Lore - Episode 217: Deadly Currents

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

While humans have depended on them for fresh water and transportation over the millennia, the rivers in our community have also become home to terrifying folklore.  Written and produced by Aaron Mahnke, with research by GennaRose Nethercott and music by Chad Lawson. ———————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com Access premium content! ©2022 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.   To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to [e-mail], or visit our listing here.

Elisha Perkins was born in Connecticut back in 1741 and trained as a physician before opening his own practice. He happily carried on the family business for years until, in the 1790s, he struck upon a new idea. You see, he had discovered a new tool of medicine and he was ready to let the world come and benefit from its powers. He called them Perkins tractors and they were a pair of metal pins, maybe 3 inches long, that were fat at one end and pointed at the other, sort of like two long, elegant nails,

and their power was quite extraordinary. All a person had to do was stand over a patient who was battling some painful ailment and use these Perkins tractors to trace the area in question and, like magic, their troubles would go away. In a world of bloodletting and leeches, these tools were different. No skin was broken and no blood was drawn. The sick person never even felt a twinge of pain and, for the modern equivalent of about $900, anyone could buy a pair from him.

After John Hagarth, a British physician who was a little bit skeptical about the claims that Perkins was making, so in 1799 he gathered together a bunch of patients and split them into two groups. One received treatment with real metal Perkins tractors, while he used wooden versions on the others. And guess what, the results were the same. They didn't call it this at the time, but Hagarth had become the first person to scientifically demonstrate the placebo effect.

He showed just how powerful belief can be, specifically in the medical world, but also everywhere else. Our power of imagination is pretty amazing. We humans have this incredible ability to pour so much belief into an idea or an outcome that, sometimes, on rare occasions, it actually comes true. And the same can be said for stories, because sometimes folklore is born in the most mysterious places. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore.

Like a lot of you, I grew up near a river. There are a lot of them out there, and depending on where you live, they're either dried up remnants of something bigger or a wide expanse of water used by the entire community for fun and recreation, and most are somewhere in between. But in the bottom-left corner of Pennsylvania and the top-left corner of West Virginia, there's a river that many people think is special. Now one reason is because it flows from south to north, and it's a common misconception that all rivers must flow south.

I know because I grew up alongside a northward-flowing river in Illinois and was taught the exact same thing, but it's just a myth. But the Monongahela River in that little corner of Pennsylvania and West Virginia has other reasons to be considered special. Yes, it has a big community life, with miles of trails for bikers and hikers on land, plus anyone with a boat and a fishing pole, but that's not why locals think it's special. Some say it's because of how deep the river is, 20 feet or more in some places. Others say it's past tragedies that took place there, like the Battle of Monongahela,

which saw nearly a thousand British soldiers ambushed and killed by the French and their Native American allies on July 9th of 1755. An awful lot of blood was spilled into the river that day, and some folks might say that that has power to do things. Oh, and as a side note, the only reason the remaining 500 British soldiers didn't die that day was because one lowly 23-year-old aid to camp took charge and pulled off a miraculous retreat saving their lives. His name?

George Washington. But back to the river. You see, over the years, stories have cropped up about mysterious creatures in the region, and I think it would be worth exploring a few right now. But buckle up, because to tour that folklore is to experience the bizarre and the weird. Since the early 1970s, folks in Granttown, West Virginia have whispered about a bigfoot type creature that's rumored to haunt the woods there, about five miles from the river. They say it's frequently seen near the old coal mining areas, and sometimes refer to

it as the Granttown Goon. A similar sort of creature is said to live farther inland near the town of Grafton. Like the Goon, the beast of Grafton is often described as a sort of bigfoot creature, standing nearly 10 feet tall with wide, athletic shoulders. But rather than being covered in red or brown hair, the beast is said to have pale, slippery skin like a seal. Back in June of 1964, a reporter for the Grafton Sentinel was driving home from work close to midnight when he spotted the creature.

In the weeks that followed, more than 20 other sightings were reported, putting the community in a sort of panic. Folks organized hunts, and much of the wooded areas around town were explored, but to no fail. But the creature most people talk about also has a name that might get as many laughs. They call it the sheep-squatch, and yes, you can probably get a sense for its common descriptions just by its name. They say it's a dog-shaped beast the size of a bear, but covered in white fur reminiscent

of a sheep. Back in the mid-1990s, a number of sightings were reported. One man, a former Navy SEAL, claims that he watched the creature walk out of the woods and drink from a stream. That same year, two children told their parents they saw it standing on its hind legs at the edge of their yard. But the most terrifying encounter with the sheep-squatch took place back in 1929. Frank Kozel was a local miner, a mine employee, not a child, mind you, and had just left work

after nearly 12 hours in the earth. He was tired and dirty, and really just wanted to get home and clean up and have something to eat. Exhausted at the mere thought of the six-mile walk he had in front of him through the brutal July heat, Frank decided to leave the road and take a shortcut through the woods. It was cooler in there, and the shade was a welcome treat. But halfway through, he spotted something through the foliage that caused him to catch his breath.

It was a pale white beast, roughly shaped like a dog, but with horns and long fangs. And it was looking at him. Frank took off running, as any of us would have done in a similar situation, but the creature was faster. In seconds, it was upon him, slashing out with its claws and snapping its vicious mouth at him. Frank used his empty metal lunchbox as a club, batting the monster away, but nothing worked. Breaking away, Frank ran faster, this time leaving the forest, but the creature followed.

And then, by pure chance, he came upon an old cemetery and hopped the low wall to get inside. The moment he did, the beast stopped and disappeared, as if it had never been there at all. And that's when he noticed the most unusual part of his encounter. Looking down at his arms and legs, he inspected himself to see how bad his injuries were, only to discover something that didn't make sense. He had escaped the monster, without a scratch. As you can imagine, rumors have a way of becoming something more.

One story here or there, a careless whisper or a frightful report, is all it might take to put an entire community on edge. And that's exactly what they say has happened over the years, along the Monongahela River. Folks who talk about Mononghi always describe him the same simple way. Mononghi is a half-man, half-fish creature that has lived for centuries in the waters of the river from which he gets his name. It has a sort of Fiji mermaid feel to it, or maybe something out of the island of Dr. Moro by H.G. Wells.

Now, some people think that the Battle of Monongahela back in 1755 was the moment it was born, that the blood from that encounter helped transform something natural into something darker. If you believe the stories, it was around that time that the local Native American community started to talk about the creature. Everything has a birth story, I suppose, so maybe they're right. In the 1930s, though, locals started to report seeing things in the river. Some even blame Mononghi on the disappearance of a World War II bomber in 1956, which crashed

into the river there. Two of the crewmen never made it out of the river alive, and the plane was never recovered. Both the work of Mononghi, they say. Reports became so frequent in the middle of the 20th century that the police were said to have formed a task force specifically designed to document and investigate the stories. On a weekly basis, sightings were said to have taken place, hinting that Mononghi had become incredibly active. But it wasn't until 2003 that anyone was able to track down proof.

That's the year that a local fisherman posted a series of photos online of the creature. But when those photos mysteriously disappeared, folks started to suspect a cover-up. Clearly, it was in the government's best interest to avoid a community-wide panic. And Mononghi hasn't gone away. Back in 2010, swimmers gathered for a race in the river just south of Pittsburgh. They simply called it the Search for Mononghi. And 52 swimmers showed up to complete the 1.2-mile loop, hoping that their activity in the water might tempt the river monster out of hiding.

He never appeared, though, much to the disappointment of the people who gathered to see him. But here's the thing. All of these stories, from the modern fishing boat photos to that 2010 swimming race, only appear on the historical record after 2010. Yes, the race was built around the theme of a local legend. But those 1930s police task force stories, the descriptions from sightings, all of it first appear in print in an article from 2015. And true to the dependable qualities of the internet, every other article out there about

Mononghi simply repeats the same details from that 2015 piece. I'm not saying that locals might not have whispered stories about something in the river in that area. But it's also pretty clear that it exists at all in some form or another, simply because people believe it does. Call it the placebo effect. Call it the power of our imagination. Call it whatever you want.

But it's clearly a moment in time that shows us just how easy it is for a rumor to be accepted as fact and then spread around our global community on the wind of excitement and fear. Which in the end is the true core of folklore, isn't it? Because whether a story is real or not, that doesn't change. How powerful it can be. Folklore can be frightening enough when it's complete fiction, but when there are historical records to back it up, that's when things become truly terrifying. Which is what makes one last creature so alluring to the people in the area around the confluence

of the Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela rivers. The first story we have on record comes to us from 1746. In October of that year, the Nichols family reported that their 12-year-old son was fishing along the river, in full view of everyone else there, and without warning, an enormous creature lunged out of the water, took hold of the boy with its long tail, and then dragged him under, never to be seen again. Those who saw it described the creature as a massive turtle the size of a bear, which sounds frightening enough.

But when one of the other Nichols children woke in the middle of the night to the sound of something massive rubbing against the side of their house, the family decided enough was enough. They, along with their closest neighbors, all packed up and left, rather than risk another encounter with the beast. A couple of decades later, a young man at Fort Harmer near Marietta, Ohio witnessed something so traumatic that he had to write to his parents about it. He started his letter off by explaining what the rumors had been, that there was some monstrous

amphibious creature that mostly came out at night to hunt on the riverbank. They lie in the deer paths, he wrote, undiscovered behind an old stump, until the deer, unaware of its enemy, passes over it. This creature immediately seizes him, and entangling him in its tail, draws him to the water where he drowns and then devours him. It was troubling enough to hear the stories, but this young man apparently had his own brush with the creature too. He claimed that he and a group of his friends had been out along the river early one morning,

when they spotted one of these creatures still wrestling with a deer it had captured. They tried to save the deer by beating on the monster with their clubs, and while they managed to kill it, the poor deer did not survive. He claims that the men weighed the creature, and it was over 440 pounds, which is just massive. It had a shell just like any turtle you might see today, only as big around as a grown man. And apparently, this creature was already commonly known to the Native Americans of the area before white settlers even arrived, and they had a name for it too, the Ogwa.

But one or two encounters doesn't make a pattern, which is why a story from May of 1983 is so important, because it shows that the monster and the folklore surrounding it has managed to hold on all these centuries later. According to the story, a local man named John White was fishing near the town of Rivesville, where the Monongahela River joins up with Paw Paw Creek, and when you fish, you keep your eye on the water, which is how he spotted it. At first it just looked like some small waves, almost like the ripples that form around a boulder when the current is fast.

But as John watched it, he noticed that the shape the waves were passing around was actually moving toward the shore, and more specifically toward him. Now John claimed that he saw a long fin rise up from the water, but I can't help but wonder if it really wasn't the creature's tail. There's no fin on the monster in the earlier descriptions, but they do all mention a really long, almost serpent-like tail. Regardless, the sight of it caused John to panic, and he stepped a good way back from the water's edge.

And just in time, too, because as he did, the large, boulder-like shape reached the bank and then turned quickly around, swinging its tail at the spot where John had been standing. A moment later, it disappeared. Seeing this to say, John White never fished in that spot ever again. It's hard to deny the power of belief. For thousands of years, we humans have been filling in the blanks of our understanding of the world with story. And for many of us, those stories have become incredibly real.

One thing to help process the power of folklore is to think of it like a recipe for a good meal. At the core level, there are ingredients and conditions you need to make it all come together, like raw dough and pizza toppings, combined with brief but intense heat. Putting them together, you get something delicious that didn't exist before. And what's important to understand about the stories of monstrous creatures in or near the Monongahela River is that they didn't form in a vacuum. It's harsh territory and always has been.

And when things are dangerous, it's easy to imagine other, more terrifying reasons why. Add in the economic troubles of the last few decades, as the coal industry has faded from prominence and you have a recipe for story. As more and more of the mines in the area closed up, those cryptid sightings exploded. Life became unpredictable and full of unknowns, and those are the sort of gaps that folklore tends to flood into and fill up. But let me throw a wrench into the works for a moment, because sometimes nature does offer an explanation, and there are some who think the answer to the Monongahela River's many

mysteries can be found right there in the zoological data. It's called the Hellbender Salamander, although many people simply call it the Devil Dog, and it's the largest aquatic salamander in the United States. It's known to grow as long as two and a half feet, and while harmless to humans, it does sometimes hunt for meat. I'm not sure I can declare with confidence that the nickel's boy was dragged into the water by an actual undocumented monster, or whether the young man who wrote that letter a few years later was documenting something still unknown to science.

None of us were there, so it's impossible to say. But they certainly encountered something, and the fear and whispers from those moments has left a very real, very powerful mark on the community. That at least is difficult to deny, and while it can often feel a bit like a shell game, believing the story is about one thing when it's really about another, what's important is the belief itself. Because in the end, whether we're talking about communal fiction or documented fact, all of us have something to be afraid of.

I hope today's journey down the Minangahela River made it clear just how packed with stories the waterways around us truly are. From big foot-like creatures to things just beneath the surface, it seems there's a lot to be afraid of, if you know where to look. But there are other troubled waters around the globe, and in one place in particular, the historical record maintains a careful balance with horrifying story. And if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll tell you all about it. This episode of Lore was made possible by Simply Safe.

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monitoring at simplysafe.com slash lore. There's no safe like Simply Safe. This episode is also sponsored by BetterHelp. I recently purchased a new camera for making YouTube content for lore, but that was overwhelmed by the complexity of the thing. Thankfully, it came with an owner's manual, and I was able to figure out what I needed to learn. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with a user manual, so when it's not working for

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I love those aha moments that come with learning. When a topic finally makes sense or I learn something cool, like what I just learned from watching the new program, Secrets of the Occult on Wondrium. For example, did you know that back in 1946, a follower of Alistair Crawley tried to conjure the goddess Babylon and in the process, some believe he may have actually opened a portal for UFOs or the demon entities that control them before dying in a mysterious explosion. I know, crazy stuff, right? With Wondrium, we get to learn all about whatever we want, whenever we want, with unlimited

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Sign up today through my special URL to get this offer. Go to Wondrium dot com slash lore. Again, that's W-O-N-D-R-I-U-M dot com slash lore, Wondrium dot com slash lore. I mentioned the Fiji Mermaid a few moments ago, something I assume most people have heard about before. The one that really became famous was displayed in 1842 by P. T. Barnum as part of his American Museum in New York City. But most folks forget that it was actually discovered by someone else.

Samuel Barrett Eads was a captain of a merchant vessel in the early 1800s. And during an 1822 voyage east across the Pacific, he met some Japanese sailors who sold him the mermaid for a hefty price. Money, by the way, that Samuel borrowed from the ship's own expense funds. And the key connection here would be the Japanese sailors. Because while the mummified corpse of what appeared to be the top half of a monkey and the back end of a fish might have seemed like a new thing to the American captain. It was old hat back in Japan.

But a good amount of that unusual taxidermy was actually aimed at a different creature than a mermaid. And rather than being ocean bound, this one preferred to live in rivers. They call them Kappa, and they are described as reptilian-like creatures roughly in the form of a human child, but with scales, webbed hands, and a turtle-like shell. They're also reported to emit a horrible stench, and they supposedly have an indentation on the top of their heads that holds water. If that water gets spilled, the creature will die.

Now the Kappa are a rather interesting corner of folklore. They're mostly viewed as predators, capable of superhuman strength and responsible for kidnapping, assaulting, and murdering anyone they come across. One thing that popped up in our research over and over again was just how obsessed the Kappa were with the human anus. And while there's a lot more I could say about that, I'm just going to leave that one alone. The Kappa were also said to be highly intelligent, capable of learning languages, and also proud

and honorable. In fact, one rumored method for killing them if you met one on land was to bow, because the Kappa would be compelled to bow in return, which would spill the water in their head, killing them. And apart from murder and assault, there was one thing the Kappa loved more than most. Acucumbers, which no, I really don't understand, but let's just file that little detail away in case it becomes important later. Now, looking through Japanese history, one thing that really jumps out is how the Kappa

have always been treated as real creatures in need of study and documentation. As far back as the Edo period, which began around 1603, there were scientific studies being published about them, complete with anatomical drawings, as if the authors of the reports had actually examined them as they wrote. In the mid-1700s, someone brought a mysterious creature to an herbalist named Ito Chobe and asked him to identify it. When he consulted in older reports and sketch of the Kappa, he discovered it was a match. They were even known to swim in the moat around Edo Castle well into the late 18th century.

Back to that unusual taxidermy, though. In the spring of 2014, a mummified Kappa arm went on display in a museum in Miyazaka. It was one of a whole number of mummified Kappa that had appeared throughout history, all in various states of decay and completeness. But honestly, what most people want is a chance to see a live one. And if you happen to be visiting Japan, you might just be in luck. There seems to be a spot behind the temple in Tano City, known as Kappabuchi, where the river is clear and deep.

And legend says it's home to a whole population of the mysterious creatures. Today, tourists flock there for a chance to witness one firsthand. Although judging by the legends, I doubt that would end well for the humans. But there's also a fisherman on duty there who uses his own handmade fishing pole. And the bait of choice? Cucumber, of course. Unsurprisingly, the current fisherman has never seen a Kappa in the flesh, but he claims his predecessor did.

Three times, in fact, complete with its red skin and dish-like indentation on the head. Today it's believed that the Kappa is a tool of folklore designed by farmers long ago to keep their children safe near dangerous rivers. And that would make a lot of sense. Lots of folklore is educational and protective in nature. But there are others who disagree. They believe people have been seen a real living creature over the centuries. It's just not a mythical beast.

No, they think everyone has been misidentifying the Japanese giant salamander. And once you hear about it, you might see why. Also known as the hanzaki, these salamanders can grow up to five feet long and weigh in at over 50 pounds. They're carnivorous, with sharp teeth and dark skin, and even emit a strong fowl odor. Just like the Kappa of legend. Fact or fiction, I'll let you decide. But if you find yourself strolling a riverbank in Japan any time soon, you might be wise

to keep one eye on the water, and your nose to the wind. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Jenna Rose Nethercott and music by Chad Lawson. Lore is much more than just a podcast. There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more lore in your life. I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think

you'd enjoy. My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical. You can learn more about all of those shows and everything else going on over in one central place, grimandmild.com. And you can also follow this show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.