Latest / Crime and Horror / They discovered pure NIGHTMARE FUEL in the wilderness…
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: In today's episode, I'm going to tell you two stories.
- 0:02Speaker 1: The first story you're going to hear is about this
- 0:04Speaker 1: village in Africa where people keep turning up dead and
- 0:07Speaker 1: nobody knows why until they do a stakeout. And the
- 0:11Speaker 1: second and final story you'll hear is about this remote
- 0:14Speaker 1: island in the Arctic region of Northern Canada where these
- 0:17Speaker 1: indigenous hunters make a truly disturbing discovery. But before we
- 0:22Speaker 1: get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the strange,
- 0:25Speaker 1: dark and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come
- 0:28Speaker 1: to the right place, because that's all we do in
- 0:30Speaker 1: the upload once a week. So if that's of interest
- 0:33Speaker 1: to you, please offer to do the like buttons grocery shopping,
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- 0:46Speaker 2: Okay, let's get into today's stories.
- 1:04Speaker 1: In the middle of the night on March seventh, two
- 1:06Speaker 1: thousand and five, a sixty four year old man named
- 1:09Speaker 1: John Mangean crouched in the bushes in his little village
- 1:12Speaker 1: in Uganda. Several of John's friends and neighbors were also
- 1:15Speaker 1: crouching in bushes nearby, and everyone was being totally silent,
- 1:20Speaker 1: constantly scanning the area looking for movement, but so far
- 1:24Speaker 1: nothing had happened, and everyone was totally exhausted and terrified.
- 1:29Speaker 1: So John had been around for a long time. He
- 1:32Speaker 1: had nine kids, thirty one grandkids, and he remembered a
- 1:36Speaker 1: time that was not even that long ago, when this
- 1:38Speaker 1: village was a happy, bustling place where you know, families
- 1:42Speaker 1: and kids could play in harmony and everyone felt safe.
- 1:45Speaker 1: But that all changed fourteen years earlier, in nineteen ninety one,
- 1:49Speaker 1: because starting in that year, people in this village started dying,
- 1:55Speaker 1: or more specifically, people in this village started getting killed
- 1:59Speaker 1: by something so someone they didn't know. It was like randomly,
- 2:02Speaker 1: people would just go missing and then turn up horribly
- 2:05Speaker 1: mutilated and deceased, or people just vanished and were never
- 2:09Speaker 1: seen again. Over the course of these fourteen years, eighty
- 2:13Speaker 1: three people from this village had been killed and nobody
- 2:16Speaker 1: knew why. And eighty three people, to put this in perspective,
- 2:20Speaker 1: represented ten percent of this entire village's population. This was
- 2:25Speaker 1: so widespread that everybody in John's village personally knew someone
- 2:29Speaker 1: who had been killed by whatever was plaguing this village.
- 2:33Speaker 1: And at some point, you know, the people in this
- 2:34Speaker 1: village began to think that clearly a demon is responsible
- 2:39Speaker 1: for this. I mean, this is this is so pervasive
- 2:41Speaker 1: that this can't be an animal or a person. This
- 2:44Speaker 1: is like, you know, God's will or something, or this
- 2:46Speaker 1: is you know, the devil's will. We don't know, but
- 2:48Speaker 1: it's it's supernatural, Like we can't control this. It just
- 2:52Speaker 1: is a part of living here. And so literally, this village,
- 2:55Speaker 1: the people here had just grown to accept that Yep,
- 2:58Speaker 1: sometimes people just mutilated and dead.
- 3:01Speaker 2: There's nothing we can do about it. We just got
- 3:02Speaker 2: to live with it.
- 3:03Speaker 1: But John, I mean he personally knew several people who
- 3:06Speaker 1: had been killed, and he never took the stance of, well,
- 3:10Speaker 1: it's supernatural and we can't do anything about it. John's like, no,
- 3:13Speaker 1: we need to look into this. There's got to be
- 3:15Speaker 1: an actual explanation for what's happening here. And so finally,
- 3:19Speaker 1: in two thousand and five, the tipping point was a
- 3:22Speaker 1: little boy went missing in the village one morning.
- 3:24Speaker 2: And for John, I.
- 3:25Speaker 1: Mean, he has all these grandkids, including a bunch of
- 3:28Speaker 1: little boys. And he saw this little boy go missing,
- 3:31Speaker 1: and you know, he was never found again, and he's thinking,
- 3:33Speaker 1: John's thinking, that's just like one of my grandkids. This
- 3:37Speaker 1: has to stop. We got to look now, we have
- 3:39Speaker 1: to look into this now. And so John very forcefully
- 3:42Speaker 1: rounded up some people in the village, his friends and
- 3:45Speaker 1: neighbors and others, and he told them, tonight, we are
- 3:47Speaker 1: going to set up a stake out and stay out
- 3:49Speaker 1: all night if we have to, and wait for this demon,
- 3:53Speaker 1: this creature, this person, whoever it is. We are going
- 3:56Speaker 1: to catch them in the act and put an end
- 3:58Speaker 1: to this thing. And because John was so motivated, so enthusiastic,
- 4:02Speaker 1: and so ready to sort of lead this thing, he
- 4:05Speaker 1: really quickly turned the tide of people's opinions in this village.
- 4:09Speaker 1: It's like they went from being how we can't do
- 4:11Speaker 1: anything about it, to you know what.
- 4:12Speaker 2: Yeah, let's put an end to this thing.
- 4:14Speaker 1: And so sure enough that night, John and all these
- 4:17Speaker 1: people he had got together for this stakeout, they headed
- 4:20Speaker 1: to this area in their village called the Butchery. They
- 4:23Speaker 1: had named it that because the majority of the eighty
- 4:26Speaker 1: three people who had been killed and mutilated and you know,
- 4:29Speaker 1: turned up dead. They were either found roughly in that
- 4:33Speaker 1: area or that's where they were last seen before they vanished.
- 4:37Speaker 1: And the butchery was actually basically right next to this lake,
- 4:40Speaker 1: this Placid lake that sort of sat right next to
- 4:43Speaker 1: the village. So everybody's scared of this lake in this area.
- 4:46Speaker 1: But tonight's the night they're going to figure out what's
- 4:49Speaker 1: happening in this village.
- 4:50Speaker 2: And so John and the.
- 4:51Speaker 1: Other volunteers they make their way over to the butchery
- 4:54Speaker 1: and they each climb into these tall bushes, these reeds
- 4:57Speaker 1: that are right next to the lake, and they all
- 5:00Speaker 1: couch down, kind of keeping their eyes on the land,
- 5:03Speaker 1: the butchery and also the lake. And there they sat,
- 5:07Speaker 1: all of them constantly looking at each other, you know,
- 5:09Speaker 1: maintaining eye contact.
- 5:10Speaker 2: You know, to stay safe.
- 5:12Speaker 1: And they're looking at each other, they're looking at the water,
- 5:14Speaker 1: the black water that's totally still, and you know, there's
- 5:17Speaker 1: nothing on land, it's still, it's silent, and for hours
- 5:20Speaker 1: they just sat there nervously watching, waiting for something to happen.
- 5:24Speaker 2: They didn't know what it was going to be.
- 5:25Speaker 1: They didn't know, if you know, one of the volunteers
- 5:28Speaker 1: in the steakout was something going to be ripped away
- 5:30Speaker 1: by this demon or whatever it was. But all night
- 5:33Speaker 1: on this first night of the steakhout, they're waiting and
- 5:35Speaker 1: watching on edge, and nothing happens.
- 5:38Speaker 2: And so John the next morning says, we've got to
- 5:40Speaker 2: do it again.
- 5:40Speaker 1: We got to go back out there and do another
- 5:42Speaker 1: steakhout because we know there's something out there. And so,
- 5:45Speaker 1: sure enough, night two rolls around, and now they have
- 5:48Speaker 1: even more volunteers. They're motivated. They're out there in the bushes, waiting,
- 5:52Speaker 1: watching the lake, watching the land.
- 5:54Speaker 2: But nothing happens again.
- 5:55Speaker 1: And this cycle continues for four more days where nothing happens.
- 6:00Speaker 1: Is rallying people every night to keep going back out there,
- 6:03Speaker 1: but the group is getting more and more tired.
- 6:05Speaker 2: I mean, they're staying out all night.
- 6:07Speaker 1: It's also sort of deflating to realize that, you know what,
- 6:10Speaker 1: it looks like, we don't have control over whatever's happening here,
- 6:13Speaker 1: Like we can't catch this thing.
- 6:14Speaker 2: We don't even know what it is.
- 6:16Speaker 1: And so after six days of this where they have
- 6:18Speaker 1: seen nothing, no one's been taken, no one's been killed,
- 6:21Speaker 1: it's been totally quiet in the village, John rallies the
- 6:24Speaker 1: people one more time. He goes one more night, give
- 6:27Speaker 1: me one more I know we're going to catch something.
- 6:30Speaker 1: And so he got the village to kind of agree
- 6:32Speaker 1: to go out for one more night. And this night,
- 6:35Speaker 1: unlike the others, John decided to do something different to
- 6:38Speaker 1: try to sort of entice you know, whatever this creature
- 6:41Speaker 1: or person or whoever it was, whatever it was, to
- 6:44Speaker 1: entice them out of hiding. He and the villagers strung
- 6:47Speaker 1: up all this organ meat in the trees right near
- 6:50Speaker 1: the butchery, you know, believing that you know, whoever was
- 6:53Speaker 1: killing these people was seeking their meat, and so they
- 6:56Speaker 1: put meat up in the trees. And so that night,
- 6:58Speaker 1: the seventh night, John and the others, after putting their
- 7:01Speaker 1: organ meat in the trees, they crouch down in the bushes,
- 7:05Speaker 1: you know, waiting and watching, and it's silent and it's dark,
- 7:09Speaker 1: and at first nothing happens.
- 7:10Speaker 2: And as the night goes on and on, you.
- 7:12Speaker 1: Know, people are starting to think, you know, it's just
- 7:14Speaker 1: another night where nothing's gonna happen, and people are starting
- 7:16Speaker 1: to get restless, and John's telling them, like, be quiet.
- 7:19Speaker 2: Stays still, we gotta wait, we gotta watch see what happens.
- 7:22Speaker 1: Hours and hours go by, nothing, but then between four
- 7:26Speaker 1: or five in the morning. It's still dark out, the
- 7:28Speaker 1: water's black, it's still and silent, and people are really
- 7:31Speaker 1: starting to get restless.
- 7:32Speaker 2: At this point, they begin to hear something.
- 7:34Speaker 1: It's like this low, grumbling sound that appears to be
- 7:37Speaker 1: coming from the lake, but it's hard to tell.
- 7:39Speaker 2: The lake was pretty big, and it was still dark out.
- 7:41Speaker 1: They're looking out at the water and it's just dark
- 7:43Speaker 1: and they're right near the water, and so they're hearing
- 7:45Speaker 1: this rumbling sound and everyone's kind of looking out like
- 7:48Speaker 1: this is the first time anything has happened during one
- 7:50Speaker 1: of these steakouts, and Johnny's he's telling them stay down,
- 7:53Speaker 1: stay quiet, and they're looking out at the water and
- 7:56Speaker 1: it's still, but this rumbling, growling sounds starts.
- 8:00Speaker 2: Getting louder and louder and louder.
- 8:02Speaker 1: It's so loud at a certain point that john he
- 8:05Speaker 1: can feel his body literally trembling from the sound. And
- 8:08Speaker 1: as that begins to happen, even with the minimal light,
- 8:11Speaker 1: they're looking out at the black water and they notice
- 8:14Speaker 1: ripples on the surface of the water. Something's moving in
- 8:17Speaker 1: the lake, and so everybody's looking and waiting.
- 8:19Speaker 2: Everyone's scared.
- 8:20Speaker 1: John looks over at the other people who are in
- 8:22Speaker 1: the other set of bushes right near him, and he
- 8:23Speaker 1: can see their eyes are wide. They're terrified, but everyone's
- 8:27Speaker 1: looking out at the water. And then eventually, this massive,
- 8:30Speaker 1: dark silhouette emerges from the lake, and this loud growl
- 8:35Speaker 1: fills the air and everyone's frozen.
- 8:37Speaker 2: And then whatever it is charges towards John, but it
- 8:40Speaker 2: doesn't go after John.
- 8:42Speaker 1: This huge creature runs past John and bites down on
- 8:47Speaker 1: the meat dangling from the trees. But the meat they
- 8:50Speaker 1: had placed hooks in the meat like a trap, and
- 8:53Speaker 1: as soon as this thing bit onto the meat, it
- 8:56Speaker 1: got snared in one of the traps.
- 8:58Speaker 2: And it couldn't move.
- 8:59Speaker 1: And who had been waiting for this moment, Even though
- 9:02Speaker 1: he has no idea what's happened here, he knew he
- 9:04Speaker 1: needed back up, and so he got up and sprinted
- 9:07Speaker 1: into the village and began screaming for everyone to come
- 9:10Speaker 1: out here and help us. And so fifty villagers came
- 9:12Speaker 1: poured out of their homes and they all descended on
- 9:15Speaker 1: the tree with all the organ meat and this huge
- 9:18Speaker 1: creature dangling and thrashing from the trap.
- 9:21Speaker 2: And they suddenly realized that what had been plaguing their
- 9:24Speaker 2: village was not a demon. It was instead the.
- 9:28Speaker 1: Largest saltwater crocodile ever found in Uganda. This crocodile was
- 9:34Speaker 1: sixteen feet long over two thousand pounds.
- 9:37Speaker 2: I mean, this thing is massive.
- 9:39Speaker 1: And for fourteen years, this crocodile had been sneaking into
- 9:43Speaker 1: the village, grabbing people and dragging them back to the lake,
- 9:48Speaker 1: and nobody had seen it, or more specifically, anyone who
- 9:52Speaker 1: had seen this crocodile.
- 9:53Speaker 2: This beast did not live to tell.
- 9:55Speaker 1: The town authorities were quickly called to the village and
- 9:58Speaker 1: they wouldn't allow the villagers to kill this crocodile as
- 10:01Speaker 1: much as they wanted to.
- 10:02Speaker 2: Instead, the crocodile was relocated.
- 10:09Speaker 1: Last year, we launched a brand new podcast here at
- 10:11Speaker 1: Ballin Studios called Redacted Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana, and
- 10:16Speaker 1: so far you guys have loved it. And in case
- 10:18Speaker 1: you haven't heard, we also launched a YouTube channel for Redacted,
- 10:22Speaker 1: where you can not only listen to these episodes, but
- 10:25Speaker 1: also watch the beautiful animations we've done for each of
- 10:28Speaker 1: these episodes. That channel already has one hundred and fifty
- 10:31Speaker 1: thousand subscribers and it's growing really quickly. And there are
- 10:34Speaker 1: hours of content available right now for you to bench.
- 10:37Speaker 1: New uploads to this YouTube channel will be every single Tuesday.
- 10:41Speaker 1: All you have to do is look up at Redacted
- 10:43Speaker 1: Mysteries on YouTube and I'll also be putting a link
- 10:46Speaker 1: in the description below. Wondery Plus subscribers can also watch
- 10:49Speaker 1: redacted on the wonder app. Okay, back to the stories.
- 11:01Speaker 1: One morning in April of eighteen forty eight, a group
- 11:04Speaker 1: of men were walking towards the coast of King William Island,
- 11:07Speaker 1: which is an island located in the freezing Arctic region
- 11:10Speaker 1: of Northern Canada. These men were members of the Inuit
- 11:13Speaker 1: people who are indigenous to King William Island, and today
- 11:17Speaker 1: they were going hunting. Specifically, they were making their way
- 11:20Speaker 1: towards the coastline to see if they could find any
- 11:22Speaker 1: seals that they could hunt and kill for food and
- 11:25Speaker 1: for clothing. However, even though technically the coastline was right
- 11:28Speaker 1: in front of them, they couldn't actually see the water
- 11:31Speaker 1: because there was this huge icy hill that obstructed their view.
- 11:35Speaker 1: So in order to look down to the water, they
- 11:37Speaker 1: would have to crest that hill and then look down.
- 11:40Speaker 1: As these hunters got closer to the hill, the youngest
- 11:43Speaker 1: of the hunters broke from the group and ran up
- 11:46Speaker 1: the hill to basically get an early look over and
- 11:49Speaker 1: see if he could spot any animals down below. However,
- 11:52Speaker 1: as soon as he crested the hill and scan the
- 11:54Speaker 1: coastline again, you got a picture. It's snowy, icy outside.
- 11:57Speaker 1: It's below zero degrees. I mean, you're in the art
- 12:00Speaker 1: Arctic wild here. He's looking down and at first all
- 12:02Speaker 1: he sees is just white, just snow ice.
- 12:06Speaker 2: But he sees something else, and.
- 12:08Speaker 1: As he's looking at it, he can't even understand what
- 12:10Speaker 1: he's seeing, like, it doesn't make sense.
- 12:12Speaker 2: It's not computing.
- 12:13Speaker 1: And so at this point, the young hunter kind of
- 12:15Speaker 1: ducked down on this side of the hill, kind of
- 12:17Speaker 1: away and out of view of the ocean, and he
- 12:20Speaker 1: turned and signaled to the other hunters to get up
- 12:22Speaker 1: here and take a look. And so the other hunters,
- 12:24Speaker 1: they don't really understand what's happening here, but they can see,
- 12:26Speaker 1: you know, there's some urgency coming from this young hunter,
- 12:29Speaker 1: and so they they run up the hill as well,
- 12:31Speaker 1: and all together, all at once, they kind of peer
- 12:34Speaker 1: up and over the hill again and they look down
- 12:36Speaker 1: and for a second they all just stared in horrified
- 12:39Speaker 1: silence down below wandering along the coastline. We're not seals
- 12:44Speaker 1: or walruses or any other animals that these hunters might
- 12:47Speaker 1: have expected.
- 12:47Speaker 2: To see out here. Instead, they saw people.
- 12:51Speaker 1: Specifically, they saw colunot, which is their word for white men.
- 12:55Speaker 1: But these men were not acting like people. They were lumbering,
- 12:59Speaker 1: almost like they weren't in control of their bodies. They
- 13:01Speaker 1: had these strange, jerky movements, and they were all just
- 13:05Speaker 1: kind of staring straight ahead with these vacant expressions.
- 13:08Speaker 2: And their skin it was like black and blue, and.
- 13:11Speaker 1: Their clothes were tattered, and they were just kind of
- 13:14Speaker 1: lumbering along.
- 13:15Speaker 2: About forty of these colunat, these white men.
- 13:18Speaker 1: Now, for these hunters, I mean, they really didn't have
- 13:21Speaker 1: much exposure or experience around colunot, around white men. I mean,
- 13:25Speaker 1: all they really knew at the time and in this
- 13:27Speaker 1: part of the world is that white men were pretty
- 13:30Speaker 1: dangerous to the indigenous people. But they did know there
- 13:33Speaker 1: was a group of Colunat who were staying on a
- 13:35Speaker 1: ship that was off the coast of King William Island,
- 13:38Speaker 1: and they had been living there for the better part
- 13:40Speaker 1: of a year, and it seemed like their ship might
- 13:42Speaker 1: have frozen off the coast and they were just kind
- 13:44Speaker 1: of trapped until the warmer months came around and they
- 13:47Speaker 1: could sail away. But to this point, the Inuit people
- 13:50Speaker 1: really had not seen or interacted with any of those
- 13:53Speaker 1: white people.
- 13:53Speaker 2: They had just kind of kept to themselves and that
- 13:55Speaker 2: was it.
- 13:55Speaker 1: So just to see the collunat the white people on land,
- 14:00Speaker 1: and that alone was really shocking, like what happened?
- 14:02Speaker 2: Why did they leave their ship? Why are they here?
- 14:04Speaker 1: But again, the way they were moving and how they looked,
- 14:08Speaker 1: it just it seemed wrong, like there was something wrong
- 14:12Speaker 1: with these people, like there's more to this story than
- 14:15Speaker 1: the Inuit people understand, and it was sort of terrifying.
- 14:18Speaker 1: And on top of just the way they were moving,
- 14:20Speaker 1: there was something else these colunot were doing. In addition
- 14:23Speaker 1: to these men just kind of lumbering along the coastline.
- 14:27Speaker 2: A few of.
- 14:27Speaker 1: Them were dragging this big sled and there was a
- 14:31Speaker 1: tarp over the sled. Clearly something big or several things
- 14:34Speaker 1: were under this tarp, but the Inuit hunters they couldn't
- 14:38Speaker 1: quite tell what it was.
- 14:39Speaker 2: It was covered up.
- 14:40Speaker 1: And so they're just watching these men in this weird
- 14:43Speaker 1: parade along the coastline with the sled, and they really
- 14:45Speaker 1: were like, we have to get out of here, and
- 14:48Speaker 1: so they ducked their heads below the icy hill to
- 14:50Speaker 1: kind of stay out of view of the colunat, who
- 14:53Speaker 1: to this point it did not seem like they had
- 14:55Speaker 1: spotted the hunters.
- 14:56Speaker 2: And as the.
- 14:57Speaker 1: Hunters are sort of trying to figure out what they
- 14:59Speaker 1: should even do, they hear this awful guttural scream coming
- 15:03Speaker 1: from down below where these men are, where these white
- 15:05Speaker 1: men are, and instinctively the huntress they grabbed their spears
- 15:09Speaker 1: and they poked their head up over the hill, almost
- 15:11Speaker 1: thinking maybe they've spotted us, maybe they're gonna attack us,
- 15:14Speaker 1: But no, when they look down below, many of the
- 15:17Speaker 1: colunot were still just kind of lumbering along, but one
- 15:20Speaker 1: of them had stopped and he was kind of wretching
- 15:22Speaker 1: around like there was something wrong with him, and he
- 15:24Speaker 1: continued to scream out and then he just crumpled to
- 15:27Speaker 1: the ground. But the other white men, it was like
- 15:30Speaker 1: they didn't even react to it, except for the men
- 15:33Speaker 1: pulling the sled. They pulled the sled right up alongside
- 15:37Speaker 1: this man who had just fallen to the ground after screaming,
- 15:40Speaker 1: and they just sort of nonchalantly pulled back the tarp,
- 15:43Speaker 1: revealing all sorts of bodies on the sled. They picked
- 15:47Speaker 1: the guy who had just fallen and they threw him
- 15:49Speaker 1: onto the pile. They covered him back up with the tarp,
- 15:52Speaker 1: and then like nothing had happened, the men kept on
- 15:55Speaker 1: pulling the sled, and this totally creepy procession continued down
- 15:59Speaker 1: the coast. At this point, the Inuit hunters were genuinely terrified,
- 16:03Speaker 1: and without saying anything, they just scrambled back down the
- 16:06Speaker 1: hill and ran.
- 16:07Speaker 2: Back to their village.
- 16:08Speaker 1: The following day, the Inuit hunters came back to that
- 16:11Speaker 1: exact spot, that icy hill that looked down to the
- 16:14Speaker 1: ocean below, except this time they had brought along several
- 16:18Speaker 1: pounds of seal meat. So the previous day, when these
- 16:21Speaker 1: hunters had gone back to their village to tell the
- 16:23Speaker 1: others about what they had just seen, oddly enough, the
- 16:26Speaker 1: consensus became that, you know, of course, the Colunot are
- 16:29Speaker 1: sort of dangerous to us, and we should keep our distance.
- 16:32Speaker 1: But from what you're describing, it sounds an awful lot
- 16:35Speaker 1: like these men.
- 16:36Speaker 2: These white men must just be starving, like the way
- 16:39Speaker 2: they're moving.
- 16:40Speaker 1: The fact that men are falling down and dying, and
- 16:42Speaker 1: they have this you know, sled full of dead bodies.
- 16:45Speaker 1: You know, they're out here in the Arctic wild. I mean,
- 16:47Speaker 1: this is a very unforgiving place. And so the consensus
- 16:50Speaker 1: was they're starving to death. That's what you're seeing. That's
- 16:53Speaker 1: why they're acting the way they are. And so maybe
- 16:56Speaker 1: the move here is you hunters go back to that
- 16:59Speaker 1: same try to find these Colunot and give them some food,
- 17:04Speaker 1: not only to help them, you know, to be good people,
- 17:06Speaker 1: good stewards of humanity, but also it's sort of like
- 17:08Speaker 1: a peace offering because there was tension between the Inuit
- 17:11Speaker 1: people and the Colunot, and so these hunters had agreed
- 17:14Speaker 1: they had showed up with the intention of you know,
- 17:16Speaker 1: finding these forty some odd white men, giving them some
- 17:19Speaker 1: food and maybe even offering some help, you know, if
- 17:21Speaker 1: they needed it. And so that day, the Inuit hunters
- 17:24Speaker 1: they make it back to their spot, they climb up
- 17:26Speaker 1: that icy hill and they look down towards the ocean below,
- 17:30Speaker 1: and there's nobody there.
- 17:31Speaker 2: It's just complete isolation.
- 17:32Speaker 1: And so the hunters they go down to the coastline
- 17:35Speaker 1: and they see footprints from the day before. They find
- 17:37Speaker 1: you know, the tracks from the sled that have been
- 17:39Speaker 1: being dragged, and they just start tracking the footprints of
- 17:43Speaker 1: these white men. And for hours, these hunters are just
- 17:46Speaker 1: following the footprints along this coastline, you know, in the
- 17:48Speaker 1: snow and the ice, and they're looking up ahead. They
- 17:51Speaker 1: don't see anybody, and it's like wow, like these guys,
- 17:54Speaker 1: they covered a huge amount of ground, Like where did
- 17:56Speaker 1: they go? And eventually, after hours of this, the hunters
- 18:00Speaker 1: come upon this campsite, but it's totally abandoned.
- 18:04Speaker 2: It's right on the edge of the water.
- 18:05Speaker 1: And based on where the campsite was and sort of
- 18:07Speaker 1: how fresh it looked, it seemed pretty obvious that at
- 18:10Speaker 1: some point, clearly the Colu Knot had been camped out here,
- 18:14Speaker 1: but they clearly are not here now. But interestingly, the
- 18:17Speaker 1: people that had been here, presumably the white men, they
- 18:20Speaker 1: had left behind quite a few of their supplies, Like
- 18:23Speaker 1: there was the remains of a fire, and sitting over
- 18:26Speaker 1: the fire was this big pot, like a metal pot.
- 18:29Speaker 1: And you would think if you're struggling to survive out here,
- 18:31Speaker 1: that you would definitely want to keep some of your
- 18:33Speaker 1: cooking supplies, but no, that was left behind along with
- 18:37Speaker 1: several other tools, and so the Inuit hunters they're looking around, thinking, okay,
- 18:41Speaker 1: well maybe they just stepped away and they're going to
- 18:43Speaker 1: come back. But they searched the vicinity of the campsite,
- 18:46Speaker 1: but nobody was there. The footprints just kind of picked
- 18:49Speaker 1: up and continued off into the distance. And so, feeling
- 18:52Speaker 1: pretty puzzled by this, the Inuit hunters decided to just
- 18:55Speaker 1: search the campsite and try to get some clue as to.
- 18:58Speaker 2: What's going on with these white men.
- 19:00Speaker 1: And eventually, after searching through all the different things that
- 19:02Speaker 1: had been left behind, they came back to that fire
- 19:05Speaker 1: and that pot that had a lid over it, that
- 19:07Speaker 1: was sitting right there, and one of the hunters walks
- 19:09Speaker 1: up to the pot, he grabs the lid, he lifts
- 19:12Speaker 1: it off, and when he saw what was inside, he
- 19:16Speaker 1: reeled back in horror. Several months later, that same group
- 19:20Speaker 1: of Inuit hunters had hiked miles and miles down that
- 19:23Speaker 1: same coastline of King William Island until they saw off
- 19:27Speaker 1: in the distance, right off the coast, this big wooden ship.
- 19:30Speaker 1: And these hunters knew this ship belonged to the colonat
- 19:33Speaker 1: and today their plan was to break into the ship
- 19:36Speaker 1: and raid it because just recently, these hunters had finally
- 19:39Speaker 1: kind of solved the mystery of what happened to those
- 19:43Speaker 1: you know, forty some odd white men they had seen,
- 19:45Speaker 1: because they came across this mass grave site, you know,
- 19:48Speaker 1: of like thirty plus white men, all dead in the snow,
- 19:51Speaker 1: and clearly they had starved to death and died from exposure,
- 19:54Speaker 1: and so it just sort of seemed like this unfortunate
- 19:56Speaker 1: thing that these guys had hiked and hiked and hiked
- 19:59Speaker 1: and just kind of.
- 19:59Speaker 2: Fell down and died.
- 20:01Speaker 1: But now that the Inuit hunters knew that all these
- 20:03Speaker 1: white men were dead, they're like, well, there's a ship
- 20:05Speaker 1: sitting right out there that you know, no one's gonna claim,
- 20:08Speaker 1: so why don't we take whatever's inside of it? And
- 20:11Speaker 1: so the Inuit hunters walked out onto the ocean, which
- 20:14Speaker 1: was completely frozen. So the ship, you know, it's off
- 20:17Speaker 1: the coast, but it's basically a pathway of ice right
- 20:20Speaker 1: up to the ship. And so the hunters they walked
- 20:21Speaker 1: on this ice all the way out to the ship,
- 20:23Speaker 1: and when they got there, unsurprisingly, it was totally vacant.
- 20:27Speaker 1: It's silent, it's still clearly there's nobody in the ship.
- 20:30Speaker 2: Now.
- 20:31Speaker 1: As the Inuit hunters climbed the side of the ship
- 20:33Speaker 1: and got ready to go inside, they all had set
- 20:36Speaker 1: their expectations to be like, okay, you know, clearly the
- 20:39Speaker 1: men who had inhabited this ship at one point, the
- 20:42Speaker 1: white men they call it not you know, they obviously
- 20:44Speaker 1: abandoned the ship and you know, tried their luck on
- 20:47Speaker 1: land unsuccessfully. So clearly something must have happened out here,
- 20:51Speaker 1: like they ran out of food, or there was a
- 20:53Speaker 1: leak in the ship, or some sort of chaos ensued
- 20:56Speaker 1: here that caused them to abandon their shelter and you know,
- 21:00Speaker 1: head towards the Arctic wilds. Right. But once they got
- 21:03Speaker 1: on board the ship and looked around, they quickly realized
- 21:07Speaker 1: the ship was in pristine condition. I mean, there was
- 21:09Speaker 1: no damage to the ship. It was practically brand new,
- 21:12Speaker 1: preserved out in the ice here.
- 21:14Speaker 2: When they went down below, they.
- 21:15Speaker 1: Discovered there were all these bedrooms with these incredibly comfortable
- 21:19Speaker 1: looking beds, and there was bunk beds and hammocks with
- 21:22Speaker 1: linens and pillows.
- 21:23Speaker 2: There was a library with hundreds of books. There were games,
- 21:27Speaker 2: There was all this cutlery and.
- 21:28Speaker 1: Fine china and just off the kitchen in their pantry
- 21:32Speaker 1: was this massive food storage room full of food, canned goods,
- 21:37Speaker 1: all still good, that apparently had just been left behind.
- 21:41Speaker 1: And so the Inuit hunters they're thinking, like, how is
- 21:44Speaker 1: this possible?
- 21:45Speaker 2: What caused these white men.
- 21:47Speaker 1: To abandon their ship which presumably was perfect, pristine, provided
- 21:52Speaker 1: much better shelter, and also they abandoned all their food
- 21:55Speaker 1: like they clearly weren't starving.
- 21:57Speaker 2: So what happened?
- 21:59Speaker 1: What caused them to go on land and die horrible deaths? Well,
- 22:03Speaker 1: the reason for this would not fully make sense for
- 22:05Speaker 1: another one hundred and thirty years, because it was in
- 22:08Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties when researchers actually began to analyze the
- 22:12Speaker 1: remains of these white men, those thirty forty white men
- 22:15Speaker 1: who were found dead on King William Island. It would
- 22:18Speaker 1: turn out those men were explorers who had been sent
- 22:21Speaker 1: out to the Arctic by the British government, and they
- 22:24Speaker 1: had been well outfitted when they were sent out on
- 22:26Speaker 1: their journey. I mean, they were given that incredible ship,
- 22:29Speaker 1: and they were given all these supplies, including a whole
- 22:32Speaker 1: bunch of canned food items. However, what these explorers didn't
- 22:35Speaker 1: know is that their canned food had become tainted with lead,
- 22:41Speaker 1: and so as they slowly were eating all these canned
- 22:43Speaker 1: food items, they were slowly poisoning themselves.
- 22:47Speaker 2: And one of the side effects of lead.
- 22:49Speaker 1: Poisoning, in addition to feeling nauseous and horribly sick, is
- 22:53Speaker 1: it drives you crazy. It basically gives you these wild
- 22:56Speaker 1: mood swings. And so like the whole ship, all these
- 22:59Speaker 1: men and are undergoing these totally insane mood swings and
- 23:03Speaker 1: basically falling into actual mental hysteria out on the ship.
- 23:08Speaker 1: And so in their hysterics, all these men decide to
- 23:12Speaker 1: abandon their ship and head into the Arctic wild to
- 23:16Speaker 1: forage for food. And who knows what I mean. They
- 23:19Speaker 1: literally were out of their minds. And when they got
- 23:22Speaker 1: to land into the wilderness, they didn't find food, they
- 23:25Speaker 1: didn't find shelter.
- 23:26Speaker 2: They found death and misery.
- 23:29Speaker 1: And as they devolved into insanity and men began falling
- 23:32Speaker 1: down and dying because they were starving to death, they
- 23:36Speaker 1: began eating their brothers. They began eating the dead men.
- 23:39Speaker 1: That sled they were dragging along was not to preserve
- 23:42Speaker 1: the bodies to give them a proper burial down the road.
- 23:45Speaker 1: It was like their mobile refrigeration unit. They were dragging
- 23:49Speaker 1: those bodies along and then eating them. And so the
- 23:51Speaker 1: reason those Inuit hunters were so horrified when they discovered
- 23:55Speaker 1: that campsite and they looked inside of that pot, well
- 23:59Speaker 1: it's because inside the pot was clearly a human skull,
- 24:03Speaker 1: and that skull had been cracked open, as if whoever
- 24:06Speaker 1: was tending this pot had literally been scooping in and
- 24:10Speaker 1: basically eating this person's brain. To this day, bones of
- 24:13Speaker 1: the crew members of that failed expedition are still being
- 24:16Speaker 1: found on King William Island. Thank you so much for watching.
- 24:28Speaker 1: Let me know what you thought of today's episode in
- 24:29Speaker 1: the comments. And remember, we have hundreds of videos for
- 24:33Speaker 1: you to binge right now. But if you're looking for
- 24:36Speaker 1: a recommendation for me of that one video that's worth
- 24:39Speaker 1: your time, well it's this one right here, So give
- 24:42Speaker 1: it a watch, all right, until next time, see y