This Paranormal Life - #406 Ancient DINOSAUR Discovered in Africa - Mokele Mbembe

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

On today's episode, we're going off the beaten path to the remote swamps of Central Africa. Here, local legends talk about an enormous, long-necked creature that STALKS the murky waters of the Congo. This elusive beast is referred to only as 'Mokele Mbembe'... and whatever you do... don't eat it's meat.Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunitySupport us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to weekly bonus episodes!Buy Official TPL Merch! - thisparanormallife.com/storeIntro music by www.purple-planet.comEdited by Philip ShackladyResearch by Ewen Friers Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Were Tamagotchi communist spies? We know about flying saucers, where's the cups? Answers to these questions and more on this episode of This Paranormal Life. Hello and welcome back to This Paranormal Life, the weekly comedy podcast where every Tuesday we investigate a different paranormal tale, deciding by the end of that episode whether we think it's really, truly paranormal or not. As always, you're joined by me, Mr. Kit Grier-Mulvenna, and my paranormal co-investigator in the hot seat, Mr. Rory Parr, sitting across from me. Hello, everyone. I'm doing great.

Hey, if Tamagotchis are actually Soviet spies, then call me a patriot, brother, because I've killed enough Tamagotchis in my life to set up a graveyard. Yeah. Ruriz got a purple heart or whatever they call it, or a cross, some kind of military distinction just from how many goddamn Tamagotchi he's killed in the battlefield. I loved them too hard. Turns out they can die from overfeeding. What were you feeding them? Tamagotchi food. They only eat the battlefield. I loved them too hard. Turns out they can die from overfeeding. What were you feeding them?

Tamagotchi food. They only eat one thing, don't they? You don't have a choice. It's like, you just give them a nugget of food. It's not like Grand Theft Auto, yeah, where it's like salad or burger. No, you just nugget food, nugget food. Yeah, very similar to my own diet, to be fair.

Rory, it is somehow February, 2025. We are barreling through the year with paranormal cases at an alarming rate. And while we started off very auspiciously, a bit like the Japanese new year dreams, it was very auspicious. We started the year with many yeses. And then- Good start.

We were cut down in our prime. We really were. We got one no. I wouldn't say, well, two nos, I think. Maybe three actually by that point. Yeah. But look, maybe we're going to start a whole new thing, a whole new streak today.

Maybe it's possible today on the podcast. Yeah. January and February, I think, are the two kind of gloomiest months of the entire year, at least in the UK. So hopefully this paranormal life is keeping you guys entertained, keeping your spirits high. You know what, here's a little tip.

You know, here's one thing that I like to do to keep a positive mindset is I like to do something every day that makes me smile. You know, so you find something that just brings a little joy to your life. So one thing I've been doing recently is I like to go to banks and I'll- Don't like this already.

I'll take a pen- You're gonna make me frown. I'll take a pen from the bank. Sometimes they have the free pens, sometimes they're on a chain, but sometimes they're up for grabs. So I take the pen and then you can technically say to your friends, I did a bank robbery.

Cause you stole from a bank. Just like a funny little thing like that. I like the security that I... Hey! It's the pen thief! He's back! Shit, shit, shit. I have a gun. Put all the pens in the bag.

You don't want money? Put the f***ing pens in the bag! It's the Bic Bandit, they call me. The Bic Bandit? No. the Bic Bandit, they call me. The Bic Bandit, no. The Bic Bandit. He only wants Bics. They put some pens in the back. Is this a f***ing Sharpie?

Yeah, we have Sharpies too. Is this a game to you? I'm the Bic Bandit. They call me Jolly Old Saint Bic because I got a sack of pens and I'm hitting every bank in town in one night. Okay, I mean, makes you smile for a moment. Makes a lot of other people frown though. Well, it depends what kind of gun you bring.

Because if it can fit in a paper bag, people don't even know the robbery is taking place. If it's a shotgun, you hit the ceiling a few times. Just because I know people got pens in their pockets too. So sometimes you can get the pockets from the people as well. 2025, not that many pens in pockets anymore. Do you want a pen? I cannot stress how many pens I own currently. I actually find myself really in need of a pen yesterday.

Didn't have one. Hold up. How do I not have one right now? This is embarrassing. The big bandit. You're going to lose your title. And when I was in a shop, I was like, oh, no issue. Just pick up a pen. Six quid. Six quid for a pack of pens. I was like, you're having a joke. If you're buying a solo pen, they know they've got your ass.

Yeah. It'll be like a pack of ten for two pounds or one pen for like ten. Yeah, it was I think it was four pens for six pounds. I was like, I'm about to go big bandit mode. I'm like you're Robin and you're Batman I'm gonna become the apprentice and then again that's maybe an assign of an auspicious new year I was just on the tube then what I see what I see sitting on a probably very dirty seat a Bic. A B. They always find you when you're feeling low. Pick it up, dust it off.

Shout out to Bic, makers of great pens and, a lot of people don't know this, surfboards. Yes, you have a Bic surfboard. For some reason, Bic, the pen company. Is it Bic or a Beak? It's Bic, right? I don't know. It's not Beak, a Beak pen.

I think it could be. Maybe in France. Yeah. I don't know. But yeah, you do have a big... I have a Bic, yeah. A Bic surfboard. They make good surfboards as well. Weirdly, that's the two things they make. It's like Yamaha, you know.

Guitars and... You go to buy a motorcycle and you're like, hey guys, any idea of where I could get a piano? They're like, you're not gonna believe this. Right, yeah. You know, same with Bic. Yeah. So, you know, time to take another look at pens, guys.

Okay, we are getting way off topic. So, you know, time to take another look at pens, guys. Okay, we are getting way off topic. We got to rein this in, Rory. I am dead set on getting us a yes today. I want to get us back on track. Oh yeah. In the good graces of the paranormal community. Look, Rory, so often in this podcast,

we hang out in the same old stomp and grinds, don't we? Mostly because we speak English and we don't speak anything else. We speak like un poco Spanglish, a little bit of Spanish. Tiny bit of Japanese. A squishy amount of Japanese, but not enough to actually research those topics

in their native language. But today I'm happy to say we are going somewhere, I don't know if we've ever been on this paranormal life. We're going deep in the center of the African continent. Whoa. Not far from the cradle of civilization itself, a place rich with wildlife, because we are going monster hunting.

Oh, what accent was that? Australian. Okay. It just lends itself so well to monster hunting. Oh, what accent was that? Australian. It just lends itself so well to monster hunting. Sound good? Sounds fantastic. All right, let's jump into that after a couple of words from today's sponsors. And a reminder, every episode of This Paranormal Life is available ad free on patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life.

Link is in the description of this podcast. Okay, Rory, we are on the banks of Lake Tele, a murky and mysterious jungle lake in northeastern Congo. And because it's 1981, surprisingly, the lake and its surrounding jungles are still pretty unknown to the outside world. So maybe it's a little strange given our location that our story begins with a married couple from the suburbs of Pasadena, California. Herman and Kia Regusters. But these two were not on holiday. You see, Herman is ex-US Air Force and they have ventured into the wilderness to investigate reports of a strange creature spotted in the area. Now over the last few days they

have heard and seen some bizarre things, but what they desperately wanted was some evidence to bring back to Pasadena. We'll go out at night with the recording equipment. Perhaps they're more active when the sun's gone down. Oh, I don't know about that honey. The whole thing seems dangerous enough as it is. What with the hippos and crocs, wouldn't we just be asking for trouble? Look, if I leave here without trying every possible approach, turning over every rock, I'll never forgive myself. Now please, pass me the cables and the microphone, would you?

Sure enough, by nightfall they had returned to the southern banks of the lake. Taking a small boat out into the darkness, they traced the shore. But just then, out of the darkness, just as Herman had hoped, they heard something. They were sure it was the beast. He described later how an extraordinary and loud animal cry was heard. It came from the jungle and seemed to be not more than 40 or 50 meters into the thicket. Whoa! Scrambling for the recorder, Herman thrust the mic in the general direction of the calls. He would say,

The cry can best be described as starting with a low, windy roar, then increasing to a deep-throated, trumpeting growl. Oh, forget the recorder! We're at threat level gun! Sounds of a large beast making it through the bush were clearly distinguishable as it moved away from us further into the swamp. Rory, let's listen to that recording.

We have it today? We do. You haven't even told me what this thing is. You just said beast at one point. No one knows it. You're in the same literal boat as Herman. So hold up. He don't know what it is. So Herman, he didn't get a phone call.

He just heard about a beast. Yeah. And he was like, I want a beast. Yeah. He's the Beast Bandit. He was like, I'm going to go out there and just find whatever this thing is. He brought his wife. Yes.

They have zero experience hunting creatures. He probably has more money than cents. Yeah, this is what it kind of sounds like. Sure. All right. Yeah, let's hear this recording. Do you need any more context? No, I'm good for now. I want to hear this roar. Okay, Rory, here's the recording. Let's hear it. Okay. Was this recorded on a Nintendo 3DS?

It was 1981! The 3DS didn't even exist! Herman would have bit off his left testicle for a 3DS. 1981, I think that's still when Star Wars was coming out. Don't you do that thing. Don't Roy do that thing where he tells me that we had Sony handycams in 1981. We did.

That was actually weirdly close reference, because that was probably the 90s. We didn't. We didn't have an 81. We didn't have an 81. You also told me that no one knows the name of this beast. It's in the name of the YouTube video. Oh, buy and reveal it to you yet, okay? Okay, it's right there.

Can you focus on the audio, please? He had a tape recorder instead of a video camera. I don't know why. What do you think of the song? There's a lot of jungle noises going on to the point where when the video started, I thought the jungle noises was the roaring. Yes. But then I assume-

Then you kind of, your ears are tuned and you notice that that's kind of the, imagine the crickets here like, whew, whew, whew, whew, whew. The background noise of the jungle. Yeah. I assume the roar, quote unquote, that we're talking about is that like,

roar. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Cause it repeats several times. And then it almost, there's almost like a little tick afterwards, which is cool. My imagination runs wild there thinking it sounds like

a Jurassic Park style beast stomping through the forest. Cause like, and it goes. Yeah, you're just making that up now. That definitely was in the thing. Let me tell you the- Phil, can we get some dinosaur footsteps in there? Cause I don't think anyone heard it. The jungle is noisy, isn't it?

Yeah. Not to try to get to sleep with that. We live, well, I live in the heart of the city, you know, in the Brooklyn of London. We're talking people just screaming at night, cop cars, driving around, just chaos outside the window all the time. I can sleep to that. I'm fine sleeping with that. I don't think I could sleep in the jungle. Yeah.

Just this constant sound of crickets kind of eating away at you. I think it's what you're used to. Because I talked to a guy recently back where I'm from, because I live by the seaside. And one of my favorite things about living by the seaside is I can hear the sea almost at all times. Certainly if I'm standing outside my house, I can hear it,

but sometimes inside if it's stormy enough. And, but I talked to a guy, this old guy, recently in the street and he was like, so you could just hear it all the time here. And I was like, yeah, pretty much. Cause he lived in the countryside and he was like, I you could just hear it all the time here. And I was like, yeah, pretty much. Cause he lived in the countryside and he was like, I think I would kill myself. I was like, what do you mean?

He was like, I'd just be, he's like, I'd be lying at night thinking about how the ocean will just rise up and swallow the earth someday. Well, he's got a couple other things going on, I think. He was like, what if there's a tsunami? I was like, I don't think there's ever been one. So like if there is, it's I was like, I don't think there's ever been one. So Like if there is it's the day after tomorrow meteorite tsunami. What do you know about aquaman?

I would say waves are a pretty good constant noise to hear. Famously quite a relaxing sound I think I could get used to jungle. Although I hate mosquitoes. I can't deal with mosquitoes So that might be a no-go for me. That's tough. I don't like mosquitoes either. This audio was later analysed by a series of zoologists and biologists who couldn't pinpoint a known culprit. Regusters was convinced he'd got a recording of the very creature he'd travelled to the Congo to find. The creature that's the subject of today's investigation. Because whenever he played that tape to the locals, they simply replied, it's the Mokole Mbembe. Woah, so this thing has a name to the locals? Yeah, they are on first name terms.

Uh oh. Like he works in the local pub. Rory, have you ever heard about the Makole Mbembe? I don't believe so. I have to just assume you're pronouncing the name right. But I did walk in on you watching multiple tutorial pronunciation guides. I said, don't listen to this. Yeah, not gonna lie. The internet's not coming down with pronunciation guides. So apologies if you are Congolese or from this general area or Cameroon. Sorry if you know how it's pronounced. But I know very little, so I'm gonna need some deets here.

How big is this son of a bitch? How hairy is it? How many legs? What kind of cryptid are we talking about? If it is a cryptid. This thing is a cryptid. It is actually more famous than I'm probably letting on. To give you an idea, if in the paranormal world

there were something like the kind of like pro tennis rankings that, you know, place people at number 35, oh, creeping up to number 10 this season, the McCauley and Bembe is probably in that top 50, certainly, and maybe even higher in the top 25 or something of most famous. It is extremely famous within Africa and also it has a long history, but I think due to our geographical restrictions we know less about it. The first written descriptions

of the Makole Mbembe that I guess left Central Africa come from a German explorer by the name of Ludwig Freyr von Stein-du-Laußnitz. Okay, brother, we get it. You're German. Yeah. Every last name I added there, he added an extra explorer's hat until he had four on top of his head. He's like, oh shit.

His mustache is extra wide. It's like my uncle. It's like, oh shit, his mustache is extra wide. It's like my uncle. It's like I have a German uncle. What's his name? Walter, of course, it has to be. Obviously. During the early part of the 20th century, Von Stein, as I'm going to call him, traveled to Cameroon

to conduct ecological surveys. He had heard tales of mysterious animal tracks found by French missionaries in the region over 100 years earlier. He also heard of the many myths and legends of the local communities living along the lakes and rivers. They described a swamp-dwelling cryptid, similar in description to a sauropod, the classic long-necked, long-tailed, four-legged dinosaur like a Diplodocus or a Brachiosaurus. Oh. In most cases, the Macaulay Mbembe is described as reptilian, smooth-skinned, and a grey or

reddish-brown colour. Some also mention a horn on its head. Whoa! Its long neck and swamp habitat has earned it the nickname Kongo's Nessie. I'm really struggling mentally to build a picture of what this thing looks like. Rory, here- You keep adding things. Here it is. It's really not that crazy. Okay. For a crazy cryptid. Rory, here's an old drawing of the creature made by the Baka people of Cameroon. Okay. Listeners of the podcast, I will now help you picture what this thing is. Alright! Wait, it's a... Diplodocus.

Yeah. Well, yeah, kind of. Which one is that? The big long neck boy from Jurassic Park. I thought that was a Stegosaurus. Nope, Stegosaurus is the one with the spiky back and it's all like low to the ground. Oh, I thought the other one was called a Diplodecus. Yeah, Diplodocus. Diplodocus? Is that another word?

I always said Diplodocus. Diplodocus? You're like, let me see one of them there, Diplodocus, right here. And then I think a scientist was like, oh boy, I think you mean Diplodocus. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, gee, I think you mean Diplodocus. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, gee, I've been pronouncing it wrong. Where are all my paleontologist friends

when you need them to correct me? Yeah, look, this thing is just a dinosaur. I mean, it does have spikes on its back at one point. I'm not seeing a horn. Yeah. Like you pointed out, I assume it would be more like a rhino or a unicorn. Some say it is a horn.

It's a giant lizard thing. It is. Yeah. These are... When did you say these drawings were done? Yeah, I think a minute ago. Like that wasn't drawn on an iPad, was it? No.

It's giving cave. It's giving bick. Yeah, it's giving cave, like, in the sense that it literally looks like ancient Spanish cave paintings but I actually don't know I just don't know but I will say it doesn't necessarily look like anything that I know exists today now this thing is very widely believed across this region of Africa with stories going back hundreds and even thousands of years across the Congo basin into Gabon and Cameroon in the local Lingala language Makole and Bembe is translated to, the one who stops the flow of rivers.

Whoa, that's how big this mother f**ker is. Yeah, that's f**ked up, isn't it? Now, while von Stein didn't find any physical evidence, his stories fascinated Germans when he returned home. He wrote, canoes coming near it are said to be doomed. The animal is said to attack the vessels at once and to kill the crew, but without eating the bodies. The creature is said to live in the caves that have been washed out to the river in the clay of its shores at sharp bends. It climbs the shores in search of food. Its diet is said to be entirely vegetable. Oh, I didn't see that coming. I do think this is tracks with our dinosaur mates.

I think the Diplodocus was a vegan. Right. And there weren't a lot of humans for him to mess up. Not in a kind of cool Bushwick way. He just didn't like eating meat. Well, Kit, as an angry vegan yourself, I could see why you would relate to today's creature. Right, like if I were to start killing people,

I wouldn't eat them either. Yeah, exactly. I would just kill them on account of being vegan. Unfortunately, that doesn't lessen your sentence in court. Look, it has to be said, this type of cryptid is quite common, isn't it? Let's just call it what it is a living dinosaur Yeah, like Nessie like maybe the ogopogo

And many other river and lake cryptids we've covered before yeah, why is it always this type? That's a genuine question. Oh, I thought that was retator. I thought you were just gonna lead off into something. Yes, I'm sorry, Phil, turn off the dramatic music. Why is it? I don't know. That wasn't like a why is it? Yeah. I don't know.

I guess this is the kind of creature that could live in a lake like this. And also... Is it because it's real? Okay, that's what you're getting at. I mean... Turn the music back on. Is it because it's real? I don't know but we have never in any case except for the Yogo pogo

Seeing enough evidence to prove that anything like this was real. That's true. I need to watch that video back Let's play the Yogo pogo video at the end of this case. No evidence for this one That's not no there's not gonna be a video not that there's no but it is 1981. So like What do they even have? As word of this beast reached Europe, explorers became interested in tracking down the McCauley and Bembe. Just think Jack Black in King Kong. You can't just go down to the pub in Berlin and start talking about this beast in the

1900s. You're going to have 12 guys with twirly mustaches and old timey helmets licking their lips about capturing this thing alive. Right. Which is why in 1932, a cryptozoologist by the name of Ivan T. Sanderson jumped on the case. Rory, does that name ring any bells?

Kind of. Well, it should because he's come up in several of thisormal Life cases before. This guy lived in that kind of late age of exploration where he specialized in hunting down new species of animal. And now in his early career, he discovered a bunch of regular animals. So he was very successful in discovering things like pygmy elephants and various new species in places like Africa. Look, a cryptid is only a cryptid until it gets discovered.

Exactly. And then it becomes a regular animal. And I suppose that's why in his later career, it was considered that he turned his focus to cryptids. But I suppose you could just say those were the animals he didn't actually find. Yeah. He specialised in writing magazine articles about things like Bigfoot and living fossils and lake monsters like the Makole Mbembe. And so when Sanderson went to Africa to find the Makole Mbembe, these are some of the most

detailed descriptions of the hunt for the beast. Okay, most detailed descriptions of the trip to the hunt of the beast. Okay, most detailed descriptions of the trip to the hunt of the beast. So not the beast. Never before have we seen the amount of detail provided in the local vegetation and the snacks that were provided on the trip, on the hunt, on the search for the beast. You're so far removed from the beast.

You're gonna have egg on your face, my friend. Hope you like omelets. All right. The soil in the region of the beast, mostly clay. The sky when I hunted for him, a little cloudy. My mood, a little gloomy as well. I got some new shoes, which I hadn't quite broken in yet. Which, you know, the first two weeks of the trip were really a write-off on account of my ankles were sore.

I bet halfway through this trip he was probably like, I should have stuck to squirrels and shit. I've bitten off way more than I can chew here. I found like nine different species of lizards. I was getting invited to universities to give talks and I got too big for my boots and I said, you know what, next up is a unicorn. I'm gonna find a f***ing unicorn and bring its head back here to Cambridge.

Hey. This just sounds like what he's done. We fly too close to the sun, you're gonna get burned. But he didn't get burned, yet, yet. We don't know yet. We don't know. Look, it's gonna be fruitful. The fruit?

Fruitful on the hunt for the search for the beast. Shall I play the tape again? I think we should. No. Oh, we need to play the tape again just for you to take this seriously. I wanna hear the evidence. I wanna hear this testimony. 10th of August, 1932, Captain's log.

I know I'm not really a captain, but it feels cool to say. I have embarked upon the upper cross river region of Cameru, searching the river with my fellow naturalist, Gerald Russell. I feel with Gerald, our expedition couldn't be in safer hands. Unfortunately the old boy forgot to pack deodorant, but hey, no one is perfect. We've already discovered vast hippo-like tracks, as well as large areas of trampled grass and piles

of half-eaten fruit. I'm absolutely sure we're on the right track and expect we should be done by lunchtime. After all, how big can Africa possibly be?" And yet, after months, they still hadn't found any hard evidence. Captain's log, 1933. Month, unknown. Day, unknown. Touche, Africa. It looks like I underestimated my opponent.

We had become frustrated with our lack of physical evidence. But finally, finally, we made contact with the beast. Gerald Russell and I, with two boys in two small canoes. Where'd the boys come from? How long have the boys been on the trip? Well, we got lonely, didn't we? What year is this? 19...worryingly long time ago, 1933.

I'm sure they're just helping row the boat. Okay. So that Gerald is ready to hit record of that ancient tape recorder that sounds like shit. We entered the river from below through a gorge in the manf pool at dusk. As we passed some old but submerged caves in the cliffside got the shock of our lives when one of the most terrific noises I have heard outside of warfare issued from one of the caves. The thing was shiny and black and was the head of something,

shaped like a seal but flattened from above to below. Its head alone was about the size of a full-grown hippopotamus." What? In later years when someone asked Ivan, are you sure you just didn't see a crocodile, he said, and I quote, the effing things head was bigger than a hippo. So unfortunately, he describes how they sprinted. They basically rode as fast as they could to shore and sprinted from the beast. So frustratingly, he didn't get a photo of the thing. What, we hire boys.

They can't swim very fast. We left the boys as bait and jumped into the river, swimming to safety. I'm going to assume, hopefully, when he's referring to the boys, he's doing so in like a kind of beers with the boys type group. Cracking open a cold one. Not a boy. Hunting for a couple cryptids with the boys, you know, not children. I think they were children. Don't say that. Don't say that.

Don't make me think that. Hey, he's employing local people, providing jobs. Hopefully he paid them. You shouldn't take children to the place where a cryptid lives with the size of a hippo head. A 17 year old is a child in the eyes of the law. Hopefully they were almost 18. Like working age.

We don't know. Hey, he seems like he's pretty clear about what he saw. I thought that was cool. Yeah. And he said it a couple of times. Its head was bigger than a hippo. Yes. And he just saw the head.

Yeah. But that's the thing about a water beast. You're only gonna see the head. Right, but okay. but that's the thing about a water beast. You're only gonna see the head. Right, but okay, well there is a problem with that because if he only saw the head and he said the head was the size and the shape of a hippo. What? He's like, I only saw the head. Yeah. And the head is the size and the shape of a hippo, right? Did he just see a hippo? No, you motherf***** Because let's be very clear about this look like a hippo head the size of a hippo

But the head was the size of a full hippo if it was out of the water because hippos walk on land too Yeah, what's your point? What? So it wasn't a hippo's head. No, it wasn't a hippo's head. Yeah. But the head was there. It was the head of a hippo. I understand the difficulty here.

It's like seeing a car, okay? And then, then your analogy is you'd understand the wheels of this car were the size of a normal car. Yeah. So it was like, so what's the weird part? Yeah, but then he's like, no, no, I mean, it's the wheels were 10 foot long. I get what you mean. The size of this creature's head wasn't, it was the size of an entire hippo. Yep.

But if you only saw the head and you didn't see the body, how can you know that you weren't just looking at a hippo? Because the size was implausible. No, well, he actually, no, but to be fair, to be fair, I'm humoring you and not shutting you down because I think this is a good point, but he didn't actually say, what did he say? He says it was just the size of a hippo.

It didn't look like a hippo. He didn't say it looked like a hippo, I don't think. He said it looked like a seal almost, with slightly flattened from a seal. Okay. So there you go. There you go. Wow. Okay, so look, I'm going to try and read this in.

We've got audio of the beast, hundreds of years of testimony, local names and stories for it. We've now got one of the preeminent explorers and cryptid hunters and biologists of the time, Ivan T. Sanderson, said he went looking for it and he saw the thing with his own two eyes, as well as our German, Volter, Volter Von Heim. He told the German community about it too. And this guy never went back, he just saw it once,

and he was like, that's good enough for me. Yeah. He's like, between you and me, I am running out of boys. No, oh God, hopefully not. They are dying every day. He's like, the thing about boys, they require more food and water than you would think. He's like, I take them because they're small

and I think they can survive on peanuts. They can. They can, they're growing. They're growing boys. Despite being small, unlike me, they're growing. Okay, we got to rein this in. Look, we're going to come back after a short break here because it turns out out a lot more people

Than just Ivan saw this thing gonna talk more about that after a couple more words from today's sponsors. Whoo That's right. There has been a long list of explorers who've had brushes with it I am very much cutting down this list to some headlines in 1924 a telecommunications engineer called Robert Leroyd came across a long-necked, long-tailed, Makole Mbembe-like animal fighting a crocodile near Lake Tellay when he was on a hunting trip. He estimated it was 10 meters long. 10 meters? Yeah, that's big. Wow, yeah, that is big. That's the thing about meters, the number

sounds small, but meters are big. Yeah. A big man is only two meters. Right, you're talking ten meters? Ten meters is big. In 1935... We're talking hippo size. No, bigger than a hippo! In 1935, a man named Furman Mossomeli saw the creature. I love this. He described how he first noticed the river appeared to flow backwards. Whoa! Then he saw a quote, great red colored animal

rising above the surface with a snake like head protruding six to eight feet out of the water. He frantically paddled in the opposite direction, and the creature eventually re-submerged. Holy shit. When he was interviewed by a scientist, he took one of their reference books and pointed to a sauropod dinosaur in the textbook

and said, that's what I saw. What are you? I'm letting a lot of stuff slide today because I don't want to dive into every single story. Go on. But this is a... What do you mean he'm letting a lot of stuff slide today because I don't want to dive into every single story. Come on. But this is a... what do you mean he talked to a scientist? It... what scientist? Because I think the point is, Ivan and guys like that come to town and they're like,

right motherf***** we're gonna find this shit. Okay. You, boy, come here. Find me everyone in town who's seen the beast. Yeah. Round him up. And then he's like, yeah, Alan's seen it. And he's like, right, Alan, come here. I've got a tenner that can buy me like 12 boys.

Yeah, exactly. Two dozen boys, please. Because I think the locals are people who live tangentially in surrounding areas. They want to get to the bottom of it too. And so when someone comes along and is like, right, tell me everything. Tell me all the stories. I want to know where you've seen it, where I can find this thing. And they start to hear stories.

Will Barron Yeah. We're just telling a lot of stories here without real names of people or anything. Will Barron Furman Mossomeli Will Barron From the, in the 1930s. Will Barron Robert Lechward. Will Barron Yeah. Will Barron Lechward. Will Barron Who's the scientist? Will Barron Don't know. No, I did know. I did know and I deleted that name. Yeah. There was a, Robert Lechward? Lechward? Who's the scientist? Dunno.

No, I did know. I did know and I deleted that name. There was a couple of blokes. There was a couple of blokes turned up in the 50s or something. And they started writing everything down. And that's why when you go online now, there's quite a long list of local accounts. Okay. None of these little questions are going to matter in a

second when I read the next bit. It's going to blow everything apart. Okay. All right. Because in 1959, the craziest bit happened. Locals at Lake Tellay claim that in 1959, a Makole and Bembe was trapped and speared to death by the Magombe people. Holy shit!

It's said that they somehow drove it up the river and into a barrier of pikes, which are very similar to spikes. And so it was driven onto these wooden spikes and then they were able to spear it. Now, the first word of this reached the West in the 80s, when as they say, explorers were landing down and asking about local tales. It took 30 years? 20, well, 20 years.

We are deep in the Congo, Rory. It's, you can't tweet. You can't tweet. It's 1959. You can't just tell people. Can't be, you can't live stream it to Twitch. Right. Oh, hey, yo, capture the Macaulay and Bembe,

like and subscribe, drop a comment down below. Should we kill it or should we eat it? They had to wait for people to arrive and then they were like, yeah, here's what happened. Here's the skeleton. So these explorers were excited to meet some of the hunters who caught this beast. They were told that everyone who hunted the creature

ate its meat and died straight away afterwards. That's great. That's karma coming at you. It really is. Makes sense. It actually weirdly, sometimes in a cryptic case a lot of it doesn't make sense, that makes the most sense yet. That everyone that they were like, cool, I guess we'll try and eat the meat. Then they just immediately killed over it. That annoyingly makes this story. That's the most believable thing you've said so far. Also very brave of them to know that this thing exists

and their goal is to hunt it and kill it and eat it. Right. Because no story so far has ever implied that there's more than one. Right. True. True. So if you capture this thing, kill it, and then get all the scientists around and you're like, oh, you know, now that we have this dead one, we can

learn so much about the creature and its local habitat, we used to say that wasn't the only one, it's gone now. Yeah. You killed it and ate it. Yeah. I mean, this is the quintessential issue with cryptids. I mentioned Jack Black and King Kong earlier. I mean, this was even in King Kong, which is ironically set in a not totally dissimilar time in 20th century history, where, yeah, that happens in all the movies. They capture the beast and then you got three people arguing.

One person being like, I love it, we must study it. One person being like, we gotta kill it. And then one person being like, we got to make a traveling circus. Yeah. People are gonna not agree on what to do with it. Right, just like this creature today. So researchers immediately very disappointed

to hear that everyone died of food poisoning after eating the McCauley and Bembe. That is pretty coincidental as well. Can we talk to any of the witnesses? Everyone died. Every single one of them. We lost 37 boys that day. Which is actually less than usual.

Record low. For a day. Boy deaths are way down now that no one's hunting the beast anymore. That was why they had to kill it. The thing was eating boys like cereal. He was having bowls of boys for dinner. It is just, om nom nom nom, bowl full of them. But it later turned out there were two men who didn't die and survived to be interviewed. They said, be interviewed, they said,

be careful, the thing's pretty poisonous, it turns out. That's the one bit of info they can give. They're like, do not eat it, they had no teeth left. Do not, it looks delicious. But Rory, I know, I well know that on this paranormal life, we need more than testimony. We need more than just eyewitness reports. Now, it was great to have a recording of the beast at the start of the podcast. But call me a doubting Thomas

because I need to see this thing with my own eyes too. But don't worry, because Herman and Kia from Pasadena, California, they didn't just get the recording. They also got a photograph. Whoa, all right. Let's see this thing. I just wanna quickly check there before I show you it. We could come down to a quick conclusion, like give this thing a quick yes, like it feels like it's already in the bag, so like let's just seal the deal

and then kinda victory lap with the photo. I really wanna see this because you said they went on this expedition, I believe in 1981 Yeah, and you were arguing about how low quality kind of evidence Video and audio was at the time. I did Google on the break 1981 was the release of Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark And that probably cost two hundred million dollars in money back then make that. To show how technically advanced we were at this point in time, that year we also released

a Gundam movie. I didn't, yeah. So this isn't like medieval times or prehistoric times. We're not still using one of those old timey photo booths. Wasn't Steven Spielberg, was it? It was Herman. We were making anime. Wasn't Herman Spielberg.

We were making anime and importing it. So I'm assuming. Sure, what are you trying to say? I'm just saying this is gonna be hopefully a very high quality picture. Well, let's couch that because I, me and Phil, Phil's got a vintage, he was handed down a vintage camera recently.

I have owned vintage cameras. I have a camera, the type of camera that would have been used back then. Right, and the picture quality is incredible. No, it's not. Nikon M, a Nikon EM. And it's fine. It shoots film, which is tough at the best of times. And a lot of it's black and white. Black and white was cheaper to shoot. Yeah. But a pro like this, a pro monster hunter. And the thing is far away.

I'll just say that. Alright, let me look at the image. Let's see the image. Okay. Why did I think this was going to be something good? It is good. Sorry. It is good.

Don't, don't, don't let people think it's not good. I kind of forgot. So that's the lake. Oh, I can see the lake. That's the jungle. That's about the only thing I can see. So that's the lake. Oh, I can see the lake. That's the jungle. That's about the only thing I can see. And that is something mad going on in the middle of it all. I forgot just how in a lake this thing is.

I don't know why in my head I was like, expected it to be kind of on land or through bushes or something. Kit is showing me a picture of a lake and yes, a tree line behind it and on on the lake there is a piece of driftwood. No. Not not even anything protruding beyond two to three inches from the lake it's just a little flat piece of black wood kind of floating on the top. I would estimate that to be 20 to 30 foot in length. You'd be wrong

You'd be wrong sir. That is absolutely not They really didn't get anything better than this is the photo that they got that they took back I think there's a quote where Kia was like we were really focused on getting the audio recording I bet you were didn't we weren't taking as much time to get the photo If I went out to take a photo of this monster and this was the photo I took then guess what I didn't get a photo They did I would come back and they say did you get a picture? Nah look nah, sorry I will Great, it's not even it's not made it's not even something I can look at and

Decide whether or not I think the monster is real or a hoax, because it's just a log. It's not a log. What is it? There is a lot of trees behind the lake as well. So the chances of it being a log are relatively high. But well, what I would say is it is, did we say Nessie was real? No, I don't. Oh. I don't remember. I don't know. Because what I was would say is it is... Did we say Nessie was real?

No, I don't... Oh! I don't remember. I don't know. Because what I was gonna say is... I don't think so. It is, I actually don't think it's any worse than the Nessie evidence.

Nessie evidence is kind of notoriously bad and sparse for how famous it is. Really terrible. That is kind of what old Nessie evidence looks like. It's like the tiniest sliver of a hump. Yeah, but even Nessie, we do have some quite infamous pictures, which I think which are hoaxes, but where it is more of like a neck or something protruding upward, defying gravity that would imply that there is a larger body

below the water supporting that structure. This thing in the picture, it's not even, there's nothing even really poking up out of the water. It's just a log lying flat on the water's surface. That might be a boy. That might be the one. One of Sanderson's boys face down in the water. So dark. Okay. He's like, I can't go back to Berlin empty handed.

He turns to look at one of the boys. He throws them in the water, takes a photo. At the end of every episode of this part of our life, we have to decide whether our given case is really paranormal or not. Rory, in the case of the McCullough and Bembe, where is your head at? You know, I felt like I was hard on today's case.

That's fair. But I was hard because I love the paranormal. And it's tough love. And I need to examine every case and break it down so that when we reach the end, we can decide whether or not something really is real. There were parts of today's story that I really did enjoy, specifically the part where everyone who ate it died.

Yeah, that's a bit. I appreciate also that we did have some evidence from modern day sightings, 1980s, but unfortunately- Not that modern. Well, more modern than the 1930s, which I think was every other testimony that we heard. Sure. A couple in the 50s, granted.

But a lot of our stuff is dated, comes from diaries, comes from the testimonies of old mad explorers who traveled across the world and would be pretty embarrassed if they went all that way and didn't find a beast, or write about having an encounter with the beast. So it's a little tricky today. Lake monsters, guys, it's a hard one in the world of cryptids they've got to be one of the hardest to prove. Yeah they are. You wouldn't think so because where is it? It's got to be in the friggin lake. Yeah and it's it's by definition a hard thing to get a look at because it's

partially submerged in the lake and unfortunately unfortunately it's quite, it is easy to conflate with other beasts because there's quite a few big waterborne creatures, like in this part of the world, hippos for one, which also do kill people. Um, very regularly. Can you eat hippo meat without dying? I don't know. No idea. No clue.

Yeah. So kind of like with many of these stories, I think the most interesting thing is probably the ancient tales and drawings of the thing. You know, if they're drawing, it's pretty f***ing convenient. Let's just think about that. If there's like... Oh, we're losing them. If there's drawings of a diplodocus that are older than human knowledge of dinosaurs, because

by the way, they died 65 million years ago, so no human should have ever known what one of those looks like until modern reconstructions of dinosaur skeletons. That's pretty interesting. Yeah, it is. Pretty interesting. Isn't that a conspiracy theory? I feel like I've read at one point that humans and dinosaurs coexisted because of cave paintings That is a conspiracy theory. That they're like look

How did we paint these pictures of a little T-rex if we didn't know that they existed? Yeah I don't know human imagination is a wild thing It's also possible that it's a which is one of my It's also possible that it's a, which is one of my favorite, annoyingly realistic tales, which is like Australia is a perfect example, a place where humans have existed for maybe 50, 75,000 years. Lots of animals have gone extinct in that time. True. Lots of large land mammals.

So there will be drawings and stories of animals which don't exist yet, or which don't exist anymore. So I don't know if that's the Macaulay and Bembe, but it's certainly possible because the African continent is where humans have existed longest on earth. These could be folk tales of creatures that used to exist. Right, just some big alligator that isn't kicking around anymore, or some big hippo.

I think we're circling the drain, Rory. Unfortunately, yes. Today, it is gonna be a no from me. Yikes. It is gonna be a double no, I think. Harsh, harsh conclusion. But I think, look, some of the haters have been saying we've lost it.

Some of the haters have been saying the only reason we got a hat trick of yeses this year was because we've gone Joe Biden mode. We've gone soft in the head in our elderly years and we're being too soft on cases. Explain this then, motherf***er. How about this? All right. Yeah. We're being hard as nails, hard as nails on the paranormal this year. So I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it. There's been many no's now and let's face it, probably going to be another no next week.

We don't know that. We don't know that. Could be a yes. Rory's on the case, so almost certainly. Am I right? Well, watch it, all right, you little son of a bitch. So is it going to be a yes? I've hired 23 boys to help me with next week's case. They're like monkeys on typewriters. That's what they say. You know, if you have enough monkeys on typewriters, they will write Shakespeare.

But if you have infinite boys researching an episode of this paranormal life, you will find a yes. Yeah. That's great. Fortunately, we only have Phil. He's our only boy. Yeah, and he's not even a boy, but he's closer to boyhood than we are.

Yeah, which makes him a boy, I suppose. So he's, yeah, you know, he's, look, he's taken care of. We don't put him out in the field. Yeah. All right? He's got some podcast editing to do. And yes, sometimes if Kit and I do go out on investigations and things are looking a little dangerous,

we push the boy. We push the boy into the danger. We get three days into a four day trip to find a beast. Phil, get in the gorilla suit. Get in the gorilla suit and get out into the field. All right, we've got to find this skunk one way or the other. Put this apple in your mouth, boy.

Look, I have absolutely relished looking into this case. All the while, thank you to you and Friars for helping research this case. Well done. Great case. Great case. If you can't get enough of this paranormal life, I think we've said it many, many times before. for helping research this case. Well done. Great case, great case. If you can't get enough of this paranormal life, I think we've said it many, many times before, if you love a river monster investigation

and you wanna see the Apex case, if you wanna see the gold standard, it's only on Patreon, I'm afraid, because it's the Ogo Pogo investigation. Yeah, and you know what? As a little treat, how about we play a clip from that episode right now? Because you didn't get a yes on your regular episode, how about hearing some juicy evidence from the episode we did on the Ogo Pogo only on Patreon?

The sighting has amazed and terrified locals. This experience has had a huge impact on our family. My son won't go swimming past a sand bar anymore and I definitely am not going in the water. has had a huge impact on our family. My son won't go swimming past a sandbar anymore, and I definitely am not going in the water. The first thought is, what is that? And then the second thought is, is that kid in danger? I mean, it's hard, I know for you guys who are just listening to that,

it's hard to get an idea of what we just saw. I'm gonna go on record and say that was some of the most convincing evidence I've ever seen in any episode of this paranormal life. This is wasted on a bonus episode. I'm ready to swear down right now that this motherf**ker is real. We saw it, we saw it with our own eyes. That's not as real as it can get. It's like we have a footage where we caught him on camera. Folks, it's real. I just saw it in a lake.

Unless they built a giant animatronic f**king snake machine for this TV show, then I don't know what else I just witnessed. Humps, we just saw humps moving through like a giant, like it was Godzilla. It was Godzilla folks living inside this lake. Ooh, okay. I think you can tell that's a tantalizing episode.

Wow. That if you haven't heard, you're gonna need to head over to patreon.com forward slash This Paranormal Life. And that is only one episode of hundreds that exists over there. So if you love the podcast and you wanna, if you wanna support your boys and make sure that they can live happy lives, the place to do it is patreon.com. Hold up, we them boys. Go Wiz Khalifa mode over on patreon.com.

Support the podcast, get hundreds of episodes in return for as little as $5 a month pending local taxes and currency conversions. That's right. At the end of every podcast, we like to do shout outs as well for the people who are on this shout out tier of our patreon. Hell yeah. Let's round out with that now. So a special thank you to Jared Staples. Jared Staples sounds like the sidekick from the for the big bandit. He's a kind of guy that goes into like a post office and is just

grabbing every stapler he can find. Yeah and he's always furious. Where's your staplers? No one staples things anymore Jared. Right. It's 2025. He's got like a stapler to the clerk's neck and he's like I'll put a pen in you right now if you don't give me all the staples you got and I'm in the background shoving pens in a bag. Yeah, man That's right. I like that, you know good Batman Batman's villains are getting kind of scary I don't know if you know that these days the Joker he used to be like a funny guy now He's actually crazy. Yeah, the penguin. I thought he just wore a funny suit. I think he's like human traffics

Yeah, it's really dark stuff I think he's like human traffics. Yeah, it's really dark stuff So we need to bring back some of these kind of like just silly Batman villains me the big bandit and who's this? the stapler Batman beats the shit out of it puts him in a coma Jesus Batman. I was a little much don't you think I know you don't kill people but he's as good as dead I have to use my bix to sign the form for them to pull the plug on the stapler. This is dark Batman This is so dark. I didn't technically kill him Are you bit all but did though all but did?

Kill him you did Batman you did Jesus you killed himself. Yeah, cuz his life was so bad after you beat him up Used his own stapler on his own face. It was his choice to make Thanks lastly today, but not lately today Mackie Mackie. Do you own a Saki? Because the big bandit he's got a heist coming up and it's actually kind of hard for me to hold all the pens and the bag Together and now that we got the stapler involved. There's some extra gear being shifted. So we do kind of need The word goon has negative connotations Right, but we do kind of need to just a goon to hold the sack

So we can just kind of throw the goods into it and you you kind of bundle them up because we talked about boys Earlier, I think of it as an evil boy That's kind of what a goon is. Yeah So the role is open if you do own a sake that would be fantastic get in touch We can't pay you much unless you like pens Because I have a lot of pens. We actually speaking of the Patreon, we talked about it on the podcast recently. I actually have a pornographic Simpsons pen. Yeah, god.

Which it's got your name on it, if you wanna sign up for the team. An irresistible offer, clearly. Thank you, Daymachy. Thank you to everyone who shouted out this week. And we will be back with more shout outs from next Tuesday, along with, maybe more importantly, a brand new paranormal tale.

Bye bye!