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Short Stuff: Dog Suicide Bridge · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh arf Clark,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: and there's Charles rough Bryant and Jerry. Oh no, Roland
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: is out there somewhere too. You put us all together.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: You have a really weird Scottish type mystery for this
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: short stuff. That's right, the mystery of the Overton Bridge.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: That was great. You suddenly turned into like a character
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: that the Scooby Doo gang would meet towards the beginning
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: of the episode. Who set everything up for him? You know,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: when we did our tour of Edinburgh, I met a
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: I met a dog there. I met a very kind
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: lady on a walk through town and she was walking
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: her dog that looked sort of pit bullish and she
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: was just so friendly and I love that accent, so
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: I'll do anything to get them to talk to me.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: And so I engaged her and her dog and I went, oh,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: what's the breeze? And oh, just a wee stuffy. It's great.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: I remember you telling that story because you're saying that
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: you were missing your dogs, because that was towards the
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: end of that tour. Remember hearing about that dog. But
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: this dog did not leap to its death, no, which
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: is good. Probably because it was nowhere near Dumbarton, Scotland,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: or maybe Dumbarton. Let's go with Dumberley, Dumbarton, not Dumbarton. Um,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: dumb American is more like it dumb Dumbarton, Scotland. That's
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: way better. Um. There is a bridge there, the Overton Bridge,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: like you were saying, and it's really beautiful. It's made
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: of stone, very ornate. It's not the longest bridge you'll
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: ever see. It's pretty short actually, and it's fairly low um.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: But it does cross a substantial um gap, something like
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: twelve meters or about fifty ft drop into a ravine,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: a little stream with rocks and all sorts of stuff
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: below it. So there's a good reason for that bridge.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: And it's also not the oldest bridge in the world.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: I think in the mid nineteenth century. It was built
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: to connect this estate that had just been built, their
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Overton House UM, to the rest of the town. So
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: it was a pretty useful bridge too. But it is
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: now considered widely considered a haunted supernatural death bridge um
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: by the locals in Dumbarton. Yeah, and namely because of
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: the weird thing that has happened dating back to the
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, at least as far as we know. There
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: have been many cases, and we don't know how many.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I've seen. There was a terrible website that said six hundred.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: But um, and I was going to read some of
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: it actually, but then I felt bad because it was
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: in very broken English. It was either a bot writing
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: it or it was someone who doesn't speak good English. Well,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: we have a good twenty or thirty years before you
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: need to empathize with bots. Okay, it was pretty funny though,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: but um, they reckoned about six hundred. Other people have
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: said in the hundreds. Some people say fewer. But dogs
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: leaping off of this bridge evidently unleashed. I mean, this
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: is a very easy way to stop this. I mean,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: that's kind of the elephant in the room. But um,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: I guess you know, it's it's a quaint bridge, and
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: it looks like a pretty lovely small town, so maybe
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: people can just walk around with their dogs off leash.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: But these dogs leaping that fifty ft and many of
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: them dying, many of them suffering bad injuries. Uh. Supposedly
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: one of them jumped from the bridge, survived and ran
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: up and jumped off again. Man, which is just crazy.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: That's second times on the owner. If you ask me, yeah,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: you know from bridge. Once shame on you, second time,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: shame on me the dog go owner. That's right. UM.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: I saw in the New York Times article on this that, UM,
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: they seem to think that there is at least fifty
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: that have been definitely documented. So this isn't just like
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: local legend like this is this is known to happen.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: This actually happens. These dogs are jumping to their deaths
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: off of this bridge. Um. And it's a really weird
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: thing that no one has been able to explain, and
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: we're we won't be able to explain it. But um.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: In two thousand and ten, the Dumbarton Council, the city,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: the town council UM contacted a behaviorist to animal behaviorist
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: named David Sands and said, hey, can you come help
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: figure this out because we're actually a fairly superstitious town.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: And right now, the prevailing theory is that it's the
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: White Lady of Overton, the ghost of the widow of
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: the son of the guy who built Overton House, that's
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: causing these dogs jump, and it's giving the White Lady
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: of Overton a bad name, because why would she want
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: to do that. Yeah, why don't you want to have
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: all these dogs die by their own Paul? I don't know.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Maybe she she just always thought dogs were just so stupid,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: so now in death she's amusing herself by making them jump.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: All right, well, let's take a quick break here and
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: terrible cliffhanger. Let's say something happy and positive instead. Rainbow bright,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: rainbow bright. Okay, go ahead, right back and talk about
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: David Sands right after this. Alrighty, so they bring this
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: animal expert over there, David Sands, he visits this bridge.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: I love how this article says he concluded first that
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: the dogs weren't doing this on purpose. It's like, yeah,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: I think suicide is uniquely human. He mistaken. He earned
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: his money right out of the gate. Someone will probably
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: prove me wrong. There's probably some animal that does this,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: but certainly not dogs. Well, don't even bother writing in
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: with Lemmings, everybody, because we debunked that years ago. That's right.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Uh So he had a couple of things to say,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: one of which was that the way the bridge is built,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: and the part of it has to do the tapered
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: edges of the bridge. Um part of it has to do.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Apparently I saw somewhere else that the foliage around it
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: creates a little bit of an optical illusion that looks
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: like you may be able to just run right off
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: this bridge on the ground. Um. I was surprised when
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: I looked at the bridge. I thought they were slipping
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: through a trestle or something on ground level. But it's,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a wall, like they have to jump
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: up and over, which is totally on the owner. No, totally.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: It is like you said, like the dogs that are um,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: that are the victims of this are the same dogs
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: that belong to people who like to show off how
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: cool their dogs are that they don't need to be
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: on the leash, that kind of thing. But the dogs
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: like inevitably go up and like approach another dog or
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: get too close to somebody who's scared dogs. It never
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: ends very well. But yeah, the the dog does have
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: to jump over this wall into a fifty ft drop below. Right.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: The second thing that he came up with was he said,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: I think that it could be possibly just some of
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: these smells down there driving these dogs crazy. Of these
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: animals he reckoned it was mink urine. Um. I did
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: see where one local hunter said, you know, there's there's
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: no mink around here. That's what one local hunter said.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: But then an official like an animal I don't know
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: who the official body for animal. I don't know if
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: it was rescue or just preservation or something that's oh
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: is it? Uhuh? The Scottish all right, well, I think
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: it was an official from there did say that where
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: these dogs are jumping, specifically on the bridge, he said,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: there are lots of mice, squirrel and mink nests. So
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: they refuted this hunter at least. Yeah. Um, so the
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: the I guess. The theory from Sands and Sands also
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: points out that the dogs um that are jumping are
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: buying log buying large jugs with a long nose, that
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: are um scent dogs, scenting dogs, hunting dogs, that they
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: would be more prone to pick up on a bunch
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: of sents or respond to a bunch of sense like mink,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: especially mink urine, and that that combined with this potential
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: optical illusion, uh that there is flat ground right on
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: the other side of this wall, is what's causing these
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: dogs to jump. That's probably what it is. Apparently they
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: even did a little testing and mink urine just makes
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: these dogs crazy. So here's the thing, Like, yeah, that
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: would seem like the most logical, reasonable explanation. But then
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: the next question you have is why is it just
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: this one bridge? Why is that not a thing all
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: over Scotland or all over the world wherever there's mink
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: or there's um, you know, whatever kind of animals going
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: to set off a certain kind of dog, Like, what
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: is it about this one bridge that that that kind
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: of It doesn't fully like dismiss sands theory. It just
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: suggests that there's some weird combination of things here that
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: we haven't quite put our finger on yet. Yeah, totally.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: You did mention the White Lady of Overton haunting the place. Um.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: There is also another kind of story slash theory that
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: there was a man, and this is just terrible, thirty
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: two year old father threw his baby off of this
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: bridge because he thought his baby was the anti Christ. Um.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: The baby died the next day, and the father was
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: committed to an institution obviously mentally ill. And some people
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: say that they're jumping from the same spot that this
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: man threw his baby from. But this was It's been
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: happening since the fifties. Yeah, yeah, it's it's just kind
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: of like an eerie addendum almost, you know, I think so,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: you know, or some people I think think like, oh,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: it is supernatural. And this man was responding to the
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: same thing. The dogs are um and that the Celts actually,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: who used to live in the area, actually had a
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: name for this kind of thing. They called it a
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: thin ace, which is where the spirit world in our
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: world kind of overlapped, where the fabric between the two
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: was thinnest, which is pretty interesting. And then there's um
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: in that supernatural camp. There's an author named Paul Owens
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: who wrote The Baron of Rainbow Bridge, And from what
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: I can tell, Owen's book basically says and also you
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: have to see the cover of this thing. It's adorable
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: but also like insane. Like he photoshop dogs jumping like
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: in mid air and made it look like they're jumping
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: off the bridge. And for some reason, Vladimir Putin is
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: dressed like a stage musician and the magician in the background.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: It's a very odd cover of a book. I'm looking now,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: that's weird. So doesn't that guy look like Putin? He's
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: sort of, But from what I can surmise, Paul Owens
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: thing is he's kind of mashed up the Rainbow Bridge thing.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah with um, which is, I guess what what pets
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: follow into the afterlife with like real life and um
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: somehow suicide Like he, I guess he thinks like the
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: dogs are actually purposely taking their lives, and like you said,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: at the outside, that's just not that's a human thing
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: that's exclusively human because from what we know, we're the
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: only ones who can conceive of what a life is,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: and so therefore we're the only ones who can think
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: of like ending that life, you know, and saying like dogs,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: as far as we know, dogs and other animals are
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: not capable of that. What do you think of the
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: whole rainbow Bridge thing? I don't know anything about it.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: You've mentioned it before. Um it ended up in the
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: book I think was where I first ever saw it,
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: and I haven't seen it. Is it a book a
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: kid's book? Now? I actually don't know the origin. I
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: just know that that's something that some people say, like
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: your pet has gone over the rainbow bridge or whatever.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: I I don't subscribe. Um, obviously they don't. It's not
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: supposed to be real. But I'm just don't. It's a
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: little kind of goofy and who who for me? But
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: if if that's your thing and that makes you feel
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: better and stuff, I'm certainly not making fun of it.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: It's just it's not for us. I got you, so, yeah,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: I have no opinion about Rainbow Bridge, but don't get
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: me started on Rainbow Bright. You got anything else? Yeah,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: nothing else. So the mystery remains, which is our kind
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: of thing. We love that. Hopefully you do too, and
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: that means everybody that short stuff is out. Stuff you
• 12:26
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• 12:28
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• 12:31
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• 12:33
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