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Ep. 40 | Harvest of Shadows: From Colonial Fields to Strange Encounters | Sasquatch & Sourdough · Sasquatch & Sourdough

• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: The path through the woods opened into a clearing, and for the first time in days, Wert and Greg found what looked like a touch of civilization.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Pottsfield lay before them, glowing with lantern light and alive with music.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Fiddles played, drums echoed, and villagers bustled about in rustic garb, carrying baskets brimming with corn, squash, and pumpkins.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Laughter rose into the air, and for a moment, the brothers felt as if they'd stepped into a storybook illustration of autumn itself.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: The celebration was everything one would hope for in a harvest festival.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Warm light, golden fields, and the comforting smell of wood smoke and earth.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Greg's face lit with delight, and even Wert allowed himself to breathe easier.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: It seemed, at last, they had stumbled into a place untouched by the strangeness of the woods.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: But as they wandered deeper into the revelry, something stirred at the edges of their relief.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: The villagers' faces were never quite visible, hidden behind wide, grinning pumpkin visages.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Their carved expressions never shifted, never blinked.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: The way they moved, stiff, deliberate, almost mechanical, gave the impression not of life, but of life imitated.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: The music carried on, bright and incessant, but beneath it was another rhythm, something older, like the turning of the seasons itself.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: The harvest smells of hay, soil, and smoke hung thick in the air, but so did the weight of ritual.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: This was more than a festival, it was a rite.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: The brothers realized too late that in Pottsfield the harvest was not only for pumpkins and wheat.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Something else was being reaped, something bound to the soil, to time, and perhaps even to them.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome, friends.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you're here.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: That was a little retelling of a tale.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you guys are familiar with it, but if you love all things just weird and strange, over the garden wall is probably one of the best little animated series that you can watch that is just great, great storytelling.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's really visually pretty.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and it's just a really cute story of, I don't know, I guess it's kind of like a little coming of age.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Some people think it's, I don't know, an expose of Dante's Inferno, but I've never taken that deep dive.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a really cute little tale about two brothers who get lost in the woods.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the places that they find themselves is uh a place called Pottsfield.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I had some fun kind of reworking a scene from that.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope that you enjoyed.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and if you're not familiar with Over the Garden Wall, please, please watch that series.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's a great palette cleanser in a really weird time, I think that we find ourselves in.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: But the show must go on, and I am going to present you guys with some really cool harvest traditions and tales that I've kind of come come up with.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: I have found did a little bit of digging on the internet uh and found some really cool stuff.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into the show.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so around my house in Maryland, uh, if you guys, I'm sure you know by now that I am in Maryland and we have a couple really fun harvest festivals that we go to, but I feel like sometimes they're just kind of like, I don't know, it's the same thing, same old, same old.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: I get my pumpkins, I get my mom's, we have apple cider.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Everything is ridiculously overpriced.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so I wanted to kind of take a little tour around America and see, like, I don't know, what are some weird things that people do for harvest festivals?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it cannot just be the same thing.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it has to be something different.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: So last episode uh we did in Colorado, we were talking about uh just my gosh, insane coffin races, which actually are are brought up again on the same page.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: That uh it's it's called uh mini time, uh America's weirdest fall festivals.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a little article.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, one of the things that I found, I mean, obviously outside of the Emma Crawford coffin race in Colorado, if you guys missed that episode, definitely go back and check that out.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: But this is actually really cute.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's a um it's a sheep festival, uh, which is just, I think, adorable.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Trailing of the Sheep Festival.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that takes place in Idaho, in it's Ketchum in Haley, Idaho.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it says in the past century, humans have been often been outnumbered by sheep in Idaho.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: This festival, about three hours east of Boise, observes the critters' annual migration to the southern part of the state.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: The big event is Sunday's sheep parade, where you can follow 1,500 sheep down Ketchum's Main Street.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: On other days, you can watch the Championship Sheep Dog Trials, a lamb barbecue, and hear music from sheep-loving areas such as Peru, Poland, uh, and in other regions.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Kids can learn about soap making uh and wool spitting or create Christmas crafts.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is really cute.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in October 9th through the 12th.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: So if you find yourself in Haley, Idaho, check out the check out the sheep festival.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: That is adorable.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so one of the cool, I guess, legends that I found is something that I feel like I heard before, obviously, from if you guys have been around for a while, you know this book is definitely I am holding up where the footprints end.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: From Timothy Renner, I've had him on the show before.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: He is just a fountain of knowledge, a wealth of knowledge, great researcher, really cool guy.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: He hosts the Strange Familiars podcast.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've never heard of him, please go find his stuff.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: His content is fantastic.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: He's also an illustrator, and he just comes up with really, really cool stuff.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: I came across this interesting, you know, I because you know, you think about harvest and apples and all that jazz when we think about fall and the harvest season.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: But this was really interesting.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: So let's see here.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it says the Susquehannock of southern Pennsylvania so feared a race of short, magical, hair-covered creatures that they adorned war shields with their likeness.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: German settlers called the creatures the abbed witch, said to be a corruption of apple snitch, due to their fondness for stealing and tossing the fruit, but more likely a uh a combination of the German alb and eint vision to escape.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: The Ojibwe and other Algonquin people believe tiny hairy memjuis blew canoes astray or stole things, if not left satisfactory offerings.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: So he kind of talks about the little just kind of telling there of the Albut Witch.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I thought it was interesting because it means apple snitch.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then also I wanted to kind of see if there was any if there was anything else out there about this little creature, because that just sounds insane.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like a little tiny creature that's stealing apples.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: How perfect, right?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I did come across this, it is very interesting.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: So this is uh, let me see here.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: This article where are we?
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so there is actually a albutwitchday.com is you can this is a really interesting Lancaster website.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so they have a couple of newspaper articles that are really cute.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: They don't give the dates, though.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's 1920.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it says, Roars from Lion Camp.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: More than 40 boys enjoyed an Albert Witch hunt Monday at dusk.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: After hours of searching, they were called off and the hunt pronounced unsuccessful due to too much noise.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: However, on the home stretch, the hunters were pleasingly surprised when one of their number discovered a watermelon nest.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: The find was enjoyed by all, and the day went down as the red letter day on the camp calendar.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's cute.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is like the kind of this is this is the kind of news I want, guys.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, can we go back to this kind of stuff?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so you uh YMCA boys at corn roast hunt elusive animal.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: An Albert Witch hunt featured the corn bake held by the boys of the Lancaster YMCA at Williams Williamson Park Monday evening.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: Four boys took turns at holding a bag in hopes that an Albert Witch might run into it, but without success.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: One little fellow claims that he saw one, but it turned out to be a hole in the bag.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: The closing outing by the YMCA boys will be held at the City Waterworks Thursday evening, at which time a watermelon swim will be held.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: One group of boys will leave the association on their bicycles at six o'clock and the other at 6 30.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's really cute.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: I like how it ends up in some sort of watermelon something or other.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's cute.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: So the Albert Witch.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then I did also have um an actual, uh, so this is interesting.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: I found this connection at the BFRO.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So they have really cool early American legends of Bigfoot like beings on their website.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: So you can kind of go like really go way back.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: I I clicked under the Iroquoian section and it says the Albert Witch's Columbia, Pennsylvania.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Local legends in the area of Columbia, Pennsylvania speak of a creature called an Albert Witch.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: The Albert Witch is a small, about four feet tall, man-like creature, which supposedly lived in wooded areas.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: The main area of residence seemed to be near Chicky's Rock, a heavily wooded area along the banks of the Susquehanna River, about a mile or two north of town.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Albert witches were also reported from wooded areas all along the river's shore.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: The creatures are named for a habit which they possess.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Their bizarre common name is short for applesnitch, as they are reputed to have a taste for apples.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Legends speak of how the Albert Witches would oftentimes steal apples from picnickers, occasionally even throwing them at the startled people.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Legends also record that the creature often sat in trees, coming down only for food.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: It also says that Albert Witches either became extinct or were driven nearly into extinction in the latter years of the 19th century.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Chicky's Rock, where the creatures supposedly live, does have a tradition of strange sights and sounds.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: In the 1990s and 1960s, a man-like figure was seen several times, and local legends also speak of sounds like a crack of a whip heard in the woods at night.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: One can only wonder if these can be connected with the Albert Witch.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Something interesting back at the BFRO website, uh, if you look in Pennsylvania, this is Columbia County, late April of 1993.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: So this isn't, you know, in the harvest season per se, but it does happen in an apple orchard.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: So this is kind of neat.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it says it's uh let's see here, Columbia County, PA near Route 42, observed one of my friends and I were camping on his family's land near Catawissa.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was just the two of us late at night.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: We were sitting by the campfire talking when we noticed we needed more wood for the fire.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: There was an old apple orchard nearby, and we scavenged some dead wood off of the ground for the fire.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was a very small, well-lit night, and we could see very well.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as we stepped into the orchard, we heard a sort of screeching or wheezing noise around a hundred yards away, as best as we could tell.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't think anything of it because we were always hearing noises from around that area, so we continued into the orchard.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: After about 10 steps in, we heard an awful scream that sounded like it needed two or three heads to make it.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: We looked in the direction and then we saw it.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe 50 yards away was the creature.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was about five foot six inches tall and about 350 to 400 pounds.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: It started running at us full speed and it was incredibly fast.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: We immediately turned around and headed out of the orchard and for our car.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: As soon as we were in the clearing, the creature stopped running at us and turned away.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Needless to say, we put out the fire and left for the night.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Also noticed about a month beforehand, we found a mangled deer in the middle of the clearing, not eaten at all, just attacked and killed.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't think anything of it at the time.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: After the incident, we think that it may have been a warning of some kind to stay out of its territory.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: About a week before the incident, we noticed that all of the windows had been smashed out of the sheds and a strange odor was in the air.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: We had at the time thought it could be vandals, and it might have been.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: We had heard the noises before in and around the orchard and pond just as it passed off as some sort of wildlife.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we just we just passed it off as some sort of wildlife.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Other witnesses, we were gathering firewood in the apple orchard.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's see here.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: It says two o'clock in the morning, very well lit night.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: The area is about 200 feet from the nearest road.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: There is a large man-made pond on one side that has a natural spring running right beside it.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a water source.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Behind the pond is a decent-sized, heavily forested mountain with many small caves, if you know where to find them.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: On another side is a large open field with an apple orchard behind that.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: There were also about five small sheds in the clearing.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's interesting.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if you are anywhere in that area of Pennsylvania and you know anything about said apple orchard, let me know.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: That is crazy.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah, so they submitted so this was from 1993 and they submitted it in 1997.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a class A.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, wow.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so probably not an apple, an apple witch, an apple snitch, because yeah, I think those are supposed to be a little bit smaller, but still, I mean, we're hanging out in the apple orchard, so there you go.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to find just any kind of folklore surrounding like harvest festival ghost stories, and I found a good amount.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's a specter in the cornfield, New England, 18th century folklore.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Farmers in rural Massachusetts whispered of a lantern man who walked the rows after the corn was cut.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: His light was said to be a warning of poor harvests or early frost.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Some connected it to restless farmhands who died in accidents.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now there's another one, uh, the hollow night watcher, which is kind of like Sleepy Hollow style.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is also from the Hudson Valley.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it says in Dutch-settled New York, autumn festivals sometimes included stories of headless riders who appeared near fields at dusk, chasing travelers home from barn dances.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we know that from Sleepy Hollow.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's also, so kind of getting back to like the oral Appalachian lore, the pumpkin phantom families would gather for harvest suppers and would tell of a phantom that would sit silently on hay bales outside the barn.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Its head was described as glowing like a pumpkin, an early folkloric link between jack-o'-lanterns and spirits, likely borrowed from Irish immigrants' Samhine traditions, but localized in Appalachian farm imagery.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that kind of definitely makes sense.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: You have a lot of those like folklore and kind of, you know, a little bit of heritage coming together, especially in Appalachia.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to also kind of like pull together just some colonial harvest traditions.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, again, it just kind of gets back to that whole, you know, Hudson Valley, Sleepy Hollow.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: When you think about harvest, it just really kind of, I don't know, puts together like seasonal customs and things that are a little unsettling about that like old part of like America.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's just, I don't know.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: There always seems to be like a fog surrounding it.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it could just be me completely romanticizing New England, New England autumn and and and fall and like fall in general, but so there was this kind of concept called harvest home.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, when I did some digging, there's also like a weird 70s like horror book and stuff like that.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: But like this was basically imported from England, and the harvest home was a celebration at the end of a reaping.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: So the end of the harvest.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was often marked by processions, feasting, and drinking.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: Colonists would sometimes parade the last sheaf of corn or wheat into town, decorating it with ribbons and treating it almost like it was this like living spirit of grain, is what they kind of called it.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And some believed it to be if you didn't like take care of the last sheaf, it would bring bad luck or famine.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: So you kind of have like this reverence for this, you know, little piece of end of harvest.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so that definitely gets into a lot of like the folklore surrounding just kind of what we think of when we think of harvest festivals.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing that I kind of loved is they had corn husking parties in the 1700s.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: So it was just like this big community event where people would drink and eat and play games.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hidden among the corn would be a red ear, sometimes dyed or painted, and it was considered special.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Whoever found it was entitled to a kiss, or in some darker tales, was expected to deliver a toast or song.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why that makes that dark.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And for the rural youth, these knights became charged with both romance and superstition.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: So you kind of get again have that little bit of tie of like Sleepy Hollow with Katrina von Tassel, you know, that kind of romanticized kind of picture.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the Polvik is a strange spirit of the grain fields.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: There are usually masculine, though some accounts mention females and children of the species.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: The pulvik is described as a rugged dwarf with dark earthly skin and grass for hair.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: They are frequently dressed in white, and each of their eyes is a different color.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: It is sometimes claimed that their feet are cloven like those of goats.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: When in a jovial mood, the pulvik may amuse themselves by killing wild birds or by causing travelers to become waylaid and confused in surroundings which may normally be familiar to them.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: In the more aggressive moods, which account for most tales about them, they are violent, dangerous creatures.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um let's see here.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: It says that they do not like idlers.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: A lazy field workers uh may be lucky just to receive a hefty kick from a pulvic, for if they change or they chanced upon someone drunk and asleep in the fields, they would strangle the person to death.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this sounds absolutely terrible.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um let's see here.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Uh therefore it was hoped that they would be appeased with an offering of two eggs and a cockerel that could no longer crow, placed in a ditch alongside the field.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: The pulvik were more most active at noon and dusk, so it was desirable not to be in the fields at those times.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is said in Russia that the pulvik shrink to the size of shaft or stubborn or stubble when the harvest is nearly complete and will hide in the last few stalks and be taken into the sheds.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: As it is also claimed that the pulvic causes disease amongst those who displease him.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: It is possible that he is the symbolic of ergo fruit bodies.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Ergo is a fungus that infects cereal crops, especially rye, sometimes with let's see here.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Whilst it is hard, dark purple fruit bodies are quite apparent, it could still get into the food supply and is not noticeable and ground and cooked.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is actually really, really interesting because this is kind of one of those theories that surrounds what was really going on with the a lot of the witch trials.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: So this is kind of very interesting.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let's see here.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so uh you know it's kind of interesting the way that folklore always kind of Ties in a lot of, I mean, you see a lot of like pagan connections with a lot of folklore and also a lot of superstition as well.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so lastly, I think it would probably be amiss if I didn't mention the Puka.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you guys probably, if you're familiar with any sort of like ghosts, or not really ghosts, but like if you're familiar with any sort of folklore, especially Celtic, you've probably heard of the Puka.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they're shape-shifting troublemakers.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: Legends say that the Puka can change into horses, goats, cats, donkeys, wolves, dogs, foxes, wolves, and hares, though always with jet black fur.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Horses bearing sleek coats, wild manes, and flaming eyes are the most common animal shape of these mischievous fairies.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: When in human form, these fairies still bear animalistic characteristics.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: So this is actually from the website Wilderness Ireland.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: It says, though stories about the Puka are vague and varied, one common similarity is the Puka's love of mischief.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: Mischief can take many forms, but one favorite, it seems to be taking their preferred animal form of a great black horse and enticing the unwitting rider on its back for a wild and terrible horseback ride through the night.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Usually this person has been on the drink, and even if they haven't, the Puka bewitches them, leaving them with a bad feeling and hazy recollections of a night poorly spent.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the Puka can serve as a protective entity helping farmers with the crops, offering presents, or intervening ahead of a terrible accident to prevent harm.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Though stories of Kylie Puka are much overshadowed by those of mischief, bad luck, or even doom.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: So there you have it.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's just another little folklore from the harvest season.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Guys, I think this has been a really cute episode.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I just wanted to leave you guys with a little, I don't know, a little envisionment of harvest.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: And just remember, guys, if you are new here, welcome.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to just get out there and share, like, subscribe.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: It really, really is the best way that you can help the podcast grow.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: We've seen a lot of growth and it's been really, really awesome.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: You can find me on Instagram.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's the best way to get a hold of me.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can go to the website and report your own encounter, Sasquatch and Sourdough.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can send me an email at sasquatch and sourdough at gmail.com.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's probably the best way to get in touch with me.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: But before I go, I wanted to leave you guys with a little colonial harvest and a scripture uh just to kind of encourage you.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: I know this was kind of a little, I don't know, I wanted it to be a little bit uncanny and weird.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because I kind of like that idea of harvest being a little unsettling.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: As the harvest moon rises and the fields grow quiet, we're reminded that the strange and the sacred often walk side by side, from ghostly lanterns to whispers of creatures at the edge of the of the woods.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: Every tale holds a seed of mystery, of memory, of meaning.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: The world has always been stranger than we imagine.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: But even in the shadows, there is blessing.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: The land yields its harvest.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: God, our God, blesses us.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 67:6.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: May the strange stories of the season stir our wonder, and may the harvest remind us that what is gathered in light will always outlast the darkness.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember the truth is out there.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: God is with you, and everyone always ends up in the kitchen.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Sasquatch and Sourdough is so much more than just a podcast.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: We are a community of kindred spirits, united by our curiosity and fascination with the extraordinary.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to bring you into the conversation.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: So whether you've had a brush with the unexplainable, seen something that you can't quite wrap your head around, this is your space.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: We invite you to join us as we break bread and break down the barriers between the known and the unknown.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to share your story, you can email us at sasquatch and sourdough at gmail.com or send us a DM on Instagram.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember the truth is out there.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: God is with you, and everyone always ends up in the kitchen.