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Leopard Men - The Society That Became The Hunter · HOLOSKY PODCAST

0:16
[UNKNOWN]: You
1:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back to the haul.
1:10
[SPEAKER_02]: It's got podcasts.
1:11
[SPEAKER_02]: We are your host.
1:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Stephen and Kyle and it's Monday, holocult.
1:16
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1:17
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1:21
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1:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Kyle's coming back in with some moth trying to look at a screen over here.
1:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Lepard man.
1:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Lepard man.
1:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Part two.
1:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Part two these part two.
1:35
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1:38
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1:53
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1:55
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1:56
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2:04
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2:06
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3:29
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3:35
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3:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Chill, okay, I'll give you that much.
3:41
[SPEAKER_02]: A couple of friends that discuss strange things that occur in the world.
3:44
[SPEAKER_02]: These guys are pretty chill.
3:46
[SPEAKER_02]: See, they'll do it.
3:48
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3:50
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3:54
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3:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, I need to learn to read.
4:02
[SPEAKER_02]: There really is something for everyone.
4:04
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4:09
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4:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you, Jane.
4:12
[SPEAKER_02]: You're pretty chill, too, for the record.
4:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
4:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for the kind words.
4:18
[SPEAKER_00]: That was nice.
4:19
[SPEAKER_00]: That was nice.
4:20
[SPEAKER_02]: It was nice.
4:21
[SPEAKER_02]: It was nice.
4:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Good.
4:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Good little description there.
4:25
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4:27
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4:29
[SPEAKER_02]: That is true.
4:30
[SPEAKER_00]: We are rather undervalued in a lot of aspects of life.
4:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It's nice that you guys love us so much.
4:40
[SPEAKER_00]: We love you.
4:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we are kind of a big deal.
4:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know if you know that or not, but we are.
4:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Apparently not big enough to have sponsors.
4:48
[SPEAKER_02]: That's okay.
4:49
[SPEAKER_02]: According to the guy on sets of Spotify.
4:51
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't.
4:52
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't need some shout out to the CIA who keeps throwing ads in front of our Spotify shows.
4:58
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5:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we need, uh, I feel like, I feel like there should be some type of like sign on bonus.
5:08
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, send us the alien files.
5:11
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5:17
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5:18
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5:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Speaking of sponsors, you can support our sponsors that you're going to hear from.
5:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Right about now and just like that, we are back.
5:34
[SPEAKER_02]: We're gonna dive right into the leopard bin.
5:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, actually we're not gonna do that.
5:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we'll take a couple minutes here and conversation.
5:42
[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna talk about some stuff.
5:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I just wanted to give a shout out to my son and his basketball team.
5:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
5:50
[SPEAKER_00]: It was awesome game today, they did a great job.
5:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It was one of them games where they were getting their asses kicked all game and then last quarter they come back and literally with three seconds on the clock
6:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Our six seconds full court pass to lay up and put them one point over for the it wasn't the dub because within that six seconds.
6:18
[SPEAKER_00]: The other team ran the ball down shot but got fucking annihilated found.
6:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the shitty thing, the coach was able to not let the shitty kid shoot the free throws to got fouled and put their best player in to shoot the free throws, which ended up tying the game.
6:38
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was a tie in the end.
6:40
[SPEAKER_00]: How does that work?
6:41
[SPEAKER_00]: It was bullshit.
6:42
[SPEAKER_00]: It shouldn't have happened.
6:44
[SPEAKER_00]: But my son's team is currently undefeated.
6:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go.
6:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So, does her beater, baby?
6:51
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, because they played super hard.
6:54
[SPEAKER_00]: They've been working really hard.
6:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It's cool to see those, you know, 10 year old boys get out there and play their hearts out.
7:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was, it was a awesome awesome game.
7:04
[SPEAKER_02]: It's awesome.
7:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm proud of him for getting out there and kicking ass.
7:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It was cool.
7:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Hell yeah, buzzer beater.
7:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we recognize hard work around the, I around the hollow camp.
7:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
7:16
[SPEAKER_02]: So take notes.
7:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
7:18
[SPEAKER_00]: We give appreciation to that shit.
7:20
[SPEAKER_00]: That's awesome.
7:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Alright, so moving past that, we're going to get into the Leopardman last episode.
7:26
[SPEAKER_00]: We kind of dabbled with the paranormal side of the Leopardman.
7:31
[SPEAKER_00]: This one is still going to have that, but we're going to focus more on what the colonial authorities ended up turning the Leopardman into, which I think fueled.
7:44
[SPEAKER_00]: a real world version of this.
7:48
[SPEAKER_00]: So this, you know, this might be a slight derailment from the predator theme.
7:56
[SPEAKER_00]: However, I don't want to leave anything on the table when it comes to the leopard men.
8:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to kind of wrap it up cleanly.
8:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's so we're going to look at
8:09
[SPEAKER_00]: the Leopardmen, the first things that it brings up is the secret society.
8:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was other societies out there too, apparently.
8:15
[SPEAKER_00]: They were the Leopard Society, the Crocodile Society, and the chimpanzees' society.
8:21
[SPEAKER_02]: What?
8:22
[SPEAKER_00]: All of them apparently had, and they were all in the West Africa area.
8:26
[SPEAKER_00]: They spanned several countries.
8:28
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a big region that ended up kind of expanding out too.
8:33
[SPEAKER_00]: But they all kind of operated in the same way, oddly enough, which was really fucking bizarre.
8:38
[SPEAKER_00]: But European colonial powers expanded into Western Central Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
8:49
[SPEAKER_00]: They encountered more than unfamiliar terrain here.
8:53
[SPEAKER_00]: The world views they encountered did not translate into Western categories of law, religion or crime.
9:03
[SPEAKER_00]: The leopard men became known and kind of spun out of control for these colonial authorities.
9:11
[SPEAKER_00]: To the people who lived alongside the jungle, these accounts were not metaphors.
9:15
[SPEAKER_00]: They were explanations of fear, death, moral enforcement in an environment where human authority was rather fragile.
9:25
[SPEAKER_00]: but the colonial administrators, missionaries, and military officers, these explanations were far below acceptable.
9:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Governments cannot control spirits.
9:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Courts could not prosecute liminal beings.
9:40
[SPEAKER_00]: You also can't file reports blaming the jungle.
9:44
[SPEAKER_00]: That just, it doesn't work that way.
9:49
[SPEAKER_00]: We're running into a situation here where they're trying to come in and kind of create this government for all these people, but these crimes are being committed and they are they're just trying to figure out a way to control it.
10:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, police it to police it.
10:10
[SPEAKER_00]: which you can't do.
10:11
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I'm just going to say I anxious to see that works.
10:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, for them.
10:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So by the late 1800s, British, French, and Belgian, colonial administrations began asserting control over territories in Western Central Africa.
10:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Missionaries, followed, then traders and military garrisons.
10:31
[SPEAKER_00]: That also brought forth Western legal systems, Christian theology and enlightenment rationalism.
10:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Which, of course, those systems weren't meant to factor in the paranormal and the unexplatable.
10:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So when the colonial officials began receiving reports of mutilated bodies displayed remains and killings attributed to these leopard men, they faced a little interesting issue.
10:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So when the local populations had their explanations to the crimes, the leopard chose the him, the forest judge them.
11:07
[SPEAKER_00]: He is no longer fully human.
11:10
[SPEAKER_00]: This is how local populations dealt with that situation.
11:16
[SPEAKER_00]: This was far from acceptable, so the colonial administrators began to reframe the situation to fit into more of a legal procedure that they then control.
11:30
[SPEAKER_00]: So when these reports began piling up, they decided to put them under a single label, the leopard society.
11:38
[SPEAKER_00]: To their logic, if the killings were occurring, they must be organized, they're most likely
11:44
[SPEAKER_00]: and they're obviously human-driven, so this allowed them to bypass supernatural causes and place them inside criminal conspiracy.
11:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Leopard men were no longer liminal beings of the jungle, they became members of clandestine cults using fear as a political weapon.
12:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Reports declared leopard societies as
12:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Secret brotherhoods that were bound by oaths, practicing ritual murder and using leopard skins, masks, or claw-like weapons to simulate animal attacks.
12:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Once this was put into place, it could now start being controlled and governed.
12:29
[SPEAKER_00]: These societies could also be infiltrated and leaders could be arrested.
12:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Once confessions were extracted, order could finally be restored.
12:43
[SPEAKER_02]: kind of on par, maybe parallel with like the witch trials.
12:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I literally make a note about that.
12:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
12:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, like, we're a word.
12:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, this starts like,
12:56
[SPEAKER_00]: turning very, very Salem with trial.
12:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, at a certain first thing I was because the first I was thinking like, it's got some like, can't there be kind of vibes to it?
13:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure.
13:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Where they kind of outcast them to the forest and they they're like, they're not, no, they're no longer human, they're in a mistake at it.
13:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And then once they were, they were looking at putting together a punishment based
13:23
[SPEAKER_02]: how am I going to say it's a basically a punishment for the supernatural aspects makes it feel very much like the witch trials.
13:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh absolutely and like I said it even gets worse like more Salem witch trialie as we progress but you know if if this is the case if these were actually oh and in real quick that's yet that you brought up like like
13:53
[SPEAKER_00]: There are other episodes that I'm going to explore.
13:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of dodged off on my next one because I didn't want to keep to take it with this narrative, but like they're in the area.
14:02
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like where hyenas and shit, you heard of those that I'm going to eventually get into.
14:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess those lean more toward which craft and stuff, which is very reminiscent of skin walker, and that.
14:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'm excited to go down that avenue as well to hear more about that.
14:23
[SPEAKER_02]: It's interesting how the lore kind of surpasses geographic lines.
14:31
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's something that I'll ever, I'll forever be amazed by.
14:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not just with lore.
14:38
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you have like the pyramids and everything has this capability or or this time in history where it every culture is just like, yep, this is a thing.
14:50
[SPEAKER_00]: All it wants for some reason.
14:52
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so weird splits off down two to like two paths one being like were these things taught by beings from somewhere else that just taught it across the globe or is it proof of a human collective consciousness.
15:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
15:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I absolutely agree with that.
15:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's, I think until we have that answer, it is something that I will forever be fascinated by.
15:21
[SPEAKER_00]: That's wild.
15:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, it's so, it's so simple, but it's so mind blowing at the same time.
15:27
[SPEAKER_00]: That's wild.
15:29
[SPEAKER_00]: It is.
15:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so if these things, if these situations were actually paranormal, how are they able to pull any of this off?
15:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, people begin to confess.
15:45
[SPEAKER_00]: In multiple cases, accused individuals admitted to participating in leopard men killings.
15:52
[SPEAKER_00]: But these confessions need to be understood.
15:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Many of them were obtained during periods of widespread panic, under the threat of execution, in a system
16:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And after suspects have already been labeled as inhuman, which I'm sure in that time and place was a massive smear campaign for said person because they had deep-seated beliefs that leopard men were real and if you in theory, if you accuse someone of being a leopard
16:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, if you were, if you were perceived as a real world leopardman kind of also, yeah, and also just purely aligns with like the sale of much trial.
16:48
[SPEAKER_00]: 100% so some of these confessions included details that actually mirrored locally from instead of criminal plannings.
16:58
[SPEAKER_00]: People were confessing to blackouts, possession, dreams, compulsion, and loss of agency.
17:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Colonial dipshits would then interpret these confessions into their own views by saying things like, oh, these are obviously nothing more than superstitions layered, layered over their, their guilt.
17:25
[SPEAKER_00]: That's obvious.
17:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So we've got something here.
17:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Steve saying he's fucking possessed.
17:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Colonial dipschins is the word of the day.
17:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I literally haven't written down to as Colonial dipschins.
17:40
[SPEAKER_00]: That cracked me up.
17:43
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's crazy.
17:44
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so dismissive to me that they were like, No, what this is.
17:49
[SPEAKER_00]: This is this is just them trying to like mask their guilt.
17:53
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what this is.
17:54
[SPEAKER_00]: They're just trying to find reasons.
17:57
[SPEAKER_02]: to be like they do they really do they really think they're going to be pardoned by saying they were possessed I don't give a fuck you still stab that dude you're going to jail it's very it's very much like how they treat people now only now you just get medicated and yeah and called just gets a friend like yeah yeah
18:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, all of this, it really muddies the waters because you have the colonial shits coming to terms with this person being guilty and viewing it as guilt and the local population would hear it and accept it because it fit their belief system.
18:38
[SPEAKER_00]: You have this, it's a, it's a two-tier thing that somehow working even though it shouldn't be working.
18:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Investigators would frequently be cited saying leppard clause were used as weapons by people to replicate animal wounds.
19:01
[SPEAKER_00]: This and itself will confirm human involvement, not supernatural beings, but you take that for what it is right there and you see how that parallel fits for both structures.
19:13
[SPEAKER_00]: The locals are saying, no, this is, this is the leopard men changing into leopards and fucking people up, whereas the government's going, no, no, no, no, this is people using leopard call-like weapons to commit these murders.
19:29
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
19:30
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's like, it's literally like a parallel situation and somehow it's working.
19:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, our, yeah, it's like two sides of the same coin are people committing our people committing these murders and then using superstition to mask it, whereas on the flip side of that,
19:54
[SPEAKER_02]: the not superstition using paranormal is what the word I was looking for.
19:59
[SPEAKER_02]: On the flip side of that, the governments like these, these people are committing these and using the paranormal to mask it or on the flip side.
20:07
[SPEAKER_02]: The people are like, no, this is really, really happening.
20:10
[SPEAKER_02]: like these entities are really doing the killings.
20:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
20:14
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I get it.
20:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't put it out there the way that I wanted to explain.
20:19
[SPEAKER_02]: It happens.
20:20
[SPEAKER_02]: But it made sense.
20:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we all get stupid.
20:25
[SPEAKER_00]: But furthermore, these weapons were at the center of the secret society narrative.
20:31
[SPEAKER_00]: They explained how bodies would appear mold without actual leopards being present.
20:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But this also brought about new problems to the picture.
20:39
[SPEAKER_00]: If the weapons were known, the societies identified and the perpetrators arrested, then why did the reports persist?
20:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It's weird, right?
20:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Why did fear remain after executions?
20:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Why did villagers continue to avoid certain paths?
21:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Decades later.
21:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm weird, right?
21:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It's weird.
21:10
[SPEAKER_00]: So here, I'm a deviate slightly, but it was something I didn't really touch on in the first episode and it kind of sparked my brain and that's why I went digging around.
21:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And it also fits, you know, the Sierra Society version.
21:27
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a clear deviation, but this is one of the more mentioned details and reports.
21:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I asked the question, all right, if I'm overarching this kind of in a predator way on the inspiration for the movie and so on and so forth, how are these bodies being found?
22:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though colonial authorities and locals disagree about why the killings happened, the crime scenes are often very similar.
22:13
[SPEAKER_00]: The bodies were sometime found elevated off the ground.
22:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Often in trees are positioned above eye level.
22:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Villagers would see this elevation as judgment, warnings, or that the forest was showing
22:33
[SPEAKER_00]: On the other side of the coin, colonial investigators would say the perpetrators would stage the bodies to create fear, playing off the belief systems of the locals.
22:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm sure everyone assumed, as I did, elevation also mimicked how prep our leopards would store their prey.
22:54
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I thought when you said it.
22:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Other aspects that are strange is that many reports
23:02
[SPEAKER_00]: appeared similar to leopard attacks, but we're slightly unusual.
23:06
[SPEAKER_00]: They had marks that resembled clawing, removing of specific tissue, which we did talk a little bit about, or damage not matching typical feeding patterns.
23:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that your room up back?
23:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, no, it probably wouldn't even really get picked up.
23:27
[SPEAKER_00]: The very thing is the fucking room but he's out there nonos or my bad.
23:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good.
23:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so predator damage like actual like a leopard as a predator, not predator, predator, predator, movie.
23:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Predator damage is usually rather chaotic.
23:49
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a lot of tearing and a regular bite placements.
23:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Observers often claim that the marks appeared more symmetrical or patterned wounds seem to be concentrated in specific areas, and that damage looked placed rather than scattered.
24:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Which does kind of lean toward maybe some sort of ritualistic kind of killing.
24:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, villagers believe this meant the leopard spirit was removing something symbolic or that it was more judgment than hunting.
24:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Once again, colonial officials say it was specialized claw like tools controlled cutting, which is further proof of this and it was a form of ritualized or staged after death.
24:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is kind of controversial, but it does show up.
24:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It's noted in some of the reports that cuts looked clean.
24:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, this is a point for pushback by people, however, Stephen, I have heard in scene in a lot of cases where, you know, mind you, they are alien cases.
25:08
[SPEAKER_00]: But we have seen cases where cuts and dammen wounds are surgical procedures.
25:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
25:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what these people are referencing.
25:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, these cuts are extremely abnormal.
25:21
[SPEAKER_00]: for anything that we have, because you would think even some of the knives they have over there are not scalples.
25:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Especially if they're like trying to push the narrative that
25:35
[SPEAKER_02]: If people are committing these crimes, they're using leopard claws as weapons.
25:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you're not going to get surgical precision.
25:43
[SPEAKER_02]: No, with someone using some sort of Wolverine as glove that's got leopard claws.
25:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
25:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's kind of funny that you say that that's you just.
25:53
[SPEAKER_00]: That's exactly what happened because that is kind of a thing here later on.
26:00
[SPEAKER_00]: So, in most cases, the crime scene was not hardly disturbed at all.
26:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Also in cases where lepros take prey, they take it into concealment, typically.
26:11
[SPEAKER_00]: They wouldn't normally place bodies in the open for people or animal species easily see.
26:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's another oddity about these displays of the bodies.
26:22
[SPEAKER_00]: What then they're really stand go ahead.
26:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I make sense.
26:25
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, a leopard's not going to display its kill to the ward off.
26:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Other, but essentially, ward off other prey, you know, they're going to stash it so other leopards don't come and take it exactly.
26:39
[SPEAKER_00]: One thing that really stands out when you start comparing the paranormal interpretation and the secret society version is that both sides agree on one detail.
26:48
[SPEAKER_00]: the body was never just a body, it was a message.
26:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether you believe these killings came from ritual practitioners or something more supernatural, the placement and presentation of victims mattered, and many reports the bodies weren't hidden.
27:02
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't buried or dragged away into thick brush.
27:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a normal predator would do, their position in places where they would be seen at the edge of paths, near village boundaries, elevated entries, or placing ways that forced people to confront what happened.
27:19
[SPEAKER_00]: To locals, that wasn't just violence that was communication.
27:24
[SPEAKER_00]: The Force believed
27:26
[SPEAKER_00]: The force was believed to speak through consequences when someone violated the taboo, or upset balance, the leopard man wasn't just ending a life, it was reinforcing and warning.
27:37
[SPEAKER_00]: You can almost think of it, by a courtroom without walls, where the jungle itself was judge and executioner.
27:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Colonial investigators saw something different.
27:47
[SPEAKER_00]: To them, this was psychological warfare.
27:50
[SPEAKER_00]: They believe secret societies staged scenes deliberately to amplify fear, turning existing belief into tools of control.
28:00
[SPEAKER_00]: By placing bodies where everyone would see them, they could strengthen the myth of the leopard men and discourage resistance.
28:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's where, you know, it ties back into that predator idea, the kill isn't about feeding.
28:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about displays, it's about dominance.
28:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about letting others know that something watches from the trees and decides who crosses that line.
28:22
[SPEAKER_00]: The body then becomes evidence, warning, and a ritual all at once.
28:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And whether you call that spiritual enforcement or human manipulation, the effect is the same.
28:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Fear spreads faster than any weapon could.
28:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Another odd thing about this is that when authorities would come into areas and dismantle the leopard's societies, they essentially stomped out the offender.
28:53
[SPEAKER_00]: But in some cases, this did not resolve the phenomenon.
28:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes violence would stop for a little while only to later resume.
29:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't get me wrong, it seems that the secret societies were actually a thing.
29:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not trying to sway anyone away from that.
29:12
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems that it actually really did happen, which could be for many reasons.
29:18
[SPEAKER_00]: My guess is that they knew local law, they decided to mimic it in their own way.
29:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Some rumors say that it was also about witchcraft, which we see in the skinwalker lore, another thing that gets sprung on to the society version of the leopard men is cannibalism.
29:38
[SPEAKER_00]: This, it gets kind of fucked up here.
29:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So, uh, listen, or morning.
29:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure, warning, cannibalism, it's because it's, I don't get graphic, but the implications of it are disturbing, uh, apparently former members have come forward at meeting to this as well.
29:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I know some reports are, or because if you go digging around, it's, it's, it seems to for whatever reason, it's like highly contested.
30:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a, it's a weird thing where,
30:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Some camps are like, yep, 100% cannibal, it happened.
30:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Other people were like, nope, it's all just here say that definitely didn't happen.
30:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's it's really back and forth bad.
30:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's because it's such a taboo subject.
30:21
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, even if the parties are guilty of participating in it,
30:30
[SPEAKER_02]: people trying to like shed that light and then we'll all we'll almost pull back on it because cannibalism is such a taboo subject.
30:38
[SPEAKER_02]: That's crazy because if you look like even in archaeological circles when you talk about like ancient man who like you have to assume probably took place in cannibalism.
30:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, probably parts of a cannibalism.
30:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Just just be just out of sheer need because times were just absolutely terrible, it's still taboo to talk about an archaeological circles.
31:04
[SPEAKER_00]: That's crazy.
31:07
[SPEAKER_00]: For some of them, I mean, it just seems factual.
31:09
[SPEAKER_00]: You either did or you didn't.
31:11
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no reason to bury it.
31:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't like the facts are just facts when they find when they'll find like human remains like ancient human remains and there's similar marks on them that they find on butchered animals they try to cut it off right there.
31:31
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fucking crazy.
31:33
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
31:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Just put that shit out there, but yeah, they fucking hate people is weird.
31:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Guess I mean, you don't hear about it very often.
31:41
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you really don't.
31:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I think about it.
31:43
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just so taboo, the idea of people, like, look at the times now.
31:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's, it's crazy.
31:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it should definitely be a taboo subject that one does not participate in.
31:59
[SPEAKER_00]: However, it does happen.
32:05
[SPEAKER_00]: But like I said, former members came forward admitting to it, I think though that the spin on the topic was the the reason they partook in these rituals was because they wanted this is this is a quote like a quote unquote official narrative I don't know that I buy this I think this is
32:30
[SPEAKER_00]: because this is a supposed explanation as to why the cannibalism took place.
32:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Symi official narrative.
32:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't think this is true.
32:42
[SPEAKER_00]: But apparently, they apart-took in these rituals because they wanted to create a trade route between the different towns.
32:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Because at the time, every town was its own political entity.
32:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So those who wanted to join the leopard society,
32:59
[SPEAKER_00]: had to sacrifice a member of their own domestic group in a cannibalistic feast that doesn't necessarily mean family members they so about I guess essentially an easy way to put this would be that all the chiefs.
33:16
[SPEAKER_00]: from all the different villages got together, and in order to trust each other, and trust that they had power, and so on and so forth, they could further the lepers' society they had to be like, guys, Steve, if you're really in command of your whole tribe, well, you're going to have to donate one of them to us, and then we're going to have to get a partake
33:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Tribal community government leaders Yeah, it is weird.
33:50
[SPEAKER_02]: We're eating people that is weird.
33:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I think about that tell you just point it out That sounds familiar to me right now.
33:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that is pretty Sounds really familiar.
34:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, it really does that's fucked up.
34:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't think about that when I was writing that some some rituals die hard.
34:11
[SPEAKER_01]: That's fucked up That's fucked up
34:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it was a thing.
34:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
34:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It just feels a little bit narrativey, but hey, so it didn't, whenever people said that about our current situation, the whole world is a stage.
34:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
34:28
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, now you ask, what about the travelers?
34:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Because apparently, other people would go missing too.
34:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And what they would do, this doesn't seem very smart.
34:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think so.
34:40
[SPEAKER_00]: However,
34:47
[SPEAKER_00]: they would supposedly sacrifice their own, but in order to keep cover about them, they would also just hit up random travelers and shit and sacrifice and eat them to that way I didn't
35:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I see the scattered logic behind it.
35:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, of course, I just don't really know, I don't know, it just feels off to me.
35:27
[SPEAKER_02]: It feels like you draw more attention.
35:29
[SPEAKER_02]: The more people you fucking eat.
35:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
35:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's weird that the different, the different territories or whatever, are the different.
35:43
[SPEAKER_02]: groups are territorial to the point to where they'll leave the bodies and such as like in my opinion territorial markers, but they'll also the leaders will also get together.
36:02
[SPEAKER_02]: and be like, hey, if you want to be part of this, we got to eat one of your folks.
36:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Tweeted, right?
36:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it is weird.
36:10
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really fucking strange.
36:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't really get the logic behind it.
36:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And this could also be, a lot of this information was most likely found in colonial reports to be honest with you.
36:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
36:22
[SPEAKER_00]: So take that.
36:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Colonial dipshits.
36:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Colonial dipshits.
36:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the 1920s, Lady Dorothy Mills spoke with district commissioners and it was noted that members of the Leopard Society would offer up and help procure someone in their town or their own family for the sacrifice.
36:44
[SPEAKER_00]: A man would offer up his wife, child, brother, whatever, usually to
36:54
[SPEAKER_00]: but this wasn't always the case because it was reported that at times the leper society would actually raid fucking houses and just yank people so my guess is the case are in this case was that they had established a dominance in the area and people feared them resulting in no one coming forward to doing anything about it also the men were costumes and would be hard to identify people in
37:24
[SPEAKER_00]: What may have actually happened is that because you think about it could play out this way where you have these villages that have all this lore about the leopardman right.
37:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Colonial fucked art start moving in the hey.
37:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they start influencing some of the the tribes like hey, this is all bullshit.
37:46
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just people.
37:50
[SPEAKER_00]: But the powers that be, you know, the chiefs of the town and whatever, like, you know what, like, maybe, maybe this is all bullshit.
37:57
[SPEAKER_00]: But what if we start to kind of cash in on this and kind of establish a society, which is assidane, it's crazy, it's out there.
38:07
[SPEAKER_02]: But I can also see how it's like a big power play.
38:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, okay, we need one of you, one of you in your village to sacrifice someone close to you or else we're going to choose for you.
38:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It's also crazy too when you point out the connection to current times because that's exactly what Epstein did.
38:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, basically got like, hey, if you want in with the compromise people, you got to be compromised too.
38:39
[SPEAKER_02]: You got to do some fucked up shit.
38:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
38:42
[SPEAKER_02]: That's fucked up.
38:43
[SPEAKER_02]: It's weird.
38:44
[SPEAKER_02]: It's fucked up.
38:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Didn't really, I don't know, that's gross.
38:48
[SPEAKER_00]: It's weird that it's like, it's like an old like it's been around for ages and we're all just too stupid to ever pick up on it.
38:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's, it's power play 101, it's fucking blackmail.
38:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It's crazy.
38:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, everybody's got to be blackmailable so we all can trust each other.
39:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Power play 101.
39:03
[SPEAKER_02]: It's crazy.
39:05
[SPEAKER_00]: So.
39:06
[SPEAKER_00]: During a criminal trial, a member of a society confessed that he had been present when a girl donated by another member had been murdered and all of them parked looking eating her.
39:17
[SPEAKER_00]: The victim in question was purchased as a slave, the child in question was beheaded and the owner then divided the girl into four sections, cutting all the way down the middle
39:35
[SPEAKER_00]: She was cooked and eaten by everyone and What's even crazy is like Sometimes people can't make the rituals, right my God.
39:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I got other shit to do.
39:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I got you know, they got fucking Dance night with the kids.
39:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't make it.
39:49
[SPEAKER_00]: They just save it.
39:50
[SPEAKER_00]: They just save parts Yeah, doggy bag of for those people.
39:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's your leftovers.
39:54
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fucked Another report came out that even a niece had been sacrificed and that after was all said and done
40:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Literally, the only thing left was skull and bones, due to the testimony, the uncle was actually convicted and put the death, which, rightfully deserved, and I hope it was nothing less.
40:16
[SPEAKER_00]: For the most painful of deaths, enough to carry on into the afterlife for eternity, you deserve whatever eternity has for you, but you can find plenty of reports like this over
40:33
[SPEAKER_00]: the Leopardman in the society.
40:36
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all over.
40:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And like I said, like Steve pointed out, didn't take long for this to turn very Salem which trial.
40:45
[SPEAKER_00]: It was noted that other societies popped up like I mentioned, leopard crocodile's chimpanzee.
40:53
[SPEAKER_00]: People began to accuse every one of this.
40:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you were found guilty, you would be enslaved or even burned death.
41:01
[SPEAKER_00]: So you know what happened.
41:03
[SPEAKER_00]: People start making accusations, taking out political rivals.
41:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Off to the races.
41:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's exactly what ends up happening.
41:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So what's crazy though, we went on about the knives and the costumes.
41:16
[SPEAKER_00]: These people were is reported that in some areas, the colonial authorities weren't even able to find leopard skins or knives resembling leopard claws.
41:30
[SPEAKER_00]: a fuckload of murders took place.
41:33
[SPEAKER_00]: It was unclear to people who was committing them until a man was finally caught in connection with some of the murders.
41:41
[SPEAKER_00]: He confessed that he was in the Leopard Society and admitted that they would take people and sell their body parts for making medicine for themselves.
41:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Even a police officer comes forward and said that he had known about the group for at least a year.
41:56
[SPEAKER_00]: which led people to believe that the group had essentially conspire of local authorities in Nigeria.
42:03
[SPEAKER_00]: They found evidence of the costumes and that the group would or and they found evidence of the costumes at the group would use.
42:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you get accusations of the chief and a son being a part of the leopard society.
42:17
[SPEAKER_00]: More and more costumes and weapons get found only for the local
42:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Just because we're finding costumes and knives, does it mean these guys are actually doing it?
42:31
[SPEAKER_00]: No, there's not enough evidence to convict them, so we gotta let them go.
42:34
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
42:35
[SPEAKER_02]: It's all circumstantial.
42:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
42:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Plenty of people are dressing up in leopard scans and running around the forest with knives.
42:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
42:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
42:44
[SPEAKER_02]: That doesn't mean you're a murderer.
42:45
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
42:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Just because we caught you with human flesh stuck in your teeth, doesn't mean you're a cannibal.
42:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
42:50
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fucking true.
42:53
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the Congo, there was an anyoto society, which was another name essentially for the Leopard Society.
43:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Apparently, so if it's wrong, I apologize for just what I'm reading.
43:06
[SPEAKER_00]: But this society was attacking people and of course, murdering them and they were purposely leaving traces meant to give impressions of Leopard attacks.
43:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Manioto society reportedly sprung up due to these what he least speaking slave trading chiefs who dominated the region.
43:27
[SPEAKER_00]: So they essentially do this out of retaliation, like a resistance, but and this is an aspect of you know, how I can I can definitely believe people would take this lure and adopt it, like they use it as like a freedom fighting technique, which makes sense.
43:47
[SPEAKER_00]: The, you know, because the lure was, it's focused around punishment, judgment, so on.
43:52
[SPEAKER_00]: This easily could have inspired people to form and find their own judgment, so to speak.
44:00
[SPEAKER_00]: But the, the any other society would turn on the colonial government.
44:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And many of the victims were upset government.
44:09
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not all that righteous because they would also sometimes partake in the,
44:18
[SPEAKER_00]: You got a problem, but yeah, you know, like a car all down the street there.
44:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Go, I will go ahead and take them out for you.
44:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Deal, take them out for you.
44:26
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll do a little hitman style contract, she's a little car all motherfuckers got to eat, right?
44:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Quite literally sometimes.
44:37
[SPEAKER_02]: It does make you wonder now that it now that you got people coming forward.
44:42
[SPEAKER_02]: It does make you wonder if it's
44:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Essentially, life imitating the supernatural aspect of it, or is it the supernatural like imitating life?
44:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Like did the supernatural occur first, presenting the fear, and then you have humans kind of taking that fear and running with it, or was that the case all along?
45:14
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope that's the case.
45:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope the supernatural came first.
45:18
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I really don't want it to be the other way around for however that would work.
45:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Because like you said, the fear is so ingrained in some of the communities that they refuse to use trails and paths decades down the line from where some of these encounters took place.
45:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the interesting thing about people, though, is that you're gonna have out of that group, out of that village of everybody that believes guaranteed
45:47
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to have at least one asshole that doesn't fucking believe it because we talked about it last episode where where this is pre-mo prime psychological warfare.
45:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
45:58
[SPEAKER_02]: You've seen it in World War II.
45:59
[SPEAKER_02]: You've seen it 100 times before and it just makes you wonder where the supernatural
46:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you know there's a gray area, you know those, those overlap.
46:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Yep.
46:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no, no, it takes us for that one crazy asshole.
46:26
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't believe to somehow get that crazy idea of like way to mean it.
46:31
[SPEAKER_02]: We can manipulate people's emotions.
46:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we get way with a bunch of shit.
46:36
[SPEAKER_00]: All we got to do is fake dress up as a leopard and stab on the fuckers and we can do whatever we want.
46:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I wonder if there's any accounts of the manipulative fake leopard men encountering the real leopard men.
46:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Garen fucking teeth.
46:53
[SPEAKER_00]: There is somewhere out there.
46:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me fuck.
46:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't able to find it, but I guarantee it, that would be sick.
46:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Them out there stage in a ritualistic murder and then they did real ones come through and are like, ah, ah, ah.
47:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I bet show you ritualistic murder.
47:09
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how you do that.
47:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Surprise.
47:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna go ahead and show you how, though.
47:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
47:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Let me show you how to be ritualistically murdered.
47:21
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so back to the annual though.
47:24
[SPEAKER_00]: In this virgin of the society membership was passed down from father to son or maternal uncle to nephew
47:34
[SPEAKER_00]: new people who wanted to be adopted into this society did in fact have to give up a family member to be sacrificed to prove their loyalty and discretion.
47:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I read a section that told of a medicine house read of a section that told of a medicine man that would help medicine, obviously.
47:55
[SPEAKER_00]: However, he would teach people how to make gloves with
48:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Wolverine hands.
48:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Wolverine hands.
48:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Throw.
48:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Damn it.
48:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Wolverine hands.
48:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Damn it.
48:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Something really interesting though, because the secret society version doesn't erase the paranormal.
48:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It actually blends with it through ritual medicine.
48:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Across many parts of Western Central Africa, the line between medicines, spirituality, and power was never clear cut.
48:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Medicine in weren't just healers, they were interpreters of the unseen.
48:33
[SPEAKER_00]: They prepared charms, mixtures, and rituals that were believed to alter a person's state.
48:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether that be physically, mentally, even spiritually.
48:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Some accounts describe initiates undergoing preparation that went beyond simply putting on a costume.
48:50
[SPEAKER_00]: They were said to take part in fasting, isolation, or trans-like ceremonies, designed to help them embody the leopard's nature.
48:59
[SPEAKER_00]: To colonial observers, this looked like witchcraft or dangerous superstition, but within local belief systems, it was a transformation, not into an animal in the literal sense, but into something that carried the authority of the leopard.
49:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Protective medicine was also a huge part of the fear surrounding Leopardman.
49:22
[SPEAKER_00]: People would believe certain substances made them resistant to weapons or allowed them to move soundly through the forest.
49:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, whether that was psychological confidence, which will believe the result kind of ended the end ended the same, they seemed untouchable.
49:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is where the paranormal and secret society narratives start to overlap once again.
49:46
[SPEAKER_00]: If someone truly believed they had taken on the spirit of a leopard, their behavior would change.
49:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Their posture, their movement, even the way they interacted with others might feel unnatural.
50:01
[SPEAKER_00]: To villagers, that confirmed transformation.
50:05
[SPEAKER_00]: To colonial authorities, it looked like rehearsed intimidation.
50:11
[SPEAKER_00]: But either way, the ritual mattered, and the medicine mattered, because it turned into a leopard man, or turned the leopard man into more than just a person wearing claws, it turned them into a role, something larger than the individual.
50:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, that might be one of the biggest reasons the legend survives.
50:29
[SPEAKER_00]: You can dismantle a society, you can arrest members.
50:33
[SPEAKER_00]: but you can't easily erase a ritual identity that people believe changes who they are.
50:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you're at a lore.
50:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
50:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is kind of off topic, but as I'm digging around, I see this old magazine cover, right?
50:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's got this white dude in like this cheez ass safari hunting get up.
51:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Colonial dipshit, the Colonial dipshit like fucking tan hat with the fucking tan button up and an old school rifle like the dude from dream on 100% dead on dead on.
51:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you see this, this African dude in the, in the bushes back there in his leopard outfit and this got his fucking glove claws on and the way he's standing, I'm like, holy fuck, was this how black Panther was born.
51:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I didn't think about bro, the fucking image looks just like black Panther.
51:45
[SPEAKER_00]: 100% looks like black Panther like the way it's like the way he's standing in this like because it's like it's not it's not a real photo it's like a drawn yeah yeah it's a drawn photo on the front of a magazine I wonder where that looks just like black Panther except it's instead of Panther they're in a leopard he's in a leopard kind of outfit make sure wonder if the Marvel guys
52:10
[SPEAKER_00]: stumbled upon some of that fucking that it really does because I mean as soon as I saw I'm like bro That's life-hancer.
52:16
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a hundred percent life-hancer Interesting So I just thought that was that was kind of interesting
52:25
[SPEAKER_00]: um there's one idea that kind of kept coming back to me while researching the secret society side of the leopard min though and as something that doesn't really get talked about what if the leopard society wasn't just exploiting fear what if it was responding to something people already felt long before the society's existed think about it before colonial reports before arrest before trials
52:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Villagers were already telling stories about hunters in the trees.
52:58
[SPEAKER_00]: About beings that watch from the edges of the forest, about judgment coming from something older than human law.
53:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And then suddenly, you have real people putting on skins, crafting claws, learning medicine, stepping into that role that doesn't just look like deception that looks like imitation.
53:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like they weren't in many a monster that they were trying to become one.
53:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe some of the societies believed that by embodying the leopard, they were restoring balance.
53:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe others used the legends as a shield, knowing fear would protect them more than weapons ever could, and maybe just maybe the reason the legend never died is because it didn't
53:50
[SPEAKER_00]: The secret society explanation tries to put a human face on, said unknown.
53:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It says the leopard men were just organized killers, just ritual practitioners, just people hiding behind masks, but here's the problem.
54:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Even after societies were dismantled, even after confessions extracted, even after colonial courts declared the mystery solved.
54:15
[SPEAKER_00]: People still avoided certain paths.
54:17
[SPEAKER_00]: They still weren't children not to follow voices from the trees.
54:22
[SPEAKER_00]: They still felt watched.
54:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So maybe the leprosciety wasn't the origin of the hunter.
54:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it was a reaction to something deeper, a cultural memory of a predator archetype that shows up across the world in different forms.
54:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where this stops being just a historical mystery.
54:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Because once you realize humans were stepping into this role of the unseen hunter using a ritual medicine,
54:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And fear to become something larger than themselves, you start to see the pattern repeating in myth, folklore, and even modern storytelling.
54:59
[SPEAKER_00]: The leopard, the watcher, the thing that hunts from above in terms of the forest into approving ground, which sounds familiar.
55:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the predator story didn't come from one event or one society, maybe it came from
55:18
[SPEAKER_00]: The belief that somewhere out there, something watches and sometimes humans try to become it.
55:30
[SPEAKER_02]: It does, it does kind of lean into that thought process that at some point in our human history, we weren't the top of the food chain.
55:46
[SPEAKER_02]: leads into that uncanny valley feeling where where something humanoid at one point was something to be feared by humans because it is a cultural thing.
56:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Like every there are so many cultures around the planet that everybody says the same thing when they go on the wilderness by themselves, they feel like they're being mocked.
56:11
[SPEAKER_02]: That's weird.
56:11
[SPEAKER_00]: They're feeling it.
56:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Then realistically, like think about Steve around here.
56:19
[SPEAKER_00]: For the most part, we have fuck all the worry about in the woods.
56:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, be really think about like we don't have bears.
56:27
[SPEAKER_02]: No, we don't have moose snakes and be the only thing.
56:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and have time.
56:31
[SPEAKER_00]: You only see them fuckers.
56:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I'm online.
56:38
[SPEAKER_00]: maybe maybe an obscure mountain line.
56:42
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, those are way rare.
56:46
[SPEAKER_00]: But like you said, every, there's so many cultures that have the same shit.
56:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's almost like, it's almost like they, they cling onto whatever is the main predator in that geographical region, like the leopard, like the crocodile.
57:08
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, almost almost trying to make sense of whatever this thing was that that has brought on the fear, you know, you can't you can't necessarily be like, hey, it's just a human just a human type predator because there's no there's no fear in that, you know,
57:38
[SPEAKER_02]: When you blend the supernatural, and you blend the superstition into it, it changes it.
57:45
[SPEAKER_02]: It takes it to the next level.
57:46
[SPEAKER_02]: It turns it into that psychological warfare.
57:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Turns it into the unknown aspect is what makes it terrifying.
57:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
57:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, and, you know, like I pointed out, but it is real.
57:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not, and it's not as difficult as people think.
58:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know that if anybody's ever, okay, so here's a good example.
58:07
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd be ever listened to a particular song and it makes you feel a type of way, yeah, like it, I don't know, I just like you believe it, you know, yeah.
58:20
[SPEAKER_00]: For them, I could definitely see ancient peoples believing in, say, the leopard men.
58:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, medicine men or shamans or people wanting to create a medicine quote unquote that kind of embodies the spirit of the leopard man.
58:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And then even if it was fake, even if all that's fake, but somebody is like, hey,
58:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Steve, if you drink this, you're going to become the leopard man and like you have 15 people that are like, no, you really will, it's going to give you all this strength, it's going to be a fierce warrior like that placebo effect is fucking real.
58:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, where if you believe it enough, you may, you may not turn into a leopard and you may not move.
59:07
[SPEAKER_02]: super silent but what if because the way you think and the way you're now approaching it you are moving a little more silent yeah you are moving a little more agile because of how your mind is manipulating your body at that point and it's things like that that essentially turned into modern medicine you know could you think about it across the board medieval times maybe like like your pian times every it they all had
59:32
[SPEAKER_02]: things parallel to that, right?
59:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
59:35
[SPEAKER_02]: So essentially, it can't say, say, say, you broke your toe, your toes all fucked up.
59:42
[SPEAKER_02]: You can't run at a hundred percent, but if the, if the little local magician, medicine man, wizard wizard,
59:54
[SPEAKER_02]: gives you some painkillers, which is this wild medicinal plant he's found out in the woods, that he's mixed up this concoction with fucking, I don't know, bad hair and butterfly feathers and everything else, butterflies on half feathers.
1:00:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Mixed it up and gives it to you.
1:00:11
[SPEAKER_02]: All the sudden, the pain that's keeping you from operating at a hundred percent is gone.
1:00:18
[SPEAKER_02]: now you're operating at 100% still with a bomb ass foot.
1:00:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Essentially it's it's a super power.
1:00:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, back then.
1:00:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and you could have labeled that however you wanted.
1:00:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, exactly.
1:00:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, exactly.
1:00:32
[SPEAKER_00]: You could easily, and the people would believe it because they may not have believed it at first, but the second that pain, you know, that I'd be profanious kicks in, they're going to be like, holy fuck, exactly.
1:00:41
[SPEAKER_00]: He was not lying.
1:00:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
1:00:43
[SPEAKER_00]: You have you got a broken leg that dude is talking to somebody on the other side of the veil.
1:00:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I fucking promise you that.
1:00:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, he's a fucking ways of real wizard.
1:00:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And that shit back then you got to think back then there was no social media.
1:01:00
[SPEAKER_02]: There was no entertainment.
1:01:02
[SPEAKER_02]: That kind of stuff was real life.
1:01:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah, Laura was real life.
1:01:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And when they sat there and saw that stuff, the you take X, you take XYZ of this concoction and it makes you run 10% faster than you did before you took it.
1:01:18
[SPEAKER_02]: That's some different level shit.
1:01:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like, man, real talk.
1:01:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I kind of wish like that was the mentality of today.
1:01:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't, I don't, I definitely don't want to go back to like fucking living in a goddamn castle with rocks and shit.
1:01:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Castle would be cool, but like, I can really appreciate the mentality of just like, you know, Steve being like, Kyle, I fucking, I talked to the fucking flower gods and,
1:01:51
[SPEAKER_00]: They made me this medicine for you and now you're going to be in a chain and I take it and I feel better.
1:01:55
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, holy fuck.
1:01:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you become the failure or the fuck?
1:01:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:01:59
[SPEAKER_00]: The flower gods are dope.
1:02:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like that's a little bit more of an exciting time to be alive than be like, now this is a bunch of fucking bleach and stuff that we put in the pill.
1:02:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And you fucking eat it and you feel better for like 15 minutes.
1:02:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Your insurance goes off.
1:02:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you know what I mean, like I feel like it'd be a little bit like a I don't I just maybe it may be just be a little bit funer to be alive if I mean, there's still eating people now so why the fuck not yeah, yeah, I mean, I ain't trying to eat people, but I'm just trying like I guess I'm just trying to like have fun in life instead of It's sucking eating bleach instead of being a colonial dipshit.
1:02:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
1:02:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I ain't trying to do that.
1:02:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I get it.
1:02:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I get it.
1:02:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I need a fucking burrito and I get it
1:02:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Hang out, fuck them, thank you cool stuff.
1:02:48
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
1:02:49
[UNKNOWN]: Yeah.
1:02:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I like how I, I'm really digging this.
1:02:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I really kind of sunk, soaked in this one in and then it was cool.
1:02:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, like, this is the kind of have that crossover, it's not, it's not like an approach that we have a lot where you have these, like, authorities come in to try to explain this whole entire situation away and then you have the locals that are on the other side, but somehow the story is interweaving itself together and it shouldn't work at all.
1:03:19
[SPEAKER_00]: But it somehow work the feet.
1:03:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like you said it perfectly when you said it's feeding off of each other.
1:03:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's crazy.
1:03:24
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's perfect.
1:03:27
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like that's so rare.
1:03:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And it rightly so.
1:03:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It should be, you know, rare, but it's just we don't we don't come across that that version of it very often.
1:03:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm kind of glad to play it out this way where I love to explore a little bit I love that it's established folklore that I've never heard of same that's what's making me so excited about like chasing down these avenues I'm planning shit loads of Things out there that I have never heard of.
1:03:59
[SPEAKER_00]: and a lot of it is from other countries so you guys are being excited about that that we do normally stick around the United States because that's from and that's where I feel like it's a lot of our curation is.
1:04:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't speak other languages very good.
1:04:12
[SPEAKER_00]: That's that too.
1:04:13
[SPEAKER_02]: That's intimidating when I have to say a lot of words that I don't know.
1:04:15
[SPEAKER_00]: That too.
1:04:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't say words I do know that good as you can tell from me reading the five star of you today.
1:04:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, my my next one's going to be on the Orange
1:04:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that nobody knows what that is, but you'll get it whenever the episode drops that sucks.
1:04:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, well-hello cult.
1:04:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for hanging out with us today.
1:04:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for sitting on the folklore that could potentially have spawned whatever.
1:04:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, not spawned.
1:04:50
[SPEAKER_02]: They could have been dealing with a predator being from the get-go.
1:04:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe.
1:04:55
[SPEAKER_02]: and this was just their way of trying to make sense of it.
1:04:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Sure.
1:04:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely knows the timeline.
1:05:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
1:05:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, thanks for hanging out with us.
1:05:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Check us out all those social medias.
1:05:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Share this episode.
1:05:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Go to YouTube and subscribe to our channel.
1:05:13
[SPEAKER_02]: We're trying to, we're trying to get it.
1:05:15
[SPEAKER_02]: 2020-6 is going to be your first git, man.
1:05:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And, yeah, let's see if we look there's that picture I was talking about.
1:05:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, you're 100% Like, by panther, right?
1:05:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
1:05:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
1:05:27
[SPEAKER_01]: That's so cool.
1:05:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Look, it's so like a such a black panther.
1:05:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Close.
1:05:31
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna stick.
1:05:33
[SPEAKER_01]: This is kind of a cool magazine.
1:05:35
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the man magazine.
1:05:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, thanks.
1:05:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, thanks for hanging out with us.
1:05:41
[SPEAKER_02]: But that we meet again.
1:05:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Stay safe.
1:05:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Stay weird.
1:05:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And try to avoid the colonial dipshits.