian company who sends you a great coffee at an affordable price. Plus, they even donate some of their proceeds to Operation Underground Railroad, helping the effort to end child trafficking. Okay, wait, I actually have heard of Squirrely Joe's coffee, and they are really great. They make it super easy to order exactly what you want if you go to www. www.squarelyjo's.com.

That's www. Squirleyjo's.com and click shop coffee. And first-time buyers can sign up to receive 20% off of their first order. Just go to www. Squirleyjoys.com or use the link in the description below. Squirley Joe's Coffee. Share coffee. Serve humbly.

Live faithfully. Yeah. No, I actually buy that for a number of reasons. One of them is that I think, I don't know, I don't think that Christians are liars. I don't think that they're constant liars. So I don't think that everything is symbolism and metaphor. That's one of the takeaways.

But what really struck me in researching this story was St. Basil the Great, calling the Great Wales tannins in his hexamarin. Which is? which is a six-headed Canaanite dragon monster. Yeah, it's a biblical word. And it comes up in Exodus 7, the serpent battle, where there's the serpent battle before the throne of Pharaoh,

and it says that Moses creates a tan, or well, his staff turns into a tannin, Aaron's staff, whatever. Which is translated serpent. Right, it's translated a serpent. Fair enough, because it was. But the idea is much deeper. It's actually God saying, I'm going to hijack this Canaanite demon. Amen. Okay. I'm going to throw it down and I'm going to consume Egypt by it. I'm going to make a better dragon that's going to consume your dragon. It's actually a whole microcosm of what's happening with the gospel. Yeah, exactly. The gospel comes into a fallen land, Israel going into Canaan, by the way. It's redeemed. Canaan is redeemed. And so the dragons even in Canaan are now used for the purposes of God. So all of the tools that the Lord found in this fallen world that always belonged to him are now being reworked to accomplish his own ends.

And so they go back to Egypt and they destroy the horrible, evil gods of Egypt. This happened with Rome. It happened with the Norse mythology. Now if you go into these stave wooden churches that are still around in the Northlands in Norway, you'll find carvings, beautiful carvings in the wood and the pews and the pulpit and the baptismal font of Norse myth. Not Christian stories. Yeah. Nordic stories that are of Sigmund, killing the dragon and things like this.

Like they just, the Christian comes in, says, this is the good news, repent, people repent. And then they're like, but there's dragons. And then they're like, yes. We've been fearing and worshipping them. Yes, of course, stop worshipping them. One moment. Let's go kill them. Let's kill it.

It's Beowulf. I mean, it's the, exactly. What is the gospel? What is happening on the cross except death devouring death? Exactly. God using the very instrument of the enemy as his own downfall. And actually, God tricking or trapping the serpent. into devouring itself, which is interesting that many of the tales have the serpent devouring itself.

Yeah, Yorgman Gunder is the, I mean, it's like the ring of bear here, like another Tolkien reference, where you have the head of the serpent starting at the tail, Erragorn War. Yeah, because it came from Barry here, given him by Renrod Feligund. Obviously. In the first age, in Nargothrond. Obviously. But, yeah, so it's, I mean, the serpent is this motif image of death. I think that also it's quite literal in many historical cases,

but it's eating itself. And that's somehow a sign, I mean, it's this case with Aragorn. It's the sign of a savior that he would show the serpent devouring itself. Very fascinating. Very fascinating. Ben, I'm going to now smoothly take us into an obvious thing to talk about right after that, which is mermaids. Well, the whole thesis of the show is that mermaids are real.

Mermaids are real. So I think we should have. So here we go. We all know the schoolhouse rhyme in, 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Now, I'm sure we also all remember benefiting from that little saying on some tests that we took in third grade, a test that we no doubt thought was far more important at the time than it actually was. It is true, though, in 1492, Columbus, brave as he was, set out from Spain in order to find a trade route to Asia, which did not require the long

journey down and around the tip of Africa's very perilous southern waters. Or at least, this is the generally accepted reasoning behind Columbus's voyage. Many actually believe, with good reason, that Columbus was not trying to find a trade route at all, but was instead sailing west in an attempt to overtake and bring justice to a large band of Muslims who had escaped Spain during the previous crusade. Now, whatever the reason, it's not mermaid related, but we'll get there. Whatever the reason, we all know that the result was actually him stumbling upon the West Indies. What followed upon Columbus' further expedition

was nothing short of formative for the entire world, both east and west, but less we gloss over some of the more interesting chapters of his journey, it's worth asking, what was his journey over the ocean like? After all, this was a time that lives in our minds with almost epic mystique. Before the time of modern navigation and communication, but already into the more modern era of marine travel and trade,

Columbus and his contemporaries lived, so to speak, on a nice edge between ancient thought and worldview on one side and ever-increasing cynicism on the other. Well, to actually get to the question, if one examines Columbus's diary from the time in which his three ships were sailing near the coast of the Dominican Republic, he will read a strange entry. I saw three mermaids today.

They are not half as beautiful as they are painted, since in some ways they have a face like a man. And while many now brush off this astonishing statement with modernist hubris, claiming that Columbus was sorely mistaken and that what he actually saw was obviously three manatees or something else equally asinine, one must reckon with the sheer level of nonchalance in Columbus writing. Genuine mermaid citing or no, what is equally interesting is how he expected there to be mermaids in the sea,

as if this was an obviously assumed risk of sailing the high seas in the first place. Columbus mentions them in passing and moves on to other more pressing issues to the man. For all of the help that it is to us in understanding the enigmatic account of sons of God and daughters of men in Genesis 6, the Book of Enoch is also, and we can't emphasize this enough, not the word of God. It's faulty, fallible, and clearly legendary in many of its sections. One such section occurs in chapter 19 of the first book, bearing the anti-Diluvian prophet name. It reads thus, and Yuriel said to me, here shall stand the angels who have connected themselves with women, and their spirits assuming many different forms are defiling mankind,

and shall lead them astray into sacrificing to demons as gods. Here shall they stand till the day of the great judgment, in which they shall be judged till they are made an end of. And the women, also of the angels who went astray, shall become sirens. And I am I. I Enoch alone saw the vision, the ends of all things, and no man shall see as I have seen. According to the writers of the pseudopographical work that had clearly made contact with the minds of the first century Jews, the origin of the siren, which according to the Greeks were either woman bird hybrids or woman fish hybrids, can be traced back to the same evil event of angelic rebellion near the beginning of days. For their sin of leaving their proper dwellings and engaging in acts contrary to nature,

the fallen angels were chained in gloomy darkness for the day of judgment. See the Epistle of Jude. For their corrupt generation and hybrid natures, the demigod Nephilim were cursed to be slain in the flood which was soon to come from God. But what about the women? It would appear as though they were willing parties in the ordeal of Genesis 6 and were not forced to commit anything they didn't already have a desire to do. Well, the writers of Enoch claim that they became sirens, mermaids, wanderers of the waves, eager to continue their sin of seduction, but now against men of weak moral fortitude who unfortunately come close to them in the ocean.

Now, this whole idea is a couple of things. It's A made up, and B, C. Point A, it's made up. We have no reason whatsoever to believe that the wives of the fallen angels in Genesis 6 were punished by being made into siren mermaid. However, the striking thing, much like Columbus's diary entry, is that mermaids are mentioned at all. Why would the Second Temple authors of First Enoch even have a category for the female fish hybrid in their heads? It leaves one wondering what gave them a category for this. Perhaps it was a general familiarity with myth, Greek or otherwise. Or maybe it was something more central to their lives.

Does the Bible say anything about mermaids? Well, the answer is a haunted cosmos characteristically typical, kind of. In the Greek Septuagint version of the Hebrew Old Testament, the coinet word for sirens does appear a handful of times, where the Hebrew originally had a mysterious phrase whose literal meaning no one is entirely sure of. For example, in Isaiah 1321, we read about how the destroyed city of Babylon will become a place where sirens dwell. Most modern English translations render this. says a nightbird, owl, or ostrich, even this reminds one of the Lilith character. But the fact is, the Greeks figured the original Hebrew to be clearly referring to Sirens.

However, since we don't know for certain what the original Hebrew meant, we have to loosely hold all theories of this being proof of the prophet Isaiah, at least having a category in his mind led by the Holy Spirit for a mermaid-type entity. We don't know for sure, maybe, maybe not. specifically, if it is true that Isaiah had such a category in mind, it is fascinating that the text implies this as an evil being. Outside of original scripture, other old translations whose languages are more closely akin to the Hebrew, such as the Syriac Paschita translation, renders the Hebrew phrase that yielded sirens for the Greek into, quote, the daughters of Nama.

Now, for all those familiar with their Old Testament genealogy, they will remember that Nama was the sister of Tubal Kane, the first artisan of brass and iron. Nama was a daughter of men, yes, but she was specifically a daughter of Cain, who would have been her great-great-grandfather. In Jewish legends from the medieval times, documented for us in the Kabbalistic work Zohar, Nama was one of the chief wives of the fallen angels of Genesis 6. It is said that she actively further seduced the fallen entities and became the mother of demons. The legends go on to see. say that Namah and her daughters continue to this day, wasting away among the waves of the sea,

haunting unwitting men and tempting them to their dooms. Again, we must emphasize how tenuous of a theory all of this is. The Bible provides us with no reason to make these sorts of speculative leaps firmly in concluding exactly where mermaids came from and what they really are. But that's not really the point we're trying to make anyways. The point is that to the Syriac Christians and the writers of the Greek Septuagin at least, the mysterious Hebrew phrase rendered today as ostrich is actually a moniker for the mythical siren. Why did these Christians have this as a legitimate category in their heads to begin with?

That's the question. What made them confident enough in the being's actual existence to bring them into the infallible text of Isaiah's prophecy? Whether they were right to do that or not isn't the question. They had that as a category. And why were they automatically always understood to be evil? Well, perhaps it's because the true and most ancient origins of the mermaids or mur people in general would immediately cause a god-fearer in the Old and New Testament to perceive them as servants of the enemy. It's believed by scholars that the first depiction of a

fish-person hybrid can be found in the ancient Babylonian picture and description of their god, Onus, a false god worshipped by the pagan nations for nearly as long as man has been fallen. Furthermore, the chief goddess of the ancient peoples of Canaan in northern Syria was a mermaid named Artigatus, the goddess of fertility. The Greeks, of course, had the sirens and the goddess Dersetto. Even the ancient dwellers of the islands of Britain and Ireland had myths of mermaids who were bad omens foretelling disaster to any that saw them. The ancient Norse peoples believed in the Hafru, who could share wisdom with sailors. The Russian in ancient Slavic peoples whispered about the vindictive Rusalka, women who died and scorn at the

hands of evil men and lurked underwater forever, snatching any men who got too close to the perilous shores. The point is simply this. Why be so quick to immediately discredit the widespread belief in something? Especially when it makes so much sense with the biblical worldview. Whether the mermaid served as a false god for a pagan nation or a lesser preternaturnational bad omen for another, the result for us is the same. These things are clearly evil. But what about today? Are there any modern stories we can look to with any credulity? On a hot summer's day in mid-July of 1998, a group of surfers enjoyed the adventurous waters, pits, and crisp barrels off the coast of Kaua'i's Puiu Beach, a very popular tourist destination.

The group was primarily made up of highly experienced surfers. Given the high-level nature of the surrounding waters and the particular conditions of the day, these men were not slouches. They knew the local ocean well, had encountered a number of sea creatures, big and small, in their day, and had little reason to be fantastical about seeing ordinary things in the water. But as one of them paddled hard to claim a beautiful wave, the others held back and let their friend ride the little slice of ocean he had just captured. The speed and frictionlessness of gliding across the water-made force of nature made everything in the world melt away for a few precious moments of pure peace and joy. The breeze struck and

refreshed him with a misty spray of clear blue water. The sun shone at the end of the waves tunnel, like a porch light beckoning him forward. Despite the calm focus, the man could still hear the laughing of his friends behind him and the sound of children playing in the shallows before. But in a moment of harsh shock, all of it came to an end. The man had crested the wave with his board to make a final turn when he saw something out of the corner of the corner of the of his eye that didn't quite fit. He quickly turned and rode out to the end of the wave and laid back down on his board.

An intoxicating whisper filled the air. The faintest trace of a voice so sweet it seemed to smell like the freshest strawberries in late spring. He paddled faster and faster back to where he had been. The rest of the group had clearly noticed whatever this was too and were paddling in the same direction. A glare of the light like a diamond shining

under a jeweler's lamp had struck him and everyone else. After a few moments, the enchanting whisper became louder and more clear as the voice of a woman speaking. Ahead, in between the crests and valleys of the waves, the surfers beheld a woman, radiant in the ever-west waning sun, swimming on the surface of the water, with a scaly and massive fishes tale that shone green like emeralds. Her hair was a rippling glow spraying them all with light that it cast off the strange surface of the water. Every man was held in captivated stupor. Finally, the strange creatures slipped back under the water and would not return. The men dunked their heads beneath the surface and, according to them, got an even better view of the creature they could have only described as a mermaid.

Still, traces of the voice could be felt by the mall. One of the men, a diver who had been snorkeling close by, snapped into a sudden state of thoughtfulness despite the circumstances and took out his waterproof camera. He filmed a short video of the mysterious and compelling creature who, according to all present, etched herself forever into their minds that day. This footage, which is incredibly difficult to find, has been the subject of massive amounts of scrutiny, analysis, and critique. And yet, if it is authentic, it clearly shows a mermaid gracefully drifting through the crystal waters of the Pacific off Kaua' East Coast.

Despite the high level of scrutiny, experts in video analysis maintain the footage contains no evidence at all of manipulation or staging. Even more recently, in 2012, workers on a dam in the country of Zimbabwe were trying to install a water pump on the deep side of the structure, indeed, close to the full depth of the river. This was done in order to help local farmers better irrigate their crops. The story goes that after the initial installation of the pumps, workers were discouraged to realize that sediment had clogged the inlets during the jostle and busyness of the install. The company in charge was forced to hire a local group of divers to go down to the base of the dam and investigate and hopefully free up the blockage. After some time of being underwater, the entire dive team resurfaced at once. It quickly became clear that something was seriously wrong.

Everyone rushed to the shore to climb hurriedly out of the river. They claimed to have found the problem in one of the pipes, but they didn't have time to fix it. because according to them, a dreadful-looking mermaid had appeared to all of them in the murky depths. Though apparently nothing was done or said by the creature, everyone had immediately sensed the danger they were in and simultaneously fled the scene, swimming for the surface and for safety. All of them refused to re-attempt the dive to fix the pipes. Eventually, the company hired another team of divers to perform the same task, but again, the team prematurely returned, stating an anxious and shivering voice,

that they would never go back down there for fear of the mermaid. To this day, the dam remains unfixed. No diver is willing to embark on such an obvious suicide mission. Now, I want listeners to understand that the way our outlines work is that we have stories and historical vignettes. And then usually there's a section where we have some highlighted just like bullet points that we've thought about ahead of time. And the entirety of our thoughts on this section reads,

I quote. I say ungolient. I say ungolient. There you go. Ungoliant and she-lop situation. One chief demonic entity and lesser offspring. Enter tab. Bro, obviously, yes.

End of thoughts. No, we do have thoughts on this. If you don't know. That's funny. All right. So here's my main. Explain. All right.

Here's my main thought. One, I do think the mermaids are real. Okay. We're not dullards. Yeah, we're not dullards. We're not idiots. We're not like, lameos. I do think they're real.

I don't think we know their origin. I'll say that. Sure. I do find the myth from the Zohar interesting. I do find it very compelling that Isaiah and Jeremiah also have these mysterious Hebrew phrases. Yeah. That even when we bring them into modern English, we always use one of these nightbird type words for it. But even understanding it's a representative of something.

Exactly. It's not, thank you, yes. And so I do think that one can safely bet. I'm going to use safely loosely here. I would bet, and so therefore others can bet with me if they want, that mermaids are somehow a product of whether directly or indirectly, the Genesis 6 event. So one of the things that Doug Van Dorn talks about in his great book,

Giants, Sons of the Gods, that everyone should check out, is that one of the things they were doing, doing was genetic manipulation. Once the Nephilim were there, kind of the first generation of these horrible offspring, they were doing a lot of the manufacturing of chimeras. And so the idea that I believe Doug alludes to, but that I certainly took away from it, was that that's where we get a lot of these pantheons in the ancient world. Centaurs. Yeah, exactly. Just think of any kind of chimeric creature. Like you had in Egypt, their goddess of fertility is a lady with a frog head. Okay, you have Ohanus, the Mesopotamian god who's a fish man.

You know, you have these things that seem like, why are they everywhere? The Egyptian gods are full of chimeric images. The Greeks are as well. They're just usually more demi-god. Yeah, exactly. The body of a man with Osiris. And you just, it's the theme that comes up surprisingly often across the world across times is chimeric mixing of kinds.

Yes. Because God created things to reproduce after their kind. after their kinds. And a lot of people say, well, Genesis 6, you have to take the Sathite view because, well, things can only recreate after their kinds.

But the point of the other view is that that was an extremely sinful, bad things to do. That's so bad. That's why. The demons were, or the watchers, the angelic beings were doing something that was expressly forbidden

and against nature. Right. Which, again, think about the witchcraft. Yeah. The witchcraft theme with shamanism and witchcraft, not just European,

but like all the way back in the Old Testament, It's, what is it doing with nature? It's twisting nature to achieve an end contrary to how God made nature. Yeah, you're trying to take something like a baby who is life and newness and murder it or create some kind of potion using its body parts to do something wicked. To give you a good crop yield. You're violating nature to do something contrary to nature. So it's like to curse somebody or it's so fascinating to me how common this theme is. So on the one hand, chimeric type of stuff, yeah, sure, that could definitely be an explanation.

I also think, though, that just simply when we look at, again, I'm going to say it's the demons, but just simply, one of the things that demons love to do to trick people is to take on trope-type images like the Lilith or the incubus type of, where they're making a mockery of all of God's creation instead of a glorious woman who, submits her husband and is fruitful with him and creates life. She is an evil life-stealing woman hag who comes and weaponizes sexual relations to destroy humanity. She's vampiric. She's vampiric. She takes blood. She takes life. So in these mermaid stories, whether it's a beautiful mermaid or an ugly mermaid actually could be the same creature to me. I agree. That presents different faces depending on what it wants to do. And it could very well be a demon. Or some category of...

Right. I think the important category of... Right. I think the important category for me to remember in this is the idea of something being preter natural, which is it kind of toes the line between being a fully supernatural thing and a fully natural thing, where it seems like the Nephilim actually fit into this category

precisely. They neatly fit into this not neat category. Yeah, yeah, thank you. But they're the sons of supernatural entities that are in their natural state, they live in the unseen realm, whatever that means. Yeah. But they also have mothers that are distinctly natural and are fully visible. And so it creates this thing that's just,

I think that they do have some kind of bound form in general. But within that form, there must have been more fluidity. Yeah. Like just by the nature of how we know those two categories behave on their own, when they interact, it would seem to me like it's not a punnet square where like one of the Nephilim is a spirit and the other one is like a kid. I don't think that it would work like that because it's a mixture of essences, not just DNA, but that's a little bit of speculative.

We're now getting a little speculative. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no. I mean, everything else we said to this point was not speculating. Everything at this point was completely reasonable. But I guess the point I'm getting at is that helps me conceptualize of a creature like unto a mermaid that could be fair to one and foul to another. Yeah.

And could even, even like it said, some of the myths, they share wisdom, you know, with some sailors. Yeah. But almost everywhere else,

it's like you don't want to see one of those. No. You don't want to get around one of those. Now, I don't want to completely jump the gun here. I just want to tease this a little bit. We're going to talk about this a lot more when we discuss fairies in our fairy episode type of thing. But one idea that we have discovered in ancient world

as well as tossed around and thought through is the idea that there is a class of, angelic, for lack of a better words, being that God intentionally created to relate more to the processes of the earth, to physical creation, upholding and overseeing, in its creational state, upholding and overseeing the functions of, and the ordering of nature. Yeah. That we just don't, you know, God doesn't tell us a lot about angels. We see a bunch of different types of angels and stuff, but there's never like, and now

you know all of them in the Bible. Exactly. You just, you don't. We have an imperfect glimmer of a snapshot. And so many Christians in the history of the church have in some way had a category for angelic or spiritual beings that were created by God, some unfallen and some fallen that relate to the physical processes of the world. And this would be another category where I could see. I bet we'll bring the mermaids back up when we get to fairies and stuff. Yeah, I think so too.

And just to tease it further, it would help one reconcile the common denominator. in the ancient world of like a storm god or the river goddess or the dryads and the nions of the trees and of the rivers exactly yeah that's the god of the forest over there he's dangerous you don't want to play with play around with him old man willow you might not get this but this is what Tolkien and Lewis are referring to yeah both of them steeped into varying degrees in different mythologies right of the ancient and the not so ancient world as well i mean this isn't just 2000 bc this is also 1,000 80 you know this is up to the you know The Puritans were...

They had some kind of category like this, because they had the category for fairies. But, yeah, we'll get more to that. Don't want to give away everything right now because it's very fun. But... Did you do a dusty tomb on the Rousalcas? I did.

Okay, so sign up, and you can hear more on the Russian mermaid story, because that's a great one. The origin story is really fascinating. The Rusalkas. Yeah. But the one... So before we actually close out the show,

I mean, we're almost done here. I did. I haven't actually said what the Angolia and Shilob situation. Oh, yeah, explain that. I didn't even... I was like, obviously, everyone gets what we mean by that. So Tolkien is heavily permeating the show. Yeah. At, you know, in the first age of the Silmarillion and Middle Earth,

Morgoth, the first dark lord, wanted to rain terror down on heaven, basically, on the dwelling place of the gods on earth. And so he enlisted the help of this giant, light-devouring spirit named Ungoliant, who normally took the form of a great spider. That was kind of her form that she assumed. Her origin is certainly from Morgoth somehow,

but Tolkien keeps it very fursing on purpose. So anyway, he goes with Angoliath, and they drink the light from the two trees of Valenor, read the Silmarillion, and then they flee into the rest of Middle Earth to hide from the wrath of the gods. Okay, but then it says that Angolian, she has a bunch of offspring in Balaerian,

and where the elves will eventually go to live. and they're lesser forms of her. Yeah. So they don't have all of her power. They don't have all of her majesty, for lack of a better word, or terror. But they are still horrible. And they still do wreak whatever havoc they can on the land that they're in. And so they become the mountains of terror.

Angoliant eventually goes far into the east and devours herself in her gluttony. Yeah, she actually eats herself. She's so hungry. Again, the serpent. Right. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. There it is. Dude, I keep saying thank you. Like, I cherish you, dude.

I just want to say, like, I got the blaze. You got the car heart. In this jacket. This isn't a car heart. You're so handsome. It's from Gap. It's close enough. Shout out Gap, sponsor.

They're not. They're not. Reach out. Reach out. Reach out. Call us. So one of the offspring that Ungolient had, eventually down the line became Sheelob, who attacks Frodo and Sam in the cave through the path of Kyrithungal because

Ghalam wants Frodo. to die so we can take the precious. And the idea here is that there's one chief fallen thing, Angolia, this one big evil spirit that somehow has lesser forms of iterations of herself that propagates through the world. And so the idea is if the fallen angels were able to reproduce themselves, then with the genetic manipulation that the Nephilim undertook, again, this is all speculation. It's all totally reasonable, so far better. It is reasonable, but it is all speculative.

It's very speculative. Maybe they could have propagated some of these chimeric entities. And so now we have, like, lesser forms of mermaids almost. That's all I'm... That's all you're saying. That's the whole idea. That's it. Like, maybe that mermaid that the surfers encountered in Kauai, maybe she wasn't going to, like, eat them, you know, and kill them.

Maybe not. But maybe, also. Maybe she wanted them to come down and drown with her. The Rousalcas definitely want that. But I do think, unfortunately, guys, it's time to close out the show. Yeah, it's time to close it. We hope that you have enjoyed this first episode of season three. We're really excited to see you guys back for episode two.

And I'm not going to tease it because I haven't decided what it's going to be yet. Yeah, we've got the whole list, but like the order. The order is always mixing. We're feeling it. Just get ready. It's going to be exciting. Brian, can you begin the closing story about the ghost ship, Octavius? Absolutely, Ben.

In the early Middle Ages, the Scandinavian Northmen were pushing the prows of their longboats ever westward in the hopes of finding new lands to claim as their own, or new peoples heavy with wealth and peace that they might easily plunder. Moral turpitude aside, one must sit back and appreciate the sheer audacity and exploratory courage put on display by these men. Whether driven by desperation and lust or a sincere hunger for glory in new lands, one may never settle the answer. But in the midst of a thriving and bright era of Christian domination in the West, one still cannot help but recognize the marvelous feats accomplished by the Vikings. As the push West continued for these people, and as the trading juggernauts of Christendom began to catch up to them, an elusive achievement began a circle around every mariner's head.

You see, the waters north of the Arctic Circle, though perilous and cold and rife with unprecedented dangers, almost seemed to call to the European sailors, beckoning them to enter the Helkeracks and icy crags to simply see what lies beyond her borders. With each passing year, a new intrepid captain would make it that much further into the frozen sea before having to turn back for warmer climbs. The Vikings excelled here, making it exceptionally far west given the technology available to them at the time. And yet, the real achievement remained a fickle dream to them.

What did it matter how far west you went if you could not actually break through the ice, icy waters and press on and on to find the end of the world, or at least the end of the west, and sail your way back to the farthest eastern reaches of the world. The path they longed for became known as the Northwest Passage. Even today, something stirs in the hearts of men at the very spoken words out loud. It is as if we, the royal we, were made to push the limits and find paths in the dark and cold, to make order in the chaos for the betterment of the world. For centuries, expeditions tried and failed to varying degrees of severity

to punch their way through the Northwest Passage. Though none succeeded, it eventually became apparent that somebody someday would do it. He who did it, the world agreed, would become a modern hero of ancient mythical proportion. In 1761, a 28-man crew boarded the ship christened Octavius in a western port of England. The trade vessel, bound for the Orient, successfully navigated her way down the shores of Africa, enjoying the warm weather of the Atlantic, and rounded Cape Horn to head due east for her destination port. The story says that upon completing her commitments in India, China, and Japan, the captain got a sudden, or perhaps long-contrived, urged for adventure and thirst for glory.

He called his men about him below deck and pitched them his grand idea. instead of returning the usual way, sailing all the way back west and back up the African coast, what if they crossed the Northern Pacific instead? What if they tried heading west to east to complete once and for all the Northwest Passage? It is said that the men, though uncertain of how successful the attempt could possibly be, were eager to break rank a bit and win a name for themselves in the history books. They heartily agreed to follow their captain on the northern road of water, to whatever end. Thus it was that the Octavius began her mad dash north. She crossed the tumultuous

bearing straight and the sickening bearing sea. Still they pointed themselves almost due north. Eventually, they hit the ice. For days, perhaps weeks on end, the crew tirelessly worked through the minefield of icebergs and drifts that threatened to put a swift end to their journey. But their efforts were for nothing. On an unknown date, at an unknown time in October or an o'velde, of 1762, the boat became permanently lodged in drifting pack ice, some 250 miles north of Point Barrow in Alaska, the northernmost point in the United States. The crew, not thinking any more of their glory being stolen from them, now fought for their lives. Still they labored in the ice. They labored and labored. On the 11th of October in 1775, a Yankee whaling vessel by the

name Harold was making headway off the west coast of Greenland, well north inside the Arctic Circle. As the Harold's Captain Warren stood on the bridge and looked ahead, he watched a three-masted schooner fade into view, listing heavily to one side as if taking on a massive quantity of water. As the image cleared, he recognized the truth of the matter. It was an icy ghost ship, lingering just ahead of him, trapped and lost and bereft of any sign of life whatsoever. Warren ordered a small boarding crew of eight men to approach the vessel and investigate the problem. Warren himself joined the skeleton crew. The complete silence of the scene cultivated apprehension in the hearts of all save the captain, while they rode slowly closer to the ghost ship. They hoisted

themselves up the ladder that led down to the surface of the ice and stepped carefully onto the slippery deck. Still, there was no sign of anything or anyone. They grazed. grabbed leads and made their way across deck, eventually opening a hatch that had been frozen shut with white moss. The group stepped furtively down into the ship's belly. What they discovered inside was nothing short of pure horror. Before them, dimly lit by their oil lamps, lay the bodies of 28 men, all frozen solid with expressions of agonized pain printed onto their faces forevermore.

Each man was in his bunk, tight in the fetal position and wrapped in heavy blanket. They inched through the sloped and icy tomb towards the captain's quarters further aft. When they finally pushed the door open against the gripping frost, they were struck by the silhouette of a man, backlit by the northern white sun, sitting completely frozen at his desk, pins still in hand. The captain had been quickly frozen in his chair,

slumped over his logbook, as if struggling to focus on his work. In the corner of these quarters, the boarding crew and the now horrified captain, Captain Warren found a blonde woman frozen beneath a pile of blankets. Next to her in the room's corner was another sailor and a small boy crouched next to one another. The boy's face was pressed into the sailor's jacket, as if desperate for some extra ounce of warmth. The sailor, face clenched in stress, held a flint in front of him in one hand, pointed towards a small pile

of wood shavings just a few inches away. The boarding crew wrestled the logbook out from the captain's frozen hands and read the unbelievable truth. The last log was written on the 11th of November, 1762, a full 13 years prior. It read that the ship had been lodged in ice for 17 days many miles north of Point Barrow, Alaska. The Octavius, now a ghost ship entombed with a frozen captain and crew and captain's family, had drifted for 13 years through the Arctic Ocean, from Alaska to Greenland. It seems, that the Octavius had won their glory and achieved their goal, only posthumously. For they were the first vessel to have ever crossed the Northwest Passage.

It is a sincere pity that they only did it while already dead. Want more Hunted Cosmos? Then make your way over to Patreon, where you can get early access to our content as well as exclusive content in regular dusty tomes and monthly live streams with Brian and myself. So go to patreon.com slash haunted cosmos and sign up. now.