Latest / Weeknight Mysteries Podcast / Ep. 123 | Creepy Folklore - The Owlman Of Mawnan & Creepy Folklore Ginny Greenteeth

Transcript

Ep. 123 | Creepy Folklore - The Owlman Of Mawnan & Creepy Folklore Ginny Greenteeth · Weeknight Mysteries Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: It was April 1979. The Melling family were spending their
0:04
Speaker 1: Easter holiday in Mornan Smith, a picturesque village in Cornwall, England.
0:10
Speaker 1: On Saturday the 17th, the two children of the family,
0:13
Speaker 1: 12-year-old June and 9-year-old Vicky, had headed out on their
0:17
Speaker 1: own to explore the area. They were passing by St.
0:21
Speaker 1: Mornan and St. Stephen's Church when all of a sudden
0:24
Speaker 1: in the sky above the bell tower, there appeared a
0:26
Speaker 1: huge creature. It looked like a man but it had
0:30
Speaker 1: the wings of a bird. The girls ran back to
0:33
Speaker 1: their parents and they were so disturbed by what they'd
0:35
Speaker 1: seen that their father cut the holiday short. Those girls,
0:39
Speaker 1: it seems, had had an encounter with the Alman of Mornin.
0:44
Speaker 1: The origins of the Alman are unclear. A lot of
0:47
Speaker 1: websites they read whilst researching this reference are a 1926
0:51
Speaker 1: article in the Cornish Echo about two boys that were
0:54
Speaker 1: chased by some sort of a large and ferocious bird.
0:57
Speaker 1: The problem is no website seems to provide any pictures
1:00
Speaker 1: of the article so you can read it for yourself.
1:03
Speaker 1: I had to go to the book The Alman and
1:05
Speaker 1: Others by Jonathan Downs to find the article and read
1:08
Speaker 1: it for myself. The bird was described as being about
1:12
Speaker 1: three feet long with a body like a duck, cream
1:15
Speaker 1: and brown colored plumage with black on the tips of
1:17
Speaker 1: the wings. Now that doesn't sound anything like an Alman
1:21
Speaker 1: to me but there's so many websites that are talking
1:23
Speaker 1: about this article and linking it to the Alman story
1:26
Speaker 1: that I had to put that in it seems more
1:28
Speaker 1: likely that the boys were chased by an angry goose
1:30
Speaker 1: rather than some sort of owl-headed cryptid. The first clue
1:34
Speaker 1: we might have to the Alman's origins is when the
1:36
Speaker 1: surrealist artist Max Ernst visited Cornwall in 1937 with a
1:40
Speaker 1: group of other artists. Apparently this group put into all
1:45
Speaker 1: sorts of weird stuff including occultism. The story goes that
1:49
Speaker 1: Ernst and his cohorts went off into some Cornish woods
1:52
Speaker 1: one night and performed strange rituals in an attempt to
1:55
Speaker 1: summon animal-human hybrid entities. Max Ernst himself had a weird
1:59
Speaker 1: obsession with birds and he often painted an alter ego
2:02
Speaker 1: called Lop-Lop a shape-shifting part-man part-bird creature. He also painted
2:08
Speaker 1: scenes that looking back on them now seem to mirror
2:10
Speaker 1: future encounters with the Almond. And take a look at
2:13
Speaker 1: this one it was painted in 1924 and it's titled
2:16
Speaker 1: Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale. The weird thing
2:20
Speaker 1: about this is there are two children and a nightingale
2:23
Speaker 1: but it's also this eerie human figure hovering above the
2:26
Speaker 1: building carrying away another child in its arms. Apparently the
2:30
Speaker 1: painting was inspired by a fever-induced hallucination that Ernst had
2:34
Speaker 1: as a child but to me it reminds me of
2:36
Speaker 1: June and Vicky Melling seeing that humanoid creature hovering over
2:39
Speaker 1: the morning church. So did Ernst and Co. summon the Alman?
2:44
Speaker 1: Maybe it's some sort of surrealist Edgar something that stepped
2:47
Speaker 1: out from the picture frame and took on a life
2:49
Speaker 1: of its own. Or perhaps the Alman is the spirit
2:53
Speaker 1: of Ernst himself. It might just be a coincidence but
2:56
Speaker 1: Max Ernst died on the 1st of April, 1976. This
3:01
Speaker 1: was just two weeks before the Mellon girls had their encounter.
3:05
Speaker 1: And three months after the girls' encounter the Alman was
3:08
Speaker 1: seen again. Behind the morning church the land slops down
3:12
Speaker 1: through a wooded area until it reaches a beach. It
3:16
Speaker 1: was in this wooded area that two 14-year-old girls were camping,
3:20
Speaker 1: Miss Sally Chapman and Barbara Perry. At around 10 p.m.
3:24
Speaker 1: on the 3rd of July, 1976 the girls were awoken
3:28
Speaker 1: by a strange hissing noise. They looked around outside their
3:32
Speaker 1: tents and saw a weird figure standing among the pine trees.
3:36
Speaker 1: He was described as being as tall as a man
3:38
Speaker 1: but had the face of an owl and was covered
3:40
Speaker 1: in grey feathers. His eyes were large and glowed red
3:44
Speaker 1: and it had big pointed ears. On its feet were
3:48
Speaker 1: large black pints like claws. At first the girls thought
3:52
Speaker 1: it was someone in a costume but then the creature
3:54
Speaker 1: flew up into the air and disappeared into the trees.
3:58
Speaker 1: The following day another two girls had an encounter with
4:00
Speaker 1: the owlman in the same area. A letter was sent
4:04
Speaker 1: to a local paper from a girl saying that on
4:06
Speaker 1: the 4th of July, 1976 she and her sister were
4:09
Speaker 1: playing it in the wood behind the morning church when
4:12
Speaker 1: they saw a large creature up in a tree. It
4:15
Speaker 1: was described as being as big as a man but
4:17
Speaker 1: it had legs bent backwards like a bird's. Its eyes
4:21
Speaker 1: were red and its feet looked like sharp black crab claws.
4:25
Speaker 1: Unlike the last encounter the creature then flew upwards and
4:28
Speaker 1: disappeared above the treetops. The first two encounters were reported
4:33
Speaker 1: by a man named Doc Shields. Now Doc Shields is
4:37
Speaker 1: an eccentric character to say the least, an artist, stage
4:40
Speaker 1: magician and monster hunter with an interest in the occult.
4:44
Speaker 1: At around the time of the Almond sightings he was
4:46
Speaker 1: taking part in a hunt for the Morgra. This is
4:49
Speaker 1: a sea monster that supposedly lived in the waters around Cornwall.
4:54
Speaker 1: In March of 1976 two photos of the Morgra were
4:57
Speaker 1: sent to a local paper from someone named Mary F.
5:00
Speaker 1: Doc Shields came on a scene and D.N. Needance that
5:02
Speaker 1: he was going to try and summon the Morgara to appear.
5:06
Speaker 1: Morgara Morgara Morgara Morgara Morgara he then orchestrated an elaborate
5:10
Speaker 1: magical ritual on the beach in Cornwall involving naked witches
5:13
Speaker 1: which were his own daughters dancing around. As you can
5:17
Speaker 1: imagine this brought a lot of press attention for Doc Shields.
5:21
Speaker 1: It was because of his reputation for hunting monsters that
5:24
Speaker 1: he was approached first by a June and Vicky Millings
5:26
Speaker 1: father and later by Sally Chapman and Barbara Perry and
5:29
Speaker 1: they both provided him with eyewitness accounts and drawings of
5:32
Speaker 1: the Alman. Now there is a problem here. Doc Shields
5:37
Speaker 1: does have a reputation for being a bit of a prankster.
5:41
Speaker 1: Over the years he's written numerous books about how to
5:43
Speaker 1: fake paranormal phenomena for stage magicians and he has books
5:46
Speaker 1: like The Shields Effect, How to Become a Psychic Superstar.
5:51
Speaker 1: It teaches you how to create a sort of mythos
5:53
Speaker 1: around yourself which you can leverage for publicity and fame.
5:57
Speaker 1: Many people suspect that Mary F., that mysterious woman that
6:00
Speaker 1: sent the photos of the Morgara to the newspaper was
6:03
Speaker 1: actually Doc Shields sowing the seeds for an elaborate hoax.
6:07
Speaker 1: Some also suspect that Doc Shields invented the story of
6:10
Speaker 1: the Alman. As far as I can tell nobody else
6:14
Speaker 1: has ever been able to track down the Melling family
6:16
Speaker 1: or the two girls saw the creature in the woods.
6:19
Speaker 1: It's very possible that they never existed at all. Similarities
6:24
Speaker 1: between the eyewitness drawings suggest that they might have been
6:27
Speaker 1: drawn by the same person although it does say that
6:29
Speaker 1: the drawings are based on eyewitness sketches so Shields might
6:32
Speaker 1: have redrawn them himself from the children's drawings. Some people
6:36
Speaker 1: have also analyzed the handwriting between these two accounts and
6:39
Speaker 1: they think they might have been written by one person.
6:43
Speaker 1: I don't know much about handwriting analysis so I can't
6:45
Speaker 1: really say for sure but there's something about how the
6:48
Speaker 1: doctor both the eyes drift slightly to the right in
6:50
Speaker 1: both the accounts. But as I say I don't know
6:53
Speaker 1: much about the subject so I can't really comment on
6:56
Speaker 1: it myself. There's no real proof that Doc Shields invented
7:00
Speaker 1: the Alman. It could be as he says he had
7:03
Speaker 1: a reputation as a monster hunter so he was genuinely
7:06
Speaker 1: approached by people that had seen something strange. Shields seems
7:10
Speaker 1: to be a chaotic neutral sort of character. a true
7:13
Speaker 1: surrealist who deliberately soars the seeds of confusion and doubt
7:16
Speaker 1: around all that he does. It doesn't necessarily mean that
7:20
Speaker 1: everything that he's involved in is a hoax but it
7:23
Speaker 1: does mean that we should take it all with a
7:25
Speaker 1: hefty pinch of salt. After the Alman flap of 1976
7:29
Speaker 1: there were sporadic sightings. According to the book Alien Animals
7:34
Speaker 1: by Janet and Colin Board, there were two more sightings
7:37
Speaker 1: of the Alman in 1978. Once by a 16-year-old girl
7:42
Speaker 1: and a few months later by three young French girls
7:44
Speaker 1: but looking into these cases a bit more Doc Shields'
7:47
Speaker 1: name crops up yet again as the source of these stories.
7:51
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily mean that they're fake. I suspect at
7:55
Speaker 1: that time anyone who had an encounter with the Almond
7:57
Speaker 1: would think of contacting Doc Shields. 11 years later in
8:02
Speaker 1: 1989 there was another encounter and this time it seems
8:05
Speaker 1: that Shields had nothing to do with it, at least
8:07
Speaker 1: not directly. There was a young couple known as Gavin
8:10
Speaker 1: and Sally, although that's not their real names. They'd heard
8:15
Speaker 1: the legend of the Alman and decided to go into
8:17
Speaker 1: the woods behind Morning Church to investigate. Gavin later contacted
8:22
Speaker 1: the paranormal researcher Jonathan Downs, author of the book The
8:25
Speaker 1: Alman and others I mentioned earlier. He related his story
8:29
Speaker 1: about what happened that night in the woods. He said,
8:33
Speaker 1: we had to torch and I was shining its beam
8:35
Speaker 1: across the trucks about 15 feet off the ground. Every
8:39
Speaker 1: couple of hours we would walk along the fringe of
8:41
Speaker 1: the woods and this was the third time that evening
8:44
Speaker 1: and it was beginning to get dark. From a distance
8:47
Speaker 1: the trees looked black but close up to branches and
8:50
Speaker 1: shrunks could be seen. We saw the animal at about
8:53
Speaker 1: 9 30 p.m. It was standing on a thick branch
8:57
Speaker 1: with its wings sort of held up at the arms.
9:00
Speaker 1: I'd say it was about five feet tall. The legs
9:04
Speaker 1: had high angles and their feet were large and black
9:06
Speaker 1: with two huge toes on the visible side. The creature
9:10
Speaker 1: was gray with brown and the eyes definitely glowed. Unseeing
9:15
Speaker 1: as its head jerked down and forwards its wings lifted
9:17
Speaker 1: and it just jumped backwards. As it did its legs
9:21
Speaker 1: folded up we ran away. Six years later in 1995
9:25
Speaker 1: a letter was sent to a local paper. It claimed
9:29
Speaker 1: to be from a student of marine biology from Chicago.
9:33
Speaker 1: She'd been on holiday in Mornin' Smith and was walking
9:35
Speaker 1: through the woods behind a church at around 9.15 when
9:39
Speaker 1: she saw in a tree a creature described as the
9:41
Speaker 1: size of a man with a ghastly face, a wide
9:44
Speaker 1: mouth glowing eyes and pointed ears. It had huge clawed
9:48
Speaker 1: wings and was covered in feathers of silver-gray color. The
9:52
Speaker 1: thing had long bird legs which terminated in large black claws.
9:57
Speaker 1: All attempts to track down this Chicagoan witness have failed.
10:01
Speaker 1: Many suspect the letter to be another of Doc Shields'
10:04
Speaker 1: pranks although there's no real proof either way. Sightings continued
10:08
Speaker 1: up until the present day but most don't seem to
10:10
Speaker 1: have much more information about them. So instead let's look
10:14
Speaker 1: at some unusual footage and this was captured via the
10:17
Speaker 1: internet channel called Ghost Adventures of Cornwall. Thank you very
10:22
Speaker 1: much to Mark for letting me use your footage in
10:24
Speaker 1: my video or put a link to the original video
10:26
Speaker 1: in the description. They've decided one night to investigate St.
10:30
Speaker 1: Mornin and St. Stephen's Church but there's one bit where
10:33
Speaker 1: the camera pans across the graveyard and this figure is
10:36
Speaker 1: standing in the background. There was two people in the graveyard.
10:40
Speaker 1: the guy holding the camera and his friend who was
10:42
Speaker 1: stood behind him at the time. They didn't notice this
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Speaker 1: strange horned man until they played the footage back frame
10:49
Speaker 1: by frame. Could this be the almond finally caught on camera?
10:54
Speaker 1: I don't know if the almond is a hoax. That
10:57
Speaker 1: could very well be the case. However, I am a
11:00
Speaker 1: strong believer in the idea that a fictional story can
11:03
Speaker 1: take on a life of its own if enough people
11:05
Speaker 1: can be convinced that it's real. I talked about this
11:09
Speaker 1: in my ghost watch video how the fictional ghost of
11:11
Speaker 1: pipes managed to possess the minds of many of its
11:13
Speaker 1: younger viewers, giving some of them psychological effects that lasted
11:17
Speaker 1: longer after the program had finished one person even took
11:20
Speaker 1: their own life. There's also the case of the slender man.
11:25
Speaker 1: It started out as a photoshop contest and ended up
11:28
Speaker 1: with two girls dragging their friend into the woods and
11:30
Speaker 1: stabbing her 19 times because they thought they were receiving
11:33
Speaker 1: instructions from the slender man himself. Maybe something like this
11:38
Speaker 1: could have happened with the almond. You could look at
11:41
Speaker 1: it from a purely psychological perspective. You convince people that
11:45
Speaker 1: the almond exists and next time someone hears a strange
11:48
Speaker 1: noise or sees a dark shape in the woods behind
11:50
Speaker 1: morning church, they might believe that they had an encounter
11:53
Speaker 1: with the almond itself. Oh, you could get a bit
11:57
Speaker 1: more out there. You could look at the almond as
12:00
Speaker 1: a kind of topper, a thought form made flesh. Could
12:04
Speaker 1: the strange rituals performed by shields and urns really have
12:07
Speaker 1: conjured something more solid up? Maybe hoaxing it was a
12:11
Speaker 1: method for willing the almond into existence, getting enough people
12:14
Speaker 1: to believe in it that it actually becomes a reality.
12:18
Speaker 1: A decades-long prank and a genuine work of magic at
12:20
Speaker 1: the same time. That might go a bit far for
12:24
Speaker 1: some viewers, but I've been interested in the interaction between
12:27
Speaker 1: the mind and physical reality ever since I read the
12:29
Speaker 1: holographic universe when I was younger. I'm not sure if
12:33
Speaker 1: I totally believe that the mind can create an all-man
12:36
Speaker 1: out of nothing, but it's the sort of thing that
12:38
Speaker 1: I like to speculate on and hey, it's nearly Halloween
12:41
Speaker 1: so I'm allowed to indulge in some spooky speculation. The Almond,
12:46
Speaker 1: he might be real, he might be a prank, he
12:48
Speaker 1: might be in a elaborate work of surrealist art, or
12:51
Speaker 1: maybe he's all those things at the same time. So
12:55
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this typically conclusionless video. I don't
12:59
Speaker 1: really like telling people what they should think. but I
13:01
Speaker 1: like giving them something to think about so hopefully you
13:04
Speaker 1: found this interesting. October always puts me in the mood
13:08
Speaker 1: for a good spooky story so I hope you guys
13:10
Speaker 1: are enjoying the content. Here's some more recordings you might enjoy.
13:15
Speaker 1: Check out the creepy folklore playlist if you like this
13:18
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Goodbye. Welcome to our new series where
13:22
Speaker 1: I'll be looking at creepy tales from folklore. Today we're
13:26
Speaker 1: going to be looking at an entity called Ginny Greenteeth.
13:29
Speaker 1: also known as Ginny Green Teeth in some places. She
13:33
Speaker 1: is said to haunt the waters of northwest England. I
13:37
Speaker 1: actually first heard this story whilst I was on a
13:39
Speaker 1: Halloween ghost tour around Manchester. As we were walking along
13:44
Speaker 1: the canal's edge, our tour guide warned us not to
13:47
Speaker 1: stand too close to the water for fear that Ginny
13:49
Speaker 1: Green Teeth might reach out and get us. Descriptions of
13:53
Speaker 1: Ginny vary, but most commonly she appears as a human-looking
13:56
Speaker 1: female water spirit with long, straggly hair, green skin, sharp,
14:01
Speaker 1: fawn-like teeth, elongated arms and long, taloned fingers. She said
14:07
Speaker 1: to lurk in various bodies of water across the northwest.
14:11
Speaker 1: The presence of duckweed in a pond is a sure
14:13
Speaker 1: sign that Ginny Green Teeth haunts that area. This is
14:17
Speaker 1: an aquatic weed that grows right across the surface of
14:20
Speaker 1: a pond. Ginny is sent to hide underneath the duckweed
14:24
Speaker 1: so she can lurk unseen waiting for her victims. Early
14:28
Speaker 1: tales of Ginny had her haunting mostly rivers and ponds,
14:31
Speaker 1: but as industrialization changed the landscape in some of these areas,
14:35
Speaker 1: she began to haunt the canals and sewer systems of
14:37
Speaker 1: modern cities. In recent times she's become somewhat of a
14:42
Speaker 1: Pennywise-type creature. Children who have heard the tale of Ginny
14:46
Speaker 1: will avoid sewer grids for fear that she might be
14:49
Speaker 1: hiding down there watching them. She seems to favor small
14:52
Speaker 1: children and the elderly. straying too close to the water's
14:56
Speaker 1: surface can put you in imminent danger. At any moment
15:00
Speaker 1: Ginny can reach up with a long, bony fingers and
15:03
Speaker 1: drag you beneath the surface to feed on your drowning body.
15:07
Speaker 1: At night time she can be seen high up in
15:09
Speaker 1: treetops watching for her next meal. An eerie morning noise
15:13
Speaker 1: heard on the wind is a warning that Ginny is nearby.
15:17
Speaker 1: Although Ginny Green Teeth only haunts the northwest of England,
15:20
Speaker 1: there are very similar tales all over the country. For example,
15:25
Speaker 1: Close to where I live in the northeast of England
15:27
Speaker 1: there's a very similar entity called Pegpowler. This is a
15:31
Speaker 1: female spirit that's said to haunt the River Tees. Apart
15:35
Speaker 1: from having a different name she seems to be exactly
15:37
Speaker 1: the same as Ginny Green Teeth in every other way.
15:41
Speaker 1: In other parts of the country she's known as Nellie
15:43
Speaker 1: Long Arms or the Grindlow or any other host of names.
15:48
Speaker 1: Where this tale originated from is unknown but very similar
15:51
Speaker 1: creatures also appear in folklore across the world. Tales such
15:55
Speaker 1: as the Nakan from Germanic folklore, the Japanese Kappa or
15:59
Speaker 1: the Storm Hag from Lake Erie in America bear a
16:02
Speaker 1: striking resemblance to genie green teeth. It could be that
16:06
Speaker 1: all these stories originate from the same source, some sort
16:09
Speaker 1: of proto-genie, something that occurred way back at the dawn
16:12
Speaker 1: of man and lodged itself in our collective consciousness. It's
16:16
Speaker 1: easy to see why these stories come about though. Pools
16:20
Speaker 1: and streams can be dangerous places for unsupervised children. A
16:24
Speaker 1: duckweed-covered pond can look like a solid walkable surface. A
16:29
Speaker 1: child tries to step on the surface, they fall in
16:32
Speaker 1: and the weeds close up over the top, making it
16:34
Speaker 1: seem like they vanished without a trace. I can imagine
16:38
Speaker 1: how in more superstitious times they might attribute such an
16:41
Speaker 1: event to the work of an evil spirit. A few
16:44
Speaker 1: more similar drownings and then a pattern emerges and so
16:47
Speaker 1: the legend of Ginny Greenteeth is born. This raises the
16:51
Speaker 1: question though why are these stories so similar? It's almost
16:55
Speaker 1: always a woman with green skin and sharp teeth. You'd
16:59
Speaker 1: think if these stories emerged just as a way to
17:02
Speaker 1: explain random drownings, then the descriptions of the entity would
17:05
Speaker 1: also vary but it seems very uniform between stories. It
17:09
Speaker 1: can then make me wonder if our ancestors knew something
17:12
Speaker 1: we don't. Maybe there's more truth to this story than
17:15
Speaker 1: we think. Today the legend endures mostly because it's a
17:19
Speaker 1: useful way for parents to stop their kids going too
17:22
Speaker 1: close to the water when they're not around to supervise them.
17:26
Speaker 1: In the same way we might tell kids that Santa
17:28
Speaker 1: is watching them so that they don't misbehave. Ginny green
17:32
Speaker 1: teeth exists as a sort of omnipresent threat, something that
17:35
Speaker 1: could be lurking under any water surface just waiting for
17:38
Speaker 1: them to get too close. Personally I think it'd be
17:42
Speaker 1: easier to teach kids about their dangers of drowning rather
17:44
Speaker 1: than give them nightmares about a green-skinned cannibalistic hag but
17:48
Speaker 1: hey hope, different strokes for different folks. So next time
17:52
Speaker 1: you find yourself at a duckweed chuck's pond or a
17:55
Speaker 1: particularly murky stretch of canal, keep an eye out and
17:58
Speaker 1: don't stray too close to the water's edge. You never know,
18:02
Speaker 1: Ginny might be there waiting for a next victim.