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Strange Odyssey · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Tell me o muse of that ingenious hero who traveled
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  Speaker 1: far and wide after he sacked the famous town of Troy.
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  Speaker 1: Those words probably sound familiar to you, at least those
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  Speaker 1: of you who didn't sleep through high school English. These
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  Speaker 1: are the first lines of Homer's epic poem, The Odyssey
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  Speaker 1: An eight hundred BCE. Homer wrote down the story of
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  Speaker 1: an ancient Greek's incredible journey to find his way home.
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  Speaker 1: Two thousand years later, another Greek went on his own
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  Speaker 1: journey to see if he could find Odysseus, the King
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  Speaker 1: of Old, right in his own backyard. The time described
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  Speaker 1: in the Odyssey is what historians call the Mysinean period.
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  Speaker 1: Mycetaean Greece was made up of several distinct, sophisticated kingdoms
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  Speaker 1: that shared a common culture and language. According to Homer,
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  Speaker 1: Odysseus was the ruler of a Mysonian kingdom called Ithaca.
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  Speaker 1: In Homer's previous poem The Iliad, Odysseus led his troops
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  Speaker 1: into battle with the rest of the Greeks to sack
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  Speaker 1: the city at Troy. Probably his most famous contribution to
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  Speaker 1: the legend was coming up with the Trojan horse. After
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  Speaker 1: the war, Odysseus angers Poseidon, the god of the Sea,
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  Speaker 1: and is cursed to wander the Mediterranean for ten whole years.
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  Speaker 1: He encounters monsters, sorceresses, the cyclops, and sirens before he
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  Speaker 1: finally makes it home to his wife and son in Ithaca. Now,
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  Speaker 1: for years, the island of Ithakei, off the western coast
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  Speaker 1: of Greece has claimed that it was the ancient site
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  Speaker 1: of Odysseus his homeland Ithaca. Today you'll find dozens of
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  Speaker 1: things named after him there, from apartments to boat tours.
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  Speaker 1: The island's website calls it the home of Odysseus, and
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  Speaker 1: a statue of the ancient king watches over the harbor. Honestly,
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  Speaker 1: a whole cottage industry has sprung up marketing ithake as
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  Speaker 1: Homeric Ithaca. But back in nineteen ninety one, a local
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  Speaker 1: man named MICUs Metexas began to think something didn't quite fit,
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  Speaker 1: namely because there were no mycene in Greek ruins on
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  Speaker 1: ithake Macchus was born and raised in Kefalonia, the island
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  Speaker 1: just to the west of Ahaki, and just like any
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  Speaker 1: proud Greek man, he spent hours as a schoolboy study
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  Speaker 1: in the Odyssey. As he read Homer's verses over and over,
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  Speaker 1: something began to bother him. Homer's description of Ithaca did
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  Speaker 1: not match the island of ITHAKEI. First, there is the river.
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  Speaker 1: Homer describes Ithaca's port as being the mouth of a river.
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  Speaker 1: There are no rivers on Ithaca. And then there's the
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  Speaker 1: Cave of the Nymphs. In the Odyssey, Homer describes a
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  Speaker 1: great hidden sea cave that ships may enter from the harbor,
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  Speaker 1: but no such cave exists in Ehachi either. Finally, there's
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  Speaker 1: Raven's Rock, a geological feature that Odysseus uses as a
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  Speaker 1: meeting place for him and a friend to plot his
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  Speaker 1: return to his throne. Many spots on a Thaki have
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  Speaker 1: been rumored to be this place, but none seem to
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  Speaker 1: really fit Homer's description. Macchus realized that while all these
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  Speaker 1: places don't exist on a THAKEI. They perfectly correspond to Kelonia.
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  Speaker 1: There is a harbor with the river flowing into it,
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  Speaker 1: a great lake trapped in a cave, and most importantly,
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  Speaker 1: the boulder that he'd grown up climbing as a boy,
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  Speaker 1: the boulder that everyone knows Aschricoptra, which means Raven's Rock.
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  Speaker 1: Following these clues, Macchus zeroed in on the place near
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  Speaker 1: Raven's Rock where Homer says that Odysseus's palace was located,
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  Speaker 1: and he noticed something strange. Hidden behind a thick cops
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  Speaker 1: of trees was a series of roughly carved stones stacked together.
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  Speaker 1: He could already tell that they were very, very old.
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  Speaker 1: Following ancient directions from Homer himself, Macchus had stumbled upon
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  Speaker 1: one of the largest Mysonyan tombs ever discovered. After decades
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  Speaker 1: of excavations, Macchus's discovery shakes down to this a giant
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  Speaker 1: beehive shaped tomb hidden in the side of the mountain,
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  Speaker 1: and although it had already been looted by ancient grave robbers,
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  Speaker 1: several artifacts remained which pointed toward it being the resting
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  Speaker 1: place of a Mysonian king and hidden in the grave
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  Speaker 1: a strangely unique seal. You see in the Odyssey. Odysseus
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  Speaker 1: is known to be wearing a cloak pin which depicts
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  Speaker 1: a dog attacking a fawn, and hidden at the bottom
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  Speaker 1: of this grave was a small piece of carved crystal,
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  Speaker 1: the carving a hound pinning a deer to the ground.
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  Speaker 1: At this point, the historical record is not complete enough
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  Speaker 1: to definitively state whether this tomb is part of Ithaca
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  Speaker 1: or if the body inside had belonged to Odysseus. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: it's hard to say whether Odysseus himself ever really existed,
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  Speaker 1: and the island of Athake has put up a fight,
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  Speaker 1: using bureaucracy to slow down investigation into the site. Odysseus
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  Speaker 1: had a long and difficult voyage home, but maybe after
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  Speaker 1: thousands of years and many more obstacles, the journey to
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  Speaker 1: find him again is almost over. John Denver's nineteen seventy
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  Speaker 1: one song take Me Home, Country Roads paints a beautiful
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  Speaker 1: picture of West Virginia. It references both the rolling tree
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  Speaker 1: covered Blue Ridge Mountains and the crystal clear Shenandoah River.
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  Speaker 1: But West Virginia isn't all sunshine and roses. It has
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  Speaker 1: a darker side, one that is full of strange creatures.
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  Speaker 1: West Virginia is allegedly home to many cryptids, which are
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  Speaker 1: animals whose existence hasn't been proven yet. In West Virginia,
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  Speaker 1: the mothman is probably the most famous cryptid of all,
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  Speaker 1: but there are many others, like the snelly gaster sheep,
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  Speaker 1: squatch than bat boy. If those sound ridiculous to you,
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  Speaker 1: it's because they are. But West Virginia has had other
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  Speaker 1: supernatural sightings that are more difficult to dismiss. In nineteen
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  Speaker 1: sixty six, for example, traveling salesman Woodrow Darrenberger was returning
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  Speaker 1: from a sales trip to Ohio. He was driving down
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  Speaker 1: the interstate towards his home in Mineral Wells, West Virginia.
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  Speaker 1: It was dark out and he was nearly home when
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  Speaker 1: another car suddenly sped past him. He wouldn't have thought
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  Speaker 1: anything of it, except another vehicle of some kind followed
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  Speaker 1: right behind the first car. But this second vehicle was strange.
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  Speaker 1: It was larger than a car and it didn't have
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  Speaker 1: any lights. As Woodrow kept driving, his headlights illuminated more
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  Speaker 1: of the object. It was about eight feet long and
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  Speaker 1: had a sort of tulip shaped to it even more incredible.
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  Speaker 1: It had no wheels, and it hovered above the ground.
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  Speaker 1: It rose into the air and then settled across the road,
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  Speaker 1: blocking Woodrow's path. He had no choice but to pull over.
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  Speaker 1: Before he knew what was happening, a voice in his
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  Speaker 1: head told him to roll down his window. He complied,
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  Speaker 1: only to find a man standing just outside his car.
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  Speaker 1: The man was illuminated by Woodrow's headlights and the cabin
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  Speaker 1: lights inside. He had dark hair and tan skin. He
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  Speaker 1: was handsome, but otherwise looked more or less normal. He
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  Speaker 1: wore a dark trench coat, and underneath it was some
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  Speaker 1: sort of shirt that Woodrow could only describe as metallic.
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  Speaker 1: There was one other thing about the man that Woodrow
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  Speaker 1: found unnerving, though his smile. It never seemed to fade,
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  Speaker 1: and it felt out of place so late on the
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  Speaker 1: side of the road. According to Woodrow, the man began
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  Speaker 1: to speak, but his mouth did not move. He just
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  Speaker 1: kept smiling, and Woodrow heard the voice in his head.
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  Speaker 1: Don't be frightened. The voice said, we wish you no harm,
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  Speaker 1: said that his name was Cold, and then he asked
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  Speaker 1: Woodrow about the city that was ahead, which Woodrow told
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  Speaker 1: him was called Parkersburg. Even stranger Cold asked if most
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  Speaker 1: all the people lived there, as if he didn't understand
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  Speaker 1: the concept of a city. Woodrow explained it to him,
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  Speaker 1: and then Cold said that his people referred to cities
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  Speaker 1: as gatherings. Cold kept smiling, mouth never moving through this
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  Speaker 1: whole conversation, and then finally he said, we will see
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  Speaker 1: you again, and then got back into his aircraft and
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  Speaker 1: flew away. As soon as he got home, Woodrow reported
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  Speaker 1: all of this to the police. Unfortunately, he was just
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  Speaker 1: another in a long list of UFO witnesses throughout the
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  Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, but his story caught the attention of a
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  Speaker 1: UFO investigator named John Keel, who found Woodrow credible when
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  Speaker 1: compared to many other UFO witnesses. Woodrow lived a very
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  Speaker 1: normal life prior to his sighting and was not prone
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  Speaker 1: to making up stories. Then, once John met him, he
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  Speaker 1: had him analyzed by a psychoanalyst who said that Woodrow
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  Speaker 1: was not suffering from mental illness. John spent more and
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  Speaker 1: more time in West Virginia, and while he was there
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  Speaker 1: he met dozens of other people with similar stories. Woodrow
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  Speaker 1: went on to be interviewed about his sighting multiple times
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  Speaker 1: throughout his life, including on live TV in West Virginia,
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  Speaker 1: and as the years passed by, he claimed to have
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  Speaker 1: even more sightings of that same being named Cold who
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  Speaker 1: told him that his first name was Indrid and that
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  Speaker 1: he came from a distant planet. Now, if all of
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  Speaker 1: that sounds too ridiculous to believe, John Keel thought so too.
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  Speaker 1: He often found that his interview subjects had a believable
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  Speaker 1: first sighting, only to share wilder and wilder stories as
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  Speaker 1: time went on. John didn't believe in aliens, but he
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  Speaker 1: did believe that some sort of psychic phenomenon was causing
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  Speaker 1: these sightings. In his opinion, West Virginia just had too
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  Speaker 1: many strange occurrences during this time for all of them
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  Speaker 1: to be made up. Was it a case of the
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  Speaker 1: researcher giving into his subject's delusions or is there something
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  Speaker 1: out there in the woods. Well, if you're curious, make
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  Speaker 1: a stop in West Virginia on your next road trip.
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  Speaker 1: But if a mysterious aircraft lands in front of you
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  Speaker 1: on the highway, it might be best to just drive
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  Speaker 1: around it. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
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  Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
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  Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
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  Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey
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  Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
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  Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
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  Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
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  Speaker 1: over at the Worldoflore dot com. And until next time,
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  Speaker 1: stay curious.