Lore - REMASTERED – Episode 32: Tampered

Episode Date: July 11, 2022

In this REMASTERED classic episode, we revisit the folklore of tiny, meddlesome creatures. And not only is the narration and soundtrack new, but there’s a whole new bonus story at the end, so don’t miss out. ———————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to [e-mail], or visit our listing here.

I grew up watching a television show called MacGyver. If you've never had the chance to watch this icon of the 80s, do yourself a favor and give it a try. Sure, the clothes are outdated and the hair, oh my gosh, the hair. But aside from the bits that didn't age well, McMullet and his trusty pocket knife managed to capture my imagination forever. Part of it was the adventure.

Part of it was the character of the man himself. I mean, the guy essentially was a spy who hated guns, played hockey and lived on a houseboat. But hovering above all of those elements was the true core of the show. This man could make anything if his life depended on it. As humans, we have this innate drive inside ourselves to make things. This is how we manage to create things like the wheel or stone tools and weapons. Our tendency toward technology pulled our ancient ancestors out of the stone age and into a more civilized world.

Maybe for some of us, MacGyver represents what we wanted to achieve, complete mastery over our world. But life is rarely as simple as that. And however hard we try to get our minds and hands around this world we want to rule, some things just slip through the cracks. Ideas and concepts still elude our limited minds, or human after all, not gods. So when things go wrong, when our plans fall apart or our expectations fail to be met, we have this sense of pride that often refuses to admit defeat.

So we blame others. And when that doesn't work, we look elsewhere for answers. And no realm holds more explanation for the unexplainable than folklore. Four hundred years ago, when women refused to follow the rules of society, they were labeled a witch. When Irish children failed to thrive, it was because they were changelings. We're good at excuses. So when our ancestors found something broken or out of place, there was a very simple explanation.

Someone, or something, had tampered with it. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. The idea of meddlesome creatures isn't new to us. All around the world, we can find centuries-old folklore that speaks of creatures with a habit of getting in the way and making life difficult for humans. It's an idea that seems to transcend borders and background, language and time. Some would say that it's far too coincidental for all these stories of mischief-causing creatures to emerge in places separated by thousands of miles and vast oceans.

The Puka of Ireland and the Ibugogo of Indonesia are great examples of this, legends that seem to have no reason for their eerie similarities. Both legends speak of small, humanoid creatures that steal food and children, both recommend not making them angry, and both describe their creatures as intrusive pranksters. To many, the evidence is just too indisputable to ignore. Others would say it's not coincidental at all. Merely a product of human nature. We want to believe that there's something out there causing the problems we experience

every day. So, of course, nearly every culture in the world has invented a scapegoat. This scapegoat would have to be small to avoid discovery, and they need respect because we're afraid of what they can do. To a cultural anthropologist, it's nothing more than logical evolution. Many European folktales include this universal archetype in the form of nature spirits, and much of it can be traced back to the idea of the daemon. It's an old world and concept coming to us from the Greeks.

In essence, a daemon is an otherworldly spirit that causes trouble. The root word, deomai, literally means to cut or divide. In many ways, it's an ancient version of an excuse. If your horse was spooked while you were out for a ride, you'd probably blame it on a daemon. The ancient Minoans believed in them, and in the day of the Greek poet Homer, people would blame their illnesses on them. The daemon, in many ways, was fate.

If it happened to you, there was a reason. It was probably one of those little things that caused it. But over time, the daemon took on more and more names. Arab folklore has the gin. Romans spoke of a personal companion known as the genius. In Japan, they tell tales of the kami, and Germanic cultures mention the fylgia. The stories and names might be unique to each culture, but the core of them is all the same. There's something interfering with humanity, and we don't like it.

For the majority of the English-speaking world, the most common creature of this type in folklore hands down is the goblin. It's not an ancient word, most likely originating from the Middle Ages, but it's the one that's front and center in most of our minds. And from the start, it's been a creature associated with bad behavior. A legend from the 10th century tells of how the first Catholic bishop of Yvru in France faced a daemon known to the locals there as Goblinus. Why that name, though, is harder to trace.

The best theory goes something like this. There's a Greek myth about a creature named Kobelos, who loved to trick and frighten people. That story influenced other cultures prior to Christianity spread across Europe, creating the notion of the Kobald in ancient Germany. That word was most likely the root of the word goblin. Kobald, gobald, goblin, you can practically hear it evolve. The root word of Kobald is kob, which literally means beneath the earth, or cavity in a rock. We get the English word cove from the same root.

So naturally, Kobalds and their English counterparts, the goblins, are said to live in caves underground. And if that reminds you of dwarves from fantasy literature, you're closer than you think. The physical appearance of goblins and folklore vary greatly, but the common description is that they are dwarf-like creatures. They cause trouble, are known to steal, and they have a tendency to break things and make life difficult. Because of this, people in Europe would put carvings of goblins in their homes to ward off the real thing.

In fact, here's something really crazy. Medieval door knockers were often carved to resemble the faces of daemons or goblins. And it's most likely purely coincidental, but in Welsh folklore, goblins are called koblin, or more commonly, knockers. My point is this. For thousands of years, people have suspected that all of their misfortune could be blamed on small, meddlesome creatures. They feared them, told stories about them, and tried their best to protect their homes

from them. But for all that time, they seemed like nothing more than story. But in the early 20th century, people started to report actual sightings. And not just anyone. These sightings were documented by trained, respected military heroes. Pilots When the Wright brothers took their first controlled flights in December of 1903, it seemed like a revelation.

It's hard to imagine it today, but there was a time when flight wasn't assumed as a method of travel. So when Wilbur spent three full seconds in the air that day, he and his brother Orville did something else. They changed the way that we think about our world. And however long it took humans to create and perfect the art of controllable mechanical flight, once the cat was out of the bag, it bolted into the future without looking back. Within just nine years, someone had managed to mount a machine gun onto one of these primitive

airplanes. Because of that, when the First World War broke out just two years later, military combat had a new element. Of course, guns weren't the only weapon a plane could utilize. The very first airplane brought down in combat was an Austrian plane that was literally rammed by a Russian pilot. Both pilots died after the wreckage plummeted to the ground below. It wasn't the most efficient method of air combat, but it was a start.

Clearly we've spent the many decades since, getting very, very good at killing each other more efficiently. Unfortunately though, there have been more reasons for combat disasters than machine gun bullets and suicidal pilots. And one of the most unique and mysterious of those causes first appeared in a British newspaper. In an article from the early 1900s, it was said that, and I quote, The newly constituted Royal Air Force in 1918 appears to have detected the existence of

a horde of mysterious and malicious sprites whose whole purpose in life was to bring about as many as possible of the inexplicable mishaps which, in those days as now, trouble an airman's life. The description didn't feature a name, but that was soon to follow. Some experts think that we can find roots of it in the old English word germ, which meant to vex or to annoy. It fits the behavior of these creatures to the letter, and because of that, they have been known from the beginning as gremlins.

But before we move forward, it might be helpful to take care of your memories of the 1984 classic film by the same name. I grew up in the 80s, and gremlins was a fantastic bit of eye candy for my young, horror-loving mind. But the truth of that legend has little resemblance to the version that you and I witnessed on the big screen. The gremlins of folklore, at least the stories that came out in the early 20th century, that is, described the ancient stereotypical daemon.

But with a twist. Yes, they were said to be small, ranging anywhere from 6 inches to 3 feet in height, from yes, they could appear and disappear at will, causing mischief and trouble wherever they went. But in addition, these modern versions of the legendary goblin seemed to possess a supernatural grasp of modern human technology. In 1923, a British pilot was flying over open water when his engine stalled. He miraculously survived the crash into the sea and was rescued shortly after.

When he was safely on board the rescue vessel, the pilot was quick to explain what had happened. Tiny creatures, he claimed, had appeared on the plane. Whether they appeared out of nowhere or smuggled themselves on board prior to take off, the pilot wasn't sure. However, they got there. He said that they proceeded to tamper with the plane's engine and flight controls. Without power or control, he was left to drop helplessly into the sea. Reports like these were infrequent in the 1920s.

But as the world moved into the Second World War and the number of planes in the sky began to grow exponentially, more and more stories seemed to follow. Small, troublesome creatures who had an almost supernatural ability to hold on to a moving aircraft and while they were there, to do damage and cause accidents. In some cases, they were even sighted inside planes, among the crew or cargo. Stories, as we've seen so many times before, have a tendency to spread like disease. Oftentimes, that's because of fear, but sometimes it's just because of the truth. The trouble is in figuring out where to draw that line.

And that line kept moving as the sightings were reported outside the British ranks. Pilots on the German side also reported seeing creatures during flights, as did some in India, Malta, and the Middle East. Some might chalk these stories up to hallucinations or a bit of pre-flight drinking. There are certainly a lot of stories of World War II pilots climbing into the cockpit after a night of romancing the bottle. And who would blame them? In many cases, these pilots had a 20% chance of never coming back alive.

But there are far too many reports to blame all of it on drunkenness or delirium. Something unusual was happening to planes all throughout the Second World War. And with folklore as a lens, some of the reports are downright eerie. In 2014, a 92-year-old World War II veteran from Jonesboro, Arkansas came forward to tell a story. He'd been a B-17 pilot during the war, one of those legendary flying fortresses that helped Allied forces carry out successful missions over Nazi territory. And it was on one of those missions that this man experienced something that, until recently,

he had kept to himself. The pilot, who chose to identify himself by the initials LW, spoke of how he was a 22-year-old flight commander on the B-17 when something very unusual happened on a combat mission in 1944. He described how, as he brought the aircraft to a higher altitude, the plane began to make strange noises. That wasn't completely unusual, as the B-17 is an absolutely enormous plane, and sometimes turbulence can rattle the structure, but he checked the instrument panel out of habit.

According to his story, the instruments seemed broken and confused. Looking for an answer to the mystery, he glanced out the right-side window and then froze. There, outside the glass of the cockpit window, was the face of a small creature. The pilot described it as about three feet tall, with red eyes and sharp teeth. The ears, he said, were almost owl-like, and its skin was gray and hairless. He looked back toward the front and noticed a second creature, this one moving along the nose of the aircraft. He said it was dancing and hammering away at the metal body of the plane.

He immediately assumed that it was a hallucination. I can picture him rubbing his eyes and blinking repeatedly, like in some old Looney Tunes film. But according to him, he was as sharp and as alert as ever. Whatever it was that he witnessed outside on the body of the plane, he said that he managed to shake them off with a bit of fancy flying. That's his term, not mine. But while the creatures themselves might have vanished, the memory of them would haunt him for the rest of his life.

He told only one person afterwards, a gunner on another B-17. But rather than laugh at him, this friend acknowledged that he too had seen similar creatures on a flight just the day before. Years prior in the summer of 1939, an earlier encounter was also reported, this time in the Pacific. According to the account, a transport plane took off from the airbase in San Diego in the middle of the afternoon and headed toward Hawaii. On board were 13 marines, some crew on the plane, and some passengers.

It was a transport, after all. About halfway through the flight, while still over the vast expanse of the Blue Pacific, the transport issued a distress signal. After that, the signal stopped, as did all other forms of communication. It was as if the plane had simply gone silent and then vanished, which made it all the more surprising when it reappeared later outside the San Diego airfield and prepared for a landing. But the landing didn't seem right.

The plane came in too fast. It bounced on the runway in a rough, haphazard manner and then finally came to a dramatic emergency stop. Crew on the runway immediately understood why, too. The exterior of the aircraft was extensively damaged. Some said it looked like bombs had ripped apart the metal skin of the transport. It was a miracle, they said, that the thing even landed at all. When no one exited the plane to greet them, they opened it up themselves and stepped inside,

only to be met with a scene of horror and chaos. Inside they discovered the bodies of 12 of the 13 passengers and crew. Each seemed to have died from the same types of wounds, large, vicious cuts and injuries that almost seem to have originated from a wild animal. Add to that, the interior of the transport smelled horribly of sulfur and the acrid odor of blood. To complicate matters, empty shell casings were found scattered about the interior of the cockpit.

The pistols responsible belonging to the pilot and co-pilot were lying at their feet, completely spent. 12 men were found dead, but there was a 13th. The co-pilot had managed to stay conscious despite his extensive injuries, just long enough to land the transport at the base. He was alive but unresponsive when they found him, and was quickly removed for emergency medical care. Sadly, the man died a short while later.

He never had the chance to report what had happened. Stories of the Gremlin have stuck around in the decades since, but they live in the past. Today they are mentioned more like a personified Murphy's Law, muttered as a humorous superstition by modern pilots. I get the feeling that the persistence of the folklore is due more to its place as a cultural habit than anything else. And we can ponder why, I suppose. Why would sightings stop after World War II?

Some think it's because of advancements in airplane technology, stronger structures, faster flight speeds, and higher altitudes. The assumption is that sure, gremlins could hold onto our planes, but maybe we've gotten so fast that even that's become impossible for them. The other answer could just be that the world has left those childhood tales of little creatures behind. We've moved beyond belief. We've outgrown it.

We know a lot more than we used to, after all, and to our thoroughly modern minds, these stories of gremlins just sound like so much fantasy. Whatever reason you subscribe to, it's important to remember that many people have believed with all of their being that gremlins are real, factual creatures, people we would respect and believe. In 1927, a pilot was over the Atlantic in a plane that, by today's standards, would be considered primitive. He was alone and had been in the air for a very long time, but was startled to discover

that there were creatures in the cockpit with him. He described them as small, vaporous beings with a strange, otherworldly appearance. The pilot claimed that these creatures spoke to him and kept him alert in a moment when he was overly tired and past the edge of exhaustion. They helped him with the navigation for his journey and even adjusted some of his equipment. He was a rare account of gremlins who were benevolent, rather than meddlesome and hostile. Even still, this pilot was so worried about what the public might think of his experience that he kept the details to himself for over 25 years.

In 1953, this pilot included that experience in a memoir of his flight. It was a historic journey, after all, and recording it properly required honesty and transparency. The book you see was called The Spirit of St. Louis. And the man was more than just a pilot. He was a military officer, an explorer, an inventor, and on top of all of that, he was also a national hero because of his successful flight from New York to Paris. The first man to do so, in fact, this man was Charles Lindbergh.

So many of our biggest problems over the centuries have been blamed on tiny creatures. I hope today's tour through the wild and wonderful world of goblins and cobalds has given you a better picture of that folklore, at least a better one than you might have found in that old 80s classic, gremlins. But we haven't explored all the corners and shadows yet, and if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll tell you about one more little problem. It was a tough position for pilots to be in, these men of science looking for a way to explain the unexplainable.

But as the character Sherlock Holmes states in the novel The Sign of Four, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. And the truth is that the Great Blue Yonder isn't the only place teeming with beings of questionable motives. Beneath our feet are labyrinthine tunnels inhabited by creatures both hostile and benevolent. Just watch your step. There are, of course, the German cobalds mentioned earlier, who would fool miners into chipping away at certain veins of ore, only for them to realize they'd been duped.

The mineral that they'd been led to was, in fact, worthless. Meanwhile, coal miners in England had their own troublesome pests called cutty psalms, elf-like creatures that would literally cut the psalms, the ropes tethered to the tubs of coal that miners would pull through the tunnels. But not all gremlins and goblins were evil. Some actually helped out now and then. The English called them bluecaps, glowing blue orbs of light that guided miners toward the sections of the mine rich in valuable ore.

They also chipped in with the work, too, helping push the coal tubs through the tunnel and warning miners of accidents that were just about to happen. In fact, the miners appreciated the bluecaps so much, they treated them as equals and paid them with their wages. They would tuck the payments into a corner of the mine for the bluecaps to collect later. But mines were, and continued to be, dangerous places where anything can go wrong. While broken ropes and false ore deposits may have been small pranks played by mischievous creatures, there were also caverns to deal with.

So who or what was responsible for those? To the miners in Bolivia, the worst accidents they faced were the work of something much bigger than a gremlin, a god. The Incas of the 16th century came to Bolivia and used their military strength to enslave the native peoples there. They put them to work mining for silver in the nearby Cerro Rico mountain, but they were soon startled by a loud, god-like voice ringing out from below. It commanded them to cease all activity and leave.

The silver inside was meant for someone else. The surrounding city was even named Potosi, meaning Springforth in the Quechua language, named for the booming voice that had sprung forth and scared the Inca. And the voice had been right, too, because the Spanish were coming. Once they arrived, they took over everything, including the existing mining system. The Spaniards then enslaved the Inca and brought over another 3,000 enslaved Africans each year to continue the enterprise. Mining operations exploded, with the fruits of everyone's labor sent back to Spain to

fund colonization efforts. In 1825, Bolivia gained its independence from Spain, and its days of slavery seemed to be at an end. However, after several crushing defeats in battle and a crumbling economy, the people of Potosi had no choice but to continue mining. The silver was mostly exhausted by then, but there were still copious amounts of tin to be excavated. Unfortunately, the more they harvested, the more unstable the mines became.

Caverns and tunnel collapses were a part of everyday life. In fact, the average lifespan of a Cerro Rico miner was only 40 years old. So to keep everyone motivated and hopeful, miners today pray for a spirit to protect them. They call him El Teo, which is Spanish for the Uncle. Whenever something good happens like tapping a rich vein of ore, it's because El Teo favored them that day. El Teo's unhappiness, on the other hand, can result in caverns and death.

He's often depicted as a horned creature with goat-like features, similar to Supe, the Incan god of death, or even the Christian devil. But El Teo doesn't torture the souls of the dead. No, he's just hungry, like really hungry, and the miner's worship keeps him from killing them to feed that hunger. The men regularly offer beer and other alcoholic beverages to effigies of El Teo by pouring some on the statues. They'll also light cigarettes for the effigies, or bring cocoa leaves to appease him.

And every August 1st, indigenous witch doctors known as Yatari sacrifice llamas outside the mine, all in an effort to keep El Teo happy. And maybe that was the problem the English and Germans faced with the gremlins and cobalts of Europe. Because who knows how far a little booze in blood might have gone? To keep those other creatures happy. This episode of lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with additional help from Jenna Rose, Nethercotts, and Harry Marks, and music by Chad Lawson.

Lore is much more than just a podcast. There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more lore in your life. I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy. My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical.

You can learn more about all of our shows and everything else going on over in one central place, grimandmild.com. And you can also follow this show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. 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.