This Paranormal Life - #140 The Mysterious Green Children: Human or Alien?

Episode Date: November 26, 2019

Medieval Britain was a mysterious place full of folklore, myth, and legend. Not least on the day when seemingly alien children arrived in the town of Woolpit, confusing the locals in a mystery that has survived over 800 years.Support us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to weekly bonus episodes!Buy Official TPL Merch! - thisparanormallife.com/storeFollow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunityIntro music by www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do cats always land on their feet? Why are babies so good at learning languages? What do they know that we don't? Answers to these questions and more on this episode of This Paranormal Life! Yo! Welcome back to This Paranormal Life, the comedy podcast where every week we dissect a different paranormal tale, case, or claim and get to the bottom of whether it's real or not.

Really. We're two paranormal investigators at the peak of their career and on the edge. The precipice. My name's Kit. This guy's Rory. How are you doing today, Rory? Irrelevant. That's not why we're here.

We're here to investigate the paranormal. I guess so. It was just a little courtesy. Common courtesy. uh you're having a good week at least irrelevant my time on this earth is meaningless unless it involves investigating the paranormal i mean you were just i'm pretty sure you just spent the last three days i wanted a podcast for the last three days and you were like i think in abitha irrelevant boys irrelevant where i was and what i was doing with my boys you said that your life is meaningless without investigating so i don't know what you're up to for the last three days well sure sometimes

investigators gotta take a little time off you go crazy investigating these monsters for so long so me and the boys blew off a little steam in abiza for a fortnight it looks like more than a little steam i mean you got arrested it seems like sure some of that steam blew up a cop's ass and he freaked out all right but that's just how that's just happened that just happens sometimes okay i'm i'm i'm getting a cagey atmosphere here so i'm gonna move on listen folks uh no time to dilly dally around we got another brand new paranormal investigation for us here today this one comes by popular demand we've been getting emails uh about this for a couple years um i pretty much just deleted them on site up until this week uh but thank you

to beth marcus stephanie white el hanrahan andrew steen rich Richard Morris, Liam L. and more, who all emailed in saying, this is a crazy case. You need to get to the bottom of it. And so here it is. A couple of years late, but here we are. Wow. Our story today takes us to Suffolk in England, less than 100 miles from our very location. Really? Which is too close. We talk a lot about going on site, going to see things hand-to-hand combat style investigations right right right get your hands dirty i'll be honest there's a reason we're sat here behind microphones i don't usually like getting within the hundred mile radius the danger zone as i like to call it that's true it's it's easier to investigate

things these things from a distance a lot. I prefer reading about it 50 years after the fact on Reddit. But our story today is in 12th century Suffolk. So whenever we think of medieval England in general, it's not a pretty sight. I usually think of a peasant life, a tough,

dirty life where life is short and hard and every day is tax day, which actually makes it a lot like this paranormal life commune well you know don't don't paint don't paint it in a bad light there's there's you know the the commune that this paranormal commune also is quite regal um you know there's knights there's kings us uh there's a chivalric code there's the tax day uh opening and closing ceremonies those are always fun but every day is tax day of course we can't every morning starts with the opening ceremony where

we knock on your door parading through the town and uh ask for money and although there is a regal high society let's be real 99 of the commune are peasant class, peasant tier. It's true. Some similarities with medieval England. But through researching this story, I've learned that apparently this really wasn't the case, especially in the Suffolk area. Apparently, it was borderline peaches and cream down there, which definitely aren't available in this paranormal life commune. Due to Suffolk's proximity to the coast for fishing and being near London for trading,

and there also weren't really any aristocrats laying down the law real hard on you. Apparently, this place was the goddamn Silicon Valley of medieval Britain. Wow. You know, we're talking wagon wagon ride sharing startups we've got grain delivery services maybe some kind of dating apps you don't marry your cousin medieval shit but people were starting businesses it was very kind of rich area apparently yeah times were good and the ale was cold it's around the year 1100 in Woolpit. The name Woolpit actually comes from the old English

Woolfpit. Okay. Listen, I know I said it was all peaches and cream in this area. Well, this time was named after what they had to do to survive here. Dig giant holes in the ground, fill them with spikes, and then cover it up so that wolves would get trapped and killed in them.

That's not peaches and cream. Yeah, it's not killed that's not peaches and cream yeah it's not you said this was the silicon valley of medieval england well in lots of ways but if you imagine silicon valley had a pretty tremendous wolf problem right i know they say silicon valley has like a homeless problem or something yeah replace the homeless people with wolves murderous wolves wool pit wasn't very luxurious i think it was the other bits that were luxurious and rich bad and it's filled with wolves yeah i don't know why you'd settle there it sounds like the town was originally called wolf pit by the way and they changed it was wool pit comes from the old english phrase wolf pit and it was next to these very wolf pits that two men were working in their fields

at harvest time using scythes to reap the harvest of grains. Just honest work. Honest medieval work. Creepy, honest work right next to the wolf pits. And they're cutting through these fields when they see some movement in the tall grass they think am i imagining that then it moves again there is definitely something in there most people would be terrified in case there's a person in there maybe an attacker but whenever you're a wool pit farmer you're worried that there's a gaggle of wolves they've escaped the

pit and they're back with a vengeance and if they survive the pit they're definitely the most uh horrific frankenstein like t1000 level wolves right you chop its head off it melts down into a puddle and comes back full strong that's right either that or so many wolves have fallen into the pits that the pits are kind of full of wolves and the remaining survivor wolves can kind of just i don't know wolf over them they've become a miniature wolf city right they're educating but it wasn't a wolf it was a child. A little girl staring at them. Please, sir, can I have some wheat? Begone, wolves! Off with her head. Damn it, Trevor, that's the third child this week you've chopped in half.

His granddad walks in. Nay, Trevor, that was a good decision. Them wolves be shapeshifters. Something was very obviously off. Her skin was green. Not not only that but the clothes she was wearing were odd the men had never seen anything like them before not made of the normal materials to which they were accustomed i think in these kind of areas they did a lot of manufacturing too they're kind of like the first places they were probably making like i don't know

you know spinning cotton and stuff like that so sure uh they were probably making, like, I don't know, you know, spinning cotton and stuff like that. Sure. They had never seen clothes like this before. But before they could open their mouths, the girls spoke. But whenever she did, unfamiliar sounds came out. It was like no language they had ever heard before. Howl!

What beautiful voice you have, my sweetheart. It was covered in a kind of green fur. What beautiful voice you have, my sweetheart. It was covered in a kind of green fur. Everything about this girl was getting stranger and stranger. And then the rustling went again. And another child came out of the field. This time, a small, younger boy. Also green and wearing the same unusual clothes. He seemed to be able to understand the girl, but again, not the men. The men, not knowing what to do, took them to the local land

owner in Wilkes, Sir Richard Decan, to see what he thought. He agreed to take them in in the meantime, He agreed to take them in in the meantime, evidently deciding that they posed no immediate threat. But more than even shelter, what the green children needed at this point was food. They were starving. They were thin and tired looking. Deccan sent for food to be brought to them. And they brought bread. But the children looked confused and wouldn't eat it, so they brought meats and cheese. But again, the children spoke in their alien language and appeared confused and incredulous and wouldn't eat anything. Despite being obviously starved,

they wouldn't eat anything put in front of them. That is until, in a desperate attempt to find something edible for the children, someone in the household placed some broad beans on the table and to their amazement, the green kids grabbed and ate them quickly. They were like, quick, fetch more broad beans! And they brought in a ton of beans to these kids and they devoured every last one. That's weird. to these kids and they devoured every last one that's weird this was very confusing but um somewhat a relief to the servants that these kids at least weren't going to starve to death they find something that they could eat but this sounds like it could almost be the problem you know if these kids are bright essentially bright green and they won't eat any human food right they'll eat a shit

ton of green beans i never said the beans were green right i said they were all together but but i mean like at what point are you telling these kids look you guys are f***ed up all right have some mountain dew and some dor, maybe a bag of Oreos, and just chill out. And maybe you can... You're sick as all hell. We thought you were wolves when you first came here. Just eat a goddamn Jammy Dodger,

have a cup of tea, and chill out. Yeah. And maybe you'll become human. Quit this vegan shit. Get some regular snacks into you. Of course. But, yeah, trying to get them into more

normality rather than because whatever they're accustomed to hasn't got them very far yeah in life because also we said this is you know this is very early uh almost medieval england these aren't the most welcoming times to people who are different yeah you don't walk around in the wilderness with no family going i have dietary requirements like we weren't even gonna feed you yeah you gotta really take what you can get yeah because these men want everyone to pretty much be the same i'm pretty sure if they found a mermaid off the coast they were like you gotta eat a cheeseburger and grow some f***ing legs real quick or swim back out where you came from

or else as far as we're concerned you're a wolf and you're going in the pit you know the classic rednecks of medieval England it's like wow that seems difficult but I guess I can get into your ways and live with your people what's the name of your

town wolf pit really fare thee well but yeah you pretty much called it and not only did they try to get these kids on the straight and narrow with the old diet they also um because like you say there's no freeloaders in this society yeah Yeah. They put these little bastards to work. Of course. They baptized them and then gave them jobs, even though they were like nine. This is so rude. It is so sad that probably even today, if aliens crashed to earth, humans would try and baptize them almost immediately, like day one. It's like those videos have you seen of like evangelical Christians trying to like preach to lions and stuff.

What? I'd love it if afterwards the aliens are like, Now let us baptize you to our Lord and Savior Smorglach. And they're just like pour water, like burns through the priest's head. So they gave them jobs. Apparently they were fine at working, I guess, except the TripAdvisor review of the little girl's work or her work reference was that she was

rather loose and wanton in her conduct. Okay, which is? I guess she wasn't a very reliable worker. Maybe she was a bit. I don't think she took orders too well, but that probably is on account of her speaking an alien language. And being nine. Nine and green.

And only eating beans for every meal. Yeah. So as far as I think, I think that's a pretty good work reference given the circumstances. I'm impressed she's not blind. And as the months passed, the kids were fed endless quantities of beans, of course. Stop feeding them beans! Well, they won't eat anything else. I do love that, like, these days, parents' problem is like,

look, I know I should feed the kids vegetables, but they love nuggets. And I have 30 minutes between getting home from work and having to put the kids to bed, so they're getting f***ing nuggets. I like that even back in medieval uh england it was the same problem yeah like sir richard decan is just like look i'm on royal business give them beans i don't have time to give them a healthy diet of leeches and cocaine give them the bloody beans listen i would love to sit here and give this little boy and girl as much booze as i can handle but all they're getting is beans and mud water so they had a ton of beans but eventually

eventually they even developed a little taste for bread just having a little bit and they realized that it was also food however these good times were short-lived and the boy started to fall ill. Oh. Whilst they tried to save him, we already know that their medical ability was not fantastic. Of course. The boy died. Ah balls. Nothing worked. He died as if as if there were some unknown cause. Something that maybe along with the boy's green skin, maybe his biology was somehow different. Whatever the case, they were not equipped to help him and he died quickly. At that point all eyes are on the little girl and her

inadvisable diet of beans only because who knows maybe she'll get hit by some disease. But the opposite happened. Not only did she not get sick, but over time she started losing her green color and started turning a pale white like everyone else in the village. She even started picking up some English and talking to the others that worked around her. Crucially, this meant that once she could speak a few words, she could start telling her story. Of course. Because up until now, it's a mystery. She claimed that her and her late brother, the boy, came from the land of St. Martin.

The land of St. Martin, she said, is a land with no sun, just a never-ending twilight. The people who lived there were all green, just like her and her brother. They all lived underground and only ate beans. Wow. Her story went that her and her brother were looking after their family's sheep when they came across a cave. Being nine or whatever, intrigue got the better of them and they decided to explore. They entered the pitch black of the cave, wandering in the dark. Eventually, they saw a way out, an exit to somewhere very different to their home, on account of they could see light, sunlight. Yeah, they must have been blinded. They stepped blinded into the sunlight there it is which they

had never seen before and that was right when the reapers found them in the field why were they so hungry then because they've been wandering in the caves with the sheep for hours but only hours because it sounded like when he found them that they've been wandering for like days they've been eating beans for nine years. You'd be pretty f***ing hungry too if you lived in a cave. I don't eat beans. I don't know why they have sheep. Because they could have eaten the sheep.

Yeah, or you said they didn't wear like human clothes, but they have sheep presumably for wool. Maybe they don't wear wool. Maybe they wear beans. We don't know what goes on. We don't know what kind of green cave sheep these were. Maybe their word for sheep is something very different. It could be. It could be.

I don't know. Fair enough. But I will concede that whatever their word for sheep means, they could have eaten it. Yeah, presumably. could have eaten it yeah presumably now because this story is from medieval times um there's kind of only a spark notes amount of information here so once we've got this girl's backstory and the knowledge that she went into work under sir richard de can all we know is that essentially she must have grown up there but the legend says that she even went on to marry an ambassador of Henry II in Norfolk, taking the name Agnes Barr.

Wow. Good for her. I mean, talking about glowing up. Yeah. Rags to riches right there. Going from green to queen. I love it. That actual piece of information is a little bit fuzzy.

There are multiple sources that cite that. I love it. That actual piece of information is a little bit fuzzy. There are multiple sources that cite that. And the person that she's supposed to have married, Richard Barr, is a historical figure. He has a Wikipedia page and everything. But there is scant information on that marriage. But it's definitely possible. This is the problem with investigating medieval cases, is that a lot of the history at the time is was recorded and documented via tapestry yeah sure and it you know while you

can't necessarily um you know mib style blackout a tapestry you know that's one of the pros of it is it's hard to get all the information and all the facts yeah not to mention the tapestries were being woven by monks who are off their tits on wine because there was no clean water it seems like yeah like by the time you're finishing up the freaking tapestry for the battle of hastings that thing's been over for years you're like do we win again i don't remember i'm a monk i wasn't there i was on wine it happened two countries away and we're getting paid via rice so i don't even give a shit i have a loose understanding of what a country is how many are there who knows let's just say the spiders won who are we fighting against spider it was spiders right well it spiders or the french i have no idea with no

other information than this uh the explanations on hand have led to some pretty fantastical paranormal theories so first of which i just have to clear the air i just have to i think everyone's out there thinking it in the paranormal nation i think we're thinking it right here you want to say it on three one two three babies oh right yeah yeah no you it's your case you lead hear me out they're great babies sorry you're one you said you're one you said you would hear me out it's my show so let me just finish my thought and then you can we should at least like just entertain the notion i don't even really want to talk about what you're talking about but i will out of courtesy we'll talk about it once i'm done you're being a real far quad but that's fine

we haven't even started talking about the the s word so i don't even want to start getting into references all right that's fine also i i take umbridge with being called a far quad anyway they were green they spoke a different language yeah they had different by the way you don't know that what no one said it was that scottish people existed at this time so it's probably not a scottish action it could have been all i'm hearing is green you projected accent you're at a swamp that's all i'm hearing there was no swamp someone said swamp no one said swamp really absolutely definitely donkey though right i said wolves right there's a ton of wolves the donkeys of the the olden days no no they had

donkeys they of course had donkeys listen the clothes were different right they only ate uh foreign food they didn't recognize normal human food okay so you think grays i'm saying it's possible this is one of the theories were they uh greens instead of grays what what was the cave then what are they trying to uh verbalize here what was the process of them coming to earth that's a great question a wormhole did they take a sheep through a wormhole that's an interesting idea though because this girl is super young and she learns english this second language we don't know how much of what she's describing is allegory and how much is literal fact is a little literal cave or that's just the closest word for however she got here yeah because how did she live if it was earth how was

it in a permanent twilight state for example yeah that's bizarre it doesn't make any sense not much do you want to talk about so they must be ogres then okay they're 100% ogres from the shrek universe that somehow caved their way into our existence universe despite it being like 800 years ago yeah well obviously the freaking movie's based on something isn't it based on the original events that took place in wolf pit no it was a dreamworks production based on based on the events that took place now here even if it was right there was no description of them being an ogre other than granted they're green if i'm if i'm not here to throw freaking spanners in the works i don't know why i'm here i think you're

here to investigate the paranormal oh that's yeah no you're right that's what it was wasn't it if i'm not here to stir the pot and get weird what am i here to do okay so we got two so far we got their aliens yep we got their uh ogres yeah fair enough we've talked pretty damn recently about underground humans and we've talked about them on a number of different podcasts is it possible there's some kind of underground human maybe an ancient civilization you know what we have talked about it a lot we talked about agartha yeah the um secret world inside our own world that's right um but in all my investigations into that i've never come across creatures described like this with green skin living in eternal twilight you know we hear about a larger very much

nordic scandinavian looking sons of bitches who are very tall live in 400 years um the description that these kids gave it doesn't sound like anything i've heard of before i know you mean in agartha in mont shasta underneath ground, humans live in a futuristic society. Futuristic yet ancient society. Yeah, it's weird like that. It's actually awesome. Whereas these kids seem to live in a medieval underground city. Right.

Where things are actually worse than on the surface. You don't have a sun for a start. No sun, only beans. But thankfully, we're not the only people to speculate about some more kind of paranormal explanations for what happened. So we can look to the past geniuses who've thought about this. For example, Robert Burton suggested in his 1621 book, The Anatomy of Melancholy,

suggested that the green children simply fell from heaven holy shit uh which led others in more recent years to sort of take that as a metaphor for saying maybe they were extraterrestrials right, right. Framing something that wild within your understanding of the world. Exactly. Even more recently, in 1996, Duncan Lunan hypothesized that the children were accidentally transported to Woolpit from their home planet, which may be trapped in a synchronous orbit around its sun, presenting the conditions for life only in a narrow twilight zone between a fiercely hot surface and a frozen dark side.

He explains that the children's green color is a side effect of consuming GMO alien plants. He wrote about this in a magazine called science fiction and science fact so it's like something we should be uh published in to be honest i like that that's a bit more you know of a scientific uh explanation rather than they fell from heaven yeah well he had a bit he had like 400 years more science uh behind him couple more uh funny that it's still at the same premise just with a cup with the word gmo thrown in i think an alien planet yeah but at least i can point to him and say look he said it i didn't it's possible these kids are aliens it's true and you know we can't be too harsh on the first guy as well because any of us would have thought that if we we were around 400 years

ago seemed like anyone could have written a book in the 1600s as long as it was as it was about religion christianity uh preferentially uh people would have been really into it i mean if this guy had actually seen an alien he probably would have been like people jesus himself is three foot tall giant ant eyes and he has a gun and he didn't seem to like me very much despite me praising him for all these years yeah it's just them um understanding the paranormal through their own lenses but on the other side of this coin uh assuming that everything I just recounted actually happened, the truth of whether this is paranormal or not lies in whether there is a plausible scientific explanation for the story. And scientists have posed possible theories.

One is that the green skin exhibited by the children is actually a condition called hypochromic anemia where a patient is so malnourished that their skin goes a light green this condition was actually known back in the day as chlorosis from the greek chloris which means green yellow or pale green this kind of reminds me of all those urban legends of the kids that drank too much Sunny D and turned yellow. Right. And what we have here is, you know, two kids, and all they eat every day is beans, every meal beans.

We didn't say it, but the beans are green. They've got to be green. There's no other reason why these little guys are green, except they're only eating green beans. I'm going to show you a picture of the bean. Okay. All right, well, I'm confused now. Did you not think it was green?

Listen, I was f***ing sure. Look, that's... This was your ace in the hole, wasn't it? You're going to be like, I think you'll find the bean is brown. The bean doesn't fit all right you're showing me pictures of cashews no these are the very bean however that wasn't a sentence however i will concede this is only one possible google image result of uh he's zooming out to reveal a ton of green beans

quite a lot of green beans in fact almost every other bean is green i'm starting to think these are the dry ones uh seems like the fresh ones are pretty damn green yeah about as green as we're talking like nuclear green here so for anyone listening at home i am a moron they're broad beans aka fava beans so yeah their green is all hell it's um relatively difficult to get a photo of what this condition looks like but these i believe are real and give just kind of a picture of what a little bit of what it's like oh what the condition is like yeah okay so uh how was this caused again with malnutrition essentially was that the gist of it exactly just kind of uh extended period of very poor diet leads to this condition oof i mean yeah so there's a there's a

couple of different pictures here i mean in the most extreme cases yeah folks we are looking at a uh a yellowy green hand so either these people have consumed far too much sunny delight or they um are malnourished and are suffering from some uh illnesses from poor diet but yeah i mean i think when when we say green children we obviously i'm thinking like bright green i'm thinking thinking yoshi green yeah shrek green two little yodas stomping about in the in the wheat fields if you will this is more of a um uh quite a pale yellowish green this is the gritty reboot color yeah where it's like a believable green so if this condition really is what happened then the question is how did they get into that shape well throughout

history there are documented examples of feral children these are kids that have been abandoned or orphaned or just fell through the cracks of society throughout history, but managed to survive in the wild on their own. Now there are a ton of crazy stories that are really worth checking out because it's very fascinating, but some of them do sound surprisingly similar to the story of the Green Children. For example, one was Wild Peter, a boy found in Hanover in 1724 who could not speak and behaved almost entirely like an animal. And crucially, whenever he was given food, he refused it because he didn't recognize it as the stuff he normally ate.

He was normally eating twigs and leaves and stuff. That's crazy. So whenever he was given bread, he was like pushing it away. I wonder how young he was abandoned at. Because he was obviously old enough that he could fend for himself to survive, but not old enough that he didn't speak any English or understand humans. Yeah. It's crazy.

That's the sweet spot right there. You got to hit that sweet spot. Too young, they're dead. You got gotta peace out before you learn all the adult bullshit who wants to know pythagoras theorem exactly but it also catch me in the forest eating berries boy it really helps if you can walk when you leave yeah that'll do you good in the wild there's been multiple stories of kids raised by like wolves raised by bears and i did see in a number of cases where they were able

to tell roughly what age they were orphaned or abandoned right because the feral child walks on four legs and then just occasionally stands up on two kind of like a bear yeah yeah whereas other feral children know to walk on two legs which means they were a little bit older when they got abandoned you would be bummed out if you were one of these feral kids and to walk on two legs, which means they were a little bit older when they got abandoned. You would be bummed out if you were one of these feral kids and you were like, all right, sweet.

Like, what's my family going to be? You know, am I going to be raised by wolves? Maybe there's like a friendly bear, jungle book style, who will teach me the bear necessities and we'll just eat a bunch of coconuts and shit. And then there's just like, I don't know, a f*** know a snake a big pit of snakes

and they're like hey hey you need a dad you're like oh i mean i was kind of hoping a bear would come along no no bears join us we eat bears you're gonna eat bear soon i don't want to eat a bear you got everyone you gotta eat something as well as jungle law jungle i've eaten other snakes before i'm one sick son of a bitch you want to grow up like me kid sometimes i eat my kids i might eat you but you just gotta you just gotta get on your belly and crawl because those snakes know how to what do snakes eat eggs they do right they eat everything yeah like birds animals that's cool well there you go that's actually a pretty good family because they'll just give you everything chicken eggs they eat pretty well i'll give them that yeah unlike say koala bears which are very cuddly a little bit human-like but only eat leaves which is not enough yeah and also you know for a creature that doesn't have any arms or legs

that's pretty good to survive and evolve and keep up with everyone else. I say fair play to the snakes. They've done well. They've done well for themselves. I always think it must have been so weird when, you know, when all the other creatures were evolving and it's like, you know, you got your monkeys and they're growing all these, like, they're basically evolving into humans and it's crazy. And then the snakes are like, nah, good it's like really you don't want you want anything it's like i'm good i'm happy i'm happy the way i am you want hands or something i don't have arms why do i need hands you guys always breaking your limbs anyway falling out

of a tree breaking your leg you're left for dead listen no no backbone no problem do you want like to make it easier to eat i could give you some teeth not just two i just want two teeth what how are you gonna eat anything i don't know i'll i'll just stretch i just won't bite it i'll just put the whole thing in at once well like monkeys have gone pretty far they have like their own teeth they could pick up a banana like they're pretty they're pretty well adapted. Nah, I'm just going to stay on the ground. Stay low down. Let's hang out here.

Do you want wings? You could fly, travel the world. Nah, I'm good. I'm going to wrap around this tree a couple of times. I'm basically camouflage. Oh, you know what? One thing you could do. Every couple of months, could you make my skin peel off?

What? Yeah. could do uh every couple months could you make my skin peel off what yeah i we can give you like we can give you like a nice coat of hair and a nice luscious locks i'm good just make make my old skin peel off and come back the same if it comes back the same what's the point just it gets dirty from wriggling around in the dirt you want to be able to wash hands so you can wash no i could probably do that with my tail i don't think so and they're just having a good time rolling about no problem anyway i'm gonna go raise this little boy do not raise the boy two years later the boys just crawl along the ground nah i'm good kid they've discovered in the forest oh my god kid do you need help nah i'm good kid they've discovered in the forest oh my god kid do you need help no i'm good

i'm just gonna crawl here he's trying to peel off his own skin and the comparison doesn't end there uh the little green girl didn't recognize the food a little bit like wild p. And with some feral children, in rare cases, those kids even go on to learn languages, in some cases even to write books, which is what we saw with the green girl from our story in Woolpit, that she eventually learned English and joined society. Yeah. And the only loose end of this theory is physically,

where these kids originally came from. Where is this land of twilight? In 1998 one Paul Harris suggested that the children were Flemish orphans. Apparently a bunch of Flemish immigrants arrived into Britain in the 12th century but were persecuted by the then king, King Henry II. And they may have lived in a nearby Fornham St. Martin, which kind of sounds like the St. Martins that the little girl talked about. Yeah. He theorized that if their family had been killed by men of the king, they might have fled into nearby Thetford Forest.

And that would have seemed like a land of permanent twilight underground to these frightened children. And they may also have entered one of the kind of underground mine passages in the area which led them to Woolpit, confused, out of the twilight zone. That makes some sense, yeah. Crucially, it would also explain their strange Flemish clothes and strange Flemish language that the local men didn't recognize. Right. However, it is also possible that the entire story was fiction, passed down through the centuries as folklore.

Because in some ways, it does read like a fairy tale. And some of the themes are kind of convenient for the time. It's like this... People have said it might even be this theory of like the green children represent the indigenous celts of britain and that whenever they were come across by the invaders to britain of the time the indigenous celts seemed like a strange foreign creature that couldn't survive in the real world sure maybe even the little boy was like a metaphor for that the old ways dying out and the only way of surviving was to like the little girl assimilate into the new british culture right one researcher even pointed out that the children only eating beans might be part of the story because beans were

historically called the food of the dead. Jesus. Apparently throughout history, people have called it that. The ancient Egyptians didn't really cultivate beans. They were mostly used in sacrifices. In Rome, the priests of Jupiter couldn't touch or apparently even mention beans due to their association with death and decay. Why do people hate beans so much

baked beans on toast according to pliny the elder pythagoreans believe that fava beans the same beans that these little kids ate contained the souls of the dead oh boy some believers thought the fava beans connected the earth and hades providing ladders for human souls the beans association with death and reincarnation made eating these fava beans close to cannibalism i guess if this was the case and this was the sort of popular opinion uh towards beans in this uh general age what we could be dealing with here is more of like uh almost like a fable you know that you would teach a child similar to you know uh i don't know i don't know a lot of fables what are the what are the fables the one with the wolf yeah i guess like the grim tales told by the brothers

grim of like little red riding hood or something yeah you know this could be uh something similar to that but obviously as the um as the opinion towards beans has changed as the ages have progressed this is a healthy option in fact this fable has been left behind you know we still have to teach our kids to be afraid of wolves um yep and you know that's why a lot of those ones have stuck around but beans we left we left the the prejudice towards beans behind back in the day the ancient egyptians considered a bean burrito uh a sign of the afterlife whereas today it's a delicious lunchtime treat it was actually a popular opinion in ancient egypt that the souls of the dead from hades would ascend these burritos to the surface world uh in all seriousness apparently um yeah apparently there's a disease called uh favism

favism right which are named after fava beans so literally this is why people were so scared of it because back in the day if you had favism just by being near these beans you would die jeez that's just being allergic to the beans though that's not a disease i'm pretty sure it's a deadly disease honestly that's like saying someone has peanutism and it's a deadly disease where if you go near peanuts you die peanuts are very connected to heaven actually listen i'm talking a lot about beans and not enough about uh the green children of wool pit i've thrown a number of theories at you but you've got kind of the general historical story what are you saying as to whether there's a paranormal cause for this and we're giving it a yes today or you think it's more mundane maybe

more folklore and it's a no well one thing that you have strangely done in this episode which we don't usually do is giving given me uh more plausible explanations for it not being paranormal than it genuinely being paranormal yeah i'm up in that regard no it's you know this is what this podcast is about is is examining the paranormal and being honest as to whether or not we think it is truly paranormal or not and in this case i think there's so many logical explanations as to why these kids uh would be i mean suffering from a condition that turns their skin green yeah that's the easy one all right we've got malnutrition we've got a poor diet yeah we've got uh possibly the explanation of them not being exposed to a lot of sunlight yeah these things will at most kill you sure

at least turn you green sure and that's what these kids are trying to trying to explain um the twilight world living inside the earth um you know this other society that the kids came from that's a lot more difficult um even though we did have some great uh attempts to explain it from uh revered scientists and paranormal investigators that is that's the that's the tough that's the pickle it is that's the nut and that's the one that i think that we're gonna have to dig our heels into the sand and make a make a choice today yeah you're the chief investigator on this case kit what are you thinking it's a pretty interesting case from the perspective of there's actually not that much to the story it's a pretty short sweet story and like i said it reads like one of these kind of like picture book fairy tale

type deals but yet it's kind of pervaded all through history people have written about it as i say in the 1600s uh in very recent years people still know about it i think if you go to wool pit today they have like a kind of ton sign up where it's like i guess welcome to wool pit it's got like a little picture of like a couple wolves and then a couple children and it's to symbolize this story are they green i think it's a black and white image oh okay but they would be were it in color so it's definitely in the hearts and minds of people and there are real historical accounts there's a number of historical accounts supposedly as early as i think the 1200s someone was supposedly writing about this pretty much after the fact right in pretty recent years so from that perspective it seems weird that someone

will just make this up out of nothing and i'm tempted to say that there's probably some historical precedent in there especially when we get into this story of um agnes as she's known marrying one of the ambassadors to the king right right it seems to be somehow grounded in reality to a degree but the problem is like you say the twilight zone the the paranormal explanation and i think for me today i prefer i better understand the explanation that involves maybe these kids being orphaned flemish children or uh right or feral kids that were left alone to die in the woods because we know that stuff happens it does yeah what are you saying i think this week it's gonna be a no from me folks that makes it a duble no but hey super interesting case we got to learn all about beans got to learn all about malnutrition a pretty

joyous episode all around don't say the the show isn't educational all right because i mean we haven't had this much scientific evidence since the hoedag where we borderline waterboard you with fact and logic um so i'm glad we could do that two weeks in a row. Thank you to Beth, Marcus, Stephanie White, El Hanrahan, Andrew Steen, Richard Morris, Liam L, and more. Apologies if I forgot your recommendation. We got there in the end, guys.

We always do. Hope you enjoyed that investigation. If you have your own thoughts on this one, or your own hot tip for us to investigate, send it to this paranormal life podcast at gmail.com. And I hope the listeners at home enjoyed this investigation. Hey, if you did, why don't you consider leaving us a little iTunes review?

That's right. That's right. How about that? Odds are you're on your phone right now listening to it. So what's it going to take? A couple extra, a couple minutes? A couple minutes out of your day? That's no big big deal do you know how long it takes to make this show huh you son of a bitch very animated it takes why would you criticize them sorry sorry

i got a little hot there i don't think you are sorry but it's fine a little hot hey how about you say five stars and just write passionate because Because that's right. Yeah. I mean, they're probably less inclined to know that you've badmouthed them. But hey, it does help us out enormously and helps the podcast reach new audiences. And then those audiences send us crazy stories like this one. And then we get to entertain you. Our dream goal is essentially for there to be a meeting of all the presidents of all the countries in the world all looking up at a computer monitor right where it's a map of the world yeah and we need a military man to go

within 24 hours the podcast has spread throughout london to greater uk areas within 48 hours london has fallen within seven days the uk and europe has been infected we essentially want that scene yeah with the podcast and just showing how much it's growing and spreading and i want to see shinzo abe uh current prime minister of japan lean into the mic and in japanese say we offer to nuke it right exactly podcast yeah that's how we want to go basically but we can't get to that point uh without your help without uh reviews on itunes and um spreading the good word and like we say at the end of every episode if you cannot get enough of this paranormal life, do remember that there is a back catalog of bonus episodes that we do not release on the main feed that you're listening to right now.

No, there is a secret, a secretive separate feed that is only accessible to patrons on patreon.com forward slash thisparanormallife where from five bucks a month you get access to that back catalog. I think we're up to 20 24 episodes or something like that so ours of this paranormal life investigations to check out over there and at the end of every episode we like to take the time to shout out those who have supported us on patreon so a special thank you to Oscar Williams. Oscar Williams.

Might as well call him Otter Williams. Because he was a feral child raised by otters. Really? Yeah. I mean, he got pretty lucky. He just kind of floats on his back. It's a pretty chill existence. He's got wrinkly bath skin, though.

Yeah, which, you know, that's fine. It's just something he's got to live with these days. He somehow made money as an otter, and he's supporting us on Patreon. That seems unusual. I wonder, maybe there's gold in those rivers? Who knows? If there is, please let us know which river specifically. But until then, thank you for your support.

Thanks also to Michael Gratton. Michael fell in a pit and landed on a spikel. That's right, he wanted to check this town out for himself, but uh-oh. Forgot there's about 200 feet of wolf traps surrounding the bish. Forgot to mention they never took those puppies down. They're actually pretty hard to decommish, the bish. So Michael's been impaled and is getting staled down in the old wolf pit. He's getting staled?

He's getting pretty old. he's just been down there eating beans for years uh he is very green so thank you for listening to the show to pass the time michael thanks also to tammy heels you know what they say that whenever uh life goes wrong whenever bad things happen yeah tammy heals all oh okay like sorry let me say that again time heals all wounds so not time heals all wounds time time time me how does she she can heal all wounds like a gunshot to the face it's pretty brutal actually actually. She uses some pretty medieval medical devices. A lot of burning, a lot of stapling, a lot of sawing. But she heals all wounds.

I'm going to need to see Tammy's medical license before I sit down on the table. You think she's got a medical license. You don't need a medical license when you've got two arms and two saws and everything's looking like a green kid that's eating family you absolutely need a medical license if you're gonna be operating on it especially a child greener otherwise they came she saw all right it sounds like Tammy is killed before I'm not gonna ask any questions. Thank you for your support.

Thanks. Thanks also to Christopher Giroux. Christopher Giroux rowed his boat gently down the green. That's right. He's one of the very few people to cross the infamous Guac River, connecting hell to the land of the living. That's an unbelievable feat. It's incredible. Using a giant sailboat in the shape of the living. That's an unbelievable feat. It's incredible.

Using a giant sailboat in the shape of a nacho, he managed to traverse the rocky, guac-y waters. I mean, it was totally unnecessary of him to create a boat shaped like a nacho. It's just pure poetry. Of course. So he thought he would do it. He should have used a regular boat. Of course course it would have taken him half the time nachos aren't waterproof or black proof

the thing disintegrated minutes off the coast um but he did it and he's still alive and fair play to him he rode a hard shell taco all the way to purgatory and back. This wacko rode a taco on the Guaco River. Thanks also to Christoph Orr. And on that journey, who do you think supplied the oars? Christoph? Of course. And the oars were made of nachos, presumably. Queso.

Why? How? They were made of a hot cheese sauce. nachos presumably guess so what why how that's it they were made of a hot cheese sauce delicious but wildly impractical Christoph you should have brought the regular oars there was no need for the for the theatrics here you guys just needed to cross you guys just needed to cross the guac ocean you didn't need to

do it in style. Thanks also to Olin Thompson. Well, if it isn't Molen Olin Thompson. You can guess where this is going. Raised by moles. Voles. Voles? Is that what you said?

Didn't you call him Molen? He wanted to be raised by moles more than anything he dreamed of it his entire life left home at the ripe age of three right uh went to the nearest forest but could only find uh one vole who became a kind of yoda figure to him the vole rode around in his back because he crawled around the forest taught him all the ways of the woods but um i mean vole is pretty is probably better than moles so he probably dodged a bullet there right doesn't have to live Boris taught him all the ways of the woods. But, um... I mean, Vol is pretty... He's probably better than moles. So he probably dodged a bullet there.

Right. Doesn't have to live underground, so that's good. Yeah, get some sunlight, stay in a healthy human color, which is awesome. So, Olin, looks like things are looking up. Well done. Thanks also to Mitchell. Mitchell was thrown in a ditch-le as a baby. No!

But he thought this was an opportunity to get raised by some of the most fiercest creatures in the jungle. Wolves, lions, saber-toothed tigers. All at once? Weren't they extinct? Well, he didn't know that at the time, and he was actually thrown into a ditch full of snakes. Oh. Yeah, so, I mean, Mitchell looks over and he just sees a family of snakes crawling on their bellies, you know.

Hey, kid, you want to join a family of snakes? Not really. I heard you're looking for a new papa. Yes, unfortunately. I'm going to raise you up to be one of my own, kid. First off, you're going to get rid of those f***ing legs. What? You don't need that shit in the snake world

come here kid i'll bite them off question how much can you dislocate your jaw you're gonna need that for the eagle legs not a lot really and look at him now he's a snake he's just an anaconda he really is he's a snake with money which is our favorite kind of snake and thank you for supporting the devil i think thanks also to alex stevens alex stevens has got me believing that earth is worth leaving that's right he's one of those people who's trying to sell you those off-world packages being like hey this place is going to shit if you want to come to mars i got a ship i can get you some land there you know he's selling trying to sell like the whole thing yeah he's got the cowboy hat he's pretending to be a mars rancher yeah he's like hey you you give a couple bucks on over to alex stevens and i'll guarantee

you some moon rocks you're like well off, you said Mars when we first... Yeah, it's all the same out there in the beautiful universe. I think they're pretty far apart, aren't they? You know, when you're traveling that fast, baby, nothing's far away. What are we traveling on, by the way? I didn't talk about the details of how we're getting there. Well, when the money comes in, I'll purchase some sort of a flying machine. I don't think you know anything about flying machines.

Well, how dare you, sir? He flies his remote-controlled drone into your head. Now hop aboard. He just grabs onto it with one arm, flies away. Mary Poppins style. Thanks also to Abventurer. There's only one kind of adventure I know with abs like that. Okay.

They're a snake. Old torso every day is goddamn chest day. There's no arms day, no leg day, no knee. Nah, I'm good. Yeah, that's God. Do you guys, like, at least, I mean, you wriggle it about in your belly. Do you want a six pack or something? Nah, i'm good yeah yeah that's god do you guys like at least i mean you wriggling about on your belly do you want a six-pack or something nah i'm good just give me like a freaking crocodile top that's all i want well we've already given you a beautiful design on

on like your back it's like all multicolored and pretty you want that in the underneath nah i'm good just whatever Just make it like dirt. Well, AbVenture, it sounds like you fell in with a good crowd. Sorry about your limbs. But hey, keep on trucking out there in the wilderness. Thanks also to Andy Martin. Andy Martin, not to be confused with his older brother, Randy Martian, who is also selling competing plots of land on Mars.

Surely not. It turns out it's a pretty lucrative business. I didn't want to bring this up, but I have invested a large portion of the money collected from the paranormal commune to basically establish a second commune on the Red Sun. Oh, that's right on this the fireball in the sky on that sun no that's what i call mars oh that's really this is that's confusing yeah i'll change the name to to um moon two that should simplify things a little bit yeah not at all also

i notice a lot of like foreclosure signs hanging out around the commune. Sure, sure. Whenever you say you took a large amount of the proceeds, do you mean you actually bled the original commune dry financially for this? I gutted it. I gutted a lot of it. I mean, it's still going and it's still going strong, but I just want everyone to know.

It doesn't seem like it. I want everyone to know when this world goes tits up we got a second home but that might be ready to rock 50 100 years away i really hope not because a lot of the businesses have been closed down a lot of the resources have already been blasted into space uh i figure they'll end up on mars at some point we're sending a lot of food that's going out of date next week straight to space because it'll freeze up there it's cold i think something like that so i just want to let you guys know it's fine it's all under control we got this thanks also to amelia m emerson the only thing with more m's in it than amelia emerson's name amelia's bank account Oh She's loaded

Oh yeah from selling Get this Plots of land In the vacuum of f***ing space What It's vaporware You don't even get land She's marketing

It's like 360 degrees of real estate. Oh my god. Yeah, it's because there's no up. There's no down. Jesus Christ. We need a second ship to transport the goods that have already arrived on Mars for the commune to our new plot of land, space. Where we'll all just float around and

investigate the paranormal. And there's a lot of paranormal out there in the universe, guys. It's a perfect place. also to dean thacker dean thacker the bean whacker back in the olden days i mean he was pretty much a superhero he would just go town to town whacking beans uh which obviously they all thought was was death death pills essentially yeah so he's just smashing them down to a pulp um and then conveniently at the end of the day he would sell everyone a delicious high protein liquid um which they all loved um yeah he was great at me these people were scared half witless of

beans but somehow fine with uh hummus and uh baba ganoush and bean juice his secret recipe uh hope you all enjoyed that uh presentation anyway if you want to get as strong as me i'm selling bean juice uh sorry i mean just uh dean's juice over here at the store i mean by this this premise alone Bean juice was the original Lombardi. It was the original liquid of the dead. Thanks lastly, but not leastly to monster Matt Monster Matt so-called because he wanted to get adopted by Like you said the kings of the jungle be the most vicious predator He wanted to get adopted by a monster cat a lion a saber tooth tiger of course uh little latino they're extinct uh we've established that he got a bug

his dad is a bug oh no his mom a ladybug oh of course that makes Wow. I don't know what kind of life that is. But again, somehow he survived. Somehow he's lived a bug's life. Which, what one was that one? Was that the one with the circus bugs? And they have to fight the grasshoppers? I think it was the good one. Yeah, because there was ants as well. Where they almost looked like too much like ants.

It was really kind of scary. If you look back at the artwork for ants. So he did the bug's life, which is the good one. Right. He's made it through. He's got some circus friends. Yeah, we don't want to talk about his brother. Ant's life.

Who's doing very poorly. So thank you for your support. And you're making some money to give back to us, which we really appreciate. Thanks to everyone we've shouted out today and everyone we are going to shout out next week. Thanks for hanging in there, folks. We're getting to the shout out slowly but surely. Hope you enjoyed today's investigation. We will see you next Tuesday for a brand new paranormal tale.