Lore - Lore 303: Shoot for the Stars

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

Most of the folklore that connects us is beneath our feet. But if history is any indication, there's more than enough to be afraid of above our head. Narrated and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with writing by GennaRose Nethercott, research by Cassandra de Alba, and music by Chad Lawson. ————————— PRE-ORDER EXHUMED TODAY: aaronmahnke.com/exhumed ————————— Lore Resources:  Get Ad-Free Lore: lorepodcast.com/support Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  Official Lore Merchandise: lorepodcast.com/shop ————————— Sponsors: BetterHelp: Lore is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp.com/LORE, and get on your way to being your best self. Squarespace: Head to Squarespace.com/lore to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using the code LORE. Mint Mobile: For a limited time, wireless plans from Mint Mobile are $15 a month when you purchase a 3-month plan with UNLIMITED talk, text and data at MintMobile.com/lore. SimpliSafe: Secure your home with 24/7 professional monitoring. Sign up today at SimpliSafe.com/Lore to get 50% off a new SimpliSafe system. ————————— To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to ads @ lorepodcast.com with the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. To advertise on this podcast please email: [e-mail]. Or go to: https://advertising.libsyn.com/lore ————————— ©2026 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.

It was a seemingly typical autumn day when actor William Shatner suited up, stepped into a starship, and for the upteenth time in his career, prepared to boldly go where no man has gone before. He'd enacted this ritual countless times while portraying the beloved James T. Kirk, captain of Star Trek's USS Enterprise, but this was different. Today, you see, he wasn't simply playing an astronaut on TV. No, on October 13th of 2021, William Shatner actually became one.

After months of flight simulations and training courses, the actor joined three fellow voyagers aboard the Blue Origin rocket New Shepard NS18, which successfully blasted off for a 10-minute-long suborbital space flight. At 90 years old, Shatner became the oldest living person to ever visit outer space. It's hard to imagine how significant that moment must have felt for him. After all, this is a guy whose name has been synonymous with

space travel since 1966, three years before the moon landing, and here he was, finally leaving the Earth's atmosphere for the very first time. You would probably expect that it was a joyful experience, a full-circle moment. Shatner himself certainly thought that it would be, but as it turned out, the reality was something far different. I love the mysteries of the universe, he later wrote, reflecting on the voyage. I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypothesis. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later,

black holes absorbing energy, satellites showing us entire galaxies and areas thought to be devoid of matter entirely. All of that has thrilled me for years. But when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold. All I saw was death.

So there you have it. Sometimes to find true horror, All you have to do is look up. I'm Aaron Manky, and this is lore. The spacecraft was called Soyuz 11, and in 1971, it had just returned to Earth after what everyone thought had been a successful round-trip mission to the world's first space station. But when the recovery crew opened the hatch after landing, excitement quickly turned to horror. The three men inside were very, very dead. Dark blue patches modeled their faces. Trails of blood ran from their noses and ears,

and it soon became clear what had happened. Soyuz 11 had accidentally depressurized while undocking from the space station some 100 miles above the Earth. The cosmonauts were gone before their journey home had even begun, and no one on the ground had any idea. It's a grim tale, but here's the really surprising thing about the Soyuz 11's casualties. These three astronauts are the only people. to have ever died in outer space. That's right.

Out of these 600-something explorers who have journeyed into the great unknown outside of our atmosphere, a mere three of them have lost their lives and on the same expedition, no less. For most of us, our knowledge of space comes from media like Star Wars and Star Trek, chock full of action, adventure, and yes, lots of death. But in reality, there's only been one single deadly accidents more than half a century ago. Honestly, not bad odds. But then again, that's just counting people who died while actually in outer space. If you add in those who perished in their attempts to get there, well, then that number becomes

absolutely horrific. Take, for example, the fire that broke out during the launch simulation of Apollo 1, killing three astronauts back in 1967, or a parachute failure that same year in which the lone cosmonaut aboard Soyuz 1 was reduced to, and I quote, a lump 30 centimeters wide and 80 centimeters long. Then there's the Challenger disaster, which I got to watch happen in real time on a TV alongside my entire sixth grade class because our teacher wanted us to watch another teacher go into space.

It's a bit of childhood trauma that I will never forget. Add to that, the seven deaths from 2003's Columbia Shuttle disaster, and well, when you start adding it up, space travel clearly isn't the safest of pursuits. And that's not even counting the dogs, cats, monkeys, mice, rats, rabbits, turtles, fish, geckos, and various insects who have perished in the name of spaceflight. And with all that uncertainty, it makes sense that astronauts will try just about anything if it means being a little safer. They may be literal rocket scientists, but they're also some of the most superstitious people on the planet, and off the planet, for that matter.

American astronauts, for example, will religiously eat scrambled eggs and steak before long. Why? Well, because that's what Alan Shepard ate right before he became the first American in space in 1961. And while this breakfast of champions is strictly ritual-based for today's high-flyers, it wasn't a random meal choice for Shepard. In fact, the menu was carefully designed by the aerospace medical lab due to its low fiber content, which was important.

You see, Shepard's 15-minute suborbital flight plan didn't exactly include a bathroom break, and a low-fiber meal would help reduce the need to go. Now, American astronaut superstitions go far beyond the dining hall. According to tradition, once the mission commander on American space flights suits up, they must win a card game against the tech crew before heading to the launch pad. The game of choice is usually called Possum Fargo, and the rules are simple. Each player draws five cards, and the lowest poker hand wins. And you might be wondering, what happens if the commander doesn't draw the lowest hand?

Well, then they keep playing until he does. And apparently there have been multiple occasions where the card game came dangerously close to messing up a launch schedule. In another example, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, or JPL in Southern California, mission control engineers eat lucky peanuts before launch. Way back in the early 60s, when JPL was attempting to send a probe to the moon, only for it to fail not once, not twice, but six times. By the seventh attempt, spirits were pretty flagged, so the engineer decided to boost morale by handing out some peanuts to snack,

on. Lo and behold, that seventh try was the charm. So, ever since then, peanuts at launches are a required snack. Oh, and yes, this is the same JPL whose founder was super into satanic rituals and attempting to summon the whore of Babylon, along with his buddy Elron Hubbard. But I digress. Of course, it's not only American astronauts who get a little woo-hoo before blast off. Russian cosmonauts have a whole host of their own superstitions. One of the most common involves having a little movie night on the eve before a launch. They always watch the same film, too, a Russian action movie called White Sun of the Desert. This good luck ritual started in 1973 when Soyuz 12 astronauts watched the film before a mission,

which was obviously a bit stressful given the fate of Soyuz 11, right? According to 12's commander, the movie's protagonist, Comrade Suhoi, became like a third crew member to them during the trip, which ended up being a huge success. and Russian rituals don't end there. Most of the others revolve around the cult-like worship of Soviet pilot Yuri Gagarin, which makes sense. After all, in April of 1961, Gagarin became the first human being ever in space. And since then, Russian cosmonauts have been attempting to oh so precisely replicate

every moment leading up to that first flight. And this includes planting a tree alongside a special grove, signing their door at the cosmonaut hotel, and getting a haircut two days before lunch. Most famously, though, that would be the tradition of stopping outside the bus that brings them to the launch pad, approaching the back-right tire, and peeing on it. And yes, you heard that right. You see, according to the legend, Gagarin did this before his first ever flight, assumedly, out of a genuine need rather than urinary spellcasting.

But today, it is a must. It's also important to pay respects to Yuri Gagarin directly. Although he died in a plane crash in 1968, his office has been frozen in time, a museum. Impending voyagers will make pilgrimages to his desk there to sign a guest book and also lay flowers on his final resting place at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. And finally, there's one last important step. You have to ask Yuri Gagarin's permission to enter the skies, which might be a problem given the fact that he's dead, but don't worry, the Russian astronauts know exactly what to do. They simply beg the blessing of Gagarin's ghost.

Long before humanity reached the stars, we were telling stories about them. You're probably familiar with the 12 signs of the zodiac, a word that quite literally translates to circle of little animals, by the way. But while astrology apps and glossy magazine horoscopes are all too trendy today, the notion that the stars present at your birth can influence the rest of your life actually stretches way back to ancient Babylon. It was the Greeks, though, who really perfected that system. and they also had some colorful ideas as to how the stars got up there in the first place.

The constellations Cancer and Leo, for example, both started out as creatures on Earth. After Hercules defeated them during his 12 labors, Hera placed them in the sky as a reward for their service. Ursa Major, meanwhile, was once a nymph Callisto and Ursa Minor, her son, Arcus. According to myth, Callisto was turned into a bear after being seduced by Zeus, only for her son to mistake her for a real bear and try to kill her. At the last minute, Zeus intervened by turning both of them into constellations. Meanwhile, the seven stars of the Pleiades cluster were once seven beautiful sisters, so beautiful, in fact, that the hunter Orion pursued them

day and night. To protect them from their stalker, Zeus had a creative solution. You guessed it, he turned them into stars. Here's the thing, though. The Greeks weren't the only ones to label the Pleiades as seven women. In fact, countless world cultures have similar stories, like the Tuareg people of the Sahara, the Great Plains, Kiyawa people, southern Australia's Wurango people, and the Raji of Nepal, just to name a few. Now, before you look up at the night sky and tell me that my count is off, yes, I know only six stars are visible in the Pleiades cluster, but I promise you there used to be a seventh, before things shifted a bit up there, and one ended up blocked from our view. And it was, well, a bit before our time, though, 100,000 years ago.

Which has amazing implications when you think about it. If the last time seven distinct stars were visible to the naked eye was 100,000 years ago, it means those stories about the seven sisters must be at least as old. In fact, some theorize that all of these seven women myths originate from one single lost story told all the way back in ancient Africa. Over the eons that tale not only spread, but it adapted with the times. Once the seventh star became invisible, the stories changed to match, including new myths to explain why the seventh woman is missing.

In some, she's hiding in shame after marrying a mortal, and in others she's dead or abducted, and in still others, she's simply too ugly to show her face. Oh, and speaking of Africa, in South African hosa culture, where it's disrespectful to point at an elder, it's also disrespectful to point at the stars. And they're not the only ones with a taboo against star pointing. In Germany, pointing at the stars is equivalent to poking out an angel's eyes. Hardcore, I know. Oh, and it's also said to make your finger fall off. But don't worry, there is a workaround. If you do accidentally point at a star while in Germany, simply bite your finger after, and you're good to go. In Britain, you'll lose more than a finger

if you point at the stars. You might straight up die. And this superstition, extends to counting stars as well. According to legend, if you count to 100, you're dead. In Brazil, though, things are a little less dire. If you point that the stars there, you'll merely get a wart on the offending finger. Now, with all that said, stars aren't the only celestial bodies that have made their way into humanity's folklore. Comets have long been interpreted as portents by cultures all around the world. Portents of what exactly? Mostly some type of horrible doom. But occasionally, they could be good omens as well. Take the Christian folklore, for example.

While usually comets are seen as a sign of God's wrath, some have argued that the star of Bethlehem from the Christmas story, signaling the birth of Christ, wasn't a star at all, but a comet. In China, folks couldn't help but notice that a comet's tail looked a bit like a broom of twigs, which led to the belief that comets swept away the old and made room for the new, for better or for worse. In ancient Rome, comet's tales were likened not to the bristles of a broom, but to human hair. In fact, the word comet comes from the Greek word cometes, meaning a head with

long hair. As if the comet were a severed head soaring across the sky, its luxurious tresses flowing behind. Of course, today we know that the effect is merely a trail of dust and ionized gas, but the whole hair analogy really had an impact on the ancients. When Roman Emperor Vespasian was warned about a coming comet, he insisted that whatever omen it brought didn't apply to him, so not to worry about it. How was he so sure? Why? Because he was bald, of course. So clearly the comet was a message for the king of Parthians instead,

his very hairy neighbor. All around the world and across the pages of history, it's clear that comets have been ominous signs, but at least they're the kind of signs that stay in the sky, right? Well, unfortunately, if the stories are true, that assumption would be terribly wrong. It was, without a doubt, the weirdest thing the people of France had ever seen. One minute, it was a typical October day in 1952, and the next

the residents of Oloran were frozen in place, gawking skyward at a giant cigar-shaped UFO, which was alarming enough, even without what came next, because there in the distance, nearly 30 other flying objects were following the UFO as it moved slowly southward. In the words of the local high school superintendent, to the naked eye they appeared as featureless balls resembling puffs of smoke, but with the help of opera glasses, it was possible to make out a central red sphere, surrounded by a sort of yellowish ring. And these things weren't just floating. They were leaving strange white trails behind them, pale smoke-like threads, almost like spider silk. And once the saucers departed, these fibers slowly fell to the ground, which is where

the real chaos began. Whatever this trail material was, it covered the town of Oleron. It landed in sticky clumps on rooftops, clung to trees and telephone wires, but when people tried to pick it up, the material turned to jelly in their hands before disappearing altogether. One man, a dentist named Dr. Belestra, was walking across a bridge when he became totally ensnared by the filaments, basically a real-life enactment of Frodo stuck in Shilob's web. He writhed and fought, finally managing to break free. But that was only the half of it, because, you see, that's when the threads gathered themselves back together and rose back into the air. And I know what you're thinking. This all sounds very

totally made up, but I promise you it is not. In fact, the incident in Oleron wasn't even one of a kind. Cincinnati, Ohio, Sudbury, Massachusetts, Auckland, New Zealand, and Melbourne, Australia, even second century Rome, in all of these places witnesses have reported seeing an almost identical phenomenon occur. To quote a report from 7th century Japan, cotton-like matter in strands of about five to six feet long were seen to fall from the sky and drift in the wind for quite some time. And in the year 196 AD, the historian Cassius Dai wrote, A fine rain resembling silver descended from a clear sky upon the forum of Augustus. Yes, whatever this stuff is, it's been flurrying down upon our little planet for quite some time.

It's come to be known as angel hair, but not like the pasta. According to UFOologists, the stuff is categorized as a fibrous web or silk-like substance that descends to earth from above, often, oddly enough, in the month of October. Usually it's white, although sometimes it's gray, silver, or translucent, and apparently it tastes salty, although I wouldn't recommend trying it. Oh, and by the way, the angel hair that fell on Oleron, France, it wasn't the most recent sighting, because just two octobers later in 1954, it descended upon a professional Italian soccer match in front of 10,000 witnesses.

In fact, this one is worth spending just a little bit more time on. It was 2.27 p.m. on October 27th, just after halftime, when gameplay in Florence's Artemio Franke Stadium screeched to a halt. The players, you see, had noticed that their fans weren't actually watching them play anymore. Instead, they'd all began to shout and point at the sky. Soon the players were looking up as well. The ball abandoned on the ground. And what they saw is about to sound all too familiar to you.

Because overhead floated strange, cigar-shaped and egg-shaped UFOs, from which a stringy, silvery substance began to fall, landing thick and sticky on the turf. And hey, if 10,000 soccer fans aren't witnesses enough to convince you, they weren't the only ones to see the phenomenon. Similar reports flooded in from all over Florence, along with other nearby towns. Oh, and by the way, this was just one out of 961 UFO sightings in Europe just that month, nearly 500 more than any month that year. And many of those reports, yes, they also included reports of angel hair.

But back to the stadium. The phenomenon continued for a good 15 minutes before the UFOs flew out of sight. And look, Italians clearly take their soccer game seriously because once the spectacle vanished, they went right back to plane. The home team won in a 6-2 victory, by the way, but it wasn't the score that would stick in players' memories. Decades later in 2014, one player named Romolo Tucci recalled the feeling that he had as he stood on the field that day watching the mysterious sky. I was spellbound, he said, and I was also so, so happy. All the wars ever fought, all the art ever made, and all the music ever composed, every love story and every heart.

break, it's all taken place right here on this tiny blue planet, barely a speck in the vast expanse of the universe. And yes, maybe there are other livable planets. Maybe there's even intelligent life out there. But if there's one thing more terrifying than the idea of something out there, it's the hollow, isolating notion that perhaps we really are utterly and entirely alone. And so we tell stories. We transform the stars into characters with names and feelings and faces. We devise rituals to appease the cosmos, as if that dark expanse cared for us at all. In other words, we bring the void to life. Of course, not every space encounter is just a story. Stringy alien angel hair really has fallen from the sky, but there are those who believe that

even that has an earthly explanation. Some theorized that the gunk that fell on France and Italy in the 1950s was a substance called chaff, a tangle of tiny fibergly. and aluminum wires that planes will drop to disrupt radar. Perhaps a military fighter jet was training that day and inadvertently released the stuff on unsuspecting citizens. And sure, that might explain some of the events of the 1950s, but what about the angel hair sightings from back before chaff or before planes, for that matter, were even invented?

Well, some have an explanation for that as well. Remember how I mentioned earlier that these angel hair sightings are most frequently reported during the month of October, Well, here's something else that occurs in October as well. Spider migration. Now, apologies in advance to the arachnophobes out there because I'm about to drop a whole new nightmare on you. Literally, it's called ballooning.

Basically, after certain species of baby spiders hatch, they disperse by catching a ride on the breeze, assisted by long strands of their silk. And if you have enough floating spiders, the silk can get all tangled up into a big silvery cloud of cobweb soaring through the sky. Oh, and by the way, ideal conditions for this happen to be calm, sunny autumn days, just like the weather during those incidents in France and Italy. And I know what you're thinking.

What about those oblong spacecraft scenes spewing this stuff? Well, apparently when light reflects off these spider-web balloons, it can cause all sorts of optical illusions, like making a glob resemble a single solid object. It is a pretty good explanation, and in most cases, probably exactly right. but it may not be good enough for those cases in the 1950s. Because, you see, I left out one tiny detail from that 1954 soccer match.

As sticky strands overtook the stadium, one quick-thinking journalist scooped up some of the substance and tucked it away. And then he took it to a lab at the University of Florence. Chemical analysis revealed it to contain calcium, magnesium, boron, and silicon. But do you know what is very much missing from this little cocktail? That's right. It has neither plane chaff nor spider silk. I hope you enjoyed today's adventure through folklore's final frontier.

Seems like the only thing expanding faster than the universe itself are the tales that we tell about it. But we aren't done with airborne legends just yet. In fact, I've been hiding one last story under the rug that's just about ready to fly. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it. This episode was made possible by Squarespace. I often tell people that I'm not just a podcast producer, I'm also a recovering former graphic designer.

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When I say the term magic carpet, most of us think of one particular story, Aladdin. After all, who could forget that cheeky purple rug zooming across the desert carrying Disney's favorite street rat. Heck, it's so ubiquitous you're probably already humming a whole new world to yourself without even noticing. But guess what? It's all a lie. Because it turns out the actual Aladdin story from 1001 nights doesn't include a single flying carpet. Not one. That entire association is a Disney invention. Now, don't get me wrong, magical flying carpets are a traditional feature in Persian folklore. And in fact, other stories in 1001 nights do mention the odd flying textile, albeit far and few between, and not in Aladdin itself. No, for much of history, the title of

the world's most famous carpet writer actually belonged to a different character entirely, none other than the biblical King Solomon of Israel. And he wasn't flying around on some scrawny purple bathmats either. No, according to Jewish folklore, King Solomon had a magic carpet that took up 60 square miles, basically the size of Washington, D.C. It was said to be made of green silk, woven with golden threads, and studded with jewels. In Jewish versions of the story, it was the carpet itself that had levitating powers. In Islamic versions, God had simply given Solomon power over the four winds. Other versions still held that it wasn't God but the Queen of Shiba, who presented Solomon with the carpet as a token of her love. In any case, the extraordinary

vehicle flew through the sky so swiftly that Solomon could eat breakfast in Damascus and supper in Medea, which, if I'm calculating my biblical geography correctly, were roughly 800 miles apart as the crow flies. And the big wig wasn't traveling alone either. Solomon's entire entourage would come along for the ride, while flocks of birds soared overhead protecting the carpet's occupants from the sun. Suffice to say, Solomon was very, very proud of this thing, and of himself for that matter. And look, who can blame him, right? A city-sized flying rug definitely puts my car to shame. But we all know how these stories go.

Pride comes before the fall. And in this case, that fall is literal. As the ancient legend goes, God was none too pleased with Solomon's pridefulness, so he sent a wind to tip the carpet, sending 40,000 of Solomon's men plummeting to their deaths and forcing the king to realize the error of his ways. Don't worry, though.

I'm not quite ready to land just yet. Flying carpets appear in other world folklore as well. In one Filipino story, for example, three brothers are given three gifts in exchange for helping a mysterious old man they meet on the road. The first of those gifts? That's right, a flying carpet. And just as a quick aside, but the other two gifts are too good not to mention here.

One is a tube that if you stick it up someone's nose and blow through it, can heal all their ailments. And the other, it's a book that when read reveals to the reader every possible current event, which sounds a lot like a tablet, if you ask me, but I digress. Magic carpets, though, aren't just for warm climates. They pop up in Russian stories, too, specifically tales about Baba Yaga. As anyone who's read our writer Generos Nethercats novel Thistlefoot knows, the infamous Slavic witch herself rides around in a house on chicken legs, but apparently she keeps a few flying carpets on hand as party favors for visitors that she deems

worthy. So if Disney's Aladdin is the American manifestation of magic carpet lore, what's the Russian equivalent? Well, for that, let me direct you to a little 1940s propaganda poem called The Wonderful Carpet. In this Soviet story, two little girls fly over the USSR on a beautiful tapestry. What image is on this magical tapestry, you might ask? Well, that would be none other than an intricately woven portrait of Joseph Stalin's face. Talk about rolling out. The red carpet. This episode of lore was produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with writing by Jenna Rose Nethercott, research by Cassandra DeAlba, and music by Chad Lawson. Just a reminder, folks, I have a brand new history book that's coming out this year on August 4th. It's called

Exhumed, and it explores the roots of the New England vampire panic through the lens of centuries of folklore, medical advancements, and pseudoscience. It is available right now for pre-order, though, and if you pre-order the hardcover, my publisher has a web page set up or you can submit your receipt and get a free gorgeous tote bag. Head over to Aaron Mankey.com slash exhumed to see the gorgeous cover, find out where you can buy it, and lock in your copy today. Don't like hearing the ads. There's a paid version of lore on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free.

Subscribers also get weekly mini bonus episodes we call Lorebytes, and Patreon members get discounts on merch and access to my inbox. Learn more over at lorepodcast.com slash support. You can follow the show on social media platforms like Instagram, Blue Sky Threads and YouTube. Just search for lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.