Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. I'm one of your hosts, Ben Bulling,
Speaker 1: and I am the other of your hosts, Noel Brown.
Speaker 1: And this is the podcast where the history stops being
Speaker 1: polite and starts getting ridiculous. That's a ridiculous history. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's the name of our show. And did you come
Speaker 1: up with that tagline? Just off the dome? You know,
Speaker 1: I pilfred it from thirteen seasons of Real World. There
Speaker 1: might be some similarities, but I don't wanna you know,
Speaker 1: I don't wanna between our show in the Real World. Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: which one of us is the luck? Right? He was
Speaker 1: my favorite. He was so puckish. It was a crowd favorite.
Speaker 1: Apparently Puck was his real name and that show was
Speaker 1: purportedly about people behaving as real, genuine people, right, you
Speaker 1: know who? My favorite was the rock star guy who
Speaker 1: sent his girlfriend like a pig's heart in a box
Speaker 1: with nails through it. Remember that. I think it was
Speaker 1: in London. He had like spiky hair. Was there a
Speaker 1: story behind the pig that somebody's face? And when he
Speaker 1: was doing a show people don't care for that. Now
Speaker 1: he was He was not well liked in the house,
Speaker 1: but he was still despite various eccentricities. Immortal man a
Speaker 1: living being and like Puck who was a demigod, right
Speaker 1: who was a nineties god. Today we are exploring the
Speaker 1: opposite of living people were exploring corpses that came out weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but corpses, you know, supposedly imbued with mystical, demonic powers
Speaker 1: of reanimation, revenance if you will. Yeah, this is spooky stuff.
Speaker 1: Various cultures interact with the dead in you know, in
Speaker 1: multitudinous ways. But this complex relationship has been going on
Speaker 1: since before recorded history. Before we were writing things about people,
Speaker 1: we were figuring out the safest way to bury them
Speaker 1: and are the safest way basically to not invoke their rage.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the burial traditions that exist in
Speaker 1: the modern day come from this. So this story that
Speaker 1: you and I found is about how people handled dead
Speaker 1: bodies in medieval England. Yeah, we're talking about medieval England
Speaker 1: sort of as the root of the story. But this
Speaker 1: idea of people being freaked out by the notion of
Speaker 1: their very dead coming back to jack them up is
Speaker 1: not limited to medieval England. We're gonna get into that story.
Speaker 1: But Ben, first off, do you know where the term
Speaker 1: undead originated. No where does the term undead come from? Well,
Speaker 1: Bram Stoker kind of made it popular, like in popular
Speaker 1: culture through his novel Dracula. Um. He actually even considered
Speaker 1: calling the book the undead, But the term actually dates
Speaker 1: back to fourteen hundred UM and it was a word
Speaker 1: that meant neither dead nor alive, somewhere in between. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's like from that we get to kind of
Speaker 1: the more modern I guess we still love the idea
Speaker 1: of the undead, but zombies, which is also an old term,
Speaker 1: and I know, you know the history of that stuff
Speaker 1: with the voodoo and the Santa Ria and all that, uh,
Speaker 1: we have in the past, asked looked at some of
Speaker 1: the fascinating, morbidly fascinating but fascinating uh stories about zombies
Speaker 1: and the undead and the interactions that we have now
Speaker 1: with modern technology. Right because once there's a fantastic book
Speaker 1: called The Serpent and the Rainbow, which is about a
Speaker 1: trained scientist traveling to Haiti to see whether there is
Speaker 1: any truth behind the myths of zombies arising from the dead.
Speaker 1: And without spoiling it, I guess the best way to
Speaker 1: say it is that they find something they they actually
Speaker 1: do find something, and I don't know if they were
Speaker 1: expecting to. Wait, So, is that this is nonfiction? There's
Speaker 1: a movie. It's like a John Carpenter movie. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: a movie. But Bill Paxton or Pullman, Bill Pullman. One
Speaker 1: of the bills, Yeah, one of the bills, the Bill,
Speaker 1: the Living Bill, which is kind of a cool nickname. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the book is the book is supposed to be
Speaker 1: the inspiration for the film, but they are widely different.
Speaker 1: But tell me more about the book. I was not
Speaker 1: aware about this book. Is it like, so it's sort
Speaker 1: of meant to be like an account of a thing
Speaker 1: that happened. Yeah, it's The author is anthropologist named Wade Davis,
Speaker 1: and he studied what they call ethnobotanical poisons, right, you know,
Speaker 1: the herbs you hear about and which is bruised and such.
Speaker 1: And he wanted to see if the use of a
Speaker 1: poison was involved in the creation of what people called zombies.
Speaker 1: And what he found was there. He did find some
Speaker 1: fascinating leads. I'm not gonna give you the conclusive answer,
Speaker 1: you'll have to check out the book. But more importantly,
Speaker 1: he found that there was this huge cultural aspect to
Speaker 1: the zombie ritual and in many ways or in several cases,
Speaker 1: he found that he believed the I guess, the potions
Speaker 1: or the poisons used were more um ritualistic rather than
Speaker 1: medicinal and efficacious. And so what we find then is
Speaker 1: even in the air of modern science, and this book
Speaker 1: was in so it's not supermodern now, but you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, in the air of modern science um
Speaker 1: our relationships with the dead and with the concepts of death,
Speaker 1: the way we apply and experience fanatology, which is the
Speaker 1: dressed up word for consideration of death. This is still
Speaker 1: predominantly guided by cultural mores and understanding. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the more we discover about ancient cities and civilizations, the
Speaker 1: more we see that they were culturally guided by some
Speaker 1: very very like terrifying ideas. They were convinced that if
Speaker 1: they did not undertake certain actions, that the dead would
Speaker 1: rise from the grave or wherever they happened to be
Speaker 1: in repose and then take revenge upon the living, feast
Speaker 1: on their flesh and drink of their blood. Perhaps, yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe. So. We've heard some of these old myths before, too, right,
Speaker 1: like the idea that in some countries the manner of
Speaker 1: a person's death determines how they'll be buried, So you
Speaker 1: would bury somebody face down, or you would stuff their
Speaker 1: mouth with things. Sure. Sure, and even like the terms zombie,
Speaker 1: We're just to go back to the the century voodoo
Speaker 1: aspect of it came from a word that was referred
Speaker 1: to a snake, god or any kind of like a
Speaker 1: divine spirit. So it had that reverence, that cultural kind
Speaker 1: of like mystical reverence for the start, and then it
Speaker 1: came to mean this idea of reanimated corpse. And like
Speaker 1: you're saying with Serpent in the Rainbow, a lot of
Speaker 1: these practitioners would create these potions that they claimed had
Speaker 1: the power, I guess to reanimate the dead. And and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of talk about this idea
Speaker 1: of making creating mindless slaves for for whatever purpose. You know,
Speaker 1: who's your imagination there, But man, you're right, like throughout
Speaker 1: history we see this, and I was looking into just
Speaker 1: some other examples, um, even as far back as the
Speaker 1: Stone Age. Archaeologist a team of archaeologists found these ten
Speaker 1: thousand year old skulls in Syria that dated back to
Speaker 1: the Neolithic Age, and they were separated from the bodies.
Speaker 1: And you know, at one point, according to this was
Speaker 1: an article based on this dig um from an archaeologist
Speaker 1: by the name of Juan Jose and As from the
Speaker 1: Spanish National Research Council and his team. UM. Apparently, according
Speaker 1: to even As, the removal of skulls was once thought
Speaker 1: to be exclusively like a form of ancestor worship or
Speaker 1: like veneration, but this particular finding uh suggests that they
Speaker 1: were actually um separated from the bodies to prevent certain
Speaker 1: types of individuals or folks that died under certain circumstances
Speaker 1: from rising from the dead. In this pit, I guess
Speaker 1: you could say they found skulls belonging to adult males
Speaker 1: between eighteen and thirty. They were separated from the spines,
Speaker 1: heads removed. There was evidence of blunt force trauma, skull bashing,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty brutal stuff. And we also see this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff in ancient Greece, and as we get
Speaker 1: to our story of the day, in medieval England. Right,
Speaker 1: so during the period between about the eleventh and thirteen
Speaker 1: centuries Common era, there were people living in a place
Speaker 1: called warum Percy. Sounds yeah, it sounds yeah, it sounds
Speaker 1: like the kind of place where you can just picture
Speaker 1: some medieval version of Norman Rockwell painting. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I picture like sprites and spirits, fairy rings, dwelling amongst
Speaker 1: the small people, and warham Percy in North Yorkshire. So
Speaker 1: here's what happened. A group of archaeologists in the modern
Speaker 1: age started digging into this idyllic town and they discovered
Speaker 1: a grizzly secret. It turned out, for at least those
Speaker 1: three centuries we just named, uh, members of warm Percy
Speaker 1: were mutilating corpses, essentially to prevent them from rising from
Speaker 1: the dead. But like worse even than our Stone Age
Speaker 1: friends that we talked about a minute ago, that was
Speaker 1: exclusively bashing and you know, pull off the skulls. This
Speaker 1: was a couple of steps beyond that one. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: recovered bones had signs of breakage, knife marks, and burning.
Speaker 1: They found remains from at least ten people, ranging in
Speaker 1: anywhere from the age of two to the age of fifty,
Speaker 1: so there wasn't really a visible common denominator here, and
Speaker 1: they were this was a mass grave. They were found
Speaker 1: buried in a pit near but not within the churchyard.
Speaker 1: So when you're an archaeologist and you discover a mass
Speaker 1: grave site, you know, you have to wonder what happened?
Speaker 1: Was this wartime? Was it a sickness or these all criminals?
Speaker 1: Was it a sacrifice of some sort. Folks behind the
Speaker 1: study don't really necessarily know exactly what the problem was
Speaker 1: with these individuals per se, but they're pretty sure that
Speaker 1: all of these things that were done to them were
Speaker 1: to prevent them from coming back and and seeking their
Speaker 1: revenge on the living. Um, I gotta, I gotta drop this.
Speaker 1: The name of this study in the Journal of Archaeological
Speaker 1: Science or this report is this is beautiful. It's called
Speaker 1: a multidisciplinary study of a burnt and mutilated assemblage of
Speaker 1: human remains from a deserted medieval village in England. So
Speaker 1: that's the part where somebody dating one of these what
Speaker 1: are these scientists, says, Oh, you finished your paper? What
Speaker 1: was the title? Right? Oh? I told my parents you're
Speaker 1: a writer. Tell them what you were writing about. I
Speaker 1: just can't wait to see the film adaptation, you know,
Speaker 1: of a multi disciplinary study of a burnt, mutilated assemblage
Speaker 1: of human remains from a deserted medieval village in England.
Speaker 1: Four stars. I hope they keep the whole title Oscar
Speaker 1: bait oscar for sure. This leads us to another big question.
Speaker 1: With the evidence at hand, why do they think they
Speaker 1: know the motivation of the murderers or the desecrators. How
Speaker 1: did the team studying these remains narrow down all these possibilities?
Speaker 1: How did they take the first steps in solving a
Speaker 1: centuries old massacre? Because it could have had a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff, right, I mean, it could have been, um,
Speaker 1: you know, a massacre. It could have been wounds sustained
Speaker 1: in battle, or some sort of foul murder you know,
Speaker 1: may there, but it wasn't. No, no, because to each
Speaker 1: of those points they had some other evidence disproving that possibility.
Speaker 1: So if these people died as a result of a battle,
Speaker 1: there would have been chop marks from swords on the bones,
Speaker 1: but there weren't. There were broken bones, but there weren't,
Speaker 1: you know, chop marks from swords. And then if they
Speaker 1: were all criminals, typically criminals were buried at the sight
Speaker 1: of their execute ship, which I imagine plays hell on
Speaker 1: you know, the property values near the courthouse or the
Speaker 1: the old hanging tree that's dark, dude, I don't know
Speaker 1: if they called it the old hanging tree. No, I'm
Speaker 1: sure it was carved into it. It was carved. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Yields. It's like the tree and that the
Speaker 1: Conjuring movie, you remember that one, and they have to
Speaker 1: be a freaky looking twisted tree, right, especially over time,
Speaker 1: you know, all that bad ju ju in there just
Speaker 1: gets twisted. And you know, so what if they were cannibals.
Speaker 1: Cannibals would have cut the bodies at the sites of
Speaker 1: major muscle attachments, and no cannibalism was on the table. Yeah,
Speaker 1: cannibalism was on the table. Yes, it always is. It's
Speaker 1: you know, things happen, things escalate, and boy do they
Speaker 1: continue to escalate. Right. If they were just unlucky outsiders,
Speaker 1: come to the wrong town after dark or something, your
Speaker 1: kind are not welcome around here, caught to you around
Speaker 1: warm Percy Way, Yes, that is a that is a
Speaker 1: stone called accurate depiction. There. Then if they were unlucky outsiders,
Speaker 1: they would have grown up somewhere else. But they found
Speaker 1: other evidence that proved these were hometown folks. This is
Speaker 1: the science he part, isn't it? Can I do it? Yeah? Yeah? Please? Right,
Speaker 1: So it's like this strontium isotopes in your teeth, and
Speaker 1: they reflect the geology of where an individual was living
Speaker 1: as their teeth progressed from baby teeth into adulthood. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is coming from a Dr. Alistair Pike, who's
Speaker 1: an archaeology professor at the University of Southampton UM and
Speaker 1: he was one of the authors of this study. Was
Speaker 1: a study the paper, yes, study and study and so
Speaker 1: apparently you can match the isotopes in the teeth and
Speaker 1: the geology around this specific location in this case where
Speaker 1: in Percy. And they did that, and the match suggested
Speaker 1: that these individuals, all of these individuals in this mass grave,
Speaker 1: grew up close by to where they were buried, possibly
Speaker 1: in ye old warm Percy village itself. Right, So these
Speaker 1: townspeople probably just chopped up the bodies of people they
Speaker 1: didn't care for but that they knew, uh. And maybe
Speaker 1: it was the manner of the person's death. You know,
Speaker 1: it seems like it seems like quite an egregious punishment
Speaker 1: to hate somebody so much that you mutilate their corpse afterwards,
Speaker 1: especially when you consider that one of the victims was
Speaker 1: two years old. So I was about to say, and
Speaker 1: they were like tweens in here too, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just like grizzled, hardened, you know, thuggish, ruggish types,
Speaker 1: right exactly. So the archaeologists believed that, if they're correct,
Speaker 1: that this would be the first good archaeological evidence for
Speaker 1: this practice of a first hand glimpse into a very
Speaker 1: dark side of medieval beliefs. Um sort of shows us
Speaker 1: how how different the medieval world was from our own,
Speaker 1: at least that's according to the archaeology team. However, this
Speaker 1: is not the only example. So here's the idea, right,
Speaker 1: Let's say, let's say there was an illness right when
Speaker 1: someone takes takes ill and their behavior changes, right, and
Speaker 1: then they die, But then somebody else later exhibits the
Speaker 1: same symptoms. So without an understanding of maybe germ theory
Speaker 1: or something, you could see how you would think, you know,
Speaker 1: the average. Just because somebody alive in that time period
Speaker 1: didn't have access to the same technology we have, it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean they were dumb. They were clearly connecting dots,
Speaker 1: you know, and they could say, well, these this person
Speaker 1: behaving strangely and dying and this person who's behaving strangely
Speaker 1: now are somehow related. This sort of reasoning. Your lack
Speaker 1: of understanding would lead people to think, well, the first
Speaker 1: person who died is obviously returning from the grave somehow
Speaker 1: to afflict the living, and we have to stop that. Wait,
Speaker 1: you mean like possession or something like. It's not literally
Speaker 1: someone who's died and come back, but it's someone who
Speaker 1: previously died who has this affliction inhabiting the body of
Speaker 1: somebody else. That could be a possibility. More more so
Speaker 1: in this case that one person takes ill and then
Speaker 1: after they die they returned to a loved one, like
Speaker 1: in all those myths about vampires. You know, the parapet
Speaker 1: cemetery exactly. You may your road, I'll go into the road.
Speaker 1: Loss has a doll. I am in love with that accent.
Speaker 1: But that poor guy in that movie, I think, Okay,
Speaker 1: just just to this is a new show. I know,
Speaker 1: but listeners, we we have we try to abide by
Speaker 1: the five year spoiler rule. We really try the statute
Speaker 1: um and hey, right in and let us know if
Speaker 1: if you're cool with that. But we've pretty we're pretty
Speaker 1: we're pretty uh solid on that. I think we've decided,
Speaker 1: so I think we can spoil pet cemetery student gets
Speaker 1: eaten by a little kid Herman Monster did not deserve
Speaker 1: to be treated like that, especially with that robust uh
Speaker 1: New England accent. It was a beautiful accent. But in
Speaker 1: the story he is somewhat the architect of his own demise.
Speaker 1: That's true. Well, sometimes ben dead is better, that's true,
Speaker 1: then undead. I do want to point out one other
Speaker 1: similar events. Lest we look down upon the people of
Speaker 1: the past, we have to remember that even in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth cent, things like this we're happening. And one of
Speaker 1: the best examples of this is something called the New
Speaker 1: England vampire panic, and we've talked about this off air
Speaker 1: vigorous UH. There was an outbreak of tuberculosis in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century and went through Connecticut and Vermont, Rhode Island,
Speaker 1: and parts of other parts of New England. The idea
Speaker 1: here was that consumption which was there were for tuberculosis
Speaker 1: was they thought it was being caused by dead loved
Speaker 1: ones returning to slowly drain the life of their surviving relatives.
Speaker 1: And so this fear swept the region and people began
Speaker 1: digging up bodies of people who had passed away from
Speaker 1: tuberculosis and ritually burning their organs. And it's important for
Speaker 1: us to put to give that a mention, I hesitate
Speaker 1: to call it an honorable mention that came up even
Speaker 1: like about this story that you know some of these
Speaker 1: uh these there was there was a history of medieval
Speaker 1: folklore and you know European folklore that leaned heavily into
Speaker 1: this idea of revenance we use that term or you know,
Speaker 1: life force draining undead creatures, and you could really interpret
Speaker 1: that as vampireism in a lot of ways to especially
Speaker 1: like you're talking about. And I love the kind of
Speaker 1: functional qualities that you're describing here, because you're right, they
Speaker 1: weren't stupid. They were acting in self interest. They were acting,
Speaker 1: you know, out of a need to survive. And so there,
Speaker 1: you know, there were kind of real life things that
Speaker 1: they were like shielding themselves against. It wasn't just all
Speaker 1: necessarily the devil is in everything, and you know, we're
Speaker 1: just gonna like mutilate all of our corpses. You know
Speaker 1: what makes me think of though White Walkers man makes
Speaker 1: me think of some Game of Thrones. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like they burned them. We didn't talk about that. These
Speaker 1: corpses were also burned. Yes, they do have they do
Speaker 1: have burn marks, so their bones were broken. Uh, they
Speaker 1: had knife wounds, but not sword chops. It was only
Speaker 1: precision almost where they were like, you know, being dismembered
Speaker 1: at a very very methodical and parts of their bodies
Speaker 1: were burned. There was evidence of burning. This This shows
Speaker 1: us that the approach that the living at the time
Speaker 1: took was they thought, well, the corpses might rise physically
Speaker 1: right and seek revenge. Therefore we disabled them physically and
Speaker 1: probably with the assistance of local religious figures. It's it's
Speaker 1: also incredibly important to consider the placement because it's again
Speaker 1: it's not in the churchyard, it's nearby, which means that
Speaker 1: they were considered inherently unclean. And at this point the
Speaker 1: story of this specific instance, the dark secret of the
Speaker 1: village there in North Yorkshire, draws to a close. But
Speaker 1: I would argue, no, the story overall, the global story
Speaker 1: is still not complete because there are archaeological digs all
Speaker 1: around the planet and they're valuable, they're crucial to our
Speaker 1: understanding of the past. But the thing is we don't
Speaker 1: know what will find totally and like even like those
Speaker 1: uh those kind of like preamble historical reference as you
Speaker 1: mentioned at the top of the show. Um, there is
Speaker 1: clearly a unconnected um to specific regions and geography and culture,
Speaker 1: unconnected sense a fear of this kind of thing, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's in China, if sciences in China, sciences in India,
Speaker 1: of you know, fear of the Walking Dead as that
Speaker 1: a show. I think that's a show fear. It's not
Speaker 1: very good. You're killing it with the references. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: fear of the walk in says the spinoff where the
Speaker 1: characters in Los Angeles different characters from the original Walking Dead. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I haven't I think this is controversial
Speaker 1: and this is purely my opinion. The we are leaving
Speaker 1: the realm of facts. In my opinion, the Walking Dead
Speaker 1: is a soap opera that occasionally has zombies. That's that's
Speaker 1: about it. I just feel like nothing good happens to
Speaker 1: those poor people, and they try so hard, they try
Speaker 1: so hard. Yes, I haven't caught up on the latest,
Speaker 1: so I am vulnerable to spoilers at this point. So
Speaker 1: we would love to hear your opinion on this, and
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear if there are any dark stories
Speaker 1: similar to this in your neck of the Global Woods. Also,
Speaker 1: Sintime vulnerable to spoilers. Uh, well, please feel read to
Speaker 1: spoil The Walking Dead for me if you wish. That's
Speaker 1: just one of those shows we're the only way you
Speaker 1: can spoil is to say so and so dies, because
Speaker 1: that's it's just literally a show where an endless number
Speaker 1: of so and So's die. That's kind of the plot
Speaker 1: of that show. That's pretty bleak. Hey, you guys, come
Speaker 1: at me. I like the Walking Down. I mean, we're here,
Speaker 1: We're we're here in Walking Dead country to we're in
Speaker 1: Georgia and Atlanta, Georgia where they shoot that out And
Speaker 1: now where is it? What's it called Pinewood? You know
Speaker 1: the name of the town. It's called Snoy, Snoy. It's
Speaker 1: like a little town. I have a tour and stuff
Speaker 1: and everything. We should go. We absolutely should go. Let's
Speaker 1: make a road trip of it, and let's stay alive
Speaker 1: so we can return next time for another episode. Can
Speaker 1: we go to fright Fest at six Flags too? We
Speaker 1: can absolutely go to fright Fest bad. That'd be awesome,
Speaker 1: speaking awesome, It would be awesome to hear from you.
Speaker 1: You can write to us via our email. We're ridiculous
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. I'm pretty sure. We've
Speaker 1: got all the other social media boxes ticked off. We've
Speaker 1: got the Facebook and the Instagram, and um, I don't
Speaker 1: know if we're gonna do a Pinterest. We don't really
Speaker 1: it's not really a Pinterest you kind of show. Maybe
Speaker 1: we can look into it. A pinboard. You ever done
Speaker 1: a pin board? I did one, but I did a
Speaker 1: physical one. I wasn't on Pinterest? Is that the thing
Speaker 1: with like a vision board? I did a vision board.
Speaker 1: Did it manifest kind of? But I set the bar
Speaker 1: really low. There was like al pizza, Oh man, what
Speaker 1: what kind? It was? Pepperoni? And I made it happen.
Speaker 1: That's seems very attainable without a vision board. I was
Speaker 1: dipping my toe in the water. Well, folks, we hope
Speaker 1: that your dreams and visions come true too, and that
Speaker 1: you'll join us next time on Ridiculous History. Goodbye,