JB Rhine is an Ass & Shrimp on the Barbie

This week on Wonderlust:

Welcome back, Wonderers! In today’s episode, we dive into our spooky Sister Subjects– the paranormal and supernatural. Our wonderings include an overview into the paranormal world of Parapsychology and mysterious story of the Green Children of Woolpit.

Sarah skims the surface of the wide world of the mysterious and supernatural with an exploration into Parapsychology, the scientific study of the paranormal. Parapsychology includes the study of extrasensory perception, telepathy, near-death experiences, clairvoyance, and more. The term parapsychology was coined by Joseph Banks Rhine in the 1920s, and has come a long way since then. Although, Sarah and Emily still think it has even further to go in understanding the inexplicable and paranormal.

Emily then takes us back in time, all the way to 12th century England, in the small town of Woolpit, not too far where Emily and Sarah spent their magical years in England. Local legend says that two children, a brother and sister, otherwise known as the Green Children, appeared in Woolpit wearing strange clothes, speaking an unknown language and most notably, sporting bright green skin. To this day no one is sure where the Green Children came from, but Emily takes us on a wild ride through all the known theories, and even sprinkling in a few of her own.

Thanks so much for listening to our rambles & wonderings! If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate & subscribe. Also be sure to keep an eye out for us on social media!

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Sarah          00:00:00    Yeah. Hell yeah. 

Emily           00:00:03    Hey sister.  

Sarah          00:00:07    Hi. How are you?  

Emily           00:00:09    I’m like so good. How are you?  

Sarah          00:00:12    Oh, I’m just the best.  

Emily           00:00:16    How convincing are we? You guys? Is it really convincing? Cause I feel like it’s not, I feel like it’s the opposite.  

Sarah          00:00:25    We are the most convincing I’m convinced after all we did get a, you know, personal review that you sound like you could be a professional voiceover actor. So there’s that job,  

Emily          00:00:40    Please. Please stop. Please…don’t stop.  

Sarah          00:01:02    How, uh, how’s your week been?  

Emily          00:01:05    My week has been jam paced. Y’all, I have been working. I have been at work every day and then some days I’m working at another job and this like now I’m working two jobs. I don’t know where this accident is going, but I do have a question for you all.  

Sarah          00:01:24    All right. That’s what you’re going to have a question for me. Okay.  

Emily          00:01:26    Well of course you are a part of the collective c’mon now. Let’s see if I can do this. I was practicing earlier today.

Sarah          00:01:34   Oh, good. 

Emily           00:01:36   Can you do an Australian accent?  

Sarah          00:01:48    Wow. You did a really good job.  

Emily           00:01:54    I feel like I did a terrible job. 

Sarah           00:01:55    It was a little New Zealand-y, but I feel like that’s just nitpicking at this point.  

Emily           00:02:02    Oh my God. I practiced so hard. I can not do an Australian accent to save my life

Sarah           00:02:08    The only, no. I can say bacon in a Jamaican accent.bacon… 

Emily            00:02:12    It’s fucking easy. 

Sarah           00:02:15   That yeah. Well you’re the voice actor. Voiceover person. Not me.  

Emily            00:02:23    No, it’s not that because I literally can’t say anything else. Like, out on the green…Shrimp on the Barbie.  

Sarah           00:02:32    They don’t actually say that though.  

Emily            00:02:35    Well, I said it. So, I went there. Um, no, there’s this comedian, fuck, I forgot to look him up before this. He’s so good. So I have to look them up so I can say his name because I was laughing really hard. So that matters.

Sarah           00:02:57    Say his name, say his name.  Guys, I know she’s really tired because she actually laughed at that.  

Emily            00:03:02    How can you not? How can you not? All right. No. What, where is this dude? Um, yeah, so he did this whole bit about how his favorite night drinking was, when he faked an Australian accent and bet this guy that, cause this guy was like, you’re not from Australia, you’re from Lake Chicago. Like you, you don’t sound like you’re from Australia. And he had an Australian friend with him and he was like faking him Australian accent. And he was like, okay, well I bet that, um, I can like prove to somebody to like a stranger that I’m from America. And they won’t believe that I’m like not from Australia. And he’s like no, no, cause he likes said something about how he could do an American accent. It’s a really good bit. I’m not doing it justice. But my point is is that I’m going to look it up here.  Hold on.  

Emily            00:04:11    I can confirm. It’s Mike Brabinski the bit is called fake Australia and you can look it up on YouTube, laugh, factory Chicago, stand-up comedy. Those are all the keywords you need to find the video.  Um, it’s really fucking good. And that was the only thing that gave me the confidence to pretend like I could do an Australian accent. Cause obviously,  

Sarah           00:04:31    I mean, you did better than what I could do, which I’m not even gonna, because it will be awful.  

Emily            00:04:38    I was practicing in the car and I was literally dying, laughing, so hard

Sarah           00:04:43    That’s right.  

Emily            00:04:47    Guys, if you can’t have a good time with yourself, then you need to really reevaluate your life. Like if you cannot take yourself out to dinner and have a beer and like a nice pizza or a steak or a fucking burger and enjoy your own company, like we need to talk seriously,  

Sarah           00:05:04    Reevaluate your life choices 

Emily            00:05:06    Or send us an email. Like for real, it’s like, we’re here and we’ll talk to you, but you know, you need to, we need, we need to figure this out because hey, this shouldn’t be a thing. Also, I have confidence of a rolly polly and I can go out there and do that.

Sarah           00:05:25    Yeah. But I feel like half of like our success is just pretending we have confidence and fooling no one. 

Emily            00:05:36    It’s not even that. I literally don’t care. I haven’t. I pick my favorite restaurant that I go out to eat by myself. I tip the staff amazingly because I want them all to know as soon as I walk out the door. Yeah, I’m a one top, but I got you. You know what I mean?  

Sarah           00:05:51    So speaking of doing things by yourself, um, I’m going to toot my own horn and

Emily            00:06:07    I’m so sorry. I don’t know what that noise was. Like scoring a basket on the JV basketball team. Like that was, that was a rough noise that just happened. I’m sorry.  

Sarah           00:06:17    So, um, we mentioned it last week, but this is now post craft fair. And obviously Emily and I are in two different States. So yeah, very introverted girl here went and did a craft.  

Emily            00:06:33    She fucking did a great job, but I wish I was there. I mean, I was there in skeleton. Yeah.  

Sarah           00:06:37    In skeleton. And I talked to a thousand people. I mean maybe not actually a thousand people, but it felt like so many for hours. Oh my God. By myself. So if I can do that, I would not have done that probably like a year ago. Maybe even six months ago. That’s how much I liked this podcast guys. Just FYI. Uh, so if I can do that, by the way, you can, you can go eat by yourself at a restaurant.  

Emily            00:07:01    I just don’t understand people who can’t like people who are like, I would never go out by myself to a restaurant. And I’m like, do you not love yourself? Cause like, no, I have issues with that. And even I can take my ass out to eat and like enjoy my own company.  

Sarah           00:07:18    Yeah. But I think the key to that is the weird like leftover fears of sitting by yourself at lunch when you’re like 12 years old, except for, we’re not 12 anymore guys. That’s not a thing it’s like, that doesn’t mean you’re uncool. If you go take yourself out to dinner and also to be,  

Emily            00:07:38    I still don’t get it. And I feel like it’s like such a missed opportunity.  

Sarah           00:07:42    It is. So we did mention Instagram for a minute there and I wanted to, uh, wanted to bring something up. So today I posted on Instagram a tweet me, are they even memes anymore? If they’re just screenshots of tweets? I don’t know.  

Emily            00:08:01    I don’t know. Gen Z works back in the day we made our own memes. Right.  

Sarah           00:08:06    Uh, so I shared this tweet meme from this Twitter user called so complikatied. Wow. Adorable. Oh my God. And so it says, do beavers even know what they’re doing or do they just see water flowing down a river and think absolutely not.  

Emily            00:08:25    No, they see water flowing down a river and they’d think…Dam.

Sarah           00:08:32    Shut up. I hate you so much right now. Okay. So anyways, I shared that and They Will Kill a liked it and shared it to their Instagram story.  

Emily            00:08:44    Girl, let me tell you how much I’m living for. They Will Kill <inaudible>.  

Sarah           00:08:51    They’re like the cooler grownup versions bus. They’ve said that before.

Emily            00:08:56    I think we cut it out of an episode though. But, I think we’ve said it multiple times at this point. Um, doesn’t mean it’s not true. It’s very, true

Sarah           00:09:04    Yeah. Yeah. So I just thought that was my, uh,  

Emily            00:09:09    I was honestly, no, I was peeping that earlier today and I mean, we might have to cut out or creepiness obviously, but no, no, we might. What are you even sipping on? I thought you couldn’t drink soda. Thank you.  

Sarah           00:09:26    That’s water. Is that a diet water? No water with MEO juice in it. So I can drink juice like a child because I can’t,  

Emily            00:09:36    You couldn’t even drink regular day. You can’t drink caffeine. What is <inaudible>? What is that?  

Sarah           00:09:41    It just makes, it tastes like juice so that I don’t feel like I’m drinking lame water because I’m a child. Have you forgotten about the water quality out here?  

Emily            00:09:50    Lame. I’m afraid of water and I drink water. 

Sarah           00:09:54    Have you forgotten about the water quality out here?  

Emily            00:09:58    Oh yeah, you’re right. So did I tell you that has this thing where it’s like, he’ll shout out and he’ll be like, Oh, by the way, give me a diet water. He’s told me about it a million times. We went to A&W and I’m like really trying to focus because I don’t want to be  made fun of for how I order with this fucking lady, because Rachel and Corey made fun of me when we went to North Carolina. They were making fun of me for how I ordered. And I’m like, Sarah           00:09:54    How did you order?

Emily            00:10:33    Slowly and patiently. But they were like making fun of me for how long it took. And I was like, listen, I’m trying to fucking focus and y’all are distracting as hell. Anyways, my point is, is that I ordered at A&W and um, made sure I had his order, right? Like, I’m like focusing so hard. And then out of fucking nowhere, he’s like, Oh, wait in a diet water. And I was like, Oh. And, and I looked back at him and I was like, you son of a bitch. How dare you do that to me?  

Sarah           00:11:10    He almost got you. 

Emily            00:11:12    He almost did. 

Sarah           00:11:15    All right. So we’re back. 

Emily            00:11:16    Hey, ho. 

Sarah           00:11:17    There we go. I knew it was going to happen. 

Emily            00:11:24    She knew I was going to call her a ho. 

Sarah           00:11:32    Oh no. Okay. So today we get to talk about our sister subjects

Emily            00:11:36    Which are paranormal and supernatural. Whoa. 

Sarah           00:11:45    We really need to start recording videos. 

Emily            00:11:49    Like, no, I trust you guys do not need video of the faces that I make to make those sounds and noise  

Sarah           00:11:54    Yes, you do. So. Yeah, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll we will be talking about the paranormal and the supernatural  

Emily            00:12:08    Ba-bada-baaa

Sarah           00:12:11    I am slightly nervous. Cause I like, I have like a general idea of what I wanted to talk about, but I didn’t know the specifics of like what to research for what I was looking for.  

Emily            00:12:30    Okay. What were you looking for? What were you, what do you want to talk about? I’m so interested.  

Sarah           00:12:35    We are going to discuss Parapsychology. Do you know what that is? Yes. Are you going to discuss it? 

Emily            00:12:50   No. It’s come up before.  

Sarah           00:12:54    Yeah. So parapsychology is the study of proposed psychic phenomenon, extra sensory perception, you know, a six sense telepathy second site. It also encompasses apparitions, hauntings near-death experiences out of body experiences, clairvoyance, pre-cognition, et cetera. So this is the general term I’m using to discuss my overarching theme, which is more related to paranormal energies in general. All right. So brief thing about parapsychology. So yeah, it’s the study of proposed psychic phenomenon. The, it was founded by Joseph Banks Rhine, who was originally a botanist with a PhD in botany, who was also in the Marines at one point. He went to a lecture in 1922 by Arthur Conan Doyle that exulted proof of communication with the dead. I had to look up what exulted meant because I wasn’t sure apparently exult means to show or field jubilation at something. So learned that, um, religious. Yeah, it wasn’t sure. It sounded like exalt. So it was a little, it was close. I wasn’t sure. 

Emily            00:14:14   Wait, there are different words. 

Sarah           00:14:22   Yeah. It’s exult with a U.  

Emily            00:14:26    Oh yeah. Okay. Yeah.  

Sarah           00:14:31    So, um, I just want to go into this little tidbit, cause I think it’s funny. Uh, so he went to this lecture by Arthur Conan Doyle, the guy who wrote, Sherlock Holmes and he’s like, Oh my God, this is so exciting. We can communicate with the dead. So he got super into it, but also got involved with exposing fraud with mediums in spiritualism in general, in the early 1900s. So, people were friends, it seemed like people were friends with this lady, Mina Crandon. He claimed that she got her seances they usually take place in the dark and in, well, at least back then. And so one, sometimes our brain can interpret things differently in the dark and makeup things that aren’t there, but also they can use the dark as a cover to actually, you know, do things, uh, you know, make noises like have there be “apparitions” that if the lights were on, you could tell it was not actually an apparition or make it seem like she was floating when she wasn’t actually floating. So he was like,  

Emily            00:15:40    Like those like a blind restaurants, we have to be like blindfolded and they make you like, think that you’re eating real food, but yeah.  

Sarah           00:15:50    Kind of like that. I don’t want to do that. I’m sure you are. And no, thank you. 

Emily            00:15:55    Like eating the busboys toes. I was like, what’s the grossest thing I can think of.  

Sarah           00:16:05    And that was really gross. Um, so yeah, he was like, Hey, this chick Mena, I saw her do this. Like this is fraudulent, but it seemed like people were friends with her and they didn’t want to accept that, uh, his paper into the American Society of Psychical Research. So he said, fuck you and publish it elsewhere in the Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology. And after he did that, Arthur Conan Doyle, the guy who got him into this paranormal stuff wrote an article titled, “JB Rhine is an ass.”  

Emily            00:16:46    LOL. Well, straightened to the point.  

Sarah           00:16:49    Yep. Because as we’ve learned from previous episodes, pettiness is not a purely modern trait. So he’s the father of basically parapsychology in this research in the early 19 hundreds. He also coined the use of the Zener cards, which are those cards that have like the plus sign, the wavy lines, the square and the star, and so the image is faced towards one person and the other person across the table supposed to guess. And then they use how many times they’ve guessed it correctly to determine whether or not somebody has psychic abilities. Um, there are a lot of issues with that and his research wasn’t great, or his research methods weren’t great. So, it sort of muddled his data, but he did, pave the way for this research into this parapsychology, paranormal kind of area. In 1957, the Parapsychological Association was founded and in the 70s and 80s. There was a lot more interest in psychic abilities, Nia Colt. And so, and obviously there’s more technology. So testing kind of like ramped up, right? This is just a basic overview because I want to talk about the things that are considered part of the parapsychology realm. Okay.  

Emily            00:18:19    Like what?  

Sarah           00:18:21    Well, I’m going to start off with the most believable and backed up by modern science kind of thing. And then go to the least believable. I don’t know. I feel like in, in movies and TV shows like everybody expects paranormal things to be like something fucking crazy. You know what I mean?  

Emily            00:18:45    Like a poltergeist situation.

Sarah           00:18:50    Yeah.  Or this weird dark figure coming and eating your face or I don’t know, like what, but you know, something really ominous and obvious. Whereas I’ve been thinking about it a lot this week and I’m coming at it from a science perspective, but also bringing in my perspectives of that I don’t think it’s that obvious, personally. 

So, with meditation, right. Nowadays when we think about meditation, it’s pretty common. Like workplace stress-reducing things. They often mentioned meditation. I mean, we got stuff at work about meditation and how it can help with your mindset and all this other kind of stuff. But it’s only in recent years that it’s like been considered more mainstream and that the benefits are more widely acknowledged. Um, it used to really be considered more new age-y and hokey, you know, uh, it’s earliest evidence was in Hindu texts and it’s prominent in religions in general, but I think that’s also why it wasn’t super taken seriously until recently. However, the National Science for Complimentary and Integrative Health, had an article about it that I thought was super interesting. In 2012, researchers compared the brain images of 50 adults who meditated and 50 who didn’t and basically what they found was that those who practice meditation for many years have more folds on the outer layers of their brain. And this may increase the brain’s ability to process information.  

Sarah           00:20:38    Right? Which was interesting. Another 2013 review of some studies suggested that meditation might slow down, or even reverse, changes that take place in the brain due to aging.  

Emily            00:20:56    That, I mean, all of that, I believe because that was another part of the Claire Sylvia, uh, episode where she had been practicing meditation for years, and was part of that study that she actually like reduced her blood pressure.  

Sarah           00:21:10    Yeah. Yep. And see, that was another thing that I was, um, going to mention is that there’s research. I mean, there’s mixed evidence, but there’s enough amount of research that it’s suggested for help with chronic pain, anxiety, stress, blood pressure, all kinds of stressors that meditation is supposed to help with. It probably also is suggested a lot because there’s not really too many negative side effects. Apparently some people claim that meditation increases their anxiety.  

Emily            00:21:49    I think that it kind of depends because I can see that point in a sense of, um, it really just depends on like what your experience is.  

Sarah           00:22:03    I don’t know. I like, so for me, I know when I first tried meditation, it was like doing things like focus on your breathing and do like this amount of breaths and like focus. It, it’s really hard for me to stay focused and then I get stressed out and I am annoyed with myself, but if I do like guided meditations, I don’t have as much of that issue. And since I’ve been doing guided meditations now for like a couple of years, my ability to do the other meditations without guidance has increased, if that makes sense.  

Emily            00:22:36    Yeah. I mean personally, like I think it’s a great tool and you know, I would encourage everyone to try it, but I also could kind of see, you know, depending on like literally what your experience is. But there are ways where that could be scary, you know? Like imagine if like you had like a sleep paralysis issue and maybe in meditation, you like had a moment where you saw your sleep paralysis daemon in the waking life. You know what I mean? It’s like, there are certain circumstances that are outside of our realm of understanding that might cause someone to be anxious about opening themselves up.  

Sarah           00:23:16    Yeah. So really what I’m trying to say with meditation is that, you know, this is an example of something that was previously just thought to be like wishful thinking, kind of weird, you know, on the same level of like, I feel like it was on the same levels, like prayer, or something like that, where it’s not like it’s not really going to help. And now that there’s been more studies into meditation and the term, the short and longterm, like there’s actually now evidence that it’s helpful.  If you really think about it, like, what are you doing? You’re like sitting and clearing your mind. No. So with meditation, what I was thinking was is that like, to me, if you think about it, like break it down meditation, everybody’s like, Oh yeah.  

Sarah           00:24:11    Do meditation, it’ll help with this. But like, realistically, what are you doing? You’re sitting still and trying to relax your mind and clear it. And there’s all these great benefits of just being able to control the energy in your mind. Honestly. That’s how I see it. And so that’s where this is my stepping stone. It’s like, this is my reasonable stepping stone. We’re going to get further and further into this is where my train of thought goes with these paranormal experiences. And I mean, to be Frank, even with…  

Sarah           00:24:56    It’s gonna get personal, personal…  

Sarah           00:25:03    Yeah. The reason I bring this up to you is like, I’ve mentioned in previous podcast, but like, and hopefully not everybody doesn’t think I’m insane, but like when I do more meditation, I do experience more paranormal-type stuff. Like even today, I also didn’t get a lot of sleep. I’m on like four hours of sleep. I finally had time to lay down for a little bit. I was like, all right, I’ll do a meditation so that I don’t actually fall asleep, but I still get some rest. But, I forgot to set an alarm and I dozed off, but I came back to it because it felt like somebody tapped my arm. And like that kind of, and it’s stuff like that that happens more and more, every time I do consistent meditation.  

Emily            00:25:55    You’re trying to encourage people to meditate. And you’re like, I don’t understand why people would have anxiety about that. I seem like you might be the poster child for the reasons why one might get anxiety about  

Sarah           00:26:10    It doesn’t scare me. I don’t know. I think that’s just a me thing, though. I think that I’m just a weirdo. But anyway, so the, the whole reason I bring meditation up is because I feel like it’s like the first reasonable stepping stone into these paranormal experiences. And my point in bringing it up to you is like, you know, I feel like it’s a lot easier for people to accept things. Like UFO’s, you know. Most people, if you’re like, do you believe any of the answers? You’re like, yeah, there’s probably aliens out there somewhere. But like ghosts and other kinds of stuff are still kind of iffy. Like only 42% of Americans say that they believe in ghosts.

Emily            00:26:53    I mean they could be time slips.

Sarah           00:26:56    But 74% say they believe in God, Which I find interesting because is it not supposed to be like a disembodied spirit. 

Emily            00:27:17    Hey, that’s the Holy spirit. 

Sarah           00:27:20    I know literally a literal ghost. So from meditation, we are jumping to the next stepping stone into the paranormal experiences that are pretty common. Right. Uh, well, relatively, and that has been studied, which is near death experiences. Okay. Um, I’ve been watching Surviving Death. 

Emily            00:27:38    Oh, nice. 

Sarah           00:27:34    Yeah, it’s good. I like it. Um, full disclosure. I did have to like skip the episodes on mediums because I just,  

Emily            00:27:48    That’s where they kind of lost me to be honest. It was a little much for me. And I was like, Oh, I didn’t realize, you know, you hooked me in the beginning with the near-death experiences and like kind of opening my mind to like the boundaries of like the medical and the spiritual world, and all of this. And then it went straight to like trance induced mediums. And being in dark room in weird places. And I was, this is not what I thought I was signing up for.  

Sarah           00:28:21    I am 100% in agreement with you. And this is where I feel like I’m trying to undo that. Cause like they started off strong with the like we’re blurring the lines between the physical scientific that we can test. And the paranormal feel like meditation is part of that. Now we have near-death experiences where, you know, people have reported these experiences. Yeah. But there’s not real proof. You know what I mean?  

Emily            00:28:51    Yeah. Well, I mean like how do you prove what’s going on in someone’s head? So the other things had, you know,  

Sarah           00:28:58    Yeah. Like, so one part that I thought was super interesting. I found this article, um, and it re referenced, Dr. Sam Parnia, and he really likes the idea of studying near-death experiences. However, there’s no easy way to like induce a near-death experience.  

Emily            00:29:29    Oh, well, have you ever heard of this show called the OA?

Sarah           00:29:35    I mean, yeah. I know how you feel about the way, cause  

Emily            00:29:39    There’s a, there’s a guy hap that might have some info for it. Yeah.  

Sarah           00:29:46    Um, but realistically that does make it difficult in the scientific community, because with science  

Emily            00:29:51    It’s like, what are you going to do? You’re going to kill people? 

Sarah           00:29:54    And exactly. It’s all about the empirical data where you have to be able to replicate those results and you can’t repeatedly put people through that situation. It makes it difficult to study. Right? But when he was working, he was the director of critical care and resuscitation research at New York University Langdon Medical Center. And he surveyed a bunch of people who went into cardiac arrest and out of 140 people that he interviewed 46 percent-ish had the sense of being conscious during that event, even though they weren’t. Right. Yeah. And so he’s quoted as saying, what we’ve learned is that yes. When it comes, when we come close to death, we seem to have transcendental and mystical, whatever you want to call it experiences. They’re not consistent with delusions. They’re not consistent with hallucinations. He said, this finding suggests that consciousness may, might be more complex than experts previously thought, which is the way that people write it off. Now it’s like, Oh, um, it’s just the brain’s way of malfunctioning before it’s dead.  

Emily             00:31:16    Which like, that’s even something that they said in surviving death. So that I did watch, sorry, I just threw a pencil on the ground on accident. Um, but yeah, that’s what he said is he was like, you know, we, people have said that it’s morphine or that’s the drugs that like you’re under. And he’s like, well, people who are under the influence of drugs do not experience near-death experiences. They don’t have that. Cause people who don’t have drugs in their system that have this experience and that are aware and awake for this the entire time.  

Sarah           00:31:46    Yes. And so in a previous episode, you mentioned the lady who died giving birth.

Emily            00:31:56    Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And she had told everyone for weeks, like hallucinating that she was gonna die and they all treat her like she was fucking crazy. And then she literally died.  

Sarah           00:32:09    So in, in this show, it’s so interesting because this is what made me watch. This actually was Emily mentioning it on a previous episode. But in the show the doctor is sitting there and she’s like trying to tell her patient like, no, honey, you’re going to be fine. Like, this is not going to happen to you. And then when it did, they’re interviewing the doctor and the doctor was like, Oh my God, I can’t believe this is happening. And she said it under her breath and she’s crossed her arms across her chest in shock. Yeah. So this lady is flatlined on the table. She’s dead. They’re trying to resuscitate her. The OB GYN is sitting there going, Oh my God, I can’t believe this is happening with her arms across her chest. And the lady who has died on the table, says that she was there and saw this woman do this. Wow. And how else could she have known if she was not actually there. 

Emily            00:33:07    How else could she have known if she was not there? And it’s like that.  

Sarah           00:33:13    And, and that’s something the doctor even admitted, which like, yeah, doctors are definitely skeptics when it comes to this, but she’s like, I, you know, yeah. I was skeptical. But when she told me exactly what I said and did in those five minutes that she was dead, like how can I not believe that? 

Emily            00:33:30    Exactly. And it’s like, I feel like that honestly, mixed with what you just said about like consciousness being more complex. And I’m like, you just, and that’s kind of what I thought about with the octopuses. I’m like you just can’t measure cognitive, cognitive ability. You cannot measure what that actually means in the actual literal, visceral, physical, spiritual sense. Like there’s no way to measure that. You can observe behaviors and record behaviors in a controlled environment that you can do, but to understand exactly what consciousness of any entity really is, I think truly is impossible. Unless you have that experience. And like you just said, it’s like, how could she have known if she wasn’t there?  

Sarah           00:34:20    Exactly. And that’s, so that’s something that this doctor to Parnia has in this other article, he’s talking about these patients that recounted this experiences and he says they described full details of what is happening to them. And in one of these cases, we managed to confirm the details for the first time as it’s happening over the course of up to five minutes. And he said, this is surprising because the cerebral cortex typically shuts down within two to 20 seconds of losing oxygen. And this lady was dead for minutes. And then  

Emily            00:34:52    Yeah but, where are they getting these cerebral cortex facts from? Because, that’s my beef.  They always are like, Oh, you’re going to be brain dead in less than 60 seconds. And then there’s all these people with these crazy experiences. And I’m like, who is, who is getting brain dead? And what is their life like? Like what is their diet like, like what is, what is going on with those people? Because we don’t hear enough about those situations in my opinion.  

Sarah           00:35:15    So I think what they say is like, quote, unquote, shuts down. It’s just that machines can’t detect, elect like the electrical impulses in the brain anymore. 

Emily            00:35:29    So when this happened to her, could they detect him like whatever in the brain electrical impulses  

Sarah           00:35:35    They said that there was no activity, she was dead. And then, so there was another lady, I don’t know if you remember this one. So  

Emily            00:35:43    She was in the canoeing accident? Yeah. I remember that.

Sarah           00:35:47    So this one killed me because she is so she’s kayaking and she goes down this dangerous ass waterfall and drowns. She drowned. And she was dead for like 30 minutes. They pulled her out of the water and she was blue and her eyes were open and she was dead. And she described this full experience of the afterlife and meeting with spirits. And she also got a premonition that her son was going to die young. And you know, the sense of time was warped and a sense of happiness and peace and all these common things that many other people have with near death experiences. But she was dead, dead for 30 minutes, technically because of how long she had gone without oxygen. There should’ve been extensive brain damage and she didn’t have it. And she was brought back miraculously. But with this experience. 

lady, I don’t know if you remember this one. So  

Emily            00:36:52    I just want to know what the percentage is of like people that have, that have had near-death experiences that literally come back brain damaged. Correct.  

Sarah           00:37:02    That’s a good question. That’s something I didn’t look into.

Emily            00:37:06    Because that is always what you hear on these shows. Obviously, like I know I’ve mentioned it several times. Like we used to watch I Survived, or I Shouldn’t Be Alive, for like all of these weird freaky shows. Cause they have juicy stories that are fun to listen to ironically, because mostly because the people survived honestly. And well, some of them did well, I don’t know it was automatic swap probably why it’s not on anymore.  

Sarah           00:37:30    I mean, but it’s also problematic. Why like, why do we enjoy we as a culture? Like enjoying listening to true crime so much.  

Emily            00:37:39    It’s not even just true crime. It’s like every hit show is about police, uh, forensics, doctors dying. Yeah. Murder. I think murder, serial killers, all the fucking killer documentaries. I think really like our biggest fear, like as a species and tell me y’all, if this isn’t true, if you were in the woods, okay. And you’re walking in the woods and you hear a stick break behind you and you whip around and you turn and you see a man standing there with a fucking chainsaw and some weird mask and he’s covered in blood, what do you think? You think you’re going to die. Right? Yeah. Now if the same situation happened to you’re walking in the woods and you hear a stick breaking behind you and you went around and you turn and you see a wolf that it’s just a surprise to see you, as you are to see it. Do you have that same feeling? You have the same feeling that you would have if you saw a physical human being. Cause shouldn’t, should we not be comforted by our own species? Shouldn’t we be able to turn around and kind of be like, oh, you’re, you’re one of us. Like, we’re a social species. We live in groups. Do we not? That’s what they tell us. That’s what the scientists tell us. That’s where we play. I don’t understand.  

Sarah           00:39:11    Yeah. Cause I mean, I’ll be honest, like part of the reason I, you know, I mentioned before, I think that I used to be really afraid of ghosts as a kid and like so much. So much so, I slept with the light on until way too late in my life.  

Emily            00:39:27    I still sleep with the lights on all of them.  

Sarah           00:39:30    Oh, I can’t anymore. But #motherhood.  

Emily            00:39:34    I’m like, I cannot sleep in the dark. I’m always afraid something’s going to get me.  

Sarah           00:39:39    Yeah. So what happened was, is that I’ve had, as I’ve grown older and had some really terrible experiences with our own species, I’ve come to realize that I have less to fear from the possible paranormal than, you know, other people. Yeah. And so that’s, that’s sort of really one helped my fear of ghosts and also spiked my interest in the paranormal more because it’s like, well, the likelihood of me getting killed by another human is way higher than me getting like possessed by the devil or something. You know what I mean? I guess knock on wood. I don’t know. I don’t really believe in that though. Um, that’s a whole, another thing for a whole nother day, but yeah. So back to the near death experiences, um, there’s really a lot of common threads though. Right? A lot of them. And they mentioned this in Surviving Death is that in a lot of them, the sense of time is completely warped. One guy was like, could have been minutes. It could have been a millennia. Like I have no idea. There was a great sense of happiness and peace, which like brings me hope. Not going to lie. Or often there’s a sense of a tunnel. Now. I feel like people can use the sense of a tunnel to be like, well, everybody says going to a tunnel. So that could just be a preconceived notion that we have in our heads. So if we know that we’re dying, that’s already like an idea.  

Emily            00:41:10    I feel like really, truly what it is is Western civilization just like telling you that you’re not a fucking valid being and that you’re not the same as like an orangutan, or a sloth, through like any other being that is like fully connected to the fucking earth, but no, you’re a person. So it’s like, you have to live by a different set of rules and that’s, and that’s all bullshit.  

Sarah           00:41:30    Honestly, that is the big theme for today is yeah, it would be really great if we could like definitively prove like some of these things. But, one, we don’t know that we won’t at some point, lwe still got a lot of time, hopefully. Two, I just think that it’s really ballsy of us to be like, welp science can’t prove it now. So it must not be true, like doing really think that we know that much? 

Emily            00:42:04    I guess. Cause I was just about to say, it’s like, it’s exactly what I said last week where it’s like, the more that we find out about things, the more we learn that we don’t know.  

Sarah           00:42:11    So, and the other thing that this makes me think of is, space. Let’s talk about space because that’s a very, you know, people can agree that space exists. Right. Um, and when I was looking at the time travel stuff, they talk about space a lot and it was like making my brain explode. But one of the things that stuck out to me in one of the articles was like, the more we learn about it simultaneously, the more we learn that we don’t know. And like, I wish that that could also be applied to these things that weren’t so easily dismissed as, this is just hallucination. Oh, that’s just wishful thinking, Oh, that’s just your brain malfunctioning. Which to me, to be honest, I think that it’s just easier for some people to not believe in stuff, because it’s way scarier to think that like, I don’t know, maybe you’ll have to have consequences after your life has done or like who knows what. You know what I mean? But so I think for some people it’s just an easy coping mechanism. 

Emily            00:43:10    It’s like homophobia for the spirit. 

Sarah           00:43:14    Yeah. Paranormaphobia, paranormalphobia, paranormal phobia, TM TM TM.  

Sarah           00:43:23    So like going from there, we’re still I’m I got really into surviving death. I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s definitely up my alley kind of show.  

Emily            00:43:31    I know I just skip the medium episodes and finish it.

Sarah           00:43:37    I really tried watching the medium ones, too. I was like, maybe I’m just being a hater. Like these haters that I’m hating.  

Emily            00:43:44    Everybody has their limits. Everybody has their boundaries. I don’t like it. It makes me feel weird inside.  

Sarah           00:43:50    To me, I feel like what’s that amount of staging and showiness. I don’t know. I just can’t. Yeah. I don’t like it either. It just, yeah.  

Emily            00:44:01    I don’t even want to consider it as an option to be honest. And I’m upset that it’s like, this is a thing that is happening and I had no idea anything about that. And I’m like, how is this happening right now? Like what year is it? What year is it??

Sarah           00:44:16    I mean, there’s still, but the other thing is there’s we want to talk about advancing technology. They’re still using the same sounds techniques in these episodes that they used in the fucking 1920s that were proven to be fraudulent. So that’s where my issue comes in, too. 

Emily            00:44:32   So many issues.

Sarah           00:44:36   Well, no cameras are allowed in the room. There’s an issue with that. I’m sorry.  

Emily            00:44:37    Now, I’m sorry that I’m not sorry. You’re right. That is a problem. Yeah.  

Sarah           00:44:42    Anyway, so yeah. So now down to the next, down to the next step in the, uh, adventure, down the paranormal adventures.

Emily            00:44:50    Down the Parapsychical staircase. Love it. Yep.  

Sarah           00:44:56    The cyclical of parapsychical staircase?

Emily            00:45:01   The spiral parapsychical staircase?  

Sarah           00:45:04    Ooh, actually that was good. So the next episode after the mediums part on Surviving Death, which is on Netflix. I don’t know if anybody, if I mentioned that, but go watch it. Uh, so they talk about signs from the beyond, right? And we’re not talking specifically from mediums, right. We’re talking about, you know, like, I’ll give you an example. One of my friends, her mom passed away when she was younger and every time she sees specific type of butterfly, she’s like, oh, it’s like a sign for mom. And a lot of people have stuff like that. And the science people of the world want to say that it’s just a coincidence and it doesn’t really mean anything, but like one, I feel like we said it in another episode. I mean, like, if that’s how you want to live your life feeling like everything’s a coincidence and nothing has meaning, like cool, bro, that sounds super fucking depressing, to be honest.  

Sarah           00:46:04    And they mentioned confirmation bias as well. And that humans love to pick out patterns out of any kind of randomness and say that it has meaning, which like, okay, fine, whatever. That’s how you want to live, live your life like that. But, when I was watching Surviving Death, there were a couple of really interesting stories that seem to just a little too coincidental for me. So there’s this lady who’s really close with her mom, her and her sister. And they were older ladies. And when her mom was dying, her mom was 97. Um, she’s like, mom, send back a sign, send me a Cardinal when you die to let me know that you’re here and you know, the mom agrees. And she’s like, okay. And she’s thinking about it. And she’s like, yeah, it’s going to be in some weird way that I don’t expect.  

But you know, from the way that she’s describing, it’s not like she vaguely sees a cardinal in the distance. So a few days after the Memorial service, they’re sitting at somebody’s house and they hear a little thud and a Cardinal flew into the window, the living room. So they go to check on it and this bird lets them, hold it for minutes. This a little Cardinal and there, the sisters are holding it in their hands and stroking it. And he’s just sitting there chilling, looking at them and there’s video footage on the, on the show. They took like somebody had their camera out or something. They had him in the house and he was sitting there with them still. And they were, you know, emotional, cause they’re like, Oh my God, it’s a sign from mom.  

Sarah           00:47:51    And like, I get that. It seems coincidental. But I would feel more if he about it, if it was just a Cardinal in the distance and be like, that’s for sure a sign, but it flew directly to their house and let them hold it. And then they held it for a really long time. And so one of the sisters is trying to like, let him go outside. Yeah. And so she like pops her hands up to let him fly away and he starts to fly and he comes back and lands on her shoulder and hangs out with them for some more minutes. Until after a while they finally get him into a tree and then he stays in the tree for a little bit. And then he lets them pet him like one more time and then he flies off, fine. But it was like an extended experience.  

Emily            00:48:38    An extended visit from the Cardinal. A visit from the cardinal.

Sarah           00:48:48    I just said it. You did pretty good though.  

Emily            00:48:51    I don’t think so to our Australian listeners. I’m sorry.  

Sarah           00:48:56    You know, we actually got some local nurse in Germany, so that was fun.  

Emily            00:48:59    Oh, Hey guys, we love all of you.  

Sarah           00:49:03    And so I just thought that that was a really interesting specific example, right? Like, okay. I could try and be skeptical about some things, but that one is intense and I cannot blame them for thinking that either to be honest, I would think that, too. And then, so there was another lady who was saying that she didn’t believe in messages from the beyond. That she thought they were completely subjective. You know, it was usually confirmation bias playing into it. And then each just you’re seeing what you want to see. So this lady went to a medium who mentioned her brother who had recently passed away and she goes, um, Oh, your brother’s saying happy birthday. And she was like, Oh wow. Okay. And the medium didn’t know it was her birthday. Which to be fair, there are easy ways to find out.  

Sarah           00:50:00    I was reading, doing some research into mediums, but a lot of frauds would like stalk Facebook pages before a client came in to do like, wow. Yeah, it’s really great. So I don’t know about that. But she said that she hadn’t told her it was her birthday. And um, she’s like, yeah, your brother’s saying happy birthday. She’s like, I’m also seeing like a red balloon. She was like, huh, that’s weird. Okay. So the lady went home and went to bed and she, before she fell asleep, she was meditating reaching out for her brother, like asking for a sign from him. Right. So she goes to sleep and she wakes up the next morning and there was a red balloon caught in a tree outside her bedroom window.  

Emily            00:50:47    Oh shit. Yeah. 

Sarah           00:50:54    Which like, that just seems really specific. You know what I mean?  

Emily            00:51:00    It’s a little too, too, you know.  

Sarah           00:51:03    I mean, a little too, too, right? Yeah.

Emily            00:51:05    And like how many times has a balloon been caught in your tree? Nevermind a red one.

Sarah           00:51:12    And right outside your bedroom window. After that, I don’t know. It was just a lot of coincidences for me. 

Emily            00:51:19    Seems a bit questionable to me. Yeah. 

Sarah           00:51:23    So then, I want to switch real quick to the idea of telepathy. Okay. I’m not going to get into whether or not psychics and mediums have real things because I feel like it’s highly dependent and it’s a topic for another day. However, I do want to put the idea in people’s minds about, you know, remember what I said at the beginning of the episode where I’m like, okay, maybe that’s not as extreme as people think it is. So I’ve only thinking about like psychic connection or people think about like, Oh, I’ll see this like vision in my head of something or, you know. It’s clear as day. Right. But what about like the basic psychic connections you have with another person? 

Emily            00:52:13    What do you mean? 

Sarah           00:52:14    So I’ll give you an example. Um, shout out to, uh, my, my birthday buddy. Uh, one of my good friends, Dale.  

Sarah           00:52:25    We have multiple times, like we’re weirdly in sync, which is also weird because we’re across the country from each other. Right. But it’s gotten so common when he’s having a bad day. He’ll be, he’ll call me or message me and check on me and be like, Hey, are you doing okay today? I’ll be like, no, I’m actually having a really shit day. And he’ll be like, yeah, my spidey senses were tingling. I thought you might be having a bad day. Cause I’m not doing well today either. And so, and even yesterday, dude today, so we were talking today and we were thinking about the same exact topic at the same time across the country. And we found out by talking about it the next day and I was like, wait, this happened last night. And he’s like, yeah. And I was like, I was literally discussing this very same thing with a friend of mine here last night.  

Emily            00:53:26    Wow.  

Sarah           00:53:28    And you know, I don’t feel like, you know, it doesn’t sound like anything crazy, but I also don’t think it’s not uncommon of an experience.  

Emily            00:53:35    No. I feel like this and that, isn’t that a thing it’s like, if you think of someone without ego, like,  

Sarah           00:53:41    And then they call you or texting you, it’s  

Emily            00:53:43    Like when your ear starts to buzz yeah. Or they call you or text you or like, you know? Yeah. I feel like here’s the thing that’s really annoying about humans trying to prove that they’re not anything special is like, I feel like humans are, I feel like we actually do have a set of skills that we neglect, you know? And it’s like, meditation is one of them, but yeah, no, I definitely feel like there are certain people that are on your same wavelength. I’m not saying that like they can read your mind and be like, Hm, Sarah’s thinking about chicken alfredo right now. You know? It’s like, they can’t do that shit, but it’s like, because you are close or like, because you are similar in personality, it’s like, yeah. You know, you could probably play that game where you’re like, we’re three, two, one, and we’re going to say the same word. Or you could probably get it multiple times just because of how close and how good of an understanding you guys have each other. Yeah.  

Sarah           00:54:43    And realistically like, okay, this is, these are words that we use commonly. Right. We talk about having a deep connection with somebody. But if we break down that phrase too, and we think about a connection, like we use the same term when we’re talking about phone connection, internet connection, a way to pass information between  

Emily            00:55:05    Exactly. IIt’s like, we believe in Wi-Fi. How many of us know exactly how wifi works?

Sarah           00:55:12    Wi-Fi is magic? I swear.  

Emily            00:55:14    How many of us know, like the actual mechanics of how Wi-Fi works? Like if you know, good for you, but it’s like, how many of us also trust that when we type in the correct little, uh, numbers and letters, then we’re going to fucking get a connection.  

Sarah           00:55:27    Okay. So there’s another good point too. It’s like, let’s, you know, we’re talking about like radio waves, right? Sure. So if we don’t have a radio, that’s tuned to a specific frequency, we can’t hear the stuff that’s on that radio frequency. Right? But does that mean that, that stuff isn’t there?  

Emily            00:55:49    Yeah. No. It’s just like when you’re listening to FM all day, that doesn’t mean that there’s no am stations. Go ahead.  

Sarah           00:55:55    Yeah. I think that the, the real issue is that we don’t have that way or scientists or whatever. Haven’t figured out the way to tune into that kind of thing.  

Emily            00:56:05    I fully love science and in researching into things and figuring out why things are the way that they are like, obviously, welcome to the podcast. But I just also feel like there are some ephemeral experiences in life. How could you possibly, how could you possibly think that you could like bottle it? You know what I mean? And reproduce it. That’s, that’s another thing that they said in Surviving Death, it’s he’s like, listen, how do you study NDEs? How do you study these things that people bring it up? He’s like everything that has been studied, you know, from like behavioral things or like developmental, you know, uh, social behaviors has been studied by through accounts, accounts of people sharing their experiences and that’s where it starts.  

Sarah           00:56:58    Yep. So even with like, let’s go back to meditation, right. Which that is backed by science to have improvements in pain management, stress management, lowering blood pressure, et cetera. Healing. And I’ll be honest. Like that’s one of the reasons I use meditation too, is for my rheumatoid arthritis, with the chronic pain, if I’m having a really bad day with RA, I do a meditation and I’ll tell you what, that should help way more than like ibuprofen does. I’m not like to be quite honest. I mean, I have to have an hour to actually like, turn my mind all the way off kind of thing for it to really be good, but like still it’s helpful. But my point in bringing it back up is like, yeah, there’s studies that have shown that it’s helpful, but do we actually know why?  

Sarah           00:57:51    Hmm. We don’t really know why we just see the correlation. And honestly, that’s a lot of science when you talk about those random, those random facts. Like, Oh, if you have a cat you’re less likely to die at, you know, from a heart attack or something. What, I’ve never heard that there’s some random facts about like having animals specifically, but that’s not that there’s any causality between it. It’s just a correlation. Right. And it’s a correlation enough to where it’s like, is there a reason it’s related? I don’t know. And that’s kind of the same with meditation. Yeah.  

Emily            00:58:30    Oh, that’s a good point. It’s like the need to prove that something is, or isn’t happening. It’s just somewhat baffling. It’s like, I get it. I do get it. But it’s also when it comes to things like this, most kind of like, well obviously it’s doing something, you know?  

Sarah           00:58:49    Yeah. No, I’m I’m with you on that. And like, there’s just like, there’s plenty of other things that we like can’t realistically prove in life either. I mean, we could sit there and be like, Oh, love is a hormone. You know what I mean?  

Emily            00:59:03    Yeah. That oxytocin, bullshit. I don’t like those. I don’t like those studies where they’re just like, Oh yeah. It’s because this hormone is released. I’m like maybe, maybe because of like, maybe it’s the other way round. Yeah.  

Sarah           00:59:16    Maybe the foremost release because of the connection with the person, you know? Yeah. Like maybe I chose  

Emily            00:59:22    To release it. Just like come out. Yes. And maybe I, I don’t know. It just diminishes it. You know what I mean? It diminishes in an invalidates, like our experiences. Yes. And that’s where I think I take issue with it is.  

Sarah           00:59:41    And to be honest, that’s part of the reason why, I mean, I’ll go into specifically at the end, why I wondered about this stuff and what was really on my mind, but that’s part of it is I’m tired of second guessing myself on everything. And not that there isn’t like a reasonable, yeah, you probably shouldn’t think that you’re the best at everything, but you know what  

Emily            01:00:09    It’s like, that does not, first of all, I feel like that doesn’t apply to women. Any women, I don’t care. Like any woman CIS or non or all of us together, it’s just bullshit. And I know some men experienced bullshit to let you know what the majority of you are pretty much validated a lot of the time. And you know what? We don’t know what that’s like. It’s super fucking annoying, like to have to fight tooth and nail for like literally everything. I don’t know if I can say this, but I’m really gonna, I had someone asked me about how the podcast is going, right. So I brought up a topic that I had researched a decent amount and I was like, yeah, it’s pretty cool. And we talked about this. Then they proceeded to like, try to tell me about what the fuck I was talking about. Which is like, I’m not saying I’m an expert on shit. But you know, I definitely put in some time and effort to understand what I was talking about. And they started saying shit that I knew for a fact, wasn’t true because I looked it up and I was like, well, actually, no, that’s not true. And they were like, well. And I was like, no, this is not a devil’s advocate situation. Like I actually fucking did the work and I don’t need you to come over here and be like, Oh, well I fucking know shit. Like, no you don’t. I don’t know. Maybe it’s like the lack of sleep, but I’m like super rowdy today.  

Sarah           01:01:49    One, I love it. And to like, that has been something also that’s been on my mind this week, which is like, Oh, to have the confidence of a straight white man to be able to walk in a room and say, Oh yeah, I, for sure know this. I for sure know this when you actually don’t. And you have like, this is the thing that boggles my mind as like, how do you sit there and say something that don’t actually know  

Emily            01:02:22    And just,  

Sarah           01:02:23    And just spew it out of your mouth. It’s like a fart. And like, yeah. I said it. So it must be true. Cause like, to be honest, I had my own experience this week with like somebody being like, well, you don’t actually know this. So, and then I looked it up and they were still wrong. I’m like, don’t try and make me seem like I’m the crazy person  

Emily            01:02:43    Thing. It’s like, we have to look it up. Yeah. But I’m just so fucking fed up with it. I’m so fed up with it. I’m so fed up with the gas lighting validation. And it’s so annoying because it’s like the incapacity for some people to understand what it’s like to not have the privilege of everyone just like accepting whatever the fuck comes out of your mouth.  

Sarah           01:03:12    Of your mouth. Yeah. It’s just, We’re also in the reverse, the assumption that what I’m saying must immediately be wrong or need second guessing. It must be just because it’s coming out of my mind.  

Emily            01:03:28    It must be double checked. It’s just, yeah, it’s incorrect. It’s invalid. It’s just the most fucking frustrating feeling in the world. And I just I’ve had, I’ve had it. I’ve had it up to here.  

Sarah           01:03:40    Oh girl, same. Like this has been here. This has been my week. And I think I, you know, in previous episodes, I think we can tell, but I do topics usually somehow related to how my week is going. And with this one, you know, this was really a, you know what, yes, I do believe in the paranormal. And I do believe in things that we can’t prove. And I think I have a healthy dose of skepticism, but I also like fuck off, man.  

Emily            01:04:10    You know, it’s just like having the confidence to live out loud at the gym. You know, they put a Bluetooth speaker in there for someone to use it and that someone is going to be us and we’re going to live out loud and we’re going to play monster mash real fucking loud. Oh yeah. All year round. Do Henri  

Sarah           01:04:31    Do our dance team dance to that. Do you remember it?  

Emily            01:04:34    Fuck. No, I don’t remember. I remember there was a dance  

Sarah           01:04:39    And another thing with all of this carrot normal stuff. Cause I’m, I’m pretty much, this is gonna, I feel like this was a broad introductory episode and the next couple of episodes while still sticking with the themes will kind of relate. The reality is too, is that I can do research and all this fun stuff and I have done research, but also I have my own experiences. And that is what I know. Other people’s experiences are cool. And I will take them into consideration, will take the science and continue the sitter into consideration. But I’m tired of discounting the things that I’ve experienced, you know,  

Emily            01:05:29    A hundred percent, you know, and it’s just kind of like one thing that I do find a little bit of comfort in is like, you know, when it comes to paranormal experiences or like supernatural shit, um, it’s like, this has been recorded for centuries.  

Sarah           01:05:45    Yeah. People have been trying to contact the dead and the afterlife literally since the beginning of time. And like when I was doing my research there, the Bible mentions, uh, they call her the Witch of Endor. But in the NIV translation, she’s called the Medium of Endor, Oh, and this is in the old Testament. So we’re going all the way, the fuck back. And they say that she raised the spirit of the prophet Samuel to allow the King Saul to talk to him about an upcoming battle. So this is going back for fucking ever.

Emily            01:06:21    Yeah.

Sarah           01:06:26    It’s not anything new. And I also don’t. I think that there’s a reason for that. And you know, like I said, if you want to sit there and believe that like humans will create meaning out of chaos just to make our lives feel happy, then fine. You can believe that.  

Emily            01:06:44    It’s like, do you think that birds that live in large groups and fly around and make cool shapes? Like, do you think there’s like one of the birds that is like, guys, I can see dead birds and all the birds are like, Oh my gosh. I’m like, we’re already here. Let me die. We just die. They’re like flying around. And then there’s like another bird that’s like, hey, I can see it too. And we’re following them our migrational pattern. Yeah. They’re like flying around and they’re like, sh don’t tell anyone flying around making cute little shapes. And there’s like a flock of flamingos below them and a flood. And like, you know, the same shit happens throughout doing their dance. They’re looking so proud. And then there’s like one kind of hanging back and he’s like, do you,  

Emily            01:07:38    Do you see that, that  

Emily            01:07:40    Bird that’s flying around in front of all the other birds? Does anyone else?

Sarah           01:07:45    Um, and you must, you must be on drugs or hallucinating. There’s no way that that’s actually happening. Let’s say some weird word.  

Emily            01:07:53    It’s like, that’s like the only solace that I can take. Like, I hope that other species like secretly have like the societal struggles that we have to deal with because we are not very involved with.  

Sarah           01:08:03    Oh no, it would be nice. But that was the thing. Give me a little bit of a warm, fuzzy,  

Emily            01:08:10    Make me feel a little more comfy in my situation.  

Sarah           01:08:13    So, to wrap up my intro to Parapsychology and the paranormal that has been studied thus far. Okay, I didn’t even attempt to talk about ghosts yet because that’s going to be a whole other episode.

Emily            01:08:26    Heard that. 

Sarah           01:08:28    Um, so psychology today says kind of what I was saying before, uh, coincidences, you know, can be startling and thought provoking. That there’s no apparent cause and effect. So everybody should be skeptical and it’s not supernatural. People try to find patterns about random occurrences. So it’s our imagination, right? Confirmation bias. You’re just finding information that confirms a preexisting belief for you. So you’re just finding that one tad bit of evidence that confirms it for you. And that’s what makes it true. Researchers were also saying too, that out of body experiences, I think we’ve mentioned this earlier and other elements of near-death experiences that might point to consciousness outside of the body, could just result from random anomalies in the brain. And so this is what Psychology Today has to say about parapsychology at the end of their article. And to that I say, go fuck yourself.  

Emily            01:09:47    Yeah. I’m just like random occurrences in the brain.  

Sarah           01:09:50    It’s such a depressing way to live too. Like, I don’t know. So somebody was mentioning her, I was reading a book recently listening. I have no time to read. So I was listening to a book and they mentioned something about getting back to your childlike self. And that’s something that I’ve been trying to think about too. And that kind of played into this as well, but I’m like, you know, what? I was a kid, I believed in like all the magical things. Yeah. And whether it’s true or not, it makes it more fun to live life. If you can believe in these other things and you’re not so bogged down in cynicism and skepticism, you know what I mean? Like I don’t know.  

Emily            01:10:31    It just makes you  more open-minded and I don’t think there’s anything. I don’t think there’s a negative about being open-minded personally. And I also, you know, when you think about like, okay, like, uh, you know, indigenous tribes, some of which who, haven’t been slaughtered, thank goodness and are still existing, you know? And like anthropologists will go into, you know, the wilderness wherever they live and they will go there and try to study them and learn from them. And one thing that I heard recently, which I thought was very, apt, you know, it’s just very like on the nose of a kind of how we see things versus how somebody else might. And they were like, you know, it’s not like this is, what they think this is, it is what is true to them. Yeah.  

Sarah           01:11:37    Truth. Yeah.  

Emily            01:11:40    So, you know, it’s like somebody else’s truth could be just, that could be somebody else’s truth. That doesn’t mean it has to be your truth. It doesn’t mean it has to be something that you live and identify with. You are fully able and welcome to like live and identify in a way that you perceive to be fit for yourself. As long as you’re not hurting anyone. We honestly don’t see the fucking problem with that.  

Sarah           01:12:00    Yes. If it’s non-destructive and it helps you live your best life, then like, yeah.That is the moral of the story for tonight. So yeah, that was my, that was my, I want to say it’s not a deep dive because we’re, like I said, this is going to have to bend the surface. Ooh. Skimming the surface of the paranormal and parapsychology. Bam.  

Emily            01:12:28    All right. So this week I am going back to 12th century England.  

Emily            01:12:47    Yes. Which came up during The Strid. I’m going to be telling the story of the mysterious green children of Woolpit. 

Sarah           01:13:08    Yes. 

Emily            01:13:09    Have you heard about this? 

Sarah           01:13:11    Vaguely. 

Emily            01:13:12    All right. Um, yeah, so it’s Woolpit which is in Suffolk or Wolf Pit in old English. Are you ready? 

Sarah           01:13:24    I’m so ready. 

Emily            01:13:25    All right. It was harvest time in Suffolk County harvest wind blowing gales throughout the land. Mysterious wind of change, settled, on the village of Woolpit, named after its wolf pits that the villagers used to trap and hunt wolves. These villagers had no idea they would be playing host to two strange beings. One day as the bells of Bury St. Edmunds rung out in the distance, some villagers came across two strange, bright green children during a routine check of their unique pit traps.  

Sarah           01:14:25    Wait, maybe I don’t know this. 

Emily            01:14:31    Hmm. The children seem to be brother and sister and spoke a strange and foreign language that was completely unknown to the villagers. They also were strange clothes. The villagers of Woolpit had never seen before. Besides their strange, bright green skin, odd appearance and somewhat alien language, they did appear to be just like children. So the town took them in and gave them food and shelter.  

Sarah           01:15:11    Are they aliens? 

Emily            01:15:24    Well…I don’t know. We’ll see.

Sarah           01:15:26    Now kind of have heard of this, but I don’t know anything about it. And I had no idea it was by Bury St. Edmunds. 

Emily            01:15:33    Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So this account was first written by William of Newburgh. Also known as William of Newberry also known as William Parvis because it wouldn’t be 12th century England, or just general historic times if people didn’t have five names. He was a 12th century English historian, and he wrote this in 1189, Ralph of Coggeshall, who was an English chronicler and was a monk that then became a sixth Abbott of Coggeshall Abbey also wrote a separate account of the story. About 30 years later in the year 1220. And his story goes on to say that the children were brought to the house of Richard DeCalne to be taken care of. Now, his last name is spelled a C a I mean, there’s like a DE in front of it, but it’s C A L N E. And from what I read it was, I thought that was suppose to be pronounced Richard t DeCalne like the L is silent, but I could be wrong. I have no idea. So I’m gonna say that.  

Sarah           01:16:50    I just want it to be like, so definitely not Richard decant though.  

Emily            01:16:55    Yeah, no, he’s Richard DeCalne. I’m Richard McCann, not Richard, de can’t. Come on in.

Sarah           01:17:03    I can. I am. And I will.  

Emily            01:17:08    So he took them in and the green children were said to have refused all food for several days until they came across some raw, broad beans and Richard DeCalne garden, which they are said to have eaten right out of the ground. What are broad beans? They are green beans. They’re beans that are green. They’re like, I don’t know to me when I looked him up, it kind of looks like edamame. I’m sure it’s not the same, but it’s like, kind of like that. 

Sarah           01:17:40    Broad beans. And they just ate them right out of the ground. 

Emily            01:17:47    Yeah. 

Sarah           01:17:48    Yuck. 

Emily            01:17:49    They were desperate for some green food, which doesn’t sound like any kids I know, actually. So that’s proof that it is alien, in my opinion.

Sarah           01:17:57    You know what kids want to eat, nonstop? The only thing that they’ll want to eat, fucking bread. Just a slice of bread and chicken nuggets. 

Emily            01:18:08    I feel personally attacked at this moment in time. I’m not about the chicken nuggets, but about the bread. Um, or anything like bright, like a fluorescent Kraft, Mac and cheese. You know. 

Sarah           01:18:21    Uh, fruit roll-ups. 

Emily            01:18:26    Tutti, Frutti ice cream. Oh, there you go. 

Sarah           01:18:30    I was boring though. I just want to, I liked French vanilla ice cream.  

Emily            01:18:30    Just liked ketchup on rice. Anyway, over time, the green children gradually adapted to eating normal food. So wolves, apparently.

Sarah           01:18:51    They ate Wolf?

Emily            01:18:53    They’re trapping wolves in their wolf pits. That’s their hunting. And like, I looked it up several times and it was like, yeah, the pits were used to trap wolves. But you’re, you’re hunting wolves. What are you going to do with them? Like, I guess it just for the, for, are you guys eating dogs out here? I’m concerned.  

Sarah           01:19:15    They were probably also eating dogs.  

Emily            01:19:17    That’s 12th century. England where they’r doing a lot of weird shit anyways.

Sarah           01:19:22    So wait, did these children have green skin? Is that what you said?  

Emily            01:19:26    Yup. Bright green skin. Okay. I spoke a weird language dress differently and everything about the most super weird, but they looked like kids. That was the only thing. Okay. So, over time they gradually adapted to eating, you know, what everyone else was eating, who knows what that was. And presumably due to their new change in diet, their bright green skin began to fade away. The children were baptized by the villagers, naturally.  

Sarah           01:19:57    Naturally in 12th century, England.  

Emily            01:20:00    I was going to say, some freaky green kids show up out of nowhere and of course you got to get them baptized. Gotta baptize demons right out of those babies.

Sarah           01:20:08    Yeah, exactly.  

Emily            01:20:10    Unfortunately shortly after they were baptized the brother, who was thought to be the younger of the two fell sick and died.

Sarah           01:20:18    How did he die? 

Emily            01:20:20    Probably because he was being forced to eat wolves.  

Sarah           01:20:25    And all he really wanted was some beans.  

Emily            01:20:31    He really was just dying for some rice on ketchup, or  yeah, that works too.  

Emily            01:20:37    I stand by it  

Sarah           01:20:38    Continue.  

Emily            01:20:42    Um, so eventually the sister was able to learn English and finally explained to the villagers where she and her brother came from. So she told them that her and her brother came from a land where the sun never shone and the light was always like twilight.  

Emily            01:21:03    Now William account states that the children called their home St. Martin’s Land that they said everything there was a brilliant shade of green and the children simply did not know how they ended up in Woolpit of like all places. According to them, they had been herding their father’s cows and became lost after they followed the cattle into a nearby cave. They heard a loud noise, which was believed by both William and Ralph to be the bells of Bury St. Edmunds. And after being “guided by the bells”, deeper into the cave, they eventually emerged into Woolpit as the world they came from disappeared.

Sarah           01:21:47    Time slip. But they’re green, so I don’t know. Alien time slip! Alternate universe! 

Emily            01:21:59    I love that you’re shouting out answers. Like it’s a game show and I’m like, yes! All of it! More!

Sarah           01:22:02    It’s a quiz. And I’m Hermione. Yes. 

Emily           01:22:08    I’m like, the price is right. I want more of this. Yeah. It’s very interesting. 

Sarah           01:22:13    St. Martin’s land. What could that be? 

Emily           01:22:17    Well, there are some theories. Some thoughts. Some provocations.

Emily           01:22:23    Um, now there, isn’t a clear, like recorded date of when they discovered the green children or like when, you know that happened or when they, you know, were taken in by Richard DeCalne, there’s like, not like a clear date on those events, but according to William’s account, the girl was still alive and was living about 40 miles, or 64 kilometers, away from Woolpit when he wrote about their story in 1189. So she was still alive, according to him, when he actually wrote it down. His account says that he, that she eventually married a man from King’s Lynn and moved there after they make, after they got married. Ralph’s account goes on to say, which was the one that was written 30 years later. Uh, he goes on to say that she worked for Richard DeCalne’s household as a servant for many years. She was considered cocky and bold, and that she, “lacked modesty”.  

Sarah           01:23:27    Is she a leprechaun?

Emily           01:23:30    This is when I reveal to you all that I am a time traveler.  

Sarah           01:23:36    How did you turn green?  

Emily           01:23:38    I ate a lot of broad beans for the role. It was a method acting situation.  

Sarah           01:23:44    You were going to turn any color. You would turn pink.

Emily           01:23:46    Uh, thank you for that.

Sarah           01:23:49    You’re welcome.  

Emily           01:23:52    Apparently she didn’t have the best rap, rep? Rep. She didn’t have the best reputation. Oh yeah. Yeah. They didn’t like her that much probably because she thought she was a person. So like, fuck her. Right.  

Sarah           01:24:09    Bold thing to do in the 12th century. Or even the 20th century, 21st century. We’re in the 21st century.  

Emily           01:24:20    Hmm. I love you. All right. So astronomer and writer, uh, Duncan Lunan who wrote Children of the Sky, which was published in 2012, actually researched Richard DeCalne family history and was able to conclude that the girl was given the name Agnes, and that she married a Royal official named Richard Barr. Richard Barr who was around from like, you know, 1130 to 1202, which just sounds like he popped in for lunch. I was going to say lunch. He had to go back anyways. It was a medieval justice clergyman and a scholar. And it was just how I want to be referred to in history, except it’s like she had a lacked modesty, but she was a scholar. Yes. Thank you. But the best part about Richard Barr being like a gentleman or a clergyman and a scholar is that he was educated at the law school of Bologna.  

Sarah           01:25:30    I’m sorry, what is that a real place?  

Emily           01:25:34    Yeah. Yeah. Literally it’s like spelled, spelled like baloney. I said like Oscar Meyer, or something silly because it’s the 12th century and they were doing weird shit back then. But yeah, literally he was educated in the Law School of Bologna. When I read that, I was like, of course he was yes. Fucking full of it anyways. So he actually was also Archdeacon of Ely. I’m sorry. But yes, that Ely, Ely Cathedral who was yeah. And he was there.  

Sarah           01:26:14    The Green Girl?

Emily           01:26:14    And like, uh, he was the author of, um, of a work of biblical extracts that was like dedicated to one of his patrons, William Longchamp, who was the Bishop of Ely and the Chancellor of England at the time. According to one report was that the pair had at least one child together. So Richard Barr was for sure, a real dude, and you know, he was at Ely only about 800 years before we were. Give or take.

Sarah           01:26:43    I miss it.  

Emily           01:26:49    I can like see it in my brain, in the, off in the distance. Yeah. So I thought that was interesting because it was like, this dude is definitely real. And to be able to trace it back to like, you know, this person that jacket just kind of showed up in Richard DeCalne’s family history. It’s just a little interesting in my opinion. Um, so our local Suffolk author and folk singer cause we’ll put is in the County of Suffolk. Um, this guy’s name is Bob Roberts.  

Emily           01:27:20    I’m sorry, which I just realized is Robert, Rob, Bob, Robert, Robert, Robert, Robert double Robert, Robert, Robert Roberts. That’s so funny.  

Emily           01:27:37    Oh man. Okay. So he published a book in 1978 called a Slice of Suffolk.  

Sarah           01:27:43    Uh, sounds like the type of book I would love. Right.  

Emily           01:27:49    So cute. And um, in it, he stated, “I was told there are still people in wool pit who are descended from the green children, but nobody would tell me who they were.”  

Sarah           01:28:01    Wait, is that a quote?  

Emily           01:28:02    Yes. That’s a real fucking quote from Bob, Bob birds. I’m sorry, Bob Roberts. Sorry. Robert Roberts.  

Sarah           01:28:07    I’m sorry. That’s a petty ass quote. I love it. They wouldn’t tell me  

Emily           01:28:15   But the legend lived on in 1978, which was quite a long ways after 1189. Um, so I thought that was, uh, definitely interesting. So now we’re going to get into some of the proposed theory explanations. Yeah. Some of the theories about the green children. So some people believe that they are extra terrestrial  

Emily           01:28:37    Or terrestextrials, 

Sarah           01:28:42    What is happening? Did you break?  

Emily           01:28:45    I didn’t break. I’m just making up words like I normally do. Um, no, but like, like a subterranean, extra terrestrial kind of like the limerea or the limerians, you know, it’s like that they kind of live in like a world that’s just under ours

Sarah           01:28:59    They share the earth, but they’re not with us.  

Emily           01:29:05     Some believe that they are just a product of war and civil unrest that was going on in the area at the time. Some people, my belief, that this could be like a case of two parallel universes contact together. I don’t know. I don’t know who they would be. Um, probably us. That was the first thing I thought of honestly, what I was reading through this. I was like, duh, they just like went through like a, like a weak spot between universes haven’t you guys ever seen Fringe? That’s what I see is like, should have been here first fucking theory. Oh my God. I love Fringe so much.  

Sarah           01:29:49    I just don’t know why they had green skin and why it went away. Wow. Okay.  

Emily           01:29:57    I, uh, so that’s part of like the whole thing about the, um, the civil unrest theory. Neither William nor Ralph, like could come up with an explanation of like their accounts of what happened, uh, about the strange skin about them just appearing out of nowhere. William, when he like wrote the story down, and again, he believed when he wrote this down that it was a hundred percent true and that she was still alive and lived far away. But like the, she moved, you know, it’s like, so, um, but he had no explanation for what he dubbed, uh, this as a strange and prodigious event, the legend of the green children of Woolpit occurred during the reign of King Stephen, which was a particularly turbulent period in mid-12th century England. And that is referred to as The Anarchy. Have you heard of that?

Sarah           01:30:56    No, actually.  

Emily           01:30:58    So The Anarchy was one of the darkest periods in England’s history. It was a time of civil war that came about after the death of Henry I, which gives me Charles II vibes, like centuries later. Seems to be a common theme.

Sarah           01:31:14    Divine right! And all that bullshit,  

Emily           01:31:17    All that. There’s also issues with errors in the story too, which I’m kind of just like Hmm. Some problematic things going on here. Not surprised. Yeah. Um, okay. So this was an interesting quote that I found. The anonymous 12th century history, Justus Stefani, which is the deeds of Stephen paints, a dismal picture of the state of the country at this time. “England, formerly the seat of justice, the habitation of peace, the height of piety, the mirror of religion became thereafter, a home of perversity, a haunt of strife, a training ground of disorder, and a teacher of every kind of rebellion.”  

Sarah           01:32:05    Okay. This sounds like all of the names of Denarius Targaryan. Like mother of dragons or all other 5,000 names. 

Emily           01:32:17    Mother of Dragon’s, haunt of strife, teacher of every kind of rebellion. I never saw the show. 

Sarah           01:32:24    I did. And I still can’t remember all of her stupid titles.  

Emily           01:32:28    So basically, this was like a Royal medieval soap opera soup that spanned over 20 years. It started with Henry the first not being able to produce a legitimate male heir, even though he had plenty of legitimate heirs. If you know what I mean. He did technically have one legitimate offspring, but as we have all been taught through the course of history and hundreds of years, and kind of this podcast, women don’t count as people. So he named his daughter Matilda, his heir. She was actually Empress Matilda at the time. She married the Holy Roman emperor, Henry V, but had been widowed. And then she remarried Jeffery of Anjou. I have no idea how to say it. Anjou. Who was heir to the French lands of True and Meh   

Emily           01:33:36    And that formed an Alliance with Normandy, which was an English possession since the Norman conquest. Okay. So she was like living her fucking life on English, like shit, but she wasn’t actually living in England. And uh, and then she was like, fuck yeah, I’ll be queen. 

Sarah          01:33:53    So you go girl. 

Emily           01:33:55    But when Henry I, died, people didn’t want a witch, sorry, a woman running the show. There had never been a female ruler of England up until this time. So, and as I just said, Matilda hadn’t spent, spent a lot of her life in England. So that just added to the distrust of her. Plus she casts a lot of spells.  

Emily           01:34:31    Despite Henry asking his noblemen to swear an oath to her succession when he died, you know, like they were swearing. Yeah. We’ll let your daughter,  

Sarah          01:34:42    This is straight up like Boudicca all over again to her husband did the same thing and they’re like, ha ha. Her husband said that his wife was his heir and that she would rule in his stead like a man until she died. And they’re like, no, no, no, fuck you.  

Emily           01:35:04    Yeah, no, that’s basically what they did. Like as soon as he died, they all came out and declared like, Oh, he was just kidding about that. He told me that I had been released from that oath. So let’s pick someone else, uh, preferably someone with external genitalia, but we’ll get to that later. Then to top it all off, Stephen came crawling out of the woodwork, who is Stephen? You are, I was going to ask he’s Henry’s fucking nephew, not even the right nephew. Like the Norman veteran nobles, like re we’re thinking like, Oh, Hey, you know, his nephew Theobald might be a good, he seems pretty. Okay. Sure does. And Steven was like, shh, shh, shh, I got this. I’m going to do this. I’m going to take this one for the team. And he just went and sees the crown basically like capture the flag and, um, Matilda refused to run out to the crown cause she’s like, hi, my actual father was the fucking King. I’m his only legitimate offspring. Uh, so his, one of his illegitimate sons, her half-brother Robert of Gloucester.

Emily           01:36:28    I know for sure on that one. Yep. Sorry. Yeah,  

Emily           01:36:31    No, I that’s where I kind of had a stroke just said. Um, but yeah, him and her uncle who was King David of Scotland. Ooh. Yeah. They like took it upon themselves to campaign for Matilda across England. And so Bing, bang, boom. That’s how you get a civil war. Well, you know, that’s one way, um,  

Sarah          01:36:51    That’s the way you get it in England though, for sure. I mean like every February hundred years. Yeah.  

Emily           01:36:58    And then you watch these documentaries where they’re like, it’s just so like fantastical the stories of the paths. And I’m like, it honestly sounds like a desperate Housewives episode. I’ve never seen a show, but it sounds desperate. And I feel like it involves housewives. Like I’m just…a stab in the dark.

Emily           01:37:20    So some people believe that the most likely explanation for the green children is that they were descended from Flemish immigrants who were persecuted and probably killed like during this super turbulent civil war time.  

Sarah          01:37:39    Why are they green?  

Emily           01:37:44    I don’t know.  

Emily           01:37:45    Okay. Um, Flemish people though, uh, they’re also called Flemings and, uh, they were native to the County of Flanders in Flanders. Yes. And I just want to say it in a, in an Irish accent, I don’t know way to the County of Flanders in modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands and France,  

Sarah          01:38:08    Which is not Ireland by the way in case anyone was wondering. Yeah.  

Emily           01:38:12    I know. I’m very aware of that. And uh, and they spoke Flemish, which was sort of a mixture of like what we know as modern Dutch, but with like French pronunciations and like a little bit of French peppered in there. So some theories basically say like they were Fleming’s, that’s why their clothes and language was unfamiliar with people of Woolpit. And at the time, the Flemish immigrants face persecution in the area. And so, uh, it was suggested that the children’s parents perished and children have come to the village from, the village of Fordham St. Martin, which was slightly north of Bury St. Edmunds, where there was a Flemish settlement at the time.  

Sarah          01:38:55    Okay. Well

Emily          01:38:58    Some historians consider this theory to be like the most plausible one. Let’s not forget about Richard DeCalne, who was a prominent well-educated man at the time. And he would have known all about the Flemish people would have recognized their clothing and their language and been able to speak it. So, um, another point that is brought up, which you brought up several times and I did not address and was ignoring you so I can get to my point. So sorry. Is there a green sickness and the fact that over time, like in a change of diet, like their green coloring faded away. Historian, Derek Brewer says they were probably suffering from chlorosis, a deficiency disease, which gives the skin a greenish tint, hence the term quote, green sickness. With a better diet, it disappears.  

Sarah          01:39:51    Is that a real thing? Okay.  

Emily          01:39:58    But it’s not like bright. It’s just kind of like a pale thing. And then you see like, you know, these photo-shopped pictures of the green children. It’s like a tint, it’s not actually bright green. And they’re described as like bright green children.  

Sarah          01:40:19    ET’s cousins. Well, actually he’s not bright green, so never mind.  

Emily           01:40:22    Yeah. No, but that, but that’s how they’re described. They’re described as like, Holy shit. There’s like these really weird kids and they’re bright, fucking green. What the hell is going on. It, you know, could have been exaggerated during the time.  Sure, sure. But also just interesting, interesting to know. Um, yeah.  

Emily           01:40:43    So as I mentioned earlier, there are others who have suggested that the children may have been aliens or inhabitants of a subterranean world beneath the surface of the earth. Remember astronomer and author Duncan Lunan? I mentioned him earlier. Well, he published an article in 1996 in a magazine called, Analog, in which he detailed his hypothesis, that the children were accidentally transported to Woolpit from their home planet as the result of a “matter transmitter of malfunction”. He suggests that the planet, the children may have been from, might have been trapped in a synchronous orbit around their sun. Now a synchronous orbit is an orbit in which the orbiting object, for example, an artificial satellite or a moon takes the same amount of time to complete an orbit as it takes the object it is orbiting to rotate once. So this would account for the Twilight zone. Oh, as it would allow for conditions of life only in a narrow Twilight zone between a fiercely hot surface in a frozen dark side.  

Sarah          01:42:08    Interesting.

Emily           01:42:15    Lunan explanation for the green coloration of their skin was that it was a side effect of consuming genetically modified alien plants eaten by the planet’s inhabitants. However, he was not the first to bring up the idea that the green children could have been extraterrestrials.

Emily           01:42:37    It was brought up back in the day, in 1621, a couple hundred years after this happened. But it’s definitely not as late as 1996 when Lunan published his article of all of his theories. So in 1621, there was a dude named Robert Burton who was a writer and a fellow of Oxford university. And he wrote an encyclopedia book called…Wikipedia.  

Sarah          01:43:13    What?

Emily           01:43:20    Obviously I’m kidding.  

Emily          01:43:23    But he did write an encyclopedia book.  

Sarah          01:43:29    Ya, got me. Just like diet water. Yeah.  

Emily          01:43:37    Okay. So he did write an encyclopedia book and it was called The Anatomy of Melancholy. And he stated that the green children fell from heaven in this book. Which for anyone who looking this up or wants to look this up, the full title of his encyclopedia was “The Anatomy of Melancholy; What it is with all the kinds causes, symptoms, prognostics, and several cures of it in three main partitions with several sections members and subsections, philosophically medicinally, and historically opened and cut up.” That is the full title of the book.  

Sarah          01:44:14    They were very, they were very wordy back then with like everything.  

Emily          01:44:18    But then they also like didn’t spell anything, right? Like there was no consensus of how to spell at all. No, excuse me. That’s so sad.  

Sarah          01:44:27    I thought you were talking to Yahtzee. Cause that’s what I say to Jase. And then I realized that we’re not in the same place, so please continue.  

Emily          01:44:34    It has been like magnetically attached to the side of my computer all day, but it wasn’t actually plugged down so sad. Um, so yeah, so I found the book on Google books and found where he mentions the green children. So if you’re looking it up as well, turn to page 254. 

Sarah          01:44:57    Werewolves?

Emily          01:44:59    All right. So now I’m going to read you some old English and cyclic.  

Sarah          01:45:04    Yes. Are you going to say it in Ye Olde English?  

Emily          01:45:10    No. Okay. “Then I say the earth and they be planets alike, inhabited alike, moved about the sun, the common center of the world alike. And it may be those two green children,” which name I can’t pronounce “speaks of in his time that fell from heaven, came from thence and that famous stone that fell from heaven in Aristotle’s time, maintained in their ages, there be infinite worlds, infinite earths or systems”, infinite earths or systems. The S’s look really weird. So it’s kind of hard. The S’s look like F so I have to like mentally translate.

Emily          01:46:10    Yes. “So there’d be infinite worlds and infinite earths or systems in infinite because infinite stars and planets like unto this of ours, which some stick not still to maintain publicly defend. I don’t know. It’s kind of gibberish-y.  

Sarah          01:46:29    Yeah. Is there like a SparkNotes version?   

Emily          01:46:33    No. This is like a real shit. And it’s like, it’s really crazy when you look at it, there’s footnotes stuffed it on the side. The text is all stuffed in there. It’s all different spots and sizes. And that’s just kind of, I guess how they printed it. I don’t really understand why it looks like this, but the main thing is the whole, you know, suggestion that there could be infinite worlds and infinite earths and infinite systems. And that, that thought, you know, and suggestion came from the green children who he believed fell from the sky.

Sarah          01:47:02    That is super interesting. And I like it a lot. Yeah.  

Emily          01:47:06    Right. It’s just more of maybe they’re aliens or something weird and other worldly. I don’t know.

Sarah          01:47:13    Well maybe they’re like, yeah, I was going to say maybe they were like aliens that were like closely related or somewhat like humanoid, but like related to chameleons…or octopuses, they can blend in with their environment later on.  

Emily          01:47:28    Are you calling them shape-shifters or skin walkers? Cause that’s a, that’s a touchy subject. No. Okay. All right. Anyways, so that they can like change their shit. Yeah,  

Sarah          01:47:42    Yeah, yeah. Like an octopus  

Emily          01:47:48    Or a shape-shifter with an outlet on the inside of its mouth, which I find… 

Sarah          01:47:51    Oh God, I forgot about that.  

Emily          01:47:55    Forever trying to live out an episode of Fringe. It’s upsetting and I don’t like it, but I love it.  

Sarah          01:48:01    I, that part was always so cringy for me.  

Emily          01:48:05    There were so many parts that were so cringy, but I loved every second. I’m probably my favorite thing about watching Fran. Just like how paranoid it makes.  

Sarah          01:48:13    No, but for real, you’d like, he’d be watching, I binged it. I remember I binged it. And after like a couple of days, I was like, whew, things are getting real intense over here.  

Emily          01:48:28    Yeah. So, yeah. So that is an interesting little excerpt from the 1600s, uh, what they thought was reasonable to publish in encyclopedias. Which I appreciate. But also could have done with some paring down. There are some people who do believe that the story of the green children is simply made up folklore that is based on completely imaginary events, which we discussed earlier. Those kind of people are not our favorite people. I’m guessing that they also like subscribe to either like that whole theory of like nothing matters or like the simulation theory or like maybe they’re Lutherans.  

Sarah          01:49:16    Hahahaha.  Throwing in a curve ball there at the end.  

Emily          01:49:22    However, it is interesting to note that the children are said to have entered this world from their cave, from this little cave. Which is a common motif in folklore and has been throughout the ages. Okay. But in my opinion, I’m like, okay, is it a common because there’s people like humanoid species living underground and maybe sometimes they come out and maybe they live all around us. And maybe we just like, are not paying attention or… 

Sarah          01:49:58    Maybe it’s an accident. Accidental wormhole.  

Emily           01:50:00    I was going to say, or maybe these caves are like entry points to parallel universes. Like, could it be all made up. Okay. Sure. Could be. But like you have no idea. So it’s very easy to say, Oh yeah, it’s all made up because that’s the easiest explanation.

Sarah          01:50:16    Which, you know what, that’s something funny too. It’s like, you know, especially when we get into the more ancient history and not the 12th century is ancient history. But like even when I was reading stuff about Boudica and they were like, Oh yeah, we’re taking this as fact, some dude who wasn’t involved still didn’t bother to write it down until like a hundred years later. And we’re still taking it as like for sure, fact. Anyway, it’s a thing that it’s like, yeah. Some dude wrote down, so it must be true. 

Emily          01:50:48    Talk about if people were able to time travel into the past. Like, I feel like if you could time travel into the past and etched some random bullshit into stone, people will find that shouldn’t be like, Oh, so I guess everybody did this back then, because this must be true.  

Sarah          01:51:01    Do you remember? I talked about that in one of other, I think it was the Boudicca episode. Yeah.  

Emily          01:51:06    You were like, I want to write a journal about random shit  

Sarah          01:51:08    Then, you know, obviously my, yeah. Obviously my journal will be important enough for archeologists of the future to look at, but yeah. I’ll just fill it with some obvious random ass bullshit. And they’re like, “That’s so crazy that they did that weird.”

Emily          01:51:21    Yeah. I put my cat in the freezer today and they’re like, you know, I heard about that on The Office. I guess they did do that popular. Oh God. So a medieval historian, Gerald of Wales told a similar story back in the day of a boy who encountered two Pygmies who led him through an underground passage, into a beautiful land with fields and rivers, but not lit by the full light of the sun. Sounds pretty familiar.  

Sarah          01:52:00    But wait, also, he was probably on drugs though, or it was so hallucination is a malfunctioning of the brain anyways, continue.  

Emily          01:52:06    Right? Exactly. It’s like some fucking hormone was going off in his brain that he didn’t understand and rains just spew out hormones left and right. Kids watch out. I mean, it’s true if you are a kid. So I’m sorry about that. Anyways. Uh, sounds very fucking familiar. Also makes me think of faeries, faery folklore and like, yeah. It’s like a lot of the whole, a ferry folklore is that they’re living like, first of all, I’ve heard a lot about how ferries are nymphs or leprechauns or like all of these like steaming, uh, supposedly imaginary creatures. They’re also like connected to a plane that can be considered the underworld where it’s like also a plane where like divas and like plants and like all of this other exist on, too. Which I just think is interesting. It’s interesting to me to just look into all kinds of interest, the weirdest shit that I possibly can, honestly, because sometimes I like tickle the mind.  

Sarah          01:53:19    You say that in a less weird way, please. For the love of God, sometimes I like to tickle the mind. So terrible. So anyways, are they aliens? Creatures?  

Emily          01:53:49    Are they medieval Creepy pastas?  

Sarah          01:53:51    We don’t know. Ooh, that’s a good point. Medieval creepy pastas.  

Emily          01:53:55    Yeah. It’s like they could have just been telling stories to freak each other out  

Sarah          01:54:00    And then people think they’re real. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it’s like human nature from all right. 

Emily          01:54:07    So there are some similarities also in North American folktale, motifs surrounding the idea of inhabitants from a lower world visiting mortals and then continuing to live with them. So it’s just, it’s very co it’s very common in like stories that are told throughout history, which just begs the question. Like, is it based on something real or is it like a metaphor for something.  How do we know?

Sarah          01:54:35    Yeah. Wow. You know, how do we know? 

Emily          01:54:42    So in the whole fairy vein, because I’m over here, like reading about this and I’m like, wait a minute, this sounds a lot like faeries. And then I’m like, wait a minute. Aren’t faeries like technically members of the underworld. So, I looked it up because I was curious, so the, I cannot pronounce these Irish slash Scottish words and I’m just going to warn everybody ahead of time. So, “the seed or the lands of the Fey, so is I found this on techno-gypsy.net.  

Emily          01:55:16    Wow. So that, well, but it was fit my Google search keywords naturally. I’m going to include it. I don’t think I read that. I just wanted to look up something could help you.  

Emily          01:55:46    Cause I’m like, I feel like, I feel like whatever I’ve heard about fairies, a lot of this sounds really familiar. Like they’re small. They, you know, come from a land that like, we can’t really see, but it’s right there. And then they’re like, Oh, I just popped out anyways. Okay.  

Sarah          01:56:05    Much like what babies say when they’re born, “Oh I just popped out.”  

Emily          01:56:12    I don’t know what fairies do, man. I’m just, just spitball it out here. I don’t fucking know. Anyways, so Ireland and the British Isles, um, talk of an underground dimension or lands across the Western seas, hidden by mists where the original inhabitants of Ireland now live. The Mighty Seed…this is bad. Say it, the, to author, I know that’s wrong to Dannon. Perhaps the themorians were all driven to this underworld by waves of invaders, such as the gales who came from Spain, led by…people.  

Sarah          01:57:05    Okay.  

Emily          01:57:06    But it is believed they had no other choice, but to take refuge under the seed, which denotes Hills where the long barrows lay and which is used to also name a special kind of faeries in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. Um, so they are believed to be knocks, which are hollow Hills inhabited by large communities of fairies, uh, often led by our King or Queen. So this is an Irish Scottish folklore. Okay. Uh, England, Bury St. Edmunds is not that far away. And I just find it really interesting. They’re like, yeah, the Hills are probably hollow, probably chock full of magical creatures.  

Sarah          01:57:53    So kind of sounds like the inspiration for habits. Oh, of course.  

Emily          01:57:57    Yeah. A hundred percent. Um, no, I just read something about that recently anyways. Um, but yeah, it does sound like that, but it’s just it’s I thought it was particularly interesting because they talk about the Hills and how they’re like. Yeah. I mean, obviously like I love how they’re just like, I love that so much about the fairy, like full, because they’re like, yeah. Obviously fairies live, live in the Hills, like yeah, of course. Of course the hello, sir. How old out? And there’s various living in there, but it’s like, it’s true in the sense of like, if you fuck with a fairy ring or if you fuck with some fairy shit, like your life is going to be shit-ty for the rest of it. Yeah.  

Sarah          01:58:43    It wasn’t just you and me. It was like a, maybe they are, maybe they’re not, but we’re also not going to fuck with them. I’m gonna leave them be  

Emily          01:58:53    Why would you? And so I just find it really interesting that that wasn’t brought up in anything that I’ve found about the green children when I’m like, okay, you’re talking about this as a folklore standpoint, let’s just look at that. And you’re saying that the theme of like coming out of a cave, it’s like a really strong theme. And I’m like out of all of the shit that I’d looked up about fairies, I’m pretty sure they came from underground. And then I looked it up and I was like, yeah, yeah, it’s common. It’s a common thought, yeah, they probably live underground. They probably live in the Hills.  

Sarah          01:59:26    I also like the idea too of the quote unquote underground or underworld as a, as a different plane of existence. Yeah, yeah, yeah.  

Emily          01:59:39    Um, so there was another like thing based on an illustration by Randolph, Caldicott called Babes in the Woods, which depicts a very like Hansel and Gretel-esque scene of two small children like walking through the woods. Um, almost the way that it’s illustrated. It looks like it could be like a stained glass window. It’s very interesting. Um, but the modern version of the tale of the green children that was associated with this illustration says that the children were left to die after being poisoned with arsenic, by their wicked uncle. The arsenic explained their slight green coloration, which is not as all like the same kind of green that they’re described as, um, fleeing from the wood in which they were abandoned, possibly nearby, Thetford Forest. That’s really the only reason why I included the cause I wanted that reaction. And then the children fell into the pits at Woolpit where they were discovered. Lame silly. Um, so yeah, so Woolpit is in Suffolk County, it’s still a village today. It is halfway between Stowmarket and Bury St. Edmunds and its village sign, cause in case anybody out there didn’t know this, villages in England, make cute little signs to tell you what they’re all about.  

Emily          02:00:56    Like the one for Feltwell is like a shepherdess and sheep. And let me tell you, there’s a fuck ton of sheep up there.  

Sarah          02:01:03    And also Emily recreated it for her little felt while Island and animal crossing.  

Emily           02:01:09    I sure did. I sure did. Um,  

Sarah          02:01:14    How long did that take you?  

Emily           02:01:15    Not as long as you might think, but, um, it, so there’s only so many pixels that you can use. Otherwise it would have taken me much longer. Um, but yeah, so it’s like, yeah, villages do that all over the place. I remember like we would get them as like little, uh, souvenirs. Mom would get mini ones of the places we went.  Yeah. So the one that was erected in 1977 for Wolf pit is the depiction of the two green children. Oh yeah. Yeah. So it’s very much like a part of the town. Um, and then the, you know, the mysterious tale of the green children lives on and still even like, you know, at this point over a thousand years later and we store it about it’s about a thousand years later and we still really can’t say where they came from, who they were, if they were real, if they were human, we have no idea. So on that, no, like us, you can find us on Instagram at wonderlust.pod. You can also find us online on our website, thewonderlustpodcast.com and also Sarah, why did you wonder about parapsychology?  

Sarah          02:02:38    Oh, because I saw, um, medium.  

Emily           02:02:44    What? Yes, that’s me pretending, like I didn’t already know that spoiler alert.  

Sarah          02:02:49    I know that she did know, but yes, that’s what we got. That’s what got me thinking about it. And I was originally going to do some research into mediums, but, uh, I was, I was not feeling that I wanted to, to hit on the other things that this experience sort of made me think about. And that was about like the things that have happened and that are weird and that are inexplicable that, you know, I sit there and like second guess, or like, I’m not going to say it or I’m not going to think it and blah, blah, blah. You know what some weird shit has happened to me. And I think that I’m just allowed to have that. Yeah, of course. So, yeah. That’s why I wondered about that. Why did you wonder about the green children?  

Emily           02:03:34    Um, well I wondered about it because it was a suggestion from one of our listeners shout out to Lee. So that was, uh, yeah, so that’s why I wondered about it. And I was like, Oh fuck. Yeah, paranormal supernatural. It’d be talking about the green children. So yeah. So yeah. So send us your suggestions. You guys like, we literally love it. I love it. Always loved learning about things that I have never heard of before. Um, also shout out to our cousin Eve. Hi, we love you.

Sarah          02:04:09    Yeah. Yes we do. We heard you listen and we were so flattered.  

Emily           02:04:14    I love it. Thank you. You are so kind and gracious.  

Emily           02:04:19    Yeah. We’re probably not as cool.  I’m just kidding. I hope you think we’re cool. Oh God. We gotta pair that  

Sarah          02:04:32    First, that desperate and said, please love us. So if you guys like listening to us and you liked the things that we have to say and the weird wonderings and the adventures that we go on, please make sure, please make sure to rate and subscribe on iTunes or Spotify or any of the other ways that you listen to us.  

Emily           02:04:54    Yeah. You could just like shout it to the sky and we’ll hear you.  

Sarah          02:04:58    Or you can email us on our website and tell us that you love us  

Emily           02:05:01    Or it’s just click on the stars out of them.  

Sarah          02:05:05    I don’t think that’s how that works.  

Emily           02:05:08    Maybe. I don’t know.  

Sarah          02:05:11    Um, but we do love to hear from our listeners. Like Emily said we really like it when we get some good suggestions that we can pair with our sister subjects. And yeah, next week we will be covering by history and true crime. Yeah. Oh yeah. She’s going to be more excited.  

Emily           02:05:36    It’s like they accidentally covered a little bit of history in this one, but it was just kind of like, it’s one of those things where I was like, wait a minute, who’s King Stephen, wait a minute. Who’s Richard Barr. And then I’m just like looking up all these people. And then I was like, wait a minute. What happened? Your civil war was about. Yeah. I mean like this is dude, that was literally just like, excuse me, I’m going to be King. Even though I have no business being King.  

Sarah         02:06:01    I just want it. If you know, what it makes me think of is, um, in Parks and Rec, when Bobby Newport is talking to the Wesley, he’s like, come on. I just want it, just give it to me. Oh my God. You would just be so cool. If you could just give it to me, like give it to me. I’ll totally put you on the guest list for the party at my dad’s house. Oh my God. That’s the vibe. Yeah. We hope to see you next time on our history and true crime. A themed episode. And we love you guys so much.  

Emily           02:06:34    Yes. Thank you so much for listening to Ian. Another wonderful episode of the wonderlust podcast. We’ll see you next week. Hey wonderers.  

Sarah        02:06:46    Now it’s time for us to wonder off  

Sarah        02:07:01    Hey, wonderers. Now it’s time to wander off. No. Dale said he liked it. Dale said he liked it.