Latest / Creature Feature With Nyx / Creature Feature Ep. 1 — Nyx Meets the Mothman
Transcript
- 0:13November 15th, 1966.
- 0:19It's almost midnight, and two young married couples are out for a drive.
- 0:26The way young couples in small towns did back then.
- 0:31Nowhere to go, nothing to do, so you drive.
- 0:36They're heading through a stretch of land just north of Point Pleasant, West Virginia.
- 0:44The locals call it the TNT area. During the Second World War,
- 0:49it was a factory for explosives.
- 0:52Now it's empty.
- 0:55Concrete bunkers half-buried in the hills. Overgrown roads.
- 1:00Ponds that are a little too still.
- 1:04They pass an old abandoned power plant.
- 1:07And in the glow of the headlights, they see something standing beside the building.
- 1:14It's big, bigger than a man, gray and shaped like a person, but wrong.
- 1:23They can't make out a head, just a body and two eyes.
- 1:31Two round red eyes glowing in the headlights like burning coals and then it spreads its wings.
- 1:44The driver hits the gas the car tears down route 66 toward town faster and faster 70 80,
- 1:56100 miles an hour, and the creature doesn't run.
- 2:01It doesn't need to.
- 2:03It glides above them, effortlessly, keeping pace with the car all the way to the edge of town.
- 2:14Okay. In his defense, he just wanted to say hi.
- 2:27Greetings, mortals, and welcome to Creature Feature with Nyx,
- 2:32the only cryptid and folklore show hosted by an actual creature.
- 2:37I am Nyx, ancient terror of the void, devourer of stars, and queen of the night.
- 2:46And yes, before anyone says anything in the comments, I am aware that I am small.
- 2:52I am concentrated evil. Moving on.
- 2:57If this is your very first time here, hello, little imp. Welcome.
- 3:02You belong to me now. That's just how it works. I don't make the rules.
- 3:08Well, I do make the rules, but I'm not changing that one.
- 3:14So, this is it. Episode 1. The first official creature feature.
- 3:21I've been preparing for this for weeks. Do you know how hard it is to start
- 3:25a podcast when you're from the void?
- 3:28There's no Wi-Fi in the void.
- 3:31There's no anything in the void. That's kind of the whole point of the void.
- 3:37And the microphone. Let me tell you about the microphone. The first time I set it up, I hissed at it.
- 3:44Twice. It was looking at me funny. It has a little light on it,
- 3:48and I'll be honest, part of me just wanted to stare at that light for a while.
- 3:54I'm part cat. We have instec- We have instincts. I'm working on it.
- 4:04But enough about my struggles. Let's talk about why we're here.
- 4:10I crawled out of the abyss because you humans have been telling stories about
- 4:14my friends for centuries.
- 4:16And honestly, you get a lot of it wrong.
- 4:20Sometimes you get it right. Sometimes you get it really deliciously creepy.
- 4:27But somebody needs to sort through it all, look at the evidence, and decide what's real.
- 4:33What's a hoax? And what's just an owl? And who better than someone who has actually met them?
- 4:42So every episode, we're going to pick one creature or legend,
- 4:46we'll dig into where it came from, the sightings, the evidence,
- 4:50what the skeptics say, and then I'll give you my official verdict.
- 4:55A monster rating.
- 4:58And at the end, I'll share some stories from you, my little imps. More on that later.
- 5:05And for episode one, we had to start with the big one.
- 5:09The legend. The icon. A personal friend of mine.
- 5:14The Mothman. Now, I want to be up front. I know him. We go way back.
- 5:22We met in 1966, under a streetlight, which, you know, is where moths and void cats tend to hang out.
- 5:31He was very polite, very tall.
- 5:35He kept asking me if I'd seen any good porch lights.
- 5:39So, yes, I am a little biased, but I promise to be completely fair and extremely professional.
- 5:48He's a sweetheart, and anyone who says otherwise is wrong Okay,
- 5:55that's my professional opinion,
- 5:58So grab a snack, turn the lights down low, and maybe close the curtains And
- 6:03come with me, we're going to Mount Pleasant.
- 6:11Okay, to understand the Mothman, you have to understand Point Pleasant.
- 6:17Point Pleasant is a small town in West Virginia, right where two rivers meet,
- 6:23the Ohio River and the Kanawha River.
- 6:26Across the Ohio, you've got the state of Ohio. It's a river town.
- 6:31It's got a little downtown, old brick buildings, churches, and a flood wall along the water.
- 6:38In the 1960s, a few thousand people lived there. People worked at the plants and factories nearby.
- 6:46They went to church on Sunday and knew their neighbor's business.
- 6:50Honestly, the kind of place where nothing ever happens.
- 6:55Which, if you've ever listened to a single spooky story in your life,
- 7:01is exactly where things happen.
- 7:05Now, a few miles north of town, there's a piece of land with a history.
- 7:12During World War II, the U.S. government built a huge factory out there to make TNT, explosives.
- 7:22It was called the West Virginia Ordnance Works.
- 7:26And to store everything safely, they built these concrete domes,
- 7:30called igloos, scattered across the land and partly buried in the hills.
- 7:36Dozens of them, plus tunnels, pipes, and buildings for making all that very dangerous stuff.
- 7:46After the war ended, the factory shut down, and by the 1960s,
- 7:52it was basically abandoned.
- 7:55The woods grew back, part of it became a wildlife management area with ponds
- 8:00and marshes, and the locals started calling the whole place the TNT area.
- 8:07So picture it. Thick woods, swampy ponds, empty concrete bunkers with dark doorways
- 8:14just sitting in the trees, old roads that don't go anywhere anymore.
- 8:20And because it was quiet and out of the way, it became the spot where teenagers
- 8:26drove at night to park, to hang out, to get a little scared on purpose.
- 8:34Honestly, abandoned bunkers, misty ponds, nobody around at night?
- 8:41That's prime real estate.
- 8:43That's luxury living.
- 8:46If I ever leave the void, that's where I'm moving. Thank you.
- 8:51But keep the TNT area in mind, because it's going to come up a lot.
- 8:56A lot of the sightings happened right there.
- 9:00And later, people would point to it as a possible explanation,
- 9:05whether that's chemicals left over from the factory, or the idea that something
- 9:11could easily hide in all those empty bunkers.
- 9:15There's one more piece of local lore I want to mention.
- 9:19And I want to be careful with it. You'll often hear that Point Pleasant is cursed.
- 9:26The story goes back to 1777 when Cornstalk, a Shawnee leader,
- 9:32came to the fort of Point Pleasant on a diplomatic visit.
- 9:38While he was there, he was held captive and he and his son were murdered by American soldiers.
- 9:46According to legend, Cornstalk cursed the land before he died.
- 9:51Now, historians generally think the curse part was added much later,
- 9:57and there's no reliable record of him actually saying it.
- 10:01But what isn't a legend is that a man came in peace and was killed.
- 10:07So when people bring up the curse as a fun, spooky backstory,
- 10:12I think it's worth remembering there was a real person and a real injustice at the center of it.
- 10:20Okay, you've got the town. You've got the spooky abandoned explosives factory. Let's meet my friend.
- 10:31So, most people start the Mothman story with the couples and the car chase,
- 10:37but there were a couple of strange reports in the days right before that.
- 10:42And I think they make it even creepier.
- 10:46First, about three days earlier, around November 12th, a group of men were working
- 10:53at a cemetery near the town of Clendenin, West Virginia.
- 10:57That's a little ways from Point Pleasant. They were digging a grave,
- 11:01just doing their job, when they saw something move in the trees above them.
- 11:07They described it as a brown, man-shaped figure.
- 11:13And it wasn't climbing. It was gliding, moving from tree to tree, over their heads.
- 11:22Now, imagine you're digging a grave. That's already a spooky job.
- 11:28You're literally standing in a hole in the cemetery. And then something shaped
- 11:32like a person floats over your head through the trees? I would have quit.
- 11:39On the spot. Thrown the shovel down. Walked into the void. Gone.
- 11:48Okay, next up, we have the one that genuinely gets me.
- 11:55Newell Partridge and Bandit. Around November 14, a man named Newell Partridge
- 12:01was at home in Salem, West Virginia, about 90 miles from Point Pleasant.
- 12:07He was watching TV in the evening, when the screen suddenly went to static.
- 12:12A strange pattern And he said he heard a whining sound Almost like a generator winding up,
- 12:21Outside, his dog, a German shepherd named Bandit Started howling toward the barn So,
- 12:29Newell grabs a flashlight and goes outside And when he points the light toward
- 12:34the barn He sees two red circles Two glowing eyes reflecting the light back at him.
- 12:43He said they looked like bicycle reflectors, but big.
- 12:48And he got a very bad feeling, like deep in his bones.
- 12:53Bandit, being a brave good boy, charged off toward the ice.
- 12:58And Bandit never came back.
- 13:03No, absolutely not. I don't like this part.
- 13:10You can mess with mortals, but you do not mess with the dogs.
- 13:16Newell said he later found Bandit's paw prints in the mud, going in a circle,
- 13:22like the dog was spinning around, and then they just stopped.
- 13:28I'm choosing to believe Bandit ran off, found a nice farm, and lived a long,
- 13:34happy life full of treats.
- 13:36That's canon now. That's the official creature feature position on Bandit.
- 13:44Okay, so that brings us to the big one. November 15th, 1966.
- 13:51Two young couples, Roger and Linda Scareberry, and Steve and Mary Millett.
- 13:58Were driving through the TNT area late at night.
- 14:02They passed an old power plant building, and near it, they saw that shape. Six or seven feet tall.
- 14:10Gray, shaped like a man, but with no clear head or neck.
- 14:14And those glowing red eyes, about two inches across, catching the headlights.
- 14:22They said it moved kind of awkwardly on the ground, almost shuffling,
- 14:27like it wasn't built for walking.
- 14:30And then, it went toward the building, and they took off.
- 14:35They drove toward Point Pleasant as fast as the car would go,
- 14:38and they said that thing spread its wings about 10 feet across and rose straight up into the air.
- 14:44It didn't even flap. It just followed them over the car at 100 miles an hour.
- 14:52They drove straight to the sheriff's office. A deputy went out with them to
- 14:56look and didn't find anything.
- 14:58But everybody agreed on one thing. Those four people were terrified.
- 15:04Not, ha ha, we saw something weird, scared.
- 15:09But like, shaking, pale, genuinely afraid.
- 15:16And the next day, they told reporters. The story hit the local papers,
- 15:21and it spread across the country through the wire services.
- 15:25And somewhere in that frenzy, a newspaper editor gave the creature a name.
- 15:30Now, remember, this is 1966. What's on TV?
- 15:35Batman. The Adam West Batman. With the bam, pow, and the dancing. Huge hit.
- 15:43So a big winged figure in the night? Well, if Batman's a Batman,
- 15:48then this guy is a mothman.
- 15:53And I want to be clear, as his friend, he has never once said he's a moth.
- 16:00He never asked for that name. He got branded by the media.
- 16:04But honestly, it's a great name.
- 16:08It's stuck for 60 years. That's iconic.
- 16:14I'd kill for that kind of branding.
- 16:17After that night, the reports kept coming. Over the next year or so,
- 16:22dozens of people around Point Pleasant reported seeing a tall,
- 16:26winged creature with red eyes.
- 16:29Firemen, couples, students, people driving home late. Some saw it standing near the TNT area.
- 16:38Some saw it flying over the road.
- 16:40And this is something researchers call a flap.
- 16:46Once a story is in the news, everyone's watching the sky.
- 16:50Every big bird, every shadow, every reflection in the dark could be the Mothman.
- 16:56Some of those sightings were probably real.
- 17:01People, at least, seeing ordinary things.
- 17:05But the original witnesses never changed their stories.
- 17:10So, the description most people agree on, six to seven feet tall,
- 17:14gray or brown, huge wings, no visible neck, glowing red eyes,
- 17:22tall, mysterious, big wings, intense eyes.
- 17:27Honestly, he's a catch.
- 17:30I'm just saying.
- 17:34Okay, investigation time. Let's put on our little detective hats.
- 17:40I have a little detective hat. It doesn't fit over my horns,
- 17:44but you can wear yours anyway.
- 17:46So, what did people think this thing actually was?
- 17:51Let's start with the skeptics, because I'm a fair and balanced journalist,
- 17:56even when they're wrong.
- 17:59Alright, we have the crane theory. Not long after the sightings hit the news,
- 18:04a wildlife biologist from West Virginia University was asked about it,
- 18:09and his suggestion was a sandhill crane.
- 18:12Now, if you've never seen a sandhill crane, they're big birds.
- 18:17They can stand around 4 feet tall, and their wings can stretch 6 or 7 feet across.
- 18:24They're gray, and here's the interesting part. They have a patch of red skin around their eyes.
- 18:31So in the dark, with headlights hitting it, you'd have a tall gray thing with
- 18:36red around its face and giant wings.
- 18:41The catch is that the sandhill cranes don't normally live in West Virginia.
- 18:45So it would have to be one that got way off course on its migration.
- 18:51Which happens, birds get lost, but a lot of people pointed out that a crane
- 18:56being lost in exactly that spot at exactly that time is a bit of a stretch.
- 19:04Next, we have the owl theory. The other big contender is the owl.
- 19:11Later skeptics, including the investigator Joe Nickel, suggested something like
- 19:16a barred owl or another big owl.
- 19:19And honestly, this one makes a lot of sense.
- 19:23Owls are active at night.
- 19:26Their eyes reflect light really strongly. So in headlights or a flashlight beam,
- 19:32they can look like they're glowing red.
- 19:34They have big round faces and kind of no visible neck when they're hunched up.
- 19:41And when an owl spreads its wings suddenly right in front of you,
- 19:46they're way bigger looking than they really are.
- 19:52And here's the thing about size. When you see something at night and you don't
- 19:57know how far away it is, your brain is terrible at judging how big it is.
- 20:03Add being scared and a three-foot owl can become a seven-foot monster real quick.
- 20:11So, a crane? Or an owl? I'm sorry.
- 20:16I have met him personally. He is a very tall, very dignified gentleman,
- 20:23and he would be devastated to hear himself being described as a lost bird.
- 20:30I'm not going to tell him. Nobody tell him.
- 20:35The other big skeptic point is about how sightings spread.
- 20:40Once a story like this is in the paper, people go looking.
- 20:44They drive out to the TNT area at night, hoping or dreading to see something.
- 20:50Every pair of reflecting animal eyes in the dark becomes Mothman.
- 20:55Every big bird becomes Mothman. And honestly, some people just like being part of the story.
- 21:02There were also some pranks along the way. people trying to scare their friends,
- 21:07and stories of folks claiming to see it as a joke.
- 21:10So not every report from that year is equal.
- 21:15Okay, now let's talk about the person who took this story from weird local news to legendary.
- 21:24John Keel was a writer and journalist from New York who was really into the
- 21:30strange and unexplained.
- 21:33UFOs, monsters, the paranormal.
- 21:36When he heard about the Mothman reports, he went to Point Pleasant to investigate,
- 21:42and he kept coming back over the next year.
- 21:45He interviewed tons of witnesses, and according to Kiel, Mothman was just one
- 21:52piece of something much bigger and weirder going on around Point Pleasant.
- 21:59He wrote about lights in the sky and UFO sightings, strange phone calls,
- 22:06people getting visits from mysterious men in dark suits who asked odd questions,
- 22:12what people now call the men in black.
- 22:18And then there's Woodrow Derenberger. Okay, I love this one.
- 22:25Derenberger was a sewing machine salesman who said that in early November 1966,
- 22:32while driving home, a strange craft landed in front of his truck.
- 22:38And a man got out and talked to him telepathically.
- 22:43The man said his name was Indrid Cold. He was smiling a lot.
- 22:49And Darren Berger said they kept in touch afterward, and that Indrid Cold was
- 22:54from a planet called Lanulose.
- 22:57I'm sorry, Indrid Cold? That's the coolest name I've ever heard. That's a villain name.
- 23:06That's a band name. If I ever have a nemesis, I want them to be named Indrid Cold.
- 23:14Anyway, Kiel took all of these stories and tied them together,
- 23:17and in 1975, he published his book, The Mothman Prophecies.
- 23:23In it, he suggested that Mothman wasn't just a creature.
- 23:27It was connected to all the other strange things happening around town.
- 23:33And maybe it was a kind of warning, a sign that something terrible was about to happen.
- 23:41The book became a cult classic, and in 2002, it was turned into a movie starring Richard Gere.
- 23:48The movie changes a lot of the details, but it made Mothman famous all over again.
- 23:56Which brings us to the part of the story where Mothman becomes a prophet.
- 24:01And for that, I need to talk about something real.
- 24:05And something that's pretty sad.
- 24:09The Silver Bridge.
- 24:16Okay, I need to be serious for a few minutes, because this part of the story isn't about a monster.
- 24:23It's about real people.
- 24:26Point Pleasant was connected to Ohio by a bridge across the river called the Silver Bridge.
- 24:32It was built in the late 1920s, and it got its name from its shiny aluminum paint.
- 24:38For about 40 years, it was a big part of daily life in the area.
- 24:43People crossed it to go to work, to shop, to visit family.
- 24:48On December 15, 1967, a little over a year after the first sighting,
- 24:54it was evening rush hour.
- 24:56It was ten days before Christmas. The bridge was full of cars,
- 25:01people driving home from work and coming back from holiday shopping.
- 25:05Traffic was backed up, bumper to bumper.
- 25:09And at around 5 in the evening The bridge collapsed It fell into the Ohio River
- 25:16in less than a minute Taking dozens of cars with it 46,
- 25:22people died Some were never found.
- 25:27Later, investigators found out what happened.
- 25:31The silver bridge was a type of suspension bridge that hung from chains made
- 25:35of long steel links called eyebars.
- 25:38And one single eyebar had a tiny crack.
- 25:42A flaw so small, hidden in a spot where nobody could have seen it during an inspection.
- 25:49Over decades of weather and traffic, the crack grew. Until one day, the link broke.
- 25:56And because of the way the bridge was designed, when one link failed,
- 26:01there was nothing to hold it up.
- 26:04The whole thing came down.
- 26:06One good thing came out of it. The disaster led the national bridge inspection
- 26:12standards across the United States.
- 26:14Rules that required regular, careful safety checks on bridges.
- 26:19So the people who lost their lives that day changed how bridges are kept safe
- 26:23across the whole country.
- 26:27Now, here's where the legend comes back in.
- 26:31After the collapse, the Mothman sightings mostly stopped, and people began to connect the two.
- 26:38John Keel wrote about it in his book, and the idea grew that Mothman had been a warning.
- 26:44That he appeared to tell people something terrible was coming.
- 26:48Over the years, people have claimed Mothman showed up before other disasters too.
- 26:54And I get why that story is compelling. Humans look for meaning when terrible things happen.
- 27:01It feels better to think there was a sign, something that explains it.
- 27:06But the bridge fell because of a crack in a piece of steel.
- 27:10Not because of a creature. Not because of a curse.
- 27:15And I think it's important whenever people tell this legend to remember that
- 27:20those 46 people were real.
- 27:23They had families and Christmas plans and lives.
- 27:28They're not a spooky plot point. They deserve to be remembered as people first.
- 27:35And speaking of his friend, I don't think Mothman would want to be blamed for that either.
- 27:44If he really was out there trying to warn people, then I hope he knows it wasn't his fault.
- 27:54Okay, deep breath. Let's honor those folks by remembering them.
- 27:59And let's honor my buddy by giving him the rating he deserves.
- 28:04So, Nix's official verdict.
- 28:08What do I actually think happened in Point Pleasant? Honestly,
- 28:12I think it's most likely that a few frightened people saw a big bird in the
- 28:16dark, probably an owl, maybe a lost crane,
- 28:21in the creepiest possible place.
- 28:24Right next to abandoned explosive bunkers in the middle of the night.
- 28:29And then the newspapers got hold of it.
- 28:31The whole town started watching the skies, and the story grew and grew.
- 28:37But what keeps it interesting for me is the original witnesses.
- 28:42Those four people in the car were genuinely terrified.
- 28:47And they described the same thing for the rest of their lives.
- 28:51Whatever they saw, it was real to them.
- 28:53And I don't think anyone can say for sure what was out there that night.
- 28:58And here's my favorite part of the whole story.
- 29:02Point Pleasant didn't run from the Mothman. They adopted him.
- 29:08Today, there's a big, shiny, metal Mothman statue right downtown with glowing
- 29:13red eyes and very impressive abs.
- 29:18There's a Mothman museum. and every September, there's a whole Mothman festival,
- 29:24where thousands of people come to celebrate him, wear costumes,
- 29:28eat Mothman-themed food, and take pictures with the statue.
- 29:32So he went from local monster to beloved small-town mascot with his own statue and a festival.
- 29:40Honestly, life goals. If anybody wants to build me a statue,
- 29:46I accept. I'll even pose. Thank you.
- 29:54Okay, it's time for the very first official monster rating.
- 29:59Every creature gets rated in four categories out of five bats. Let's go.
- 30:06Spookiness. Okay, I'm going to give this a four out of five.
- 30:11Glowing red eyes in the dark.
- 30:13A car chase at 100 miles an hour. That poor dog.
- 30:17That's scary stuff. I'm only taking one bat off because, you know,
- 30:22I know him. and he's a softie.
- 30:25Plausibility. I'm giving it a 2 out of 5. A lot of people saw something.
- 30:31That part is real. But an owl or a crane really does explain a lot,
- 30:38and the story got bigger once the media got involved.
- 30:42Cuteness. 5 out of 5. Fluffy.
- 30:47Big eyes. Loves Lance. Shy. there are no notes. He's a cutie.
- 30:54I will not be taking questions.
- 30:56And finally, the most important category, would Nix befriend him?
- 31:03I already did. We're besties. Next question.
- 31:07So that makes Mothman's final monster rating a very respectable 11 out of 15
- 31:15bats, plus a friendship bonus,
- 31:18congratulations mothman you're
- 31:20the first ever creature feature do you have anything to say to the fans.
- 31:28He says hi and he wants everyone to leave their porch lights on okay that's a little weird but okay.
- 31:40Okay, time for the last segment of the show, Tales from the Imps.
- 31:48This is where I share your stories, your strange encounters,
- 31:54your hometown legends, and the time that your cat stared at an empty corner
- 32:01and you've never been the same.
- 32:04And you guys actually sent me stories. for episode one.
- 32:09I am so proud of you. The void is fed. The void is happy.
- 32:17All right, the first one comes from Alistair.
- 32:22Alistair writes, One day, my family and I were on a road trip,
- 32:28and we stopped at a hotel to sleep for the night.
- 32:32I had my own hotel room. During the night, I heard knocking on the window.
- 32:39I thought it was just the wind, so I ignored it and went back to sleep.
- 32:47In the morning, I woke up with scratches on my back.
- 32:52Deep ones. My back was bleeding.
- 32:56And not just a little bit. A lot.
- 33:01To this day, I still can't explain what happened.
- 33:07Alistair. Alistair, excuse me?
- 33:13Okay, first of all, I'm so sorry that that happened to you, and I hope that your back is okay now.
- 33:24That sounds genuinely scary and painful.
- 33:29Second of all, knocking on the window at night in a hotel and you just went to sleep?
- 33:39Alistair, you are braver than me. I would have been under the bed.
- 33:45I would have been in the bathtub with the shower curtain closed.
- 33:51I would have called the front desk and asked to be moved to a room with no windows.
- 33:58Or walls I would have gone back into the void,
- 34:02But let's actually look at this, because there's a lot going on.
- 34:09Number one, knocking on windows is a thing in folklore all over the world.
- 34:17There is a really common old belief that you should answer a knock that you shouldn't.
- 34:24I'm not trying to trick you, I promise. Yes. Um,
- 34:29there's a common old belief that you shouldn't answer a knock or a voice at
- 34:36your window at night because something might be trying to get you to let it in.
- 34:43And you'll find modern versions too, like the stories of the black-eyed children
- 34:50who supposedly knock on doors and windows asking to be let inside.
- 34:56So the fact that you didn't open the window? Good instincts. 10 out of 10.
- 35:02Never open the window.
- 35:06Number two. Waking up with scratches you can't explain is one of the most commonly
- 35:14reported things in paranormal stories.
- 35:18People who believe in hauntings will tell you scratches, especially in groups
- 35:24of three, are a classic sign of something unfriendly.
- 35:31Now, the skeptic in me has to mention a few things because I'm a professional.
- 35:38Sometimes people scratch themselves in their sleep,
- 35:42especially if they have an allergic reaction to something like hotel detergent
- 35:49or, I'm sorry to say this, hotel bugs.
- 35:55Some people have sensitive skin that make that makes marking really easily makes
- 36:02marking really easily what are you doing next makes marks really easily,
- 36:10and sleepwalking or rough sleep in a strange bed can do weird things.
- 36:18But the knocking the same night and scratches deep enough to bleed a lot,
- 36:28that's a lot of coincidence for one hotel room.
- 36:34And honestly, Alistair, you were there and I wasn't.
- 36:40And if you still can't explain it, I'm not going to pretend I can.
- 36:46So, my official ruling is, something knocked, you didn't let it in,
- 36:53and it was very, very rude about it.
- 36:59Also, if you remember the name of that hotel, please tell me so I can never, ever go there.
- 37:08Alright, next story.
- 37:12This one came in on TikTok from Ville47, and it's about their grandpa.
- 37:20Ville47 writes, My grandpa swears that every year on the same day,
- 37:27something strange happened at his uncle's old house.
- 37:32A flaming ball of fire would appear in the street outside the house.
- 37:39Then, it would open the front door, fly down the long hallway,
- 37:46all the way to the back door, and go out into the backyard.
- 37:51It would stay there for a few minutes, and then it would disappear.
- 37:57The house was in a town called Hopetown in South Africa.
- 38:02My grandfather was just a kid back then, so I doubt he remembers which day it was.
- 38:08And there were other supernatural things that happened in that house,
- 38:12things he doesn't talk about.
- 38:16A few years ago, my grandpa visited the house again, as an old man, with my parents.
- 38:23They met the new owners, who were really nice.
- 38:27They talked for a while, and then my grandpa mentioned that he used to visit
- 38:31the house as a kid, to see his uncle during the holidays.
- 38:36And the new owners went quiet, and they asked just one thing. What?
- 38:44Do you know about the ghost? And my family had never said anything about anything supernatural to them.
- 38:55Not one word.
- 38:58Okay, I think I have goosebumps. I didn't know void demons could get goosebumps.
- 39:06I have them. My fur is standing up.
- 39:11First of all, a fireball that opens the front door, not smashing through a window,
- 39:20not floating through a wall like a normal ghost. It uses the door,
- 39:25it walks the hallway, and it goes out the back like it's taking the same path
- 39:29it's taken a hundred times.
- 39:32That's the most polite haunting I have ever heard of.
- 39:36That ghost has manners. That ghost wipes its feet.
- 39:41But honestly, the detail that gets me is that it happened on the same day every year.
- 39:50In ghost lore, that's what people would call an anniversary haunting.
- 39:56The idea is that something happened on that date.
- 40:01And whatever it is left behind, or whatever it is, Whatever,
- 40:08is left behind keeps repeating it like a recording loop, walking the same path every year.
- 40:18Front door, hallway, back door, backyard.
- 40:23Which makes me wonder, what's in the backyard?
- 40:28Why does it go there and stay for a few minutes?
- 40:33Ville 47 I need you to ask your grandpa about the backyard And glowing balls
- 40:39of light show up in folklore all over the world.
- 40:44In Europe, there's the will-o'-the-wisps, mysterious lights that float over marshes at night.
- 40:51And in Mexico, there's the stories of bolas de fuego, fireballs that some people
- 40:57say are witches flying through the night.
- 41:01And in South Africa, you've got plenty of your own local ghost lore too.
- 41:06The skeptic explanation people usually bring up for fireballs is something called ball lightning.
- 41:14But ball lightning doesn't usually show up on a schedule it's a rare glowing
- 41:23orb that can sometimes appear during storms,
- 41:28and it definitely doesn't open doors.
- 41:34And then there's Hopetown, which, if I'm correct, has its own bit of strange history.
- 41:43It's a small town in the North Cape, or Northern Cape, and it's famous as the
- 41:50place where the first diamond in South Africa was found.
- 41:54Back in the 1860s, which started the whole diamond rush.
- 41:59So it's an old town with a lot of history.
- 42:04And lots of time for stories to pile up.
- 42:09The part of the story that will stay with me is the new owners.
- 42:14Your grandpa says he used to visit as a kid, and instead of,
- 42:18oh, how lovely, they go quiet and say, do you know about the ghost?
- 42:25Nobody told them anything, which means whatever was in that house when your
- 42:31grandpa was a little boy is still there.
- 42:35Decades later, still walking the hallway.
- 42:40Nix's official ruling, that house is haunted.
- 42:45The ghost is extremely polite, and I would 100% leave the back door open for it.
- 42:51Ville 47, please tell your grandpa, thank you for this story.
- 42:56And if he ever wants to share the other things that happened in that house.
- 43:02The void is listening, respectfully, from a safe distance.
- 43:07Okay, after that one, I think we all need something a little less terrifying.
- 43:14So, I'm going to tell you about the time I heard knocking at my window.
- 43:22So, a few weeks ago, I'm in my little corner of the void, getting ready for this podcast.
- 43:31It's late, very late.
- 43:34I've got one tiny lamp on, and I'm curled up reading about cryptids, as one does.
- 43:41And then I hear it. Tap, tap, tap on my window.
- 43:49And I want you to understand I'm a void demon I'm the scary one Things are supposed
- 43:58to knock on other people's windows Because of me Nobody knocks on mine,
- 44:05So I do what any ancient terror of the void would do,
- 44:09I fluff up to twice my size I hiss, I fall off my chair and I hide behind the
- 44:15curtain The tapping keeps going tap, tap, tap for like 20 minutes.
- 44:23And I'm behind the curtain the whole time, whispering, I am not afraid.
- 44:30I am not afraid. I am the thing that people are afraid of.
- 44:35So finally, I gather up all my courage. I rip open the curtain,
- 44:40horns out, wings out, ready to fight.
- 44:44And there's a moth, a tiny little moth, bonking its head on the glass over and
- 44:53over because it wanted to get to my lamp.
- 44:57And I'm standing there, all puffed up, staring at this little guy.
- 45:03And he's staring at the lamp, and I just went, same, buddy, same.
- 45:09So I let him in. He sat next to the lamp all night. And honestly, it was kind of nice.
- 45:16And now that I think about it, he looked a little familiar.
- 45:21Big eyes, kind of shy, very into lights.
- 45:27Wait, was that a really small mothman?
- 45:33Was he checking on me before the episode?
- 45:38I need to call him. Anyway, the moral of the story is, if you hear knocking
- 45:44at your window at night, it's probably a moth.
- 45:48Unless you're Alistair, then it's definitely not a moth. Please lock your windows.
- 45:56Thank you so much for your stories, little imps.
- 46:00And keep them coming. Send me your encounters. your weird sightings,
- 46:05your local legends, your haunted grandma's house, anything strange.
- 46:12And your stories could be featured in the next future episode.
- 46:17You can send them over to me by emailing them to creaturefeaturewithnicks at
- 46:23gmail.com or leave a comment on one of my videos.
- 46:29And, uh, that's the story of the Mothman My tall, winged, red-eyed bestie And
- 46:37the little town that turned a monster into a festival,
- 46:42Next week, we're heading to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey To talk about the
- 46:48Jersey Devil And I have a bit of,
- 46:53a history with him We went on a date It did not go well. We'll get into it.
- 47:01If you liked this episode, please subscribe, follow, leave a review, and tell a friend.
- 47:08It feeds the void, and the void is always hungry.
- 47:14Until next time, stay curious, stay spooky, and don't stare into the void. She's staring back.