This Paranormal Life - #322 Lady Wonder - The Psychic Horse that Solved Crimes

Episode Date: July 4, 2023

We've investigated paranormal cases in the past involving HUMANS with psychic abilities but what if those same abilities could be trapped inside of an animal? This week we're investigating Lady Wonder, the horse that can talk, read minds and even locate missing persons...LIVE TOUR - www.thisparanormallife.com/tourFollow us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTubeJoin our Secret Society Facebook CommunitySupport us on Patreon.com/ThisParanormalLife to get access to weekly bonus episodes!Buy Official TPL Merch! - thisparanormallife.com/storeIntro music by www.purple-planet.comResearch by Amy GrisdaleEdited by Philip Shacklady Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do aliens watch movies about human invasions? How come babies can run around naked, but when I do it, I'm no longer welcome at Subway? All of these questions you can find the answer to on This Paranormal Life! Hello everyone and welcome to This Paranormal Life, the comedy paranormal podcast where every week we investigate a brand new paranormal tale, case, claim, beast, and come to a conclusion at the end of the show as to whether or not it truly is paranormal. These are mysteries that have confused and angered mankind for millennia, and we pick them up, we investigate them, and once and for all, put them in their graves. Whoa. Yeah, that was maybe actually a bit of an angry metaphor i didn't mean to come across that angry but it's important to

snappy you know no you're damn right rory there's nothing that infuriates humans more than not knowing what's going on yeah confusion as a child i was sent to juvie For many long years Because a magician Pulled a coin From behind my ear I broke his legs In three places Because I I don't

Coins don't come out Of my ears Yeah Where'd he get it from To this day I still don't know Genuinely asking Oh you know spells

Fix your legs Magic man And you kicked him In the knees Well hey I'm I'm confused and angry and furious too i mean the intro question alone when babies run around sandwich shops naked oh it's funny it's a viral video yeah this one i'm not on board with when a man does it when i do it i don't even get so much as a giggle yeah Yeah, I know we all get excited, you know,

at the new flavors that drop at Subway every season. For me, the meatless meatball marinara, of course, and hearty Italian bread. But there's a limit to that excitement. And I think you might have taken it too far, it sounds like. Well, I just saw like everyone laughing about the baby running around naked. That was like kind of a funny, like silly thing. Oh, a naked baby running around the store. So I said, hey, everyone, you've all seen a six inch. How about a foot long? And dropped my trousers in front of everyone. Revealing, if you've all seen the video that went viral over the weekend,

revealing the smallest penis you've ever seen. Yeah, I'll say it because everyone's seen it. i don't want i don't want the events of the weekend to kind of overtake the podcast but i feel like it's going to come up it is hashtag naked subway man was trending it's just unfortunate that we put a lot of time and effort into making this finely crafted content for the internet that we're trying to get as many people to listen to as possible but then you whipping out your micro dong in a sandwich shop in front of sandwich artists which is an offense to their trade yeah to be honest uh that gets more views in three hours than this podcast has gotten in six years honestly it's it was embarrassing the thing took off like a wildfire. All of a sudden I'm seeing clips of myself on NBC,

ABC, CIA, FBI. They minted you as an NFT. Yeah, that sold for millions. You just look so much like an ape. They minted you. So I'm glad you, you know, part of me is glad that you withhold this kind of behavior for the real world. And I don't have to see it here in the podcast investigator studio. It's true. And it's because when we start this podcast, we know that we have one goal and one goal only, and that is to tackle a paranormal case. Kit, are you prepared?

Are you ready physically, mentally to dive into a new investigation today? I thought I was until I encountered some pretty harrowing mental images, but I'm going to try and move past those. Well, it's important that you do. As soon as you enter this studio, the outside world, gone.

Your wife, gone. Your kids, gone. Your car, gone. What did you do? You have to be here and be present. Be now. Because right now, all that matters is this investigation and this investigation is crucially one of the most important one of the most mind-blowing one of

the most scientifically undeniably paranormal cases we've ever investigated on this podcast before we are going to dive into today's case right after a few words from today's sponsors and a reminder we talked about it last week, but the tickets for the This Paranormal Life US and UK tour are available right now. Head over to thisparanormallife.com forward slash tour. Today's story begins in Richmond, Virginia in February 1924 on a sleepy little estate owned by Clarence and Claudia Fonda, a young couple who owned acres of land, and they needed it too, because one of their passions was raising horses. Little did Clarence and Claudia know that one of the little foals that

they had adopted was about to become not only one of the most famous horses of all time, but also one of the most paranormal. One little horse that they had recently adopted was only a few weeks old and needed to be fed with a bottle at the beginning to help build up her strength. She would trot and prance around with such poise and grace that Claudia decided to call her Lady. Lady quickly became Claudia's favorite horse. She felt like they shared a connection between man and beast.

Sometimes Claudia would be going about her day working on the estate. Then she would randomly think about Lady the horse, and five minutes later, Lady would appear out of nowhere. It seems cute and harmless enough, but this was happening so frequently that any time she thought about the horse, it would appear out of nowhere like a f***ing wizard. Okay, so this is becoming a bit of a feedback loop. The kind of don't think of a pink elephant thing. Yeah.

It starts becoming so weird, she can't stop thinking about the horse. Yeah. Because the horse is watching her eat, watching her poop, watching her sleep. Yeah, exactly. I assume she's in bed with her husband and, I don't know,

her husband calls her lady and it's like, don't say, don't f***ing say. And then all of a sudden the horse bursts into the room and is like, oh, for f***ing sake.

You can't think of, you can't think of the horse. Can't mention the horse or the horse is going to appear. Her husband in the kitchen passed me a ladle. Oh, god damn it. Eventually, Claudia started calling this trick wishing for lady. And it seemed to work every single time. It was easy to tell that lady wasn't just a normal horse. As she grew up, Claudia decided

that she would start testing to see just how special this horse really was. That's what Rory calls a Friday night, wishing for ladies. Oh yeah, I've spent a couple evenings wishing for ladies. So she gathered a bunch of kids blocks that were all labeled with different letters of the alphabet and scattered them across the floor. Before Claudia could even get settled, the horse had already pushed two blocks together. H and I. Was this horse trying to say hello?

Okay, we might need some more blocks just to check. I agree. That's not... That could just be a coincidence, you know? You put enough monkeys on typewriters, they're going to write high at some point. But Kit, this was only the beginning. Little did Claudia know, she had basically just put a typewriter in front of Stephen King.

This horse started blasting out full sentences, responding to questions, solving math problems, borderline freestyle rapping in the stables. Stephen King, known for freestyle rapping. At one point, Lady was asked who the president was, and quick as a flash, she moved the blocks around to spell Calvin Coolidge. Alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright, alright. Let's pump the brakes here. Alright, we can pump them, but the cart ain't gonna stop, because it's horse-powered

this week, brother. Uh, I have a problem. Uh, whoa Nessie, slow down, slow the cart problem. Whoa, Nessie. Slow down. Slow the cart down. Whoa, Nessie. Yeah. Isn't that what they call

a f***ing horse? I guess my question is one thing. Sure. For the horse to be able to understand English in the same way that, let's say, a dog can.

Dog knows what walkies means. Roughly, yeah. But another to be able to spell. Sure. To read and write. That's what we're saying. This animal can read and write.

Animals do have brains. I'm not a scientist. They do. But I do know they do have brains. Not all of them, but most of them, yeah. Even f***ing mice, you can train them to. Well, mice is a bad example because I think those little guys can pilot mechs. They're actually incredibly smart. I don't think that's

true. I don't think mechs are real. Lab mice, I think that's why they use them in experiments because they actually have incredible brains for what they are. I think that they're cheap and no one cares about them is why they use them, but we'll not get bogged down in that. You would have your mind blown by the world of mice experiments there's actually some pretty interesting like anti-aging kind of experiments like that going on they've kind of oh yeah taurine was the recent one and they i think injected mice or some other animal or something uh with just like shit loads of it uh and they And they lived forever. That's not true. For a lot longer. That's simply not true.

A lot longer. You're like, they have a mice there from the 1400s. I think, yeah. I think. Let's say. He's hooked up to a machine underground like f***ing Akira. He's dangling with wires. This tiny little mouse.

He's seen horrors beyond human comprehension. I think the point is if a mouse only lives to like three, some of these mice are like seven. It's like it would be the equivalent of a 200-year-old man. Right, right. Something like that is the idea. I really want to go to a lab now where they have a 600-year-old mouse who's got like a long beard hooked up to a machine.

And he's just like, I have lived beyond the years I was supposed to have been. I have seen comrades, family, friends. Nations, four. Be born and perish within my lifetime. I have seen sheaves of all kind grow moldy before my very eyes. Young Stilton become aged. It's like, all right, so he's pretty smart, but he still also loves cheese.

I've seen my predator, cats, die by the thousands. Who has become the greater creature now, Tom? Yeah, I like the idea that the only thing holding them back from speaking like Sir Ian McKellen was time. If they just had a bit more time, they could do it. I mean, after 400 years, you'd be f***ing sick of cheese, wouldn't you? I don't know, man. I've been going for a while now and I love it. Seeing what this horse was capable of,

the couple decided to build a bespoke machine that would help Lady communicate. The final contraption had alphabet cards fixed to flippable paddles that the horse could move with her mouth. So now when Lady was asked a question, she could flip the right cards and spell the word out for onlookers to see. I'm going to show you a picture of it, Kit, because I appreciate this is kind of hard to visualize. But for those at home that can't see this picture, imagine a piano where every key has a letter attached to it. And it's able to be flipped up to show the audience what key you're playing. I've got you. I've got you. Okay. Yeah, exactly how Rory's described it. Basically,

yeah, the fastest, easiest way for a horse specifically to be able to spell something out. Now, of course, before long, word of a talking horse spread like wildfire, and soon the friends and neighbours of the Fonda family were turning up with their own questions for Lady. What was my maiden name? Lady, what's the capital of France? Lady, over here! How many calories in a Big Mac? Lady, over here! Hey, I have a question! Hey, Lady! Lady was answering dozens of questions every day with remarkable accuracy. This horse could probably spell better than I can. And while the novelty of a talking animal was pretty exciting, the real reason that people would flock to this horse was much more paranormal.

More paranormal even than a horse with human intelligence. In an ultimate test of Lady's abilities, people started asking her questions about the future. Oh no! Who would win the big fight on Saturday? Would my daughter be born a boy or a girl? Where can I dig to find oil? Lady answered every one of these questions, and every single time, she got it right. Such a reach. Such a reach.

Humans are so pathetic. Utterly, utterly pathetic. humans are so pathetic utterly utterly pathetic such a leap to go from a horse knows what walkies means and can sure spell out a response to it is the oracle from the matrix

revelations it knows what has been what will be it is a reincarnated bodhisattva under the plum tree it knows the future. It has seen battleships fighting on the rings of Saturn. It's a horse. It's a horse. And if it knows how to spell, that's pretty interesting.

Right. Insane. Insane that they're going to it looking for future information. I mean, this is like every story from the Bible is just showing you how fickle humans are. As soon as you turn your back on them, they're looking for a new God. Moses in the desert, he was saying to the followers, I'm going to be gone for like five minutes. Do not under any circumstances worship any other gods. Walks away for 30 seconds. Between you and me, I didn't know there were any other gods sounds pretty cool you asked me did he say there were other gods they might be better yeah immediately I think that's what we're seeing here with these

these humans we have a situation where people are so desperate to believe anything that as soon as someone says that they have a horse with psychic abilities you're gonna want to be one of the first to abuse that and the first to get in the good books of the horse. You know, it is true. And this is why we need God to come back. Yeah. You know, whether he sends Jesus, whether he sends his son,

whether he sends a f***ing archangel, I don't care. The T-1000 I'd settle for. Optimus Prime. Who cares? What we need is him to send down Some cool paranormal shit To remind everyone What's really going on A little refresher

Because He might have sent this horse To be honest And they all accidentally Started worshipping the horse Because these motherfuckers Are worshipping A furry animal

Who eats carrots All day long Right You know Because he was able to Spell 2 plus 2 equals 4. I mean, it sounds silly, but Kit, if I came to you one day and said, I have a hamster that can see the future.

Do you want to talk to it? First off, you'd say yes. But second off, you wouldn't waste your question. Not that he's a genie, but you wouldn't waste your question on like, is it going to rain tomorrow? You know, who's going to win the football game on Sunday? You're going to say, which cryptocurrency is going to max 300 within 24 hours? I don't know that I would. I think I would ask something that I could find out whether it was true or not and prove whether the thing was real. If you're going to ask what the meaning of life is, you'll never know if it's real or not. I mean, these three examples that I threw out, these were real questions that were asked. And she got them right. She correctly guessed the sex of the baby before it was born.

She predicted Gene Tunney's victory over Jack Dempsey for the heavyweight championship in 1927. And I'm not joking. She did help someone find the location of an undiscovered oil reserve by the New Mexico border. I assume making them millions of dollars. I like the idea of people coming to Lady with questions, quizzing her intelligence, and these questions getting increasingly complicated.

Like, you know, starting off with, you know, is it going to rain in the next hour? Yes or no. To what were the economic and political backgrounds that led to the US invasion of Vietnam? And they kind of had to wait there for like two or three days while a person of a bitch painstakingly typed out

a kind of perfect, you know, university level essay on the subject. Yeah. She's so tired. These questions have aged her. It's like she finally writes out this whole dissertation on the complicated situation. It's like, OK, and who is up next? Remember, just one dollar to ask the horse a question. It's a f***ing historian

that comes up. Lady Luck, I'm interested in discussing with you the complications and justification behind using nuclear weapons in a war and whether or not that's justified when taking into account

the human lives lost. All right, everyone else go home. Just groaning. Oh, everyone else go home. We're going to be here for a couple of days. All right, everyone else go home. Just groaning. Everyone else go home. We're going to be here for a couple of days. All right, take a ticket. We'll come back later. Kit, I assumed by this point that you would be incredibly skeptical of ladies' abilities.

So I actually threw together right now a list of some of the insane things that Lady Wonder managed to do. Okay. All right, let's start it off she told one gentleman the date on a coin in his pocket without looking all right she's not just smart by the way she's magic okay right in case we hadn't done that yet she's a wizard she's not just really smart. She's on some David Blaine shit. This isn't just chat GPT.

It's not just an AI chatbot. Yeah. Point number two, she hovered in the air like Mewtwo for seven seconds. Another visitor wound his watch to a wrong time and then asked Lady what time he turned it to. She guessed it down to the minute. Good lord. She called the results of sports matches and elections, even reportedly choosing 28 out

of 28 winning horses at Baltimore's Pimlico Racecourse. This is too hard to believe. That last one maybe makes a bit of sense because if there's anything she's going to be able to predict, it's what other horse is pretty good. Right. Yeah, she's really disparaging. It's like, oh, Blue Jerry? Oh, he's a bitch. He's going to keel over in the first 50 yards. Yeah, I know that, dude. He's a piece of shit.

She's spelling all this out. Now, the thing I haven't mentioned yet is whenever you asked Lady normal questions, like, what color is the sky? She would simply flip the panels to spell blue. But when you asked her to make a premonition, Lady Wonder would go into a trance-like state. Her eyelids would droop, and she was very still and when she did move it was slow and controlled then as soon as the session was over she'd flip back into normal horse mode did i mention that horse is a strong word for what lady really looked like she was gray all over kind of

sweaty skin horses have horns right is that what i'm thinking of? And the little wings Yeah, this feels ungodly This feels like the kind of thing where You'd be like, a day of answering questions And at the end you'd be like Alright, good job today, lady What do you want for dinner as a treat? And it's like, alright, flip panel, flip panel, flip panel And you're like, oh

Lady, you spell blood You spell blood there, lady Did you mean baloney she's like putting her head side to side no no it's like okay you meant burger surely or something she flips up more oh human human human baloney no, that doesn't make sense. Something about this doesn't feel right. Lady Wonder was seen by an estimate of 150,000 different clients in her lifetime. Many of those instances included overwhelming evidence of an animal seemingly possessing psychic powers, like telepathy and prediction. So many people were coming to see Lady that eventually

the fondest began charging people one dollar for a question, which even with inflation feels like a steal. I've paid more than that to go to a zoo where, spoiler alert, none of the animals talked. They didn't answer any of my questions. Yeah, zoo, sometimes the animals aren't even in the enclosures in a zoo. That's how you know zoos are scams. I was in the gorilla pit grabbing monkeys by the throat, just saying, listen here, you little f***er. I'm in the hole, 1K. I need to know what to invest on Monday morning that's going to pay back.

And they wouldn't say a goddamn word. Yeah, you know something's gone wrong if you go to a zoo and instead of don't feed the lemurs, it's don't ask the kangaroos for financial advice. I mean, you could make your, if an animal is really psychic, you could make your money back in a heartbeat. You basically have the sports almanac in horse form from back to the future.

You can know the outcome of any sporting event. Yeah, I mean, this is pretty interesting stuff. I mean, I'm not trying to just poke holes in this story for the sake of it at this point, but we do say on This Paranormal Life that we don't like when people necessarily charge at this stage of an investigation with a paranormal phenomenon.

Granted, they might need the money, go for it, go off king. But it does indicate a level of entrepreneurship that is sometimes associated with hoaxes. Sure. You could argue on the flip side,

if this horse was really predicting shit, if it could really see into the future, that would be far more lucrative and powerful just in the hands of its owner

than charging to see the horse. Could you not ask Lucky for the f***ing lottery numbers and never be seen again? That's a really good point that I haven't thought of before. I mean,

the believer in me wants to say that Claudia was just so noble that she didn't want to gatekeep this secret and wanted the world to be able to experience. Invite scientists to study.

Yes, this incredible phenomenon. The skeptic in me believes I don't know There's peanut butter hidden under the Under the f***ing letters That's how they're being flipped But I mean if we're getting into this kind of We'll talk more later I'm sure

But if we're getting in at this early stage Into a bit of chat of Is there something untoward going on It should be said that If any of these claims are true Theyard going on uh it should be said that if any of these claims are true they do even defy what should be possible for a con artist you know if we're talking about coins in people's pockets uh being read and so on and so forth well of course you are right and uh luckily we don't have to be the people to dissect the incredible abilities of

this horse because scientists and intellectuals already did it. Many and many of them over the years visited Lady the horse, trying to disprove the theory that this creature did in fact have psychic abilities. One of the most famous being scientist and parapsychologist Joseph Banks Rine, who visited the horse in 1924. This dude was the real deal. He founded the parapsychology program at Duke University and was actually the first person to coin the phrase ESP. Damn. We've probably talked about him on this podcast before.

So in short, if anyone could prove that this thing was a hoax, it was him. Joseph Banks Rines arrived at the estate. Would he discover foul play and trickery? Or would he confirm once and for all that this horse has psychic abilities? We're about to find out, right after a few words from today's sponsors. So as I said, Joseph Banks Rines arrived at the estate in the winter of 1924 and set up a tent outside Lady Wonder's stable. He intended to stay for a week and put the horse through over 500 different tests. 500! He didn't have a lot going on by the sounds of it.

Oh my god. If you can ever just upend your life to live in a tent and interview a horse for a week get a hobby get a get a part a life partner start playing and scrabble on the weekends at the old folks home find something to do if my friend asked me to go for dinner on friday night i would say do you think i'm made of time how am i supposed to fit that into my existing schedule? So the idea of conducting 500 tests from a tent on a paranormal horse that you heard about on a newspaper or something, that is quite extreme. It was a different time.

It really was. Because he was certain, though, that Claudia was somehow controlling the horse's behavior, he asked questions that he was sure Claudia wouldn't know the answer to. He asked the horse to spell complex medical terms and solve mathematical equations. This is mad. Lady nailed all of the spelling,

but did struggle with some of the harder math questions. Okay. And it was interesting to note that she performed equally well whether Claudia was there or not. What the hell is going on? So even if Claudia was gone, the horse was still flipping battles to answer questions, which is so f***ed up. I'm starting to get scared of the horse.

I'm getting scared of the horse. Of course! I'm scared of the horse! Shut it down, I think. Claudia leaving and the horse still answering questions is the equivalent of fucking Pinocchio just starting to walk with no strings attached. I want to be a real human. This is like if in Toy Story,

Andy came into the room and the toys didn't fall down. They kept standing there and kept talking. This is, it's getting weird. Lady Wonder also, it's worth noting, did worse in tests when she was blindfolded. They blindfolded the horse. Interesting. But she still did get a good proportion of the answers right.

Which I don't even understand. What does that mean? She doesn't even know what paddle she's flipping and she's getting answers right oh I see oh f***ing hell it's safe to say that after days of testing even Joseph was having his mind blown at one point

and this is amazing he wrote the word doctor he's like he's gone well past 500 tests and he's just making shit up now on the fly to see if he can finally catch it. At one point, he writes the word doctor on a slip of paper, intentionally spelt it wrong,

and then asked Lady to guess the word that he had written and hid in his pocket. Right. She spelt out the word with the exact same typo. So, I mean, right now we're getting into, this isn't entirely uncharted territory. You're right. This case is only so different because it's a horse.

I mean, we've talked about these kind of special ESP sensory powers before. We've just never raised the question as to whether or not they're limited to humans. Or whether or not they're still in animals. Which is pretty fascinating.

Does that make the whole phenomenon seem more believable? That it goes beyond animal intelligence? That it's some kind of paranormal holy spirit that takes over a being? Yeah. I mean, it's only lucky that it's managed to be identified in this horse and they've created a system

in which the horse can communicate. I mean, holy shit. Bro, there could be a psychic turtle out there that we don't know about because no one's given him a goddamn platform to speak. There could be a duck-billed platypus that plays piano like Bach. But we'll never know

if we don't let him tinkle the ivories. It's true. There could be a monkey, Picasso. There could be an elephant that can dunk. Maybe using his trunk, maybe not. We don't know, because we haven't given him a court. We haven't let him hoop.

He's never hooped. Holy shit. The potential is unbelievable. And that's what hooped. Holy shit. The potential is unbelievable. And that's what Einstein said. If you judge a fish by its ability to run, then you'll think it's a dumbass. He said something like that. I think he did, yeah, about climbing a tree.

If you tell a fish to climb a tree, you'll say, you're fucking useless. Yeah, you're crap at it. You're terrible at this. But you know what? Hold a monkey underwater for a minute and see what happens. I think that was the whole quote. Don't, but.

I think that was the whole quote. I get the point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, tell a fish to climb a tree and they'll think it's dumb, but drown a monkey and then get back to me. That was the whole quote. Drown a monkey. I hate me. That was the whole quote. Drown a monkey. I hate monkeys. That was what he said.

It's true. And if anything, this is more impressive because this is not only a creature that has psychic abilities, but if you sit on their back, you can go 30 miles per hour. That's pretty impressive. Yeah, this is as close as we're getting

to Puff the Magic Dragon, a kind of magical being you can ride through the sky. By the end of the week-long investigation, he had reached his conclusion. Lady was not some sort of all-knowing horse. She was, however, a telepathic horse. So she isn't infallible like the Pope, but she is a demigod. Yeah, this sounds silly, but the explanation is actually quite reasonable. He said that the animal was incapable of

independent thinking because she only seemed to know the answer if somebody else in the room already knew it or was thinking it. Oh, okay. She wasn't a genius or a psychic in the way that you could predict the future, but she could just read minds. She can kind of tap into the human hive mind. Exactly. A telepathic horse. Hey, they got to knock that entry fee from $1 to $2.

Things are getting spicy. I mean, when the skeptics are telling you that this shit is paranormal, it's hard to say that it isn't. But Kit, believe it or not, this isn't even the craziest part of the whole story. In 1951, officers from the Quincy, Massachusetts police department arrived at the estate.

They knocked on the door before being greeted by Claudia. Lady killed someone with her mind. She crushed her head like a peanut. Ma'am, we're from the Quincy, Massachusetts Police Department. We'd like to ask your horse a few questions. Claudia nervously took the men to the stables to see Lady Wonder. Presumably, as you said, she's thinking this horse is just some sort of escaped experiment or an evil genius,

and the police are basically here to shoot it dead. Yeah, this is the 11 from Stranger Things of ponies. But when they reached the horse, Claudia never expected what they would say. Lady Wonder, we're investigating the case of a missing person and have run out of leads. Oh, my God. Can you tell us where the individual is located? Fire that police chief.

This, he can't do his job. This is a real story. He can't do his job. The police department of Quincy, Massachusetts, when out of options, did approach Lady the Horse to help solve a crime. Without missing a beat, Lady Wonder went into her trance-like mode, flipping panels, spelling out a collection of words. In the end, she had written, Pitsfield Waterwheel.

Oddly, Kit, there was no Waterwheel in Pittsford, but Police Chief William Ferrazzi interpreted Lady's message differently. Hmm, Pittsfield. Do you think she could mean Pitfield? Pitfield Wild Water Quarry? But sir, we already searched the Pitfield Water Quarry. We'll search it again, damn it! And lo and behold, the remains searched the pit field water quarry. We'll search it again, dammit! And lo and behold, the remains of the missing person were found by the water wheel at the quarry. I called it Lady's the Killer. If you'll pardon the pun, Kit, Lady Wonder was no one-trick pony. She helped the police find two more bodies later in Illinois.

What the hell is going on? The horse is solving crimes now. This isn't real life. This is unfortunately real. Two cases were brought in front of the horse and in both cases she suggested or semi-suggested locations that, to be fair, had already been searched once by the police, but Lady told them to go back and search it again more carefully, and they found the bodies. Help me out here, brother. What is going on? Are people back in the day as dumb as we sometimes give them credit for, or is this horse really paranormal? I don't know.

I mean, something is wrong with your police department if you need to bring in animals to help you solve crimes. As much as I'd love to see a f***ing beaver with a gun and a badge out there solving crimes, that works better

as a children's TV show, I think, than an actual idea. Yeah, you know, there are other psychic animals out there in the world. We've talked about it on the podcast before, of know, there are other psychic animals out there in the world. We've talked about it

on the podcast before, of course, here in the UK. We had Paul the Octopus. Paul the Octopus predicted the outcome of World Cup games for one of the World Cups. Yeah, they weren't hiring Paul the Octopus

to like screen cancer patients. You know, we put a limit and a lid on psychic animals abilities yeah let's keep it to fun stuff for the most part can you imagine being a serial killer and you get arrested by the police and you're like they're never gonna crack me there's no way they're gonna be able to tell i was the one who did it and the police just drag you into a room and sit you in a chair across from a horse wearing a little officer's hat and a little uniform. And the horse just looks at you for three seconds and then goes, he did it. And they're

like, well, there you go. Put him in jail. You're like, what? Who is this horse? How is that the law? This is a horse is psychic. He sees everything. You're going away for a long time, bud. It's the, It's basically the movie Minority Report, where they can predict crimes of the future. But instead of a complex computer system, it is a horse. It's a horse with a psychic brain. Now, this story might seem completely insane, but believe it or not, Lady Wonder isn't even the only psychic horse in history. In fact, she isn't even the only animal with psychic abilities. In fact, she isn't even the only animal with psychic abilities. In 1780s London, there was a novelty act

where a pig would, quote, spell words, read minds, tell you the time, and play cards. Not real. I don't believe it. I'm having such a hard time with this. He was nasty with the cards too. You couldn't win a game of blackjack against him. Right, he was getting kicked out of Caesar's Palace like Ben Affleck for being too good.

Now, while we love to talk all day about the paranormal side of things, as I said, it's important that if we want to be impartial and unbiased, we have to look at the logical explanations and the arguments from the skeptics. Luckily, those skeptics aren't hard to find because as you know, super researcher Amy is also our animal expert. And she even studied psychic horses as part of her animal behavior degree. Good God. I know. What are the odds? She said that in the past, cases of psychic horses have been debunked. For example, in one case, a man named Willem claimed that his horse, Cleverhands, could tap his hoof to answer questions and count. However, this was proven to be a lie. Weirdly, not a lie by the trainer.

Wilhelm was actually tricked by the horse. I'm so glad you brought this one up because this is famous and I was getting a bit confused because obviously focusing on a psychic course I was starting to wonder had I heard the story of Lady but I haven't. That is the one I've heard

Clever Hands. I mean do you know about the debunking of this horse? Yeah, wasn't the horse basically side-eyeing his owner, and as he got closer to the answer, he would kind of, you know, read

his expressions. He was basically very tuned in with his owner's emotions, and as he would get closer and he could see his owner was getting more and more excited, he would, like, stop there, or whatever. Exactly. This is a lot like my daughter making you know any number of random noises now that she's you know coming up in a year and a half almost two years old she makes a lot of strange noises in the day um and as she makes ones that me and my wife find funny uh we laugh and smile anytime she does uh hilarious ones which is how we've ended up with a baby

that does a kind of comedic impression of Michael Jackson, where anytime you hand her something, she says, thank you. And instead of saying thank you, she says, hee hee. Oh, there you go. See, I'd be laughing already. It's not a situation we want, but we have unintentionally,

like Clever Hands' owner, found ourselves here. You've trained this child. Now, I do kind of understand what you're saying and where you're coming from, but just to clarify

for the audience, what you're saying is your daughter possesses psychic abilities. No. She can read her father's mind.

No. She can read my mind to what I don't want her to do, which is impersonate Michael Jackson, and she does it anyway. Okay. It's just, um, I'm gonna tell the police. Because there's a couple of missing person cases and I think Cora needs to get involved! You can't gatekeep this power, Kit. You need to share it with the world.

Hard cut to a grizzled, smoky police detective's headquarters. It's like, well, our informant said that the remains will be found in poopy. We've got a lead on the suspect goes by the name of Smelly, Smelly PP,

just west of Pooptown. when we asked about the coordinates our lead investigator said he he in a michael jackson voice during her life lady wonder was asked to predict her own death which is so f***ed up that is too far tears in her eyes flipping the paddles. No animal needs to contemplate its own mortality. That's really the one thing animals have going for them. They don't usually know that that's coming. When asked about her death, Lady said that she would die at 30, but actually passed away on March 19th, 1957, at the age of 33 years old.

Okay, well she f***ed that one up. 1957 at the age of 33 years old. Okay. Well, she f***ed that one up. Yeah, maybe she was like, you know what? I'm gonna push on. That's the age I'm gonna die at unless I change my life now. Yes.

Who knows? But that was the end of Lady. She was given a regular burial in a regular pet cemetery, I assume. And the legend... Don't bury her. Take her brain.

Put it in a vat. Study it. Put it in another horse, a younger horse. Reanimate her. Do whatever we have to do to figure out what's going on. I don't accept that. I don't know. That's kind of dark.

I think letting her go out with a bit of dignity is... Sorry, lady. Sorry, lady. Sorry, lady. Take her brain. You're too special. Can't let you go. And that is the end of today's story into Lady Wonder, the psychic horse.

Alright, I'm going to need you to 180 degrees wheel your little ass back into that story, Rory, and get me a conclusion because I can't sleep at night knowing that there was a horse with the intelligence of a god. There is no conclusion. This is a story where I'm just taking you on a journey from birth to death of this horse.

There have been a lot of different people who've investigated this. A lot of them are skeptical. A lot of them said that it is legit. I lot of them are skeptical. A lot of them said that it is legit. I will say because of the nature of this podcast, we have obviously, obviously focused on every one of the most impressive instances where Lucky got it right and did something miraculous. From my brief reading and research, it seems like I wouldn't say equally, but there was also a lot of situations where lucky was wrong yeah that seems important yeah yeah i don't know what the ratio is whether it's like a 50 50

is 60 40 but uh yeah because it does kind of come back to the monkeys on typewriters thing the monkey on typewriter story is sure if you focus on them writing Shakespeare, it seems pretty amazing. But I think the point is that I think it takes infinite guesses of them smashing on typewriters before they write Shakespeare. Yeah. And it's one thing if you, you know, asked Lucky, hey, Lucky, what's the capital of Australia? And she said, I don't know. Wait, what is the capital? I don't know. We need to use a different example. Yeah, that's a bad one. It's either Sydney or Melbourne. I don't know. Wait, what is the capital? I don't know. We need to use a different example.

Yeah, that's a bad one. It's either Sydney or Melbourne. I don't remember. No, I think there's a trick. I think. Oh, that is why I know it. It's a trick question. It's like something mad like Canberra.

Oh, it is Canberra. I'm lady. I'm the reincarnation of lady. I knew a thing that I didn't know that I knew. Give me a carrot for that. Yeah, there's a big difference between asking Lady, what color is the sky? And she says, green.

And the answer, of course, was actually blue. And, for example, another question, we say, hey, Lady, what color is the sky? And she writes out, blep. Right. It's like, okay, she's not only getting it wrong that time she didn't even spell a word right that's when it becomes more of a thing of like is this just luck or is this genuinely a really intelligent horse that sometimes gets the question wrong you know what i mean yeah of course i think you know some of the most amazing ones are sure the betting ones of

course but at the end of the day betting is also kind of multiple choice but spelling out bizarre long calvin coolidge scientific spellings that seems a bit strange it's really strange so i i i don't know i think i think the problem with this case is there was essentially no experiment that definitively ever proved that she was psychic. I think even the most skeptical people at the very most walked away being like, this is pretty nuts. I don't know what's going on. Except for that one dude who said the horse was telepathic. Keep an eye on him. I don't

think he should be able to teach at universities. I guess maybe the crux for me as we sort of round towards finishing our conclusions on this episode, it is a little troubling whilst it is unbelievable some of the stuff she was able to predict or get right. It is a little worrying that given the backdrop of Clever Hands, the very famous psychic horse, quote unquote, a lady did share one commonality with Clever Hands. And that was that she would not get an answer right unless someone who knew the answer was in the room. Yeah, yeah, that's a very fair point. So whatever power she has, if at all, requires humans to kind of interact with her to do it. Potentially require some sort of human input, whether it was psychological or not.

There's so much, there's so much shit in this that would have to happen for this to make any sense. Like, let's just say the horse is able to communicate and it can spell words and it can talk to humans. to communicate and it can spell words and it can talk to humans why the isn't it just saying like hey hey carrot carrot poop why is it like hello everyone i have finally been given a voice why does it think it talk like a human that doesn't make any sense isn't the whole saying i'm gonna butcher this one too isn't the whole philosophical saying is that if a lion could speak, we wouldn't understand it. If a lion, yeah, if a lion like you could speak English, we still wouldn't understand it. Understand it because it's reference points. It's understanding of the world. The way it lives its life is so different by definition to humans. Even if it

had our same words, we wouldn't be able to comprehend the lion's brain and its existence. You know, maybe a great example in this case is Coco the gorilla. I don't think we've talked about Coco. Is he from the cereal box? The Coco Puff monkey? Gorilla Munch is a good cereal and I won't hear a bad word against it. What the f*** is Gorilla Munch? I think it's Gorilla Munch. puff monkey gorilla munch is a good cereal and i won't hear a bad word against it is gorilla munch i think it's gorilla munch that sounds like one of those cereals you get in the supermarkets that

are like cost half the price of the regular cereals oh gorilla munch is pricey you i can't no way i can't afford gorilla munch you're like i love all those cereals. You guys have to see this box of cereal. It's good stuff. That is a picture from DeviantArt. That is no way that that is a real box of cereal. It's a little cute monkey and he's celebrating a bowl of cereal getting poured. But he's not like a cereal mascot. That is just a picture of a monkey.

A straight up gorilla. Yeah. Anyway, Coco is one of the most amazing animals to ever exist. There's many videos all over the internet of Coco speaking in human sign language. Yes, he's a sign language monkey. Famous videos of Coco communicating with Robin Williams and scientists and all of this. And that's 100% real. Coco had a real grasp of human communication.

Is that right? Was that the conclusion? He could genuinely understand and communicate with humans? As far as I'm aware. And whenever we talk about these kind of reference points, the way that Coco communicated was a bit more realistic. You know, Coco at one point had a pet kitten and Coco loved this little cat. And then I think sadly, eventually the cat died.

Right. Natural causes, I assume. Yeah, hopefully not smashing by a gorilla. Smashing by a gorilla. But whenever they would ask Coco where the cat had gone, Coco replied in sign language something to the effect of like long sleep. Wow. So it displayed Coco didn't understand the British language. Right. And had a big vocabulary.

Coco understood concepts. I refuse to believe this is true. Long sleep? He said the cat went for long sleep? You've got to be careful when monkeys become that smart, alright? I don't know if you've seen the Planet of the Apes movies, but I know what happens when those guys can talk to each other.

They got big teeth, by the way. Even though they munch leaves all day, they actually got big teeth. It escalates very quickly. One minute it's petting a cat and talking about the long sleep. The next day, one of them has a bazooka. And he's on the Golden Gate Bridge taking down helicopters. That's a really good point.

All right, let's look at this monkey, Bobo, Coco, whatever his name is. Put some respect on Coco's name. They, I won't, they at no point were like, this monkey is magic. Right. He has wizard powers. He is some sort of super being. They just thought he was extra smart and could talk to humans. Lady is a little bit different because some of the abilities, she was being tested in ways that weren't just about intelligence. It was about psychic abilities. So that's why this case in particular is paranormal.

Of course, all we're illustrating is that it seems a bit almost suspicious just how amazing Lady's spelling and vocabulary is, as you say, the way she talked. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I think we're going to have to come down to a conclusion eventually, and I'm happy to take the lead on this one. I think it's a great story. I think it's really unique and different to anything we've covered on this podcast before. But due to the nature of the case, the fact that it's in, what did I say, 1927, the fact that it is kind of being examined by quote unquote scientists and intellectuals, but either their results are mixed or these are people that already kind of believe that these powers do exist and we're, you know, leaning towards it being some sort of psychic ability. I don't know. I don't think we have enough today.

We don't have enough proof to undeniably say that this horse can read minds or has any kind of paranormal ability. I think I'm in pretty much the same camp. I'm feeling a bit rattled. I'm feeling a bit out of my comfort zone because it's a strange one.

But the seeds of doubt have been planted and maybe I'm scarred by the story of clever hands and there's too many red flags for me to sign off on a yes on this one I think that's it the fact that psychic

and magic animals has been such a thing throughout history and almost every other case has been established to be a con it's not a good environment to have a paranormal story in so unfortunately this week it is going to be a con. It's not a good environment to have a paranormal story in.

So unfortunately this week it is going to be a double... No! But hey, what a great case. What a wild one for us to investigate. I had an absolute blast investigating this one and I hope you guys enjoyed it too as a fun change. Investigating psychic animals. There are probably a whole bunch of psychic animals with crazy powers out there that we've

never even heard of before. Psychic bug, psychic bird, psychic cat, psychic dog. All future episodes of TPL. Guys, if you enjoyed this week's episode and you want a little more taste of the paranormal, we've got it covered you can head on over to patreon.com forward slash this paranormal life where you can get access to you know imagine if you were eating a burger at your favorite burger place and you were like yum yum yum eat that burger wow that was really really good. I wish I could eat it again.

That's a bad example because you can't. It doesn't happen, yeah. Yeah, you could just pay more money and get another burger, I suppose. Let's just tell them about the content. Yeah, I thought I had something there. Yeah, it's just,

there's a lot of other parts of that metaphor getting thrown around a little bit. So let's rewind it back because we're talking about the Patreon.com where you can get all this awesome bonus content. So, got it. See, the way you just said it

and I was actually really clean. Got it. No, forget that. Cut that from the episode, actually, because I got a better one. Imagine you're going to go see the latest movie with all the big Hollywood stars.

Right. And it gets to the closing credits and you're like, man, I was having a great time. I could have done with 30 more minutes of that movie. Well, guess what? You can get 30 more minutes

of that movie at the snap of your fingers. It's bad. Yeah, that was bad, wasn't it? Because the director's cut is notoriously bits that weren't good enough to be in the original cut

of the movie, which is not what the Patreon is. The Patreon is actually the home of entirely new content. It would be like... What if you... What if you ate all your popcorn before the movie ended and you wanted more popcorn? So you paid $5 a month to get extra popcorn. Just say what it is.

It's a service where, for as little as $5 a month... What is that? A cup of coffee? A cup of coffee. You can get access to bonus episodes of this paranormal life, weekly bonus episodes, monthly bonus episodes, and a whole world of additional content. If you enjoy the show and you're up to date and you want more content,

you can get it over there for a low, low price. But I know what you're saying, Kit. Hey, what if I, um, what if I'm a bastard?

Stop using metaphors. You don't know how to use them. And I don't want to support online independent content creators. What if I just want to go to a venue where I can drink beer and hear the show live in front of me? What would I do then, Kit? Strangely, we do have an option for for you which is we announced just the other day our first ever this paranormal life world tour we're coming to the United States of America and the UK we're coming to Los Angeles we're coming to San Francisco we're coming to Chicago we're coming to New York we're coming to Somerville we're hopping across the pond and we're doing

Belfast Manchester Glasgow and London holy shit that's a lot of dates so at the time of recording I don't know if there's still tickets available

but they are limited so get your asses over to thisparanormallife.com forward slash tour we can't wait to see you there yeah we're so excited we don't get to tour that often so if can't wait to see you there. Yeah, we're so excited. We don't get to tour that often. So if you do want to see the show live,

hop on over, pick up your tickets. You don't want to miss out. We had shows sell out last time we did a tour and people weren't able to get their tickets. So don't wait. Head on over and pick them up ASAP. And of course, at the end of the podcast, we like to give a special shout out

to the people who have supported us on Patreon.com so a special thank you to Sylvia Reid Sylvia Reid which is fine

normal good thing to do yeah healthy nice the only problem is she's a f***ing horse

Sylvia's a horse? she can read. How does she have a Patreon account? What didn't you just get about her reading? She's probably got an iPhone. Even with the hooves? Thanks also to Jane Meyer. Jane Meyer lives on La Playa.

She lives on the beach. Where's La Playa? I think it means beach. Oh, does it? In what language? Spanish? Mm-hmm. Oh, there you go. La Playa, It's, I think it means beach. Oh, does it? In what language? Spanish? Mm-hmm. Oh, there you go.

La Playa, where you drink cerveza. Cerveza. Agua mineral. And potentially, Coca-Cola. She hangs out at the beach all day long. That's why she's Jane La Playa Maya. Right. And I don't want to tell you about what kind of creature she is,

but what's horse in Spanish? Okay. Because that's what she is. She's a talking, drinking horse on the beach, and you love to see it, a party horse. And thanks lastly today to Bosefer. Bosefer, we're recruiting for the commune elite force

and we need a bow staffer mmm someone who's good with a bow staff good is kind of maybe an exaggeration we just need someone

who can kind of swing it around without hitting themselves in the nuts because the last guy he couldn't pull that off he hit himself

pretty hard and he's he got dishonorably discharged from the force. So we need a new Bo staffer to come in and swing it around, enforce the law, take down anyone who kicks up a fuss on tax day. Now ironically, you need

to be able to hit them in the nuts. You need to avoid your own nuts. Be able to hit other people's nuts as quickly as possible. So get in touch. Thank you to everyone who supports us on Patreon and thank you to everyone who tuned in for this week's episode. As I said,

head on over to thisparanormallife.com forward slash tour to pick up your live tickets and we will see you of course next week for another Paranormal Tale. Ciao!