Thinking Sideways: Places You Don't Want To Go

of these. Yeah, they're scary places. I kind of want to go to mine because you're we Well, okay, I can see why you'd want to go down, but you're still weird, that's true. I am no, Actually I do want to go to your place. Oh you do, not your house, but yeah, that's there. I don't really want to go back, just kidding stuff. Yeah, well, okay, let's

just start talking about these unpleasant, scary places. My vote for the place to stay away from is in a Hottie Valley, which is in the Northwest Territories in Canada, that is the northern part of Canada. It's just um to the east of the Yukon Territories, which are just to the east of Alaska. So it's well up there. It's way up there. Yeah. Yeah, I've heard estimates as many as forty four people have known to either disappear or diet under mysterious circumstances in this valley. Yeah that's

I mean, that's you know, it is way up in Canada. Yeah, there's bears and some people, so well, I mean, well we'll get there. Yeah, Okay, on on with our story. When the first European trappers and gold miners began to get into the area around the valley, they talked to the natives quite a bit and heard a lot of legends about it. The Indians said that they avoided traveling

there because it was inhabited by evil spirits. They also thought that it was home to spirit creatures known as the Wahila, which is supposed to be kind of half wolf half bear and it sounds like a really ugly critter. Yeah, I don't know, and that's when I would stay away from. They also thought that the natives actually thought the Wahila has had mystical powers like the ability to appear and disappear it will. Yeah, that would be one scary critter.

It's a pretty handy handy little power. Yeah, yeah, I know, I wish I had it. Uh. The locals also had stories about a tribe called the Naha. They were this fierce mountain tribe that lived in and around the valley, and they would come pouring out of the mountains occasionally on slave rating parties on the low landers. And yet somehow, right about the time white people arrived here a little before, even the entire tribe just disappeared. That's unusual. Well, you know,

maybe they were wiped out by disease. M Well, there's a lot of reasons, and I know we're going to get into some of that, but there's a lot of reasons why people would disappear. But it's just weird that it it precludes the appearance of the white man. Yeah, it's just like Rono colony man, Yeah, a little bit. So anyway, it's this is either a huge historical mystery or it's just the wilderness version of an urban legend. I'm not sure where. So it's possible that they didn't

never exist. Yeah, I think it's there's really no evidence that they did. No artifacts, Okay, got it. Yeah, so who knows. But anyway, back to our story, as the Europeans began to come into the area. They looking for gold and furs and stuff like that. There are stories that were spread that there was gold in the Nahanti Valley, and so that's when the troubles began. That's always when the trouble began. You saw Treasure of the Sierra Madre written by B Traven. Yeah, totally saw. Also, we just

talked about gold being found last week. I did Joe's kind of thing about stories that involved gold. If I like gold, I'm hinting I want for gold bars for my birthday. Not that nice new patio out back is hiding something. Okay. It was kind of a rush job though. A couple of guys were on the on the lookout for gold nineteen o six. The place was the Honey Valley was pretty much untouched and unexplored. But a couple of brothers, William Frank McLeod decided they wanted to head

up to the Yukon. Willie and Frank. Yeah, William Frantiska. I thought you said Willie Frank as in it was first in middle name. I thought, I said William Franco. Yeah. Yeah, So they wanted to go up to the Klondike, I guess, and they decided to go through the valley and they persuaded another guy named Bobby Weir to go along with them. So they had it up the Hone River in spring nineteen o six and they were never seen the live again.

All three all three, uh the Clouds. The Club brothers bodies were eventually found about two years later, but their heads were gone. Yeah, they had ben decapita. I'm not sure exactly what kind of shape their bodies were in, and some of some coupts I've heard they were just skeletons, and they should think after two years, I don't know how much would be left. Well, that depends on when they died. If they died as soon as they got there,

then yes, two years would have gone by. Yeah, but if they lived for a year, so there might even remains other than small after a year. It's pretty cold, though, It's not as if they were in a tropical jungle where it's nothing but bugs and other critters. Yeah, but you've got scavengers looking for a warm, easy meal. Yeah, that's true. Probably a lot of those, a lot of that going on. So yeah, I would say they were probably skeletons, but whatever. But the key point here is

their heads were gone. Okay, yeah. And as for as to the other guy, Bobby, we're apparently a native hunting party found at a decomposed body a year later, about half a mile away from that spot where the brothers were found. But it's not that it apparently wasn't. I don't even know how they really identified the brothers. Maybe through their possessions, it's the only thing I can obviously,

not their fingerprints or their dental records. Dental records weren't really Also, they never found their heads, so yeah, that makes it quite It's hard to do dental records with no dentists dentie, yeah, okay, yeah, And and so that was not the end of it. A guy named Martin Jorgensen, who was a prospector, was found headless in nineteen seventeen outside the burnt remains of his cabin along the Flat

River and other versions. He was found inside the cabin and so and so, I was right about this time that the nickname of Headless Valley, or also the Valley of the Headless Men both of them began to like append itself to the Honey Valley for good reasoning. Yeah, thanks so. And then at the time went by, people were disappearing, of course at a steady rate. Minor from Ontario was found in his sleeping bag in the Valley

of the Headless Man. What again, his head missing. And all, by the way, none of the heads that disappeared whatever found, well, they never are in Highlander either, yea, nobody else has made that connection. Come on, this valley is obviously where the Highlanders are going. It could be quickening the Yukon. Sure, okay, yeah, see there were other mysterious desks that didn't involve to

be heading. In one case, the body of a trapper named John O'Brien was found sitting this camp frozen solid, next to his campfire, with a box of matches in his hand. I also heard in a version that it appeared that the fire had been burning amazingly hot at one point, and so he must have flashed frozen. Did you come across that? I saw that. I saw that that out there, and I don't it doesn't make any sense. I couldn't find any support for that. I think he

probably actually fell and fell in the river. Was like, you know, I had really bad exposure and was, you know, shaking like a leaf and trying to get a fire lit and just didn't quite. Yeah, that's that's probably what I think. Or somebody murdered him. But he's still at his head. He's still had his head, got it, Yeah, kept his head about him. Yeah. So here's some theories about this place and why it became this evil, this

place of evil headlessness. Some people thought that there might be some sort of mad trapper or murderous hermit running around in the Honey Valley. That sounds familiar, Yeah, Yeah, I remember remember Albert Johnson, Yeah, trapper of Rat River. Yeah, there's a guy named Dick North who wrote a book

about him. And North speculated that Johnson might have passed through the valley in the years prior to his moved to Rat River, and he thinks Johnson might be responsible for at least some of the murders, but of course he has no evidence of that. And of course Johnson died in nineteen thirty two, so he obviously couldn't have carried out the nad Yeah, and I think he was too young to have murdered the McCloud brothers in nineteen o six, I would agree, Yeah, because he was in

his forties when he died. Is that right? But they weren't really sure that Johnson. I mean I think they were thinking maybe right around forty. Yeah, that would make you a child at in when the first murders occurred. Yeah, that doesn't work, Okay. Our next theory, uh is some people actually believe this, the natives mostly something. I thought that it was a remnants of the missing Naha tribe.

So maybe they didn't actually completely disappear. They're just hiding and they're looking at the valley and then so they did it. Tell me you read up on how this gets tied into the hollow earth theory. Oh, the hollow earth theory. You know, I didn't. I've heard of the hollow earth theory. I wasn't really going to include this

whole thing with the hollow earth theory. But yeah, there is there is a theory out there among some people that you know, the earth is hollow and that the entrance is in this valley, which is why if you get too close to finding that entrance to the hollow Earth, then you know you've got to be off. You know what. It also makes me think of this this whole the

rance to where this tribe is living. And I don't think Devon's going to know this, but you might remember this is there was an old comic called Tar Rock, Son of Stone. Do you remember that at all? That sounds vaguely familiar. Yeah, I remember seeing that. I don't. I don't think I ever read that. Well, yeah, it's been on and off for fifty sixty years, but it's it was written as two Indian or it was an Indian man, an American Indian man, and an American Indian boy.

Find a cave, go into the system, and come into a world where dinosaurs are still about. It's basically kind of the same Hollow Earth, find your way in, find your way out, travel between the two. But that's exactly what it made me think of, is that they're going into this paradise and then they're protecting the entrance of paradise for all these interlopers who were going to come in and destroy it on them. I always like it when you're like, Devon's too young to know this totally

nerdy reference that totally knows about you. Do. Yes, you just watched the animated version, didn't you know. Let's keep going okay, all right, okay, next theory. The then a tribe. They're the ones who, like you, lived outside the valley and didn't not to go into the valley. They had a theory that it was the New luck, the new Cluck. Yeah, okay, what the heck is the new cluck? Yeah? New Cluck is a word that translates as men of the bush. All the Arctic tribes knew of the New Cluck, and

they all were afraid of the New Cluck. Apparently, what they are is they're short, sort of Neanderthal like sort of human human, but with with more fur, and they have they carry stone weapons, like stone clubs and such things, and they're very violent. And it's said that they used to run the whole the Arctic Circle and that and that as at the time of our story, their numbers were believed to have been reduced enough that they were all maybe had hanging out in the Honey Valley. They're

like a hairy ogre or something. Is that what that is? I know obviously the more locks, right yeah, yeah, from the time machine. Yeah yeah, yeah, that would make sense too. I could be yeah, yeah, I don't know. These guys apparently were some sort of just left behind branch of

humanity and perhaps this is one of those things. Not I don't want to like railroad sidetrack this at all, but this is one of those things that makes me contemplate how aware we are as humans of our past and how much leftover there is and mother civilization and going down a rabbit hole. But the fact that you know, Native indigenous people very often refer to this thing that we know now definitely existed and predated us, and they always have that as like a remnant somehow of a memory.

But they live, they live literally on the ground there in the middle of it all the time, and they're passing that history, whereas we as a society. The white man, from what I can understand, hasn't explored this area other than aerial photography. We said, a plane over, we took a picture. That's it. Yeah, Like there's tons we don't know. Yeah, I just mean, like in terms of having this kind of mythical thing, Well, you're talking not just this particular

value in general, the new cluck. Yeah, I'm always I'm always astounded it when you hear stories of that. Anyways, there there are actually a few European men who who's seen these critters. In ninety four, trapper named John Baptist was was with some companions and in the valley and they came across a strange man like creature about five feet tall, had long, bushy hair and beard and hairy chested back, and the hair was not quite so thick on the arms and legs, and yeah, he took the

new Cluck took off. Baptist and his friends tracked it for a while. Uh, and the entire time they heard strange whistling calls in the brush around them. Members of the tribe later explained what that whistling meant. That's how the new cluck communicated when they were on the hunt. So these guys thought they were tracking the new cluck, but apparently a group of them, we're tracking these guys. The hunter becomes the hunting. Yeah, just like a group

of velociraptors. Yeah. There There was another new exciting in nineteen sixty four by a sound kid whose name. His name does not has not been passed down to remember. So, I don't know, I don't know that these things are actually real. It sounds like it might not be beyond the realm of possibility. Yeah, Yeah, that's always a hard one to say. We don't have anything that says they don't exist, that's the hard part. Yeah. Um, so I believe in their existence, maybe a little bit more than

than a hot tribe. So our next theory the Wauhila. Remember the Wahila, that wolf bear hybrid. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so it could have been the Wahila, except I don't really believe in the Wahila. The Waka. You know, what the Wahuila sounds like to me is kind of like that hairless bear they saw. Remember that bear, the like

sun bear or something that was roaming around. Maybe it was a grizzly bear that was like really really sick, and so it didn't have any hair on it, and people were taking pictures of it and they were like, what is this creature? This just happened like a few months ago. Remember this, No, never mind, our listeners will know. No. I was just gonna say, is that. I mean, critters that are in states of distress tend to look really weird too. I remember the Montauk creature a couple of

years back. It turned out to be a pig. Yeah, but it was all it was washed up in the ocean and all beat up and it looks like something completely different. But I could see how a very sick and I'm like, sick mange or something. Yeah, this bear looked like a brand new animal that nobody had ever seen before. And they finally tranquilized it, and they're like, oh crap, it's a really really sick bear. So they got it and treated it and released it and it

looks totally normal. Again. Good for the bear anyways. Yeah, well, okay, so so much for the Wahila. There are next areas that maybe these incidents were just unrelated. I mean, that's obviously. It's in a really rugged environment with bears and wolverines and stuff like that. I'm inclined to go with this one, just so, you know, is it because it's reasonable? Yeah, exactly. I realized nobody can see me. Not yeah, but boring.

In the case of the McCloud brothers, Bobby weird body was not found with him, so maybe he killed them, uh, and then took off himself. And maybe they did yeah, and then they got a whole bunch of gold and then Bobby killed him and took off. The remains that were found a half mile away may or may not have been his remains, and maybe the clouds died from disease and in the cold, and we're left to get help just or just to say it himself, and he just died somewhere along the way. And it's just really

really hard to say. As for their skulls, I mean, if you're laying there in the rush for like, you know, a couple of years, an animal might actually just come and but chew your head off and carry it away. We've we've talked about this many, many times about how far bones will travel from the initial side of death. Yeah, yeah, I think this is a remote, inhospitable place. And the odds of dying from a cold accidents animal tax because you can't just call nine one one emergency. You're just

out of luck. And just if you do something as a routine in our society as breaking a leg, well that's it for you. There's say, okay, well it's gonna be a three month hike to get to the doctor, which is a problem. But on the other other hand, last there it is interesting that deaths occurred with the beheadings and everything within a span of about forty years, and in more recent years people have visited the value, and nobody's lost their head, so it's possible beheadings and

the murders were done by one person. That really is possible. So I mean forty years, that's not an unnaturally long lifespan. Obviously, you're not gonna start killing people till you're at least like, you know, fifteen or eighteen whatever the legal ages in Canada. Okay, But and and it's it's also possible of this if if it was some serial killer, you know, real mad trapper, kind of lunatic. It turns out that the value that has this mans has a lot of limestone caves in it,

so a lot of places to high bodies. Yeah, yeah, So who knows gonna be one of these days somebody will be exploring a cave and make a really ghastly fine and or something. Uh, that would be really the Throne of them In the first Conan movie and the Throne of Skulls, I don't remember, it's been so long since I've seen that. I know, I swear it was a Throne of Skulls. Maybe it was in the comic good Man. Yeah, I know. So that's it. So the

value they had this man don't go their kids yeah, don't. Uh. You guys want to talk about my place, but I kind of want to go We're gonna talk about the Aokigahara Forest, which is also known as the Japanese suicide forest cheerful place. So if that is the sort of thing that disturbs you, skip ahead twenty ish minutes. Sorry, everyone, We're not going to call it that. We It's often referred to as the Sea of Trees, which in Japanese can be said as the Jucai, which is how a

lot of people refer to this forest. So we're going to go ahead and just refer to it as that. Okay, let's pretend I didn't already tell you that it's a suicide forest, because it's a beautiful, lush forest, the kind that you would see like in a Miyazaki film. Kind of Uh. It's an idyllic fourteen square miles at the foot of Mount Fuji, and it is the most the second most popular place in the world to commit suicide,

the first is the Golden Gate Bridge. Numbers vary, but reportedly anywhere between ten and a hundred people kill themselves in the Juchai every year. In two thousand and ten, there were fifty seven confirmed suicides. In two thousand to the number of confirmed suicides was seventy eight. And I say confirmed because we don't have a way of knowing

for sure. In two thousands three, after a rumored hundred and five confirmed suicide, the government decided maybe telling everybody how many people killed themselves in this forest is a bad idea, and the reason that was to stop it from attracting other people to go to do it. I think that was definitely part of it. Part of it was to stop this kind of cycle. Another part of it was it is a tourist attraction. There's a really famous ice cave there. There's a couple really famous other caves.

There's a wind cave and a bunch of other really beautiful stuff. Yeah, go look at the photos of the caves. They're fantastic. Yeah, you have to. You have to google specific things in regards to this one. If you just google the forest, it'll just kind of show you some pictures of a really beautiful place. But they were trying to nip the whole everybody will kill yourself there thing in the bud, but also not scared tourists away. That makes sense. It kind of like in Jaws. Yeah, so

many weird references today. Uh So, in addition to the kind of confirmed numbers, I don't know how they necessarily can confirm what happened in this past year versus not, but they the local government does conduct annual searches for bodies, and with the forest being what it is, it's hard to know if the bodies are older or younger, or maybe they got missed in last year's search. It's always it's an incredibly lush forest. It's really easy to get lost.

It's hard to tell. It's also frozen half of the year or more so. It's possible that bodies could freeze in a non decomposed state for six, eight, twelve almost months, and then they have a warm spell, it decompos, it starts to decompose, it freezes again. It's hard. Yeah, and frankly I think sometimes they just don't even try, because that's a lot of bodies. Yeah, it's a very small group that has to deal with it. Yeah, it is

in the name of prevention. Not only are there large signs at every trailhead urging people to seek help, but workers also play signs as they search for the bodies to remind people that there's something to live for, just kind of sporadically around the forest. So at least they're just hundreds and hundreds of these signs all around the four They are a bunch of them. Yeah. One of the big signs is loosely translated to kind of say, quote, let's think once more about the life you were given

your parents, your brothers and sisters and children. Don't suffer alone. First, please contact somebody. And then it has a suicide hotline number on the bottom of it. It's you know, it's funny to me. I mean, I've seen a lot of you see those signs on bridges and stuff here about, you know, to encourage people to get help and they're going to jump, But I do say suicide counseling this phone number. Well, no, I've seen some different different signs.

But what I crack up about this is this kind of plays on that that cultural bend of you know, your family, which is very important in Japanese society. It's actually really smart. I was I read it. I was like, oh, whoever wrote that really knew what they were doing when they put this together. Yeah, Yeah, it's pretty interesting how intelligent they've been about trying to prevent suicide. It's just a popular thing to do over there, kill yourself. Yeah, and suicide of Japan is a lot higher than it

is over here, that's true. If you haven't already, you should definitely creep yourself out by googling Chucai and uh quote forest bodies. Hopefully I don't need to add this disclaimer, but some of those images are pretty disturbing, or could be disturbing. I don't know why. Maybe it's because we've been doing this podcast for so long, but dead bodies don't really creep me out. This. This is right up

there with body farms. And then have you ever looked at images from body farms, the ones where they just leave them laying out in the brush to figure out what happens? This was very much in line with the imagery I've seen from that, and I think it's the same thing. We've looked at it enough. Yeah, I will say I'll show you a picture later on in one

body that really will creep you out. Okay, The forest is really really lush, really, it's really if you don't know what's going on in this forest, it's really beautiful if you just look at pictures of the Jucai. It's it's just kind of breathtaking. It is genuinely if you saw Spirited Away or Um Princess Mononoke, it looks like

the forests from those movies. It really really does. So because of the lushness of this forest, bodies are very often missed less these days because people have started um. People who are hesitant to kill themselves will take trail tape with them, you know that, like nylon trail tape that you see tied around tree branches. Sometimes they'll take that and they'll tie one in around a tree and they'll just like flow it behind them in a straight line instead of yeah, so they won't get lost. So

often that leads to something it's it is. I know you're gonna tell talk about this, but it's really easy to get lost in this Well, it's really easy. Yeah, it's super super easy. The and the most common way that people kill themselves is they either the first most common is hanging and the second most common is taking sleeping pills. But is that is there any do you know, is there a male female ratio there? I almost imagine

that men would be more likely to hang themselves than women. Um, from what I've heard, it's not so much a male female ratio, it's a determined and not determined ratio. So the people who are determined will not mark their trail in and they hang themselves. So hanging bodies or nooses with skeletons underneath are often found years and years and years later because there's no trail mark versus the fresher bodies that they find are often marked by a trail,

and they're not hung. They've taken sleeping pills, and then it takes them a while to die from exposure because they're too weak from taking the sleeping bills. That doesn't kill them, but they're two weeks it can, but it turns out that the people often it doesn't. People don't take quite enough in this forest. People tend to overestimate. It's probably the fault of movies. How many pills it

takes to actually make that. And they actually have This is really really creepy, but they have suicide manuals that they come out with in Japan that they'll find on a lot of these bodies that tells people how to kill themselves in in the Chucai. Yeah, it's really it's really creepy. Yeah, and it says either hang yourself or take sleeping pills. Yeah. Okay, alright, I was gonna make some joke about, you know, killing your leadership, but never mind.

And some I guess the third most common way to die in the forest is just by basic exhaustion, dehydration, or malnourishment. This is due to something we're gonna talk about in a minute. That's called ubats but it's a traditional practice in Japan. Aditional I hesitates called traditional, but it is. I have a number of Japanese friends, and when I was talking to them about this story, I mentioned and they said, oh, does that happen there? Like,

that's a thing that happens a lot. So you're looking at me, you know where we're going, like I do. But apparently the people of Japan, at least the people that I know from Japan, believe that this is a thing that legitimately happens. So alright, we'll leave it at

that for a minute. Okay, it's not happening anymore though, right, Well, maybe it's hard so I'm assuming besides bodies, because the story has got enough traction, there's other stuff that's being found there's lots of other stuff, and visitors do describe the forest as being unnaturally silent, as if all life

has abandoned the forest intentionally. I've watched some videos of people walking through and you can hear birds and things like that, but it is really muffled, kind of as you know when you have have the first snow, at least in Portland. I know places that get a lot of snow don't have this as much because the plows are out immediately, but it gets really quiet and muffled. And that's the truth of this forest as well. And

a lot of people do leave stuff behind. Like you said, there's ice and snow a lot of the time in the forest, and I don't know why people would leave a lot of this stuff behind, Like shoes of all sizes get left behind, including children's shoes, and it's not like that kid dropped his shoe, better leave it. Pairs of shoes lined up, which is weird. There's people leave packs of photos, children's toys. There's a really interesting I don't know if you guys got to watch the Vice

video that I posted for the links. It's really really interesting. They follow Japanese geologist who's part of the suicide patrols that go out there that I don't think I've mentioned yet, but I'm going to mention and he kind of explains things. But they find this stuffed animal that's kind of a humanoid figure that's been nailed upside down to a tree and kind of like cut open, and then there was a curse that was nailed into the inside of him.

They find that while they're wandering around, so you kind of have the sense that that's the sort of thing that's around a lot. This is kind of like getting into Blair which territory a little. Yeah, there are a couple of theories about why people go here to kill themselves, why it's so popular, and ubats plays a role in it. Ubot s is it literally translates to the leaving of an old woman, and it's this rumored Japanese tradition, although

tradition I don't think it's the right word. Practice, I guess of leaving a family member who's very old or ill in a place to die. Basically, it's it's somebody is a burden on the family. You take them out into a forest or some other deserted area and leave them to die. So that they are no longer burdened to you nice as I said, there's there's not a whole as far as I can tell, this is not a thing that actually ever happened. You know, in Japanese culture.

Isn't the only place that I've heard of this kind of thing. Other cultures talk about taking the old out or the old wandering away when they decide that they become a bird. Yeah, that's that's kind of back in the way back days, like when you're we were living in the Stone Age and the way back in the

way back. Yeah. There, And there's a larger conversation to be had here about the traditional treatment of seniors in Japan and the fact that Japanese seniors have the higher much higher rate of suicide than seniors in the rest of the world or the average rate of suicide in the rest of the world. But we're not going to

dive into that so much. Yeah, they haven't kept stats on the age of the people what they find having their bodies out here, right, No, they ever really kept stats other than numbers for the most part, it sounds like but even though I'm not totally willing to say that you bots is a real thing. Let's assume it is, and we can say that because it is vengeful spirits from the family members who have been left behind haunt

the Jucai and call people in. That's a good theory, right. Alternately, vengeful spirits from samurai who killed themselves in feudal times. Did they all go to the forest to kill themselves? I don't know. I don't think so, but that's a theory. It's smacks of so many bad Hollywood movies where there's the house or the woods that are filled with evil spirits that draw people in. I mean, it makes me think of The Evil Dead with Bruce Campbell. Yeah, the houses,

it draws them in. It does crazy stuff that's completely believable. Next theory that has the exact same smack to it is the urry, which are demon ghosts. Also maybe the Buddhist monk, which is a demon ghost. Will There have been reports of people seeing a Buddhist monk wandering the forest uh and some people claimed to have even spoken with him. He asks people wandering the forest why they're there, and he tells them how to get out of the forest.

He gives them, you know, there's the trail around Basically yeah. If they say, oh, my gosh, you're right, I don't want to kill myself, I don't think oh yeah, actually I guess I did mention that there's a core of volunteers that goes out to try and find people who haven't yet committed suicide. Know you talk about the people

who go out and look for the bodies. Oh, they are also trying to find people who are out there who might be about to commit suicide and try to talk them out of it, not in like, oh you have so much to live for blah blah blah. This is another thing you get to see in that Vice video because the gentleman that they're following is part of this core, and they do find somebody and he just kind of sits there and talks to him for a couple of minutes. He says, what are you doing out here?

You know you can't you're not allowed to camp out here. Okay, Well do you have food and water? Okay? Well I just want you to think really hard about what's going on. It was really nice to meet you, okay, you know by basically, uh, you know, it's not like you have so much to live for and don't kill yourself. And blah blah blah blah blah. It's more of a let's have an honest human interaction with each other and hopefully that will discourage you from doing whatever you were thinking

about doing, the cluttering up our forests with corpses. Anyways, the reason that I bring this up is it turns out one of the people that's very active in this is a man by the name of Chaozin Yamashita, who is a Jodo Shinshoo priest. It's a sect of Buddhism, and Yamashita juice Shaku, is one of those monks, and he does dress in the traditional robes, not the it's not the bright orange robes familiar. Yeah, they're dark robes, but they are traditional. You can kind of you could

go out and google it if you want. They are they're kind of big, dark, flowing robes. So I think it's pretty possible that people are freaked out in the middle of the forest and have a real encounter and go back and talk to their friends and they say, yeah, I talked to a monk in the middle of the forest, and people are like, you're crazy, that's not a real thing.

You probably saw a go I can very easily see that in a forest where it's super weird and creepy and you're on your own or such, the two of you, and suddenly a monk, which is not something I think you would normally expect to run across in the forest, suddenly shows up. Yeah. Yeah, strange. Yes. Next up is the q Roi Jucai book, which is by s Cho Matsu Moto, who's a very famous Japanese novelist. He's written just an absurd amount of novels and books and poems

and things like that. He's very, very famous. But he wrote this book. I came out in I think it was nineteen sixties. Some things I read said nineteen sixty two. It's not in print and English, and despite my clearly flawless Japanese product pronunciation, I do not actually read kanji or katakana, and that's the only way that you can

get information about this book. I did find a Wikipedia page on this book, and it was in Japanese, and I said, hey, Chrome, translate this page into English, and I literally could not make the English words that appeared on the page makes sense to my American brain. There were some very very interesting things that happened, and I was I know I mentioned to you guys. I was talking to one of my Japanese friends, and I said, can you just read the synopsis and tell me what

this book is about? And she kind of looked at it for a minute and said, uh no, so Ese. She read in Japanese and I there are two different ways that it could that this book could be. And it's also possible that it's like just a there are a lot of Japanese concepts that don't translate very well into English, so it's possible that she just was like, I'm tired of you asking me things about Japan, so stop and uh, I don't really want to try and

explain this to you. But as far as I can tell, this book is either about a woman who kills herself in the forest because of kind of a star cross to lover forbidden love situation, or about a woman whose sister dies in a bus accident and she like won't leave her sister and then she tries to take over her sister's job. Or maybe there's like an evil spirit

that possesses the sister. It's hard to tell. If you want to run this experiment, please be my guests, go out in your English speaking brain and find the Wikipedia page and try and Google translate it and and then if you can figure out what it means, tell me please. But apparently it was a very very popular book in Japan. Many people read it and thought, hey, that's a cool

place to kill myself. Yea, at some point at the end, she commits suicide and in the forest, yeah, as far as I can tell, in that particular forest, in the Jucaia, as far as I can. And then my final theory is that it could just be a really pretty place. And I died Sena to go kill yourself. It's really beautiful, it's really quiet. There's a lot of really secluded spaces. You don't have to look at anybody. Somebody's not going

to stumble upon you and a campsite or something. Yeah, and it also, you know, not to be macab or anything. But it saves your family and friends from having to find you. It's a pretty much guaranteed that your family and friends aren't going to be the ones who stumble upon your body in the middle of this forest. Somebody else is going to, and they're going to if you're still recognizable, they will tell your family, what happened to you,

and where it happened. I I have never really contemplated suicide, but I can see where the draw could come from that. Well, but of course you know that, and I think that the people who are in that situation don't think of his exact opposite side of that, which is your unrecognizable, you cannot be identified, which means your loved ones then live on forever wondering what happened to you. It's always the other side of the coin. Yeah, they I'm sure they leave a note behind, say I'm going to go

off myself. Oh maybe for their family before they had that strike out for the forest. Well, I have another theory is that these are suicidal people and they go out to the forest to do it because they're animal evers. They figure, I'll not only kill myself, but I'll leave a nice, a little tasty meal for all the animals. It's kind of like an air funeral. Yeah, you know in that Vice video, not to like refer too much to it. This is the third time. Now, sorry, Hey

what about the Vice video? Yeah? No, but the the guy that they're following, you know, he says they find this little area where there's a bunch of flowers in a box of chocolates, and he says, oh, it must have been the family and friends of this person who died. And he said, you know, I think it's a really beautiful re minder that you're never alone. Even if you think you're alone, you're not. So there's that. That's the

up note to remind our thoughts of this story. I really don't know how I'm going to follow that act because wow, it's going to be an upper you have something I read it before you're started. Read a little fun little piece of trivia regarding this, which is that the work cruise that have to go out and get the bodies and bring them in. They take him down to the police station and I think there's they have

a special room just for the suicide. They put him in there and put the body in there, and then they have to roche embo to see who gets to spend the night in the room with the body, because apparently, um, it's bad mojo that to just leave the body alone, so somebody has to stay with the body all night. Yeah, so that one. You know, it was a pile of bones and it's okay if it's anything otherwise rotting corpses

you to I don't know. I like from the living perspective, it's kind of an early job, but from the the ideology of it, it's kind of sweet. You don't want to leave this spirit alone? Yeah? I would. It's a nice sentiment. Yeah, the sentiment is that it's good way to put it. Can we stop talking about suicide? Please? Hey, everybody, we're done. Let's talk about something else. I think we lie to people. It's been a little more. It might have been a little more. In twenty minutes, we're going

to talk about a new one. Yeah. So, Steve, do you have an exciting terrible place for us? I I do have a what is a beautiful but terrible place? I know it's just like me. Yeah yeah, but for completely different reason. Is it a terrible place? Okay, okay, not so much A terrible place? Has a scary place? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, there's there's a lot of fear involved here. Let's let's go ahead. Um, the place that I don't think that these people, that any of our listeners should be going.

It's one that randomly catches on fire. Yeah, things like a bad thing. It's kind of a bad thing. Not the whole place doesn't catch on. No, it's not Pumpey or anything like that. We're talking about the village of Coronia. It's on it's on the island of Sicily, which it's east of if you know the island at all, it's east of Plamo and Sicily is Italy Sicily. In case somebody didn't know that, I thought I said Italian village. If I didn't, an Italian village. Um, it's it's a

pretty little coastal town. You know from the photos and and everything. It's exactly what you'd picture a coastal town on the island of Sicily. Look like it's built up into the hills a little bit. It's really nice. I'm showing you pictures of Griano. Yeah right, yeah, it's very picturesque. Oh it is. I did my usual thing. I did a little street tour on Google. Beautiful neat little town.

It was actually really hard to drive around into Google street View though, because it's one of those weird little towns where it looks like the street keeps going but the road doesn't. The street does because you can walk on it. Yeah. I was like, why won't you go there? And by the way, there's the streets in this village are not like what you're thinking used to thinking of the streets. They're more kind of like alleys. They're very small,

very scared. It's a traditional village. Yeah, and lots of like a little weird underpass and yes, all of that good stuff. But enough talking about this beautiful little place. Let's talk about the story. Okay, talk about why you should be scared to go. Yeah, you really undersold this so far. The story begins somewhere in the beginning of January of two thousand four, when randomly things literally started

catching on fire. Lots of things, like physical things. Okay, here's a list of things according to the media reports. Because this is the difficulty with this one is most of his media reports. And I did the same thing. I was putting stuff into chrome and getting it translated, and it makes a little rough. Here's the things that catch on fire. There's furniture, there's electronics like TVs or microwave stuff like that. Um or computers would have their

memories randomly wiped. That's a kind of an odd twist on the whole electronics bit part. Cars would either can't just be on fire or there. The glass would implode into the car from some kind of weird heat source. Uh. The doors, electric doors on cars, the law box, they would go on and off, opening, closer, locking, unlocked, constantly weird. And there's there was there's electronic gates that would randomly

open and close on their own. So you'd just be walking up the street and then the gates of the head would open and then closed, and then open and then closing. He sounds like the whole town got hacked it. Yeah, I've even seen a photo of what it looks like. It was a water tank on a wall. So if you imagine in the if you're from the States, you've

got your toilet tank. It's almost like that shape, that square shape of but as a water tank with a pipe coming down, and it looks like the whole thing had caught fire at a water pipe looked like they had caught on fire. It wasn't a toilet tank a toilet No, No, it wasn't, because there were pipes running away from it and it was kind of cropped, but the pipe took an angle in in what I saw, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't. Somebody was smoking on

the John now. Of course, at first when things are going up, especially the electronics are catching on fire, people started unplugging things. There are other things like appliances like toasters and yeah, appliances that things in general that plugged in, we're catching on fire. So people were unplugging them and the power company would eventually cut off the electricity. That, however,

didn't stop the problem. One of the famous pictures you see is a hair dryer hanging on the wall, the core looped up next to it, not plugged into anything, and the dryer on fire, which is really weird that what did the owner of the of the hair dryer like take a picture of it or something that somebody had a picture of it as it was catching As it was flames were coming out of it. Yes, it was. It almost looked like it was they had stuck it in the towel rack. There was no towel, but they'd

stuck it in the towel rack itself. And so you can see the wires, you know, looped up around and and the head of it was had flames coming out of it. Bizarre. Yeah, that's a hell of a hair dryer. Let's see there's oh, and there's there's other weird things that were going on in this village. At the same time, people were reporting seeing glowing orbs over the ocean, because as we said, it's right on the ocean. And they also reported that there were UFOs flying just off the coastline.

So this is a nice little addition to the Oh, by the way, everything I own is catching on fire? How many? How many different people reported things catching on fire. I don't have a clear sense. I'll say this now. I don't have a clear sense of how much stuff caught on fire. I don't have a clear sense of how long things caught on fire. Four. We're gonna talk

about this in a sec. But there's the time frames in the descriptions lead me to either believe that it was a short time frame, say like a month or years, that this stuff kept happening. But let me, I don't know that for sure. I believe that it's stopped, but I don't know that for sure because the reporting is so like even the English versions of things not to translated, but the English versions are vague, So I'm not positive if it's stopped. I have to imagine that for the

most part it's stopped. But well, and some of this will be covered in theories. For the time frame thing. The time frame about a week after of fires had happened, they evacuated the town. And did they evacuated after about a week or so? Yeah, it was after about a week the well, again this depends on the accounting. Some say it was after two or four weeks they have they evacuated, Some say after seventeen fires. Like again, it's

never an exact number, but they evacuated the town. Government brings in every expert that they can think of, They run tests on things that have been burned. They start they put up cameras all over the town to try and figure out what's going on. The odd bit to me is that as soon as the as as big as the government swoops in and starts doing all of this, the fire stopped. That's nothing caught according to the government reports, nothing caught on fire while they were there, and they

couldn't figure out what was going on. So eventually they know the people are like, hey, I'd like to go home please. So eventually they say, okay, well we can't figure it out, go ahead and go home, and the fires. At that point, this is what I got to earlier sporadically seemed to start happening again. Weird. Here's some other weird things that then happened after that, is water pipes

begin to leak and burst, the pipes under your sinker whatever. Um. There's some theories on that that we can talk about in a bit. Let's see what else we've got. There is, Oh this Devon's I know you love. There's there's farmers in the area who grow eggplants, and according to their reports, all of their eggplants change colors, not the you know, as egg plants will do. They change one color to to another color when they're right, they all changed to

different colors. That Yeah, I was reading through the script and I was kind of skimming. I missed this part, and I was reading through the theories and it says the egg plants, and I was like, what, the eggplants are responsible for everything? Apparently Steve has lost it. But but these eggs plants, the eggplants didn't just change to one odd color. That changed to multiple different colors. That is what the reporting that I've seen set. And I'm going to put that in doubt because that seems a

bit fantastical. We'll talk about that a little bit in the theory section. But I actually did some research on eggplants, just trying to figure out in the eggs action of the grocery store aisle. Yes, let's see, we also have there's some other weird stuff. And this again, this is another vegetation thing. There's a local grass called the Mauritanian grass Martinian. Yeah, and it's it's a big grass, so

not like your lawn. This is a grass that grows eight feet high in a big Your lawn is brown and scorched, is not tall, unlike these plants, which are super tall. What this plant has in common with your lawn is that it was scorched. It was the plant at ground level showed signs of burning, but it wasn't as if it had ever cast caught on fire. Was more of a smoldering heat kind of look. And I don't know how they figured this out, but I guess somebody would start digging them up. Is the roots were

blackened as if they had been burned. That's odd, it is. And the last thing that I'll put in here is people have said that from that time or during that time, that compasses weren't working correctly, that they were deviating from magnetic north. You're pointing somewhere else UFO influence here, then we are. We are laying a ton of hints for the possible UFO theory right there. I will totally admit it. Yeah.

And another theory you're going to talk about too, Yeah, yeah, and we we should go ahead and just jump right into the theories. Yeah, I think so, because really that's about all of the description that we've got for this particular story. Theory number one, the devil did it well, Satan. You know what we should have named this this episode

is things that nefarious spirits do. Yeah, because that just rolls off the tongue places you don't want to go things nefarious spirits, Okay, nefarious alright, fine, but that's been a common thread throughout everything, and it kind of is that bad spirits are doing this thing. Yeah. Well, okay, this is kind of a commo. It's either the devil or evil spirits, which is much like what we talked

about in the forest that you had. I've got to say, the more superstitious villagers seem to fall in line with this right away. And you know that the devil makes tunnel sense. It comes from a really hot place. Of course, he would catch on stuff on fire. It's his fault. I get. I get why people would see that. Italian villages are also very religious usually. I think that you know, if the devil was up to this kind of stuff, he'd be spreading the he'd be spreading the love a

little bit. You would think, you would think it was a very big concentration of centers in the city. Devil. The devil is pro center. He would go, he would go to the most pious village and starts. That's true. Yeah, oops, okay, let's move away from the devil did it to the evil spirit side of this theory, because there's actually some

very simple logic in this one. According to villagers, this is the way things played out is somebody's stuff or house would start to try to catch on fire, and an attempt to save their stuff, if they had somebody who would let them, they would take their belongings to that other person's house, so that if the house went up, at least they're they're precious things didn't go as well, except that according to this the evil spirit was actually

in the possessions. The evil spirit was causing the fire, was in a possession. That possession is brought into the new house. The spirit then jumps from the newly transported item to an item that had resided their previous to its rivals. So it's jumped into the new home. It's gonna catch things in that house on fire. That person is going to do the same thing. Oh, I gotta get my stuff out of here, moves it to the next person's house, inadvertently passing the infection. Yeah, passing the

infection along it. From a very simple perspective, it makes a lot of sense. I suppose I would think that a spirit really wouldn't need a ride over to his next place. He's gonna go to. You know, there's lazy spirits. You do sit around, eat cheetahs, catch something on fire and wait for a ride, play Xbox until that happens, or short the Xbox out. One of the two it happens. Well, I'm totally buying into this spirit thing. But what are the theories do we have? Well, I got one that

you'll totally buy into. Yeah, yeah, okay, I said they were flying objects seen in the area, glowing orbs over the ocean, and UFOs flying in the distance. Their stories of helicopter chasing something but never quite being able to catch it. Those sightings supposedly became a regular occurrence right about the same time that all of the fires started, so that has led people to posit that it's aliens that are causing the fires. Of the aliens did it right?

Why though this I love this, this is hol hilarious to me, is that one article I read said they were doing it as a way to test how we as a society or a group would react and how good our response would be to a crisis like a fire. So once these pyromaniac aliens figure out how our response patterns are, they'll be able to just in vain because they'll know how to outwit us because they'll already know

what we do is a predictable pattern. Because a small Italian village on an island is probably the best way to test that small sample size. Baby, it's all about the small sample size. I don't know, man, that just it just seems like, yeah, you'd want to like, if you're going to a place for you as an alien. You don't really know that these guys are representative in terms of the way they would respond to anything. Right, true,

in the size witch. You know, if they're powerful enough to set things remotely on fire, wouldn't they send any people on fire? Well, I can just imagine that it's you know, it's it's some drone alien worker in the drone alien worker reconnaissance office saying where am I gonna put this? I don't know. All those humans sound alike, these ones sound fine. This looks like a big enough

settlement will use it. I mean, it could be that, or it could be that it's total OUI or the aliens were like, this place has been around for a long time. It's probably the pinnacle of what We've been watching. This place for a thousand years. It hasn't changed. Therefore it's perfect. Yeah exactly, or maybe not. Yeah, I'm gonna move on. Yeah, the next one I actually will. The next theory is actually the possible one in my mind. I know, because you were bragging about it last week.

You were like, the theory that I came up with is actually supported. I would try to deport it with this seventeen page document that I found on the internet. Yes, exactly, Okay, Well, our our next theory is volcanic gases. What are volcanic gases? Well, you know when you eat a lot of beans. No, no, let me. Let me explain a little bit of the geography of the area. I think the geology is pretty easy in terms of we know that there's a ton

of freaking volcanoes in that area. But the geography of the area is this village is right on the coastline, so it's at sea level for the most part, and as you move inland, the land rises up and there's little valleys. So if you keep that in mind, we're going to keep going through some of this description, but that that geography is what is important. Right above of the village, just a couple of miles up is what is called the Auto Strata A twenty and it's a

four lane motorway. It runs around the coast to Sicily, and at the time two thousand and four it was brand new. They finished construction in two thousand and four. The train in the area, like we're talking about, there's the valleys, it's kind of hilly. The engineers civil engineers love this, well, I don't want to go over, I'll just dig a tunnel. So they dug a tunnel. They dug a bunch of tunnels, and what they did is

they would tunnel through the mountain. They would come to a valley, they would build a bridge to the next mountain. They bore a hole in that hill, come out. If it was decent flat land, they put the road on the ground, and then they do it again wherever they had to drive around sicily on that road. The twenty looks really cool. If you look at it in the satellite views, you can actually see the shadow of the bridge thrown across onto the shape of the valley. It's

really they're they're there. They're kind of that that span arch bridge, the lower arch underneath, not on top. The really neat looking. But this is what they did well. The idea is that what happened is as they were digging those tunnels, they accidentally popped open a fissure or some kind of vein that was connected to a magma system or a volcanic system. Nothing major, because if they'd

hit something major, we'd have known about it. Stuff had blowed up, and I say that my best American accents. Stuff blowed up, it would have been obvious. But instead nothing happened, which means that they hit a crack or they hit a small leak so this theory runs that there's a fissure in a tunnel and it's not obvious and it's leaking gas or we're talking explosive gas. So not just carbon monoxide, but methane and things like that.

Are these things found in volcanoes? I know two of the gases that would be flammable in a volcanic mixture would be methane and hydrogen sulfide. Yeah, I know those ones. What else is going to be in there? It's it's a mixed bag. Were not yet? But those uh don't those kind of odoriferous? No, they're not, they're not, they're not. You gotta remember, is a lot of the gases that we use that could I mean, like, methane does put off kind of that sewer smell, Hydrogen sulfide does not.

So we're used to have a lot of gases having like this is a common misnumbers. People like I would know if I had a gas leak, you know, because it smells like rotten eggs. Well, when you're out in the woods, nobody's artificially put that rotten egg smell in it. Well, yeah, that's that, that is true, because they do they do put that in methane yeah, natural gas yeah yeah, so no,

those are the flammable. So though, as I we were talking about again, and I'm going back to the geography, if this crack is coming out of a tunnel, which is uphill, it's gonna run down the valley, which this town, this village sits in kind of the basin of a valley, so it would all run down hit low spots create little pockets of potentially explosive gas that if there's a spark, which Okay, my TVs on, it's got little sparks running around in it, or my computers running, or my car

ignition is on, but the cars not on. I can see how that could cause a fire. What it doesn't appropriately answer is the fires that are caught in things like furniture or electronics that aren't turned on, or hair dryer that's not plugged in. It also does in the caf its for like you know, hard drives being wiped and gates opening and closing on by themselves. It does not. It does, and it really doesn't. Uh, there is there

is some discussion. At least one article that I came across was talking about the fact that if it is some kind of volcanic fisher that is leaking gas, It's probably gonna be leaking volcanic ash at the same time in very small quantities. But that's going to drift down. And I've got to I've got to read this because

I didn't exactly get it. But this is what I'm understanding, is that there is a bit of friction that has caused between the ash when two pieces of ash rub together or go across each other, which would create a static charge. So if enough of that builds up, it's going to create enough static charge that could potentially start a fire. Then you would be dealing with like random fireballs as well. You know, it wouldn't necessarily always be things.

I'm plus, I think people in the village would be noticing that there's ash all over everything, you would think, But if it's in small amounts or it's ground into stuff, I can see how it's not noticeable. But Devin brings up a good point because that ties back into remember the UFOs, the the glowing balls over the ocean. I guess that's true. I forgot about that. It could be the old men in Black explanation of swamp gas or a burning ball of gas floating over the horizon potentially,

So that's a bunch of their gas. It's just gone out and got caught on fire somehow caught on fire a cigarette and flickted straight up a hundred feet. And yeah. The other thing about the thing about this theory that I'm not so sure about is that, like, besides that the flammable ones psychhydrogen, sulfide, and methane, there are a lot of other gases that are associated with volcanic leaks, and some of them are pretty caustic and and you

would be smelling them. Yeah, um, well, you know. And one thing that we haven't talked about a little bit, if we're gonna go into the series just a tad bit more, is there have in reports of people saying that as they were going through the tunnels around the village on the twenty and I want to say that the other road is the it's like the eighteen or it's an eighteen. I remember that it's it's in the teens.

Is that there are random events where a car will shut off the electronics with car die car coose to a stop, they started back up, it starts, ignition fires, and then they drive away. And they don't know how much that happens when people have reported that in that area, And I don't know if it's in the tunnels, or if it's on the other road, or if it's on

the bridge. Like the reporting on it was very scant, But it could be that it's some of those more caustic other gases which when the car sucks it in instead of oxygen, is going to kill the ignition, you know in the in the cylinder gas can on ignite. If there is not oxygen and it's some non gas that doesn't burn right with it, then the car dies. But it it rolls far enough forward to get out of that pocket of gas, so then when they go

to turn it over, it sucks in air again. So that's that's why the pocketpants of the car don't get assixiated. Then they're moving too quickly. Yeah, it's not perfect, but it's one of those things that I've heard or of read, so I think I think the explanation for that is these people just need to get their car worked on. It's some auto body shop in the village or car repair shop in the village that's doing it. Yeah, that's

probably what it is. So it could very well be. Um. I know Devon likes this because we we've used nefarious a number of times and this this plays a little bit here. Well we've got our next theory and it plays a little bit into the volcanic bid and then it goes on to the much more defarious aspect. So this kind of ties the two together. Is that when there are vachanic eruptions, there tend to be some electro magnetic issues that go on. Because I don't understand why,

because I'm not a volcanologist, as we've said, but it happens. Well, that is one reason people say that there's these electro magnetic issues. The other one is that some bad organization is targeting the town. And what they're doing is they're they're using a high powered electro magnetic beam shooting it at the village from somewhere most likely out to see, which I gotta say sounds like a total evil supervillain move. Um,

and they're frying stuff in the town. Yeah, that sounds legit. Yeah, this is actually Yeah, Ano this works because I would I would not be at all surprised if some of the some some super villain wasn't working on some sort of volcano lancing super laser. They could the blackmail of the world. You're laughing, but this is like a serious

vocal Yes, a volcano that says super laser that. Yeah, And you could just say, hey, guys, if you know what a hot lava boiling down to your town, you've been giving a cough up like a million bucks man, Yeah, right now, one million, one billion dollars. Yeah. And so it might be that these are kind of beta versions,

they're weaker beta versions. He still hasn't gotten all the way up to the superpowered one end or she possibly she or it as in a organization, because it's there's there's a there's a US Air Force base right in that area. So of course the finger gets pointed them. The finger gets pointed at the government, at aliens, or

at a super villain. The quote that I've got here talks about the fact that it would have to be all ultra high frequency beam and it would have to be transmitted somewhere between three hundred banker hurts and three giga hurts. Makes sense. I mean they have been they have been mucking around with the mp AMP weapons and so well, we've talked about that mazers and every other kind of silly laser item like that. Yeah, yeap, device wouldn't set things on fire. Yeah, I'm gonna say no. Yeah,

it was not meant to do that. Yeah. Our next, sadly theory, our next theory, sadly could be one of the more plausible, and that it was it was a local boy slash man. Yeah, that makes sense to me.

And by a boy slash man, I mean a boy in two thousand and four, isn't a teenage boy who is now a man, Because one of the Italian reports that I found was talking about the fact that they had found they believed, they authorities believe they finally figured out what the problem was, and it was just sepi Posino. He's twenty six and he had been so that means he's been fifteen sixteen years old at the time. And they're saying he's one who starts all the fires. Yeah,

he was running around starting fires. Kind of a pyromaniac situation. Burning thing. That's not unheard of. It's not unheard of, though. More unheard of is like breaking into a house to set a hair dryer on fire and then escaping before anybody noticed that you're in the house. Well, the hair dryer, in my mind is kind of suspect because whenever I walk into a room in my house and I find something on fire, I don't stop to take pictures of it. I grabbed I haven't seen the picture kind of just

looks like there's a flashlight. It just looks like there's like a bright light, and I am I am taking the photo and face value according to what it's written about it. That's so, you're right, it does look a little suspect. But here's here's what we're saying. Is that, remember I told her. What I'm saying is I told you that when the Feds came in they had put up all these cameras, or when the government had come

in and then the fire stopped. Yeah, well, there evidently is some footage just at the beginning of that time, and one of this one of those pieces of footage shows him by a car and doing something almost the strike a match movement, if you were going to strike a match, a wooden match away from yourself, and he's in front of a car, and then it's obvious it's one of those cameras that does every five or ten seconds and then suddenly the car is smoky and billowing.

He's moved away, and then the fire department comes running around to it. It almost, uh, it's really it's kind of comical to watch. It's almost like a Benny Hills skit, the way everybody runs around but they run over and you can see him standing there, almost as if he's, you know, on his phone, go. I don't know what's

going on or what happened over there. I do. I question it because there was so many things, and I really don't know how one guy could have got into so many places unless nobody in that village ever locked their freaking doors. You can't entirely rule out the possibility of copycats too well. But the thing is what I don't understand, and maybe this is tacked on, is all

the other weird the computer drives wiped. Okay, I could see somebody goes in with the magnet just wipes the drives, But what about car doors and weird electronics stuff, you know, locks, opening and closing, things like that, those things happen. I'm saying is that I don't know that those aren't tacked

onto the story. I can't say they're not. It just it seems like a lot, and it seems like there's According to the article I was reading, he might not have done it all on his own because his dad, at the time that he got in trouble, was head of the fund to compensate people for things that had caught on fire. Maybe his dad was helping him a little bit once he figured out he was doing it, and hey, help me keep my job. Kind the thing. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, maybe Giuseppia is totally

totally the one who did it all. He probably is Devin Judge jury right there. I think. I think it's entirely possible to that at least some of these things that caught fire, people just thought, hey, I want to get on the act. I want the guy from the National Enquiry to come by an interview me. So I'm gonna let my toaster on fire, or yea, this hair dryer doesn't work anymore, I'm gonna light it on fire and then the fund will replace it. Yeah there's that. Yeah, Yeah,

that's that could be could do that. You could intentionally overload something. I would do that and then plug it back into the sock and say, look at caught on fire right there. Oh my gosh, I need a new one. I know this is the crappy one, but I'd love the fancy super chrome queas and art version please. I mean, that's the version I bought. When I bought it, you

just can't tell because it's so melted. Yeah, there's a lot of evidence of people pulling that kind of fraud off in the past to say that it's entirely pousible. And as far as wiping your drive, your hard drive, I guess I don't see what the hell you'd get out of wipe in your computer, because every time my computer dies, I am so angry, even if I have

it backed up. Yeah, I know, but no, I mean I I would put a compensation for a claim for compensation, Like you know that drive had that was filled with cat videos. Spent a whole lot of time. It took me five years at working, you know, twenty hours a week to build up my collection of cat videos. They're all gone. I would like to be compensated for my time. I have a feeling that might actually get thrown out. That surprises me. I got I've got to back up my cat videos. I do have a couple of bits

that I want to throw out. These are not specifically related to any theory, but they are explanations of some of the things that were going on. Do you remember I talked about the water pipes that suddenly, after all the fires, suddenly water ironically, water pipes are bursting. There is a theory on how that might be happening, and that is through what is it's called a probably mispronouncing cathodic or cathodic process. I think it's cathodic because it's

the cathode. I think that's right. But basically, what it is is that you've got a water pipe and it's welded together with some material, and somehow electronic charge is getting to the pipe and that's going to corrode and weaken that seem so that's what's causing us. So it's almost like there's an electrical leak in the ground that is weakening everybody's water pipes, because then it gets in the system screws the whole thing up. Um. I must say that this this village looks pretty old, it does.

It looks like it's been around a long time. I'm going to give you that. The last thing I want to talk about, though, is Devon's favorite part. The egg plants. Yes, the evil, evil egg plants. Did a little bit of research on this, and I, okay, I admit my ignorance right off the bat. I thought all egg plants were that weird dark purple. They are absolutely not. They are as varied as the rainbow. They come in a million colors, and most of them start out one color and then

turn another. I also want to point out the fact that if this is a local farmer who is trying to save money, he may have gotten eggplant seeds from someone saying that they had a specific kind and did quite the sloppy job and gave him a variety of egg plants. Because I've had this at our house, is that we'll say, oh, we're gonna plant this, and you plant a bunch of seeds and then the one oddball, like what is what is that weird carrot? And it turns out not to be a carrot, but you know,

something utterly different. Yeah, an eggplant which I'll never grow. Well, it could have been actually also a little farmer playing

a little prank on the press. You know, I know this, I know that they're gonna come out all colors, but these guys probably have as ever seen purple ones, you know, So I'll ring them out to my farm and I'll wind up my multi colored egg plants, and you know, I make and just you know, kind of make make a fool out of the one thing that I've always seen In the articles those they said the entire crop had to be destroyed because they couldn't sell it well,

which sounds kind of punkish to me. Cross Pollination is also a thing, like you know, when you go out in the summer and there's like this one bush that's got flowers on it that's like half one color and half another color. That's a thing. Yeah, I don't I don't know if that's as prevalent in eggplant because it seemed like they were very very linear in their their process. But it completely could be, if possible, if he had, you know, one plant that was a different color that

got cross pollinated with a bunch of them. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, I personally think it was a seed mix up, That's what I'm thinking to or I really think the guy was drown asparagus and didn't know what it was. Yeah, yeah, And the guy probably might he might very well deliberately mixed up the seas produced different colors, you know, because that would make your fields look a lot prettier if they're all multi rainbow colored and everything. That's that's really

all we've got on this, this little village. So I'm gonna vote for human agency. I'm I'm inclined to go with the volcanic gas online. But you know, we never talked about did we ever vote on the other's all? Who cares? Not? No? No, I think I think I think with mine the value of the headless Man. I think it was probably just unrelated. I think it was Turrock, son of Stone. Yeah, it could have been that. I don't want to think about. We're just glossing over mine. Okay,

I'm totally okay with that. Okay, Well, so it concludes another episode of Thinking Sideways the podcast. Hey, you probably don't know where our website is, so we're gonna tell you this Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Actually I'm sure you do know, but just in case you don't, you can leave comments. We'll have links out there for you.

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are on Patreon. Now, if you haven't heard of Patreon, it is spelled p A t R e o n, so it would be Patreon slash Thinking Sideways patreon dot com slash Thinking Sideways. Yeah, so if you don't know what patreon as well, you'll find out. We've got stuff on there to explain it. Yeah, we do, um, and that's pretty much it. Hopefully you're gonna take our advice and stay the hell away from these places. Vacation somewhere normal,

much nicer now. Actually, I think if I ever get the chance, I think I'm going to go to Sicily and go to this little village. It looks pretty cool. Yeah yeah, yeah, I would. I just wouldn't stay there. Yeah. The Valley of the Headless Man not so much. No, no, yeah yeah. Okay, Well that's it. Then, see you all next week. Later everyone,