This Paranormal Life - #089 Real Mermaids Of Zimbabwe

Episode Date: November 27, 2018

Ancient civilisations all around the world tell stories of the same creature - the mermaid; Half human and half fish. Whilst the mermaid was once believed in by many, today it lives only in our imaginations and on the Starbucks logo, right? It turns out there are famous sightings all throughout history and through to the present day. Is there some truth behind the legend? Kit and Rory get to the bottom of it on this week’s episode of This Paranormal Life!Support us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to weekly bonus episodes!Buy Official TPL Merch! - thisparanormallife.com/storeFollow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunityIntro music by www.purple-planet.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Were there dinosaurs on Noah's Ark? How does a goblin get promoted to hobgoblin? Answers to these questions and more on this episode of This Paranormal Life! Welcome back to the podcast. It's Tuesday once again and you are listening to This Paranormal Life, the paranormal podcast where every week we dissect a different tale, claim, or case, and get to the bottom of whether it is true or whether it is false. And as always, you are joined by myself, professional paranormal investigator, Kit Greer, and my paranormal co-host, Mr. Rory Powers.

That's right, the motherf***ing OP ghoul investigator coming at you on Booze Day. The scariest day of the week. That booze, that looks homemade looks homemade no as in booze day whoo no but the booze in your hand right the rum that looks homemade that looks like that might blind you very homemade i admit it in our bathtub really yeah you take one liter whiskey one liter vodka one liter of smirnoff ice a handful of lush bath bombs and you nuke that bad boy so it's more of a mocktail than a actual making booze more of a mocktail interesting yeah that's right we're back

on tuesday with a brand new paranormal tale and like most weeks uh we're just going to dive right in and i have just one question for you rory how much do you know about mermaids um very little really yeah in all of my professional paranormal adventures um i'm afraid of the water so i've kind of veered away from nasi mermaids ninjan a lot of those kind of uh those are those beasts of the ocean no one like turtles dolphins okay well those are cute and smart big fish like sharks smaller fish as well as well salmon um any beast smart enough to swim in schools like a little educated fish bastard i'm staying well we don't shut them down next thing they're gonna have universities and after that probably entire industrial military complexes that's what

i'm saying let's try and run through the basics with what little we do know right off the bat everyone knows little mermaid generally the bottom half of a fish the top half of a lady they're generally depicted as quite beautiful sometimes in the case of little mermaid because that was a pg show you know they're wearing underwear but in kind of older depictions you know they're they're kind of like animals so they just tops off yeah it's crazy ariel was my uh my favorite uh disney princess growing up really yeah i had the biggest crush on her yeah i think it was the hair you know when she's underwater she has that kind of woofy fringe yeah it's always like zero gravity maybe that's it

yeah i think she is very popular which is interesting because she's one of the only like non-human princesses yeah and she can't talk for like half the film yeah yeah wow she is she's amazing at acting with her face yeah i think that is the point of the movie as well isn't it is like can she woo um the prince right without words that's beautiful that is beautiful maybe he was just like desperate though um yeah so they swim around top half lady bottom half fish sounds like you're out of facts. No, no. I'm not going to lie. I knew that one coming in.

I know I said I didn't know a lot about mermaids because I thought you were going to drop some fishy bombs on me. Not that the top half is a woman and the bottom is a fish. Because I knew that. I really thought you were going to take the lead on this investigation, honestly. And I really feel like you've thrown me under the bus by not knowing anything about this. They breathe in the water and out sometimes. Bottom half fish, we said.

Okay. So they have a reputation. Let's face it. The Little Mermaid, Ariel, if that is a real name. She was very much the Disney-fied version. You know, she was very cute, very charming. Yep. Really not evil at all.

No, little angel. But mermaids have a dark side, let's say. It's that mermaids have the ability with their beauty, their grace, their beautiful voices, they can lure man to at least precarious places, if not to their death. And that is something that we're going to see all throughout this investigation. But to understand how we got to Disney's Little Mermaid,

we got to go back in time about 4,000 years to be precise. 4,000! Our story begins in Babylonian times, in Mesopotamia. In what today we would call Iraq, Ku kuwait turkey syria that broad area we now call atlantis no oh well on this podcast yes right artwork from this period features creatures with the body of a fish and the head of a man and slightly less commonly the head of a woman they called them kulitu meaning fish woman okay and they seemed to be shown as creatures of protection their earliest legend of a mermaid is of the goddess atargatis who after falling in love with a mortal shepherd accidentally kills him how i don't know

but that kind of thing you know that that happens that's like i think she like falls in love and she's like oh just come with me down to the ocean and he's like she's like oh it's great yeah do you love it under the sea under the sea and he's like his limp body he's just like floating away he's like which accidentally in fish language is like like deeper dope deeper deeper babe i love this i never want to leave if you insist the sheep have followed him in and they're just drowning one by one oh you can breathe great this is sebastian a little crab cutting at his neck i hate this and uh crippled by shame she jumped into a lake to become a fish oh so she wasn't even a mermaid when she fell in love yeah she was just a goddess okay uh yeah so she was so ashamed she wanted to

she couldn't bear the world anymore she had to remove herself from it she jumped into a lake to try and become a fish she wanted to de-evolve but the lake couldn't conceal her beauty and she kept the upper half of a woman thus becoming potentially the first mermaid ever wow and this would be interesting enough but the ancient Greeks had their own legends too. It was said that Alexander the Great's sister Thessaloniki turned into a mermaid after she died. And it was sailor legend that she wandered the seas surrounding Greece and if you were caught in a storm she would find you and ask, is King Alexanderander alive to which you have to reply he quote he lives and reigns and conquers the world that specifically yes it's like a curse so if she

asked me and i was like he's doing great the ship is gone like i'm wrecked uh yeah he's all right he's he's you know just just you know busy working that uh alexander alexander when was the last time i saw big al uh god it's been ages legend he's an absolute legend that guy yeah i tell you that much anyway yeah if you tell her that that he lives and reigns and conquers the world she would calm the storm and she would bid you farewell and happy with with that news yeah but if you told her the truth that alexander was dead she would turn don't say it that aggressively at least be like i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i have to be the one to tell you this but he's no longer with us yeah Don't be like, that old dead bitch. Why didn't you go check 12 feet under the ground?

Ask him yourself. That's right. We buried him double the normal six feet because he was such a dickhead. He's such a fat king. At this point, she's just throwing jellyfish at your shit. You're dodging the Neo style, just hurling insults back at her.

And he died broke. If you told her the truth, she would turn into a literal gorgon and create a storm that would doom any sailor cotton. But the legends don't end there. It turns out there are numerous stories of mermaids from all over the world. In the UK, there are tons of tales of mermaids throughout history from Scotland to Cornwall, the Isle of Man, Ireland as well. There are legends of mermaids in China over 2,400 years ago. There are Russian mermaids known as Rusalkas, the Savannah Matcha in India and Thailand, Maneli

in ancient Persia and the Jengu of Cameroon, the Iara of Brazil. The list goes on and on and on of mermaids. Fascinating. What does this make you think right off the bat that there are mermaids all throughout ancient history in a truly massive number of global civilizations? I find that really interesting. I think anytime you see any bit of consistent information that's been spread all over the world before there was any easy way to spread information like that all over the world.

Like, that's always kind of fascinating because you're like, how did these people know the exact same thing these people did? Or how did they have this rock that was carved the exact same way that these dudes 500 miles away carved a rock 5 000 miles away it's like there was either either mermaids are real yeah and everywhere or there is an ancient version of blackberry messenger and some asshole started a rumor on it yeah that we don't know about but like otherwise how is a fake rumor getting spread all around the world? The only thing is, the only thing I can really compare it to well is when we were growing up in school. Yes. As younglings, there was a certain symbol that everyone would draw. And that symbol was the S.

Now, it was an S that, I mean, like like if you don't know what i'm talking about now right you'll never know you'll never know you sad bastard so turn it off but i'm assuming a lot of people here are gonna know the s the three lines the triangles yes and i thought that was something from our school right and then you bump into some other kids from other schools and you're like oh my god you guys know about the s yeah that's crazy then you know we move over here to to london and i'm talking to friends i make over here and they're drawing the s i'm like how the hell do you guys know about our secret s that's true it's a mystery on how that thing spreads at a time where you know there weren't memes there weren't viral videos did

someone go on holiday and learn how to draw the s and then come back and be like look what i can do he went on holiday to an ancient temple in peru it was carved on the walls in your like p5 class at primary school and a 35 year old indiana jones is in your class look here junior i've got something interesting to show teachers like who are you get the guy i'm gonna call the police he pulls out a whip remember the symbol kids swings the bar snaps falls right on his ass so information can spread in this world and we don't know how so it's possible that it could be one rumor one legend that has spread somehow because what is the theory of the s is that just that symbol was just so undeniably badass that whoever gazed upon it simply had to know how it

was made they had to share that knowledge because there's some people that try and draw the s but they don't know the right way the procedure of drawing it and it's crooked and it's uneven and it looks like dog dirt there is an art to drawing that thing right that's been passed down maybe it's the same with mermaids it's kind of f***ed up to think that the future president of the united states of america will have drawn the s somewhere that's amazing i really hope his name begins with s and that can be like his campaign logo because i don't know if the s made it to america yeah i don't know we should we should conduct a poll on twitter or something to see if this like how far this this reached that's a good way to get people into the the paranormal commune it's like hey welcome to the commune draw the s on your own body with this tattoo gun but that is a fascinating idea um on the fringes of science the most hated

scientists of all will come up with ideas like morphic resonance you know this is the idea that whenever you have rats in mazes on either side of the planet when one rat completes that maze for the first ever time on its 200th go that the rat in a maze on the other side of the world can somehow tap into that knowledge of how to complete the maze somehow through the air itself and complete the maze faster this has been demonstrated in some scientific studies extremely controversial stuff as soon as something is discovered it can be discovered that much faster all around the world it's a nice idea isn't it humans advance collectively i'm into that that's right but i'm also into the week getting left behind so it kind of conflicts

with that really yeah that's normally seen as like a byproduct of evolution but you think that's a like a good thing that the weak get left behind i think so yeah mostly like most modern societies have kind of written that that's why we have things like benefits right to help the neediest in society yeah it sounds let's reword it the strong move forward how about that interesting there we go neater it's still the same asshole sentiment though isn't it sounds like weak talk to me but continue weakling i'm so far ahead of you i can't even hear your little weak voice i could be far ahead of me on my own case.

So the next thing about mermaids you need to know. Go ahead. Calling my bluff there. Did you know that they're... You're weak. You're f***ing weak. I'm strong. Like me.

I'm strong. This is pretty fascinating. Pretty unusual. But one thing it ain't is hard evidence. Which is why we need eyewitness testimonies about mermaids also. Yep. It's 1493, and Christopher Columbus is sailing off the coast of Hispaniola.

He's gazing out into the water. Wait, he's sailing off the coast of the Hispaniola? Of Hispaniola. Wasn't that the name of the boat? No. The His Hispaniola. Wasn't that the name of the boat? No. The Hispaniola? No. What was the name of the boat?

I don't know. What are you thinking of? The Santa Maria? No, that's the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Marina. I don't know. Those are the three. Continue. I didn't know this, which is ignorant.

What's the Hispaniola? Oh, Jesus. Here we go. Sorry. Feel free to cut this. This is going to drive me mad if I don't look it up up i think the listeners better know what a diva bitch you are i'm strong dude hispan are you seeing what i could have told you which is that it's not the name of the boat shut up dude shut up shut up it's not like I had to research this or anything. It's a restaurant in London, all right?

So if you have to know, it's the ship from Treasure Island. No, it's not. I think it is. I think it is. It is. It's the ship from Treasure Island, not the ship that brought Christopher Columbus. Also, because people are probably screaming into their iPhones at home right now listening to this, it should be said it's

also the second largest island in the Caribbean behind Cuba. Sure. Known for many reasons. He's gazing out onto the water when he sees something stirring. Suddenly, there's three female forms rising high out of the water.

He realized that he was looking at mermaids, but he said, quote, they're not half as beautiful as they're painted. And it has been suggested by more than one historian that he was probably looking at walruses, manatees, or sea lions. Yeah, I feel like if there's that many claims and testimonies of these beautiful sea creatures if you see like this one with tusks it's probably not a mermaid yeah this is hilarious and embarrassing that he for any amount of time thought that manatees were ugly women i can

actually show you a reconstruction of this because it was weirdly covered in the latest season of Disenchantment on Netflix. What? Okay. Did you watch that show? No, I haven't. Our hands brace for mermaids and their irresistible song. If it's smooth jazz, I will destroy this place. It's beautiful. Such angelic voices. I've never heard a song so sweet and delicate.

I must have sex with its origin. Ah, I'm free. Lead the way, loins. I'm Merkimer. I can't wait to meet you. not one mention of your fuzzy muzzles climb aboard so i bring this up because that's pretty wild that as famous a figure as christopher columbus saw mermaids unfortunately i can't remember what episode it as famous a figure as christopher columbus um saw mermaids unfortunately i can't remember what episode it was but we brought up christopher columbus in another sighting in a previous episode if you remember he saw like a crazy like ufo light in the sky or something that's right yeah um he used to sail around the bermuda triangle um so i don't

know maybe next time i see christ Columbus come up in an investigation, I won't get that excited. We'll maybe leave that bit out. Yeah. History hasn't judged him like kindly either. So no, he's not like a hero anymore. Absolutely not. So that sighting could be a bit of a dead end, but there are others.

And believe it or not, they're pretty modern. Fast forward to 1943. We're deep in World War II on the Indonesian K Islands. Japanese soldiers are stationed there and they've got a surveillance detail all over the place. But when they start picking up activity on the islands, it's not the tangos they're expecting. It's paranormal activity. It starts off, you just see something moving in the water here and there. Next thing, they're seeing spines on its body as it breaches the water's surface. Are we going crazy out here? What kind of animals do they have in this country? Before

long the other soldiers are seeing it too. They're talking to each other. This is a humanoid water creature. They see it lying on the beach in the distance before it scuttles away once it's spotted. One of the soldiers brings it up with one of the Indonesian locals and they're like yeah what about it? They're like oh you know this thing? They're like yeah it's called the orang ikan which I think translates roughly to human fish. Wow. So one night serge Sergeant Horibataro is doing his nightly rounds when he's approached by one of the locals. Chief, come with me. You're gonna want to see this. We've caught something in our nets. They walked on to the water's edge where some of the fishermen are gathered around in a circle. They're standing around what looks like a body horiba-san described a small body with red brown hair spines along its neck a humanoid face with a lipless fish-like mouth full of needle sharp teeth

horiba-san told the others but of course japan had other stuff on its plate after the war so whenever he went back to his country was telling people trying to get biologists out there no one really believed him and the iran ecam was not really investigated further the same thoughts are running through the minds of our listeners right now we're running through the minds of people in post-war japan they're like one it was a fish two it might have been something else but who knows um three you were all like delirious from the war yeah and tired and hungry and then you just started seeing things i mean this is quite recent was it was there any military forms filled out or pictures taken or any logs of the event the things that I like to see.

You're typing. Looks like you didn't think about this. No comment. Okay. Until I type more. I don't have documentation. That's fine. Whenever I look up this account,

well, the paranormal world has gone pretty apeshit for this story most of the hits on google are um epoch times beyond science tv crypto mundo.com all the big ones look it's fine as you said it's war you know who who's gonna bring a camera to war the most horrible thing of all time listen the war was documented by painters believe it or not not cameras no you wouldn't bring a camera to a slaughterhouse that's right you wouldn't bring a uh a goddamn about you a box of popcorn to the battlefield you don't bring fun stuff to bad things yeah and cameras are only used for fun yeah people don't actually realize that necessarily but there were war poets war painters like that was the only way of documenting what was happening in those early days particularly world war one yeah and then later on now we've

got war photographers and journalists and stuff yeah they were one step away from sending like metallica to write an album about the war to like tell the world what it was like. It is kind of funny that we had like, you know, the first world war and we get, you know, poems and songs and this artwork of like men storming the hill and all these heroic acts. And then we're like, OK, oh, my God, another war is around the corner. Like, here we go, guys, round two. But now we got photos and all the photos are coming back home. And they're like, this is horrible. It's like the paintings were like guys raising a flag.

And they were all jacked. It's like now it's just like gaunt men lying dead on a battlefield. It's like no more wars. No more wars. This is awful. This is a terrible idea. Listen, if we just gave every soldier a gopro there'd be no more war think about it okay i concede uh we're talking about the 40s here um although they're they did

have technology then it was kind of a fuzzier bullshit kind of a time it's hard to take those accounts so seriously but luckily we have even more modern accounts. Startlingly recent accounts. It's 2012 in Zimbabwe. 2012? Construction crews in a place called Gokwe have been scared away from their place of work. They have abandoned their post. This was reported in the news around then, picked up by journalists because the men claimed that a mermaid was harassing and attacking them and making it impossible to construct the dam. They call it the Mamba Muntu. After seeing it, they said this thing's a bad omen

and they refused to finish construction. The local council, in an attempt to placate them and for them to be able to finish it, they apparently got in a crew who were not local. They believed, we can get some workers in here who aren't steeped in the local mythology who weren't raised with it they won't have the same problem however these workers also fled the construction site as well and they vowed never to return due to the rage and harassment quote of the zimbabwe river mermaid oh my god that's amazing uh the locals were apparently left with no other choice

than to perform kind of traditional ritual rites to try and cleanse the area of this mermaid omen. And from what I understand, the crew were able to take up work again. Through the process of the ancient rituals that has been brought down in history of poisoning the river um they were able to cleanse it of all threatening life forms like 20 mermaid bodies just float to the top all right you guys good now it's like yeah we're just sad like i guess yeah we're fine we're gonna bring in a shaman

he is very experienced just a guy in a helicopter with a machine gun but there was again just four years later two years ago in 2016 more mermaid panic in zimbabwe at a small river in Chicanga near Chicanga Primary School, there are two mermaids. Rose Mugaza, 45, a teacher at Chicanga Primary, allegedly lost her teeth when she met the creatures on her way home from work. Describing her ordeal, she said, quote, I decided to use a shortcut on my way from work. While using that shortcut, we crossed a small river. And just when I was about to cross that small river, I saw a whirlwind coming straight in my direction. Oh my god. Move.

I then decided to jump to the other side of the small river so I could proceed home. But it was not long before the whirlwind engulfed me and i fell into the small river um describing the two mermaids she said the female one is very beautiful and its hair is quite long it stretches down to its bottom half while the male one has relatively shorter hair that ends at its shoulders so it's a male and a female yeah sorry did you say she lost her teeth yeah falling into the river what does that even mean i thought that was like a turn of phrase at some point the eyes i was so scared i lost my teeth the eyes of the female one are always roving you're not talking about the teeth kit what happened to her teeth did she bash him on a rock busted out i'm pretty sure what a weird thing to happen not like a scraped knee that they

took all her teeth sheing teeth. She said, After that encounter, I managed to proceed home, but I was feeling dizzy with blood oozing out of my mouth. This is so weird. Rose, who also injured her leg and arm during the incident, had to get artificial teeth put in. Oh my god. Brian Shindidzo, age 32,

experienced a similar ordeal in the same place on his way home from work he claims that a huge snake fell off a small tree into the river and suddenly disappeared quote although the water was crystal clear we could not tell how the snake disappeared all i know is my teeth were gone every single one i blinked for one second and he got my molars that's got to be the scariest thing in the world by the way like it's scary enough if you're assaulted by someone or something but just walking home and you're like oh like what was that you're like wait a minute where are my teeth and your teeth are gone yeah that's mad imagine they just started going like a couple at a time you're like whoa something seems missing it's like your front teeth and then you again like you blink your molars you've only

got the middle ones who's doing that you're stop it now your pre-molars go oh you just got one on the bottom front row you're trying to tell them to stop you can barely speak anymore at this point take the last one yeah so brian said recently we saw someone who wanted to use that same pathway but he returned soaked in mud he said as he approached the place unseen objects dragged him in he said he fell down but somehow later managed to escape he described the mermaid as a huge fish the size of a grown-up human being others in the area complained of drum beating sounds and people singing but they couldn't see anyone so i mean i almost gotta apologize that it was that was a scattergun story all right i feel like that was a control c control

v without a little proofread hey you're talking about drums and snakes not one of these things are mermaids like that last dude clearly just fell in the river like he just said he just fell into the river and then he's like but i think it was a mermaid but he said he saw the mermaid didn't he i don't know if he did he did he said it was a fish the size of a human so what we're seeing there uh because rory's not getting the bigger picture here is that is a local take on what is clearly in line with the global history of mermaid sightings a fish humanoid fish the size of a human who lures people into danger near bodies of water i i don't know if teeth ganking is in line with the history of mermaids i think that's a pretty much i bet christopher columbus didn't have too many teeth

that's for various other reasons there were none left to gank so i'm sensing some indignation on your part i'm sensing some disbelief i hear you where's the evidence videos Videos? Pictures? DNA? Where's the smoking gun? Where is the washed up mermaid? In May 2012, the channel Animal Planet released a documentary called Mermaids The Body Found. And this centered on the experiences of former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists. And they claimed to show real footage of mermaids. Like live footage? Yeah, videos. People right off the bat started calling bullshit.

Right. Then the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist service said, we don't know anything about this. Quote, no evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found. Right. So that seems pretty cut and dry, right? You'd think so.

But here we are. But crucially, a year after this exposition, Animal Planet aired a follow-up documentary called Mermaids, The New Evidence, featuring, quote, previously unreleased video evidence. How are they getting away with this? And they had more scientists from different organizations

showing this previously unreleased footage on national television. I'm going to show you some of this footage right now. Okay. What is that? Oh, my God! What is that? So what is that creature on top of a rock supposedly captured on film by tourists? That is not a sea creature!

Oh my God! Oh my God! Many watching Animal Planet's Mermaids The New Evidence saw it as proof that mermaids do exist. The show, presented as a documentary, details close encounters with the mythical sea creatures. Dr. Paul Robertson, welcome. It even featured guests purporting to be scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.

That's the way he's a f***ing scientist. Also, he just winked in the interview. He just winked. I'm not even taking this go back no no go back with the mythical sea creatures dr paul robertson welcome it even featured guests scientists from the national oceanic and atmospheric administration but it was all in the name of entertainment and it turns out dr robertson is not really a scientist. So many viewers were fooled.

NOAA, a federal agency, felt compelled to issue a statement. It said, Neither NOAA nor its scientists are involved with anything related to this topic. No one from NOAA was involved in making the fictional show, and the person identified as a NOAA scientist was an actor. If you watch the show closely enough, Animal Planet did include this disclaimer during the closing credits. Certain events in this film are fictional. That's way too late.

Viewers took to Twitter after discovering the show was fictional. Animal Planet, you are dead to me. You got me on your little mermaid hoax. What was the freaking point? One said. What is that? Oh my God! What is that?

Jesus Christ. I feel like doing a disclaimer at the very end of your hour-long, quote, documentary about real evidence that mermaids exist is, like, that's way too late. But what if they said some of it was fictional what if some of that footage you saw just now was real then why would they need the fictional footage if they have real footage of actual mermaids apparently one of those videos where you saw the mermaid like scamper off the rock yeah um the actor was identified as david evans from ontario canada it's not even a woman a woman that's ridiculous so again we might have a little um dead end here listen i didn't you know lead you guys on for all this time to disappoint after all this buildup of evidence.

Two years ago, in Norfolk, in the UK, a mermaid washed up. Okay. I have pictures. It's very close to home. It's not pretty. Oh, God. I'm going to show you. If you want f***ing mermaid carcasses. Fine.

This is what you asked for. You're like, this footage was uncovered on Animal Planet. Mermaids 3. This time it's personal. Oh, God. What the hell? This is what I wanted.

Ah, you got it. You know, you were... You wouldn't believe. You wouldn't believe with the little mermaid. You wouldn't believe with the Greek mysteries. You wouldn't believe with the Greek mysteries. You wouldn't believe with mermaids, one or two on animal planets. This is what you get. You get the real facts.

And it's not pretty, folks. It's really not. I mean, what you're seeing is like the grisliest version of what a mermaid would actually look like. This is a hoax, right? This has got to be, has been declared a hoax i know it looks pretty real it looks like a dead human body and then with like a bin bag tail no with a fish tail um i mean it's bad i don't think it's evidence what do you mean it's bad what do you mean it's not evidence how is this not evidence of fish human people there's not really a tail it just kind of goes i guess it's not legs is it

no it's definitely not legs um what's with the eyes they're like black orbs maybe you need different eyes if you live under the sea that's actually a really smart argument you're absolutely right you probably do wow those probably that was probably... Bish eyes. It doesn't not look like bin bags. I might throw these photos... I mean, they're disgusting, but I might throw them up on Patreon just for your guys' perusal.

Definitely a controversial sighting. Having seen that, having known the history, knowing the historical precedent, the mythological precedent, the sightings throughout history, granted the fake mockumentaries, but then occasional modern sightings also. What does this make you think?

It's an interesting one for sure, but still, we lack that video evidence. We lack those photos we lack uh you know any real proof that i can get my my claws into now granted i showed you fucking mermaids jumping out of waves like they're dolphins granted the ocean is the most mysterious place left on earth true we have seen none of it yeah um so hell if you haven't seen all the ocean how do you know what's what's down there like the ninja and themselves we can we can't categorically say they don't exist because we haven't even seen i don't know what the percent is but we haven't seen a lot of the ocean yeah folks it's too dark and we're scared of that uh we can't also can't breathe down there and there's like water pressure and things like that but mostly it's too dark and we're scared of that uh we can't also can't breathe down there

and there's like water pressure and things like that but mostly it's dark as hell yeah so it's hard to go on the line and say whether or not something like this is real or false kit you did the investigation what are your thoughts i think there's there's an unbelievable amount of rich history, rich lore about mermaids. More than griffins, more than centaurs and the other kind of half beasts that we sort of sometimes think about with fantasy. They go right back to almost the dawn of humanity probably. So we spoke earlier about how if mermaids are not in every ocean around the world then information would have to travel simultaneously around the world. Like the S.

Like the S. Or like a viral cat video. Right. Yet, back then we didn't have technology. The third explanation for how that may have happened, we didn't really talk about, which is that maybe it's, you know, like Carl Jung thought, maybe this is something built into the human mind. Right. That throughout our evolutionary history, you know, we came from the water as fish. You know, some people are crazy enough to think with aquatic ape theory

that maybe even human beings, Homo erectus, Homo sapiens, came from the water. That's why babies can swim right out the womb when other monkeys can't. Maybe there's something in our DNA that believes in mermaids whether that's literally a woman with the scales and tail of a fish or it's some sort of human water hybrid yeah what i have to concede is that throughout all of this investigation and despite how famous it is all throughout history, there is next to no evidence for anything like this existing. And these whirlpools in Zimbabwe where women are getting their teeth knocked out,

there's still not a goddamn photo to point in any direction of there being mermaids. I was excited about the military one because I was like, hey, maybe there's a report or something where you can read the testimony of what happened that night but unfortunately there isn't as you said they had other stuff going on they did it might be a good time to mention that one of the big theories for why there are so many sightings why people like that sergeants in the military why um indigenous peoples all around the world think that they've seen mermaids when yet we don't have any photographic proof, is that they could, like Chris Columbus, be mistaking other animals for mermaids.

Right. And I'm going to give you some examples. So with that one that I just showed you, animal experts would look at that and say that that's like most likely a seal and that some animals whenever they disintegrate in the ocean like that or just on land they look very very different to how we normally associate them right without the blubber it's actually just a human skeleton a lot of people don't realize they're very they're very cute under like with all the blubber yeah and then without it that's horror it's like a trapped human inside them and this one's pretty crazy so apparently for a very long time people have collected skate bodies now this is a type of fish

you've probably heard about it people eat it i guess and i'll show you what a live skate looks like okay oh so it looks it's kind of like a stingray yeah kind of like a flat fish um big old tail looks like a kite and there i mean that is a truly giant one as well he is enormous we're looking at an aladdin's magic carpet size fish here folks so i didn't even realize they got that big, but that's just to show you. And now let me show you this. What a dried up dead skate looks like. That is so creepy. That looks like a shriveled up little alien. Yeah.

Boy. Yeah. Jesus, that's terrifying. It's so scary. Yeah. Oh my God. And it looks entirely humanoid. It does legs two arms like eyes mouth head ears looks like a wise old man yeah like a wise old alien man this is going from a full-on stingray

to a full-on alien boy like if you were in deep water and saw this thing floating in the sunlight of the ocean i i i think i would pull out my oxygen tubes i'm ready to die seeing that down there because you know it's gonna end in death you might as well be the one to pull the cord i'm gone man because that little boy he is gonna pull the cord he will that's the first thing on his mind so out of everything we've talked about that's almost the most compelling argument for what people thought mermaids were if that washed up on a beach somewhere yeah you know and then you're that indonesian fisherman and you show the the japanese sergeant that that's gonna be pretty convincing absolutely i could see that even if it's just a with them so i think where this brings us on the hard and fast conclusions about whether mermaids

are real or not what do you say in light of these facts something's just a little fishy kit i'm a yes oh shit all right it's, unfortunately, a no from me this week. I think that makes it a double no, folks. Damn it. Loved investigating this one. Had to get it off my chest. It's a huge story. But I think a double no.

If you guys have interacted with any underwater beasts, be they fair maidens or disgusting alien boys. Yeah. Do let us know at this paranormal life podcast at gmail.com. As always, you can tweet us those just truly horrifying images on Twitter at this para life or facebook.com forward slash this paranormal life. Presumably lots of mermaid related memes and content will be going down in the This Paranormal Life Secret Society on Facebook.

That is the premier place to discuss paranormal happenings and this podcast. Because you can't spell secret without C. Like the ocean. Nice. Thanks, man. Also the cool S at the beginning. Yeah, the secret society. That would suck if no one gets what we're talking about.

I really hope people know what the S is. And if you have enjoyed this podcast and you enjoyed all the other podcasts and you just need that little bit more. Oh, you can just feel it in your veins. You just Jones in front of the podcast. Give it to me. Give it to me. Give it to me. I just need to quit my job.

Sell everything I can to get my podcast. Then you can do that and it isn't gonna cost as much as a bag of the good stuff that's right oreos fruit pastilles on our patreon we offer shout outs bonus episodes merchandise and more from as little as two dollars a month and it's actually the only way we support um this podcast keep it going we don't run advertisements we don't have any fancy sponsors um so we are only kept going through our listeners contribution which is a beautiful thing that we have such supportive listeners who've been with us from day one and we love to be able to give you something back through patreon and um it's it really keeps us in body and soul so that that is a beautiful thing and i don't want to interrupt oh sure we do actually have a sponsor

for this week unfortunately we do have an ad oh we do yeah yeah you see um like i actually messaged animal planet i told them we were doing this thing oh they have a new they've got another mermaid documentary coming out that really under the wraps like you didn't even i think you didn't even seem like you knew animal planet was a minute ago i just wanted to like play it off cool fair enough you don't want the sponsored content to like interfere with well that's the episode we don't want to be too heavily branded yeah so bear with us this is the just a little ad here okay for the newest um animal planet mermaid documentary that's coming out i think on the 12th of december so stay tuned for that okay thank you

in a world where men and fish are divided just by an ocean who will stand when the waves bombard the land of men. Deep dive into a world you couldn't understand. A world of myrrh and maids. On December, on this December 12th, your world is gonna be... You won't be able to breathe. And these bubbles, they'll hit you hard. So, so... So, so...

Brace yourselves for Mermaids, The Waves of Justice, December 12th, only on Animal Planet following legal statement has been approved by Animal Planet LLC even though we produced two previous fake documentaries this one is the real deal ads over we just had to get that one out of the way so thank you to Animal Planet for sponsoring it

but thank you for you guys for helping us with Patreon and helping us keep the show going if you do support us on Patreon what we like to do is every episode give you guys a special shout out and that's what we like to do is every episode give you guys a special shout out and that's what we're gonna do right now let's go thank you to rishi shah it's finally time to give rishi a shout out it's about time whoa hey thank you so much for supporting this the the show that was a difficult pun to make, but I think we managed to nail it.

Thank you for your support. They've actually just cancelled their pledge. Wow, it was that bad? Wow, really offended them. Damn it. I'm sad now. Sad but sweet, like a re-cheesed peanut butter cup.

Thank you for supporting the show and please don't leave because of that. Thank you also to Sydney Klaus. Klaus is in the house and she's on her Sydney's. Begging for more paranormal content. Don't worry, Sydney. We are dishing it out in our little paranormal. You know how like in communion, they're like, here's the bread.

Here is the wine. Right. Well, we're like, f*** it. Here's bonus episode. Bonus episode. And here's a little sticker. If you get a t-shirt you know we're giving out other things things you can wear things you can stick on things and instead of wine we're dishing out lombardi liquid of the dead and people are dropping like flies it's a party you want to be at so sydney i'm glad to have you here thank

you also to ian usher if there's one guy I love seeing, it's Ian. And I don't see him much after we were both dishonorably discharged. Whoa! From the war. Which war? All of them. Pray tell. All of them, one after another.

We snuck back in at night. We left early morn. I have citizenship in many countries. Don't ask me how. They just let me sign up and i sign out same day baby me and ian together brothers in arms brothers in dropping our arms in the mud and running away so thanks ian thanks also to fiona o'dwyer fiona o'dwyer more like fiona oh hire that's right fiona's one of the few paranormal cryptid

hunters brave enough to try and capture a dragon whoa yeah while you and me are about in the woods looking for bigfoots big ass footprints she is sky high trying to harpoon dragons do you know how high they are i think that's almost interplanetary it's like out of the the the the atmosphere big time she's at the iss i don't know how she got a harpoon on board i think it was 3d printed yeah uh really dangerous really inappropriate but she's chucking that thing left right so much as just pokes a hole in any sort of fabric they're all going down all of us usa r, Russia, China. The brightest minds of every country.

But worth it to get one of those space scales back safely to Earth. Which I hear are excellent ingredients in boner pills. So please get them here ASAP, Fiona. Thank you for your support. Thank you also to Shannon Robinson robinson shannon robinson

eats corn on the cobinson i know what you're thinking what could a simple corn farmer bring to a paranormal commune but i bet you didn't think about this corn yeah actually it's pretty delicious yeah nutritious yeah ghosts come out of it what the fields no the corn not the corn itself yeah but they'll come out of the corn fields like um whatever that baseball movie was we're gonna play a lot of baseball in the commune right so if we manufacture things what ghosts like yeah we'll get more ghosts so if we if we if anyone in the nation is good at making creepy old rocking chairs, ideal, we'll take a hundred. Because if you build it, they will come.

One of our many mottos. We will hoover them. So Shannon, please come along to the commune and bring all of the corn you can. We're starving here. Thank you, lastly, but not leastly, to Andy Locking. Andy the Lock King himself. I once saw Andy on stage at a Battle of the Bands.

Weird, because he was a magician doing a magic act where he locked himself in over a hundred different locks before jumping in a tank with a shark in it. And they asked every act to stay to three minutes tops and he spent an hour and also to play a song and he went on stage and without missing a beat just jumped in that tank yeah no clue how to get out and even if anyone had tried to remove him they wouldn't have been able to due to all the locks yeah yeah it was kind of a weird thing where i mean even if he knew how to get out of the locks, that's quite impressive

regardless of the shark. Yeah. Which was a whole other obstacle. Yeah. But it's good to know he's still alive. But thanks. And thanks to everyone we've shouted out today

and in previous episodes. If you haven't heard your shout out yet on the podcast, that's probably because it's around the corner. But if you think we have missed it it is always possible we do try our best but sometimes slip up so just pop us a message and we will get right to it otherwise we hope you've enjoyed this episode and we will see you next week for yet

another brand new paranormal tale bye bye folks ciao folks. Ciao.