Haunted Cosmos - The Fair Folk

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

In this episode of Haunted Cosmos, Brian and Ben continue Season Three by FINALLY diving into a broad topic that is a bit ... untidy. Welcome to our first episode on the Fay!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!Support the show

This episode of Haunted Cosmos is brought to you by Squirley 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 1644, Robert Kirk was born to loving parents in the cold and wild Scottish highlands. Kirk's father, James, was the minister of their particular parish, Aberfoil, Perthshire. Young Robert was the seventh-born child of his parents and remained the youngest son in the family.

He quickly matured in his environment, a fruitful mixture of rugged terrain and affectionate community where trustworthiness was the prime virtue. And so, taking after his father, Robert attended. seminary at St. Andrews before receiving a master's degree from Edinburgh in 1661. Three years after his graduation, he was named the minister of a smaller village in Perthshire before taking over the ministry of Aberfoyle from 1685 until his death seven years later. He was a keen family man. He married his first wife, Isabel, in 1670, and the two had a son named Colin. When Isabel died after a decade of marriage, Kirk carved an epitaph out of stone by his

own hand to place on top of her grave. He married again soon after and was blessed with another son, a boy named Robert Jr. But meandering through the seemingly normal life's path that Kirk tread runs a prominent thread of enchantment. You see, Robert Kirk was a folklorist and Gaelic scholar. Before his death, he would actually help oversee the first mass printing of a Gaelic Bible. This meant that he was well-versed in the local legends surrounding his little parish in central Scotland. What's more, he was not only interested in them, but he was compelled by his Christian faith to accept them as at least partly true. Though not a particularly fantastical man, he understood, in a way to be admired by us today, the nature of the world in which we live, that it is one full of wonder, mystery, and strange things that one normally cannot see.

With this passion for the super and preternatural as his foundation, he wrote a treatise that has been praised as being one of the first. the most important and significant works on the subject of fairies and second sight. Kirk took particular interest in this category called Fairy, a category he referred to based on tradition as the good folk. And so he began his masterpiece treatise, the name, the secret commonwealth of elves, fauns, and fairies. Kirk was willing to admit that he loved the idea of there being some world in between, a great puzzle for us to try and solve. He would often go for solitary walks, up a thickly forested hill near to his house that was rumored to be a gateway

into the Fairfolk's parallel world, a hill named Dune. The shoulder-to-shoulder trees at this place let only the smallest slivers of light through on the brightest days. Everything was covered in a blanket of moist green moss that reminds one of long-fallen trees yet clinging to their place,

as if their rotting roots could still draw the nourishment of rain and soil. It was on this favorite walk of his that Robert Kirk's body was found one day, cold and lifeless and dressed in a nightgown. It was as if, at the beckoning of death, Kirk had struggled to the place he felt most interested in the world in order to give one last message to the people he loved.

But his story was not over. For despite all signs pointing to the body of the beloved Reverend being dead, the spirit and form of Kirk allegedly appeared after his funeral service to one of his kinsmen in the night. He told his kin that his body was simply in a swoon but was not dead. according to Kirk, he had been stolen away to Fairyland in order to serve as an undead chaplain to the Fairy Queen, that he had only one chance to be brought back. His relative listened closely, as Kirk informed him that, at the upcoming baptism of his child,

who was still to be born, and so would be born posthumously of his father, the Reverend's other kinsman, a cousin, named Graham of Decre, must throw whatever is held in his hand over the head of my apparition, which will appear without fail at that time. The message was relayed, and cousin Dacre was prepared to do his part to bring Kirk back from the house of the good folk. But when his apparition did appear, everyone was so taken aback by the brightness and curiosity of it all that Ducre did not throw what he held in his hand over the spirit's head. Thus, Kirk never returned to his body, and legend says that he still serves as Christian chaplain to the queen of the fay.

On the border of the Berkshire Downs in southern England, two hills are raised. The histories of these hills have filled the minds of the English and indeed all of Europe with wonder for centuries. The larger of the hills contains a bleach-white chalk effigy on its summit, curved in the shape of a galloping horse. It is called the Uffington White Horse, and despite many bold claims concerning its origins from historians over the years, nobody really knows where it came from. Some have said it was formed by King Alfred the Great and his men to commemorate their tide-turning victory at the Battle of Eddington. Others say that it was made by the Germanic brothers, Hingist and Horsa, as a sort of claim staked over the land that they had just led their Engel, Saxon, and Ute's brothers to sometime in the 5th century. Many, however, are quite confident that the white horse was born in a far earlier time, a time like the Bronze Age, when Celtic druids still reigned supreme over the hearts of the few men who dwelt in this otherwise mythical place, far to the north of what anyone else figured to be the known world.

The problem with all of these theories is that they do not seem to take much care in describing why the supposed horse figure looks the way it does. If you find an image of it, which isn't difficult to do, you'll likely be grateful for having been told by others that it's meant to be a horse because, frankly, it doesn't look like one. This line of thinking brings us to the other important hill in this section of the Downs, Dragon Hill. St. George, a member of Roman Emperor Diocletian's Praetorian Guard, was a man concealing a weighty secret. For you see, despite serving to guard and protect, one of the greatest enemies of Christ's church the world has ever seen, George had found his heart compelled by the

gospel message he so often heard, and saw written on the faces of the martyrs that died before him. Eventually, his soul was so stirred, thrashing in his chest like a raging storm, giving him no relief, that he repented of his heinous deeds to the Lord Almighty. George became a Christian. Once his repentance had taken hold, it didn't take long for Diocletian to lose all love and pity for the man, a man the emperor now deemed a traitor. Pitiless as ever Diocletian had him sentenced to death. But before his death, some time between his conversion and his sentencing, George traveled to the island of Britain for some important task or other.

As he journeyed the green southern countryside, he stumbled upon a settlement of people in desperate need of help. You see, a dragon had taken up residence close to the settlement's gate. Like all other fay dragons, this one was a greedy and lustful hoarder of riches. The monster demanded tribute from the town's folk as payment in exchange for mercy, and perhaps foolishly the townspeople complied. Soon, however, they ran out of treasures to give to the dragon. Fearing the wrath to come, they begged the dragon to accept, in place of treasure, a human tribute given to him once a year in great honor. The dragon accepted their bargain and so began the

true terror. Each year, one of the people would be randomly chosen and forced to offer him or herself to the dragon as a living sacrifice. Considering the alternative, death for all, the people were content with this dark pact. That is, until the lottery landed on and the dragon himself demanded, that the blushing young princess be offered as the next tribute. The thought of seeing her innocence, beauty, and immense pure love for her people lost forever to the dragon's ravening maw was too much for the villagers to bear. But what recourse did they have? It was in this state that George cantered into the village market on his horse and met the leading families. They quickly informed him of their plight, sensing in him a noble doom as well as great courage and fighting

skill. George moved to selflessness at the thought of such a noble young maiden being fed to the uncaring and crude jaws of the wicked beast assured the people that he would do everything in his power to rescue their princess and kill their oppressor. It is said that the battle waged on for hours or days, depending on who you ask, and it was hard fought for both the soldier of God and his slithering adversary. But the fight itself does not come into these tales. Rest assured, St. George the Dragon Slayer won the day, the love of the princess and the safety of the village. As the generation's role, down the years of the town, the tale of St. George's heroic deed would be passed from father to

son, kindling selfless courage in the hearts of the people. In fact, it would have been very hard for anyone to forget the story, even if they did neglect to tell their children's children. For just below what would one day become the white horse hill lay the body of the slain dragon, buried in dirt, and appearing as another steep hill just beneath its larger neighbor. And on the very top of the hill lies a bare patch of chalky earth where no grass will grow, marking the place where the dragon's blood was poured out. One can safely say, then, that the Berkshire Downs are no strangers

to tales of epic heroism and mystery. On the contrary, the region seems especially disposed to enigmatic events. The stranger, the better. And many whisper that it's no coincidence that all these strange turnings seem to coalesce on this one region. The Berkshire Downs, they say,

is a place everlastingly prime for the strange. In 1962, a middle-aged woman strode through the Berkshire Downs on her way back to the little farm where she and her husband scratched their living out of the ancient black soil. The light was quickly fading, and even still today in this part of the world, the dark came on thick and fast, a Stygian current drowning the sky. She had already been walking for what she felt was far too long to have not made it back to the familiar Ridgeway Road that ended at her friendly.

cottage. Still, worrying would accomplish little, and so she pressed on in the direction she was certain was right. But the day continued to wane. The bloody violet sky threatening deep dark, and the woman's welcoming threshold seemed no closer. How far was home? Why were her paces taking her no nearer? Where was she? Her confusion gave way to panic, chest heaving with each breath as she whispered frantic prayers for home. She could not have told a soul how this had happened, how she had found herself in a place utterly unfamiliar to her, despite not being more than a couple of miles from where she had lived her entire life. Finally, exhausted and completely at her wits' end, the woman collapsed to her knees on the dirt road and began to weep.

She reached her breaking point when it became plain that somehow she had been walking in circles. In between her muffled sobs, a curious noise met her ears. She perked up slightly and silenced herself at the sound of the sound of her. of what she thought was another person close by. A little voice crept through the thick brush surrounding the path and glided over the serene pasture lands on either side of her. As the sound continued, she stood up

and began to take halting steps towards its source. Finally, just as a cloud moved south to invade the moon's white light, the woman saw what she thought was a very short man step out from the shrubs just a few yards ahead of her. He was dressed in forest green and didn't say a word. She stood stone still, perplexed at the creature, who looked at her with an expressionless face.

He slowly walked over to her with small and awkward steps. Neither spoke a word, and the little man would not meet her eye. He gestured, as if telling her to follow him and overcome by the moment she did. Within brief minutes, her feet found the familiar path to home. Relieved and mystified, she quickened her pace toward home and safety, but no sooner had her deliverance become apparent, her little green companion was gone into the night. After the woman arrived home to her worried husband,

she told him everything that had happened, and upon reflection, felt a strange sense of fortune. Not that she had found her way home or that she had encountered the strange good Samaritan, but rather lucky that the Samaritan was good. Her heart told her that in interacting with the creature, she had only narrowly escaped some evil end. Her husband was at a loss. He had never known his wife to tell tales or again.

exaggerate before. Those more familiar with the folklore of the area confirmed two things for the couple. First, that it was unlikely the woman had embellished anything, and second, that she was right to feel lucky, for she had just survived a trip to Fairyland. For all of human history, there's been a fascination with less than corporeality, that indefinable preternatural realm that seems to straddle the scene and the unseen. When one takes a serious and sympathetic look at the lore and myth of our world, one must conclude that people for all time have been quite certain that some category of being exists, which on the surface at least defies the neatly packaged divisions of pure good and pure evil, of material and immaterial. As a catch-all term,

this category has been referred to as the fairies, the long gavie, the good folk, the fay, the fair folk, and many other monocers that don't really bring much clarity to the issue. Okay, so we gave it a name. But what is it? What actually is a fairy? Are they anything at all beyond the imaginings of men? Folktales for children to hear at the hearth fire. The term fairy, or more accurately, Fay, only goes back to some time in the Middle Ages.

But that was emphatically not the beginning of the idea. Rather, it was only a retitling and repackaging of the idea of that. an idea that had already been around from the deep past. From the Sanskrit Gondarva, who serve as semi-divine musicians and dancers in Hinduism, Buddhism, Buddhism, and Jainism, to the various nature spirits and nymphs of Greek mythology, to the gin of pre-Islamic and Islamic regions, to the elves of the Scandinavians, to the druids and black dogs and elementals of the European lands. The category of the Faye people has been around for virtually all of human history. They're sometimes assumed to be generally benevolent,

and sometimes viewed in a much more sinister light. They are said to dwell in a land that is somehow nested alongside our own, yet mostly or most often invisible to us, save in strange or rare circumstances. They may be the malevolent beings who carry off children and leave a lifeless or evil changeling in their place. Some people conceived of them as soulless creatures, which would perish in annihilation upon their death, whatever that means.

Modern folklorists have proposed ideas ranging far and wide, that the Faye people are dead souls too evil for heaven and too good for hell, that they are somehow the illegitimate children of Eve, that they are a certain type of demon or fallen angels who did not continue in their gross rebellion, but turned back from sin, caught in an in-between state, neither holy good nor holy evil.

As Christianity began to rise in adherence and popularity, the common belief of Faye people, being a race of demoted angels, gained widespread acceptance. stories told of the fay falling from heaven with the evil angels at the great revolt, but instead of falling to hell, the fay lingered on earth. The gates of heaven were shut to them, but they were given leave to remain on earth as a sort of reward for their repentance. This theory gave way to somewhat less speculative ideas as the church matured.

King James I, in his short work on demonology in the 17th century, made the general assumption that fairies were a separate class of demons, who prophesied to, consorted with, and transported the human sinners they served. Men must be on guard, lest the fairies seek to lure him to an unfamiliar place from which he cannot return. If you've ever heard of witches having a familiar spirit, this is the same idea, roughly speaking. The 19th century theosophists gave more benefit of the doubt to this race of unknown beings. They saw in the Faye an entity who guided many of the natural processes of the earth. They helped in the growth of plants and the flowing of rivers.

They were the elementals. Perhaps some fell, and so we have evil areas in the world. Perhaps most did not fall, and so we find unexpected peace in many parts of nature. But even this idea predates the theosophists by centuries. In fact, it is precisely what the 14th century physician and alchemist Pereselsus thought. As hateful as theosophism is, this idea became popular among Christians too. Some claimed that these fairies were pagan deities that had been almost defrocked of power

by the victory of Christ in his church in the world. With the 17th century rise of Puritanism, the view of all fairies as demons rose in prominence and acceptance among many Protestant denominations. For example, the well-known English fairy, the hobgoblin, went from a friendly but mischievous

and annoying household entity to an evil goblin that corrupted your dwelling entirely. Now the goal here is not to determine in once and for all which of these ideas, if any of them, are totally correct. The goal is simply to have us reckon with the fact that all of these various groups throughout history, both pagan and Christian history, were certain that this mysterious class of being did actually exist. Can they all be wrong?

Well, sure. Yes, certainly. But maybe they aren't. After all, forgetting begets unbelief. When you forget a thing exists, you stop believing it could ever exist. It appears that this happened to all of us in regards to the Faye. Luckily, the last medieval man, C.S. Lewis, left us a wonderful summary of thought on the Faye that certainly warrants our attention.

He calls them the long gavie, the long livers, after a play by Martianus Capella. Lewis states, their place of residence is ambiguous between heaven and earth. They intrude a welcome hint of wilderness and uncertainty into a universe that is in danger of being a little too self-explanatory. too luminous, end quote. Another word we could use would be tidy. He relates how confusing of a race this is and how confused humans have always been by them. Spencer was able to highly and poetically praise Queen Elizabeth I

by calling her the fairy queen, while a woman could be burned at the stake a few miles down the road for consorting with the fairies and having a familiar spirit among them. Lewis goes on to give the four most commonly held beliefs about the Faye and where they stand as held by the medieval and ancient peoples. There were other opinions, but these were the most credible, that is, if you believe any of this at all. The first is that they are a third rational species,

distinct from angels and from men. They were given long life, but they did not live forever. Milton and many others before him conceived of them finally as the tetrarchs of fire, air, and flood on the earth in Paradise Regained, the Elementals. They are thought to be free from any further judgment or blessing than that which they had already received and of which we know nothing. The second theory is that they are angels who, to use oversimplified modern jargon, were demoted. They left heaven when the gates opened at Lucifer and the evil angels fall, but they did not leave in rebellion, more in curiosity.

Among this group are some who are evil and will be cast into hell, while there are some who are really not rebellious at all. The third theory is that they are a class of dead souls somehow bound and doomed to roam the earth before the judgment day. Lastly, the theory already mentioned, which states that fairies are fallen angels, devils, demons, etc., that the sometimes questionable motives behind their sometimes questionable actions are just highly refined deceptions, meant to draw man's attention away from his proper duty and dwelling. The interesting thing is that Lewis and many other Christian men of his day and before him, including Tolkien, Milton, and Shakespeare rejected this category. They believe that it too lazily cast too much shadow over an area of creation that was not so boilerplate and simple.

They maintained that they simply did not know the answer any better than anyone else, but that putting the label of demonic and devilish over the whole phenomenon just didn't seem to fit. we read in an encyclopedia of fairies by Catherine Briggs about some of the more specifically nefarious things people have believed about fairies in Europe for example the fay are said to have a nasty habit of kidnapping new brides from the human world and turning them into the wives of fay princes and fairyland they do this because it was believed that the fairies have a very difficult if not impossible time reproducing after their own kind when the bride theft was successful the fay would eventually need to kidnap a human midwife to help with the birth when it finally came. If all of this failed, the fay would simply settle for stealing the most beautiful newborn babies away from the local village and replacing them with a changeling fairy hybrid.

This changeling would behave like sort of a vegetable and would eventually wither away. In addition to all of this, many of the fay in Scotland, Ireland, and the Nordic regions exhibited vampiric tendencies. The blood of young and healthy humans was very precious to them. and eventually became a dependency of theirs. On the Isle of Man, villages would leave bowls of water out on their porches every night for the Faye to consume.

Reason being if they failed to do this, the Faye would silently come into their homes and steal there in their children's blood while everyone slept. It appeared to less modern people that the Faye were almost dependent on humanity to stay alive. But if virtually everyone from the older world had so much to say about these entities,

many of them claiming to have had encounters with them, them themselves should make us wonder why we apparently don't see much fay activity today. What happened? Did they just get bored of us and move on? Well, in Briggs' encyclopedia, the section on the departure of the fairies posits that since the time of Chaucer, the entire race has been in a steady decline, either refusing to interact with man or otherwise leaving to go someplace else that we know even less of. Other reasons have been given, such as our eyes being blind to their activity or senses being dulled to them, are forgetting about them leading to some kind of diminishing of their power. But with every answer, the caveat remains. Some do still linger,

and sometimes they are quite bold with us. Have you ever taken a walk alone in the woods? Maybe there's a small cluster of pines behind your house that's just big enough to feel infinite when you stand in the middle of it. You know that you're never more than a couple of miles from all the greatest creature comforts of the modern world, things like Burger King and Starbucks and gas station hot dogs. But when you stand there, alone and surrounded by trees on all sides, something in you seems to forget this fact, for better or worse. It's undeniable that the forest has its own feel. It is an other sort of place, different from a grassy hill in the middle of nowhere, different from the Martian deserts of Utah where the sky is vast, and you can't

see a soul anywhere on the horizon. Different from the tidy suburbs or the crowded city or even the city park. Maybe the only thing akin to it is the feeling you get when you're swimming in the ocean and make the mistake of thinking about, well, the ocean for a bit too long. You suddenly feel like an intruder, like you don't belong no matter how experienced you are, or at least this is the case with some places. Why not all of them? If you enter a wood alone, alone, and you're not, and you enter a wood, and at night the strange, uncanny sense multiplies. Darkness has a way of shifting things around and disorienting the most well-known bits of our lives.

Navigating in the darkness is like staring at a person's face upside down. Things just don't look right. Darkness, I'm sure we all know, can turn the most familiar and mundane neighborhood of trees into an alien world simply by making things dimmer. It's incredible.

In 1995, there was a man named Bill Rousseau who re-learned this lesson with unfortunate force. You see, Bill was a welder at a manufacturing plant in his town, one of those industrious towns whose beating heart of production is so easy to forget. He was getting a bit older at this time and only had six years left of work before he could retire. One could say it was a period of coasting through life for Bill. One wouldn't be wrong. The only real downside was that the company had him working a sort of swing shift.

Instead of going in at 9 a.m., like he had always done, he would roll into work at about 3 p.m. and then work until midnight. Now, this wouldn't have been such a pill if it had just been Bill who had to adjust and nobody or nothing else. But that wasn't the case. Bill had a dog. Samantha was a German shepherd mix, with about a half dozen other breeds demonstrated on her coarse fur. She'd been Bill's loyal friend for nearly a decade. She was a dang good dog, but she counted on Bill. to go on long walks with her every single day at the same time. If she didn't get her scheduled walk, she got really fussy.

All this is to say, the first month or so of swing shift, was less than perfect. Samantha didn't want to change her walk time. Bill wasn't always excited to go walk around for a few miles when he got home at midnight, but once the habits had kicked in for the both of them, all was well again. In fact, Bill started to really like his nighttime walks. Everything was quiet. He found himself able to think with a clarity the day. just didn't provide. On the fateful night, Bill got home like usual and leashed Samantha up.

Normally, they followed a well-lit path down sidewalks and side streets that eventually ended in the town center. From there, they would turn around and retrace their trail home. But on this night, Bill wanted to change. He wanted to try more of a looping route. So, instead of going out the front door, he led Sam out the back, through the gate of his backyard fence, and into some woods behind his house that separated their subdivision from the next one over. He wanted something new and he got what he paid for. The woods were far darker and even more lonesome than the sidewalks and roads. They somehow were less quiet though.

Cicadas and owls and all manner of other critters Bill didn't know of were going about their lives when Bill and Sam entered their home and they weren't going to stop for him. Nonetheless, Samantha seemed very pleased with this new place and so Bill committed and went further in. After a half mile or so, he looked ahead and could see the faint orange glow of a street light in the distance. They went towards it and found their woodland path crossed a quiet side road at that point. The light would surely serve as a nice landmark in the future. But right as they stepped out of the trees and onto the road's grassy ditch, Samantha started acting strange. She was pointing like a statue towards the lamp and the thick shrubs connected to the woods that were collected at

its base. The dog was shaking and whining slightly. Bill figured it to be a squirrel or a possum that Sam was smelling. He called her to heal and yanked on the leash, but she didn't budge. He pulled harder, but she strained to stay exactly where she was. When she stumbled to the side due to Bill's pull, her head didn't move from where it was pointed. She didn't even take the time to get her footing back. She just landed where she was, planted herself there, and refused to yield. The shaking got worse. Once Samantha looked back at Bill with eyes that were neither aggressive nor angry nor excited, they were frightened. Though her body was as rigid as the post it faced, her face was painted with anxiety,

as of silently begging for help from her master. As Bill kept wrestling Sam and encouraging her to follow, he started to hear a faint noise. It was high like a dog whistle, but somehow soft like any old breeze. It was choppy and inconsistent, but it wouldn't fully go away. way. The little wine grew into a cold and piercing hiss that slightly stung Bill's ears. It kept making the same four sounds over and over with mechanical timing. Ewa-choo, tear. He-watch you, dear. In the intervening seconds, Samantha had somehow grown more rigid despite also shaking much more uncontrollably. Bill squinted his eyes and stared all

around the street light, but the warm circle of light over the road was of no use. For a few more minutes, this continued. The sound would come, Samantha would shake and whine, Bill would stare, and nothing would come of any of it. Finally, just as Bill was ready to brush the whole thing off and pick up Samantha to move on if he had to, a little figure stepped out into the center of the light's beam. This creature was small, no more than four feet high, according to Bill, and was covered completely in thick hair. It was bipedal with a pot belly. It wore no clothes. Bill says it couldn't have weighed more than a hundred pounds soaking wet. It just stood there and set its eyes on the man and his dog. The revelation of the creature set both Bill and Samantha completely still.

Neither of them moved a muscle or made a sound. It was as though some long-forgotten instinct had roared to life from deep inside their hearts, an instinct with a single message flashing in bright neon, tread carefully. After a moment of silence, the little creature started to repeat the same sounds Bill had been hearing before. E was you dear. A sudden wave of unendurable dread overwhelmed Bill. He was terrified. He finally understood why Samantha had been so difficult. This thing that stood before them wasn't right.

The creature kept repeating the sounds and then began to raise its arms in a kind of unsettling, beckoning gesture, like it clearly wanted Bill and Sam to follow it somewhere. Clouds covered the moon, and the world grew yet more ominous. Eventually Bill's courage found a hold and forced him into action. He still could not move, but he started trying to ask the creature questions. His voice was nervous and cracking, but he finally spoke up. Who are you? Do you need help? Are you hurt?

The creature lowered its arms and engaged once more in its lifeless stare at the walkers. A long pause was followed only by the same sounds. E watch you here. And for some reason, this was the nail in the coffin of Bill and Sam's stillness. They whipped around and ran for home. The dark and looming forest was no match for their urgent panic, and before long, Bill through the fence gate shut behind them and then slammed and locked his house's back door. Samantha fell asleep soon thereafter, but Bill could not allow himself the same rest.

He brewed coffee and drank, desperately trying to stay awake and on guard. All night the sounds echoed in his mind. He thought that if he could just know what the thing was saying, he might feel some kind of closure and security about it all. The hours wore on and the dark sky gave way to a pale blue before the first rays of the warm sun started to shine. Bill finally had it. It wasn't some strange new language.

The creature was trying to speak English. We want you. Come here. Welcome back, everyone, to Haunted Cosmos, Season 3, Episode 2. Brian, what is up? Man, I am just shaking over here from that last story. I recall, the first time I heard that story, I was living in a different house, and we had like an unfinished basement,

and I was walking on the treadmill down there. and it was way out in the dim corner of the treadmill, and I was like, the pot-bellied creature's here. It's here. The hobgob ones here. I was at school, and I was walking on the university campus back home. It was like a rainy day. Oh, dude.

And it was evening. And I was like, this is such a mistake. It's over. It's over. What a great story. I'm going to be taken to Fairyland. I know. Most of the time, growing up, I thought Fairyland was like either a good place or like a

kind of, you know, I don't know, like Elton John kind of place. It's a shame that the word fairy has been so sullied in our modern world. It really has. It really has. It really has. I mean, geez. Well, hey, welcome back to the show. Yeah. After that 35 minute cold open. Yeah, I say welcome back. You've been here for 30. You've been here for half an hour. Welcome to the middle of the show. When we say cold open, what we mean is, A chapter of a book, and then... 40% of the show. And then a little bit of banter and then some more of...

It's how we roll. Yeah, it is. Everyone knows the deal. Guys, before we jump into fairies, and this is an episode I've been anticipating for months now. This is... No, honestly, I've been thinking about this since before we started Hanuk Cosmos. Oh, yeah.

And I really hope that all of the thought comes out. Because it is a topic that really excites both... I'm fascinated by this topic. But before we show you that, guys, you need to come to a conference. Yep. New Christen Press Conference. June 6th. June 6th, 2024. Who all's going to be there? We're going to have Dr. Joe Rigney, Stephen Wolfe, myself, Ben and I are going to be doing a live Haunted Cosmos show. That's right. Pilinging kind of a new idea that we have for a live show model. Like a live performance.

Yep. Of an actual episode. So we got J. Chay Dave. Joel Webbin. You guys don't know what that means. His name is Jay Chase Davis. Yeah, we call him J.C. Day. Because how could you not? Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it's going to. be great. And we've got, it's, it's, there's time. There's still time. Yeah. And if you actually, if you're a patron of the show, yeah, there's a discount. First of all, become a patron and you get a 10% discount to the conference. But also, if you get there early enough on Thursday, we're going to do a Chili's lunch meetup. Oh yeah. For the Hanna Cosmos patrons. Yeah. So if that interests you, I mean, what more could you possibly? First of all, Chili's. Dude, it's no big deal. Just buy a plane ticket.

Triple dipper. Like, come across the Utah. Like, and you get to go to Chicago. Like, and you get to go to Chili's and like we're not paying. I want to make that clear. We're not paying for the lunch, but we will be there paying for ourselves. Like we're doing, like the show is doing well, but not that well. Right. It's not like buy a whole Chili's. I mean, Chili's is like three Michelin star. So yeah, so we can't afford that. And you guys, you should be on Patreon anyway, because Patreon number one, it keeps us making this show. Um, it Ben works full time for Haunted Cosmos. We're looking to hire other roles that help us with production and, um, which, helps us have more time to focus on the really core things with research and writing and

preparing and all of that. On top of that, though, every week. Some of the best dusty tomes, yeah, I think, in my humble opinion, have been released recently. Like, there's Hone Cosmos, and then I'm making sure I'm still on the frame for the YouTubers. Yeah, there you go. And then there's the dusty tone. And it's under it. But not far under it. Right. No, it's really good. It's like 45 minutes scripted for the most of the most of it. most part solo show with Ben telling you story. Some of the recent ones that he's released as we record this episode, a multi-parter on one of the wildest alien. And when I say alien, I mean demon abduction stories of all time. And if you're not convinced on that, become a patron and

listen to these. Just listen to this story. Because it's crazy. There's an unsettling story about a creepy elevator. Yeah. It really happened. The elevator game. And then the valley of headless men. Yeah. Which if there's any, I know there's, I know we have some Mr. Ballin fans. Yeah. That are also fans of our show. Yeah. Maybe you're familiar with that. Okay, there's no harm in hearing it again. Take the like button over, take Mr. Bowen's like button on a date to Hanukos's Patreon. And then when you've got it there and it feels safe, you murder it.

Okay. The like button. Okay. By smashing it. See, I was going to say you take the like button on a date to the Valley of Headless Men and then you abandon it when the white giant people show up. when they get here. I'm just going to leave it there. Let's just leave it at that.

But anyway, the patron support makes the show possible. We're very grateful to all the patrons. Thank you. Thank you, seriously. And speaking of Patreon, we are going to be giving away like five copies of a great little book that we used and referenced in this show already.

The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fons, and Fairies. What a great title. The first time I heard that title, I was like, I need it immediately. It actually is a, it's, been named like one of the greatest books of English folklore heritage. And it was written by Robert Kirk, who we talked about in the cold open, that pastor. We're going to pick five random people who sign up for Patreon today, which I mean the day this episode goes live, which should be March 20th,

20th, 2024. Let me make sure that's right. I believe that Ben researched that. March 20th, 24, year of our lord. And we're going to pick five people at random. You have to sign up for any tier of Patreon that day. Yep. And then we're going to contact you via the messaging there and send you a free. We'll pay shipping everything, send it to you for free. We'll also be picking some existing patrons. We take care of our existing patrons, too. Yeah, yeah. Which each of these give-ways. We always make sure we do something great for our existing guys, guys and gals.

Again, thank you guys for making us a top 1,000, top 700 Patreon out of more than a quarter million. So we don't take that lightly. And lastly, do, we want to say thank you for like more than 5,000, five-star reviews across all platforms now. Oh, I didn't know that. And just say, say, go, if you haven't already. go leave a quick, like your most heartfelt, genuine, soul-stirring, only five-stars review. Yeah. Yeah. And hey, you know what? Shout out to the one-star reviews, too. Really appreciate you guys. You know, in your own way, keep the lights on.

These guys are, what heretics? Or what's the other one's like? I hate their face. Oh, they, no, one guy said that we're, yeah, like false teacher heretics. And the other one said, can't stand all of the 13-year-old girlish banter that it happens between these guys. Once again, I won't apologize for having friends. No. So, come for the fairies, stay for the 13-year-old girl ban. God, that's so true. All right, that's enough housekeeping here.

Let's talk about this cold open. What do we think about the Faye, the fairies? Let's digest a little bit. Because there was quite a bit there in that cold open. Yeah, a lot. And in my mind just goes in a million directions when I hear those times. The thing that compels me most about the Faye is not, so much that I, you know, I haven't had any experiences necessarily. Yeah. Um, that are overt.

But what, what shocked me, especially reading Lewis and the discarded image, was that everybody had a category for it. And so that just got me thinking, why is that, you know? And also, uh, are there any like Venn diagram type overlapping of categories where the Muslims would say the gin, but they essentially, the gen act in the exact same way as the fairies. Right. Uh, to, to the Europeans and the Englishmen. So we don't want to get like bogged down in terms and think that it's such a rigid category. And so that then led us to say like,

okay, well, what explanations are we comfortable with potentially for this? The ones that I'm not comfortable with, which are probably easier to talk about. Yeah. Are like the demoted angel. Yeah, that's just... They didn't rebel, but they also left heaven.

It's very like Tolkien with the Aynor and became the Valar. But overall, like, in the real world, that seems nonsense. Yeah, it doesn't seem to cohere. So there's the way that we're, sometimes you're looking at a question and saying, okay, what does the Bible actually teach? And then there's, you develop, but it doesn't, the Bible does not talk about everything. Right, exactly.

There's stuff that the Bible doesn't concern itself with. So then you can ask, what would the Bible forbid us to believe? Like, what would not be consistent with the teaching of Scripture on a topic? And that's where I, I think some of that kind of thinking to me begins to veer into the, I don't know if that's consistent. Yeah, exactly. With the tale that we're told in scripture about the angels. It doesn't seem allowable, given the nature of what we do know about angels. And then the other one that I really don't like is the dead human souls.

The purgatorial. Yeah, it's very purgatorial. Again, and the reason I don't like it is because we just don't have, actually we have explicit reasons not to think that right about human souls about human souls we know what happens to the human soul when when it dies it either departs to be with the lord or it goes to shield to await the pains of hellfire yeah those are the two choices and so this third category that historically people have tried to shoehorn in yeah um that a lot of christians have fallen pray to as well and some still do today just seems like it has no warrant whatsoever and there's nothing binding in

nature that would compel me to think like, oh, yeah, sure, that's there. Yeah, that's a reasonable category. We know about spirits that wander the earth and the waterless places and those are the demonic spirits. We know about that. And so I think we can say on the other side that the Puritans view, again, this is like the Haunted Cosmos trope where there's literally a Facebook page that someone made just so they could tag it that says Haunted Cosmos has investigated this subject and determine that it was demons. Yeah, yeah. Fair enough.

I will say that that is certainly a possibility. Yeah, yeah. It's certainly a possibility. It's an obvious possibility. I think we can both agree, though, Ben, that one thing that's not a possibility is that there's no such thing as fairies. Yeah, 100%. If you're a dullard and you're a modernist, like, copium, you know, inhaler, then you're

not going to think fairies are real. But that seems, I'm at the point now where I can say, like, no, I believe that there exist some being that people have thought are fairies. Yeah. Whether or not calling them that is right. Whether it's demons or something else. Yeah, exactly. To me, it's whether it's demons or something else.

Yeah. They're real. They're real. Next thing you're going to tell me that the Lochness monster of Bigfoot aren't real. Right. And I would never say that. Because, well, here's the thing. Speaking of Bigfoot.

Brian, you know how sometimes you wake up in the morning? Yeah. Hopefully everybody does that. Sure, maybe. 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 Rail. railroad, helping the effort to end child trafficking. Okay, wait, I actually have heard of Squirley

Joe's coffee, and they are really great. They make it super easy to order exactly what you want. If you go to www.squarelyjo's.com. That's www.squarelyjo'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.squarelyjo's.com or use the link in the description below. Squirley Joe's coffee, share coffee, serve humbly, live faithfully. Go on. We'll get into it. Go on. We will get into it. But one of the things that these fairyland stories get me thinking about are, what was the guy's name, Robert Osmond? Yeah, it was Robert Osmond. Robert Osmond or Osmond, yeah. Who we talked about in our season two, one of the Bigfoot episodes of season two, where he was

first one, yeah. Kidnapped by a big foot for several days. And then just hung out with its family. And it ate as like snuff. Yeah. And threw up. Yeah. And but like he was fed leaves that tasted good.

Yeah. And the Bigfoot mom was like folding clothes. You know? And eventually he escapes. She's like Bigfoot daughter. The floor is not a hamper. Right. Yeah.

I don't. But that that reminds me of a fairyland type story. It really does. Where maybe they were keeping him for some reason. The fairy is never. Well, yeah. I'm about to talk very, like, matter-of-factly. Like, the fairies never.

All of the qualifiers are there. The fairies never take a person without a reason. Mm-hmm. And we don't know of any reason with Robert Osman, you know, but maybe he just wasn't privy to it. Maybe they did have a reason. Yeah, maybe he offended them. It's like, obviously, the fairies never takes them without a reason.

He said nonchalantly. Yeah. Well, I said, all the qualifiers were there. He said the qualifiers. To me, one of the most compelling ideas about the fairies, is like, okay, maybe they're demons, and that's fine. Really links with some of the stories that I love. Because clearly Lewis picked up on this.

And I also, actually, as we're reading, I made another connection that obviously, Andy Wilson, in his 100-Cubbered series, picked up on it. And let me start there. Because he has, 100-Cubboards is a story about essentially a child who comes from a different world threw into our own as an orphan and grows up there and doesn't realize he's from the other world.

And then he goes back and he discovers that there's this world of the fay. It's literally the farin. Okay. And it's called the farin. I mean, Andy Wilson is not trying to hide this at all. But one of the themes of the story is that his father, Mordecai, was, and this is like spoilers, left and right. Literally skip it if you're reading the book or something.

But Mordecai, the father, is trapped and has been lost in a fairy mound for years. And his grandmother had been, had wandered out her spirit to try and find him and had gone insane, basically. She wandered too far and her spirit was separated from her body. And so she was kind of like half there, half of the spirit world. But what happens is that at his christening, at his baptism, Henry, the boy from the other world, all of a sudden realizes somehow that he's holding a knife in his hand and he has to. throw it and he throws the knife and it embeds itself in the mantle over the door at his christening and his father is released from the farren that is literally Robert Kirk I did not make this connection literally through editing until we were telling the story here wow andy wilson is a

fairy enjoyer yeah he's clearly like knows this story shout out shout out to Nate the other one though um that I obviously this is an obvious one I love this though I'm just I just finished the line in the wish in the wardrobe, reading it out loud to some of my younger children who haven't heard it out loud yet. I'm proud to say that I got to participate in some, you did. And one night of that. You read a chapter or two, right? Well, Brian and Lexi went on a date. Yeah, that was awesome. Thank you. And I was actually kind of like sad that I missed it, even though I've read the line words and order. Probably 50 times. It's when they finally got to see that last land. I was like, let's go. This is one of the best part. We're reading in

publication order, which is the correct order. Right. So the next book is Prince Caspian. And in Prince Caspian, you have this story that Lewis tells where the original, the original men who peopled Narnia had been driven out and lost and replaced by the Telmarines, who were a people that actually also came into that world from Mars. But they were a people who were totally closed to the world of the supernatural and the preternatural. And so all of the river daughters and all the spirits of the trees and all of old Narnia, the talking beasts, were suppressed and killed and died off and went into hiding or went into deep hibernation. One of the themes of the stories is it's basically Lewis's telling of the,

retreat of the Faye, the Faye people, and his, they're reawakening. When Aslan comes back in and he reawakens the trees, he reawakens the river. And he dances with the dryads. In the naiads. And Bacchus shows up and all these greening gods and he's a good guy, but he's kind of like, irresponsible a little bit. So Lewis is like, I shouldn't have been, it felt safe around him if Aslan had not been there. You know, so these stories, they should.

show Clive's hand a little bit and Nate Wilson's hand a little bit. I don't know if Indie Wilson really literally believes this or not or what, you know, C.S. Lewis, I think, would say, we don't know for certain. But it tips their hand that it seems to me that stories like this show a world where the fairy, the fairy world is a real spiritual thing that was created by God to govern over natural processes. And that some of them did fall and were tricksters to, to varying degrees. Yeah. And some of them did not. And so you would have these, the wood that was full of light and joy.

And then you would have the, the wood like the Japan suicide forest we've talked about. Yeah. Where it's dark and people go in there, they feel a spiritual oppression. And I think Lewis would say, and we would entertain the idea. Right. Maybe that's not just the weather. Right. Or the geography or the trees.

Maybe it's, maybe there's something there. Maybe God, what if God really did order? nature through mediating governors. Well, you also see, I'm thinking of this right now. I mean, while we're just totally blowing the minds of... That is, that's where I land with the Faye. Yeah. Is, and I based it off of some scholastic beliefs of how there's intelligences guiding

the stars and how the planets have intelligences that govern. They don't, they don't, well, I'm not sold on whether or not they influence man in some way, although the argument could be made from the moon that's pretty strong. Are you a cancer? Or are you a capricorn? I'm a capricorn. Yeah. Dude, January.

Oh, that's right. We're both capricorn. Yeah, we're born under the influence of Saturn, by the way. The third house. Yeah. We're like, we just became like, we're not astrologist. I look this up one time. This is not true.

Like, we're not. I'm not an astrologer. But what I'm trying to say is, so the medieval belief that there was a, uh, uh, uh, uh, a intelligences of some spiritual type that were, we would think of them as angelic. Yeah. Because they were benign and they were spiritual. And they were servants and they were servants. And they governed the orbits of the stars, their rotation, the planets and their trajectories and stuff.

And it's just not a far stretch from there to say that there is some preternatural category on the earth that does the same thing for things like rivers and mountains and trees and forests and oceans and all that stuff. Yeah, there's just an hierarchy of beings that we're not necessary. It's apparently not our business to know everything about. Right. That God created as servants of his world. And the thing is, this is not really that far, because most people would say, well, the demon view is not out there at all. It's just we, demons mess with stuff, they're tricksters, they do whatever. It's really not that categorically different to conceive of the possibility of governing, mediatorial governing of God through servants that he created for that purpose.

Well, you even see there are some examples in scripture. People might think these are loose connections, but I really don't think they are at all. So in Exodus, when God is judging Egypt, the first plague is blood in the Nile. He turns the water to blood. And there was the Nile God, the God of the Nile overflow, who kept, basically was the one that the Egyptians depended on to give them a good crop yield. And so there we have an explicit example of it, because, the plagues are all judgments on Egypt's gods. There we have an explicit example of God judging a false god, a demonic entity,

who is over a river, who's in charge of a river. We also have Mount Hermann. And it's like filling the river with her blood. Exactly. He kills the god or the goddess. I believe it's a male. Yeah, I'm a demon. And literally its blood fills the river.

So instead of the water, it becomes the blood. Yeah. And then also, even with Mount Hermann, you have the same kind of type going on where it's a demonic mountain where at its base, rampant pagan worship takes place. Many of the tribes of Israel become notorious for participating in this horrible worship that happens in the northern lands. And then you have Christ performing his transfiguration most likely on top of Mount Herman. And so it's this reclaiming, this slaying of the demon of the mountain, these gods of the mountain. these gods of the mountain. And Christ saying,

no, this mountain, just like everything else, belongs to me, just like he showed in the Exodus. But this whole trope is also really prevalent. No one's going to be surprised with me saying this.

And Tolkien. Wait a second. I feel like we passed over this. But isn't it also the case that the god of the Nile or one of the gods that is judged is the god of sorcery? Yeah, so that's the second plague,

the frogs. The frogs. Yep. Is the god of sorcery. Yes. She's the goddess of fertility. Because when the Nile banks would flood, the frogs would leave their eggs further up. So when people saw frogs closer to their homes, it would be a sign of, oh, the harvest is coming.

Our crops are going to do great. Praise the gods. And they would see a bunch of frogs. And so they would thought, oh, the frog is like a symbol of fertility. So the fertility goddess, one of her sub-rolls was goddess of sorcery and necrimency as well. And then when God... Finish it. Yeah.

Finish it. It's so cool. It is great. It's amazing. Like the stories that God writes are just so entertaining and wonderful. But when God judges Egypt by sending the frogs... Basically, I have taken mastery over this God's domain. Right.

Right. And turned the blessing of that God... Into a curse. So you thought you liked a bunch of frogs? You thought you liked Nile? Blood. You thought you liked the frogs because it brought you great crops? Now they're going to be in your head.

Now they're going to destroy you. And it's... And it's a bunch of... interesting that explicitly mentions that it will be in their bed. And so he turns the blessing into a curse. And then the magicians are able to do that. They're able to do what Moses was able to do. But then they're not able to do anything after that. So once the goddess of sorcery has been judged and killed, the magicians are powerless. So they're doing miracle for miracle, sign for sign. God kills their god of sorcery. It's one of my favorite things. And then all of a sudden,

they're frantic and they're like, we can't do it anymore. They can't do it anymore. We can't replicate anymore. Their powers. The stuff that used to work isn't working anymore. And you go, why? I'm sorry. Got chained up your demon goddess of sorcery has been killed. Exactly.

Exactly. Dude. That was a really, it's hard to high five given our positions. If you're listening and not watching, we just right now. But anyway, I just couldn't let you pass over that without noting that part of the story in Egypt. But you were getting into Tolkien now. Yeah. So Tolkien, as one does.

As one does, we have to cover all the bases. Lewis is Tolkien. Yeah. No, I mean, all of Tolkien's story, his whole legendarium is preternatural. You have Old Man Willow in the Lord of the Rings. Even in The Hobbit, you have like Bayor, you know, this kind of preternatural bear who's kind of a good guy, but also kind of scary. But before that, Tolkien's foundation of mythology is the Silmarillion and the Book of Lost Tales, which was the infant version of the Silmarillion. And the whole, I mean, the whole presupposition of Tolkien's world is that the lonely island where the elves were able to go and find reprieve from the world in has been lost. And there's this sailor, this mariner who's named Ariel who finds it.

And he is an Englishman living more in our time. And he sits before these elves who literally Tolkien calls the fe or the gnomes. They're like a high, a high fairy type motif, which we talked about in the cold open. And he hears the real history of England, Middle Earth. And he hears about how the gods came and they separated the lands and then the lamps and then the trees. And then Melkor was like a fay who turned bad. But they were all over natural processes. And then the elves came and then they went away with the diminishing of them.

Like all of this is just steeped in this underlying assumption about the world, which is, what if there's a category that's a little less tidy? Yeah. What if there's a fairy? What if there's some preternatural governors of natural processes that we are sometimes made aware of in a way that makes us very uncomfortable? Yeah. And we know that angels, from our angel episode,

we know that angels proper do interact with the physical and natural world in terms of pouring out natural disaster and judgment. So this idea, in our minds a lot of time, we flatten everything out. so it's just world and then God. And what we see in Scripture, though, is actually a complex interaction of God ruling his world through mediators. Means and mediators.

Through imagers and rulers in the heavenly places. And also man as his imager and vicegerent on earth. And so that's actually our whole end is man who is actually then to judge the angels by the time we're the hobbits. We're the ones who come to full ability to self-refer. rule and govern, not self-rule autonomously from God, but to become truly renovated human beings in the image of the God man, partakers of the divine nature like Second Peter. One talks about who are not becoming God, but who are becoming conform to the image of the new humanity in Christ. Yeah. And so this is a motif that we shouldn't be uncomfortable with. What we've done, though,

in modernity, and this was what Lewis was riffing off obviously when he said, in your world, you know, son, that's just what stars are made of, not what they are. Right. We tend to reduce everything to its physical components and it's the physical processes that govern it and assume that we have then seen everything. Not having humility to recognize that there are actually aspects of the world that are not even they're opaque to our scientific investigation because of the nature of their being. Science is a methodology that's good and proper and glorious and man was supposed to

discover and use it. But it definitionally has a boundary at the physical world. It cannot investigate things beyond that boundary because it deals with repeatable, observable phenomena in the natural world. So just because you've explained an electron does not mean that you understand everything about it. Well, yeah, just because you've observed an electron's spin, that now means you can't know where it is. Like this is the thing is when you when you boil things down, you say this a lot. And I think it's the perfect way to describe it, that all of creation is a tapestry where visible and invisible, more or less, are woven together. And if you pull on the one, you necessarily are tugging on the other. Tugging on both.

And so all that we're saying is that we know that God loves to send ministering angels to exercise his providential decree over the earth. We see this laced in scripture. Yeah. And so we're saying, well, what if there's just one that we haven't thought as much of yet? And that is that if you tug on the natural river, you're also pulling on the supernatural governor of that river. Yeah. Or if you see the sun rising up in the east and then setting in the west, there's also some invisible governor of that thing. I mean, we know that the stars are there to govern the times and the seasons and the days.

The L-deal, I mean. Exactly. I could have said it better myself. The O-Yarsa. I mean, we're not, we're not dullards. No, it's like the NICE, though, wants you to boil everything down to the appearance of the physical, to the appearance of rationalism and materialism. But you know what it's always, if you just peel the layer back from the rationalism and materialism,

what's under it is always occultism. Yeah. One layer down, you always feel. find under materialism, occultism, demon worship, false gods, the old gods are always right there underneath the surface. And what we're saying is that what if in creation, just underneath the surface of some of these other things, there are not fallen things too. Yeah, exactly. They're a real, you know, I don't want to meet it to death, but it's a new thought, I think, for a lot of people. Yeah, it was a new thought for me. But I find it really compelling.

Should we? Yeah, go ahead. No, no, no. I was just going to say, and, in all of it genuinely, like we joke a lot, but it's important in these areas to recognize the limits of our uncertainty, where it's possible to think and ponder a thing, and we ought to do that, and then come to some theory or conjecture and test it against your existing framework of knowledge and what you know to be certain from scripture,

and then to say, that could be. Yeah, exactly. And you're not saying that is, certainly. So we joke, but I'm genuinely saying in this that I do think that these stories are true, that people have seen and interacted, and then other people make stuff up based on the folklore and blah, blah, blah. That happens with everything that humans interact with. Lies get twisted with the truth.

However, in this category, I think it's safe to say that it's either some kind of demonic phenomenon, maybe the Puritans were right, or I'm compelled by this other theory. Yep. That is a possibility. And I would say part of why I like this, even for myself, is because I'm a Western man. I'm tempted to think Western thoughts, which tends to be more systematized, more rigid, more bullet point, and more certain. And I think that trying to, however loosely, hold these possibilities in your head and let them help you develop a framework for how the world actually is and how creation actually. is. Just like what Lewis said, it introduces just a little bit of untidiness that keeps you on your toes

and it helps you love the world that God originally said was very good. And the world that he is redeeming and the world that he has won. And so that's the last thing. Just even with Western tendencies, we can be very uncomfortable with this kind of idea. And I don't think that's always helpful. I think this is an example where it isn't helpful. It isn't helpful. to dismiss it outright. Yeah, yeah, that's all. Well, let's talk about another aspect we've mentioned before of this phenomenon

in the changeling. Yeah. And talk a little bit about, because this is a theme that's woven throughout much of the fairy or fay folklore is this idea of a nefarious interest in children, in innocence and blood and things like that. So, you know, Ben, why don't you take us

into this story of the changeling? I would love to. If one travels to the very northern tip of the United Kingdom's mainland, and gazes out into the cold, wind-torn ocean. He'll see other rocky anchors of land peppering the water and defying the waves. But even many more leagues beyond these small islets

lies the very northernmost section of Scotland, a region called Shetland. It's difficult to live in Shetland. The strong sun, when it does seldom come out, certainly mixes with the ocean spray to form a green and tranquil utopia every once in a while. But for the super majority of the year, it's hard living in this part of the world.

wind whips with a near constant attack that goes mostly unabated in the rolling grasslands storms can appear as if out of nowhere and can threaten to ruin homes in even entire cities close to the coast that don't have the proper measures put in place to withstand them and due to the remoteness and hardened landscape not much industry apart from farming

can be reasonably expected to thrive here even the farming is hard despite these things though Shetland has been the home of many people for a very long time. And a part of that distant history, the owner of a little croft of land rejoiced with his wife

over the birth of their first child. The baby was healthy. The mother was settling into motherhood with a grace that sang like songbirds in the heart of her husband. And the whole neighborhood doted on them constantly in those early days, as if everyone was a bit more complete

now that the child had finally arrived. However, in addition to this time of rest and celebration, much work still needed to be done by the crofter. This was a day long before any such thing like paid maternity or paternity leave. So in between, staring at his new child with joy and giggling with uncontrollable mirth at the sight of its little feet kicking as it nursed at its mother's breast, he would sneak away into the fields to tend to his crops and livestock.

During one of these trips into the fields, the crofter began hearing a slight knocking sound that seemed to come from nowhere and, of course, everywhere. He would inspect the stalks of corn and hear the knocking. He would slaughter a chicken and hear the knocking. Each time this happened, he tried clearing his ears out to see if that would solve it. It seemed to him like the sound was more than likely, not even really there, but with some figment of his imagination or a quick trick of the wind. But wind or not, it persisted.

The knocking refused to quit. Finally, after some days of hearing the sound faintly, and as he was folding the sheep from one pin to another from the moment, better grazing, the knock became no longer faint but loud and obvious. The crofter was not tricked anymore into guessing where it might be coming from. It was clear now. The knocking, which now resounded as one beating against a door ensuing for entry, was coming from under his feet. It was a knocking from underground. He stammered in his place and tried searching for a hidden door covered in moss that led to an unknown bunker beneath his sheep's fold, but of course nothing could be found. Here the

Crofter wisened up to what was likely going on. You see, it was well known in his day that the Fay peoples dwelt as little semi-spirit folk beneath the downs and knolls of Shetland. They were like unto the petty dwarves of myth and legend and behavior and stature, only they were real. Given the recent arrival of his firstborn child and the fairer complexion that child possessed, that was undeniable to all, the Crofter started suspecting the Fay of a malicious intent to steal the child away. As he trudged back to his cottage to attend to his family and see to their safety, he resolved to fortify their home and prepare for the suspected attack as best he could. But before he made it out of the sheepfold, his suspicions were fully confirmed

when he heard a voice that slipped like mist between the wind hissed three times at him. Mind the crooked finger. His wife, due to some birth defect, had a double-jointed finger that often turned crooked. He knew now it would not be. the child they would try to take, but his wife instead. After all, the fairies often covet the fertility of human women and require them as surrogates for their own racist survival. The crofter knew just what to do. He quickly paced to the house, lit a candle, unsheathed a knife which he held in one hand and open a Bible to hold in the other. After this was done, and in the presence of a handful of

admiring neighbors. A loud clamor arose in the shed that shared a wall with the den of his home. The noise was likened to a great crowd of people, committing violence against the room they were in, and even it seemed one another. The good man put the handle of the knife in his mouth such that the blade stuck straight out in front of him, caught up the candle and opened the Bible in either hand and charged headlong out of the house and into the shed. The neighbors, inspired by his courage, followed him as support. Once the door to the shed was opened, he stepped in and threw the Bible

to the center floor of the room. This sent the Faye wailing and tearing at themselves all the more before fleeing the property under the agony of having contacted holiness without themselves being clean. In their wake, the crofter found an intricately

and masterfully carved wooden stock of his wife on the ground. This, he knew well, was what they would have certainly replaced her with. For fairies, using their powerful magic glamour, can animate the dolls of real people for a little while to make their escape. Once the glamour runs its course and the wooden carving is seen for what it is, it's then too late. The man had narrowly escaped a sorrowful demise to his love. For years after that day, his wife used part of their wooden stock as a cutting board in her own kitchen.

But not all tales of changeling tragedies are so black and white. Some challenge our notion of siphoning all-fay away into a single category of good or bad. If we're to believe the stories, it seems that some of them, much like us, are often at the mercies of the wiles of the more wicked and matured of their own kind. One of the ancient legends of Ireland is that of a daring attack by fairies on the newly born child of a first-time mother. The fresh family of three were asleep in one of the bedrooms of their quaint home. It was deep into the night, when suddenly their door burst open with her.

a great crash. All three awoke with a start. The father stood up. The wife could hardly breathe from the shock, and the baby started to let out a tired and fussy cry. Into this audience walked a tall and very dark man. He was followed by an old hag witch who carried a scrawny, wrinkly, sickly, and hairy child in her arms. The father of the healthy baby mounted an aggressive and valiant resistance to the swapping of these children, but it was ultimately done in vain. in the fray the man's single candle had been blown out by the swift turning of coats and blankets. When the candle was relit, the new parents were horrified to find their baby gone from its crib. In its place was the sickly and clear deformed fay child the old hag had been carrying.

They were now the despondent and sorrowful parents of a changeling. But in the midst of their tears, a young girl gingerly walked into the room. She wore a red tunic and hummed softly. As though these people's bedroom was an open scene in a marchion. square, the young girl started at the sight of the family and asked why they were so sad. They showed her the changeling and explained the recent fight. To their shock, the young girl burst into laughter and said in a joyful tone, this is my own child that was stolen from me tonight because my people wanted to take your beautiful baby, but I'd rather have mine.

If you let me take him, I will tell you how to get your child back. With hope rekindled in their hearts, the couple eagerly agreed to these terms and listened close while the young Faye explained what they must do. The next day, the couple hiked to the small grassy hill that marked the local entrance to fairyland and started to burn three sheaves of dried out wheat, one by one on its summit. As each sheave burned, they cried out in loud and angry voices, but they would not hesitate to burn the entire hill down if the fairies did not return their child before the third sheep was snuffed to ash.

The Faye relented and exiting the mound with downcast postures and faces. the old man in black and his hag companion returned the lovely and plump little child to the young parents. There were many reasons that were given for the theft of human children or full-grown adults by the fay. Some said they needed real souls of real men to pay a tithe to the devil for their ongoing power and prosperity. Some claims that their slow birth rates required

the more fertile and quickly weaned daughters and sons of men. Still others said that in pure selfishness that was free of all malice and ill will, the humans were taken away for the love of their beauty and vitality. But in any case, the fairies would always be kind, or not so kind, enough to leave a replacement for the human behind them,

a changeling, a wooden carving endowed with brief life, or a sickly fairy doomed to quickly wither away in the heavy air of the visible world. Forevermore, for these souls that were taken and never returned, they would reside as captives in fairyland until the day of judgment. Wow, I mean, what a story. Two stories. First of all, I just wanted to be known that if that happens and someone tries to give me a wood wife, I'm just letting you know.

It's so over. I'm going to give you what's called a lead pillow. That didn't make sense. Dude, a knuckle sandwich. I'm going to give you what's called. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, get out of my house. Get ready to die. Get ready to meet him.

Get out of my house because I'm about to. I'm finna arranged the meeting. So, no. I read these stories and immediately thought of, do you remember in astonishing legends, which is a great podcast,

by the way, the Black Eyed Kids episode that they did, they told the story about one family who was just sitting at home one night. Mine in their business.

We all listen to the episode. They get the knock. They go to the door, black eyed kids, and they don't let them in. They're like, what? This is creepy.

All this stuff happens, whatever. The black eyed kids eventually go, away. Close the door, go back to their life. And then they get another knock. And they go to the door and they open it. And do you remember what, what's there? This like white-eyed, bright-eyed girl. Yeah. Yes. So instead of the black-eyed kids, there's this wide-eyed glowing girl. Yeah. Who's like, did you see two boys recently? Oh, well, I'm going to go get them. You won't be bothered by

them again. They're in misbehaving. Yeah. You won't see them again. It's like this. And you're like, very white-eyed fairy girl that's going to go throw the smack down on these naughty. other fairies. Well, doesn't it remind you of this, though? Like, you get the old dark man and the witch, and they're like, take this child. Here, have the trial. See?

I don't know what I'm like Chicago gangs. She? Take the child. Take the child. Take the child. And then this little girl comes in, she's like, oh, wouldn't you know it? That was mine. That hairy baby's mine, actually.

I love that baby. She's got a hairy, gross disgusting baby, first of all. But it's like this good versus bad. It's just, it's the untidiness of it all. Well, you know what they say. You know what the moderns say to this. They go, this was just the ancients and the medevils dealing with birth defects and things that they wanted to say,

like, this couldn't be possibly my real child. And it's just, you know, it's a fairy that did it. And I get it. Fair enough. I get it. Sure. I'm not saying that changeling babies, like, that you need to worry. Yeah, I don't think you do.

Okay? I do. Because my baby is the cutest in the world. Well. So you all don't need to worry. Alfred's got the Gerber baby curl right now. Ambrose has these four teeth and he looks like a beaver. Ambrose is pretty cute.

Let's just say like Ty. All right, fine. So we need to worry. No one else needs to worry. Yeah, that's true. No, I'm fine with saying that people are superstitious and people do make stuff up and whatnot. I don't necessarily know. But it is interesting that again and again in the demonic and all these things,

you see what, attack on children. attack on the image of God. It just shows you that sin and hatred of God ultimately will be expressed in hatred of his image bearers. Yeah. And so you're going to see this theme show up wherever these stories do. But regardless of birth defects or no, what do we do with stories that have more reliable record?

I think that we should just roll right in to the next story, the Green Children of Wolpet, unless you have anything else that you'd want to say. Well, I was going to say that one of the things, that we learn is like if you don't want your children to be taken by changelings, like how much more would you not want to slather them with seed oils? Oh, so true. In the form of industrial soap products that you get from big box stores. Honestly, I think that that's worse than the changeling.

Personally, it probably happens more often. It's a real bad. Let's be honest. It's an epidemic. And so you should definitely, like, this isn't an ad here. This is just like you should definitely check out Indigo Sundry Soap Company in the description. Use code Honed Cosmos, all caps. no spaces and get some of their handcrafted quality soaps from a Christian family, making,

I mean, high quality, seed oil free, phallate-free, hormone-disrupting-free, amazing soap products for your children. Guys, I can't emphasize this enough. We're not joking around. This is for the sake of your children. If you don't do this, it's not because we didn't warn you. Like right now, Indigo sundry soap company.com is on... The fairies could get your children if you don't do this.

Or just as bad. maybe they're tea. They could start voting Democrat. They get low T. They could start voting Democrat. Yeah. Okay, anyway, yeah. Let's jump into the green children of Woolpit story.

Do you want to take it, Ben? First? Yeah, I'm going to edit this out. I mean, I just finished. I'm going to edit this out. I'm going to edit it out. I'm going to edit out you saying, do you want to take it, man? Yeah.

On the 22nd of December in 1135, Stephen of Blois became the reigning monarch of England. His father, the former count of Blois, had left him a legacy in tatters, seeing as he had been labeled a coward in the Levant Holy Land during the First Crusade. Stephen, jealous for his father's honor and eager to see the family's good name maintained in history, set to work on reforming England in accordance with his own wisdom and the wisdom of his advisors. Though his attempts were noble, his reign would ultimately be remembered as a tumultuous one, tarnished by the bloodshed caused between brothers during the anarchy.

A civil war waged in England and Normandy between Stephen and his embittered cousin, Empress Matilda, of Germany. The weight of war never grew lighter for Stephen, and so much of the comparatively smaller things that happened in his realm during his reign went largely unnoticed by the king. One is forced to wonder how Stephen might have reacted to some of these forgotten things had he been blessed with peace. There is certainly one thing in particular that would have

rattled the king, most likely to his very core. In the county of Suffolk, there is a small village called Wolpit, named after it's being a place with many pits that are good for trapping wolves, whose otherwise quiet and forgetful streets were theater to one of the strangest things to ever happen in the entire 12th century. Medieval historians Ralph of Cogashall and William of Newburgh independently tell the tale of how one day during the late harvest season, a small group of villagers were helping one another bring in the sheaves when they discovered two children hiding in one of the wolf pits that lined their fields. The group of grown-ups were predictably troubled by the sight of hardly clothed

and frightened young kids holding on to one another in a trembling embrace in a dark and shallow cavern of the wood. They reached down to pull them up as quickly as they could and immediately started back in some shock of their own. The children were green. The two youths stood awkwardly before their normal audience, as their bright green pigmented skin and strange fabrics of clothing were taken in by their rescuers.

Finally, one of the adults spoke, asking if the children were okay or if they were injured. In reply, the adults got confused looks and nervous fidgeting from the children. More questions were asked. asked that went unanswered before one of the men a bit impatiently took a measured snap at the strange children, who none of them had ever met or seen before, by the way, in the hopes of eliciting some kind of response. The children both began to speak, now the boy and now the girl,

but each one's words drowned out the others. Finally, the girl, who appeared to be the older of the two, spoke calmly and clearly for the harvesters. Her language was completely unknown, foreign, unheard of. Other. The adults were now the ones standing awkwardly, not having any further idea of what to do or say or think about these things. Were they even human? Coming up empty on other better ideas, the children were ushered quietly down the streets to the home of a local knight, Richard DeColne, whose estate was very close to where they had been harvesting. Upon arrival and admittance from the night, despite his complete confusion at it all, the children were sat down at the table, where they right away proceeded to weep for many hours. After their weeping had ceased, food was set before them. But though their faces spoke loudly of their obvious hunger,

they refused to eat anything the night's servants could muster. A couple of times, probably out of pure desperation, to have something in their stomachs, one of them would try something, but would quickly gag at the smell and throw it back down. This awkward and silent back and forth of food went on for a couple of days, until finally everyone noticed the children taking them, a keen interest in some broad beans someone had brought in a bucket through the great room.

After a time of teaching the children how to actually extract the naked bean from the stalk, the children inhaled nearly all of the broad beans the night had in a single sitting. Over time, as the children grew strong and healthy again, they acclimatized themselves to the taste of more normal food. Indeed, the appetites of the older girl proved to be very strong. However, the younger one, a boy, never seemed to gain much of any liveliness. He ate very little and despite his sister no longer caring about the language barrier and instead babbling away quite frequently did not talk much, not even to his green companion.

He appeared frail and emaciated and his face wore a sullen expression of clear and sincere melancholy. After a time, it was decided that the children ought to be baptized, but the boy never made it to the font. It said that he died right before the sacrament was to take place, a budding young flower scorched by a hot sun. The girl, however, began adjusting even faster to her new home and world upon her baptism. She was taught how to speak English, was given clothes in a place on the staff of the night, Richard, and soon started to grow paler and paler of skin.

Eventually, even the most subtle hue of green could not be ascribed to her. She looked and behaved as though she had always been an English woman from Wolpet. Around this time, Richard and some of the respected ladies of the home started asking the girl about where she had come from and why she was green. She freely told them that she and her little brother had come from a place under the earth, where the light is not so bright or warm, but where a dim light akin to a fading golden sunset lingers all around them all the time. She said that everyone there is green and everyone there is Christian.

She said that in the English tongue, the place would translate to St. Martin's Land. It was a magical place, close to our own, but not of the same kind. She had no memory of how exactly she and her unfortunate brother ended up scared and alone in the wolf pit that day, but she did remember going through a very normal-looking cave in her world that she had never seen before until they were struck dumb by the blinding light of our own son. When the swoon had run its course, they had their wits about them. They did not recognize where they were, nor could they find the cave's mouth leading back home again. It is said that, after a sporty adolescence of misbehavior and many fruitful years serving

in the night's household as a maid, the green girl of woolpit was married off. to a well-to-do royal official named Richard Barr. Through it all, the girl's name was lost. Faye confirmed. I mean, obviously, there are green Faye people that occasionally find their way into a world and have to be adopted by French knights. Exactly.

I think that's obvious. I love how she's like, yeah, everyone there's Christian. Yeah, that's the best part. She's like, they're all... Why are you baptizing me a second time? Why are some of you people pagans here? Dude, what is wrong with you? In Fairyland...

Every knee in heaven on earth, and under the earth. And the preternatural fairyland. Wow. Every knee. Look. I don't want to say confirmed. No, it actually...

But I did just say confirmed. So the children of wolf it... The green children of wolfit is one of the most popular and for its time. Mm-hmm. Okay. Well-documented 14 type things. Uh-huh. Where these two independent historians both got accounts that overall matched really well with one

another. Briggs talks about this in her encyclopedia of fairies. And so people are just left being like, okay, if they were making it all up. So you're saying Neil deGrasse Tyson would confirm this story. Neil DeGrasse Tyson did. Because it's got so much independent with us. Theoretically, he did. Basically, Neil deGrasse Tyson would pop out right now and he'd be like, hypothetically. There are green people. Then they're all Christians. If Neil deGrasse Tyson confirmed it, I would doubt it more. That's actually, I actually don't want Neil deGrasse Tyson to get it. That's a fair point. That's a fair point. I don't. really have anything else to say about that other than like based that they're all Christians.

I think that we should just keep trudging right along. Let's just keep on. Keep on. I'll start us off with the story of Danny Philippitous. I love it. I think that's how you say is now. We're going to say that because that's what we're going to say. And if any of you in the comments correct me, you can go home and you can just stop. You know what you can do? You can get on an airplane. You can travel across the southern border to a place called Oaxaca in Mexico. You can go to St. Martin's Land. Okay. And you can hang in. You can hang up. You can. out with all the green people. Are you kidding me, Waxaca? Waxaca. It's not how you say. It's not how you spell Oaxaca. That's how you say it. I speak English. All right.

All right. Tell us about Philippides. On February 13th, 2018, Toronto firefighter Danny Philippus stood alone outside of a strip mall in Sacramento, California. Witnesses stated that Philippus had a confused look on his face and appeared dazed, directionless, and foggy. The question is, why are their witness statements? about a random firefighter standing on the side of the street in California in the first place. The answer, for the past six days, Danny Philippides had been the subject of a massive manhunt on the other side of the country.

Here's what happened. Every year, the Toronto fire stations would poll interest and pool money from any of her employees that wanted to participate in the annual station ski trip. In 2018, after a really difficult year on the job, excitement was quick to boil over for the men as they convoyed across the American border and headed for Whiteface Mountain in Lake Placid, New York.

When they finally arrived, it didn't take long for them to start hitting the pists and icy slopes of the East Coast Mountains. It was an amazing time for a few days as the different station crews raced one another over and over again down the beautiful runs overlooking the tranquil Lake Placid. After one of these high-energy runs, Philippus told his friends that he would meet them at the base

at the end of their next go. He was going to take a quick break, only to go retrieve his phone out of the car he had ridden in that day. They all hopped back onto the lift line, and Danny started making the short hike to the side of the parking lot. He was never seen on that mountain again. Philippetus would later say that he believes he somehow lost consciousness in a hidden and tucked away spot,

sometimes shortly after he split up with the others. He says he doesn't remember going down, but that he does remember waking up, feeling very cold and very sore. And though he vaguely remembers waking up and walking up, walking around a bit, his memory ultimately fails him in regards to what he actually did next, but somehow, in his full ski gear, Danny stumbled down to the road which lay just outside the resort boundary and boarded a random freight truck that was in hindsight heading west.

The strange thing is, by this time, the mountain rescue effort had already been fully mustered looking for Danny. Six state and federal government agencies were involved, with over 135 people spending a combined 7,000 man hours looking for Danny on the cold mountain over the next six days. Little did they know that at some point in their shuffle, Danny had accidentally slipped away without really knowing what he was doing. The next thing Danny remembers is the mysterious truck driver telling him that he was in Utah, already almost 1,900 miles away from where he had departed. But everything went foggy again immediately thereafter, and Danny eventually came to, still fully clothed in his ski gear

after the truck driver had dropped him off at a random stop in Sacramento. The totally zoned out man had traveled over 3,000 miles across the country in six days without ever changing clothes, knowing the name of his driver, or even knowing how he got into the truck in the first place.

Left without an ID and having never gotten his cell phone from his friend's car, Philippus used his credit card, the only thing he had on him, to buy a prepaid phone. He called, his wife's number after having to try and remember it for over an hour, and all was well again with the world. One must wonder why and how things like this happen. Is it just some kind of

acute brain injury and amnesia that we don't understand yet? Is it a malicious truck driver kidnapping a confused man only to then let him go 3,000 miles later? Is it something more? Is there something in the area of Lake Placid that lurks behind the veil of our world and seeks to torment, the unlucky man who finds himself alone, went out its most wily. The truck driver, for the record, has never been found. Mabel Smith Douglas, born on February 11, 1874, was a woman known for her lack of conformity to the usual societal standard. After being blessed with two children, her husband and love from youth passed away, leaving

Mabel at the helm of a growing and poised to flourish family business called W.S. Douglas and co. They shipped wholesale butter, egg, and cheese to restaurants and markets. She never remarried, and so as her children grew, she took an especially keen interest in their education. This interest soon became a bona fide passion for Mabel and caused her to pursue the formation of a new college, in all girls' college, tailored to getting four-year liberal arts degrees into the hands of New Jersey's young maidens. She succeeded in 1918 when she was made the first dean of the New Jersey College for women. After almost 15 years as faithfully and, by all accounts, skillfully serving as the first dean of the college,

Mabel retired in September of 1932, due to worsening health. In lieu of growing old and decrepit close to the city of New Brunswick that she had loved so much, she decided to spend her later years in peace and quiet of a camp that she owned on the shores of Lake Placid in New York. A year after her retirement, almost to the day, some of the camp servants watched as Mabel rode away from shore in her canoe for a morning trip, atop the foggy and glassy water. She was never seen again. Her boat was found later that day,

capsized on a shore of the lake three miles opposite from where she cast off. It was the shore that everyone knew marked the very deepest section of the lake. Nothing else would be found for decades. But 30 years later, a group of scuba divers were exploring one of the lake's deepest points,

a place called pulpit rock, when two of the group's divers saw a bleached white and very eerie-looking man. mannequin poking up from the vegetation that lined the bottom. As they approached, their unease evolved into horror. It was no mannequin they had found. It was the dead body of an old woman. The cold and still water had ensured that her corpse was well preserved. As the divers got close enough to touch the body, they found that its awkward position in the lake was due to a black chain being wrapped around its neck. The other side of the chain was attached to a 50-pound anchor. The men tried to

to bring Mabel's body to the surface, but the face immediately melted away at the slightest disturbance, and the arms and heads soon fell off. What had led to Mabel's violent demise? Was it suicide? If so, why? Was it somehow foul play? Perhaps. You see, many believe that Mabel's soul never really left Lake Placid. They believe the woman became trapped in a world just adjacent to ours, a world of fay and unpredictable creatures. Thus, Mabel Douglas is Lake Placett's very own Lady of the Lake. Okay, so it's clearly fairies. That happened. Yeah. And it was fairies. And it was fairies. Literally there's nothing that we can at all connect it to being fairies. Well, no. Okay, let's hear. Because it says that she's the lady of the lake, that she's trapped in the lake. Yeah. And it reminds me of the Rusalka and how

like mermaids are kind of like elementals. I can free associate my way. I can all the way to ferries. I used to jeet my way there. Like you wouldn't believe. No, here's a question. Also, the guy, the truck driver was a ferry. The truck driver was definitely a ferry.

A lot of our trucking industry is held together by ferries. We all know it. We also know that many times truck drivers assume like different kind of natures. Yeah. And they can often transform their bodies. Elemental forms. Right. Like they can become the truck that they're

driving. If I had a dollar for every time that I saw a truck driver, shape, shift in front of me, well, from one form to the other, I would have. The thing is. I wouldn't have any dollars, but I can imagine that happening. Everyone is familiar with a story of this happening. Yeah. Let's hear it.

Ever heard Transformers, robots in disguise? I could say in. Transformers. Semi trucks are fairies. Robots in disguise. It reminds me of that Instagram craze that's going on. There's this guy who, he makes these videos. videos that are really funny. He's like, every dude with a podcast. He's like, can I blow your mind

right now? Can I blow your mind right now? And then he shuffles in his seat and he like, fairies are real. And we have evidence of it. And then he's ever seen transformers? He goes for like 15 minutes on the most ridiculous. I saw that and I went, that guy, I know he's joking, but that is also literally me. No, so the reason, the reason that I, so the Danny Philippaida's story, I just thought that was cool. Yeah, dude, flip, itus theory right into my head. I'm sorry. As far as Mabel Douglas got, I just think it's interesting the parallel between fairyland abductions and missing 411.

Yeah. So if you line up the country's national parks with a map of the country's cave system, it's pretty much a one-to-one match. Like most natural parks are around the biggest cave systems in the country. Let me stop you right there. And so I know what you're about to say. What am I about to say? You're about to say that maybe people go missing in national parks because the fairies live in the caves underneath the national parks.

Yes, that is what I'm about to say. That is 100% what I'm about to say. And honestly, I don't know why you're laughs. Sometimes I'm just like, record scratch. You're probably wondering how you found yourself here. No, go on. This is totally, this is confirmed. No, so like, you know, there's this other place under the earth.

And the green children of Wolpit said it, dude. That they live under the earth. I forgot about the green children of Wolpitt. That there's like, it's more of an amber colored light. So you're saying Hollow Earth. They're Christians in there. Dude, what it? At least in that cave.

Or some of them. They were all Christians. Danny Philippitis, dude, clearly he did not get taken by a Christian. He got taken by an evil fay. He got taken by a bad fay. He didn't get taken by one of the green people of Wolpit, that's for sure. Did they check to make sure all his organs were still there? But Mabel Douglas.

She, like, what if she was taken? Like, the fay are now just strapping chains to people and throwing them out of canoes, like, communist out of helicopters. Just brutal. They're just like... But the fay of Lake Placid is not playing around. Like, he's just drowning old lake. But it is sort of a... Lake Placid is like a residual haunting, you know, where there's Resurrection Mary and...

And then there's the Lady of the Lake Placid. where there's this, it seems like demonic, spiritual entity that is haunting the lake and that is, you know,

tricking people into their deaths. Because that's not the only Lake Placin story that could be found. Right. I'll let the listener do their own research. Yeah, listener. Check it out.

But here's the deal. We've been going for a while. We have, like when I started my timer at the beginning of this episode, it says it's zero minutes. Now it says an hour 53. I know we cut some stuff out

in the middle of this, but here's what I want to do. I want to get back to the most serious. theory of the Faye, which is that some kind of elemental or governing of natural processes type. This is Milton. This is Lewis. This is Paracelsus. This is Tolkien. This is big hitters. This is the one that I genuinely think has legs. And here's the thing. If you look into some other, you know, cryptid type phenomena. Then you might be able to make some connections. Yeah. Between this element.

fey. Yeah. And stories that we've heard in the real world that initially you might not be so quick to think are the fairies. Let me tell you, Ben,

about some tree spirit related folklore. You love to hear it. And then, and then guys, this is going to be, we're going to be going out from here.

So I'm going to close us out. Thanks for listening. Guys, we hope this episode's been enjoyable to you. We're just scratching the surface on the fay. Indeed. And we're going to be,

we are going to be, like, it is going to become my whole personality. It already is. In every episode, it used to be the demons. Now it's literally just the Faye did it. We were planting seeds last season.

We're no longer planting seeds. We're just going to fully talk about it. We're just going to start a true crime podcast called Murdered Cosmos. And instead of people, we're just going to, every unsolved case, we're going to say the Faye murdered them. And then we're also going to stop doing this main show. And instead, the main show is going to turn into oops only banter. And it's just going to be Brian and I chatting. Just chatting.

No stories. I want you to know I would listen. All right, let's talk about the oak spirits. Ferry folks are in old oaks. Elm do grieve. Oak he do hate, willow do walk, if you travels late. That is the bridge of an old Somerset folk song, which illustrates very well the popular belief about the nature,

the preternatural nature of the trees at the time. From the earliest recorded times, nearly all trees have carried some level of spiritual or otherwise sacred association along with them for different cultures. Of course, some are more powerful, sacred, or in a sense, alive than others. The magical trinity of personified trees

are the oak, the ash, and the thorn in European lore. The apple and the hazel also have their place in the hearts of men. And then the elder elm, willow, and alder have been known to take sides in the grand battle for the world's heart as well. The oak, for example, was worshipped heartily by the druids and served to mark the vows

vast majority of their high places. And one cannot fail to remember old Donner's oak, the powerful pagan trees that bent only to the acts of the Christian missionary to the Northman, St. Boniface. The point of these ancient beliefs and how they manifest as relevant for us today is that people used to believe that trees were haunted by the spirits of the Fay, the elementals. As it turns out, J.R.R. Tolkien was being exceedingly faithful to the widely held belief of northern European folk when he wrote the character of old man willow into the Lord of the Rings. Not only did the author paint the willow as surly and gluttonous and ogreish, he also, and this is very important, got the most critical detail right, that the willow is actually alive or intelligent

in some capacity. It's Lewis speaking through Mr. Tumnus to Lucy and informing her that even some of the trees of Narnia are on the white witch's side and may betray her escape back through the wardrobe if they're not careful. To most people, it seems the trees, at least some of them, are more than just bark, leaves, xylem, and floem. They're also fairies. But here's the heart of the matter. It's not only trees that are said to be the haunted homes of different fay. The rivers, the mountains, the hills, the lakes, the canyons, and cliffs rocks of certain places in the world are all said to be home to the spirits that govern them for good or ill. Could it be that there is some category of spiritual being, an elemental angel, some of whom fell and are the fairies,

some of whom are holy and go largely unnoticed to man, that could explain all these different stories and beliefs. Though it may be that nine-tenths of the tales are false, the credulity of what is left still leaves much to be desired in the way of explanation. It's believed by some that this idea of an elemental fairy or angel is not new. Indeed, Lewis cites it as a common belief in his discarded image. Other Solstis talk about the fairies of the air being pixies and the Scandinavian Valkyries, who either trick or help man. Catherine Braggs, in her encyclopedia of fairies, discusses the ancient European belief

that dragons were fairies of the fire element, along with the eastern gin and will of the wisps. The brownies and puckwagis and hobgoblins and nymphs are the fay of the earth. The mermaids and Rusalka are the fay of the water. This classification can continue on until we find some more details. category to help us to conceptualize many of the common sprites and beasts of folklore. And therein lies the point of all of this. What if the fairy is still active in the world? What if this category, so broad in its nature, could help us explain some of the most enduring

myths we have that otherwise appear unrelated? What if there is an elemental fairy of the forest lurking in the pine barrens of New Jersey? Before the English cavaliers arrived on the central eastern shore of the new world and began settling the land for their families and commerce. The Lenape people lived in the area immediately surrounding the vast pine barons and the now southern part of the state of New Jersey. Given the tumultuous relations that were soon to follow between the natives and the settlers, it might surprise one to hear that initial interactions were friendly and had an eye towards helping one another. One of the ways in which the Lenape people helped the newcomers early on was in giving them a solemn warning.

of something dark that lurked inside the endless twilight of the barons, a monster with some deer-like creatures and thick, black, leathery wings that ruled over the woods and tormented unsuspecting travelers through them. In 1735, this cautionary legend was given new life when rumors started to spread about a local resident named Jane Leeds, who gave birth to her 13th child that was supposedly cursed and fathered by the devil himself. But interestingly, the child was not born with such an evil reputation about him. Initially he was normal, but the story goes that he eventually transformed, very quick apparently,

into a grotesque beast with hooves, a goat's head, bat wings, and a forked leathery tail that whipped his brothers and sisters viciously. After the violence of the beatings and the screams of both parents and neighbors, the inhuman child is said to have crawled up the home's chimney and flown away deep into the pine barons that their little home was on the boundary of. Mother Leeds, as she came to be known, was later assumed to be a witch. The local clergyman tried to exercise the demon from the barons, but their efforts are said to have failed. In 1909, over the course of a week in early winter, hundreds of encounters with the Jersey Devil were reported by newspapers all around the

South Jersey area and even up to Philadelphia. The winged creature, attacked two trolley cars in two different counties. Police officers fired on the beast as it flew away from the town of Bristol in Pennsylvania. Schools and businesses closed out of fear for the monster. Footprints of a bipedal and hooved thing were found in the snow. Groups of hunters with a strain of vigilanteism flooded into the pine barons to put an end to the horror. The Philadelphia Zoo even placed a $10,000 bounty on the Jersey Devil's Head. All of it succeeds in reminding one of other strange events surrounding some creature of doom from the earth, the air, the fire, or the water. The mothman certainly comes to mind. And so the question must be asked again, what if there is an elemental fairy of the forest lurking in the pine barons of New Jersey?

Those old English settlers had a deep conviction that when they looked outside the walls of their colonies and into the dark barons, they were looking into the un-evangelized domain of evil. Were they right in such a literal way? And if they were, and if this is a case of a fallen fe, terrorizing a forest, he is providentially set over? Is he alone? Are there other monsters that are fallen elemental spirits in the world? Well, if we suspend disbelief and entertain the question for a second,

it doesn't take long to say maybe. If one thinks about it for a bit longer after that, they may start wondering the same thing we did. What about Bigfoot? Want more Haunted 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.