Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and what of the
Speaker 1: stuff will Never Told You? A production of iHeart Radio?
Speaker 1: And we are back with part two of our classics
Speaker 1: on the women of Urban Legends. And yeah, I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about this too in terms of I would love
Speaker 1: to do an internet version of this because I feel
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of urban legends of women and
Speaker 1: now I specifically, yeah, yes, and I used to play
Speaker 1: these games when I was younger where they would terrify me,
Speaker 1: but it was kind of like the whole slender Man thing,
Speaker 1: but with women of She's coming for you with the
Speaker 1: end of these games. So I feel like there's so
Speaker 1: much uncovered ground that we could look over. We could
Speaker 1: talk about.
Speaker 2: Octobers here October is here.
Speaker 1: Yes, but before we can do that, and yes, if
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions, please let us know. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: let us look back over the ones we've already talked
Speaker 1: about in this classic episode. Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
Speaker 1: I'm walking to Stefan Never Told You protection of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2: Okay, Annie, I really wanted to ask you this on
Speaker 2: the last episode, and I forgot and was excited about
Speaker 2: the movies because you know, we were talking about all
Speaker 2: the legends, but have you ever gone on any of
Speaker 2: the ghost tours that are offered, and or have you
Speaker 2: gone on your own adventure in an where there's supposed
Speaker 2: to be a folklore or a legend a haunt on
Speaker 2: your own?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes to all, Yes to all. Yes. As someone
Speaker 1: who likes her, I have done a lot of ghost tours,
Speaker 1: like Savannah and Louisiana coming to mind, because those are
Speaker 1: kind of big around lots of ghost stories and lore
Speaker 1: around those areas. I've done that. I think I did
Speaker 1: some when I was in Europe and one when I
Speaker 1: was in a cave system in Europe, and that's probably
Speaker 1: the most afraid I've ever been. But I think I
Speaker 1: had more to do with the caves unless the ghost.
Speaker 1: And then, like I said, I I do like scary things,
Speaker 1: so I have. I have a friend Katie who's been
Speaker 1: on the show, and she also likes scary things. And
Speaker 1: I think we build each other up, like I think
Speaker 1: sometimes word nothing is happening, we both convince each other
Speaker 1: something is happening, right, so we're convinced we've seen a ghost,
Speaker 1: even though like not even should I believe ghosts real?
Speaker 1: But like when I was a kid. We convinced each
Speaker 1: other we'd seen this ghost. We went like, we convinced
Speaker 1: ourselves there's all kinds of haunted stuff in our woods.
Speaker 1: And we would go and invest to gate and pick
Speaker 1: up clues and find like a turtle with blood on it,
Speaker 1: ghost like things like that turtle with blood. Oh the
Speaker 1: turtle shell had blood on it. I still have it
Speaker 1: freaked me out. And then we found a mailbox that
Speaker 1: was buried and it just had these business cards that
Speaker 1: said do as I say and not as I do.
Speaker 3: And I was like, this is a murderer.
Speaker 1: Things like that, and then I definitely there were some
Speaker 1: urban legends around where I grew up, and one most
Speaker 1: of them just involved like don't go into Dawsonville Forest
Speaker 1: at night, but there was one where you would go.
Speaker 1: Probably a lot of people have heard this, because I
Speaker 1: think like any town that has the right hill for
Speaker 1: this has tried it. But it was like you would
Speaker 1: go and park on this hill and put yourself in
Speaker 1: neutral and it would pull you upward or something. And
Speaker 1: there's a scientific reason for why that works, but of
Speaker 1: course there's also like ghost stories around why it works.
Speaker 1: So I did that once, and I mean it was
Speaker 1: pretty weird, but it didn't really scare me.
Speaker 2: I was just like, oh yeah, So I don't typically
Speaker 2: do like the Savannah a ward where they just care,
Speaker 2: you know, you ride in a horse cart and they'll
Speaker 2: tell you about buildings.
Speaker 3: I didn't do that. Have I done those?
Speaker 2: No, I've never done those because I'm like, it's just
Speaker 2: getting on a horse. I'm looking at buildings, which is nice,
Speaker 2: but I'm like, that's not a thing I want. Because
Speaker 2: I for the longest time devoured every episode of ghost Hunter.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and.
Speaker 2: I would watch all those and it was hilarious because
Speaker 2: like every time anything scary happened, there was nothing.
Speaker 3: You could barely see anything.
Speaker 2: And I was like, are like, rush, this is what
Speaker 2: you're supposed to look at. I don't understand the investigation
Speaker 2: party is you're staying. So I really was like, I
Speaker 2: can do this, let me do this. And then like
Speaker 2: there was another one I can't remember the name of
Speaker 2: the show. I loved him and he would actually travel
Speaker 2: around the world, but it would just be like finding that.
Speaker 2: So if they would do you know, the whole finding
Speaker 2: the Yetti in the Force in China, I know he
Speaker 2: visited the suicide Forest in Japan for a while and like.
Speaker 3: Did those things. It's super eery things.
Speaker 2: But of course the night vision stuff made it even
Speaker 2: every year still sea, so I was like, why am
Speaker 2: I watching this? But you know that intensity. So I
Speaker 2: was bound and determined, like I want to go to
Speaker 2: these things. So for my birthday, two of my good
Speaker 2: friends decided to purchase a ghost tour essentially a ghost walk,
Speaker 2: which happened at night near Halloween because it was near
Speaker 2: my birthday, so during the October September time.
Speaker 3: And it's in Roswell, Georgia.
Speaker 2: So for those of you who do not know the
Speaker 2: area very well, Roswell, Georgia is one of the small
Speaker 2: mill towns that actually never burned down during the Civil
Speaker 2: War when Sherman marched through it was salvage, so the
Speaker 2: mills still exists and the older buildings still exist, so
Speaker 2: a lot more history there than pretty much all of Georgia.
Speaker 3: Because it was burned down sadly enough.
Speaker 2: Don't get me wrong, it happened, it had to happen,
Speaker 2: but all of those to say, we don't have a
Speaker 2: lot of historical things, and the mills of Roswell remains,
Speaker 2: so of course we get a good amount of tails
Speaker 2: come from that area, which I love. So we did
Speaker 2: a whole tour and I don't know, I don't think
Speaker 2: this woman was an actress. Like she was definitely just
Speaker 2: like dry talking about whatever's happening. So she was a historian,
Speaker 2: but she was also very into the ghost world. So
Speaker 2: she would take us on in the middle of the night,
Speaker 2: not middle of the night, I guess, like eight eight pm,
Speaker 2: seven seven eight pm, and it was super dark. Got
Speaker 2: her flashlights. We had to have our flashlights, and we
Speaker 2: toured around Roswell and at one point, like we went
Speaker 2: by the mills and she told the story of a
Speaker 2: young boy running out the door and her and her
Speaker 2: crew witnessed it.
Speaker 3: Of course, all of these different tales.
Speaker 2: And at one point we were at a I want
Speaker 2: to say it's a some kind of antique store.
Speaker 3: So it was preserved and now antiques are there and
Speaker 3: you could see them in the building.
Speaker 2: And as she's pointing her flashlight up, which is a
Speaker 2: gigantic flashlight, it starts flickering and doing the flashing, and
Speaker 2: it like she kept hitting it, and she genuinely seemed annoyed,
Speaker 2: but she wasn't like associating as it's a ghost story thing.
Speaker 3: She just did this to the point that.
Speaker 2: My friend and I looked at each other and started
Speaker 2: backing away and looking out at the windows because she
Speaker 2: was talking about seeing an old man in the window
Speaker 2: whatever whatnot. And she was like, well, I guess I
Speaker 2: need to neat new batteries. And then we talked to
Speaker 2: four a minute and then walked away, and the flashlight
Speaker 2: started working again, to the point that someone was coming up,
Speaker 2: walking up on us, and she thought she knew them,
Speaker 2: so she flashed. She pointed the flashlight of him and
Speaker 2: teasing at him, and it turned out to be a
Speaker 2: cop and he got very angry and yelled.
Speaker 1: At him, my goodness.
Speaker 2: The other scary part of the tour, like, oh, our
Speaker 2: person was about to be arrested, but like she did
Speaker 2: all of that. So for a few minutes, I was.
Speaker 3: Like, did we were you were? Were you to encounter
Speaker 3: a ghost or was she just like an actress? I
Speaker 3: don't know, I don't know. So I did that one.
Speaker 2: And then there was a whole legend that happens at
Speaker 2: the University of Georgia. Of course, you know, you have
Speaker 2: to have tons of legends at your schools, and it's
Speaker 2: always someone who died by suicide was not found for
Speaker 2: days later, Like, yeah, I know they did because we
Speaker 2: did a comparison. But there was one because there at
Speaker 2: one point in time there was a building and I
Speaker 2: never understood this. And when I see anything like this anywhere,
Speaker 2: because I've seen a couple, I get really freaked out.
Speaker 2: There was a stairwell that just went to a wall
Speaker 2: and that was the end of it, and everybody's like,
Speaker 2: what is this? And so the story was told that
Speaker 2: it used to be a dormitory. An exchange student was there.
Speaker 2: He had hanged himself and because everybody was on vacation,
Speaker 2: no one saw him. But of course his corpse smelled
Speaker 2: up the place, so they couldn't do anything about it.
Speaker 2: So they just filled it off. Uh, And that's the
Speaker 2: legend of that because no one can find the entrance.
Speaker 3: And I've been there because we were like what is this?
Speaker 2: And so of course we had that and then we
Speaker 2: would try to find the spirit there. Find that spirit
Speaker 2: though good, I know, I guess.
Speaker 1: So that reminds me of when we did our episode
Speaker 1: on the Winchester House. That's that feels very like Door
Speaker 1: to Nowhere.
Speaker 3: But we were all like, why does this exist. What
Speaker 3: is this?
Speaker 2: It's probably something very simple, I mean to be honest,
Speaker 2: They're like, is this and it was cheaper to do
Speaker 2: this because it's damaged?
Speaker 1: Okay, fine, yeah, fine ruin our ghost stories. I did
Speaker 1: go to I went to the Stanley Hotel, which is
Speaker 1: what The Shining's based on. I went during July because
Speaker 1: it's only open, just like in the movie, the snow
Speaker 1: is get so bad you can only get there in July,
Speaker 1: I think. And it was really really funny because we
Speaker 1: did a tour of it and the very kind tour
Speaker 1: woman went out of her way to just be like,
Speaker 1: there are no mean ghosts here, only nice ghost I
Speaker 1: don't know what Stephen King, I don't know what happened
Speaker 1: to him that night. I think he was just stressed.
Speaker 1: But they are only nice ghosts. They just are children.
Speaker 1: They like candy. You just I don't know. And it
Speaker 1: was so funny because they kept and I get why,
Speaker 1: because they were like, we want you to have a
Speaker 1: good excuience. They have to know that, like everyone there
Speaker 1: though Shining and like one person is like what hotels
Speaker 1: and people would like. There's the Attic some part of
Speaker 1: the movies based on it, and it has read just
Speaker 1: people keep writing red rum on it. She was so annoyed.
Speaker 2: She was like, it's not like that at all, and
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, stop, be smart our ghosts.
Speaker 1: It was very very cute, honestly, all right. So all
Speaker 1: of that is a lead into our part two on
Speaker 1: women in urban legends from all around the world. If
Speaker 1: you haven't listened to part one, go check that one out.
Speaker 1: And just a really brief repeat of our disclaimer. There
Speaker 1: will be some gruesomeness we've already touched on some so apologies.
Speaker 1: Nothing to in depth though, and also, as we said
Speaker 1: in the last one, we tried to get the best
Speaker 1: sources we could. But these are urban legends, so by
Speaker 1: nature it's hard to find like proof, and in fact
Speaker 1: it purposely almost doesn't exist because they're an urban legend.
Speaker 1: It's just a story people repeat over and over, usually
Speaker 1: because of some morality tale or some lesson some anxietal
Speaker 1: fear that we're having is anxietal a word. I just
Speaker 1: made it one and in our society, so you know
Speaker 1: that being said, all of these are just I mean,
Speaker 1: mostly they're just stories that we tell and they do
Speaker 1: like scaas and that's fun, but you know, not a
Speaker 1: lot of facts in here.
Speaker 3: Not too many facts.
Speaker 1: Now, yes. And also we've done a bunch of past
Speaker 1: episodes related to a lot of the stuff we're talking about.
Speaker 1: We shouted those out in part one. You want to
Speaker 1: listen to more, and you haven't heard those, go check
Speaker 1: them out because we love these kinds of things and
Speaker 1: we've talked about it a lot. So all right, So
Speaker 1: I actually this one is an interesting one, but I
Speaker 1: wanted to include it because one of my favorite things
Speaker 1: about urban legends, and we talked about in the last EPISO,
Speaker 1: so are these rules are things you can do to
Speaker 1: protect yourself or bring favor or whatever it is. I
Speaker 1: don't know why, but there's something about that that I
Speaker 1: find really interesting, especially as we've said, I don't believe
Speaker 1: in them, but I still don't want to mess with it.
Speaker 1: So I just find that it's such an interesting piece
Speaker 1: of human nature. So we're talking about the Mistress of
Speaker 1: Copper Mountain. And I did have a lot of trouble
Speaker 1: hunting down info in English for this one, even though
Speaker 1: there are some fairy tales that you can find in Russian.
Speaker 1: But I did want to include it because it has
Speaker 1: a lot of contradictions and superstitions around it. The Mistress
Speaker 1: of the Copper Mountain, also known as the Melchite Maid,
Speaker 1: or also a lot of times referred to as the
Speaker 1: ancestor or parallel of the ASoft Girl, is a mountain
Speaker 1: spirit frequently associated with the Earl Mountains. The Copper Mountain
Speaker 1: is the oldest mine in the Earl Mountains, and this
Speaker 1: mistress is both beautiful protector and demonic punisher Yes yes.
Speaker 1: In Slavic mythology, she is described as an extremely attractive
Speaker 1: young woman with green eyes, a lizard crown, and a
Speaker 1: malachite dress. Jewels and lizards feature very often in her story.
Speaker 1: In some version, she's got like an army of lizards
Speaker 1: that does her biddings.
Speaker 3: Lizards. What is what those lizards? I know, people, we
Speaker 3: had a lizard barely does a thing?
Speaker 1: Huh it is? I can't wait till you watch the
Speaker 1: silent Okay, yeah, anyway, So this mistress is viewed as
Speaker 1: something like a saint for male miners and a protector
Speaker 1: of mountain treasures, treasures she may allow the mining of
Speaker 1: or not, depending on a lot of moral judgments she'll make.
Speaker 1: The Mistress did not allow for other women in her domain,
Speaker 1: men who longed for her patronage were not to marry.
Speaker 1: She appreciated kindness, goodness, and skilled craftmanship and would reward
Speaker 1: all of those things. But on the other hand, she
Speaker 1: punished those that did not adhere to to her rules
Speaker 1: and were unkind, and she would punish them with either
Speaker 1: loss of luck or wealth, or even death, even death.
Speaker 1: Children were told that making any loud noise near the
Speaker 1: mountains would incur the Mistress's wrath because she didn't like
Speaker 1: loud noises, which I find funny, right, because that's another contradiction,
Speaker 1: because I feel like mining can get quite loud. I
Speaker 1: can wrong, right, Yes, she quote brings woe for a
Speaker 1: bad man, which, yeah, we talked about. That's a recurring
Speaker 1: theme in a lot of these.
Speaker 3: I'm not mad about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. In nineteen thirty six, Pavel Bashov first
Speaker 1: published The Malachite Box, which was the series of fairy tales,
Speaker 1: and one of them featured the Mistress of the Copper Mountain,
Speaker 1: a tale Bashov had grown up hearing. He went on
Speaker 1: to include her in several other stories, and he claimed
Speaker 1: that her story was a sign that miners just missed women,
Speaker 1: and that she represented wealth and beauty. Many men sought
Speaker 1: after in a partner. There was also an interesting essay
Speaker 1: because there's been some research done on this legend. A
Speaker 1: lot of it went over my head because I'm not familiar,
Speaker 1: super familiar with Russian culture, but there's been some research
Speaker 1: that she represented like Western beauty specifically, which was interesting.
Speaker 1: The Earl Mountains do you have a long history of
Speaker 1: being central to that region's industry, whether it was the
Speaker 1: mining of jewels or later materials for the military, And
Speaker 1: it makes sense that this story really took off, that
Speaker 1: it took root and solidified itself in the national psyche,
Speaker 1: that men working in the minds would hold on to
Speaker 1: this idea of a beautiful woman who would keep them
Speaker 1: safe if they were good and punish the bad, which
Speaker 1: I'm assuming you would never think was you mining it
Speaker 1: was dangerous. Many miners died due to the conditions. Some
Speaker 1: of even speculated that workers saw her as a defender
Speaker 1: for their rights, even in the USSR and times like that.
Speaker 1: Some think she is an embodiment of Christian values. Others
Speaker 1: think that she has undeniably pagan roots. According to a
Speaker 1: paper written by Mark Lepovetsky, she represents three Fordian ideas.
Speaker 1: Death drive because that's where she lives. Sex drive men's
Speaker 1: desire for her, and castration anxiety are loss of power.
Speaker 1: So again, there's just a lot going on in this
Speaker 1: one kind of seemingly simple story, but there are reasons
Speaker 1: these stories are created and get told over and over
Speaker 1: and over again.
Speaker 3: Right, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I like it though, mm hmmmm. It was really fascinating read,
Speaker 1: and it made me want to look more into the
Speaker 1: whole history of these mountains. And I was like, this
Speaker 1: is a different podcast, You've got to start here, but
Speaker 1: I was looking up like old mining charts did.
Speaker 2: So we are going to talk about La Daman, y'all.
Speaker 2: I'm struggle with the French and I really want to
Speaker 2: make it Spanish, so I apologize beforehand. And she is
Speaker 2: also known as the Woman in White, and yes, there
Speaker 2: are several variations.
Speaker 3: As we've already talked about this lore.
Speaker 2: It it exists throughout different cultures, but for right now, we're
Speaker 2: talking about the French lady. And actually within French culture
Speaker 2: there are several versions of the Woman in White as well,
Speaker 2: but there is a differentiation between women in White and
Speaker 2: leis down blanche. But as with most folklores and legends,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of crossovers and variations, so apologies
Speaker 2: in advance if you think that we have messed it
Speaker 2: all up. But this is what we saw, so this
Speaker 2: is what we're going to talk about. But for this one,
Speaker 2: the dome blanche are typically seen on bridges or by
Speaker 2: bodies of waters, and then there are some versions that
Speaker 2: also say they reside by caves, caverns, or ravines, so
Speaker 2: good to know that too. And they are dressed all
Speaker 2: in white and is in these locations like our fairy vampires.
Speaker 3: That we mentioned before. They also love to dance. Dancing
Speaker 3: is a big.
Speaker 2: Portion to this, but in this instance it isn't a
Speaker 2: way to put you in a trance.
Speaker 3: But if you refuse her.
Speaker 2: Or you try to stop before she wants to stop,
Speaker 2: she's going to throw you into the water and drown you,
Speaker 2: or have an animal come in and assist her to
Speaker 2: make them eat you.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, okay, okay, so just dance.
Speaker 1: It'll be okay.
Speaker 2: You're just gonna need to dance. But where did they
Speaker 2: come from? Well, yes, this is a great question because,
Speaker 2: unlike many of the other legends, we don't have much
Speaker 2: of a backstory for the dom Blanche.
Speaker 3: They don't really have a really origin.
Speaker 2: We don't know if she was spurned by a lover
Speaker 2: or she was locked away from attending a ball because
Speaker 2: this is what I'm imagining. So she loves to dance,
Speaker 2: and unlike the other lady in white stories in France,
Speaker 2: which apparently typically has the tragedy of an unfaithful husband
Speaker 2: and the death of their children, which causes her to
Speaker 2: lash out against other men and children, which is what
Speaker 2: this lady in white does in France. So she goes
Speaker 2: after I may cause an accident or some something for
Speaker 2: them to get hurt or die. We don't have that
Speaker 2: same backstory for this specific folklore. And they typically don't
Speaker 2: have a preference in gender and just likes dancing. And
Speaker 2: according to one side, it is complicated dancing, so I
Speaker 2: don't know what you need to know ballroom dance or salsa.
Speaker 2: I don't think you can break out with an eighties
Speaker 2: Roger Rabbit dance. That would be great at that though,
Speaker 2: But and you have to keep going until she is satisfied.
Speaker 2: And one of the best known doms is La Dame
Speaker 2: de Prickney, who actually, y'all, my friend is bad. I
Speaker 2: just said, y'all, so I feel like, that's a reference
Speaker 2: to how bad it is who actually likes to haunt
Speaker 2: streets and not necessarily bridges. And according to one guide
Speaker 2: about ghost travels, and I want to go to this
Speaker 2: by the way, it states that quote, she has no
Speaker 2: backstory and no history, but somehow a legend began of
Speaker 2: her appearing on what is present day Ruth Saint Quentin
Speaker 2: by you in the northwest of France, and that allegedly
Speaker 2: she would greet those who would attempt to pass through
Speaker 2: the narrower ravine with an extended hand, and it accepted
Speaker 2: she would dance several rounds of the most elaborate dances,
Speaker 2: keeping the human for extensive periods of time, before eventually
Speaker 2: letting her partner go.
Speaker 3: If it refused, however.
Speaker 2: She would pounce onto her victim before throwing him or
Speaker 2: her into the ditch filled with briars and thorns.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 3: Right, So it's a very.
Speaker 2: Interesting kind of legend with no real backstory other than
Speaker 2: they are the beautiful version of a troll out of bridge,
Speaker 2: I guess. And instead of answering the riddles three you
Speaker 2: have to dance elaborate dances, So I guess we're gonna
Speaker 2: have to figure some of those things sound. So also,
Speaker 2: while we're talking about women in specific colors, we can
Speaker 2: talk a little bit about the Lady in Red just
Speaker 2: for funzies. Yes, there are those legends with the lady
Speaker 2: in red, and I believe we've.
Speaker 3: Mentioned her in our episode in the Power of Red.
Speaker 2: Like just kind of the whole stereotype and what it
Speaker 2: often is in legends, except there's a version, and it's
Speaker 2: just the typical version. There's no real like area that
Speaker 2: they haunt necessarily, but if you go there's lists on
Speaker 2: lists on list, and there's a lot in the US
Speaker 2: that I've noticed that there are either a jilted lover
Speaker 2: or a prostitute who was killed in a fit of passion,
Speaker 2: or sometimes just a vain woman in red, which we've
Speaker 2: heard that concept of like oh, she's looking at herself,
Speaker 2: the red lipstick type of thing. And then when she appears,
Speaker 2: she's either dressed all in scarlet or in a blood
Speaker 2: red dress, or she's covered in blood sometimes and that's
Speaker 2: what makes it red, right, And it's typically the ghost
Speaker 2: who appears throughout different cultures, but not necessarily do anything malicious.
Speaker 2: Never been any real tales of them doing anything harmful,
Speaker 2: but just likes to haunt specific places like again hotels
Speaker 2: and theaters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I looked into that one, and I looked
Speaker 1: into the Lady in White based on because that's the
Speaker 1: first episode of Supernatural, right is the Lady in White? Yes,
Speaker 1: woman in White? Yeah, And what I found basically was
Speaker 1: a bunch of like very specific, unverified stories about hayecheckers
Speaker 1: or like seeing them on the road, not even necessarily
Speaker 1: hay checkers, but like seeing them by the side of
Speaker 1: the road, and that's very common actually in a lot
Speaker 1: of urban legends are just ghost stories, right. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: that's pretty much all I could find as well. But again, listeners,
Speaker 1: if you've got like a specific story or something you
Speaker 1: want to add, please list.
Speaker 2: It seems like the Lady in Red is nicer than
Speaker 2: the Lady in White, so maybe we would rather see
Speaker 2: the Lady in Red, which is not so much to
Speaker 2: the Lady in White.
Speaker 1: The Lady punish you men, she will make you do
Speaker 1: some things, she's said, She's gonna make you feel feel
Speaker 1: a certain way about it. Right, So I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about the narophon or narifan. Apologies in advance. We
Speaker 1: did want to cover things from all around the world,
Speaker 1: but that does mean the pronunciation might not be there.
Speaker 1: And I tried to look up the pronunciation for this
Speaker 1: and I could not track it down. And a lot
Speaker 1: of this story was hard to track down as well.
Speaker 1: But I did want to talk about it because when
Speaker 1: I was reading about it just immediately caught my attention.
Speaker 1: So the narifan are the makalifan. It's a type of
Speaker 1: tree in Buddhist mythology that grows fruit shaped like young women.
Speaker 1: They sprout from their heads and grow from there. And
Speaker 1: this tree grows in the mythical forest at the Himaphon,
Speaker 1: where local men cut them off and eat them. The
Speaker 1: narifan also show up in the Vesataka, planted around the
Speaker 1: place where the body satfa Vessentaura meditated. Whoof sorry again,
Speaker 1: try I'm a best version of the tale, the Buddhist
Speaker 1: god Indra had a home at the edge of the
Speaker 1: forest with his wife Vesentara and their two children. Vesentara
Speaker 1: couldn't enter the forest without being in danger of horrifying
Speaker 1: male creatures, or in some versions of the story, just
Speaker 1: lustful men who had acquired powers by meditating but were
Speaker 1: still like lustful men, which I thought was a very
Speaker 1: funny and terrifying commentary of like men are just monsters
Speaker 1: in this case. Okay, So to protect her Injra planted
Speaker 1: twelvenarifun trees that would grow fruit that looked like his
Speaker 1: wife so that she could be safe while picking fruit.
Speaker 1: The idea being the monsters Orman would pick the fruit
Speaker 1: and take it home, thinking it was Vesentara and leaving
Speaker 1: the real Vesentara alone. But they would take the fruit home,
Speaker 1: have sex with the fruit, and consequently fall into an
Speaker 1: enchanted sleep for four months and lose their powers. Over
Speaker 1: the years, there have been a few news stories of
Speaker 1: a purported discovery of the trees that grew fruits shaped
Speaker 1: like women. You can buy a lot of markets around
Speaker 1: there sell I mean generally fake, but yeah, you can
Speaker 1: buy buy kind of like carvings or even fruit. There
Speaker 1: are a few trees that are rumored to be ary
Speaker 1: fun and several hoaxes around that. Narry Fun are very
Speaker 1: prevalent in Thai culture. Yeah, they appear in comics sold
Speaker 1: as gifts, popular amulet and charm. So it's another example
Speaker 1: of kind of this story that is just really taken
Speaker 1: heart in a particular place, which I also find fascinating yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very fascinating.
Speaker 2: Also, this kind of reminds me of with the short
Speaker 2: stories that we had, and the birds were the women,
Speaker 2: the birds worth of women.
Speaker 3: It was one of the bloody tales.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah mm hmm.
Speaker 3: And he turned the women into birds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, way to keep them mm hmm. I do remember that.
Speaker 3: That's what it reminded me of.
Speaker 2: And for my last one, I decided to because y'all,
Speaker 2: there's something about Japanese ghost stories that.
Speaker 3: Scared the hell out of me.
Speaker 2: So they for some reason, Like I just recently watched
Speaker 2: Juan and it's so old and in comparison to a
Speaker 2: lot of the other movies, and the effects are not
Speaker 2: over the top, but it scared me, like to the
Speaker 2: point that I.
Speaker 3: Was like, I have to watch something else before I
Speaker 3: can go to bed.
Speaker 2: But I love them so much because they just to
Speaker 2: me are extra eerie and I don't know what it
Speaker 2: is about how they just make it seem like. But
Speaker 2: because of that, we were returning back to another Japanese
Speaker 2: ghost or Japanese legend, which is kushaki Ona or the
Speaker 2: slit mouth woman, so super specific. Now, the spirit has
Speaker 2: been around, according to one report, for over eight hundred years,
Speaker 2: like people have been talking about it for a while.
Speaker 2: I did see another report saying that it was started
Speaker 2: around the seventeenth century.
Speaker 3: So this is an old tale. And she is known
Speaker 3: as on Rio on Neil.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to figure this out, y'all, or a malicious
Speaker 2: spirit and is often seen wearing a mask or some
Speaker 2: type of face covering, and is often seen carrying around
Speaker 2: a sharp object.
Speaker 3: So it could be a.
Speaker 2: Large knife, some say scissors, very long scissors, but she's
Speaker 2: carrying something sharp.
Speaker 3: And now her origin.
Speaker 2: Story is a cautionary tale for the women to ay
Speaker 2: not to be vain and b don't cheat, So those
Speaker 2: two things co hand in hand. So this beautiful katushaki
Speaker 2: Ona was married to a samurai and she was known
Speaker 2: to be very vain.
Speaker 3: But she was also very beautiful, so both of those things.
Speaker 2: And one day, because she could, she cheated on her
Speaker 2: husband at the time, and when he found out, yes,
Speaker 2: he was very angry and enraged and gave her something
Speaker 2: that is called the Glasgow smile. I didn't know there
Speaker 2: was a name for this because obviously with the things
Speaker 2: like the black Dahlia, we knew of this type of
Speaker 2: crime and it seemed heinous to me at that point
Speaker 2: in time as well, But okay, which is when someone
Speaker 2: causes a scar because they cut into your face that
Speaker 2: looks like a smile, yes, by cutting from ear to ear, horrifying,
Speaker 2: And then he's turned around and said to her.
Speaker 3: Who will think you're pretty?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: Of course, in another version it is says that she's
Speaker 2: cut up by another woman who is jealous of her
Speaker 2: doing a medical procedure, and she is also, in these
Speaker 2: legends sometimes given sharp teeth, which would scare the hell
Speaker 2: out of me, to be fair, and now she haunts
Speaker 2: people by asking them the same thing, do you think
Speaker 2: I'm pretty? While wearing a mask? So if you run
Speaker 2: into a beautiful Asian woman that says do you think
Speaker 2: I'm pretty? That has a face covering, I would run away.
Speaker 2: If they say no, she kills them with this sharp
Speaker 2: object she is carrying. If they say yes, she'll take
Speaker 2: her covering off to show her a scar and asks again,
Speaker 2: and if they say no, she cuts their face and
Speaker 2: kills them.
Speaker 3: If they say yes, she cuts their face to match hers.
Speaker 2: And I believe they also die. They didn't really say
Speaker 2: in all those okay, now there is a way to
Speaker 2: avoid being cut, so y'all, we're here to help you
Speaker 2: run into this woman. Instead of saying yes or no
Speaker 2: when she asks you if you think she's pretty, say
Speaker 2: so so or average or you're okay, which will give
Speaker 2: you some time to run away from her as she
Speaker 2: is confused. Okay from this answer, yeah, I know, I
Speaker 2: was like, what. Or you can try to throw some
Speaker 2: money at her and that can work, or some hard
Speaker 2: candies apparently it has to be a specific candy called
Speaker 2: beco ame, which is a caramelized sugar candy from Japan.
Speaker 2: So I guess we need to invest in some things.
Speaker 2: Or perhaps saying the word palmade three times and I
Speaker 2: don't understand why I try to find this one and
Speaker 2: there's no reason behind it, and since palmad is typically
Speaker 2: a French thing, so I was like that, okay, whatever.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 3: And according to Wikipedia.
Speaker 2: Because you know, they have a lot more legends than some,
Speaker 2: the first written mention of her didn't appear until nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine. But again, the legend in itself has been
Speaker 2: around for a while, and according to one telling of
Speaker 2: this legend, there was a period of time not too
Speaker 2: long ago. One said two thousand and seven when children
Speaker 2: were being escorted in fear of this type of monster,
Speaker 2: because there were records showing deaths of children that were
Speaker 2: similar to this type of tale, saying that there was
Speaker 2: a woman roaming around asking children things and then following
Speaker 2: them home and murdering them essentially.
Speaker 3: So again it's not saying.
Speaker 2: That happened, and I don't know if that's true because
Speaker 2: it was all from this legend site. So, but it
Speaker 2: did put that in there, and it could be one
Speaker 2: more of those again urban legends when we say my
Speaker 2: cousin's sisters, friends, whatever type of conversation, so that.
Speaker 3: That happened, but it did scar them enough that the day.
Speaker 2: I actually did escort some of the children. Again, So
Speaker 2: apparently Juan and the grudge and the ring were kind
Speaker 2: of based on these legends.
Speaker 3: You can see it. You can see the variation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe not of the face and all of that,
Speaker 2: but like the woman who cheated or who was found
Speaker 2: to have cheated, all of that, and so the husband
Speaker 2: murders them in like a brutal way, and she comes
Speaker 2: and murders everybody else as well sometimes, So yeah, this
Speaker 2: is kind of that basis. And if you ever see
Speaker 2: any of the drawings again, some of the legends some
Speaker 2: of the movies. It's pretty scary, Like it freaks me
Speaker 2: out for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I've seen I've heard of this one before,
Speaker 1: and that like freaks me out. Oh all right, Well
Speaker 1: for my last one, it's kind of a cheat because
Speaker 1: I like to cheat here because it's.
Speaker 3: Three Oh my god, Annie.
Speaker 1: But they're related. They're related, so and they they're kind
Speaker 1: of similar to what we talked about with law Urona
Speaker 1: in the last one. But all right, we're talking about Pinegal, Lamatsu,
Speaker 1: and Lamia. And let's start with Lamia. So you've probably
Speaker 1: heard of this one. It was in It's been kind
Speaker 1: of the name has been used for a lot of
Speaker 1: things nowadays, and it was in like the horror movie
Speaker 1: Drag Me to Hell. It's Lamia. But all right. In
Speaker 1: Greek mythology, Lamia was the beautiful, highly sought after queen
Speaker 1: of Libya and a mistress of Zeusus like a lot
Speaker 1: of Zeus's mistresses, Haarah did not like her and punished
Speaker 1: her by killing or kidnapping her children except for Syla,
Speaker 1: and transforming Lamia into a monster that feeds on children
Speaker 1: or in some versions, Zeus did that. Not only that
Speaker 1: absolutely delighted in hunting and terrifying them, so she not
Speaker 1: only was hunting them, but she liked it. In some versions,
Speaker 1: she gouged her eyes at the loss of her children.
Speaker 1: She gouged her eyes out and essentially lost her mind,
Speaker 1: leading her to eat the children of others. In some stories,
Speaker 1: Harrah actually has the body of a woman and the
Speaker 1: of a serpent, and many descriptions. She never closes her
Speaker 1: eyes so she can see the terror of her victims,
Speaker 1: or she was cursed with insomnia essentially or never being
Speaker 1: able to close her eyes, so yeah, and other versions
Speaker 1: of the legend. Zeus granted Lamia the power of prophecy
Speaker 1: and the ability to remove her eyes since she had
Speaker 1: been cursed to never close them, so she would always
Speaker 1: obsess over the death of her children in an attempt
Speaker 1: to appease her like, I don't know about that, man,
Speaker 1: I only that's enough. But anyway, on top of hungering
Speaker 1: for the blood of children, Lamia also had a voracious
Speaker 1: sexual appetite and enjoyed sucking the blood of men. She
Speaker 1: was often painted as a deadly seductress and gave birth
Speaker 1: to a class of supernatural demons. Her story and fear
Speaker 1: around it has endured and evolved for thousands of years.
Speaker 1: The word itself can sometimes yeah, refer to this whole
Speaker 1: class of demons in which is so, sometimes it is
Speaker 1: used for other things and creatures these days. But okay,
Speaker 1: speaking of let's move on to La Mastu, or she
Speaker 1: who erases, a demon that was often blamed for illness
Speaker 1: during childbirth and miscarriages. She bore seven names, so she
Speaker 1: was sometimes called the seven witches in Mesopotamian times. She
Speaker 1: was a daughter of one of the greater gods Anu,
Speaker 1: and she manifested as a creature with the head of
Speaker 1: a lioness, with the ears and teeth of a donkey,
Speaker 1: a hairy body, and clawed bird beat. She was believed
Speaker 1: to cause all kinds of terrible things, like poisoning of water, tetanus,
Speaker 1: destroying plants, causing nightmares, and a fever that would not
Speaker 1: go away. She primarily targeted unborn children, though she was
Speaker 1: said to sneak into the homes of pregnant women to
Speaker 1: touch their stomach seven times to kill their children. She
Speaker 1: would kidnap breastfeeding children and kill them by forcing them
Speaker 1: to drink her own toxic breast milk. She sometimes murdered
Speaker 1: the mother too, and feasted on the flesh and flood
Speaker 1: of who may or may not have been the father.
Speaker 1: They're just men in general. I think many wore amulets
Speaker 1: to ward off Lamashetu Pazuzu, and yes, that one from
Speaker 1: the Exorcist. The king of evil wind demons is often
Speaker 1: depicted driving her back to the nether world. According to
Speaker 1: one source I found, and it was a German source
Speaker 1: from like seventeen hundred, so much later, so grain of salt.
Speaker 1: There was even an incantation against the Mashtu Great is
Speaker 1: the daughter of Heaven, who tortures babies. Her hand is
Speaker 1: a net, Her embrace is death. She is cruel, raging, angry, predatory,
Speaker 1: a runner, a thief. Is the daughter of Heaven. She
Speaker 1: touches the bellies of women in labor. She pulls out
Speaker 1: the pregnant women's baby. The daughter of Heaven is one
Speaker 1: of the gods, her brother's with no child of her own.
Speaker 1: Her head is a lion's head, her body is a
Speaker 1: donkey's body. She roars like a lion. She constantly howls
Speaker 1: like a demon dog.
Speaker 2: Wooh.
Speaker 1: And lastly, let's touch on the Malay figure of Pinagallen.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find much on her, but she sounds terrifying,
Speaker 1: and the drawings that exist of her are terrifying. This
Speaker 1: is a creature that takes the form of a woman's
Speaker 1: head with long hair, and her intestines and spine trailing
Speaker 1: behind her as she glides. She removes her head from
Speaker 1: her body at night, and so it's just her, her
Speaker 1: head and her spine and intestines floating around. A vampuric
Speaker 1: creature smells like vinegar. Some say that panaglon is created
Speaker 1: when a woman meditates and a vat of vinegar. That
Speaker 1: perhaps a woman was once so deep in meditation that
Speaker 1: when a man walked in and startled her, she jerked
Speaker 1: so hard that she decapitated herself, leaving her body in
Speaker 1: the vinegar, and that as a creature, she soaks her
Speaker 1: organs in vinegar to make it easier to reattach them
Speaker 1: after returning from hunting. In many of the stories about her,
Speaker 1: she is the result of women practicing black magic, and
Speaker 1: some it is a woman who seeks beauty by adhering
Speaker 1: to a vegetarian diet for forty days. If she eats
Speaker 1: meat before that time is past, she is cursed to
Speaker 1: forever spend her days as a monstrous creature, eternally hungry
Speaker 1: for the flesh and blood of pregnant women and children.
Speaker 1: She might pose as a nanny or a nurse wife
Speaker 1: during the day, then snatching a child with her invisible
Speaker 1: tongue through a window or reaching up through the floorboards
Speaker 1: with her intestines. Learn to keep her away, people would
Speaker 1: lock windows and doors and board up any entry points,
Speaker 1: like in the floor. Braver Folks might try filling her
Speaker 1: body with glass, like if you can find the body
Speaker 1: that she left behind, you fill it with glass so
Speaker 1: that when she returns to reattach her head and everything,
Speaker 1: she dies. But yeah, I thought it's just been interesting.
Speaker 1: As we said, there's just these common themes throughout and
Speaker 1: from these stories, there's just so much fear and misunderstanding
Speaker 1: around illness and pregnancy and miscarriage and childbirth, which you know,
Speaker 1: in ancient times people didn't know. I didn't know why
Speaker 1: people were experiencing these things or how they worked. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure, I mean, it would be terrifying, and these
Speaker 1: are the stories we told people came up with. But
Speaker 1: it's pretty freaky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna have nightmares, but.
Speaker 3: I'm also going to watch more movies.
Speaker 2: But okay, to end it off, I thought we would
Speaker 2: talk a little bit about Bloody Mary and not necessarily
Speaker 2: the origins, and we will tell a little bit about
Speaker 2: that because I think people typically know, but everybody has
Speaker 2: some type of I feel like this is one of
Speaker 2: the bigger of the say it in the mirror shows
Speaker 2: being type of thing.
Speaker 3: Did you ever try this?
Speaker 1: Yes, I think, as I said in the last one,
Speaker 1: I did try it. And so for people, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming most people know what we're talking about, but
Speaker 1: if you don't, it was like this game you would play.
Speaker 1: It's been popularized in many movies and TV shows where
Speaker 1: you would look in the mirror and you would say
Speaker 1: bloody maror either three times or five times, depending on
Speaker 1: the version you heard, and that if she would show up,
Speaker 1: and it was usually like a dark haired woman and
Speaker 1: in a white dress covered in blood. And for me,
Speaker 1: for some reason, like if you did it and you
Speaker 1: thought it worked, but you weren't sure, you were supposed
Speaker 1: to get in the tub like say bloody Mary. Again,
Speaker 1: I don't remember, but I got in that tub because
Speaker 1: I freaked out. I regretted it immediately. Did you do it?
Speaker 2: Yes, I just did the mirror version. Freaked myself out,
Speaker 2: could not stand in the bathroom in the dark or
Speaker 2: anyway with a mirror for the longest time because I
Speaker 2: freaked myself out for so long, And of course it's
Speaker 2: that whole idea. I know, different versions what was supposed
Speaker 2: to happen.
Speaker 1: Again, I thought she would appear behind you in the mirror,
Speaker 1: and I recall thinking she was going to kill you.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure why we were all about this,
Speaker 1: but yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, so yeah, mine was that she would appear and
Speaker 2: come out of the mirror and kill you, like.
Speaker 3: You were gonna die, which is dumb, So why would
Speaker 3: you try to die?
Speaker 1: I think it's that fear because I was just like,
Speaker 1: because I didn't really believe it, but it did scare me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it scared me.
Speaker 2: I didn't necessarily not believe it, but I didn't necessarily like,
Speaker 2: I didn't think too hard into it. But it scared
Speaker 2: me to be in the dark in the bathroom with
Speaker 2: the mirror because you could also see your own damn
Speaker 2: reflection a little bit. That makes an even aerier. But
Speaker 2: just so you know, it does originate to Queen Mary
Speaker 2: and kind of some of the things that played into
Speaker 2: who she was. What happened with her apparently includes like
Speaker 2: she had really bad minstrel pains. She apparently had thought
Speaker 2: that she was giving birth to a baby but never did,
Speaker 2: and she had symptoms of.
Speaker 3: As if she was going to have a child.
Speaker 2: She also was the daughter of King Henry, who she
Speaker 2: you know, he did all he beheaded every woman essentially,
Speaker 2: and then she was trying to like according to this,
Speaker 2: they says she had daddy issues. I'm saying this for
Speaker 2: them as in like she's trying to find affection through
Speaker 2: other men because of the loss of love of from
Speaker 2: her father. Of course, the Mary and Persecution happened underneath her,
Speaker 2: which involved two hundred and forty men sixty women being
Speaker 2: sentenced to the stake, and so she became Bloody Mary.
Speaker 2: So she has a whole history and that's kind of
Speaker 2: that origination. But honestly, that connection never made it to me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: like it was so separate from this that it's like
Speaker 2: what but there's different things like this could be this
Speaker 2: and this is why. But she was nicknamed essentially Bloody
Speaker 2: Mary because of all the persecutions she did against the Protestants.
Speaker 3: But there you go.
Speaker 2: I want to know, have any of y'all done this,
Speaker 2: any of these things and.
Speaker 3: Nothing you've seen it? Because I think if you've seen
Speaker 3: you die, but something weird.
Speaker 1: Happened, Yeah, yeah, I mean the power of these stories
Speaker 1: is amazing because if it's you know, bloody Mary, is
Speaker 1: that old? And then I think I had a particular
Speaker 1: and a lot of people do it was like not
Speaker 1: her at all. It was a woman who had been
Speaker 1: murdered and was looking for vengeance and right, just these
Speaker 1: themes that we see over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: But yes, listeners, if there's a story that you want
Speaker 1: to share with us, legend we miss or anything as
Speaker 1: we move into October that you want us to talk about,
Speaker 1: please email us. You can do that at Stuff Media,
Speaker 1: Momstuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can also find us
Speaker 1: on Instagram at stuff I've Never Told You or on
Speaker 1: Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. Thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: super producer Christina, Thank you, and thanks to you for listening.
Speaker 1: Steff I ever told you the protection of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcast on iHeartRadio is the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.