The Cryptid Factor - 24: #024 The Gap Issue

Episode Date: July 10, 2017

This week sees news on nanny haunting ghosts, old lobsters released from condo-jails and dog thefts - where the dogs are the thieves. On the Cryptid front. we discuss re-finding the faceless fish, exciting sightings of thylacines and more dreadful sightings of the Mothman.

The Cryptid Factor, with Rhys Darby and Dan Schreiber. Hello and welcome back to The Cryptid Factor, now performing almost as regular as my grandfather George. Once a month, if you're lucky. But the main thing is we're back, I'm Rhys Darby. Dan Schreiber. And Buttons, hello. Yes, well, another week of... That was exciting, maybe we should try that again.

Do it again? No, no, no, just the Rhys Darby. Oh, okay. Hello, I'm Rhys Darby. Oh, there's too much of a gap between hello and then I'm... You could shave that and edit it. You could shave that. You could probably shave that and edit it.

But anyway, I don't have you do... I don't want you to have to do that. No, let's do that. There's more work in it. I'll be on the phone. Did you shave the bit between hello and I'm... You haven't got to that yet. Oh, I'm a stickler for that.

It was just a little bit too long. You know how I like it. And then I listen back. Hello, I'm... Oh, no. No, I want you to get back to that. It looks like hello, I'm is one word. People don't realise why it takes so long to get podcasts out

because the editing takes months. It's Darby's review of your edits. Not for content, just for the gaps. I love it. Just some of the gaps are slightly too long and some are not quite long enough. I've just got a few notes. Just at the fifth minute, the 18th minute, the 27th minute,

the 32nd minute and the 43rd minute. Those are the four minutes that don't need any work. Gaps are perfect. The new policy should be that I do not hear the podcasts. No, you can't, you know. The problem is, as we're recording it, you comment on the gaps after the gap is not delivered well. That's what we're editing mainly.

I think I should be on a gap year myself. I would agree. Anyway, I'm Rhys Darby. We've already done that. No, let's move on. Just in case you want to use this bit. No, that was good. No, are you happy with it?

No, I'm happy with it. Hello, I'm Rhys Darby. I'm Dave Schrober. I'm the high on buttons. High on buttons. High. You bastards. I think it's time for...

Weekly World Weird News. Crazy, freaky. Watch out. Yes. Everyone's favourite segment. And this week, without a doubt, comes through with some revealing astonishments. First up, Louis, the 132-year-old lobster,

released after 20 years. Oh, that's a good headline. That's going to be a tricky one to beat. Yeah. Dan, have you got something to better that? I've got a Scottish family have offered over 50,000 pounds a year for a nanny, who has to look after kids but live in a house

that has potential supernatural incidents. Oh, dear. Oh. That's a gamble. I'm interested. What's the number I've got to call? That's 50,000 pounds. I don't know whether you'd be...

Way more than that. I mean, you know, it might be a good nanny, but... I'd be like Mary Poppins. Would you? Yeah. I think you'd be a bit heavy for that umbrella. What have you got? Okay, well, I've got dog caught on camera

stealing bread from store. Oh. Hey. Thieving hound. All right. Well, listen here. June 17th, a massive 132-year-old lobster. Too much of a gap between the 130 and the two...

I'll edit that. I'll edit that. Okay. 132-year-old lobster named Louis was set free after spending 20 years at a New York restaurant. Now, I like this story because how many times have you been to a seafood restaurant

and you've seen those lobsters in those tanks and you feel for them and you go, oh, no, look, that's going to be someone's dinner tonight. Or that's, you know, because that's what you assume. But little do you know that those lobsters quite often are there just for display. You know, they're not the ones that are going to be boiled out the back.

But... Oh, I see. They're the friends. Friends of the restaurant. Yeah, that you walk in and you sort of, you know, you see, particularly these older restaurants, these older seafood restaurants, and you see the crabs or the lobsters

and they're in these tanks and you think, oh, yes, I'll have that one, please. You know, it's so inhumane, mainly because they're not humans, they're lobsters. But I like the story because this one had been there in a tank for 20 years at the seafood restaurants, and, you know, in the end they went,

you know what, let's just let it go. And he was already 100 at that point. He was 132. How they found out he was that old, I don't know. I didn't know lobsters lived that long. I mean, that for a start is interesting news that they live that long. He's 22 pounds.

So they decided to do it the town of Hampstead to support the protection of wildlife. Hmm. So it actually got an official pardon. Hmm. Yeah. Don't be shellfish.

Help the town of Hampstead protect our wildlife. This national lobster month, we set free 22-pound, 132-year-old Louis, the lobster at Peter's clam bar so he could live back. Live back?

Live back. So he got caught at 112. Well, yeah, you've done the maths. Well done. Can you imagine? You've lived 112 years of not being caught as a lobster. All your mates have gone at some point.

All right. You think you've come to the end. You've done it. You've won the game. Yeah. And then you get lobbed off into a... A lobbed off. A lobster.

Lobsters always do. That's where it comes from. Full lob off. Hmm. Yeah, well, that's actually, he's probably really, he's like, man, I was in my little condo. I was being fed every day.

What the hell happened? Now I'm out having to catch my own food. So you're thinking the opposite. Yeah. Dan and I are thinking, yeah, he was free. No. He was imprisoned for 20 years, you know, for a crime he didn't commit.

You imagine his... And if you're thinking he's taken out of his wonderful environment and put into a... Okay. His actual not good environment of the real world. And then put in a lovely condo. Oh, because he doesn't have to fend for himself?

Yeah. And when you think about it, it's a hard life in the sea. You've got to go out and... How would you know? He lived 100 years... What? How many years before he was put in?

112. The ocean's not like some big adoption center for loose fish and crustacean. It's not like a puppy hound place where you pick a dog, bring it home, save it. What? It's the real world. How do you guys know?

How do you guys know how it works? Well, we can only assume... Yeah. That life outside a small, enclosed environment is better. He might be really... He might have been like, oh my God, this is like...

This is amazing. I don't have to try... I don't have to... You know, I just wake up and there I am with my food and lovely people coming, little kids coming up and tapping on the glass and saying...

It would sound like this. Boo, boo, boo. Boo, boo, boo. Hey, hey, mom. Hey, mom, look at that. Boo, boo, boo. I mean, the only problem with this... He got out.

He finally was let out. A crime he didn't commit. And I'm just... You know, it's just a bummer he didn't get to write his bestseller while he was in there. Yeah, that's the only thing... If I ever go to jail,

that's the one thing I'm looking forward to. Writing a bestseller. Writing a book. About how you went to prison. I mean, you've written a book already. Yes. But I didn't get imprisoned first. But I think, you know,

kind of my book... What would be your prison book, everyone? I'll give you a minute to think about it. Mine would be how I was wrongly committed. You know? The story of why I shouldn't be in here. Yeah.

And my escape plans. I would write a how to survive prison book because you're there living it and you go, I'm writing this from inside the prison. And then you'd sell it to people going, I went to prison

and I never thought I was going to. You might go to prison too. Don't leave it too late. Read this book now in case you go to prison. Buttons prison guide. A survival guide, you know? Yeah, not bad.

What about you, Dan? I would do a book that was all about the fact that I wasn't in prison for the crime that I'd been convicted for, but I had committed another crime. Oh, wow. And I would put,

this is my release date and if you can solve what I did actually do, I'll be put in jail for another book. Oh, wonderful. Yeah. So it's got an expiry date on it.

A real puzzler. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, that's... Okay. All right. Prison books. Yeah.

Okay, Dan... All right, we're going to mine. Yeah. Okay, so this is a living nanny position has come up in the newspapers in Scotland saying that we would like a nanny and this is a part of the listing.

Five nannies have left the role in the last year, each citing supernatural incidents as the reason, including strange noises, broken glass, and furniture moving. What?

Wow. Oh, that's amazing. Now, the family says that they haven't seen any supernatural happenings themselves. They did when they bought the house 10 years ago. They were told

that this is a haunted house and they said we don't believe in that sort of stuff, so this will be fine. They've never seen it, but these five nannies have fled. Wow. I would love to know the connections

between these nannies if there is any because this sounds like some sort of conspiracy if it's not real. And let's also point out that, you know, we don't normally do ghosts

or believe in them here in the cryptid factor. Well, what's interesting is this is just a higher paid job because neither did the family who were advertising for the job. They're like, it's just unfortunately

people who do believe in ghosts are coming in and somehow fleeing because they've heard a weird noise. So they've had to actually offer more than you would pay the average nanny because everyone keeps leading. But if the five people

back to back, like you say, good point, maybe do those five people, do they all come from the same agency or do they have, they linked in some way? If not,

then you have to actually look at it and kind of go, well, how else are they known? I'll tell you how. I'll tell you how. It's the kids. It's the kids. Of course it is.

They're manipulating the scene. They don't want a nanny. They are therefore either using magic or, you know what I said. I should point out, I do believe in magic, not ghosts, but I do believe

that the kids are magic. It turns out the parents are the Weasleys and they're trying to get the kids to look after the Weasley kids. You're a Weasley. I get my idea from Mary Poppins. I don't know whether you've seen

or read that, but the kids certainly got up to a bit of mischief there. You know, normally a smart adult can tell, but five in a row, I mean,

I'd love to meet these kids. And kids are usually the age where paranormal stuff is said to happen. It's usually girls, young girls, sort of going from 10 to 16. That's why in all the movies, you always see it's always these

little girls. Weird stuff starts happening according to the movies and people who believe in ghosts. I have had some weird things happen with my six-year-old, who now is a seven-year-old daughter. Have you?

Yeah. There was this one time where I put her to bed and she was lying in her bed and I walked out of the room and the door slammed behind me. Like, you know, like a proper slam.

And she's a lovely little girl, Emily. Yeah, exactly like that. It was uncannily like that. So I was sort of left there kind of going, that was weird. She slammed the door. I had a couple of seconds.

I was like, hang on, and how did she get up out of bed and slam the door that quickly? And she normally likes the door open a little bit. And then so I went back in, like only two seconds after the door slammed, and then she is still lying perfectly in bed.

That's weird. I mean, did you check the window? Yeah. Checked there were no windows. There was no windows open. Wow. I was left there sitting kind of going, and there have been a few times in our house,

I'm sort of like, you know, the kids say some weird stuff. Like, Wait, you were like, No, no. All right, let's move on, shall we? I've got a theory though about what ghosts are. What?

Little girls. Transparent. Poor little girls. I guess. I'm sorry to tell you Leon, but your little one. She's a ghost. So she does,

I didn't even realize I had a little ghost. Transparent time travelers. Oh, I like this. Because they come in, and maybe the way of time travel is actually to do with the fact that we're able to project ourselves here, but not physically.

So almost like the bit just before the human fully forms in Star Trek, where you see them apparating. Maybe we've got that far. Maybe we can't put a physical time trap. That's really good. My only angle against that would be quite often the ghosts that are seen

are in, you know, very old Victorian type outfits. So are they time traveling from that? Yeah, it's part of the gang. I think they've put the wrong date in. So the ones that we see that are dressed like that were meant to go back to the... Further. Further back, but they...

They popped into the 1990s. They got a digit wrong. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, very likely. Very likely. Well, hang on. It's our daughter again.

I get scared. I thought we don't do ghosts. Let's move on. Okay, let's move on. Okay, my one. A dog caught on camera stealing bread from a store. So, believe it or not, a husky. A wonderful, you know, huskies.

They're gorgeous. Oh, yeah. Wouldn't hurt a fly. You see a little husky walking down the road. You can't help but want to give it a big cuddle. Anybody. They're not aggressive. This one walked into a dollar store

and became friends with the employees. Oh, nice. Yeah, which is lovely. It sort of came up. Just wandered in. Snuggled up against them. Yeah. And then just turned around, grabbed some bread, ran out,

stole a lot of her bread. So came out and just sort of rubbed up against them, let them pat him. Yeah. And he was lovely. And then just... Flipped on a coin, grabbed some bread and bolted. Unbelievable.

I've got a wee video here to play about it. It was a Wednesday night like any other at this dollar general store in Shafter. Until... This dog came in and he was really friendly looking around. Or so we thought. Next thing we know, he'd grab a piece of bread and started running around with Stephen.

A canine caper caught on camera. You can see the suspect struggles over a loaf of bread with a dollar general employee, Stephen. And then dog gone it. It was time to call in the big guns. The bread banned it. Nick Riddick is Shafter's Animal Control Manager, part of Shafter Police Department,

who responded to nail the suspect. Here's how we believe it all went down. The hungry husky went for the Wonder Bread, close to the ground, soft to the bite. But fled after being caught red-pawed, narrowly escaping. But the next day, collared. They end up getting greeted, which is why they get caught. And unfortunately, in this case, the culprits were apprehended.

The original Bonnie Barker, let's say, had an accomplice. And the two returned the next day only to be apprehended. Two beautiful huskies, with no tags or IDs, sent to the slammer. But fear not. So they will be held for the requisite time period, after which point we will certify them good for adoption, and they will most likely be placed up for adoption.

They may be bread-crusted criminals, but they're still man's best friends. But you got jailed? Yeah. That's what you get jailed for in the dog world? Quite harsh. Because as soon as I saw that, and I mean, it's obviously somewhere in America,

and I thought to myself, hang on a minute, a dog, a beautiful dog like that came in. It gave a bit of affection towards the staff or whatever. And, OK, ran off with a loaf of bread. So what? Let it go! It's a loaf of bread! And from that video, it was a huge stall with a million loaves of bread.

It's a dog. I mean, obviously, it's hungry. Well, yeah. It has no tags. It's homeless. Just let it go. Also, if you try to get the bread off the dog and you failed, just accept it.

Don't call the cops. Well, no, but you say this. But have you, either of you, seen a 1972 movie, fantastic movie called The Doberman Gang? The Doberman Gang, no? The Doberman Gang. The premise of the movie is that these criminals, failed criminals, bank robbers,

have this great idea of training a gang of Doberman to do their bank robberies for them. I've got the trailer here. The Doberman Gang. Six Doberman pinchers trained to commit the most incredible caper ever conceived. The Doberman Gang. Six savage dobies with a thirst for cold gas

that leaves banks bone-dried. The Doberman Gang. They ain't in it for the dog biscuit. I take limit to their height. Who says you can't teach a new dog old tricks? Clockwork canines, trained to rip off banks with mechanical precision and rip up anybody who gets in their way.

See the Doberman Gang bite the long arm of the law. That's incredible. Awesome. They say a weird thing though. They say you can't teach a new dog old tricks. I mean, that's exactly what you can teach a dog. That's how it works. Didn't he say who says you can't?

Yeah, well no one is the answer. No one. Makes me want to see that film now. So maybe, yeah, maybe they are in training. Yeah. Maybe they can make a movie like Oliver, but about homeless dogs who are being taught by maybe a Doberman.

Do you? Yeah. Do you? Do you? Yeah. Do you? More? More?

More people. Get out of here scram! Do you? Do you? Yes, I'm trained in foley. That's amazing. Amazing. Well, I wondered whether or not there was the plausibility

that somebody was training them to rob banks and they were using too many times when they were talking about stealing the money. The common term for money for gangsters is bread. Talking about dollars and get the bread. They put two and two together into the dollar store and literally stole some bread

trained by Dobermans that come back. I mean, the Dobermans have done well if you think about it. Look at the lads. They've got that huge mansion in Hawaii. That's very true. Showing your age. Showing your age. Showing your age with reach.

I can't believe he used greatest American hero to talk about age. Bottoms just showed his age too. So they're in jail now, these dogs? Yeah, they're in jail. And if you wanted a lovely little husky, a pair of criminal huskies to add to your litter, I suggest you go and talk to whoever that was.

Yeah, or maybe leave them there because according to Buttons' lobster prison situation theory, it's actually a nicer life for them. Well, it would be, wouldn't it? Because they're there, they're getting food, they're getting love. Come on. Yeah.

And now it's time for the meat and veg of the show. It's time for... Attention, all personnel, it's time for this week's cryptid... Help me! Yes, don't get eaten by this cryptid news, but it's coming at you live from this dining room studio. New thylacine trail camera footage released.

Wow. Now there's slightly a longer gap between camera and footage, I would have liked there. But I'm going with it, I'm going to stick with it. But please, if you could edit those two words just slightly quicker together. The thylacine awareness group of Australia, which hasn't increased in numbers of late, but probably will after this report,

has uploaded a new video clip to its YouTube channel. The group, which believes that the thylacine, who of course is also known as the Tasmanian tiger, continues to survive to this day, despite being officially declared extinct in the 1980s, has released several videos over the last few months showing what some people believe to be evidence that the species is alive and well.

And we've seen some of these before, they keep popping up, and they're really obviously either really, you know, promoting their awareness group to get more numbers, or they're onto something here, or perhaps both. But this latest video, which was up-lated, up-lated? Yeah, a couple of days ago, shows an animal with distinctive black stripes

moving around on the left side of the frame for about two minutes. That's amazing. I'm going to show you the clip here, just to get your guys honest reaction, and see what you think, okay? See it there? Yeah.

So we're looking at a bit of foliage, some trees, and some bit of scrub, and it's obviously a trail cam. I don't know why it's been set at this particular place. Oh, that is definitely stripy animal skin. There's like, down in the bottom left-hand corner, there is just the very smallest amount of fur. And it's stripy, parts of it are stripy,

and then as it moves, other parts aren't as stripy, which is classic thylacine markings. That face looks like a weird face on the fur there. It's just gone out of shot now. That looked like us. There's definitely stripes. I mean, what other Australian, we've got an Australian in the room.

What other animals, apart from thylacines, have striped markings like that? I don't know. Other than a tiger or a tabby cat, can you get actual domestic cats that have got decent? You can't really look with stripes like that. No, you didn't end up with an actual tiger. You know what?

It's way too small a sample to be conclusive. Keep talking. Well, look, this video is eight minutes long, so we've got to keep on out over. But there's a picture there of the actual thylacines. You can see the stripes there. And see, the interesting thing is, is that that one there, you could see parts as it moved around a little bit.

You could see parts that were striped, and parts that weren't striped. And that's classic thylacine markings, isn't it? I think so. It's quite good. I mean, the animal is never fully showing, so it makes it difficult to identify. But it's definitely something, and it did have stripes.

I mean, it could be, though, who's to say it's not a puppet that they've created with stripes on it from a fairy, because it's black and white as well. Although, are all those kind of trail cams in black and white? At night time, they are. It's a night time one. And also, the other intriguing thing is, the initial shot of it, just looking at two trees,

and why is it positioned there? It's not even on a trail. It's kind of a weird place for it to be. It might be like as a passing, looking at the other side of the trail passes in front of it. Yeah. The thing that excites me about that is, the thylacine has been an animal that has existed,

and it's gone into extinction, right? Yes. So the great thing is about this, is if they do prove themselves to be non-extinct, and if they are still around, it's a great proof of theory of cryptids that haven't been proven yet, and the fact that... They go into hiding. Yeah.

They can hide. Here's the thing. With regards to the getting hidden once your numbers are down, it makes sense. I mean, think about it for humans. If there was only a few of us left, we would hide away, because we'd be scared. And if there was another whole civilization of aliens

or bigger creatures that arrived on this planet, and we lost our numbers and dwindled because their habitat grew ours, we would certainly hide for fear of being the last of us. Yeah. So this was last seen in 1936, the last of the Tasmanian tiger, and it was in a zoo in Hobart. And so, I mean, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of wilderness out there. It is possible that it could be sort of sitting on its own.

It's a shame that we allowed it to go extinct, really, because we had them in captivity. Yeah. I don't know how that happened. Yeah. There's the white rhino, or one of the rhinos right now, where there's only one of the species left, and they're protecting it from poachers,

and it has a 24-hour security guard following it wherever it goes. I know this interesting story, because there's actually 11 of those left. And I was in Africa, and I saw two of the 11. Oh, wow. Yeah. I was in Zambia, and we're on a... That's incredible. In a park, and looking for animals, safari in a jeep,

and, yeah, these rhinos happened upon us, but before they got to us was their bodyguard, which is what they essentially are, which was a guy coming towards us with a gun, and he was, like, you know, dressed in the green, and had a weapon and a walkie-talkie, and, oh, what's going on here? This guy's gonna...

We're in trouble now. And he just came up to us, he said, stop where you are. There's two rhino here, the endangered white rhino, and we were like, what, what, really? Yes, you know, they've got a full-time bodyguard situation going on that they take shifts, and they make sure that poachers don't go anywhere near them.

Would you like to come and see them? So we got out of the vehicle, and we walked about 30 yards, and we stood there right in front of two of the last 11 of these things, and it was one of those moments where your heart is beating against your chest. I love that we're all whispering. I just don't want the poachers to hear about this.

And I'd love to know where your heart normally beats. Half of our... It's not normally beating against your chest. It's where it always beats against, when you can feel it. I think you can feel it beat against there, like, you know, quite, quite thumper. But it is, it's possible that this, you know...

We can probably break out of the whisper now. Yeah, yeah. That's the thing with poachers, and they do listen to the show, but they've got their heart of hearing, so when we get to a point where we start to whisper, they have some information about some things we can poach. Listen carefully, listen carefully, Steve.

Oh, I can't hear it, I can't hear it, Brian. Damn it, the fall is again with a little volume. I hate the show. Stephen, Brian, your classic poachers. Your classic gentrified poacher. Yeah. But yeah, you know, like, people were tweeting about sightings of Tasmanian tigers,

proper sort of people like Richard Dawkins, for example. Right. You know, they think, you know, there could be truth for this, and they want there to be truth for this. Because we keep losing these animals for a very stupid reason, which is that we just didn't bother to save them. Yeah, that's it, too busy.

Totally. Okay, well, on to other cryptid news. Dan, have you got something to share? Yes, I have. A faceless fish has been found off the coast of Australia. It's been dubbed the faceless fish. This faceless fish actually does have a face,

but it's on the bottom of its body. Really? Yeah. So it looks like, if you look at it, it looks like just a fish, they say, with two rear ends. It just looks like it has no way of seeing, no way of anything, but it's been discovered underneath the face.

The reason I'm bringing this up is crypto news, and this is very much in tune with what we were just talking about, is that this was first found back in 1873 off the coast of Papua New Guinea by HMS Challenger, and we've not seen it since. So it was presumed to have been extinct, and like all these animals where we think maybe they're in hiding, maybe they're out there somewhere,

we've just rediscovered a fish that we thought was no longer around, and maybe it was an anomaly, the first one that he'd seen. So technically, encrypted in that, when you spotted it, it was presumed extinct. What's interesting that it was found in Australia as well, because quite often Australians get off their face.

You know, it's a common term there, and so this fish... Literally off its face. And reminds me also of a push me pull you situation. Yes. You know, from the Dr Doolittle book. That's amazing. But yeah, and they did this huge haul,

they've discovered so many new species while they were down there. So again, just another thing of people saying, the mysteries of the world have been solved, the animals have been discovered, they haven't. You could put a net down just off the coast of Queensland, come up with presumed extinct fish, as well as completely new species. Yeah, I like to know who it is

that's saying these things no longer exist. What the rule is on how long you have to wait, or how far you have to search before you definitely are allowed to get your marker pen and cross it off of the list of living things, because they turn up time and time again things that are supposedly dead or gone. And they're not, particularly things that are smaller

than something like a rhino or an elephant, because those are easier to spot. But these fishes without faces that are deep down, I mean, how can you... not be at every day looking for these things? No. You haven't seen them once, and it's like, oh, I think they've gone. They've gone, George.

I know. We'll get the marker pen. You know. We just don't put enough effort in. I know, and the sea is so unbelievably hard to describe. I'd say it's more soft and watery. No. It's hard.

It's hard to explore. It's liquid, I mean, it's not hard. It's definitely liquid. It gets harder as the further you go down. Yeah, it's hard to explore. It's hard to explore is what I wanted to say. It's dark down there. Somebody once likened it only being able to try

and discover all of the animals within the African plains with a flashlight at night. Ah, yeah. If you could only ever look for any animal in any continent, anywhere, if you could only try and discover new animals at nighttime with a flashlight, you wouldn't find half of them.

But you would find the other half. That is a good analogy. So it's good for 50% of a flashlight. It's coming back. How'd you get on? You stole half of them. You stole half of them with a flashlight? Yeah, I didn't do too bad, actually, but I missed a couple of rhinos

and the odd snake. All right, well, look. That's my point. Okay, well, my bit of crypto news is really exciting, but also really scary, and the fact that Chicago's current Mothman flap is continuing,

and experts are starting to say that people should start taking it as a warning. Oh, yes, of course. Tell us a bit more about this, so there's been some more recent sightings. Yeah, for those of you who may not know about the Mothman, it was originally seen in Pleasant Point. There's obviously been fantastic movies about it.

It was seen on the Silver Bridge in Pleasant Point just before it collapsed and killed a number of people. So it has been assumed to be an omen of bad things to come, and there have now been like a good, at least seven sightings of the Mothman now in Chicago. And so people are starting to freak out a little bit,

and now people are starting to say that the flying humanoid should be seen as a mark of a potential disaster heading Chicago's way. Has there been any actual footage captured in these recent sightings? I know there's been a lot of sketches. This is one of the favourite cryptids out there because it is so scary.

You can't really fathom what it really is. Is it from another realm? Is it the devil itself? Yeah. Well, the interesting thing with this cryptid, where normal cryptids are hidden off in the bush, these are happening right in around Chicago City and the outline areas.

There's a bit of a map here of all the sightings, and there's counted up to now, actually, on this map, 15 sightings. And the one common thing, though, which is what is making experts really concerned about whether or not it is some kind of omen, is that the one common part of the sightings when people give reports is that they are overwhelmed

with a sense of dread and fear. Really? Now, I can understand the fear, but the dread, so they really feel there's some sort of connection where they just feel really down in the dumps and they feel awful. How do you manifest that without... So you see it and you feel that,

and then... See, this is sort of a weird thing that connects to our brains, connects to who we are, the energy around us that makes us feel a certain way, which proves that there's more to life than what we see. And it's about the vibe. What are they dreading?

Well, this is the thing that they can't quite explain. I mean, some researchers are just saying that it's probably an extremely large owl. But a lot of the reports, almost all the reports, are saying that the wings are way more sort of leathery and sort of more prehistoric kind of feel. And that they feel...

Before they even see the strange being, they're starting to feel an overwhelming feeling, let's just say dread. And I've felt that in the past myself, when I've felt bad about something I may have done. I may have said something that's not a bad thing. I feel a sense of dread. Yeah, a sense of dread.

And I looked around to see if there was a moth man around. And then you thought, oh, and actually that was just me because I treated that guy like shit. There was more regret. Okay, there's more regret. And I was talking to my accountant. He made a bed.

Mr, I'm going into too much detail here. Well, look, I've actually got a video here of recent times. And we're looking at here. It's this year. It's actually the second of this month. It's entitled, Scary as Hell,

Moth Man Returns, Demonic Dark Angel, question mark. So here we go. Let's have a look at this and see... Is this in Chicago? Would very well be linked. I think so.

Yes, with what you're talking about. Let's see what we think. Blake Cousins here. Welcome back. Look. Third phase of moon. And what are we looking at right now? I'm going to be sharing with you the exclusive link

of what I dub the Dark Angel. Are those its legs? Or is it... I mean, it's... It looks... It's got good legs if it's a man. There is incredible imagery coming in. We're going to be looking at it with the world.

Huge. It's like he's facing with his back to us. You can see that's like his hair and his face. Oh, you think? Yeah, it looks like he's wearing a suit. In the neighborhood. Menacing. Very menacing.

I mean, you know, it's not a great photograph. It could easily be a man with big manufactured wings. Right? In that photo. The world in regards to this dark menacing figure. Got some comments here from people. I saw this today. People are calling it the Markman.

So the interesting thing in this article, there's a lot of eyewitness accounts within this article that I've got this information from. But the one eyewitness account got me really the most was from a truck driver. And he said, It looked like a flying Batmobile. I was sitting in my semi-trailer around noon.

I saw this object coming from Route 55. And I saw it gliding and not too fast. No sound. I saw that it was not a drone and the size of a large car. It climbed higher and turned twice. I can tell you that it glided just like a bird. It went almost straight up and I lost it in the clouds. And he said this man says that he believes the incident

has actually affected his life. And he said, The more I speak of this, the worse my luck becomes. My mum died three weeks ago. I'm not sure what to think at this point. Well, I don't know if you should speak of it anymore. I don't want any more bad luck happening to this chap. It sounds to me like that could be a Thunderbird report too.

Well, it is. And one does sound very Thunderbird-ish. The very first eyewitness account says, A seven to eight foot solid black humanoid with a wide membrane wings that resembled those of a huge bat. The wingspan was at least 12 foot. The head was prominent and thinner than a human head.

The back end of the body tapered to a point. No legs were noticed, but could have been tucked up under the body. The figure was gliding quickly along the length of the street heading east and suddenly ascended into the night sky. Neither heard any sound. Both witnesses told the person taking the eyewitness account that they felt a sense of foreboding

and were still terrified almost an hour after the encounter. Wow. It's quite spooky. If it was something from this realm, if it was a large bird, if it was even a Thunderbird or a prehistoric bird, why would it come with a sense of dread? That's the demonic part of it.

That's where people fall into the Satan kind of realm of thinking. I guess that's why people are relating it to the Point Pleasant incident because the original people who had encounters with the Mothman in Point Pleasant also said they had that very summer sense of dread and foreboding. That's the spooky, spooky part of that cryptid. Yeah. Nice. Nice to know that it's back.

Welcome back, Mothman. Well, that's me at the end of my tether for this episode. It's been fantastic. Thanks for listening and we'll see you all, although more likely you'll just hear us next week. If you're lucky, I'm the cryptid Factor. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Bye. Factor Bad. Hang on, did she sound bad? No. Factor Bad.