You are now listening to Cryptid Cocktail Party Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Crypto Cocktail, part of your show where we have a few drinks, share a few laughs, take a dive into the unknown. I'm your host Dave, joined as always by my wonderful co -host Sarge. How's it going Sarge? Oh man, I'm fucking fired up buddy. You sound fired up. It's been one hell of a week. Yeah? Yeah. We bombed Iran, which
is not great. However, they called it Operation Midnight Hammer, which incidentally is the name of my erotic novel. Found a loophole, Dave. I found a loophole. I'm not going to lie. The name of my erotic novel is way better than the name of my sex tape. I think that is so much funnier. Even if you just said erotic fan fiction, that's just as good. But no, I mean, we had two weekends of pride bookending my week of shit. So I actually I did the Boston Pride March last week with my
with my company. And this week, a buddy from Narragansett met up with me. I was down at the brewery and then we went to pride in matching. Bigfoot outfits and Bigfoot was all rainbow colored and neither one of us thought for a second that anyone would consider us a gay couple. That was my first thought when I saw the picture. I even showed it to my wife and I was like, ooh, these two look like two bears that are madly in love.
There's no way around it. There was one very tall man in cowboy boots, tiny, tiny shorts and a cowboy hat and he said, oh, you're matching. You two have been together a long time. I cannot wait to post. I'm posting that photo, by the way. I hope you don't mind. I'm fine with it. Love is love, you guys. Cam is a beautiful man. I would be honored. But to those of you who are listening to the show right now who were at Pride, thank you for having such an amazing event. Pride
in Providence. I hate to say it because I'm from boston but pride and providence is so much more fun i can imagine way more people the parade is a little bit shorter which is actually i think a good thing because the pride parade in boston had 250 floats in it oh my god i mean that's 250 like groups um and so i was at the starting line And we waited two hours before we even started moving because the floats took so long to actually get to the finish line. I would get bored. So
I would get bored so fast. Oh yeah. I was like reading the news. Yeah. My daughter's yelling at me cause she just wants to start marching, you know? Anyway, it was a really good time though. Providence is amazing. It's a beautiful city. I think should, should deserve the name gayest
city in America. Just for how, fucking cool their pride is it's amazing anyway uh so i'm super pumped up about that uh gave out tons of cryptid cocktail party stickers uh i was very excited to have those dave you're gonna get a whole bunch of them soon hell yeah and they were so popular we're actually gonna make more And on some of them, we're actually going to put the podcast on it, the podcast name, so that people know
where to look. I thought about that when Cam asked me for the artwork, and I was like, should I put like a Spotify and Apple link, like something, or like figure out a way to put like a QR code on the back or something? Yeah, that's what I was thinking too, but oh well. But I was at work, and I was like, I'm not going to figure that out. And when I say that's what I was thinking too, I don't mean that I was thinking that beforehand.
It was while we were handing them out. I'm like, oh yeah, there's no reason for anyone to follow the podcast based on this. But we met some cool skateboarder kids and they loved them. So overall, amazing night, good times. And to the lady that wished me a happy gay pride, you don't have to say the gay part. We all know. We got out of the Uber in our matching outfits with rainbow headbands. And this obvious straight woman in a cowboy hat looked at the both of us and said,
happy gay pride. And I was like, gay pride. It's good to be specific. Okay. Yeah. Cause it would have been alarming if I got out and she said, happy white pride. Yeah. So it's good to be uncomfortable with that. Yeah, that's true. Cause just saying pride, even though we all know what it is, it's pretty ambiguous. It could be problematic depending on who's saying it. Could be anything. Now, the fact that she was wearing a rainbow cowboy hat kind of probably would have given what you just
said. But at the same time, who knows? In today's climate. I want to know. So there was a guy standing in front of us at the parade wearing a thin blue line t -shirt. Okay. And in the blue line, it said, we the people. And I was thinking to myself. What the fuck are you doing here? How are you still alive? Cops can be gay. I mean, I don't think a gay cop is going to wear a thin blue line shirt. I'm pretty confident that this gentleman just was wildly unaware of what he was doing.
Like he was probably like on vacation. He's hanging out in Providence and he's like. Oh, all these really snazzy dresses are watching these people dance by. I wonder what's going on. I mean, I don't know. That is a bold fashion choice. Yeah, at a Pride parade in 2025. Yeah, that's pretty good. All right. Sorry to take up so much time talking about it. It was just such an amazing night, and I wanted to thank all the people who followed us and jumped on to be a part of our
podcast. Hopefully we don't offend you. I don't think we will. We might. Possibly. Not this episode, anyways. Future episodes. It's a good chance. Or two episodes back, if you're listening. Are we talking about the sailors? It's really where you start listening that could be problematic for some of you. You'll know why I'm not allowed to say name of my sex tape anymore, at least. Yeah, but dude, fucking the name of my erotic novel is so good. I'm going to use it sparingly,
but it's my loophole. Oh, yeah, because I think that's the name of my erotic novel and or erotic fan fiction. That's one of those ones where you have to use it at the right time, I feel like. Yeah, it has to be perfect. Yeah, or else it just loses that fucking punch. All right, sorry. Operation Midnight Hammer. Are you ready to dive into today's episode? I am so ready. This is a nightmare. I kind of got ahead of myself while riding it, and I buried the lead until the very
end. You got over your skis, as they say. I don't know what that means. I don't think that's a real sign. Apparently, it means that you bit off more than you could chew, and other analogies and euphemisms as well. Okay. Is it like a gen... No, weirdly enough, it's an old people thing. You hear it on the news all the time. Donald Trump is over his skis on this. Oh, like skis? Like S -K -I? Yeah, like when you're skiing down a hill. Oh. I thought it was S -K -E -E -Z. Like
a fucking... Oh, skis. I mean, I think it's an appropriate... way to refer to donald trump because he is always leaning forward like he just went off a ski jump that's actually pretty good all right right yeah we're eight minutes in let's fucking let's start rolling okay all right so today starts we're gonna be heading to glasgow glas i should probably figure people get weird about pronunciations is it glasgow glasgow scotland
i think it's Glasgow. Glasgow. All right, so today we're going to be heading to Glasgow, Scotland, and if anyone has a problem with the way I'm pronouncing it, please write me a strongly worded email at crypticcocktail at gmail .com. Now, besides Highlander, Groundskeeper Willie, and whiskey, what do you know about Scotland, or I guess Glasgow in general? Well, I know about Scotland that they love fried food. Who doesn't?
Scotch eggs are delicious. yeah i mean everything scottish is kind of cool you know what i mean um i know that the movie braveheart was wildly inaccurate uh i know that bagpipes didn't originate there but they definitely uh claimed them so that's good even if they didn't originate there they definitely perfected it they did and honestly if you play bagpipes at a funeral i don't even if i hate you i'm gonna cry so It's true. Amazing Grace on bagpipes. I'm done. It's game over for
me. And just, you know, overall, very funny people. The movie Trainspotting is fucking phenomenal. Trainspotting is so good. Yeah. I can't remember the name of the author, but he's written a couple of books that I've read and I really liked them all. Okay. So that's all you know? Yeah. North of England. Freedom. All right. Well, today we face paint. Something like that. Well, today we're going to be heading back in time to Glasgow
in the 70s. And to paint a picture of what the city was like during this time, well, back then it was pretty rough. It was soaked in booze and full of people who either wanted to fight you or drink with you more often than not. It was usually both. Now, the city back then was split up by class, religion, and old grudges nobody ever really let go of. Some neighborhoods had beautiful old homes, while others were all crumbling
flats. boarded up buildings and it's those kinds of places where stories tend to originate and fester and one of those stories and the topic of today's episode is about a man or maybe something pretending to be a man bald skeletal twitching and grinning like his face is being peeled off in slow motion he would show up in the dead at night sometimes under a street lamp and other times at the foot of your bed contorted leering and then poof just gone so Today, Sarge, we are
going to be covering the deeply unsettling legend of the Gurning Man of Glasgow. Are you familiar with this at all? No, but it sounds like a horror movie I want to watch really bad that's going to get screwed up by the guy who did the Conjuring franchise. Well, first of all, the reason why the Conjuring franchise got screwed up is because the titular characters were, in real life, frauds and terrible people. That's where my problem was. Yeah, the worst kind of people. Yeah, that's
true. Yeah, so lucky for us, Zach Baggins came along and fixed that problem right away. Too bad Annabelle's missing. Did they ever find Annabelle? You heard that Annabelle the doll went missing, right? No, I didn't know it went missing. How do you fucking lose a haunted doll? Because it's fucking haunted, man. Let me see if I got this straight. This is a fucking doll. When you try to throw it in the trash, it shows up back in your house. Yet somehow they lost it. Well, they
brought it on tour. Morons. These people are morons. Yeah, they brought it on tour and then I can't remember where it was. Thankfully, it wasn't Philly. Philly has an affinity for just ruining things that are on tour. But yeah, it's just gone. I think they found it. I never followed up with it because in my mind, it's way funnier to believe that it's just out there causing fucking chaos. Just a raggedy and I'll just getting in a Walmart behind a stack of paper towels. Yeah.
I mean, I like to think of it as I think like to think it's on Bourbon street and fucking new Orleans, just getting fucking white girl wasted shit face. Yeah. Dude, it's been in a fucking, I'll curse you. I'll curse you right now. I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid of you. All right. So back to the gurning man. Um, Oh, for anyone knows what it's called, the gurning man. I had to figure out what gurning means because I thought
maybe they just misspelt grinning at first. But apparently to gurn is to make like a really contorted gross face. So it's the gurning man, which makes the name way worse. It's also kind of like a good way to describe the face you make when you orgasm. Sarge? It's like a better one than vinegar strokes. Yeah, you're going to hold on to that
thought. Oh, no. So the first known encounter with the Gurney Man, or at least the first one ever really talked about, happened in the spring of 1976 in the Cross Hill neighborhood of Glasgow's South Side. It was around midnight. Two teenage girls were walking home from a party when they spotted something up ahead underneath the street lamp. Now, at first, they thought it was just a guy standing there. He seemed a little twitchy,
a little weird. But I feel like that's kind of expected for a Scotsman standing under a street lamp at midnight. You know what I mean? Yeah. I did see train spotting, so I agree with you. Yeah. Now, it wasn't until they got a bit closer that some of the details about this man started becoming clear. And none of them were good. He was completely bald and thin as hell. Like, unnervingly thin. Like, it's not great. It looked like his
bones were trying to escape from his skin. Like, that's how... skinny he was he was wearing what one of them described as a black leotard which all right hold on so this description it only gets worse from here but just up to this point i feel like this is probably the last thing that i would want to see if i was like a drunk teenage girl walking home at night like i feel like i kind of saw a guy who looked like this last night at pride a lot of leotards down there yeah but
i feel like at night midnight You're a teenage girl with your friend walking home. This is not a great sight to see. Dude, I'm a fucking grown -ass man, and I would run in the other direction. Yeah. Now, the worst part is that he wasn't just standing there. He was moving all weird. He was fidgeting, twitching. Like, herky -jerky. Not really. It was almost like dancing, but, like, twitchy. Like, I got to pee real bad, kind of.
You know what I mean? Okay, yeah. Yeah, and accompanied with the movements were the sounds that he was making. It was described as a mix between grunting, snorting, and choking, kind of like a pug, but like if a pug was a sex pest, kind of. Oh, so he's masturbating. He was masturbating. Okay, that makes a lot more sense. Now the twitching makes a lot of sense. But what really stuck out
to these poor girls was his face. They said it was twisted into this just like horrible pain smile and not like a happy smile or even like an injured cold kind of smile. It was more like he was trying to smile through a stroke. Yeah, like a Melania Trump smile. Just too big, too wide, not human. Yeah. Now, one of the girls, either the braver or the drunker of the two, called out to him and asked if he was all right. He didn't say anything. He didn't even blink.
He just screamed this high -pitched animal shriek. He screamed this high -pitched animal shriek and then started lunging towards them. So they ran fucking hard. Yeah, I'm out. I'm out, dude. And then one of them looked back, probably to figure out how much time they still had left on this mortal coil, but he was gone, just not there anymore. And there weren't any alleys. There wasn't any open doors to pop into, nothing
to hide behind. He was just gone. Now, just a few nights later, literally down the street from where these girls had their encounter, a middle -aged woman in Cross Hill had her own run -in with the gurney man, and this one is undoubtedly worse. It was early in the morning, around 3, 4 a .m., which is arguably the worst time of night. Like, nothing good ever happens in that time frame, I feel like. Agreed. Yeah. So she woke up to a weird sound. It wasn't like a loud
sound. It was more just like wrong. Like at first she thought it was just like her husband snoring, but very quickly realized that the snorting was the same nightmare mouth sounds that the two girls heard. It wasn't coming from next to her. It was coming from the foot of her fucking bed.
Oh, no. So. Oh, no. I hate it. So instead of doing what I would do in this scenario, which is pull the covers over my head and pretend like nothing is wrong, she looked down and there he was, a bald, grinning man just standing there, his face all twisted up in that same pain smile.
And to add even more horror into the mix, he was rubbing his chest in a slow, obsessive way, just running his hands across himself like he was trying to either soothe himself or kind of like he was getting off on the terror he was inflicting. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the good news is at least he wasn't buffing the musket. You know what I mean? True. I guess that would make it worse. But also, would it though? I feel like if you're making those sounds. At least I get
it. This is just like. Just standing at the foot of the bed. He's like, oh, we've been trying to reach you about your warranty. Yeah, it's like it's given like it's kind of like it reminds me like Buffalo Bill, but like. I don't know. Now, I'd fuck me. Goodbye, horses. Dude, I listened
to that song. fairly regularly i love that fucking song and it's not just because it's a great song but also because it makes me laugh when i think about the implications of listening to that song in my car with the windows down on a random street in my neighborhood that's pretty good i think i'm at a stoplight and goodbye horses is on i have no problem rolling down the window all right so you got this fucking gangly dude stroking his chest probably pinching his nipples or whatever
standing at the foot of her bed just yeah yeah now she froze couldn't move couldn't scream that is until he locked eyes with her that's when she lost it and finally just like let loose now her husband jolted awake like his dick was on fire he flipped on the bedroom light ready to fucking throw hands but the gurning man was already gone and not gone as in like he ran out the door gone like he was never there there was no open windows no unlocked doors no scuffed floors or
muddy footprints in the house he was just gone now after her encounter like that was it for her she was like i'm done and according to the story the family moved out the house not long after they packed up and got out of cross hill altogether and i mean yeah i get it i'd probably do the same yeah you gotta think like something has to be really fucking terrifying to move out because like when we think about like horror stories and people living in haunted houses.
And you're like, why don't you just move out? But like, here's the deal. Like that's fucking expensive to buy a new house and you got to pick up all your shit. How do you do that? And also, if you don't want to be there, you have to like get a hotel room and get, yeah. Or get an apartment while at the same time, probably still paying off the house. That's haunted. Exactly. While trying to buy a new house. Yeah. It's not like
moving your apartment. Like when you live, live in a house, you have like, decades worth of shit at some point yeah and i feel like in in the 1970s in glasgow or even in america like you weren't renting houses like that wasn't this i feel like that you might be able to but i feel like you might have been like back then council or something a council estate and like the government was helping you or whatever but you know back then i feel like you either owned the house or
you rented a flat like you weren't there was yeah exactly so this person probably owned this house and they're like i saw a fucking I saw Christian Bale in The Machinist standing at the foot of my bed, slowly roughing his chest. I saw Stephen Miller daydreaming about catching illegals at the foot of my bed. Oh, Stephen Miller. He's getting cucked by Elon Musk, and I think that's the funniest fucking thing. Imagine being
cucked by Elon Musk. I'm sorry to sidetrack, but just imagine how awful you have to be that Elon Musk is more attractive than you are. I think about it all the time. That's what gets me off. Oh, gross. So the third major sighting happened sometime in the late 70s. I think it was like 79 or something like that. And it came from an elderly woman just going about her nightly routine of putting out her milk bottles for the morning delivery. This is back when that was
still a thing, apparently. Now, just a simple harmless task. On this night, unfortunately, no, not really. So as she was putting out her bottles, she noticed something out of place. She heard like a clinking sound, like the sound of someone kicking glass. And when she looked up, she saw him, the same tall, bald, twitchy nightmare right there in the middle of the fucking road. So the worst part is that he wasn't just
standing there. He was jogging in place, but it seemed almost involuntary, more like spasming. It was like a jerky, frantic and uncomfortable to watch, she said. He was wearing the same tight black outfit. His face was twisted up in what she said looked like rage or pain or maybe both. And when they locked eyes, just for a second, that's when he started to move towards her. Now,
not a walk, not a run, but a lunge. She let out a terrible scream, and just like that, Poofy was gone, just blinked out of existence, and reality spat him back into whatever void he came from. And now it's just her, standing there on her step. clutching her milk bottles, trying to process what the fuck just happened. So from 1976 to 1979, there were at least 17 reported sightings of the Gurning Man, and those are just
the ones that were reported. 11 of those sightings were outdoors, on the streets of Cross Hill and the surrounding neighborhoods. The other six were indoors, inside people's fucking houses. Ugh. Not great. This dude really gets around. Yeah. Now, every report followed pretty much
the same basic formula. a spindly bald man in tight dark clothing usually described like a leotard or something you'd expect like a haunted mime to wear his face was always contorted into the same inhuman grin and he always moved like he was glitching he would snort grunt twitch sometimes kick kick objects or rub himself like he was getting off on the fear it's so fucking weird yeah and he only showed up like At night, between 9 p .m. and 4 a .m., almost like he was
a demon working third shift. It's not the best shift, but hey, you got to make money somehow. He just got out of his job as the security guard for Sainsbury. I know British stuff. But the part that bothered people the most, well, not the most, but... I guess what's frustrating, I guess, is that he always disappeared. You can't catch the guy if he's popping in and out of existence. The second someone screamed or turned on the light, he was just gone. Where are you at? How
are you feeling? I fucking hate this. I mean, the thing is, this is terrifying. Objectively terrifying. Except for the fact that I keep reminding myself he was wearing a leotard. Yeah. Which is the least horrifying outfit. I can think of. So they described it as, like, I don't know, I mean, obviously there's no fucking photos of this thing, so I don't know, like, if that's really what it was, but I guess, I mean, I feel like if it's 1970 -something, you know how to
describe clothes at that point. Like, it's not like, it's not like this was the 1800s and they're trying to describe something from the future. Like, they had leotards in the 70s. Yeah. Yeah, so that's pretty funny. That's actually deeply funny. He's like, I'm scared of him. But at the same time, I'm like, why are you wearing that? You could just wear like a button -down shirt and it would still be scary. Like, what are you
doing, buddy? I mean, I guess if you're doing calisthenics in the middle of the road, just fucking run to the place. Yeah, that's true. It's just a really motivated jogger. Yeah. You need that range of motion to be able to, you know, fucking herky jerk. The thing is, every time he lunges at someone, that's not out of malice. It's just when the pre -workout kicked in. True. But also, now that I think about it,
he's wearing a leotard. Maybe his lunge is like when you do lunges at the gym where you take a big step. I know I'm dating myself here, but I keep thinking of when Mike Myers did sprockets.
when he was Dieter like it would be great if the gurning man had like a very effeminate German accent oh man hello I am the gurning man would you like to dance so one thing I didn't mention is that all of these were reported allegedly to the police now the police useless as always uh yep naturally tossed out a theory that the indoor encounters might have just been interrupted burglaries but what kind of burglar just stands at the foot of your bed grinning and rubbing
his chest instead of you know robbing the place he's again while wearing a unitard and not holding a bag yeah there's also the fact that nobody ever reported missing items there was no forced entry no broken locks Unless the dude had like a David Blaine level escape plan. Like how was he getting out so fast? That's the thing is he just fucking disappears. Like everyone, when everyone who comes to you says the guy just dematerialized
right in front of my eyes. Like old men who are that skinny don't really have the muscle mass to fucking jump out a window. Yeah. Clearly this is something more horrifying. Yeah. I mean, but also like that only. That only maybe explains the six indoor encounters, not the 11 other outside ones. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. But also, then there's also the one really uncomfortable detail about all this, and that's that every single witness was a woman. Most of them alone. Some,
like we mentioned, were teenagers. Some were elderly. Almost as if the gurning man didn't just appear at random, but targeted his victims. Like, he was a prowler. Here's the thing, though. By the time that 1980s rolled in, the sightings just stopped. Well, yeah, because by the 80s, everyone was wearing black leotards and listening to Joy Division. There was no arrest, no answers, just a creepy little hole in Glasgow's heart where a monster used to be. There were no new
reports, no fresh encounters. People either moved on or convinced themselves that it never really happened to begin with. Years passed, then decades. The yearning man became one of those local weird tales, like half forgotten, half laughed at, until eventually it just stopped getting told at all. So you would think that after decades of silence, the legend would have died, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, of course. In the early 2000s,
rumors started bubbling back up again. A few folks were whispering about seeing a strange, twitchy man lurking around Queens Park. Thin, bald. dressed in black. But those early reports are hazy. There was no names, no details, but just enough to get people talking again. And then in 2017, which is too recent for me, two actual encounters were reported. The first came from a young woman walking through Queens Park
around 9 or 10 p .m. She was passing by some parked cars when she noticed someone wedged between a van and a car. A jogger who just got stuck in a traffic collision. He's fucking pinned. It's like signs for the lower half of the body. If we move the cars, they're just dead. Yeah, he's done. He's wedged between a van and a car. He was disturbingly thin, bald, and dressed in tight, dark clothing with a neckline so low it was, and I quote, almost revealing his nipples.
Oh, man. I love that he's wearing a V -neck that is so deep it's writing its own poetry. Amazing. And the moment they locked eyes... Love a deep V. Who doesn't love a deep V, dude? And the moment they locked eyes, he went into full freak mode, I guess. I don't know how... He started groaning and snorting and rubbing his chest. His face twisted into the same contorted pain grimace. He's just hitting all the classics at this point. Now, she backed away and then took off running.
But when she looked back to make sure he wasn't like gaining on her again, he was just gone. Now, later that same year, a group of teenagers were hanging out in Queens Park at night when one of them noticed something moving in the bushes. Never a good sign. So another girl shined her phone flashlight into the dark. And there he was, a bald skeletal man crouching among the branches, watching them. And then the second the light hit him, he did all the signature moves.
We've been through it enough. You know what they are. So trademark dance. Yeah. So they screamed. Then they ran. And then one of them tried to snap a photo, like either as a memento or evidence. It's unclear. But when she turned around, he'd already vanished. So you got two sightings in the same area, same behavior, same leotard. The only difference now is that he was described as old. I didn't mention this, but the first Queens Park witness guessed that he was anywhere
between 70 and 90 years old. It's as if the girding man had kept... It's as if he kept existing all this time, just out of view, if that makes sense. Imagine if he was just like some interdimensional traveler. and he kept getting stuck here, and the whole reason he was doing all this is he just really needed to pee, but he can't find a place to do it. Or maybe you can't pee in another dimension. Maybe there's something about it. Yeah, he's just got to hold it. He's been holding
it for fucking 50 years. Well, I guess this is a good point as any to start. This is a good jumping off point into our first theory of what this thing fucking is. Yeah. And now that we know that he got old, maybe the gurning man was just a dude. How do you feel about that? I mean, I don't know what Rudy Giuliani is up to, but it sounds like you're describing him. Yeah, it's pretty close. Horrifying. Yeah. You know what, though? Rudy's kind of a pudge. He's a bit of
a pudger, though. Well, now, when he was back when he was 9 -11's mayor. Oh, yeah. No, he was skeletal. He was terrifying to look at. Uh, like Nosferatu. Um, I don't know. I don't think it's a man. I mean, it can't be a man. The guy just disappears out of nowhere. Well, you know what? I haven't even give you the reasons why he might just be a dude. Maybe I'll change your mind. Do you want your mind blown or changed? Okay.
Yes, I do. Okay. So yeah. So what if he was, so he could, he could have been just a man, a very disturbed, possibly sick, definitely very horny for fear type dude. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Every witness described him as big into nipple play. Just squeezing the raisins. Every witness described him as looking real. Like he wasn't see -through. He didn't float. He wasn't like flickering or glowing like a ghost, but he seemed like flesh and blood. But so, you know, maybe he was just
mentally ill or on drugs or both. Now there are also some neurological conditions like dystonia or epilepsy that can cause uncontrollable facial contortions, like spasms, even odd vocalizations. That makes sense. Yeah. So maybe he wasn't. even trying to scare people, maybe his muscles were just betraying him. It's horrible. It's actually worse because he's not trying to do it. Yeah, but if we're being honest, though, the chest rubbing, the bedroom staring, and the nighttime
stalking, that feels intentional. So even if he was a guy... I mean, those are my go -tos.
I have never had a complaint. So even if he was just a guy in pain, he was still doing some... deeply predatory creepy ass shit and the fact that all the witnesses were women usually alone makes it hard not to see this as some kind of like targeted behavior so still even if it was just some menace or a mentally ill person or whatever that doesn't really explain the like I blinked and he was gone shit yeah you know what I mean no it doesn't help like but maybe
like the fear and adrenaline you feel in the moment messes with your memory or like maybe people didn't see him run because they were too busy shitting themselves like maybe yeah but like a suspicious maybe you know what i mean right right but if the real life human theory isn't for you let's go the opposite direction and get weird with it uh a lot of people lean toward the supernatural on this one the vanishing knack is a classic ghost move the fact that he
showed up in people's bedrooms with no sign of forced entry also very ghostly and his ability to scare the fucking piss out of you like without saying a word that's pretty textbook paranormal type stuff yeah Some folks have also compared him to, like, shadow people, like, you know, those dark human -shaped blobs when you have sleep paralysis, like, hand -type shit. Well, yeah, like, he does kind of sound like a sleep
paralysis demon. Yeah, he checks some of the boxes, like, for sure, like, but only in the cases where he's seen inside. I feel like if you're outside, that doesn't make any sense. Like, he shows up at night, paralyzes you with fear, and then disappears when the lights come on. But the Gurning Man wasn't a shadow. He had details, like clothing, features, sounds, behaviors. Like, that makes him feel more real, like more physical in a sense. Almost like he's half in
our world and half somewhere else, Sarge. Oh. Which brings us to the theory that he's some kind of interdimensional traveler. Ah, like Bigfoot, but shaved and skinny and wearing a unitard. That sounds offensive. I'm not going to say that one anymore. Leotard is how I'll say it. But yeah, it's like whatever barrier keeps us from seeing into the next reality just got thin as hell in Glasgow during the 70s and then briefly
in the 2000s. And through that rip came this twitchy bastard who couldn't quite get the hang of existing in our timeline. That could explain the weird body movements, the distorted face, and the way he was able to just vanish on a moment's notice. And then finally, our last theory, maybe none of this shit ever actually happens. Okay. Yeah. All right. There are zero news reports from the time, no police barter, no archived
headlines. Nobody who lived in Glasgow back then seems to remember hearing about this, which is pretty weird, right? You would think like leotard man with horrifying smile terrorizes women would have made the papers, but no, it's almost like gurney man just showed up on the internet one
day. and yeah damn it you son of a bitch if this is a fucking reddit story i'm gonna lose my goddamn mind the first detailed version of the story popped up online around 2012 which means more than likely it's a case of retroactive folklore something someone making up a spooky local legend that felt like it belonged in that era it's much like when we did the not deer like the not deer yeah it's kind of like that but then people started believing it and maybe even seeing it This is
where the Tulpa Theory comes in. It's the idea that if enough people believe in something hard enough and long enough, it becomes real. Think like Slenderman or The Rake. We know they were made up, and yet people swear up and down that they have seen them. If reality is just a shared hallucination, maybe the Gurning Man is real enough now to step out of the shadows, and maybe the reason there were those two sightings in 2017 is because we invited him. How are you feeling
about these theories? This makes a lot of sense, actually, now that you mention it. I see Slender Man semi -regularly, actually. He smokes Marlowe's, hangs out by a garage, a lot of bird seed. Anyway. You just grabbed my dad. I love the Tulpa theory, I think. it's, it's, uh, it's a weird nexus of things. You know what I mean? Like the Tulpa theory is kind of right up there with, um, uh, what is that weird thing that happens when people all seem to remember something and it turns out
not to be real. The Mandela effect. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like the Tulpa and the Mandela effect, it kind of like a hand in hand thing. Um, Cause like, if you look at it, so not, not that this is, this is like a deliberate example, but like Sinbad, everybody thought that Sinbad was in a movie where he was a genie. Yeah. And then he actually did a commercial where he was a genie
just to mess with people. And it really, it like those two things, those two like things in my brain kind of go so well together that it just, it, even if it's not real, even if there's nothing to that. It's such a, like a fascinating, like little journey to go on in your imagination. Like just how fucking cool an idea that is. What's weird is that I don't remember. I, the only genie movie I remember is Kazam with Shaq. Yes. Like
it's one of those things. Cause the one that the people think Sinbad was in, they called it, it was Shazam. I don't remember that at all. Right. Yeah. And the thing that's funny is I remember Shazam. And the Shaq movie. Yeah. See, that's why it's weird that things like that only affect certain people. It's like, it's like, it's like the Fruit of the Loom thing where like, I remember a cornucopia. Me too. Apparently there was never a cornucopia. I know. It's so fucking
weird. We need to do an episode on the Mandela effect. I think that'd be a lot of fun. We should. I think we should. Yeah. I love the Tulpa theory. And I, I think there's some truth to it. Cause if something's real to you, whether it's real or not is immaterial. It's your perception. And, you know, we all live in a hologram, so your perception is reality a lot of the time. That's very true. Which is why I'm the most handsome
guy in the world. I mean, I'm just kidding. I mean, no, you're spitting facts right now, Sarge. You flatter me, sir. So was the Gurning Man just a creepy dude in a bodysuit, a lost spirit stuck between dimensions, or an internet -aged Tulpa that we accidentally willed into existence? Tulpa! Tulpa! Tulpa! Yeah, more than likely it's the last one. But in the end, The Legend of the Gurning Man of Glasgow is about answers and more about
what sticks with you. Like that image of a bald skeletal man grinning through pain, rubbing his chest and stalking the streets at night. It hits on something primal. Like he's not a monster. He's not even a cryptid. He's a fucking intrusion.
Like real or not, this is the kind of story that latches onto your brain like black mold and it's... really hard to get rid of the gurning man embodies a very specific fear of being watched of being alone of something just fucking wrong lurking at the edge of your world and whether he was ever real doesn't really matter anymore so there you have it sarge that is the story of the gurning man of glasgow we did it that was an amazing one i loved it all right it was really good i
had a lot of fun right yeah There's nothing funnier to me than the idea of a haunted sex pest. Not only is it creepy and fucking terrifying, but it's also a pervert. But also like, that's like, I feel like a paranormal sex pest is the worst. Like that's way worse. It's so gross. Yeah. Cause you can't do it. You can't do anything about it. Like, it's just like, like, were they going to catch them? Were they going to call the ghostbusters?
The ghostbusters aren't real. This thing might also not be real, but at the same, you know what I mean? Like it's all bad. I'm just thinking like, he just like, he shows up. He's like, Oh, it's so good to see you. He's like twitching. He's like, oh, he's getting all riled up to fucking sex pest his way through your life. Fuck that. I don't want to be a part of your weird fucking fantasy, a creepy ghost. It's like a demon version of the BP guy from South Park where he's like,
I'm sorry. Just like rubbing his nipples. It's like that, but like a sex pest demon interdimensional ghost. All of it's bad. There's a show called Doom Patrol that I really like. It just finished up. It's on HBO. Brendan Fraser's in it. It's about a bunch of weird superheroes. I fucking love this show. There's a running gag throughout the show. I think it started in season two where these ghosts just show up in somebody's house
and they're just fucking everywhere. They'll just be like sitting on the couch and then they'll hear groaning. They'll look up in the ceiling and there's two ghosts just banging on the ceiling. That's pretty good. Oh, gurning man. You're going to be my new favorite cryptids. More like gooning man. Am I right? Hey. Oh, that was good. That was good. I'm actually going to go into chat GPT and try to recreate gardening, man. I just want to see what their interpretation of him
would look like. All right. All right. Sorry. Put that out of the way. You got anything you want to plug before we do our other plugs? Yeah, yeah. Follow us on the internet. I don't really have anything. I want to thank Cam, Amanda, and Elvira for all the help last night and handing out the stickers. A lot of cool ideas we kind of threw back and forth. Hopefully some cool shit for the future. Drink Narragansett or We'll be sad about it. And that's all I got. All right.
And if you want to follow us, you can follow us on Instagram at Crypto Cocktail. Follow us on TikTok, Crypto Cocktail Party. If you want to follow Sarge, there's a link in our Instagram. You can find all of his socials on there. He's starting to do TikTok again. Sarge, you're doing TikTok again. Pretty good. Yeah, I'm getting back into it. Pretty good. Thank you. You can subscribe to our Patreon. That'd be awesome.
Give us some funds. for some things. Uh, I think that's all I, Oh, leave us a rating and review, please. It really helps. Yeah, please. It really, really helps get, uh, get the word out there. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your mom, tell your dad, whoever, even if you just want to shoot us a message on Instagram, we can just kind of post it, uh, post the message, uh, and your review of the show. Happy or sad. I don't care where you, you know, you can say we're
terrible. We'll still post it. Yeah. Cause we're masochists, but also do it on an actual app. podcast app because that's how people know if we're good or not. Dude, I'm just going to post it on Instagram anyway. It's fine. Yeah, man. It doesn't help us with people. People won't see it. All right. Fine. Fine. Fine. Rate us on a real thing instead of the thing I made up. But you can send us nice messages or mean messages. Yeah, I'll take that too. Yeah, that's fine.
It keeps me going. Yeah, I love it. I put on a DV and started pinching my nips. Yeah, and if anyone has a problem with the way I was pronouncing
Glasgow, Glasgow. whatever uh call me out i'm gonna fuck help us get better no i'm still gonna pronounce it how i pronounce it which has changed dramatically throughout the beginning and the end of this episode i pronounce it like four different ways it's just one of those names where you don't feel comfortable saying it yeah i hate it it's all bad and they should feel ashamed for naming it something hard to pronounce even though that's wild to say considering i used
to live in new england now live in Pennsylvania, where everything is named awful that you can't pronounce if you're not from there. Right. All right. Go to Leicester. You'll love it. I guess that's the way it starts. Do you want to say goodbye and love you to the audience? Goodbye. I love you. Happy Pride.