Season 07 Episode 10: Into the Badlands (Pt.1 of 3)

we know. Even the subconscious space of our dreams has been considered a potential location for beings as real as any we might find in the conscious realm, or at least try telling an eleven year old who just watched a Nightmare on Elm Street for the first time that

such beings aren't possible as it happens. Whereas Cradon, the creator of A Nightmare in Elm Street, is thought to have drawn partial inspiration for the film from the crudely labeled Asian deaths in of the late nineteen seventies and eighties. During this period, over one hundred and ten men who fled to America from Lao to escape a newly installed communist government are said to have fallen victim to the unusual syndrome. All died following unexplained seizures in their sleep.

For others, it is precisely the possibility of what we might find in these places that scares them the most, and who could blame them? Considering how many of these tales end in disaster, from the terror of Ridley Scott's Alien where all but one of an entire space flight crew are wiped out by a previously unknown organism, to the damningly self reflective satire of Gulliver's Travels, travels which leave the eponymous Gulliver so appalled by humanity he becomes

a recluse. Such stories seem designed to prevent us from exploring the US unknown. They are handed down to us as supposedly hard earned truths, a warning to anyone foolish enough to venture beyond the comfort of their known environment. If it doesn't kill you, at the very least, you run the risk of discovering something about yourself you don't want to know. As a species, not only have we proven death to such warnings, we seem almost pathologically predisposed

to ignore them. It was far easier, for example, for the British nation to celebrate the achievements of explorer Captain James Cook than to dwell on the fact that he was murdered while out on his travels, but the hands of the distant savages, as they were referred, that he had supposedly discovered. And if you look at tales like that from the point of view of those on the receiving end of efforts to colonize so called distant and

exotic lands, business of exploration starts to look very messy. Indeed, but even still we carry on regardless. We might argue that our yearning to illuminate the darkest unknown corners is driven by survival instincts. We search to understand what out there could be a threat to us. Or perhaps it is the Freudian unconscious desire to name and to conquer that ultimately drives us. Or perhaps rather it's simply the

selfish pursuit of personal gain. Yet when we look at the incredible achievements of our species's most eminent adventurers, such as Abu Baka the Second or the indomitable Shann Barret, it is possible to discern a different driving force. Abu Baka the Second was ruler of a huge Western African empire considered by some to have been the largest and

wealthiest ever. In thirteen eleven, he is alleged to have given it all up having become determined to find out just what exactly lay on the other side of the Atlantic. After leaving to do just that, Abu Baka was never seen again. However, Malian writer and historian Professor Gassau Diawara has speculated that he may have fact have got as far as present day Brazil during his adventures. While in seventeen seventy five, Shan Beret, after disguising herself as a man,

became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. Look past the cynical political motivations of the Apollo eleven moon landing, and you see it there too, in the engine fire of a Saturn five rocket. It powers NASA's Voyager space probes beyond the heliosphere toward interstellar space, blows the sales of Charles Darwin's HMS Beagle, and forms the metaphorical glue that binds the nuts and bolts of the Hubble telescope that enables us to peer ever deeper into the furthest

reaches of the universe. It is the irrepressible force of human curiosity. It's this adventurous spirit that also fuels the search for other kinds of truth set Apart from the pursuit of the hard sciences, we find it in the ever seductive lure of the occult and the gnostic philosophies, the powerful idea that beyond the realities we comprehend, like other more majestic places, just waiting to be discovered, if only we had the requisite knowledge and tools to get there.

In many ways, the hard science search for truth is not too dissimilar to the gnostic or religious search for truth. Both are founded on the belief that there is more to reality than what we know, and both are equally striving to peer behind the wizard's curtain, as it were. Where they differ is in their approach. Gnostics start with the absolute conviction that there is something more to it all, some guiding hand. Perhaps their search cannot stop until this

mysterious manufacturer is revealed. This approach often leaves me wondering whether people with that inclination would ever be truly satisfied. What if we did discover one day that there was

an omnipotent creator. After all, it likely wouldn't take long before knowledge of this God's existence simply became part of our quotehidean life, something we just took for granted, how long then before people began to wonder if that God wasn't in fact the end point of or knowledge, but was itself made by an entirely other God occupying a whole other layer of mystery, and that God made by another God, and so on and so on. Scientists, on the other hand, tend not to start with an unshakable

conviction of what the end point might be. Although they are more than happy to acknowledge there are things not yet known that may yet be discovered. They prefer to get there one step at a time, through trial and error and the slow methodical accumulation of empirical data. They might occasionally take a leap of faith for an idea,

but if the data doesn't correlate, the idea is soon discarded. Meanwhile, for the alternative truth seekers transcendent philosophers, what satisfaction is to be found in the mundane scientific worlds of fields and sub atomic matter when there are much deeper, hidden geometries to explore, far beyond the confines of standard human perception. Doubtless there is a strange comfort in contemplating things beyond

our everyday practical experiences. Furthermore, it is the potential of what might be found in the unknown and unseen that gives birth to many of our wildest ideas thoughts on consciousness, eschatology, and the very nature of reality. But might we have neglected something in all this? For what if those tales we tell of other worlds and other creatures weren't just stories and we aren't in fact alone? What if it isn't only our species that is doing the exploring. You're

listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLain Smith. Gwen gazes longingly at the vast blue sky as Terry turns their battered old pick up off the AR eighty eight Fort Duchane. It's the summer of nineteen ninety four, and the Shermans are traveling through a northern stretch of the Yuintar Basin in the northeast corner of what is commonly known today as the American state of Utah. This part of the basin, which stretches out for hundreds of miles to the south,

forms a clash of desert and rich pastures. Fed by the Uinta River and nearby Bottle Creek Reservoir. It is a stark landscape marked by rare pockets of oasis in otherwise desolately swathes of rock and dust. Some might call it the bad Lance, but to others its plain old Cowboy country and everything that Gwen and Terry are looking for. The truck kicks up dust as they make their way

deeper into the plains. To their right lies a two hundred foot high mesa ridge of red dust and sandstone, one of those other worldly structures you might think had more in common with Mars than Planet Earth. While to their left, a pale scrubland speckled with milky green sagebrush and spindly Russian olives, stretches out to the horizon, and all is framed by the widest bluest sky. You could

possibly imagine. Such places have a magical quality, a hidden history that lies compressed and fossilized underground, painted onto the rocks at the back of darkened caves. It rings with a silence. But it's not the silence of emptiness. It is the silence of absence, the silence that remains when so many things have been and gone. For of course, the state hasn't always been called Utah, nor indeed has

it always been a state. The vast ranges to the north haven't always been named the Uinta Mountains, and this desert basin hasn't always been a desert. Roughly twenty thousand years ago, a community of bipedal, bare skinned creatures first ventured forth towards present day North America, walking from lands of ice and snow to the northwest across a land bridge newly emerged from the depths of wants impassable waters.

Confronted by walls of ice and inhospitable terrain, the intrepid pioneers were forced to remain on that bridge of land for thousands of years before a thawing of the surrounding glaciers and permafrost brought new roots for them to explore. In their isolation, they'd been changing deep within their blood. When they finally move on to greener pastures to the south, they emerge new and distinct from the people they'd been before.

These people, whose names have long been lost to time, are thought to be the first human inhabitants of what we now call Utah, arriving there some thirteen thousand years ago, forming small communities. The first inhabitants of present day Utah drift with the seasons eating cattails and sedge, and crafting nets for creatures that swim and fly. They hunt with spear points made from bone and stone, expertly and delicately

fluted on both sides. Just like the world of those who came before them, theirs is tuned to the cycles of the golden orb of day and the ever changing white disk of night. Eventually they will make it as far as the stretch of land Gwen and Terry are driving through, perhaps sheltering under the mesa ridge to their right, or tracking animals in the scrubland to the left, three and a half million curves through the sky of the

golden orb. Later, however, surrounding waters rise and flood the basin, forcing those ancient people from the land, where they will also be lost to the mists of time. A thousand years later, and a shift has taken place, and new people arrive from the southwest with bows and arrows to complement the spear. Although some are nomadic, others prefer a

more stationary life, growing at harvesting crops. They wear shoes made from deer hyde, make pottery and weave baskets, and paint detailed pictorials of creatures both strange and familiar, onto the rocks of their homes. But just seven hundred years later, a great drought forces them too from the land. It's not long before yet another group of biped creatures arrive, this time bringing a name that is recorded in history, Nouts,

which translates in English as the People. The Noots eventually stretch out across two hundred and twenty five thousand square miles of the surrounding deserts and prairies, building teepees and wiki ups from Pinion and Juniper branches to the Nuche. The land on which they walk is a place of great power, a place revealed in dreams and made manifest

by their creator, Sinnawav. It includes the upper earth of mountains, a middle earth of foothills, the lower earth of the canyons, and the underworld, where the light giving orb in the sky they call Tavachi rests at night. It is a land peppered with puave power points where tribal medicine men channel sacred forces. It is also a world populated by the Mokwitch, the dead. The Nuts never venture into the places of the Mokwitch, who are said to roam the

abandoned homes of those who had come back. Should you ever find spiders and cobwebs in old, formally inhabited buildings, that is a sign that the mock witch the dead are there. The Nuche occupy the land for many cycles of the Golden Orb, living out a mostly peaceful existence in harmony with the elements of their world, taking only what they need and fighting only to defend the territory

that is crucial to their survival. Are known to the Nuche. However, there is a whole other world that occupies the exact same space as theirs, and it is beginning to press in on them. Some Nutch have already heard of this parallel world, populated by people similar in some ways but different in others. As they soon discover, it is a place made not by Sinowaf, but by God Almighty. In this other world, time is different, and the nuts are

instead called Utah. There, it is the year sixteen twenty, the same number of years they are told since a man named Christ was sent to Earth to die for everybody's sins. Early exchanges with this other world's people bring occasional riches, such as the majestic and powerful horses that

will later strengthen their communities. There are new ideas too, that help the Nuts make better sense of their own world, discovering, for example, that the golden orb in the sky is not moving into darkness each night, but rather it is they and the land they stand on that is moving around it. But sometimes those from the other world will make ray into Nuche communities and steal their people away

to be reared as slaves. More and more, this other world presses in on that of the Nouche until it has enveloped it completely, and they have little option but to leave their world behind. By this new world's year of eighteen sixty four, the land occupied by the Nuche, now referred to as Ute by the newcomers, has been

declared owned by the United States of America. An agreement is reached to establish a small area of territory for the Nuche, along with other tribes such as the Uncompahgre, Yampa, and White River, to call their own for fifteen years. They are rounded up and escorted into this designated area, known as the Uinta and Ourey Reservation. No longer free to move with the seasons, the tribe's peoples struggle to adapt to their zone, an area that is largely dry

and poor for hunting. When asphaltam, a highly profitable mineral, is discovered within this territory, it transpires that the eighteen sixty four agreement is not quite as final as it had first seemed. Seven thousand acres of reservation territory is quickly reclaimed by the US government and given to the mining industry. By nineteen o five, the reservation has diminished to a quarter of its initial size. Terry Sherman brings

the truck to a halt. He and Gwen have finally reached their destination, a four hundred and eighty acre stretch of ranch, surrounded on all sides by the Uinta and Ourey Reservation. Up ahead lies the Maya's Ranch house, peeking out from under a row of grand cottonwoods. Although it is true that the ranch occupies land that was once part of the original reservation, some claim the Nooch were only too happy to be rid of it. Unknown to

Terry and Gwen. It is said that something peculiar stalks these pastures, something not recorded in any of the history books, and the Nooche are terrified of it. A deep yellow sun hangs in the sky. As the Shermans step from the cool of their truck into the dry summer heat and make their way towards the house. Terry runs a hand through his hair before replacing his cap, trying his best not to look too excited as the estate agent

approaches the building. Perched at the base of the Mesa ridge and backed by a wide irrigation canal, is a modest sized bungalow in need of some care and attention. Inside, wallpaper not changed since the seventies, peals from the walls and ceiling, while bags of rubbish are strewn throughout the place. As the Shermans enter the property, it's hard not to think of the previous owner living out there all on

her own. Gwen drifts from room to room, and though she is excited about the prospect of making this their home, she can't help feeling there is something off about the place. Then she sees it. Every internal door appears to have a dead bald lock drilled onto it inside and out, and all the windows too. Gwen is nudging one of the locks shut when Terry calls to her from outside. She steps out the door to find him holding a heavy chain in his hands that has been bolted securely

to the front of the house. Must have been some dog to warrant this, says Terry. I guess so, Gwen replies, before being suddenly distracted by the breath taking view. From here, she can see the full acreage of the grassy paddocks and scrublands to the south and west, cut through by dry Gulch Creek, and bordered to the north by the irrigation canal and sandstone ridge that run in parallel all the way to the far western border. As she takes it all in, it feels as if they've lived there

their whole lives. Later, after taking a walk through the fields, Gwen and Terry stumble upon the Old Homestead, a dilapidated stucco cabin built in the early nineteen hundreds, but now warped and rotted after years under the baking desert sun. How uncanny it looks, they think, almost as if it were still inhabited, with its rusted drain pipe chimney still intact and sticking out through the roof, the old floral patterned lino inside just visible under a thick carpet of

dead leaves. In sight, Gwen spies numerous cobwebs and spiders clinging to every corner, and can almost feel the presence of the building's previous occupiers. It's just when they're walking back to the house that Terry notices something peculiar hidden under the thick, dry grass of one of the pastures, a circular indentation roughly three feet wide and at least

one foot deep in the ground. Even stranger is that the soil underneath seems compacted, as if whatever had made the marking hadn't dug the soil out of the ground, but had come down on it from above and compressed it into the earth. It's a gray, overcast day when the Shermans return later in the autumn, the proud new owners of the Meyer's ranch. They arrive with all their

worldly goods on two heavily laden trucks. With the help of Terry's father Attison, Gwen and Terry's eleven year old son Tea and nine year old daughter Kay lead the way, picking out pieces from the top of the truck and handing them down to the grown ups. Terry is just returning for another load when he notices his son staring at something across the pasture, picking its way through the field and heading straight towards them. What is that, coyote,

asks Gwen, having just clocked it. Too Nah, too big for that, says Terry, not taking his eyes off the animal. The family watch as the creature draws near, until they can make out its silver gray fur as the unmistakable hide of a wolf. Gwen looks anxiously towards the kids, who, far from being scared, seem quietly mesmerized by the creature. Terry takes a step forward, scanning the distance behind for any sign of a pack, then looks nervously toward the

animal paddock. One of the three calves that arrived that morning, having sensed a shift in the air, has wandered up to the fence and stuck its head inquiringly between the slats, all the while the wolf trots closer and closer, its head bobbing beneath its shoulders until it's barely ten yards away. At least it looks like a wolf, thinks Terry, even if it's twice the size of any he's ever seen before. Stranger yet, is the pale blue electricity of its eyes

a crossbreed, perhaps, he wanders. The creature keeps on coming until it's at Attison's legs, close enough for the old man to run his hand through its thick, wet fur. Must have come from the reservation, who says to the others. The wolf arches its back under Attison's hand and brushes against his legs with all the playfulness of an old family dog. Gwen waves for the kids to come down and join them. Can we keep it? Asks Kay. Before Terry can respond, the wolf is already in motion, heading

straight for the corral. A moment later, the six month old Anger's calf is squealing in agony, it's snout caught tight inside the wolf's jaws. Gwen backs the children away as Attison pulls a baseball bat from the truck. He brings it down hard onto the wolf's back. As Terry tries to kick it free from the calf. Get the magnum, screams. Terry Tea leaps onto the truck, pulls the magnum from its holster and runs it over to his father, yelling

for his son and Attison to step away. Terry gives the barrel a quick check before snapping it back into place and squeezing the trigger. The shot thunders into the animal, but the wolf doesn't back down. Gwen does her best to shield Kay's eyes as Terry takes another step closer and fires a second slug into the wolf's chest, but again there's nothing, not even a whimper. The exhausted calf sinks to the ground, its wide eyes rolling back in terror as it waits for death. Terry shoots again, seeing

the bullet clearly thud into the wolf's stomach. Finally, it releases the prey and stumbles back a few yards. The calf collapses backwards, panting heavily as blood pours from its nose. The next bullet enters around the wolf's heart. It stands unmoved for one more beat, fixes Terry with its electric blue eyes, and then simply trots away. Get me the rifle, says Terry. Calmly Tea runs into the house and returns soon after, carrying a sniper rifle. The wolf has stopped

thirty yards away. Terry takes the gun and raises the sight to his eye, then pull the trigger. They all gasp as the bullet rips through the wolf's body, but the wolf remains unmoved. It stares Terry down. Terry fires again. This time the bullet visibly tears flesh and fur from the creature's chest, but without as much as a whimper. The wolf eyes the calf one last time before finally turning away and heading off back in the direction from

which it had come. Attison, in a state of disbelief, wanders towards the piece of flesh torn off by the bullet. When he bends down to pick it up, he recoils in disgust. The meat is putrid and riddled with the stench of decay. Terry will later attempt to track the wolf down and kill it once and for all. He follows its clear set of footprints for over a mile into the bush before they inexplicably disappear from the land.

And all that was just day one. You've been listening to Unexplained, Season seven, Episode ten, Into the bad Lands, Part one of three. Part two will be released next Friday, November seventeenth. This episode was written by Richard McLain Smith. Unexplained is an AV Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLain Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music,

were also produced by me. Richard McClain smith Unexplained. The book and audiobook, with stories never before featured on the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, and other bookstores. Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like to share.

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