#okay fantasy england enjoy your civil war I guess | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

transcripted-podcasts · 5 years ago

Text

Zombie Fishbowl - Episode 1

Haunted Battlefields

In our first episode, we talk about the phenomenon of ‘haunted battlefields’ after we introduce ourselves and explain WTF ‘Zombie Fishbowl’ actually means!

Listen to the episode here!

---

[Intro music]

Melanie: Hello!

Danielle: Hello!

Melanie: Welcome to Zombie Fishbowl, a podcast about random shit!

Danielle: Zombie Fishbowl? What does that even mean?

Melanie: Not a damn thing.

Danielle: And everything at the same time! Wow!

Melanie: All right, so let's start by introducing ourselves.

Danielle: Hello! I'm Danielle, I live in Northwest England, in a very damp, seaside town. But I did live in California for about 13 years, hence the weird accent. I'm studying for a master's degree in archaeology after deciding that I wanted to change my career after being a support worker for 10 years. So, I fucking love history and logic, and am, as you will get to know, very skeptical of the paranormal world (which we will probably do a lot of talking about because it's the most fun). And, even though I roll my eyes at ghost hunters and psychics and spooky YouTube videos, I still fucking love it! I love a ghost story. I love a weird happening. My mum and I share this enthusiasm. She kinda passed it on to me.

But although I am absolutely intrigued by the unknown, I also like to have a look and see what reason there might be behind something. So, I'll be bringing the scientific papers and whatever reliable publications I can find to try to explore humanity's obsession and consistent claim that there is something, some other world that we cannot see or test or measure.

Melanie: And I'm Melanie and I live in California, USA. Daughter of a horror novelist and a porn star, I'm an enthusiast for the bizarre, taboo, and fun. I am pagan, a recovering medium, a horror and fantasy fanatic, and mythology nerd so, needless to say, whatever she doesn't believe in? I just might. Or, at least, will enjoy the telling.

So, backstory. Danielle and I were best friends growing up in southern California. We were nerds with a punk/goth twist that were never quite cool enough for the punks or the goths or even the nerds. But we partied together, grew together, and basically been through hell and high water. We grew up and I stayed in California...

Danielle: And I moved back to England to be with my loverboy.

Melanie: So here we are, in our 30s, continents apart. But whenever we get a chance to chat, it's always insane, fun, and full of information. So we thought we'd share our love of the random, macabre, fun facts and turn it into a podcast.

Danielle: Also, in regards to the name of our podcast, I suppose you do need some kind of explanation. Well, we tried being clever, intellectual, and punny, but nothing was quite working until Melanie, randomly, in an exasperated moment threw out Zombie Fishbowl which was the name of the band we almost-tried-to-but-didn't-quite-ever-have in high school, although I did attempt to learn how to play the bass, and I can still play the intro to Crazy Train like a total badass.

Melanie: And I can sing, so that was something. [laughs] It doesn't mean anything but it could mean so much.

Danielle: So throw it all in a zombie fishbowl and eat it up!

Melanie: So here's the plan. We have a list of wide-ranging topics from magic to UFOs, and every week we throw them into a randomizer and then research the shit out of it. Hopefully, as this podcast grows, we'd love to hear from you. All of our social media information will be holla-ed at you at the end of the podcast.

Danielle: But we're going to steer clear of current affairs, politicky stuff, because it is so so so so divisive and polarizing and just plain frustrating. We will no doubt get political, it is in our very nature, but not as a topic, and we'll try not to be overtly preachy.

Melanie: Also, sports because we do not sport.

Danielle: Nope, I can't sport and neither can Melanie, so no sport. Anyway, one more thing before we get into the topic this week: we have The Purge.

Melanie: Dun dun dun! So this is where we, mostly Danielle, will have a moan for a couple minutes to clear the air before starting. So what do you want to vent about this week, Danielle?

Danielle: Wet rain.

Melanie: [laugh]

Danielle: Not normal rain that just comes down and you can, you know, put your umbrella up and you're quite happy walking across the street looking all emo and [unintelligible], but the kind of rain that just makes everything on your body damp and no matter what you do, everything is just wet and miserable and it just...it makes everything difficult. Uh! I just fucking hate wet rain. It's that stuff that comes from the ground as well as the skies, comes from the left and it comes from the right, and there's nothing you can do about it, and you're just damp all the time and--

Melanie: It's like a soggy miserable rain.

Danielle: Yeah, which is pretty much 90% of the weather in this bloody town. It's really, really grim out there right now. It's been grim for a couple days, but then there's like an hour of beautiful sunshine and everyone runs out in their shorts just--just 'please give me the vitamin D! Please give me the vitamin D!' and then everybody runs back inside as soon as it starts to rain again. It's June! It's supposed to be lovely outside but it's like looking at a November...ugh, so miserable. That's--that's what I wanted to get off my chest. I got wet earlier today and I haven't got over it yet.

Melanie: [laughs] I'm sorry for your soggy life over there.

Danielle: Well, you know, it's what I signed up for, I guess. You gotta have the bad damp horrible weather in order to appreciate and really take advantage of lovely sunshine which I can see you're having right now, ya bitch.

Melanie: Oh yes, the sunniest of sunshines. And it's not quite yet at like 90 degrees. I think we're at a nice medium 65 heading toward 70.

Danielle: That sounds perfect!

Melanie: Yeah, yeah that's that's the sweet spot, but give us about two hours and it's gonna probably be like 85.

Danielle: Yeah, it kind of goes OTT after a while. I don't know why I said OTT! I don't say that in my daily life. I'm gonna say it fully: over the top.

Melanie: [laughs] Okay, good because I'm old, and when you said OTT, I have no idea what that meant.

Danielle: I read a lot of Reddit. [laughs] I learned the lingo of the youths.

Melanie: Yeah I'm not, I'm not hip with the kids today with their their letters instead of words.

Danielle: I have to admit, every so often I have to Google an acronym, but...

Melanie: I have to Google an acronym almost every day. It's awful.

Danielle: [laughs] fantastic. Right, okay. Do you have anything you want to purge?

Melanie: Oh I suppose we'll go with cats. No, I love cats. I have two cats. I--I love my cats, but they can be such fucking cats. Like Phineas, my big fat old one. He's fine. He's too lazy and slow to really do anything much as far as the bothersome cat behavior. He just has that Siamese cat meow which makes you want to kill something, but other than that? But my kitten is such a kitten and I can't stand it! She, I have a cup of water above my bed every night, and every night I get clunked in the head with a glass full of water. And you'd think I'd learn.

Danielle: Yeah. [laughs]

Melanie: But I don't because I keep forgetting that she's such a cat. Like not just...the little things, you know, knocking things off the things, the technical term. Why?! Why! It's so cute until it actually is in your life and then you're like 'why the fuck are you catting so hard!'

Danielle: [laughs]

Melanie: So that's--that's my purge because I keep getting knocked in the head with water at like 2:00 in the morning.

Danielle: Patrick started...it's his summers sick ritual which is, you know, when the summer comes around, cuz he's a long-haired cat, and every other day he'll be hacking up a hairball. But he just doesn't do it over the--the wood floor, it's all over the carpet and it's all over multiple carpets because he moves three feet between each regurge.

[Laughter]

Danielle: So, you know, swings 'em roundabouts, really. They're awesome, they're awesome. I love my cats, they're my little dudes, but yeah. They don't knock water into my face but they certainly make for a Russian Roulette when you're walking around the house barefoot. Yeah, all right, I feel better, do you?

Melanie: I think I do. A little bit.

Danielle: All right. Let's take a deep breath and we'll start this week's factotastic Zombie Fishbowl podcast.

Melanie: Ready?

Danielle: Ready.

[Sounds of exaggerated deep breaths and laughter]

Danielle: That's never gonna get old.

[Laughter]

Melanie: All right. So, this week's topic randomly picked from our random topic picker is:

[In unison]: Haunted battlefields!

Danielle: Wow, that was shit, fantastic. You go.

Melanie: I felt good about it, I don't know about you.

Danielle: [laughs]

Melanie: I really did.

Danielle: Fantastic.

Melanie: Okay, so I suppose I'll start. Being in America, we have had a bloody civil war, which we all know, but really getting a grasp on the numbers of it was was phenomenal. So, out of all of the soldiers that have ever fallen in a war, every single American soldier, if you add them all up from the beginning of American soldiers being a thing to present day, if you add all those casualties up, half of them took place in the Civil War. But brother against brother so, no matter who fell, it was an American falling and it was just so, so much and that's not even including all of the battles against the Native Americans and--and the Mexicans and--and just--just the slaughter that took place here all over the place. There are many ways I could have gone, and I kind of got stuck in the Civil War, mainly because I have never in my life had any interest in it. So I thought, this thing that I--I know enough about to pass like, what, third grade, but it never really hit me as anything super interesting, so I researched into it.

Danielle: I feel you on that. I'm not a big warfare history buff. I like my history and stuff like that but, you know, battlefields and war and battles, it's never really been...because it's--it's a little bit repulsive.

Melanie: Yeah! Yeah! And it's funny because, instinctively, I think we're just kind of like 'oh yeah, no, this happened' but if you actually just take a second to really try and grasp what happened, it's heartbreaking and hideous and then just horrifying.

Danielle: Yep.

Melanie: So, um, I started by researching the top ten bloodiest battles of the Civil War.

Danielle: Oh, god.

Melanie: Which is so fucking significant like, oh my god. And poor Virginia, man. Well not so much poor Virginia but, Jesus, the amount of people who died there for this--this war is staggering. It's like at least 15,000 just in a couple of these battles? It's just absurd. Anyway, so we'll start with the--the biggest, which is the Battle of Gettysburg.

Danielle: The most famous, I think, in American history.

Melanie: It is the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. It lasted for three days in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Grand total casualties including wounded was almost 50,000 people in three days. 5,425 people just went missing. Which I think is interesting, and looking at all of these battles, you don't see a number so much for people just missing. But with the Battle of Gettysburg, almost 5,500 people just, poof!, disappeared. So, Battle of Gettysburg. With so many dead, dying, injured, and just missing, it's--it's one of the most haunted sites in America.

Danielle: Mm-hmm.

Melanie: All right, the battle took place across this one field, but it also took place over mountains; it even went into the city itself. It was so bad that in some of the houses that were healing the--the injured, people were like ankle deep in blood.

Danielle: That sounds like an exaggeration.

Melanie: It's an exaggeration, but--but the--the walls? Covered. The floor? Covered. Like completely covered. Ankle deep, yeah, is a bit of an exaggeration, but to say that they were at least heel deep in blood I don't think is an exaggeration.

Danielle: They were slipping in the stuff.

Melanie: Yeah.

Danielle: Yeah.

Melanie: But one of the things, with all the battlefields that I researched, I found that most recurring...thing was when...hold on, I got the word...residual hauntings.

Danielle: Mm-hmm

Melanie: The residual hauntings are really just a replay of the events.

[Overlapping talk]

Danielle: I have heard that. Yeah, sorry, you, go ahead, you say it.

Melanie: [laughs, then with a lisp] So from a psychic pagan perspective…

Danielle: [laughs] Yes.

Melanie: All right, with residual hauntings, I believe that...when you have that much death and that much rage and fear and--and just--just really amped up energy, it sort of leaves an imprint. I mean, you go into a room where somebody's been, you know, beaten their whole lives, even if you don't have any context of what happened there before, that room feels dark and oppressing and not great. So when you go to a battlefield or go to a place where, you know, the soldiers were taken to be treated and eventually probably die or have their legs amputated with no anesthesia, there's a lot of emotion there and so with residual hauntings, a lot of it is just, you see these people replaying these moments, whether it's somebody's specifically getting up and walking across the room or [clears throat] a lot of the times they'll see people standing on (or sitting on) horses just sort of standing there in the field, just--just chillin'.

Danielle: So my--my knowledge of this means that they're not intelligent, they can't interact with them, and they don't interact with you. In fact, they probably don't even see you. It is an imprint of emotion left, so this kind of definition within the metaphysical world implies that it's not actually the human soul; it's not actually a person who is dead, it is actually more like a film being replayed.

Melanie: Yes exactly. Exactly. And so, you know, when it comes to those kinds of hauntings I don't find them particularly---

[Children's screams]

Danielle: Ahh!

Melanie: Holy Jesus! I'm gonna close that window!

[both laugh]

Melanie: Lord have mercy!

Danielle: Hopefully people with earphones didn't suddenly think some child was screaming in their ears.

Melanie: It's my own ghost child...so when it comes to residual hauntings, I don't find them particularly spooky because, again they're, yeah, they're unintelligent, they don't have a motive or instinct or reason; they just are replaying.

Danielle: Mm-hmm. I think and also, by its own definition, it's not proof of an afterlife.

Melanie: Absolutely! Absolutely! Yeah, they're--they're not so much ghosts to me as like, yeah, holograms, imprints.

Danielle: Yeah.

Melanie: But one thing I thought was really interesting at Gettysburg is people getting wafts of phantom scents of mint or vanilla. And they'll come out of nowhere.

Danielle: Vanilla?

Melanie: Vanilla because, back then, back in the day, after the war, you know, the streets are piled up with bodies, just--just piled up in the middle of Pennsylvania's summer which, I gotta tell ya, it's hot. Not only is it hot, it's humid. So bodies were swelling to twice their size and they were just sitting in the streets. But it still had to function as a city, so people would have to walk through these streets, and they would douse their handkerchiefs with peppermint oil or vanilla oil to try and mask the smell.

Danielle: Oh, I'd definitely be a peppermint, because, if I was smelling the rotting corpses of the dead and vanilla, it'd be like that sickly sweet...oh no, mint for me, definitely mint.

Melanie: It would put you off [unintelligible] forever

Danielle: Yeah, seriously.

Melanie: But yeah, I think--I think that's interesting, especially because, you know, it's not that mint isn't native to it, but when you get just a waft from out of nowhere, and it's gone within a second, I mean, that's--that's a little bit more telling than sort of been like 'well, no, there's probably people just growing mint all over the place' no, it's a strong, concentrated smell.

Danielle: And people in Gettysburg still get whiffs of that?

Melanie: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, it--it's just, to them, it's just sort of what it's like there now. But people who go to visit, they'll be walking and they'll smell, like, you know, just regular street, they'll smell flowers, they'll smell the baker, and all of a sudden just a bomb of menthol in your nostrils.

Danielle: It's interesting that it's that and not the smell of rotting corpses.

Melanie: That's what I thought, too! Why not the smell of corpses? I mean, you'd think that would be more predominant, but I think because the intention, there's that very strong intention of, you know, masking this smell or--or even, because mint was also believed to help prevent disease and decay, it was sort of like also as a medicinal buffer from the dead? I think the fear from--from...while inhaling such a scent is what left its imprint rather than the whiff of the dead bodies.

Danielle: Okay, okay. Plus, if you smelled what you thought was dead bodies, you possibly just misinterpret it as the drains? [laughs] Who knows?

Melanie: There's that, too.

Danielle: I don't know. Anyway, carry on.

[Both laugh]

Danielle: I find smells very hard to believe because, like you said leading up to it, it can just easily be coming from someone who's growing some mint in their back garden or, you know, the smell of some concentrated vanilla isn't that unusual in the 21st Century with cupcake shops and doughnuts and stuff. So, you know, if it was something like, you know, really unique, like the smell of a very particular cigar or something like that, maybe I'd be a little bit more intrigued, but mint and vanilla, to me, I could write straight off. Poof! Those are common smells.

Melanie: And--and, I was willing to write it off too until I was reading the accounts of people. It's like, no, it's not just a subtle mint smell, it's like, it's like being chloroformed with mint, just...

Danielle: All right.

Melanie: You know, really strong, strong whiff. [with a lisp] So that's what I got for Gettysburg. [back to normal speech] There's--there's so many. God, the amount of people that died is just insane. Next one I wrote out was Little Bighorn. Do you know much about that?

Danielle: Native American battle...was that...I'm going to sound really ignorant...west coast?

Melanie: So Little Bighorn...shit, I don't think I even wrote down where it fucking was.

[Both laugh]

Danielle: The Matterhorn is in California? And that, maybe that's what I'm mixing it up with.

Melanie: So the battle of Little Bighorn took place somewhere very important...

[both laugh]

Danielle: Over there.

Melanie: Over there. And there was a whole bunch of tribes involved, and that was basically one of Custer's last battles. It was his last battle. There we have the Sioux nations, Hunkpapa Lakota, Sans Arc, Blackfoot tribes, whole bunch fought against Custer's 7th Cavalry. On January 25th, 1876, most of the native warriors survived, but almost every single one of the troops that went into battle died. There was a rumor or a legend or a myth that the only soldier to come out of there alive was the horse named Comanche.

Danielle: On the American side?

Melanie: On the American side. Well, I guess they're all Americans. So Custer went over there with 600 troops. Only 300 entered the battle. Sitting Bull gathered his warriors and ensured the safety of women and children, while Crazy Horse left with a large force to attack. Custer was quickly defeated. Including Custer, over 260 troops of the 300 died. The hauntings again seem to be residual, but they do seem to be a little bit more intense. And I think a lot of that comes from either the Native Americans' connection to the land itself, I think it just has a deeper significance to them. But most of them, again, it's residual. Warriors on horses just surveying the field. Occasionally believed to see some of the federal soldiers looking for their limbs.

Danielle: Nice.

Melanie: Which I found this interesting.

Danielle: How do we know they're looking for their limbs?

Melanie: Probably just that lost look and that one arm reaching...'it's gotta be here somewhere.'

Danielle: Someone hopping along and saying 'has anyone seen my foot?'

[Both laugh]

Danielle: 'My country for a foot!'

Melanie: [laughs] And then from there I have cryptids. So I want to hear what you've got before I go into cryptids.

Danielle: Cryptids on battlefields.

Melanie: Mhmm.

Danielle: Melanie told me that she was going to cover the continent of the USA, Northern America. Or, did you go into South America? Because you did just say continent.

Melanie: I did not. I'm a big fibber. I was pretty strictly on my end...

Danielle: Right, that's fine, that's fine because, I did--I did a couple. You can tell me whether you want to hear both of them at the same time or one at a time. But the first one I did was one called the Battle at Culloden Moor. Or [repeats name slightly differently] I don't want to sound like I'm doing the Scottish accent, but it's in Scotland. And it's up in the Highlands. It was during the Jacobite rebellions. So, for those over the pond that don't know, the Scottish really don't like the English, and at every opportunity have fought tooth and nail to not be part of English sovereignty, if you will. You'll still hear about that today. They really don't like it. The Jacobites were basically these, sort of, people of the Highlands of Scotland who did not want to be a part of the English Kingdom, but the king was pretty adamant that they should better bend the knee kind of thing. So it's up in the Highlands, near Inverness, so if you wanted to take a look for it, it's in a lovely little place which is on the crook[?] of the Moray Firth which is a part of the North Sea that goes into Scotland. Lovely part of the country. Never been. On me list. It took place in 1746. It's the last battle of the Jacobite rebellion. They've been fighting for 31 years, so this was a long time coming.

Melanie: Good grief.

Danielle: It was horrific, it was bloody; you can imagine, we're still using swords and, you know, stabby things at this point.

Melanie: Pointy sticks.

Danielle: Pointy sticks, throwing shit, stones, all that horrible stuff. And, unfortunately, it's the infamous death of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and loads of his followers. I'm not going to get into why he was called Bonnie Prince Charlie, I will let you imagine why the Scots call him Bonnie Prince. I'm sure it won't take you very long to work it out. It also lasted less than an hour. I mean, they were annihilated, and it was the end of the Jacobite rebellion, and the king was victorious in the end. So not only were they horrendously defeated, apparently their suffering didn't end at the end of the battle because they still haunt the battlefield to this day, so people say, anyway. Every year on April 16, which is the anniversary of the battle, people see, I guess, a residual haunting of a reenactment of this battle. So...I'll get more into that bit in a bit but, um, people have apparently seen this reenactment, but it gets funny. But I'll tell you about this afterwards because I want to tell you this--this story about these two old ladies because this is the cutest ghost story I've ever heard.

Melanie: Nice.

Danielle: So, right, I like it because it works backwards, and to me, that is more logical than when somebody's told something's haunted and then sees a ghost.

Melanie: Mm-hmm.

Danielle: Other way around. So, I will show you this. These two old dears show up at a National Trust for Scotland site. National Trust for Scotland, basically, we put up an office in a nice little Museum next to historical buildings and places of historical interest and charge people to get into it to keep and maintain it because we love that shit. On a bank holiday weekend, we'll go to a castle, go through the cafe, go sit down in the castle, have a look around, come out, go through the gift shop and have another brew. That is a bank holiday weekend to the tee.

Melanie: Nice

Danielle: Literally tea. Anyway, so these two old dears go to this National Trust of Scotland site, and they asked if they could see a map which would show the route for this infamous Jacobite retreat. Now, the bit that I didn't talk about before was that, prior to the actual battle, there had been a failed surprise attack by the Jacobites. So, they had split into two and decided to ambush the Duke of Cumberland, which was the son of the king at the time (and nicknamed The Butcher) who they were going to be battling at some point or another, but they split into two to decide to go and surprise attack them. One of the armies, one side of the army, decided that it was just not workable, we're going home...well back to the camp, and went back. And that was about 2:00 a.m. in the morning. Well, the other half didn't get the message until nearly daybreak, when they were literally on top of Cumberland's camp, was, like, literally about to attack as far as I understand it, and then someone was like 'no! call it off!' so they all had to run. So this lady knew about this retreat, but she wanted to see the route of it, so she and her friend were looking at this map, and the--the helpful people in the gift shop at the National Trust were showing them the route that the--the retreats took (because we did take very good notes, I guess; someone took the time to write it down). So they're looking at this, and then the woman goes 'ah! there's my house!' So she sees on the route of the retreat that it runs right through her back garden. And she turns to her--her best friend, or old lady friend over there, and goes 'see! see! I told you! I told you!' Apparently, about five times over the last ten years, she'd been woken up in the early hours of the morning to the sounds of, very distinctly, soldiers running through her garden. Now, I don't know what soldiers running through a garden sounds like, but I imagine it probably gives off a little bit at a different aura, difference aural sound...

Melanie: Yeah.

Danielle: Transmission or whatever than your average running man? But she says that it sounds like soldiers. So she--she'd run up to the window to see, what the heck, who's running through her garden. And then she wouldn't see anything, but she'd still be able to hear them. And she was like 'I've always heard soldiers running through my garden.' and--and so this kind of gave her a little bit of validity in that the route of the retreat most likely went through her garden. So she is pretty convinced that she's heard the residual sounds of the Jacobites in retreat, which is quite interesting. Because it works backwards, I'm more likely to believe an old lady trying to prove herself right (because I know how that is) than somebody that goes somewhere that is known to be haunted and saying 'oh I saw a specter.' Well, you were expecting to see it so you're gonna see something. That's the other way around, it's a little bit more believable.

Melanie: Exactly.

Danielle: And the actual battlefield itself...I forgot what it's called already...Culloden, Culloden Moor, the actual battlefield itself has your typical array of ghosty apparitions. Mostly sounds: war cries, clashing swords, screaming in agony, those sorts of things. Especially around the anniversary of the event itself. So this is what I'm gonna get a little bit cynical because, interestingly enough, the author of the Outlander novels, name's Diana Gabaldon, have you heard of Outlander?

Melanie: Yes.

Danielle: Yeah. So the writer of these novels, right when she was releasing a book which happens to be talking about star-crossed lovers who were separated by this very specific battle, came out to say that she's been to the battlefield, and she was brought to tears by the feeling of dread and sadness of the--of the souls that were on the battlefield. So it was pretty highly, not highly but, you know, it was put in all the press and all the tabloids and everything about how she feels it was so much...she's just...knows it's haunted. She just knew, Melanie, when she went; she knew it may be haunted by all these souls. ‘Buy my book! It's so haunted, it's so, you know, it's such a horrible thing. Buy my book.’ So that happened.

Melanie: [laughs]

Danielle: Some other stuff that's happened: locals and tourists say that they are visions of unearthly specters over the graves of the Jacobites. Basically, the Jacobites were buried in mass graves right in the battlefield.

Melanie: Mass graves are the worst.

Danielle: Yeah there's loads of the burial mounds, there's loads of things like that around the battleground, they're just chucked in. One person claimed to have seen a tartan-clad man lay maimed and bloodied on the ground on the moor. So I wanted to look at see if the Jacobites would have actually worn tartan, but then I forgot and didn't. There's this whole thing about how tartan is associated with the Scots...Scottish. Ooh, they don't like, sorry with the Scots, Scottish...Scots.

Melanie: Stop offending people.

Danielle: I know, I just, you don't say Scotch, you say Scots. There's a whole thing about how the certain tartans weren't actually around until hundreds of years later and things like that, so I meant to go and have a look if it was even likely that someone in this battle would have been wearing tartan, but I didn't. I'm sorry...

Melanie: We'll never know!

Danielle: But that's the one thing I'm like, right, okay so if you're going to say that something so specific that they're wearing tartan, I'm gonna go find out if it was even likely that a Jacobite was wearing tartan, but I'll get into that another time. But the thing that the actual site themselves claim is that birds do not go near it. That is something that can be verified. So apparently birds don't go near the battlefield, and they certainly don't sing. So if they are passing by, or hopping along, they won't sing while they're at the battlefield. Now that is something the site itself, like, the sort of touristy bit of the site claims - there's no birdsong so that's definitely something that I'd like to explore further. that is, literally, you just have to go there and stand there, and if you don't hear any birds, you go 'huh, no birds. That is weird.' But if I hear a bird, then I'm gonna be like 'well that's obviously BS.' So...

Melanie: Bullshit!

Danielle: Yeah. So with this sort of battlefield ghosts, I mean, it was--it was horrendous and it was devastating for Highlanders. It's really gotta sting; this was their defeat. So I feel like these legends just ensure that the story of the battle continues. And that people don't forget how shit and nasty the English can be. So I don't blame them; ghost stories are a perfect way to do this. But I can't take away from peoples’...I can't take away peoples’, like, personal experiences. So I'm not pooh-poohing anyone that feels like they have actually seen something or heard something on any scale because I wouldn't be so bold as to say that I'm right and they're wrong. But it just seems too perfect for me that a place where the Scottish would want people to remember a battle that they want people to be pissed off about, you know, the best way to do that is to build a legend around it. So the legend around it is that it's incredibly haunted

Melanie: Yeah.

Danielle: So it's a really good way to transmit a cautionary tale, you know, about how shit the English are. You'd think we'd learn but, you know...and that was Culloden Moor, anyway. Do you want me to do my other one?

Melanie: Yeah, do it!

Danielle: The second one that I thought I'd do...I knew you'd have to do Civil War, if you were doing the US; that's the only war you fought on your own soil. Unless you did Pearl Harbor, which I don't really know if counts as a battlefield, really.

Melanie: Right?

Danielle: It's a location of war, but it's, you know, like warfare but not necessarily battlefield. It was a bit one-sided.

Melanie: Yeah, a battlefield is where two forces are clashing.

Danielle: So I thought that I would sort of educate, in a way, your side of the pond in that we also had a civil war. So we have, you know, we have had a civil war was between the Parliamentarians and the Royalists, because there was a time in our history where the kings and queens of the Royals were not looked upon favorably by a certain sector of the population. They were taking the piss and so Parliamentarians, people that wanted to have a more democratic - I'm gonna say that with a pinch of salt because it was…it was a religious revolution more than it was a political one. And one of the greatest battles of the Civil War took place in 1642 in Warwickshire. It was called the Battle of Edgehill. It was, as you can imagine, pretty horrendous; thousands died and it ended up being strategically moot because both sides lost about the same amount of people. It added no strategic advantage to one side or the other, and the war continued, and it didn't seem to really have much of an effect other than the fact that they all had less people. But they ALL had less people so, you know, it didn't leave anyone with any advantage, so it was kind of a bit, you know, shittily planned battle.

Melanie: Yeah, pointless.

Danielle: Yeah. The funny thing about this particular haunting is that it happens almost immediately. So, you know, you've usually got a little bit of time between when a tragedy occurs and you start seeing ghosts.

Melanie: Yeah.

Danielle: Well, this literally happens less than two months later. So it happens in about November, that was (I’m trying to remember now) October, at the end of October, in 1642, and just before Christmas, a shepherd reported seeing a reenactment of the battle. But not just, you know, on the ground, like your typical reenactment. Up in the sky! Above the battlefield. Right, so you could hear the clashes of armor, cries of the dying, screams, voices, even horses up in the sky. So he runs and he tells his priest like ‘I just saw this great battle in the sky over the battlefield at Edgehill.’ And what does the priest say, do you think?

Melanie: That he's drunk.

Danielle: No. ‘I saw it, too!’

Melanie: Oh, shit.

Danielle: The priest tells him ‘I saw it too! I thought I was going mad!’ Now, I don't think if he said that bit but he said ‘I saw it, too’. And over the next few days, apparently, more and more locals reported to seeing the phantom battle in the sky. So much so that they produced a pamphlet in 1643 (so this is the next year) called A Great Wonder in Heaven. And it detailed all the different peoples’ accounts of this battle.

Melanie: Yeah.

Danielle: Right. So this little, you know, town who's made this pamphlet about this haunted battlefield, and the king finds out, and he's very intrigued. So he sends his, he sends his bros down to see what the fuck is going on, right? So it's in Warwickshire, so it's not that far. He sends him up from London. And, lo and behold, his cronies see the phantoms at the battlefield, too! Not only did they see this phantom battle going on in the sky, but they could recognize people who were in it. This only happened two months previous. Their comrades up there, and I can actually see, apparently, their friends and their, you know, their confidants up in the sky.

Melanie: Oh no, it’s Jeff, he's getting stabbed! Run, Jeff!

Danielle: Exactly. There's one particularly interesting one which was the king’s standard bearer. And for those of you don't know what a standard bearer is, it's the person that is tasked with holding the flag that has the standard of the king on it. So they don't actually fight, they're not soldiers, but they're usually highly…they were soldiers, and usually are very highly decorated, but their role on the battlefield is not to take part in the battle but to hold the standard. And if the standard falls into the hands of the other side, it's kind of like they win the battle. It's kind of like capture the flag.

Melanie: Wow…

Danielle: [laughs] So I don't think that people would just, like, surrender if the other side had the flag, I think people would keep fighting, but it's kind of like symbolic? If the other side has your standard, then it's like ‘oh shit, we're losing!’ So, you know, it could either serve as motivation to fight a little harder or it could make you feel despair that you're losing. It depends on your predisposition

Melanie: I would imagine they kept those guys at the back, right? They had to work their way through?

Danielle: I mean, it would usually be quite close to the king, so the king will be pretty heavily protected. Or, you know, like the commander of the particular rank…you know, the most highly ranked person there because you'd have to have a standard bearer there to sort of decree so everybody knew whose side was who, I guess. I'm not an expert on these things, but there's always somebody holding a standard. I think that it shows up in Game of Thrones at some point, so if you guys wanted…that really did happen, people did really hold flags. But this guy, Sir Edmund Verney, was the standard bearer for this battle and had gallantly refused to let go of the standard when it was being, like, yanked from him by the other side. So they chopped off his hand and his arm to get at the standard and then got it. So, apparently, these guys who had come down or up from London to have a look, saw their friend Sir Edmund Verney getting his hand lobbed off and the standard taken. PSI…is it PSI? Side note: the Royalists do get the standard back, and, apparently, they get it back and his hand was still clasping onto the pole. What a guy! Still, you know, and the Parliamentarians hadn't, you know, tried to rip it off. It was time-consuming, I guess. So apparently when they got the standard back, his hand was still attached. So this guy was pretty well thought of. There's this sort of…he's almost martyred, if you will. The standard bearer of the King, ‘til his dying breath, held the standard and had to have his arm cut off before he would be able to have it pried from his hands, right? So, can you say propaganda with me?

Melanie: Yeah.

Danielle: So these people that have come up from the king just happen to see the hero of the battle, if you will, Sir Edmund Verney, getting his hand lobbed off and the--the standard being yoinked. So I'm not saying the story’s bullshit or anything, but [laughs].

Melanie: I don't know, watching the whole battle in the sky sounds pretty realistic to me.

Danielle: I just mean that their--their particular account of their friend Sir Eddie there. So yeah, but it certainly makes for interesting telling to the king when they get back, which they do, more on that later. So the villagers and, I imagine the priest, who in no way makes any money from this, wink wink, decide to give all the corpses a proper Christian burial. So they get the proper rite, it's the Christian rites, as they're being…because obviously they've just been kind of dumped in this field. It was only two months ago; some of them were probably still sticking out of the ground. And apparently, for the time being, the great ghost battle in the sky stopped. So apparently burying them in Christian graves by the priest and getting all of their last rites, apparently settled their souls for a time.

Melanie: That's usually the way to do it.

Danielle: Yeah, well, it seems to be pretty consistent in these kind of stories that they need some kind of resolution, unfinished business, if you will.

Melanie: Yeah.

Danielle: Contradictory to this, people still report to hear shit to this day. So, at the time, they were quite happy with settling, you know, settling it and saying, ‘Listen we gave them all Christian burials and everything went away.’ Well that's very good Christian propaganda, end of story, right? Well, as time has gone on, people have latched on to the ghost story a little bit more. And the whole thing about God Almighty letting them all settle at the end, you know, as long as they've got their rites? That's finished, we don't believe that anymore, do we? So people still report to hear shit like screams, cannon fire, hooves galloping, and battle cries on the site, especially around the anniversary. Like a week or so before a fair or a carnival or something that doesn’t need press or publicity or anything. Suddenly people will start hearing shit and it gets into the local paper and at the bottom of it might seem like ‘oh we're having a carnival!’ I'm not cynical or anything…

[Both laugh]

Danielle: But it's infamously haunted, this place, Edgehill. Interestingly, and this is my last little fact on this, because this is--this is the most fun fact for me because of all the…both these stories I can easily dismiss as…the first one was Scottish making up legends to try to, you know, demonstrate how shit the English are, and then this one clearly a religious one because the Civil War was a religious war. But this, this is funny because this is the historical impact that this ghost story's had on our country. Because the king sent this official committee, if you will, to go and investigate this? Their account is held in the public records office.

Melanie: Nice.

Danielle: So it is the only officially recognized phantom battlefield in Britain. In fact, any ghosts whatsoever. It is an officially recognized haunted location according to the public records office because the king sent an official group of people to go and get an account. They wrote it all down, it went into the public records, eventually into the archives. So, legally, it’s haunted.

Melanie: Yeah, totally real. That’s awesome.

[both laugh]

Danielle: I don’t know if there’s any other legally, you know, officially recognized haunted places. I think things that are of historical interest, the haunting will be included in that. But in this particular case, the haunting is the record.

Melanie: Wow, that’s awesome.

Danielle: I thought that was pretty cool. I actually tried to find the official document within the public records, but it's not that easy to track down because it's not really called like the public records office anymore, it's like the National Archives. And they haven't digitized everything yet. So it's there, but I’d have to actually go to London and go through the National Archives and find it.

Melanie: If you ever do that, you could put that in the notes on our sites.

Danielle: I wanted to quote it. I wanted to quote it, I wanted to read it and be able to tell you what these dudes actually said. Like, ‘Lo, before me ‘twas the face of Sir Edmund, my friend.’ [laughs] I wanted to hear what he actually had to say. Anyway, so those are my battlefields.

Melanie: All right. Well then, in our last few minutes, let me just get in a cryptid and a yokai.

Danielle: All right.

Melanie: So the one cryptid that I did want to bring up is [says ominously] Old Green Eyes.

Danielle: Okay.

Melanie: So Old Green Eyes, he appeared...it's believed that he appeared before the battle but he really became popular around the time of the Battle of Chickamauga. And I have some details on that. It's the second bloodiest battle of the Civil War, second only to the Battle of Gettysburg. A shit ton of people died…where is me notes? Ope, there it is. Sorry.

Danielle: Organized as ever!

Melanie: Yeah, right? So the Battle of Chickamauga took care took place in Catoosa City in Georgia. It was a two day long battle. 3,969 people died. And right after that, even during the battle, it was said that the--the smell of blood, the screaming, the devastation…so much blood was spilled that a creature of great malice was drawn to the devastation. Most people believe it's a ghoul. It's not so much a ghost as a creature that stands about six to seven feet tall, humanlike. Some people say it's got long black hair and bright green, glowing eyes. They kind of, they have that--that green that almost turns orange; that shift of, like, night vision, like in a wolf.

Danielle: Like 1990s, you know, Fresh Prince hats.

Melanie: [laughs] Yes. But he has a huge deformed jaw and terrifying fangs (some people say fangs and some people say tusks) protruding. And he came to eat the dead. I wanted to, I didn't have enough time, but I wanted to see if there was any sort of, you know, native lore on a creature like that that might have been around that area. I'm still going to research that and, if I can come up with some facts, then I'm gonna throw that on one of our pages because I thought it was really interesting.

Danielle: Was it in Virginia again?

Melanie: Georgia, I believe. [Sound of notes shuffling] Yes, Georgia. And he's been seen over and over and over again. There was this one telling that there was this guy who was like a park ranger, and he'd seen it a good couple times. I meant to write down his name. I think it was Tidds or Timmons or Tiddly. [Laughs]

Danielle: TT, my friend!

Melanie: The park where this battle took place, it's kind of like Lovers Lane. It's a good makeout spot for a lot of people, and there have been numerous people that felt, like, while they were making out, all of a sudden this hot breath on the back of their neck.

Danielle: That’s very romantic.

Melanie: Then they turn around and they'll just see these big, bright green eyes. Then, of course, [clap sound] they fucking book. Sorry about my loud clapping. And then they fucking book. And this one park ranger had seen him a good few times. And it's interesting that, as the years progressed, the ghoul progressed. So whereas before he was a mostly naked kind of ghoul, but some people will see him now and they see him with a top hat or like a long black coat. And back in the 60s or…60s? I want to say 60s or 70s. No. Yes. One of them have this really racist viewing of it. They saw this tall…with gold green eyes and had the six feet tall and a big white head as if it was hair was wrapped up in something. And the person who walked upon it seeing it, seeing this giant, like, not hairy but human-like thing but so dark in the shadows but this big white thing on their head, they hear a baby crying, and they go to go approach them and, you know, say ‘what--what was going on? Can--can we help?’ and they described it as looking like an African American with their head wrapped up in a towel and then said in a big burly deep voice [speaks in growly voice] ‘just leave me alone’.

Danielle: Sounds like a Voodoo demon. I'm trying to remember. There's lots of fun folklore about particular, um, I think he's the sort of Voodoo version of death or, you know, like the Grim Reaper type of thing. Sounds a bit like him. I'm trying to remember what he's called.

Melanie: Oh, I know it.

Danielle: He’s sort of like half zombie half, you know, beast humanoid with the green theme is running through that one as well, but he's got white face paint on. He's definitely a black man with the top hat.

Melanie: I know his name. I have it in my flipping head.

Danielle: I know, it’s so bugging me.

Melanie: It’s like Big Daddy Saminy...Samily? Sam…something. Shit.

Danielle: We’ll remember like ten seconds after we finish this.

Melanie: Yeah.

Danielle: But Big Green sounds a lot like that legend.

Melanie: Old Green Eyes evolved and I think probably, I think initially it was just something that somebody was seeing when they were really, really terrified though. All of this monstrosity is going on, a monster in the mix really doesn't seem that out of place right now. But…

Danielle: So people on the battlefield themselves reported to seeing this thing before they went into battle?

Melanie: Yeah or during, in the middle of battle.

Danielle: Ooooh.

Melanie: Yeah. That was interesting. So some people had seen it or had been talking about it before the battle. But none of the soldiers who were there knew anything about it at all. They all of a sudden just see this--this tall huge creature with this massively deformed jaw just, like, slinking out from the woods to grab a corpse and pull it back in to eat it.

Danielle: Could it not possibly be an animal, but it's all fucked up and mangy looking because there's a war going on?

Melanie: Absolutely, especially because of the--the green eyes. And some people say that the green eyes turned from green to orange so it had that nighttime reflective much like a wolf, I think like that. But I did think that was neat with the whole, like, the tusks and the deformed jaw, I think it's really terrifying. Some of the images I found were downright spooky. And I love a good monster so I--I'm all about Old Green Eyes. But, over time, I think that it was interesting that he sort of evolved to just sort of be this like racist creature.

Danielle: Yeah, it’s a bit odd, that’s very telling.

Melanie: Yes, and that's how humans are, you know? We latch onto a story, and we sort of evolve it with--with us. And then my last thing I want to mention is my yokai because, with any topic, there's a yokai for that. My yokai is…I went with the Kosenjōbi which is a demon fire. It's made from the blood of warriors and animals that died in battle. The blood soaks into the earth and then the Kosenjōbi rises from the--the blood-soaked earth into the air at night, creating fiery shapes or orbs. They occasionally take the form of fallen warriors or animals, but mostly it just sees just balls of flame. And that's really predominant a lot of Japanese, like, mythology. Same thing with Chinese mythology, too. They do the big flaming balls of hate, fear, children, all kinds of things. But these ones are specific to battlefields. It’s said they, once again, they wander around the fields looking for their missing body parts. They're harmless but spooky.

Danielle: See, to me, oh you know the whole thing, everything that we've both researched, that all of it is not happy, right? And it’s never going to be happy when you're researching the ghosts of fallen soldiers. But these particular stories have a very clear message. All of them have a clear message: that war and battles and death like this is just bullshit. It's just...shit, it's shit; it creates horrible monsters, it creates balls of flame that could possibly represent like anger and hatred. You know the great sort of battles that are being reenacted with our friends dying over and over and over again, all of it has a very...although you can sort of twist it and mold it to your own narrative as much as you want. Overwhelmingly the, you know, without any doubt, going into it and coming out of it, this topic was going to come out. The moral of the story is: war is bad, m’kay?

Melanie: War sucks.

Danielle: War sucks. So yeah, any story that comes out of a battlefield, anything like that, I'm going to be a little, I suppose, I'm very skeptical and cynical of it, obviously. But I am NOT cynical of the message that is being…so if in Japanese culture they believe in this fiery, you know, beast if…sorry in this fiery yokai. If in Georgia they believe in this, you know, cannibalistic man-pig thing that comes and devours these bodies of the dead and--and--and mine as well, it just, you know, it's sad. It's sad that we don't listen to these things and…or at least that we manipulated the actual stories of the event to fit this kind of weird spooky side story and not actually tell the true stories or what actually…I'm sorry, I'm getting a little preachy, but I don't really like war.

[Both laugh]

Melanie: War, not so much fun.

Danielle: No, it's a little bit depressing. Because, after all of this, like, we've had a laugh and we've added this or we’ve added that, but these people really did actually exist at one point and they were killed horrendously. So just thought I'd end our little topic there, just like, sorry guys, you know...shit, no, sorry guys, sorry.

Melanie: I wanted to go into the stories of what generals took what where and--and all those details but there's so much and war, it's such a huge, huge topic that I unfortunately went the lame route of just, like, there was a battle and people died there. It was, you know, they had names they--they had families and the amount of places that General E Lee apparently haunts is hysterical.

Danielle: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I imagine. I think I've seen a few documentaries because allegedly the spirit of, you know, you’re going ‘yeah well isn't he meant to be haunting that other place?’ Like, he gets around.

Melanie: You know he seriously haunts, like, 60 different places.

Danielle: If you could, would you multi-haunt? Like, if you were a ghost and you could go on holiday and haunt loads of different places, wouldn't you?

Melanie: Probably.

Danielle: Yeah! You wouldn’t want to be in the same spot all the time.

Melanie: You’re, like, stuck here, you might as well…I'm gonna haunt Disneyland. Was never there, but I’m gonna do it.

Danielle: I'm gonna latch on to this guy because this accent does not sound familiar, and I want to know where it goes.

Melanie: Hey, where does he come from?

Danielle: [in slight southern accent] Oh Spain! I’ve never been here before!

Melanie: [in southern accent] This is neat!

Danielle: That was my really bad southern accent, but I tried not to do it over the top. [laughs] Okay, so, well, that was a lot of shit there for the Zombie Fishbowl.

Melanie: Indeed it was. I think we did some stuff.

Danielle: Stuff definitely happened.

Melanie: Definitely.

[Both laugh]

Danielle: And if, after all that stuff, you enjoyed it and want to listen to us again for some reason, please, please, please subscribe. And, if you could, rate and review us, that would be awesome.

Melanie: And tell your friends.

Danielle: Yes please! You can also follow us on Twitter and Instagram and join our Facebook page all under Zombie Fishbowl Podcast. It's dead easy.

Melanie: And if you want to contact us to tell us where we're wrong about something, which I'm sure there's plenty of that, and want to request a topic to be added to the random topic picker, you can email us at Zombie…hold on, my brain, [email protected].

Danielle: No hate mail, though.

Melanie: Speak for yourself. [evil laugh]

Danielle: All right. Thank you so much for listening to our little podcast. If we, sorry, we really want to do well, so any feedback would be received with much, much love and humility. Also, if you want my list of sources or Melanie’s list of sources at any point, give us a shout and we'll give you the details. I'll keep track of any scientific journals and stuff whenever I mention them, which I didn't this episode. It was a bit tricky to shoehorn in, but I'll try harder next time

Melanie: Well that just leaves us to say goodbye and thank you.

Danielle: And I will leave you with a quote by one of the greatest minds of the 20th century: ‘In critical moments, men see exactly what they wish to see.’

Melanie: Danielle, is that a Spock quote?

Danielle: Yes.

Melanie: For fuck's sake.

[Laughter]

Danielle: Bye!

Melanie: Wait! We need to pick a topic!

Danielle: Oh shit! I forgot!

[Laughter]

Danielle: Right, okay. I'll pick a topic right now. I'm going to the random topic picker. [Singing] Random topic picker, random topic picker, pick a random topic, I’m a topic random picker.

[Laughter]

Melanie: That was solid!

Danielle: You want to know our next topic?

Melanie: Yes.

Danielle: Mummies!

Melanie: Oh, that's exciting!

Danielle: Yes.

Melanie: And on that note, bye!

Danielle: Bye!

[Laughter]

[Outro music]

#podcast #podcast transcript #transcripted podcasts #paranormal #paranormal podcast #transcript

0 notes