Friends, this is John, your host of Dairyland Frights. And make sure wherever you listen to Dairyland Frights, to rate and subscribe this, give us five stars. We truly appreciate it. And make sure you give us a review so we can see how we can improve the show, make it better, and stay spooky. Hello, my spooky friends, and welcome to another episode of Dairyland Frights, the paranormal podcast that covers everything spooky, creepy and mysterious in the Midwest and beyond.
And today, I am so blessed. I found these guys at lady, which is super awesome. They make me laugh. They have some really funny cryptid stuff as well as paranormal stuff. Great conversations. You're going to love them. I have Derek and OD Lady, Dame from Monster Crush Podcast. Welcome.
Hello. Thank you so much for having us.
Yeah, thanks for having us. I'm so excited to be here.
Yeah, it's going to be fun because we're kind of like, in the sense that the paranormal is sometimes not funny, let's be honest, it's kind of frightening sometimes.
That's true.
But if you can bring a little humor, you know, where people are listening and they can kind of have a little bit of laugh about it and stuff like that. So sometimes it's really hard because you have certain topics you're covering and you're like, I don't know if that's so funny to talk about. You know, this, but. And especially sometimes I do true crime. I don't know. Do you guys ever do true crime? Do you ever have a true crime podcast? Talk about it.
We devoted ourselves pretty early on to skirt as far away from true crime as possible. While you can make even monsters that are, like, scary and sometimes even, like, you know, bloodthirsty, you can have a fun twist on those. When it gets to the. The quote unquote, the real stuff, that's when we're like, we don't know how to make this fun. We don't know how to make, like, serial killers especially. That's one of our big devotions. They are. They might be called monsters.
We're not going to ever talk about any serial killers because our whole deal is like, you know, finding them romantic. That's not a bridge we ever want to cross. We're going to burn that bridge as fast as we can.
Not.
Not true crime, we kind of steer away from. We have talked about scandal, scary places before.
We've talked about scary objects, too. And, like, real life objects. Yeah, real life. I think, you know, the closest we got was maybe when on our, like, Cursed objects.
Podcast objects did get a little like. Well, a lot of this is sad because it's based around, like, human misery, which is why it's cursed. But still kind of, you know, touching on that a little bit. But that's. That's about as close.
Yeah, absolutely. So who was the genius behind Monster Crush?
Like, answer that one. I don't.
Either of us. No, either of us. So Monster Crush is a. We just hit our hundredth episode and. Yeah, yeah, we're very glad to do that. Monster Crush is the. The brainchild of two incredible human beings, Ellie and Heavenly, who are fantastic people who both got incredibly busy. So their whole concept, the concept of Monster Crush in the first place is like, when you really get down to its surface level, it's. It's monster, it's smooching monsters.
It's the whole sub genre of, you know, we can find scary things sexy, but. But when you dig a little bit deeper, it's to touch on that. Just because something is visually scary doesn't mean that it is actually scary or it doesn't mean that you can't find something beautiful about it. Monster Crush is all about finding beauty and horrifying. And it.
We. We found a lot of touchstones with people who have body dysmorphia, and when they look in the mirror, they see a monster even looking at themselves. So if they can love something that is covered in spikes and slime and, you know, absolutely bloodthirsty, they can love themselves back as well. It's. If it's of transition. So Heavenly and Ellie made this podcast what it was. And then Ellie got incredibly busy with grad school, is currently an author in Europe and living her best life.
Heavenly also went back to school and is working her butt off. So I ended up coming in as a step in for. For Ellie after a little while. And then Heavenly got really busy and it was at that point that LD and I were very good friends and LD had a wonderful show where she would discuss **** on. On Twitch. So it was a logical next step to. To invite LD to join me on the rest of this journey. And yeah, it's been. It's been a great ride so far.
It was really.
Love it. Like. Like I said. So ld.
Yeah.
How did you. You know, you say you. Do you like smart? Yeah, I'll say adult themes, you know, very adult.
So I had. I had, you know, during the. When. So I work in theater is my day job, quote unquote, you know, and, you know, we. That was heavily affected when Everything shut down in 2020. Nobody. Nothing was happening. And so I, like, I started a twitch stream, like many people did, and I was. I decided to, like, read stories out loud. And I was reading. It's probably. It was my immortal, which is the most. Which is the Harry Potter fanfiction, for those of you who don't know.
It's, like, one of the worst pieces of fanfiction ever written. And I had a couple of friends who were really excited about it, and they suggested that I continue it with, like, continuing to read weird stuff, smutty fan fiction. And so I think the very first. So I created the show called Smutty Saturday, and I think the first episode was about the Slender man. And that just became my, like, Panini project of.
Yeah.
Of reading Horrible. And, like, I was always. I was always picking or generally picking, like, the weirdest stuff I could find. There was a lot of Chuck Tingle. There was a lot of, like, tentacles. There's a lot of Cryptids and monsters. And because I thought it was. I didn't want to read bad fan fiction and make fun of people who were writing it. I wanted to get into the weird stuff, like the people who knew they were doing weird stuff and celebrate that. When theater picked up.
Yeah, when theater picked back up, I stopped being able to do that show just because I got really busy again. So when Derek asked me to do Monster Crush it, we managed to make that fit into our schedule. I was. It was easier to fit that into my schedule than the show that I had been working on. So I still get to do that thing.
Yeah, I love it. Now, ld, I heard something on the podcast, and maybe I misheard it. Did you work with Randy Quaid for a little while?
I sure did. I. I forgot that I brought it up. Yeah.
LD's best qualities is her ability to name drop and just, like, let it slide. It's. It's. Honestly, it's a real talent.
Yeah.
I try really hard not to do that too much, but. Yes. Yes, I. Back when I was still in college, there was a musical. Again, I work in theater. I. There was a musical that was about to go to Broadway, and Randy Quaid starred in it, and it happened to be. It was called Lone Star Love. It's like, all of this is searchable. You can Google Lone Star Love and Randy Quaid. But it was the show that he got that, like, essentially he was kind of already on a downward trajectory at that point anyway.
But, like, that was the. That was the nail in the coffin show. Like, he. It Was. It was a. I am so grateful still that I, you know, little baby college age lady dame was like able to be a fly on the wall for that entire thing because, like, that was the show that got him kicked out of Actors Equity. The entire cast sued him for the. All of the shenanigans and nonsense. Like it was. And there were points of it that were very scary and like, not pretty and like, really awful.
But like, in retrospect it, you know, it's still a good story. And he's off in Canada now, you know, not causing problems for people at this point.
So, you know, and some of my spooky friends, they're a little bit younger, but just Christmas vacation that they show eight gabillion times during the holidays. The cousin Eddie, I believe his name was.
I can't watch any of the National Lampoon movies or anything that he's in because he just. It just like gives you that. I get that visceral, like, feeling when I see him.
This is, this is what I'm thinking would happen. Tell me, tell me some, maybe some behind the scenes stuff. Did he show up with like jars of pee and be like, hey, everybody, you know what?
No, but like, I wouldn't put it past him. It was a lot of, honestly, it was a lot of like email, like really rancid emails. He did actually hit other performers on stage also. And he also like stole costumes backstage and it would like, like, I don't know if you've, if you've followed any of the stuff that he's been up to, but after he left the production, he and his wife would like post video, like sex videos of the two of them. And like, and. But that was stuff they were doing.
They wouldn't post videos, but they were like sending like nasty pictures and they were calling up like our very old Jewish New York producers and being like, I'm gonna your wife's *****. Literally.
So before he went off the deep.
End, that I know. Yeah, it was so. So no, he didn't go that far, but it was close. I mean, jars of pee of. Jars of urine far. But he, you know, might as well have frankly, as well.
Yeah, yeah, Like Howard Hughes was famous for that. He would be in some just whatever when he went off the deep end. And this is why, folks, kids out there, this is a lesson. Do not follow any stars because they're all wackos and you know, don't put, put them up on a pedestal. But there are some good ones out there who like, really, really nice people.
In my time.
Yeah, but.
Yeah, but I have also met some real weirdos. I mean I.
Humans at the end of the day.
True.
Yeah, that's right. Exactly. Derek, can you top that? Can you do a name drop? Do you have any names?
No, nothing to that effect. I met Brad Dourif once when I went to my very first Comic Con and he was a little standoffish. That's about as, as deep as it gets. I was also like a 12 year old kid who was doing my best to seem cool and was failing horribly. And my mom was with me and it was like right when like Lord of the Rings had come out or I was probably older than 10, but you know, he had all of this like Chucky the killer doll stuff all over it and then like one Grima worm tongue thing.
So I did not give a **** about Chucky. I only cared about the fact that he was in Lord of the Rings because it was a big Lord of the Rings guy. But that's, that's the extent of what it gets to. Otherwise it's all like D list celebrities that I. I'm a little more parasocial with.
I love it. I love it. So I know you guys deal with cryptids a lot and stuff, but Derek, I'll start with you. Have you ever had a paranormal experience or maybe a Cryptid experience and what happened? And how old were you?
I guess so the closest thing I've ever gotten to a paranormal experience. I've. I've maybe had two minor things. I've never seen a Cryptid and I think that's because I want it too bad. And I think that they know that. You know, I've always heard that the people that are the ones that go out and look for stuff, they're the ones that never see it. It's the random Joes that are out there that are getting picked up by aliens and seeing Dogman off the street and everything else.
When I was in high school, we had an abandoned house relatively near the high school that was in the center of a cornfield. Like it didn't even have a road to is this long, long abandoned house. And it was a place that some of my group of friends would love to go ghost hunting. I had one friend that was really into it. He would go and bring like an EMF reader or he'd bring like a recording device, see if he could pick up on anything. There was just. There was a weird thing about the house.
It was a two story house and at the top of the stairs was A window was a window that did not go to anything. It just went to a wall. And so he did get recordings. I was not there for this, but he would, like, show us at parties where he would tap on the window and then something would tap back. So that's. That's the extent of that.
The only thing is, when I was in college, had like, no air pressure, nothing that would necessarily, like, make this happen, but door to my bedroom, fully open, just closed. I also apologize for my bird. He's a nightmare. But yeah, the. The door just swung closed with no other means to it. And it was. It was when I had a girl over and she was like, I don't want to be here anymore. So I had a. I had a ghost block me once, potentially.
So that was kind of rude.
But that's the extent of my paranormal experience.
I gotcha. How about ld? What do you. How about you?
I. You know, if you listen to Monster Crush, I'll tell you. You can hear about all my paranormal experiences. I actually. So the closest I have. I suffer from sleep paralysis. So I have the very common. I have had three different sleep paralysis demons over my. Over the course of my life.
Ooh.
I. So I've. Which I like. It's always that I. Derek knows much more about cryptid stuff than I do. I'm just here for flavor, really. But I. So I never know, like, whether you know, what counts as a cryptid. But I think that my sleep paralysis demons count as deemed as cryptids. So I've seen. I have. I've always had one called the man that I called the man with the Bowler Hat, which is a version of the Hat man, which is a very, very common sleep paralysis demon.
I also have a hag and what another friend deemed a change lane.
Yikes.
Yeah. So that it's. Yeah, I would say, yeah, I've had some paranormal experiences. That's the extent of it. I've been around, like, my haunted houses and stuff like that. We used to have a family reunion in an old hospital that was definitely, like, you could tell was haunted. I never saw anything there. But that's.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, that's funny what Derek said. I'm the same way. Like, I've had a couple experiences here and there. And one thing I wanted to share with you guys I thought kind of fit your show here is a story I don't tell a lot because I'm not sure what to make out of it, but. So when I was like, younger in my youth being stupid. Well, this wasn't stupid. I had a buddy down. What we did was stupid, actually, and I'll explain what we did.
We went to this ghost tour down South Carolina. He had a job down there. We went down there and we went to this farm that was haunted. And basically, the story is, long story short. There was this farmer whose name was John, and he had a family, was married and everything like that. And this woman, her name was Sarah, fell in love with them and tried to. You know, it was one of those ugly, toxic affairs where she was, like, trying to hurt the family and everything, and just.
She was so in love with them. And he kept pushing her off and pushing her off. Eventually, she hung herself in the barn. So he basically walked out one day, and there she is, hungry, hung herself from the rafters. This is, by the way, in the 1800. I should clarify that.
Yeah.
Anyway. And then supposedly she cursed. According to the. You know, the tour guide, she cursed everyone. Well, when we went to the barn, the tour guide said, look, here's the deal. Sarah doesn't like people coming in here. She sometimes will pull a woman's hair. She will, you know, been known to scratch people. So. So please, please be careful. Well, I'm in my 20s, so I'm an idiot. And we saw these pictures of Sarah because she had picture that somehow. Some pictures. And Sarah was all right.
You know, she wasn't a 10, but she was all right. So, you know, me and my buddy go in there and we're like, hey, maybe and Sarah can have a threesome. Yeah, that's good. You know, we're all saying this stupid ****, and the guides get really mad at us.
You.
You shut up. You know, got an attitude. And then all of a sudden, she goes, okay, everyone, Sarah's here, okay? And I'm going to tell Sarah, you know, if she wants us to leave, we will leave. So she's like, oh, Sarah, you know, we're here. If you want us to leave, we'll leave. And, okay, Sarah's cool with everybody. Let's. Let's keep going. This is blah, blah, blah. And she's talking, and all of a sudden she says, sarah, no. And she looks at me.
She looks directly at me, and she stares at me, and she goes, sir, Sarah's right in front of you, and she's trying to touch you. Just stay still. You'll be fine, okay? Don't worry about it. And I'm sitting there, I'm like. Like an idiot. Like, hey, baby, let's, you know, come on. She's like, sir, you're not. You're not helping. Stop it. Stop. You know, attitude. So anyway, I feel this weird touch on my shoulder, like, right here, like. Like someone touches you gently, you know?
And I'm like, okay, all right. I don't know. That's kind of weird. At that time, I was like, it's kind of weird. You know, whatever. I'm just probably imagining things. I get back to the hotel room, me and my buddy are sharing, and I take off my shirt, and there's this mark, weird mark right here. And I'm like. And I'm like, okay. And I show my buddy. He goes, dude, it's a bet. It's like a bug bite or whatever. Well, flash forward two, three weeks. It's not going away.
Like, I'm trying to put stuff on it, you know, it's not going away. And of course, my mom, you know, she's like, honey, go to the doctor. I'm concerned about you. It could be, you know, whatever, Lyme disease. I don't know, whatever. So I go to the doctor, and the doctor looks at it, and he's just so funny. He just looks at it. He's our family doctor, so he's been since I was a little baby taking care of me. And he looks at me, goes, I don't know what that is. And he goes, probably.
Probably a rash, probably something like that. So here you go. Gives me some ointment, whatever. I put it on there and then. Still not going away, but it's not hurting me. But I feel weird. Like I have weird dreams, like, about, you know, Sarah and some other things I'm not really telling anybody. So finally, a couple of years later, I finally am, like, getting more and more into the paranormal. And I meet some mediums and some psychics and stuff. And I decide this really nice lady name is.
Her name is Sarah. And I say to Sarah, I meet her one time through a friend of a friend, and I say, could you look at this? And she takes one look at it, and she goes, you're fine. It's a protection. And I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, it's a protection from evil symbol. So Sarah really liked you, and she put a mark on you to protect you from evil.
So, like witches, she goes, or anybody who's trying to physically attack you in your mind or something paranormal or anything like that, you're fine. You're good. So I'm like, really? And that mark, to this day, is still there. I can't show it because it Only shows up when it's either cold out, it's kind of faded, but it shows up when it's really cold out. And it's a weird symbol and everything. And I'm married with kids now.
My wife has seen it and I told her the whole story and she's like, okay. And then I just had some guests on some psychic mediums and everything who are pretty prominent, and I asked them, what does that mean? And they were like, well, I got to take a look at it. I drew the symbol for him, I sent it to her and she, and I said, do this need to be recharged or anything? She's like, no. Yeah. She goes, it's fine. It's going to last forever for you. You're fine. And she goes, you're very lucky, John.
She goes, have you ever felt like, you know, you've been in a bad situation or, or something really terrible has happened to you and it doesn't. And I said, well, yeah, you know, it's light. And she's like, yeah, good, yeah, you're protected. So that was just one of those weird situations that, that's. I don't know what to make out of it.
Yeah, right. I, I really do like that a ghost kind of looked at the 20 old version of you were like, you're gonna need help. You're gonna, you're gonna need somebody looking after you. Like this energy is gonna carry you so far. So that's, that's really nice. That's much better than just like a permanent ghost scar.
But yeah, I never thought about it that way, Derek I ever thought about like, oh man, I want to be.
A skill 20 year olds could really use, you know, a little protection, little ghost protection here and there.
Golly, I'm almost tempted to go meet Sarah. But also if she doesn't like women, I think I'd be ******.
Anyway, she does pretty with a good ghost tour.
That's so good.
A good ghost guy. It's like, listen, stop, there's a ghost right in front of you. And then follow up to it. That's, that's pretty good.
That's commitment to it.
Also.
It's super funny. I've heard other people tell their ghost stories and they're like they've been scratched or many women, I don't know what it is, you know, when they're out and about where they're like, I've had numerous female paranormal investigators, so they've had their hair pulled, they've been called *****, ****, all this stuff. And I'm like, why do you keep doing that? They're like, well, you know, it's really hurting me. And I kind of understand a lot of this.
When they go into prisons, for example. Right. You go into a prison and it's full of just hatred, you know, a.
Lot of negative energy in those places.
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I just think that's, again, that's part of the paranormal. That makes it really interesting. But getting back to Cryptids, you know, we have two of the famous ones. We have Slenderman, and we have Beast of Bray Road. Probably not as famous. Maybe you guys can look at it. Beast of Bray Road has been around forever, and people have talked about this werewolf, like, creature, numerous stories about it, they made, made documentaries about it.
So I don't know if you, like, if you have anything to add about Beast of Bray Road.
Basically made Linda Scot Free's career. Yeah, she's one of my, my favorite cryptozoologist writers. Beast of Bray Road being her first big one, Monsters of America, phenomenal writer, phenomenal reporter. LD is a big lover of werewolves.
I am a very big werewolf and shapeshifter fan.
Yeah, I'm also from the Midwest. I am from. I'm originally from Ohio, which is like stretching the definition of the Midwest, but it still counts.
Yes.
But, yeah, I am. I am also a. A big Beast of Bray Road fan. I think it's a very, very interesting story. I think a lot of the evidence that kind of lines up with it is, Is very interesting. I'm a really big fan of the Small Town Monsters documentary, but it has this really great scene that I've mentioned on our podcast a couple of times. But there's.
I think they're interviewing a police chief, and as he's talking about, like, all of this satanic activity in the area and how his theory is that the Beast of Railroad is, like, tied to some sort of, like, evil presence, like, you know, some sort of maleficent sort of thing. You see a book right behind him on his bookshelf, and you can watch as it slowly just edges off of the bookshelf and then falls. And it's, it's such a great scene to literally, like, you watch it in real time and
he just turns around and goes, huh? Yeah, told you. It's just, it's really great. Small Town Monsters does a really great job with, with scary stuff like that. They had a Bridgewater Triangle movie as well that also had a really great scene like that where they talk about how all this activity in The Bridgewater Triangle is all kind of culminating from this one historical event where, you know, the British army, during the King Philip's war, stole the Wampum Belt of the. The native peoples.
And how the, you know, King Philip, who was a Native American, that's the. The name they gave him, said that until the Wampum Belt was returned, that that area would never know peace again. And the Wampum Belt was lost on a ship that sank on its way back to England. And as he says, like, there will, you know, this label be cursed. Until Wampum Belt is returned. The whole production shuts down. Everything loses power. Like, the lights burn out.
They were new lights, and they get everything back up and running. They replace the light bulbs and everything. And he says the line one more time like, hey, let's get this clean. He does again and everything shuts off all over again. And it does like two complete, total power outages. They lose all the light bulbs.
So I think Small Town Monsters does a really good job of kind of capturing the independent voices, but absolutely Beast of Bray Roads, fantastic Cryptid, and has a lot of interesting story and evidence to it, really. I think Dogmen in America are very interesting. I think it's interesting we don't call them werewolves. We're like, listen, werewolves are weird. That's. That's magic bullshit.
Yeah, they're dog men, which are legally distinct from the werewolves.
There may be Bigfoot, but probably not because their snoots are longer.
Yeah, absolutely. And then Slender man, that happened here in Wisconsin where that poor girl was stabbed multiple times. Who survived? I haven't looked at all your episodes. Did you guys ever cover Slender man at all?
We haven't done Slender man yet. We've done a little bit of creepypasta and I think we've. We've touched on it just a little bit. But Slender man feels like probably one of what's going to be one of our heavy hitter episodes. It's also one that, that. Because it has that real world connection to that tragedy and to the mental health issues of that poor girl and the other girl that got stabbed and then the third girl that got involved in it as well, we've kind of skirted around it a little bit.
We'll get to it probably eventually. But yeah, it's not one we've touched on too much. We've been trying to check off the Active, the ones we know they're fiction, and then actual Cryptids. And then every now and then we'll do something. We've done SCPs we've done SCP episode ones.
Yeah, those are fun.
Slenderman to me is they use a fancy word that's been on like, I don't know if you ever watch the X Files, it's called Atopa. It's where the collective get together and we formulate something with enough power that it comes true. And remember Slender Man. Not to steal you guys thunder in your show, but when you do, it is it was just somebody with Photoshop and just messing around on a project. I can't remember the gentleman's name because we did a little bit of up.
I did a Halloween special about him and just put it in a photograph and. And people were like, oh, my God, that's real. Oh my God, that's real. And then these poor girls, by the way, when you do your research, go watch a documentary about Slender man they did on hbo. Well, it's on hbo, Max. Or whatever.
Yeah, Max or whatever it is. Yeah, I know the one you're talking about.
Yeah, yeah. And the poor parents. Now, not to bring this podcast down, but the poor parents solve the notebook of the little girl drawing Slender man and putting all these names and, and weird sayings and they were like, oh, it's my little girl. Just being silly and weird. They never, never thought that this would go this far. They didn't just then, you know. Yeah, that's the scary part of Cryptids where people believe in it so much that they just destroy lives over it.
And that's, you know, sorry, bummer. It happens.
It is where the, the creepypasta kind of takes that. Like if it doesn't go directly into fiction, then it becomes problematic. Like you get stuff like Siren Head. Definitely a stretch of, of Slender man, who's tall, slim, scary, you know, comes out for kids. I work with, with kids in a mental health setting. And all of them are super fascinated with all like the kid based horror. Like Five Nights at Freddy's.
Yeah.
And you know, the puppies, Playtime and all that kind of stuff because it makes horror applicable to them. You know, I think kids are scared by monsters that go after kids. And very much in our society, we have steered away from the boogeyman as much. You know, we don't scare our kids with stories as much anymore. Like we used to, where most monsters were, you know, they were, they were lessons, you know, don't go near the water or this, this lake monster will get you.
Don't.
Don't do this or this will happen.
Good. Or Krampus is coming for you.
Yeah, you Absolutely. You have so many monsters that are based around teaching children to behave in a certain way. And we really steered away from that. So now when you have the. They're not necessarily teaching lessons so much anymore, but they are like monsters that specifically target children and as adults that really unsettles a lot of people. I know my, my mom loves horror but will not watch horror movies if the dog dies or if a kid dies. Those are her two rules.
Yeah.
So that's, I think that's something we steer away from. But then when that stuff does get created, it has that attraction to kids. And again if it's not, if it's not tied to something where it's like, okay, this is very clearly made up. I think it can kind of, as you were saying, become a tulpa. Become this hive mind, this groupthink sort of concept that gets away from you. Yeah, no, it's, it's interesting. It's definitely interesting.
Yeah. It's just fascinating to me what we can do and then ld. I don't know if you've already thought about covered this, but are you familiar with the term spectrophilia?
No, but I can gather from what.
You can piece it together.
I can piece it together. I haven't, I. It doesn't surprise me that that is a thing, you know.
So that's something. Just a recommendation. I've done an episode on it where women are having ghost babies, where women are being married to certain ghosts. Where women are like this is my lover ghost, that. It's women having intercourse with ghosts. So I know, I like on the smutty end. I think that's really, really interesting. And they've made movies about it and st stuff. It's pretty funny. So let me ask you.
Sometimes I, I just have to say sometimes with the way that our society is and the way that some men treat women, I totally understand why you would go for something that is supernatural and dead already as opposed to the real life person. Because the real life people can be very disappointing.
Yeah. At least that the dead ones have age enough to mature. They're the most mature.
You know, they've been around, they know some things, they're experienced. Sure, why not? Yeah.
I think people can find love in non conventional places and it's not hurting anybody. Great. I remember it wasn't that long ago there was that woman that married a roller coaster. Right. You know, there's this, there's, there's always going to be there. There's definitely, you know, the Philias exist for a Reason and the human mind is a complex one. And if you can find love out there. And again, if it doesn't hurt anybody and it's. It's not breaking any laws, great. You know, more power to you.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. As long as you're having fun, right? I haven't heard anybody married a Cryptid, though. Have you guys ever heard about that?
I think it's really hard for them to commit. I think it's really hard to. I think it's really hard for them to put a ring on a finger that they can't find. You know, you can at least pretend with a ghost.
I think.
I think it's probably going to fall off, but I'm sure there's people out there that would love to marry a Bigfoot.
It's just the one that I. Or Mothman, like, those are the two that I am sure somebody has tried.
I feel like Nessie's got cold fins at the altar. It's just. It's really tough. It's really tough to get him there.
Yeah, I love it. So I have a great topic for you guys today. Now, you guys have done Bigfoot and you know that Loch Ness and you know, the big guys, you know, and ladies, they might be ladies out there too. Cryptids on that. I'm still learning about Cryptids every day. So what I found today is. Be a great topic for us. Some of the more ridiculous Cryptids. And I have a list of 10. And you guys are more than welcome to chime in and tell me what's your favorite?
What do you guys like? I will start. Okay. If that's okay, guys.
Absolutely.
So this. I'll start with the first one, which I think is great. So the first one is called the ex monkey. Okay. And he has said. Or she is whoever is had to been created in a lab. Okay. The scientists who created it, of course, is unknown, yet many people believe it was. Guess who our favorite. Albert Einstein himself. Because he was very uneasy about talking about it. People would bring it up to him. There's some, I guess some interviews with him about his monkey. And he was kind of.
So the X monkey, you want to say? Okay, what is the X monkey? It is the size of an orangutan and half its face. Wait for it is robotic.
Okay, all right.
Sure. Okay. One of its eyes is robotic. Yeah.
Albert Einstein, known for his expertise in robotics. Sure.
Yeah.
Crack correct. Follow me on this. Follow me, guys.
No, we'll walk this path with you.
Let's see what this. Okay. Okay. We're going down this path. It's I. One of the eyes, of course, glowing red.
Well, that's a hallmark being a cryptid. If it doesn't have glowing red eyes, it's not really well and robotic.
I mean, that's very Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator. Is that one you know, glowing, glowing 2000? I. Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's a slight fraction of Kenya in Africa is claimed to have seen it. A slight fraction. I don't know what that means, but okay. And explorers have found a rundown lab in the middle of Kenya and they have found blueprints as well as a broken tank with hair. Okay. The hair had orangutan DNA as well as our artificial DNA. The blueprints exactly match the description of civilians, each and every one who have seen it.
And the name at the top of the blueprint is said simply X. This cryptid. Okay, I'm going to stop there before I get it. Okay, so let me get this straight. You go into this lab, it's all busted up and everything, and you just happen to find blueprints with an X and an orangutan here in a broken tank? I don't know why it's in a tank. Should be in a cage, but whatever. Maybe it swims, who knows?
Yeah. I wonder how waterproof those electronics are in the robotic part. But yeah, orangutan cyborg.
Okay, yeah, orangutan cyborg. Solid choice.
Yeah, orangutan.
You know, it reminds me a little bit. And other than the Kenya mentioned, the fact that Albert Einstein was involved in stuff also makes me think of.
I'm glad he had the free time, honestly, I thought he was very busy. Yeah.
It makes me think of one that we've talked about before in our Critters episode, which is the Tree monkey. What was it? What's the full title?
It was the Monkey man of New Delhi.
Was.
Was a very similar cryptid which was seen only like a relatively short time ago. I think it was the 2000s or maybe the 90s. But it was during like these rolling blackouts, brownouts in New Delhi, where people were sleeping outside and were being systematically like attacked. Anybody was sleeping outside. There were like these, these string of reports that were going all across this. I mean, New Delhi is massively populated. Well, well, so overpopulated.
And there were people saying that there was a monkey like creature that would climb up. It was often wearing a like motorbike helmet, like full face helmet. But then they also said it had like glowing robot eyes and would Just like tear into people and scratch people. Like, nobody died, but there were like rolling mobs that were looking for this thing. So it very much has that. And I remember that being on a. What was the Jonathan Frakes? Was that beyond belief?
Yeah.
Was that his. He had. Yeah, he had an episode which did touch on the Monkey man of Dudeli. And I remember, like, as a kid watching that and being like, yeah, there's this robot monkey. He's like, didn't believe it. Too bad. It's real. I'm like, what? Really? That's so. Yeah, no, it has.
Besides all of the other entirely erroneous facts and the fact that there's no. No actual pictures of these blueprints that are so well described, which is great, but I'm glad they found broken down lab in the middle of. Of Kenya. That's good evidence.
Sure.
Yes. Yeah. It's. What you're saying is it's solid facts. All right.
You know what I'm saying is I can't disprove it.
So, yeah, who am I either. Yeah.
So it's in good company with other. Sorry, it's in good company with other cryptids that we already know about.
That's true. It has similar pinpoints.
Absolutely, absolutely. So ld, if you have the list up, I do want to try to find one really quick. There's a favorite of yours.
Okay. I just have to put this out there because this list includes one of my favorite folklore characters. And it's funny because I'm going for not the monster in this particular cast or in this particular. But they mentioned Paul Bunyan here. Yeah, but okay, I mean, this, they. Part of it is that they say, no, this is in no way a cryptid. But like, I. I'm like, I is Paul Bunyan. I don't know how I feel about Paul Bunyan.
Well, so for those of you who don't know who are listening to this, Paul Bunyan is a lumberjack figure in the North American folklore. So he's a folklore figure and tradition. One of the most famous and popular North American folklore heroes. He's usually described as a giant as well as a lumberjack of unusual skill, and is often accompanied in stories by his animal companion, Babe the Blue Ox. I would think that Babe the Blue Ox might be a cryptid. To be honest, I would argue that.
As a giant, Paul Bunyan would classify as a cryptid with all of the giant stuff that we hear, like, oh, the Smithsonian is suppressing giant information that we can find archeological evidence of giants. You know, there's the Kandahar Giant. Even, like, if Paul Bunyan is. Is a remnant of giants, then he absolutely does qualify as a cryptid. Now, did he?
What are all the Paul Bunyan stories? Like, he, you know, chopped down the Rocky Mountains and drank a lake full of maple syrup and stuff like that.
Yeah, yeah.
Again, who am I? Who am I? Who am I to say? But, yeah, I think it's interesting that he has added to this.
Just remember being very into Paul Bunyan as a kid. And, like, I loved watching that cartoon. Like, the animation from the Disney film. I loved watching it many, many times, both because of Paul and because of Babe the Blue Ox. So I was like, I'm just, you know, I'm super into him. I'm super into the ox. Like, who doesn't love a lumberjack? Really?
Yeah. Yeah.
My favorite. I just. I'm like, he's not that weird. Paul Bunyan's totally cryptid and is not that weird. Why is this on the screen?
Yeah, it really is. It really isn't that weird. You know, I think it's interesting because, like Derek said, there are various reports of giants and some evidence of showing there were giants at what time on earth. So I think that's kind of interesting. And who knows, you know, Lumberjack, you're back in the deep forest, you're gonna see some weird stuff, right? You're gonna. And who knows? Maybe it's a conglomerate of many other things. I don't know.
Lumberjack stories are wild. Those fearsome critters, you get like cactus cats and hide behinds and. Yeah, you get some pretty wild stuff. You get old spider legs, which is just a horse with big spider legs on it. Yeah. No, Lumberjacks had a lot of time on their hands. And, yes, a lot of moonshine.
Also, like, with Babe the Blue Ox, like, you know, moose exist. We have megafauna. That's true.
It's the only megafauna.
It's entirely possible that the giant, you know, and blue is like, how blue was he really? It is a coloration that you find in. In creatures that's like sort of that, like, gray, smoky color is a blue. And, you know, maybe he's not bright blue, but, you know, he could have also been covered in, like, an algae or something, like a Meg. You know, I feel I fully believe in Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. I am on board with them. I think they were real. That's my. I'm gonna.
That's apparently the hill I'm gonna die on today.
There you Go. I love it. I love it. Derek, how about you?
Yeah, it's interesting because we have done a few episodes of A Cryptid by Any Other Name where I tried to find oddly named Cryptids. And we did like the Saybrook Blockheads and the Sandown Clown. And we definitely talked about the worst named lake monster in the world, which is Old Slavey, which terrible name. It's named after the Slave Lake, which is. Which is in Canada, but which. It doesn't have the American history of the term slave. Still not a great name.
However, I did unfortunately skip over the ***** monster, which apparently is. Is a lake monster in. In Canada that lurks under ***** Hill.
I believe we missed that one.
I know. We'll have to come back around to it. It's supposedly bigger than Ogopogo, which is a pretty sizable horned serpent lake monster in Lake Okanagan. But for being in ***** Pond, which definitely sounds smaller than a lake. That's. That's interesting. But no further reports of the ***** monster were made with visitors calling the concept odd for such a large creature to be in such a small lake. Okay, that's fair. So, yeah, I think I'm gonna. I'm gonna throw out the ***** monster.
That is a pretty oddly named monster with. I did pull up its news article. Half decent news article here. So good for you. Newfoundland, it's 1950. Well, that's all right. Before the Internet. What were we doing?
Yeah, exactly. And you know, with mixed company here with ld, I was like, should we bring it up or should we. Yeah, my. We're a mixed company.
It's named for the lake. I don't think the lake is necessarily named for the object.
Sure. One can make a, like, bad dragon, like, for sure. And also like lake monsters being oftentimes depicted as kind of phallic in the. You know, at any point, like, I sort of went with it, honestly.
And you know what's funny too is they say the moral of the story, double check what your name in your Cryptids.
I guess. Yeah, it doesn't hurt.
Yeah.
We just talked about on our most recent episode that's. That's yet to come out at this time. But we just talked about, like, how so many lake monsters have the naming convention that kind of mirrors Nessie. It's like lake name with an ie sound on the end. So there's like Cressy and Chessy and Tessie and Bessie, and so you get all of these different things. So it's really interesting that they weren't Just like Dildy. No, that still doesn't work very well.
Yeah, Might as well just stick with the name of the pond and call.
It a day as well, I guess.
Yeah, yeah. So I'll go back to the list. You guys look at the list because I'll ask you another one here. One of my favorite ones here is the Japanese hairy Fitch. The Japanese hairy fish is a mystery fish to Japan. It is said to have a scaly fish like body with a length of four to five feet. That's a big fish with a human like hair on the head. Okay. Aggressive. Emerges from the water to fight or play. Question mark.
Okay. Amidst loud cries said to attack and kill humans by drowning them, is said to live in an unspecified river in Japan. So imagine you're just taking a walk on a beautiful day and all of a sudden this fish jumps out. It's like five feet long with like a hair at the top of the flight and just. Yeah, takes you, drowns you.
I don't understand how that's not just a siren. Like, that sounds like a mermaid to me.
It does.
It's like a reverse mermaid a little bit. Yeah. If there just goes. And also speaking of fearsome critters, there is the, the fur bearing trout, which is a fearsome critter that, that appears a lot in Pacific Northwest stories. So apparently people are just really fascinated with hairy fish.
And that's, that's interesting, honestly, like a euphemism for something else.
But it does. I don't know, I always, like when like certain monsters will have conventions of just this thing, plus like a texture it's not supposed to have or in a place it's not supposed to be. Like the Pacific Northwest tree octopus. It's like, yeah, it's just an octopus, but it lives in trees. Like we've just, we've taken this one element of it and twisted it slightly. That's also why I think giants are really interesting monsters. Because it's just people.
But big, big or like brownies or fairies, where it's just people, but small. Just the one once change is all. All it takes to be a monster.
I mean, the tree octopus is like a very specific thing too in that like there are reports of octopuses actually climbing and ending up in places that they're not normally found just because they are adventurous little buggers, really. And so tree octopus as bringing that up, it's like, oh, yeah, well, of course somebody's gonna see an octopus in a tree at some point. They're octopuses. They're yeah. They can get up to shenanigans.
And you, you think about too. Maybe somebody, you know this. We're weird as a human race. Maybe somebody got an octopus, right? And I don't know, maybe they were gonna use it as a pet and then they were like, well, this ain't working out. I can't throw it over here. Just chuck it up this tree.
Yeah.
Then somebody right out of the second story window.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So ld, you got another favorite on this list? I do.
So this one is number five on this list. And it's just because the name is so good. It's the woof and poof. I had to because it's really mostly I'm just fascinated by the name. So according to this aornis, I never have to do these words. This is usually Derek Tervaloch. Go Biensis.
Yeah, that's pretty good.
Thank you. Is a fabricated avian species supposedly living in the Gobi Desert, conceived as a comical fabrication by Dr. Lester W. Sharp, a professor of botany at Cornell University in the United States. Why did he do this, you may ask. The answer is more straightforward than you think. He wanted to. Which, you know, that's valid. I want to create a monster. I'm going to create a monster. It's, you know, the, it is a classic.
That's how we got like the jackalope and all sorts of other like, like fabulous, wonderful critters. Dr. Sharp wanted to see how far it could go before one of his students questioned him about its authenticity. Not wanting to correct. That's like literally every lumberjack tale ever. The woof and poof remained for a whole semester with the result being a 35 + page report on a creature that was actually a pelican car hood ornament. It's so good. I love it so much.
Also because pelicans are I, I'm not totally convinced that pelicans themselves are not cryptids of some form.
Yeah, I read the other day they can fit 5 gallons of water in their beaks. That's. That's not a real animal.
It's upset. Like if you've ever seen a pelican try to eat anything, it's kind of upsetting, to be honest.
Poor thing. It's just really, just wrapping it all in there. The thing's barely fighting half the time.
Yeah, I love, I love the idea of just like, hey, honestly, this is something that I would have done in, as in like junior high or high school because we, I was in the gifted program and you know, when you Leave a lot of gifted kids to their own devices or stick them in a room together. Weird **** happens.
Happens.
Yeah.
And like, coming up, we tried to start a cult in my junior high class. So us, like creating and making up a cryptid whole cloth and then trying to convince everybody else that it was real is totally something I would have done. And so I love this. And again, like, going back to like the topos. Topos, Topos, tulpas that like, you know, you get some. You put enough energy behind something and you put enough belief behind something, it tends to. To. It can manifest as something.
Yeah.
Real.
And this name, I don't read a lot of Harry Potter, but the books I've read sounds like it should be in Harry Potter. Right. The woof and poof. You know, I don't know.
Yeah, no, it does seem like something J.K. rowling would have just blatantly stole from the Internet. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
It's like everything else she is.
Oh, oh, well, you know, that's a whole different topic. Right.
Yeah.
So, Derek, what do you think? What's the next one?
So again, like I said before, we did do a crypto binary name. So I did try to find some like very weirdly named cryptids and I couldn't help but coming across the Czechoslovakian dong wrangler. But yeah, ten seconds of research. Just be like, this is the most made up, nonsensical, sort of like I could not follow the story through like three different websites. It is. It is a creature that wrangles dongs, which is not as inappropriate as it sounds as from the. The picture provide.
It seems to wrangle like hammers used to hit gongs with. And it can hit multiple gongs at once.
Yeah.
So it is absolutely a creation of the Internet. I've read stories where it was involved with like George W. Bush and George W. Bush and was also involved with the fall of the. The Soviet Union and like apparently like attacked. Attacked, quote unquote. A farmer first reported supposedly in the 1930s is what is.
No, it can.
It can.
Can. It can ring multiple dongs. So, so good for. Was also highly involved in geopolitical issues during the. The later days of the Soviet Union being in Czechoslovakia. I guess that makes sense.
There you go.
No real description of this thing, although the image is, as far as I can tell, it's a humanoid with a baboon head. Maybe wearing a leopard shirt.
Sure.
Okay.
This honestly looks what I'm seeing out of this.
Although like a check stamp that we're looking At.
Yeah, it looks like a Chuck. One of those images where it's like, oh, do you see an old lady? Or do you see a young woman? Do you see a duck or a rabbit? So I. I'm seeing kind of an ape, like, face. But, yeah, I could also see maybe like a seal.
I don't know.
There's a lot going on, right? Yeah, no, this. This. This was definitely like, I'm. What is it? Graphic. Graphic arts is my passion sort of vibe.
This is 100% a chuck tingle cover.
It definitely feels like one. Yeah. Yeah. If you ever pub.
Yeah. Right. And, you know, this list I'll put out during this episode, a lot of it has names in there, which you're gonna laugh at because you think it's like, has to do with sexual themes. But no, it's like dong. And some do. Well, some do, yes. But some are like, just, you know, that's the way they. They name stuff, you know, Like.
Yeah.
You know, sometimes, like, old sayings. Like, I said, life. Not that it's a big deal, but, like, people would say, I feel gay today. In. In today's world, you're like, yeah, okay, whatever, Gay. But back, you know, I was gay. He was happy. Right. Like, I'm gay. I'm super gay today. And everybody's like, okay, you're fine. You're super gay. Good for you. But back then it was like, I'm really happy, you know, and it's just kind of the word. Kind of.
Oh, yeah.
Some people take it a different way today and be like, well, what do you mean by that? And you'd be like, no, I'm just happy.
Yeah.
I do think the way language has changed.
Yeah. I do think the Dong Wrangler is. Is meant to have that. That innuendo to it created by the Internet. They knew what they were doing.
Yeah. Yeah. You know, you got a lot of people with free time on their hands, and they're like, let's figure this one out. So mine is, we'll do a couple more for a wrap. Up here is Veggie Man. So Veggie man, classic.
We have talked about the Veggie man on Monster Crush before. Yeah, I think it's a pretty interesting one considering how weird the story is. But, yeah, no, please, go ahead.
So help me with this, since you guys are probably more experts than me, since I'm just reading this for the really first second time.
I wasn't here for the Veggie man.
Conversation, which I love in the article says, don't ever Trust anybody. Anyone whose body resembles the green slender stalk of a plant. Okay. And sucks out your blood through three seven inch long fingers with needle like tips and suction compounds. Okay.
Okay.
So it's a vampiric vegetable alien. If I remember right, this is again a farmer who said that while he was working he saw like a UFO land from beyond the hill. And then a let's like this very elf goblin looking like creature that seemed made of plant fibers came out and then hugged him with these suction cups on, on its fingers that had little, little spines in them. And he could feel the thing like sucking his blood out.
The thing seemed very weak until it like fed off of him and then it thanked him and then it went back over the hill and took off in its, in its spaceship. So the thing refuel.
Yeah, gotcha.
He said the hug was nice, if I remember right.
Is it okay?
Yeah, at least there's that.
Yeah, sure.
Yeah. And you know, kind of talks about here that it came in peace, just draining blood through his finger. A minute later this guy's talking about this paranormal research. I won't get into too much of it because you can read it off when the episode comes off. He was a little, the guy was losing, disturbed.
You know, many speculated this is a hoax, but it's not like these things are like jumping out and then, you know, sucking everybody's blood and then, you know, we all die in a miserable death. Which would be a great Hollywood movie, by the way. Horror movie. But yeah, I mean, so let me understand this correctly. It's not like you're walking in the woods and this thing, you kind of look at it and then it comes out at you.
You know what I mean?
I mean it's an alien, right? Or a weird troll.
It seemed to be an alien. He did make a drawing of it, which, which isn't featured on this website. But it very much is something I would have drawn in elementary school and like if I was trying to make up a new veggie super villain. This is probably what I draw because it has big pointed elf ears and like a conical kind of head and like a big old like honking like Squidward nose. And then. Yeah, absolutely. It just walks right on up to you. I did forget. It does have hypnotic eyes.
So it will stare you down again. Yeah, these prismatic eyes that will then hypnotize you and then it goes in for the hug, does a little, little suck and go. And then it's, it's often spaceship again. Yeah. It sounds like these Are not something you have to worry about on a daily basis. Although, I mean, maybe, maybe keep your eyes towards the sky.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
The grays or the. The tall whites or the tall browns or the reptilians or the, the nords or the vampiric vegemon. So it's nice. We could add another one to the. The alien categorization.
At least it was a nice.
Sometimes I eat these veggies straws. You know, they're. They're kind of a healthy snack and they kind of have like this tuna through them and stuff. So I don't know, maybe they're trying to.
Where the veggie straws eat you back. Yeah, it's a little, little give and take.
Do we really know where veggie straws come from?
A good point.
Perhaps. There's a lot I don't know.
Now I'm going into like this like conspiracy theories.
Let's. Let's develop new conspiracy theories. There's not enough for sure that veget.
Straws are actually coming from like vegemin that somebody's got captured in a lab somewhere. That's my conspiracy theory for you.
Yeah, it's all coming together.
It's all facing. Okay, so ld you can get up for your last one. You can do the list. Or if there's something that maybe you guys have done off your show that you guys want to bring up to my audience.
I. You know what? I'm going to have to touch on this one just briefly. It's on the list because I have to. Is. Is the ov. Ovido **** monster.
There we go.
I have to like this is apparently in central Florida. I honestly, this should explain a lot. Is that it's in central Florida.
There you go.
And it's only 15 minutes away from Orlando. It's an alleged cryptid that's about 7ft tall and has a phallus shaped body and two round legs. So it's a **** monster. Because it looks like a ****, which is, you know, that's, that's. That's 100%. Most sightings take place at night in the woods of the Stillwater neighborhood where many teenagers go to smoke cannabis. Which honestly. Yeah, that checks out a hundred percent.
Like there we go.
All sightings have been from teenage donors in still water. All sightings have been from highish teenagers. And honestly, I love this for this monster only because it's like. Yeah, I mean if you have a bunch of stone teenagers making a cryptid, of course it's going to look like A ****. Like, that's just. I. It's sort of. I. I feel like the. More, as in all of.
In human history, if you go back to ancient times, there's like things that the human that humans are fascinated with and genitalia is one of them. You see it in carvings like, you see it like. This is, this is just another. This deck monster is just another in a long storied history of the human fascination with genitalia.
Yeah.
Which I think is great.
Yeah. And you know, there's a bunch of stoners sitting around. Hey, man, would it be really funny if we like, you know, there's a **** monster and then everybody's like, yeah, you know, and it just kind of goes topa style, if you want to say.
I mean, even when you look at statues from like, you know, Samaria, Mesopotamia, and you have like these demon statues, you know, a lot of them have significant members.
Yeah.
I even think that's something from like Pazuzu, which was, you know, the. The main demon in the Exorcist is Pazuzu, has a snake for genitalia, which like, even then they're like, we're going to reference it, we're going to make it weird because you can't stop thinking about it.
That. Yeah, that, that, yeah, you got, you got to do that because, you know, it's just one of those things. And two, fertility. If you look at like back, like old statues from, you know, the Viking age and stuff, like, you know, she has a really nice body, is well endowed, you know, she's not like, you know, small and ancient Nordic peoples, the.
Greeks, all their, all their statues are naked. Absolutely. Yeah. The ancient Egyptians even. Absolutely.
It's in. It's fascinating to me. It's. It's like. But that's, you know, to them, that's. That's how you generated life and how you moved. Moved on to generate your species or whatever you want to say. So, Derek, anything off the list or do you have one that's not on the list?
The last one I'm really seeing on the list I think that we haven't talked about is the giant flying squid and dog boy. The giant flying squid is a giant flying squid. But there is one that, that I do remember from our episodes of Crypto by name, the name that, that I think is maybe a good addition and has a half decent story to it. That is the tumor seal of Mel's other hole, which is wild name, wild name for this. So this story comes from Mel Waters, who is, I believe he lived in Utah. It was.
It was somewhere in like, I think it was Utah. Might have been Oregon, might have been Washington, I can't remember. But he did somewhere in the west, somewhere where there was a lot of land because he called into coast to coast AM and reported that he supposedly had a bottomless pit on his property that like for generations and families had used to like dump their trash in. And for generations they never saw the trash again. Like, that hole never filled up.
And so he started doing like weird experiments with. He had buddies come over and they would see if they could drop stuff in and if stuff would come back out.
I've heard this.
Yeah. So they ended up lowering in a sheep and they. They lowered it in a crate to about 1500ft, at which point they stopped hearing the sheep. They stopped like hearing any rattling in the cage or anything. So when they pulled it back up, they noticed that the. The sheep had passed was actually in a pretty rough situation. The sheep looked like it had been cooked from the inside out.
And as they, as they opened the sheet up, they found something living inside that they described as a tumor seal. This was a creature that had kind of like flippers, very human, like skin is what they reported, and very human eyes that just kind of stared them down. They said they felt very upset by just looking at this thing. And then given a little bit, it just. This fetal seal is the. The quotation here, separated itself and dove back into the hole and that's the.
The last they ever saw of it. The pictures are. They're all artistic renderings, pretty horrible all across the board. Pretty skin foldy and human eyes and.
Well, that is a. Nothing pleasant here setting description.
It really is. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm not sure if he still. I know there was a little bit where it's like the government potentially came and took his land and like you can't even see it on Google Maps. Like if you use the satellite view, it's like all blocked out in that area or something like that. But I haven't taken a deep dive into it in too little while. So I don't know if that's. I love manufactured story, if that's.
I love me a good conspiracy theory for sure because it's so fun to talk about. And some of them are not fun because it's like. My favorite is Skinwalker Ranch because there has been proof behind it, There has been evidence behind it, and there's been put, you know, millions of dollars behind this ranch and a lot of it is not good. A Lot of it is not, like, come in peace, and we're here to help your society become, whatever, stronger, smarter. It's been a lot of, like, but.
We'Re here to play pranks on you, and we're gonna follow you home kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. We're gonna mess portals opening up and. And monsters pulling their way out. Yeah, no, I do like that. That is. I can't remember his name, but the billionaire that purchased the land, I think that's a good application of billionaire dollars. I wish more billionaires put their money into researching paranormal stuff instead of trying to hoard more wealth and ruining our economy. So take that as a lesson.
Absolutely. So, wrapping up here, LD do you have a. Maybe a favorite Cryptid or something that you would love to one day find out is actually true? There is actual evidence, and this is 100% true.
Yeah, I mean, that's. It's tough because I. My default. And those who listen to Monster Crusher listen to literally any of the things that I do know that, like, in my heart of hearts, I want werewolves to be real so badly.
Okay.
I am a. I'm a big fan of shapeshifters in general, but, like, there's something that I find really interesting about. About that, like, connection between our, like, civilized selves and our more wild selves and things like that, I think is really cool. I think if. If anything is, like, I will say the other one that I like, really would love to be true is the Van Meter visitor.
Ooh, can you explain that to my spooky friends? I know what it is, but, yeah.
That one we talked about. Ever since we talked about it on Monster Crush, I've become, like, slightly, like, obsessed with the Van Meter visitor. So the Van Meter visitor is, like, essentially a pterodactyl with the laser on its head.
Yeah, a sticky pterodactyl with a laser on its head.
And, yeah, stinky. That was important. And I. I'm convinced. I. And I talked about this on Monster Crusher. I'm convinced that, like, the terror that the Van Meter visitor was a bunch of aliens who had, like, rescued pterodactyls, tried to reintroduced them into the. Their, like, habitat, but did it too many years too late. And that's. And then they were like, oh, nope, we screwed up by trying to reintroduce them because the habitats just changed and then took them away.
And we haven't seen them, and that's why we haven't seen them since. Like, I have a whole narrative in my head about The Van Meter visitor and why they came because there were two of them. I think there were two.
There were two of them that I've seen.
Yeah. It seems like, you know, because we as humans do that with our, with our, with you know, endangered animals and things like that is like we'll take them, keep them in captivity and try and like restart the species and then reintroduce them into their native habitats. But like for, in the case of these pterodactyls, their native habitat has changed drastically. And so they, yeah, that was my, that and like that story too. Like when they were introduced, the whole town went and mobbed them.
And so it's definitely like that, like the aliens are like, oh no, we screwed up, we up, let's go, let's take, we'll take it back. And yeah, that's, that's, that's my, that would be my favorite one, I think.
I love it. Derek, same question.
Yeah, I, since I, I've been a kid, I've always been fascinated by lake monsters. Nessie, what has, has always been my first cryptid love. And if, if we could prove that lake monsters are real, it kind of validates my intense thalassophobia, which is like there's stuff in the water and it's scary.
The wonder is.
But I, I also think that, you know, when you get those, those long lived stories and you have all these different people seeing them, it also validates what they have experienced as well. And so like, you know, closest lake monster to me is Okapoga, like Okanagan. I would love someday, you know, especially a horned serpent which has like, you know, native roots and everything as well.
But prehistoric cryptids in general, you know, even like Mokele Mbembe and the Kasai Rex and all those dinosaur cryptids that are all seen in that same area of the Congo. I think that's also really interesting. I think it'd be really cool to kind of like bridge that time gap and have the concept of, yes, you have the mass extinction events, but things can persevere, things can survive in, you know, changing environments.
And I think that's maybe it's, it's that like twinge of survival and perseverance that I find really interesting about them. And also like the majesty of seeing these, these things that, that human eyes were never meant to see. That, you know, if Nessie is a plesiosaur, that we can see this thing that is so far separated from our existence.
Absolutely, absolutely. So mine really quick is the Chicago Mothman or just Mothman, it's been saying, yeah, I really want to understand. This is most of misunderstood Cryptid because a lot of people say, well, when West Virginia, when he came to West Virginia and came. And the bridge, the Silver bridge, whatever, in people died. I'm thinking he's like warning people, or she could be warning people. And then everybody misunderstood it.
Now, the Chicago Mothman, as I like to call it, has been a sitting around Chicago o' Hara Airport. It's been sitting in Illinois. I talked to. I had a guest on Jackie from Spoon River Paranormal who lives in Illinois. And she has said numerous, numerous times, people have seen it, like in their backyards, like they're grilling, you know, having a good summer night, whatever, hanging out, having a beer. And then in the tree is like this creature with red eyes just staring at him. But it's not.
It's not flying, you know, and like killing people or grabbing your burger or your hot dog and taking off, it's. Or your beer. It's just there.
Yeah.
But there's nothing bad happening. So it's been around the airport. So the logical explanation for or reasoning for being around the airport is unfortunately, planes crash. Right. And there's planes, you know, that explode. And we've seen it. Right. But not really. Nothing has really happened. And baggage for a while, security. Yeah, security personnel, baggage handlers, people driving around the airport have seen this. I don't know. So I really want to know.
I don't want us to catch it, but I would like to maybe have a conversation with it. If I could smell this language and say, what's up, man? Like, what do you. What are you. What's your angle? Like, what's going. What's going on? Right.
Maybe the Mothman has retired from its harbinger duties.
Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
Yeah.
There's. There's a lot of people who write into phantoms and monsters saying that they've seen this or that. A lot of people are saying it's very bat like, as opposed to like bird or owl like, which was also kind of what Mothman. Mothman was said to originally have feathers, but they were originally going to call it Batman, but they couldn't because the Adam west series was on TV and they thought it'd be confusing.
Yeah, no, it's one of those things where, yeah, if it was going to harbing something, it's taking its time on it.
Yeah.
Yeah. So I think it's also interesting not to discredit anything that people are saying that they saw, because I Think people know the difference between a bird or an owl and, you know, flying humanoid. It is interesting that the Mothman almost always gets like. When you have people, the skeptics like, oh, it's a sandhill crane. People just don't remember how big sandhill cranes are.
And when you look at their migratory pattern, it passes right through Chicago into Point Pleasant and on through the Carolinas. And so you do have these. These, like, very large. Larger than we think birds should be. Kind of like wingspan birds flying through that area. But at the same time, they don't have ey shine. They. They don't have human legs that. That people are seeing and crouching on trees and everything else.
Yeah. And I live out in the middle of nowhere, and I see sandhill cranes all over the place.
Do you?
Yeah. So I see them all the time, which is funny. I live in the middle of nowhere and there's no cryptids out here, so I'm going to make one up. You guys can help me. Yeah. You work with me. We'll do a brain storm and we'll think of a cryptid here where I live in Wisconsin.
It'll boost tourism if nothing else.
That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Last but not least, my other thing is doppelgangers. I love to figure that out, because you hear stories where people. They'll show up to work and then people will say, wait a minute. You were just in that meeting. Like, no, I'm sorry. I just got here. I was late. I had problems with my car. No, no, no, I just saw you in the meeting, you know, and you're like, no, there's no way. Or weird stories. Like, they'll.
They'll be in their house and like, you know, they'll be like, hey, you know, Billy whoever. And then, like, they'll see Billy walk past them, and then Billy will come up to him and be like, hey, why didn't you hear me when I was talking to you? And be like, no, man, you just. Just walked past me down the hall. You know your stories like that. Yeah. So I don't know.
Such interesting relationships with, like, doppelgangers and changelings and those. And those kinds of, like, mimics like that. Partly because a. I'm a twin. So, like, I. That happened. That happens to me literally all of the time where people are like, I just saw you. And I'm like, no, that was. That's my s. You're. That's my sister. It's fine. And she And I live work in the same industry and everything like that.
But also, as I mentioned earlier when I was talking about my sleep paralysis demons, one of them is one of the sleep paralysis demons, and the one that I've had more recently is one that appears like to be other people. People. So, like, when I'm in having an episode, I've had like a roommate walk into my room. I've had my mom come into my room. And like, you know, and it's. And those are always really interesting. So, like, sure, yeah. I mean, I fully. So. So I'm of two minds, essentially.
I'm like, that's just twin nonsense. And also sometimes you're like. And I've been mistaken for so many people who. I don't look anything alike, but people are like, I swear that was you. And it's like, oh, no, I know who you're talking about. That's just a person who looks a lot like me, but. Or it's my twin. But then also I do have. I have had some experience with that sort of thing.
Yeah, I love it.
The stories are interesting. I mean, even Abe Lincoln said that he had a doppelganger story before he was assassinated.
Really?
Yeah, it was. It was a dream that he had that he woke up and he said he saw another version of himself. But in the dream, he said that he was walking through D.C. and everybody was super sad. And. And he ended up asking, there was a soldier at the Congressional Rotunda. You know, why is. Why is everything draped in black? What is everybody sad about? The soldier said, the President's been killed.
And he said that he saw his own body lying in state and then woke up to see a version of himself staring him down, like in his bed that walked out of the room. So, yeah, I mean, it's one of those. Those scary things. And he recorded that before he passed.
So. Thank you so much. This has been awesome, you guys. I love you guys. He's just so much fun.
It's mutual.
And, you know, so much knowledge, Derek, and. And things now I can. I can look up and we can look up **** monsters and ****** and dongs. And we looked that up and realized realize maybe went down a rabbit hole. We should have went down, but, you know, it's out there.
Folks, folks, this is perfectly on brand.
For us as well as veggie straws. And, you know, what are veggie straws? That's a new conspiracy. We'll figure that one out. So what do you guys got coming up? What can they look Forward to for.
Monster Crush we will have episodes out every other week. We just recorded. We'll be releasing as of our recording right now episode 101. So depending on when this comes out, you can always find Monster Crush. Wherever podcasts are found. We do have a link tree. That's the weird way that Linktree breaks up its. Its URL and then Monster Crush Pod and you can find. Yeah, we, we have socials. We are part of the Sword and Key Network which is a TTRPG and streaming network and also podcast network.
We're the only podcast that's part of it but that's where we run TTRPGs like Dungeons and Dragons and a whole variety of of other games, a lot of charity based games. And so all of Sword and Key stuff that that then will have a link to all of Monster Crush stuff is beacons AI Sword and Key and you can see everything we have there. We've got discount codes, we've got games and we've got a discord that you can hang out and it is a Sword and Key discord that Monster Crush is part of.
So you can always hang out in that and ask your. Your deepest monster queries.
I love it. I love it. Oh D. Anything else they had before.
We wrap up that pretty much covers it. I Although if you are somebody who loves to watch like Twitch streams, that's the other thing that I do is I stream on my own Twitch channel. You won't catch me doing stories so much anymore. But if you like hanging out and playing video games and also talking about musical theater, that's on my own Twitch channel which is Twitch tv. Thelady Dame I think I believe that's all I've got going on other than I'm.
I. I am very frequently seen hanging out and about around the Sword and Key Network on various and sundry things.
Love it. Please check it out. Thank you for going. Over time I could talk to you guys for hours. It was so much fun. And you know again I like to invite people back on the podcast. So look for. Because when I get close to Halloween and stuff we like sometimes do like group chats and do like a group, you know, podcast where we talk about different topics and it's so much fun. So again, check out the website, check out the link tree, check out their merch, check out everything.
Listen to Monster Crush. You will love it. It's. It's very funny and very well done. And again thank you guys. I couldn't say enough for being on the podcast guest. So stay spooky and we'll talk later.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Take care. Bye. Bye.