The Baldoon Mystery with Dr. Rick Fehr

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Shop now at ikea.us slash bedroom storage. Astonishing Legends Network. Astonishing Legends. Would like to thank Factor, Mint Mobile, our contributors at Patreon.com, and you, our listeners, for making tonight's show possible. Tonight's cold open is taken nearly verbatim from an article published on November 19th, 1829, in the Detroit Gazette titled, A Weird and Malicious Ghost. A few days ago, the good people of a Scottish settlement on a little tributary of the River St. Clair, called the Chanel-et-Carte, were thrown into great consternation by the pranks of some invisible and mischievous visitor, whose gambles were repeated during several nights, and at the habitations of several farmers. One house, in particular, appeared to be the single object of the vengeance of the ghost, who set it on fire in several places, notwithstanding the strictest watch was kept, and all the exorcisms which a people who cannot be supposed unlearned in such lore could think of were constantly repeated. Yet, so fast as the fire could be extinguished in one place, it broke out in another. At length, the house was abandoned by the inmates, and in the morning following was burnt to the ground. In the neighboring house, to which the people had retired, they were again persecuted by the industrious demon, and were assailed with noises more dreadfully superhuman and discordant than the caterwauling of a dozen couples of cats in a dark garret. Having retired into a room with the doors and windows closed, the noises continued, the candles burnt blue, there were strange appearances in the embers, and everyone distinctly perceived a slight smell of burning brimstone. What is still more extraordinary, the persons in the room were assailed with balls and slugs of lead, which struck them from every direction, though no noise like the report of firearms was heard. The devil, however, had some conscience left, for though he had committed arson, he hesitated at murder, and these balls and slugs were as harmless as if thrown from the hands of a child. The people of the settlement could bear the annoyance of the infernal visitor no longer, and sent deputations in various directions to procure the attendance of a preacher, for the purpose of laying this impudent emissary of Old Nick and driving him to the Red Sea or the Lake of the Woods, for one of which places he has no doubt before this taken up his line of march. Welcome back to Astonishing Legends. I'm Scott Philbrook, and this is Forrest Burgess. Live you, or are you off that man-made question? Banquo, Act 1, Scene 3 of William Shakespeare's Macbeth, also cited in Chapter 6 of The Baldoon Mystery by Neil T. MacDonald. Join us tonight where, along with our special guest, Dr. Rick Fair, we dive deeply into the little-known Baldoon Mystery. And we're back. That we are, folks. Thank you so much for joining us again. Speaking of back, you just got back from New York, didn't you? Yes, I did. My wife, Emily, was recruited to write for the Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary, so I went up with our son for a few days, and we had a blast. Oh, it did look like that. I just teed that up for you, of course. Yes, I do. I appreciate it. I knew you were up in New York for a big to-do. Yes. But it looked fantastic. And I saw that reel of Devo playing. You posed it from the SNL Homecoming concert at Radio City Music Hall. Yeah, that clip has 80,000 views. I'm pretty sure it's the most viewed thing we've ever posted anywhere. It's too bad we're not Devo instead of Astonishing Legends. Are we not men? We are not Devo. Okay, right. That's true. Yeah, you're going to have to be Gen X or older to get that reference, I'm afraid. All right, folks. We've got a great show tonight about one of our favorite kinds of Astonishing Legends, an esoteric one that is not so well known, the Baldoon Mystery. This is a Canadian legend, by the way. Well, we like coming across and covering the lesser-known ones, and tonight we have the good fortune of being joined by Dr. Rick Fair, one of the foremost experts on a little-known haunting commonly called the Baldoon Mystery. And Rick not only wrote a master's thesis on the area where this took place, but he also was born and raised there. Yeah, that's what you call none more qualified to reference Spinal Tap. And we're lucky to have him because there's precious little accurate information out there about this legend. Yeah, and Dr. Fair earned a Bachelor of Arts honors degree in Canadian and Native Studies from Trent University in 2004. And in 2006, he obtained a master's in environmental studies at York University and was awarded a PhD also in environmental studies from York in 2011. He's the acting director of indigenous studies at Western University in London, Ontario, where he is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology. He's the editor of a book titled High Strangeness in Ontario's History, which is scheduled for release in a couple of months. He also has research papers germane to this topic, published in the Journal for the Study of Religious Experience, and in the book Greening the Paranormal. Ooh, I love that title. I can't wait to find out what that's about. Well, his research focuses on points of intersection and contention between settlers and indigenous peoples in the early 19th century in southwestern Ontario, specifically Walpole Island, which is at the near geographical center of the Baldoon Mystery. So you can pretty quickly figure out how the work he's been doing and form deep knowledge about this particular legend. Yeah, and what's interesting about the Baldoon Mystery and what Dr. Fair has researched, studied, and taught for some time now is that this story is very much right at the intersection of indigenous connections to the land they lived on with settlers, particularly of the time period we're looking at tonight. All righty, Scott. Let's get Dr. Rick Fair in here. All right, folks. We would like to welcome Dr. Rick Fair to the show. We are so grateful to have him because, as far as we can tell, he's one of the few experts we can find in the world on the Baldoon Mystery. And we are so lucky to have him. He actually grew up in the area. But then on top of that, he is a scholar. He has an amazing presentation on this subject online, which is how we found him. It was actually sent to us by a listener, whose name we're going to have to look up. We don't have right now, but we're trying. Just so you know, folks, when you send us ideas, we love to get them. But they come in on lots of different channels. It's like a DM on X or a message on Facebook or an email. And sometimes if it's not in the email, we can't find it. And sometimes even when it is the email, we have a hard time looking it up. We'll shout you out the next episode. But as I was telling these two gentlemen here, it's one of my many 200 tabs open of stories and leads that people have sent us. So we decided, like, this is a pretty good story. And not one that many people outside of the region have heard of, not even in the area. And you take a look at the Wikipedia entry on it, and it seems pretty thin. Not like some of the other stories we're going to be talking about that happened around this time. But it definitely piqued our interest. And then once we saw the presentation, it's like, yeah, there's a lot going on here. Not just a collection of poltergeist activities, but a whole broader socioeconomic, political, cultural, folklore elements that are going on with us that contribute to this story. Like that does a lot of the time. You can't take these things out of context. The context is what informs and colors the story. Yeah, that's right. So, Dr. Fair, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about your background and how you came to be an expert on this particular story and many other things as well? Well, thank you very much for the invite, Scott and Forrest. I appreciate it. I've been listening to the show, as I said, for a few years now. That's also amazing. Yeah, we did not know that. So, that was a great surprise for us. But one of the things that I think comes from that is listening to shows like Astonishing Legends actually informs my methodology. And one of the greatest episodes that I heard was actually The Bell Witch, which I believe we might be talking a bit about. Let's do it. Just before you dive in, I do want to point out to folks, you are born and bred in this area, right? So, I was born and raised in Wallisburg, Ontario. And as a child, I had the benefit of meeting at the time in the early 1980s, the town historian. And I think that's a bygone era, right? Where each town had this figure whose presence stretched 60, maybe if you're lucky, 80 years. And this was a man by the name of Frank Mann. And Frank, who was alive in the 1920s, remember this was in the early 1980s, got to know some of the descendants, the direct descendants of the families that were involved. And in the 1960s and the 1970s, Frank published a number of works, just locally, you can find them in the local library. And, you know, I'd look on eBay for them just to save them. And I had a chance to meet Frank when I was a kid, a little kid. And I remember my buddy saying, that's the guy who wrote the Baldoon mystery. And as a kid, I knew about the Baldoon mystery because it was a story that people talked about. And again, perhaps that's a relic of a bygone era, having a local ghost story that everybody knows about. You know, it's the kind of thing that passes around campfires. And, you know, we used to camp every summer. So if we had a fire, I'm sure we would hear about the black goose that swam up and down the Snye River and tormented the McDonald family. So that's what I was raised on. And then I grew up and moved away from Wallisburg and did my PhD. I got a PhD in environmental studies and was really focused on environmental history, but it was a material history, like looking at what Indian affairs was doing to the local indigenous community, which I'm sure will also come up in our talk. And then I had the fortune of meeting somebody who became a good friend of mine, Dr. Christopher Larson, who wrote his dissertation on the history of poltergeists in the 20th century United Kingdom in America. And he really reoriented my focus to histories of magic, histories of mystery. And I went right back to my hometown to ask some deeper questions and really understanding and respecting the stories and the witness testimonies that people shared. Because up until then, I mocked it. I didn't believe people when they told me. And that's one of the worst things you can do to somebody who's sharing something so deeply personal is to not give room or space to that. That's very well put. So geographically, I'm going to start out just a bit larger. South Western Ontario, it's a peninsula in the lower Great Lakes. So on one side, you have Lake Huron and to the south, you'll have Lake Erie and sort of sandwiched all around Southwestern Ontario. You have Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, which is great now, but it wasn't so great 200 years ago. 215 years ago when there was a certain war, the War of 1812 that made this peninsula, Upper Canada, as it was known back then, the front line of aggression. So a number of battles were fought in this area. And of course, General Tecumseh from the Shawnee Nation in the Ohio Valley was killed on the Thames River, not too far from Baldoon. And Baldoon was actually a site of aggression as well. All of their cattle and their sheep were stolen by Brigadier General William Hall. There was a short occupation of Baldoon. All of the livestock were stolen and brought over to Detroit. They were returned. But what I'm getting at is it was a really tough time. Right. And that was one moment in time. And we're talking perhaps successive years of corn that only grows six inches. You can't feed yourself and you can't feed your family off of corn that grows six inches. Right. And the Baldoon settlers themselves were indentured servants. They weren't even free citizens. And when I mentioned that, again, it kind of takes off the filter of our 2025 glasses, because what do you mean they weren't free? Well, they were the descendants of the Jacobite Rebellion. So they were landless crofters from the islands of Tyree and Mull in Argyleshire County, Scotland, Hebridean folk. And it was considered a great thing to do at the time to take entire boatloads of these crofters and move them across the continent. One, to ensure that they don't rise up again. But two, if there's any way that they could maintain their allegiance to the crown, give them a gun and maybe they will fight for us. So they were quite literally on the front line, along with their neighbors on Bikenshwanong territory, the Anishinaabe, who were also on the front line of the War of 1812. Right. So you had indentured servants living in a very hostile environment. When they first arrived on the Snye River, or the Schenelle cart, as it was known back then, only one house had been built. And this was just before a very precipitous winter, in which I think the estimates are one third of the community died, including more than half of the family heads. And this was 20-some years before the events that we are talking about in the Baldoon mystery even began. So if we go forward in the 1830s, there's another war that happens involving the same families. And that was the Patriots War, in which the Hunter's Lodge, a militia based out of Pennsylvania, New York, and Michigan, were making raids into Canada. And at one point, they actually held members of the Macdonald family hostage in Michigan. Oh, wow. And a group of Chippewa or Ojibwe warriors from Amgenong, which is Sarnia, Ontario, liberated them. So there were raids that were happening in the midst, either before or after the events of the Baldoon mystery. What was the goal of the Hunter's Lodge? What were they trying to do? To take land or? To liberate Upper Canada. Okay. But it was not supported by the United States government. And it was one of those short-lived wars that actually resulted in some atrocities on the hands of the British. So the British were committing atrocities against Americans. Right. It's one of these really bizarre events that happens or happened back then. And it happens in the midst, either before or after. Well, this happened definitely after the events of 1829. But some of the people that you see in the index of the Baldoon mystery were directly involved. And some of the people who were involved in the mystery were POWs in the War of 1812, held for a year as prisoner in the Detroit garrison, for instance, for their role in the Battle of the Thames being captured, or the Battle of the Longwoods, which was another battle nearby. So these people carried a lot. Yeah. They had a lot of history and a lot of hard times. Absolutely. And that's something you also find, not all, but many paranormal instances, especially ones that are kind of drawn out. There are very trying and difficult circumstances around it, strife and turmoil, with individuals having a metaphysical or supernatural experience, a lot of times early childhood sickness, something that's very traumatic. And out of that, and there are theories as to maybe why that's happening, it kind of loosens the bonds of reality or the other side, things coming through. But these things are often born out of tremendous strife and death. World War II, for instance, lots and lots of paranormal happenings going on, just because things are so crazy with our reality. All right. So let's talk about the actual mystery and what happened, like where it began. The Baldoon mystery happened in 1829, 1830, in the Bell Witch in Robertson County. Tennessee, just, I would say, not too far from southwestern Ontario. I think about 1817 to 1821 is when those events started happening. Yes. And many similar elements overlap. Some don't, which makes these stories quite unique. But in the Baldoon mystery, for instance, you know, building off of that methodology, one of the things that I really tried to get across in that presentation to the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomenon is these people who lived 200 years ago had a completely different understanding of reality than we do today. And we can't look at a story like the Baldoon mystery or the Bell Witch with 2025 glasses. We have to take those off and not filter how other people would have seen the world in the things that they said they saw and they experienced as being complete bunk, right? Right. That would be, I guess, you know, that maybe that's the scholar in me, the objective materialism saying, oh, that couldn't possibly have happened. But for these people, it did. And when you read in the Baldoon mystery, there's 24 testimonials at the end in the appendices to the Baldoon mystery. Almost every single one of them ends with this statement, this is my true statement from what I have witnessed or what my father or mother has passed down to me. So these people, they had no reason to lie. Now, we can use different measures to say, oh, you know, that couldn't possibly have happened. But we don't know the world that these people lived in and how they saw the world and what was going on. I think that's a great point. And in your presentation, you talked about some fascinating ideas on how to approach this from a sociology and anthropology angle. And I think you called it the canoe of belief versus skepticism and how to navigate that fine line between, OK, let's remain, you know, open minded, but rational and skeptical. But also you have to touch the shore of skepticism and the river of belief of like, OK, but if somebody you really trust that you believe or tend to believe or want to says this really happened. And as you said, it's like they're not selling a book or tickets or anything. They're just this is their sober minded experience. It's like, what do we make of that and how do we navigate that? But my point here is that the fascinating concept for me is that this was their reality to them. This is truth. This is observation. And it has to be of that time. And maybe as they say, there is a great This American Life episode about, I think, the Iliad and the Odyssey and just how what they perceived was different than how it is now. Colors may have looked different to them. Their physical world may have been actually different from ours. And what we're getting now is a description, but it's not what they really experienced then. Reality has changed depending on who's experiencing it. Absolutely. And I had to take the ultimate Canadian approach by calling it the canoe of consciousness. There has to be a canoe somewhere. So, yeah, we could be on the shoreline of skepticism or we could jump out of the canoe and be carried away in the floodwaters of belief. And what happened 200 years ago is something that most people, I would say, if not all people back then, did not want to have happen to them. And it's similar with John Bell. I'm sure John Bell did not want to have this disembodied, discarnate voice and all the other crazy things that were happening. It's different when you're not the one experiencing it, but probably to a story, every encounter that we have that's this fantastical is no doubt exhausting to the experiencers. It's like the Polish poltergeist. Like that going on for that long, it's just everything's breaking, being damaged. You have to repair it. It breaks again. There's fires starting. You can't sleep. Your life is totally upended. Not to mention in the case of the Bell Witch from physical harm and death and just property damage and having to deal with that. And then people coming by wanting to check out the specter. And not to always try to find something to laugh about in these stories. Comically short corn. Yes. That always happens. Corn would not grow. If you were six inches a foot tall, that's not good. You don't want short corn. No, but that's also a symptom of an environmental catastrophe. And what is that doing to the psychological makeup of this community? And with the Balduin mystery, it wasn't just one person or one family. It seemed to be a community-wide event. Now, if you're okay with it, I can share a bit of the narrative because it's quite compelling. So in the 1870s, I believe it was 1871, a local newspaper in Wallisburg published the story that was written that became the Balduin mystery. And it was authored by Neil T. MacDonald. That's N-E-I-L MacDonald, not MacDonald. You said that in your presentation, right? So you're making it clear, there's no A up there in the front, but also it's how you say it, right? There is no A. It's also how you say it. It's one of those things when you're doing archival research and you put in a typo and then you find nothing. But if you get it correct, then perhaps you find something. So Neil T. MacDonald, he collected eyewitness accounts from approximately 24 people that became the basis of the Balduin mystery. And from my estimation, he did the same thing that Martin Van Buren-Igrim did. He waited until the firsthand witnesses had passed on. In particular, his father, John Taylor MacDonald. So John T. MacDonald was really the center of all of the events that happened in the Balduin mystery. Again, very similar to John Bell, you have this John MacDonald, these two people with everyday names, right? Who have these fantastic things happen to them. And in the story, the Balduin mystery, we get this incredible account of, well, perhaps I'll just read how the events actually began. Because I love the early Gothic narrative and the flair that people like Ingram and Neil T. MacDonald actually used as part of their Storytellers Flourish. Yes. So this is from chapter two of the Balduin mystery. And it's on page six of Frank Mann's son, Alan Mann, his book on the Balduin mystery. In those days, the good wife of the family weaved the homespun cloth that should cover the backs of her husbands and sons. And the daughters of the family were adepts in stringing the yellow straw into hats that should ward off the blazing sun in the harvest field. Many a merry party were gathered in the barns in hat weaving days, and the industrious maidens were never behind hand when any set of industry was to be performed. One day, the men went off to their farm duties, and the young women of the United Families started off to the barn to pick and prepare the straw for their afternoon's work. There was a glad party of innocent girls full of frolic and happy as birds on that bright summer's day. The rafters of the old barn rang with many of youthful laugh. The barn was built of logs, and inside had poles laid across from side to side overhead, forming a kind of loft upon which flax was thrown. As the girls sat chatting and working, they were startled by the sudden displacement and fall of one of those poles, right into their midst, but striking nobody. When this first surprise was over, the circumstance was forgotten and attributed to some natural cause. Suddenly, there was another crash, and down fell a second of these poles. This time, fully aroused, they instituted a vigorous but vain search, for notwithstanding all their efforts, they could find nothing to account for the incident. With some trepidation, they resumed their labors, and a long respite from annoyance occurring. They were again drifting into their merry mood, when a loud noise accompanied a third pull as it thundered onto the floor. This time, thoroughly frightened, they took to their heels and fled precipitously into the house. What could it be? Their conjectures were various, and each tried to reassure the other with an assumption of ease, by no means honestly felt. But the household duties called their attention, and they became absorbed in their work. While thus engaged, they were startled by a crash of glass, and a leaden bullet fell at their feet on the floor. It came through the window, and dropped easily like a spent ball. What a shame, said one, thinking that some hunter had carelessly fired in the direction of the house. People ought to be more thoughtful of others' safety. One of us might have been hurt. Hardly were the words spoken when another bullet followed the first, and barely had the terrified girls got over the shock of this occurrence. Then a shower of them came through the windows in the same way. In a short time, the young ladies fled to the house of a neighbor, not daring to remain at home. Mr. L.A. McDougal of Wallisburg, to whom the present writer is indebted for a most interesting account of the circumstances, came and, persuading them to return, found the deserted home, as they described. Each bullet had bored a hole through the panes of glass, as though it had been violently shot from a gun, and yet had dropped harmlessly and quietly on the floor. When John MacDonald returned to the house and found his women in such trouble, he was visited with a fit of melancholy, as though by some sensitive prescience, he could foresee the miseries his devoted family were about to endure. For days, nothing else was talked about in the neighborhood. Persons bagged these bullets as curiosities and carried them away with them to distant parts of the country. It was a nine days' wonder, and some thoughtless member of the family quite prided themselves on the notoriety they were attaining. One night, about midnight, John MacDonald was awakened by his wife with the exclamation, Hark! There's someone in the kitchen! Then followed the slow, steady tramp of marching men, backwards and forwards, with measured hollow tread. Then stillness. Then again, tramp. Tramp. Tramp. Driven to desperation of bravery by the startled cry of his child who slept in a room off the kitchen, the terrified father rushed to the apartment, flinging open the door, it found nothing. Nothing but the empty room with no apparent displacement of a single article in it. This event occurred in the summer of 1829, and for three successive years, this afflicted family were to be the victims of many such manifestations. Well, one thing that's interesting about this, and you've probably heard us talk about it on the show, because you think, okay, all these huge beams or poles are coming down in the barn where all the women are working alone while the men are out on their farms and that sort of thing. And it's like the first one, it's like, oh, that's weird. Okay. And then the second one, and then a third one, by the way, three, often a significant number with the Trinity and all that sort of scary, spooky stuff. But then they run into the house and they're probably talking about it. It seems like that's how it's being described here. But then they're like, oh, hey, we got all this other stuff we got to do. This is a very early case of paranormal apathy. They're like, hey, a bunch of stuff fell down in the barn. But you know what? We got farming and farm duties and things to do. So we're just going to move on from that. And that's when the bullets come into play. You know, the cows aren't going to milk themselves. Exactly. They got to keep working. Also, there's no remedy for that. It's just something observed. And as we often say, what do you do with that information? It's like, okay, so some beams came down. Well, maybe they were loose. You know, that's not that, I guess, gravity could play a part in just natural wear and tear. But bullets coming through the window. So like I said, that can be ignored until something doesn't make sense with our understanding of physics. Like the bullet comes through the window, it makes a hole. I don't know if it shattered the glass. But it doesn't go through and stick into the opposing wall. It stops kind of midair and drops. It's like a matrix situation, apparently. It seems like that's how they're trying to describe it. It's coming into the house and then falling to the floor. And now it's got your attention. And also, this is how things often start off with something. I noticed this was more major. A lot of times it'll be scratching or knocking. You know, you talk about Jeff, the talking mongoose. There's rapping. That's a very common kind of thing. This one is a, I guess you could call a larger force of poltergeist activity. But it starts off with something to get your attention. And then it kind of builds from there. So something is trying to make itself known. Also, another story around the same time period that it reminds me of is the wizard clip, where you also had a strange activity. You have a small incident happening. They always start off with, in this case, you'll get to what they think may have been the initial cause of all this activity. But the same thing with John Bell. There's an affront that happens. In the wizard clip, there is a traveling stranger, apparently, took ill and died, and he was not given last rites. And so there's a trigger there of some kind of like, okay, that's not good. Something is going to ramp up here. But also, it starts off with the sounds of horses galloping. Also reminded me of this story, like phantom sounds, phantom crockery being broken but never found, burning embers jumping up from the fireplace. A lot of common themes here were, well, that's what the materials you had at the time. So it's like not a lot of electronics to mess with back then. Absolutely. So you had the common things that are being messed with that eventually get your attention. And then eventually, like the burning embers, cannot be ignored anymore. Yeah, it's not like they had the Lego pieces that were in Enfield, right? It was what was at hand would come flying off the wall or through the window. And one of the things that witnesses describe in the accounts in the appendix, a fishing seine or a fishing net would have weights that were threaded through the screens. These would come flying off with the threads not being torn. So there's always an element of this thing happened, but it defies a logical explanation. A bullet can't fly through a window and then suddenly drop. A lead weight can't tear itself off of the seine without tearing the thread of the net itself. But there's one comment in that passage that I read that really strikes me. And that is John MacDonald experiencing melancholy as if this prescience overcame him. And back then, melancholy was a very serious thing. It's not listening to emo music in your room. It would have been a very big deal to say, oh, father has melancholy. In the 1950s and 1960s in parapsychology, there was almost this obsession to pinpoint a young girl as being the source of poltergeists. And that also happened in the Baldoon mystery where there's this unnamed girl who's mentioned maybe twice. So some of the works that were coming out to say, hey, what the heck was happening back then? Oh, it was probably this young girl and maybe this Lachlan McDougal was in love with her. But again, the glasses of the 1950s and 60s were sort of looking at the event through that particular lens. But when I see that John MacDonald was suffering from a fit of melancholy, I'm thinking, no, there's something happening with this man in particular. And then to see John Bell almost a decade earlier also being the focus of so much activity. I think that Neil T. MacDonald was right to say, this was happening to my father. Yeah. So that's interesting. And, you know, we've talked about that in the past on the show, them saying, and I don't think we've noted that. We've certainly noted that, you know, a lot of times, and this is going to come up here as we get deeper into this story, that it's, okay, there's an older single woman. She's invariably a witch and she'll be persecuted as a witch. That's scary. A woman with no husband or sometimes no kids. And it's like we need to burn them at the stake because they're doing bad things here. But it's interesting to think about that with young girls and poltergeists as well. And I don't think that's an observation we've made before, which makes me feel bad. But it's interesting in this case and that comparison that you make to the Bell family as well because you have these patriarchs. And, again, it's the other thing that's fascinating here, too. It's like you said. Historically, there was a lot of hardship for these families when they came to the area. And there's a lot of pressure to succeed and build. The thing that I thought when I was reading the publication that you shared with us was I was thinking about how the pressure then was so much more about building generational wealth for your family that has had a rough time up until you came along, at least. And you're trying to create not just get by and pay your bills and that sort of thing, but build something that they can lean on for your kids and your grandkids and your great-grandkids and add infinitum. And that's a lot of pressure. That's a lot of, like, are we making all the right decisions here? Right. As you said, you just can't call in sick or go into your room and listen to music for a few days. You have to be present and you have to be, especially the patriarch or the leaders of the families, had to be there to lead. And so it's quite an affliction when you cannot go out in the field and you're down for the count as much as any other injury. But we've also heard that's another common side effect with ghosts and hauntings is this melancholy, is that people are emotionally affected quite a bit. And probably, from my view, the most common one is a sense of melancholy or depression or dread, just negative feelings, especially when it's something that's not all positive. It's not just fear. It is a feeling, that extreme dread. Also, as you said, the same with the bell witch. And also, well, it just made me think of Lord Byron often claimed his abbey was haunted and he would wake up every morning with melancholy until about the midday. And so it was just a common kind of, and he attributed that to the spirits of the house, just like, well, it just comes with the house. I just feel very depressed for half the day. Just another common kind of thing. But also, in this case, cause for alarm when life is seemingly much more simple and with simple pleasures of just, this is a much more traumatic thing. Whereas nowadays, there's so much noise, I guess, is what I'm saying with modern society and that that happens. As people tend to ignore it here, the other quote that struck me was, it was the only thing talked about for days after this happened. This was the biggest news in the area. Yeah, it was. And we're just talking about the beginning. This is the early days of the events. And if the threads that will hold your sanity together are being stretched that early, what happens when this occurs over an extended period? And that's why I think that nobody at this time wanted anything like this to happen. So, I read the passage with the marching feet in the kitchen. It moves from marching feet in the kitchen to the sound of thunderous carriages moving over the rooftops at night. Balls of fire that uphort in the air and fall to the ground and set ablaze to the floor. When events like this happen, it does attract attention. And some of the people who are drawn to these types of events, I think 200 years ago is not much different than today. You get all sorts of characters who come out of the woodwork. Yes. Protein bars often feel like you're choosing between taste and nutrition. If it tastes good, you flip it over only to discover it's made with a whole paragraph of ingredients you've never heard of. 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But when it comes to dinner, nobody wants surprises. Marley's Spoon helps you eat well without overthinking it. Each meal is chef-designed, made with quality ingredients, and balanced so you feel good about what you're eating. With over 100 recipes to pick from every week, there's always something new to try. Whether you're in the mood for a comforting classic or something a little more adventurous. Marley's Spoon adapts to your life. From breakfast to dinner, and even those in-between snack moments. The subscription is simple and flexible, so it fits your schedule no matter how busy things get. Go to MarleySpoon.com slash offer slash pod45 for 45% off your first order and free delivery. That's right. 45% off your first order and free delivery. That's MarleySpoon.com slash offer slash P-O-D-4-5. This is Sophia Bush from Work in Progress with Sophia Bush. Check out this special moment we did on our show presented by eBay. When I was living in Chicago, I took part in my first ever giant charity sale, and I was able to auction several items from my personal closet on eBay. They were items that marked huge moments in my life and in my career, and though I was ready to pass them along, I also wanted to make sure they were going to someone who would love them. One of the things I loved the most about doing this with eBay is there was a way for everyone to shop. It wound up being so much fun to see where each and every item was going, where it was going to be loved. And in passing items along like that, authenticity really matters to the person who's getting them. That's why I love eBay's authenticity guarantee. They weren't just listing my items, they were verifying them, making sure something was genuinely from where it claimed to be, in this case, my closet. To listen to more, check out the full episode wherever you get your podcasts. Find what you love, sell what you don't. eBay, things people love. Hi, I'm Alex, and you're listening to Astonishing Legends, one of the few shows that you can make a vocabulary list for. Now let's get back to the show. There was a lot, and this word came up in your presentation, there is a lot of aportation, which we've talked about on the show before, where in terms of events happening in the house, physical objects were being moved in ways that defy the laws of physics and time. And among those objects were the bullets that were coming into the house that would be taken out of the home and reappear. But the other thing that was happening is that was happening with stones, and then that was also happening with the weights on the seine, right, which is the fishing net. So folks, you know, if you've seen the fishing nets, it's obviously you have to have the weights around the outer edge to throw it into the water and have it do what it's supposed to do. And these weights would be stitched into the net, and I don't know with what kind of style. I actually want to do some research on this. But the indication was that the weights were turning up inside the house, and then on the inspection of the nets, the threads were not damaged. The weights were just vanished from it, which implies an aportation there. But the other thing that was happening is when the stones were coming into the house or the weights from the nets is they were taking them out of the house, back down to the river, throwing them in the water, where they said, at least according to these witnesses, it was 35, 36 feet deep. They come back up to the house. They're there again, or they appear immediately or drop onto the floor. And on top of that, they're wet. And there's multiple people are saying that this is happening and that they've witnessed it. Now, some of these witness accounts in the back of the book there, like you said, there's several cases. Most of them are firsthand, but there's a lot of them where it's like, well, it was my dad. My brother told me this or whatever. And so there's like that folklore that's coming down. But other folks are like, no, I was there. I saw this happen. A lot like the witnesses that get talked about with the Bell Witch story and some of the other ones of this nature, including the person, I think it was Neil Campbell, who was struck in the chest by a stone. Yes. In the house. Yes. Right? Moments after he said, in this moment of bravado, nothing's going to scare me. And then, right? Right. Famous last words. And that stone came through the window, I guess, from the river, maybe. And then he's also one of the ones who saw the black dog and the one who saw a kettle flying around with boiling water. And the water is not touching or burning anybody. Yes. So the lid from the kettle gets like flies off and embeds in the window casing. And according to this account, the one person said you could see it 35 years later. You could see where it had left a one inch gash into the window casing. Yes. So it's a lot of folks. But some of these witnesses now, and this particular copy of the book that you sent us, it's the fourth edition. But these witness accounts are from the first edition, right? They were just carried out. Yes. And I have not noticed any alteration in the many editions. The last one I got was a few weeks ago, 1925. It's consistent with the other ones. Right. So it's good to know that because the story is being told the same way, especially with regard to the witnesses. But some of these witnesses, to give people a bit of a timetable on it, like you said, about waiting until folks have passed away. Because some of them, when they're telling the story, they're saying, well, as I'm writing this, I'm 74, I'm 75. When it happened, I was 24 or 25. Yes. The interesting thing about that is when some folks go, how are you going to remember something? It's like, well, you do if it's life-changing. But the other thing is that what's happening here is these events stuck with these folks, and they are sticking to their stories five decades later when they're explaining. And they're not all old folks that were that old. Some of the accounts are more contemporaneous in terms of the age. But here's the other thing that was interesting to me. I think it was about the bullets, which were – I don't know if they were spherical. I don't fully understand, like if they're just shot like circles. It would be a ball. Yeah, like a ball shot. It would be a ball, right? Yes. Because this isn't – when you read the book, the first half of the book is like all of this stuff happened, like the section you read, which is really cool. But then when you get into the witness accounts, it's like there's even more startling details. And among them is the fact that according to some of these witnesses, that they put private marks on the balls. They marked the balls and then threw them in the river. And then that's how they knew when they reappeared in the house that it was the same one they had thrown in the river, and it A, ported back into the house instantly. I mean the first thing I thought about was Zelda Rubenstein and Poltergeist with the tennis balls. You know, she put the X on the tennis ball and it comes right back into the – you know, that's through a portal. But the same idea. But these folks are basically saying it's not just that it's more bullets. It's the exact bullet that I threw in the river a few minutes ago. And there were accounts of military officers doing this. So it wasn't just that it was ignored. There was some type of an investigation by – I believe it was Captain Lewis Bennett. Came to investigate, watched what was happening with these bullets and said, this is out of my expertise as a military officer. I'm just going to head back to Toronto. I'm out. Yeah, which again, Bell Witch. It's like, I shall handle this. I'm going to figure it out. And it's whether it's like, I am this great theologian or I have this religious background. I can fight anything because the other thing, there wasn't their mention of – and I don't know. Now, you have to tell me if this is true and which person it was, but that maybe a Catholic priest came and read possibly exorcism rites and it didn't work or read some incantations. Yes. So the McDonald's, their first approach for help would have been to Detroit because in October 1829, the Detroit Gazette actually carried a story. Right. Saying the McDonald family is beset by a curse and a copy of that story is actually in Christopher Larson's 2014 14 Times article that he wrote with Paul Cropper. It actually has the text of that particular article from 1829 and seeking the help of any clergyman or members of the community that have knowledge of spiritual affairs that can bring the events to an end. And I think writing that is kind of like adding gasoline to a flame. It's just going to draw everybody to what's happening because what are you going to do, right? They didn't have television back then. They didn't have internet. They were going to go watch these witch balls, as some of the witnesses called them. Witch balls. Go flying around. And that's the other thing that was interesting too, and I don't think we've touched on it yet, was that at some point they were talking about the house being lifted off the foundation several feet. Or the roof being lifted up and put back down, which is the kind of thing you might expect in a tornado or something. Oh, and I did want to ask you about this. At the outset of your presentation, you had a piece of artwork in it, and we'll share this, a link to that. That's a local artist that did that? Yes. Kristen Gallardo. Yes. Yes. And I looked her up in preparation for talking to you. She seems like does really amazing work with sound and art. Absolutely. That sort of thing. And that picture is amazing. I would love to have her permission to share it on our webpage for this episode. If you would ask her on our behalf, we would appreciate that. Definitely. I can reach out to her. Okay, great. But it's such a cool piece of art. And just the idea of the house shaking and all of these things happening. And when you think about that, you think about this physical violence that's happening. Additionally, there was at one point, according to William Fleury, with the cradle that had the baby in it that was like rocking violently, like so much that they're concerned about the child. And three men couldn't hold the cradle from rocking that violently. And I think they did an experiment and they put a Bible in it and then it stopped it. Yes. You know, there is also an account that I found separate from Neil T. McDonald from this woman who passed away, I believe, in the late 90s. Her name was Jean Reed Lye, who was a descendant of the McDonald's. But she identified a different McDonald family at Baldoon. And you have to think, this name was as common as Bell or Smith, right? So there's McDonald's everywhere. And not only that, I think I counted something like 11 John McDonald's from the early 1800s to the 1900s. So what do you do with that? But Jean Reed Lye had written that the family home burnt to the ground and the next day it was intact. And this happened three times. So I'm thinking, what is that saying about witness and encounter when you escape with your life and watch your home burn down and maybe in pure exhaustion sleep at a neighbor's house and then you wake up and your home is there. What is going on psychologically in this community, having lived through decades of war, failed crops, livestock dying in the fields, the few short years before the Patriots War, where their foundation for reality is crumbled? Yeah. It's everything that they know or think they know about how safety and stability is not there. There's no control in the world. Anything can happen. And often it's not good. Absolutely. The other thing that I thought was interesting, there's this one passage in the book. This comes from pages 16 and 17 that I wanted to share real quick. And I'm curious what your take on it is, Rick. A peculiar incident that had great weight on the mind of Mr. McDonald occurred about this time. The old woman, who lived in the long low log house, solicited old Mr. McDonald's sister, that would be the dad, to weave her a piece of carpet. She was told that there was so much trouble in the house, she would not attempt an extraneous work. Nay, but, said the old woman, no trouble will befall your house while you are engaged on my business, end quote. Again and again, she repeated the assertion until it was determined that a trial should be made. And sure enough, as long as the carpet was being woven, they were undisturbed. Such a relief was indeed a luxury. Rest had for a long time been a stranger to them. And now, for a few days, there was perfect rest. An old writer pictured heaven as a place of utter rest, perfect ease of mind and body. These people, for a short time, experienced the blessing of perfect peace. But it was not to last. As soon as the cloth was restored to its owner, the noises and trouble began as lively as ever. So, it's interesting to me that this is woven into the story, pun intended, because, also, red flag, it stops when you're helping the neighbor. Maybe you don't have to shoot the goose. Maybe you just need to go over and have a talk. Right. Or, what else can we make for you? Yeah, absolutely. What happens when you have good relations with your neighbor? Yeah. Coming back around to Mr. Mann and trying to determine who that family may have been or who the woman may have been, it's like, are there names associated with an actual person for that? Or is it just sort of an amorphous idea? There is. And... It does not appear anywhere. It doesn't. No, it doesn't. And maybe you're choosing not to dox that person, even all these years later. I'm not, because Mann was convinced that this particular family, and I've seen the family name mentioned a few times, but they don't actually appear much in the literature of the Baldoon settlement itself, although they were Baldoon settlers. And he was convinced, I don't know, somebody told him at some point, probably in his youth, oh, it was this family, and it was for this reason, and they were from Scotland. Right. Right. They came on the boat. And I have to think, I don't know what feuds these folks carried with them. Right. And I'm sure they did carry feuds. Right. And those feuds could have turned families against each other. They could have turned the community against a particular family. Sure. Now, I don't know. Maybe that is part of the truth, that it was a particular family that was so maligned, they were written out of the community history. But they rarely ever appear in the archival documents. And my master's thesis was on the Baldoon settlement, not the Baldoon mystery. And I'm like, oh, this family, I never saw them. Right. In the archives. They were there, but I don't know. Maybe there's something to make of it, but I'm not sure. And one of the people who comes out of the woodwork is a man by the name of Robert Barker. And he is the character of Study. I'm publishing a book. It's coming out in mid-April. Oh, that's great. It's right around the corner. What's the name of the book? It's called High Strangeness in Ontario's History. Oh. And so Robert Barker, who is the focus of my essay in my anthology, was a schoolteacher. He was the headmaster of the local school in Sombra, Upper Canada, which was just up the river from Baldoon. Robert Barker is traveling at a canoe on the Thames River. I don't think it was the canoe of consciousness. He was probably getting some goods. He sees John MacDonald passing by, and he says, my friend, I hear about the troubles that's happening in Baldoon. Are they still plaguing you? And MacDonald, in sort of reaching his melancholic state, begs for any help that Barker or anyone can offer. And Barker says, well, I happen to have a pamphlet that has Pennsylvania Dutch spells, and I can perform hex work that will free you from the spirits that are troubling your household. And MacDonald says, sure, why not? Let's do this. The reason I know these details about Robert Barker is because there are court transcripts that detail his arrest and his trial and conviction for the crime of pretending to practice witchcraft. So in October, November, December, and into January of 1830, so 1829 to 1830, the school teacher was a very active person in Baldoon. And what Barker would do was he would work with these Pennsylvania Dutch spells, which often invoked the name of Christ to expose the witch or the evil spirit that was causing the trouble. He would write a missive on a letter, seal it in an envelope, and then nail it above a door in the family house, and then have a horseshoe placed either above or below the letter, with the intention that Jesus Christ would write the name of their persecutor on this sheet of paper, and then they could then persecute the real witch. So they would do this several times, and each time it would happen, it was reported that the envelope was found at a different part of the house the next day. And they would open the letter, and there was nothing but the missive that Barker had written. This is happening as we start to see scores of people coming to the MacDonald house and coming to Baldoon to witness what was occurring. And when I read these court transcripts, I get this image in my mind of this perhaps bellicose spectacle that's occurring, in which the name of God is being invoked to expose witches. And when I start to see that, I start to see trouble happening, because you're starting to get either a mob mentality, or you're getting a fervor in the community. And Robert Barker starts pointing to one or two women, of course, because if you're going to have a witch, it's more than likely going to be a woman. Like Kate Batts' witch, yeah. Right, there you go, Kate Batts. So Robert Barker is pointing to one or two women in the neighborhood as being the source of concern. And this is entirely speculative on my part, but I kind of wonder if some of the women in the community didn't go to the magistrate in nearby Windsor and say, you got to come up here because this guy is out of control. And the term they used was blasphemy. So Robert Barker is accused of blasphemy. And the magistrate is called, arrests Robert Barker, actually chases him into Michigan, and then, you know, doesn't care about international boundaries, goes across into Michigan and arrests Barker. He is put on trial, is convicted, he has to be in prison for one year, and each day when he wakes up, he has to stand in pillory, which was when you had to stand with your head in kind of a wooden guillotine frame in the stocks. And it's secured to the ground, right? It's not, you're not walking around, it's not the walking around stocks. No. Like you see in Monty Python, it's, yeah. Yeah, and you have to stand there till high noon. And that's what happened to this Robert Barker. Yeah, in public. However, he did write a plea for clemency to the Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, John Colburn, and was granted clemency. And in the story, it says, he was never seen again. And I can't blame the guy, right? Like, I would book it too. Well, I know. And it's also suggested that he was essentially, like, while he was jailed, right, he was starved and neglected and because he was emaciated. And he basically got into a pretty bad situation once he was apprehended and being held, I guess. He was. And he was actually portrayed with sympathy by Neil T. MacDonald. And in the court transcript, John T. MacDonald also writes with sympathy for this man who was trying to help him. This was the only person who was trying to help him. And that's the first mystic who tried to help the MacDonald family. The second mystic who is credited with bringing the events at Baldoon to an end is a whole other character in his own right. And that is the witch doctor of Long Point, John Troyer. Protein bars often feel like you're choosing between taste and nutrition. If it tastes good, you flip it over only to discover it's made with a whole paragraph of ingredients you've never heard of. Or artificial sweeteners are doing all the heavy lifting. 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Marley's Spoon helps you eat well without overthinking it. Each meal is chef-designed, made with quality ingredients, and balanced so you feel good about what you're eating. With over 100 recipes to pick from every week, there's always something new to try. Whether you're in the mood for a comforting classic or something a little more adventurous. Marley's Spoon adapts to your life, from breakfast to dinner, and even those in-between snack moments. The subscription is simple and flexible, so it fits your schedule no matter how busy things get. Go to marleyspoon.com slash offer slash pod 45 for 45% off your first order and free delivery. That's right, 45% off your first order and free delivery. That's marleyspoon.com slash offer slash P-O-D-4-5. Hey, it's Jay Shetty from On Purpose. Check out the best of a moment we did presented by eBay. I'd never owned a vintage camera before. There was something about it that felt almost unnecessary in a world where everything lives on our phones. 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To listen to more, check out the full episode wherever you get your podcasts. Visit ebay.com to shop your favorite finds. Find what you love, sell what you don't. eBay. Things people love. You're listening to Astonishing Legends with Scott Philbrook and Forrest Burgess. John Troyer, who was a Pennsylvania Dutch loyalist, who was not, he wasn't American, but he came to Canada following the revolution, as some others did, brought with him his faith. He was a Pennsylvania Dutch practitioner, and he was a practitioner of dowsing and what's known as powwowing. Not an indigenous term, but a white term that would involve hex work and involve invoking spells to rid your community of witches. And John Troyer was the type of person who saw witchcraft in everything. Okay. So this is from the 1898 publication, Pioneer Sketches of Long Point Settlement by E.A. Owen, and it's on page 30. This is about Dr. John Troyer. The old doctor was terribly persecuted by witches. All his troubles of mind and body were attributed to the witches who existed in human form and possessed miraculous powers for producing evil. He looked upon certain of his neighbors as witches, one of the most dreaded being the widow of Captain Edward McMichael. Mrs. McMichael was a very clever woman, and to be considered a witch by the superstitious old doctor was highly amusing to her. She was a woman of strong mind and great courage, and it is said she frequently visited the lonely ravine and made grimaces at the poor old doctor from some recess or clump of bushes, just for the pleasure it gave her to tease and torment him. He was a great stutterer, and her appearance in the ravine would throw him into a fit of wild excitement, during which he would stutter and gesticulate in a threatening manner. He was a great deer hunter, but if he chanced to meet Mrs. McMichael when starting out on a hunting expedition, he would consider it an omen of ill luck and would turn around and go home. He kept a number of horseshoes over the door of his house, and at the foot of his bed, a huge trap was bolted to the floor, where it was set every night to catch the witches. The jaws were about three feet long, and when shut, about two and a half feet high. There are people in Port Rowan today who have a distinct remembrance of having seen this witch trap in Dr. Troyer's bedroom. But in spite of this defensive means, the witches would occasionally take him out in the night and transform him into various kinds of animals and compel him to perform all sorts of antics. Whenever he met with an experience of this kind, he would suffer from its effects for some time afterwards. One night, the witches took him out of a peaceful slumber, transformed him into a horse, and rode him across the lake to Dunkirk, where they attended a witch dance. They tied him to a post, where he could witness the dance through the windows and fed him rye straw. This change of diet and the hard treatment to which he was subjected laid him up for a long time. It required several doses of powerful medicine to counteract the injurious effects of the rye straw and restore his digestive organs to a normal condition. Strange as it may appear, Dr. Troyer believed all this. Yet, aside from witchcraft, he was considered a sane man. He is described as wearing, as having a long, white-flowing beard, and it is said he lived to be 99 years old, and that just before his death, he shot at a hawk offhand from the peak of a barn roof. So that's our introduction to the second witch doctor who enters Baldoon. And if you forget to mention, that was a great observation that, oh, rye straw, perhaps it's a little bit of ergot poisoning. Yeah. So he might have been ingesting a derivative of LSD. Right. And not knowing. Right? So, of course, he turns into a horse and then rides across Lake Erie. Yeah. I love that. And crossing the water, it's fascinating. So, Troyer, I don't understand, though. It's like, why are so many people there just witch doctors? How are they getting branded like witch doctors? That's taken from indigenous culture and that idea, or like? Indigenous culture was involved. And the case that we see happening is actually on the Thames River. And there were a group of Muncie, Delaware, the Lenape Nation that lived closer to present-day London in Muncie Town. And there was another Muncie community further downstream called Fairfield, which is now Moravian Town. And there was an interesting note in the 1790s by the Moravian missionaries who lived at Fairfield, who wrote that the Muncie, Delaware, at Muncie Town, come down here and accuse us of being witch doctors. And accuse us, meaning accuse the brethren of the Moravian mission of meddling in magic, because they would have had their own divination practices. So, when we see these accusations of witch doctoring, which John Troyer proudly proclaimed to be a witch doctor, to work in white magic to dispel witches, which he saw everywhere, as you saw from that passage, it's often people like Barker, who gets accused of blasphemy, Troyer, who dabbles self-professedly into white magic, and the Moravian mission brethren as well, who get accused of this by the indigenous folks. And I think one of the things that we often fall into a trap of mysticizing indigenous people, when they would see white folks, these settlers, practicing sympathetic magic, and at one point, I'm pretty sure that's what John MacDonald starts dabbling in, John Troyer's instruction, constructing perhaps, and this is speculative, a goose, and I'll get into the goose momentarily, constructing a wood frame perhaps of a goose and shooting it with a silver bullet to sort of expel the poltergeist that is besetting the family. And at this point, somebody who's perhaps past the level of being threadbare with his sanity will do anything. So what he does is he goes to visit John Troyer. So he visits Troyer, and in the book by Neil T. MacDonald, there is this wonderful passage in which he describes consulting with Troyer's daughter. So John MacDonald pays a visit to Dr. John Troyer on Lake Erie. And on page 25 of the Neil T. MacDonald story, we get this description of John Troyer's daughter as being a striking-looking girl of 15 years of age. Her complexion was sallow and unwholesome. Her form, fragile, and her eyes had a weird, faraway expression. But when excited, gleamed with a latent fire. She spoke simply and unaffectedly of her gift of second sight, seeming to take it as a matter of course. The stone, she said, her father had picked up in the field and was by some called the moonstone. She told them that any attempt on her part to decipher mysteries by aid of the stone was always attended by great physical protestation and much mental agony. Therefore, she had resolved not to use her powers unless under very extraordinary circumstances. So that's the introduction of Troyer and his daughter. And so what this daughter does is she goes into a different room and all as quiet as they're waiting with great anticipation as to what is this moonstone going to say. And the girl emerges after some commotion and looks at John T. MacDonald and says, look at the time. I'm assuming they had some means of telling time. At this very moment, your barn is burning to the ground. And so they remembered that. And then when they returned home, sure enough, it was burnt to the ground, apparently at the same time. But Troyer's daughter also prescribes the culprit of the maladies affecting Baldoon and places the antagonist as being this neighbor who wanted to purchase MacDonald's land from him, to which he had steadfastly refused because he was not interested in selling, but had wanted to raise a productive farm as a legacy for his children. This daughter of Troyer had said, this is the culprit. And not only is she the culprit, is there not a strange goose that swims up and down the river in front of your farm? This strange goose might even have a black wing. And MacDonald says, yes, this bird has been meddling with my flock, causing mischief. And the girl says, you must mold a bullet of silver for no lead will harm this bird. And you must shoot this bird. And by shooting it, you will expose this antagonist and it will bring all of your troubles to an end. So that is the story, in the story of Neil T. MacDonald. And there's some debate as to whether there was a young daughter who was involved. What we do know for a fact is that John Troyer went with John MacDonald back to Baldoon to help rid the family of this curse as they were beginning to know it and help him mold this bullet of silver. And on the way to Baldoon, they stop at the farm of Captain Arnold on the Thames River, who was a veteran of the War of 1812. And Troyer, as I described, with a long flowing white beard and a top hat, which wouldn't have been fashionable in 1829. It would have been rather backwoods of, no city gentleman would have been caught like this. So they stop at Captain Arnold's home and there's a gathering. And Captain Arnold's wife does the one thing you should never do to a mystic of such eminence. She says, prove it. And so what Troyer does is he says, oh, okay, I will show you. He takes his top hat off and he points it toward Captain Arnold's wife. And he says, kindly look inside the hat. And kind of what I imagine to be a very awkward situation, he puts the top hat right against her face. And she's quiet for a few moments and then they can hear this soft sobbing coming from the woman. And then she starts bawling, just endless tears. He takes his hat back and puts it on his head and he's quiet for a moment. And he says, why don't you tell us what you saw? And she professes that she saw her mother who had passed decades before, looking as she looked when she was alive and vibrant and smiling at her. And that proved to everyone at Captain Arnold's that John Troyer was the real deal. A little bit of forced scrying. Right? Yeah, that's exactly what it would be. Just a little scrying, you know, no mirror, but just look inside the hat. So they go to Baldoon and in the story by Neil T. Macdonald, John Macdonald molds his bullet of silver and the audience gathers around the river and he spots this rogue goose with a black wing. And he shoots it, hitting it in the wing and it lets out this god-awful human-like scream and skitters away on the water. And then, sure enough, the next day, who did they see walking down the road with her arm in a sling but the neighbor who tried to purchase John T. Macdonald's property. So, it does kind of have the museum curator Scooby-Doo feel to it, right? Right. It was, yeah. Okay, let's go with this being truthful and accurate. Is then the goose a familiar, you know, in the old witch term, and also, of course, you have silver. So, you have a pure metal just like werewolves. You need something of special casting to deal with. Well, really, kind of, I guess, just like a werewolf, transmogrification, something that's, like anthropy, you've got something that silver deals with humans turning into animals. So, there's a commonality. And I don't know, I guess you'd need a historian in folklores to make a connection if that is that some part of werewolf lore and vampire lore. But the question for me is, so you have this creature that is familiar, perhaps, of a witch, which is an animal that is controlled by the human, not necessarily is the human. So, is this swan, then, are we to take this as that is the woman who has transformed herself into the swan and back? Is this a skinwalker situation that are we dealing with? Or is it a sympathetic injury that the swan, you know, the swan is just an animal she controls? Sorry, the goose that she controls? And then the, well, they're all very aggressive too. Geese and swan can be very aggressive as well. Yes, my dad was attacked by a swan at a cemetery. Yeah, I was attacked by a goose. Bellbuckle saved him. Yeah, they're not gentle animals. But is it a sympathetic injury or did, are we to believe that the woman had transformed herself into the goose? So, Troyer's daughter is the seer who supposedly gave the message about this is why all this is happening. And in the book, there's this suggestion that it was a Methodist minister who took MacDonald up to see Troyer? Who took him through the forest in the long woods where they heard all the people fighting and murder, murder, help, help, and all of that in the night when they were on their way to meet with Troyer's daughter? It was a Baptist minister. It was a Baptist, not a Methodist. Yes, so it was a Baptist minister. MacDorman? Elder McDormand. Elder McDormand. Okay. And that account in Neil T. McDonald's story Yes. is strikingly like Nathaniel Hawthorne's young Goodman Brown. Right. So, I'm kind of curious if, you know, I kind of need a plot device to get father from Baldoon to Long Point. Right. So, let's have a story about an encounter in the woods with the spirit but instead of the devil and young Goodman Brown, it's Elder McDormand and John T. McDonald. Right. But curiously, a number of the, well, the incident that happened in the Longwoods in my mind evokes the battle of the Longwoods that happened in the war of 1812. That's an actual battle. Yes, an actual battle. And so the Longwoods, that's a real place. Yes. Okay. You have to remember these are also veterans of that war. Walking through the woods where a pretty fierce battle happened between Americans and the British soldiers visa the Scots. Does the timetable for this work enough to suggest the possibility of PTSD upon being... Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Absolutely. So that's interesting. That's interesting. So there are some deeply traumatic experiences that these folks were carrying with them for decades. Sure. That hit ground zero in late 1829, early 1830 through the Baldoon mystery. There's no direct reference to PTSD. Well, of course, that's a 2025 term. Sure. But there's no direct reference to the trauma that these folks experienced during the war. And I'm wondering if they had mechanisms of talking about what happened during the war. Yeah. Because they might not have because they wanted to build a better future. And why would you build a better future by talking about the horrible past? Coming home and talking about things that your family would not even be able to imagine happening. Right. But maybe it finds its way into the literature. My reading of all of this is that one, Neil T. MacDonald, perhaps, like Martin Van Buren, Ingram, is a great storyteller. Right. And this is really written in the Gothic tradition. So at some point, I imagine MacDonald and probably Ingram had read works by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Right. They were quite familiar with the tropes and they were quite familiar with the verbiage. And that's as far as I get. That I don't want to prescribe what I think happened, but kind of like having those glasses from the 2025 filter, I want this to have room to breathe just as it is. And some of the magic that I see is, you know, at the center of Wallisburg, there's this giant statue of a black goose flying. My favorite restaurant in town is the black goose pub. I mean, they've got the best food in town. So, there's a magic that happens in storytelling. And at some level, yes, I fully think that there was sympathetic magic occurring. Perhaps the goose wasn't a goose at all, but was a wood goose that was carved by John T. McDonald and was shot by a bullet that was made of silver. And perhaps it was in witness to members of the community. that would have gotten attention. That would have made people think, is this guy okay? Maybe that's why Neil T. McDonald says, you know, father had melancholy. Right? So, sort of putting a cushion around his father's behavior. Ah, yeah. So, what could have happened, what actually happened is beyond me. I can speculate, but I do think at the very least there was sympathetic magic being practiced. Well, when you say that, what does that mean, sympathetic magic? So, in the old days, that would have been a scapegoat, driving out the evil forces by projecting or crafting an object that holds all of the intentions that are harmful to your family. And when you reach that point in your life where you're tired of your barns burning to the ground, of your six-inch corn, everything is beyond reason at that point. Your reality is in the depths of, well beyond the canoe of consciousness. You are carried away in the flood. So, you're ontological borders, your boundaries are so porous, you don't know right from left or up from down. So, you'll do anything to find some peace. What do you make of the idea that this person that is supposedly the antagonist for this situation is never mentioned by name and they're just called the people of the long, low log house, which is one of the coolest things of it, the people of the long, low log house. But what is it they're covering up there? Because it seems like there's at one point, I think in the book, there's an implication that they're trying not to malign someone by mentioning their actual name. There seems to, maybe there's also an implication that there are indigenous folks that wanted the land and that they're being vilified in that way. Like, is there any historical connection to any real person associated with who might have represented the woman who was injured after the goose was shot? There's two possible answers to this. The first, let's consider an actual person or group of people, long, low log house. Frank Mann firmly believed that it was another settler family. However, he suspected that this other settler family hired indigenous folks to harass the McDonald's because the settler family wanted this piece of land. And if we consider this hypothesis that it's a person, we can also consider that, you know, indigenous people can act on their own agency and they wouldn't have to be hired by a white person to do it, especially if they wanted the land back. Right. Right. I personally don't suspect this to be the case, but I know folks do. When Baldoon was established in 1804 by Lord Thomas Douglas, the fifth Earl of Selkirk, he arrived to survey the land and said, I want to build my house right here, Dover Township, the north end of Dover Township. this was before any survey was done. This was before any question of township had been settled. There had been treaties 1790 and 1796 that deal with the general area, but when you actually read the language of the treaties, they say things like, the first fork in the river. Well, what river? Is it a dominant fork? Is it high water, low water? So there's ambiguity. When Selkirk starts building that house in 1804, not the same house that the McDonald's lived in, but the manor, Selkirk Manor, there was an indigenous woman who was going to plant her crops in May of 1804 and she sees these people. She'd never met them before and they're building a house. That's where she was going to farm. She approached Chief Wetalance, the principal chief on Walpole Island and they filed some very specific grievances to the crown and they were visited by a Captain Harrow from across the river in Michigan. This was still quote-unquote crown land at the time and Captain Harrow took one look at the situation and said, oh no, none of this land is indigenous land anymore. In fact, all of y'all are going to move, we're going to push you out west. That's the beginning of the Trail of Tears quite literally where indigenous peoples are forced off the land. So that happens 25 years before the Baldoon mystery. So there is a thread of tension, anxiety, and antagonism among two marginalized communities. The Anishinaabe who are being forced off their land and the Highland Scots who are being forced off their land. The Highland Scots are being relocated onto the Anishinaabe land. So we have two communities who are already in a pressure cooker situation where life is at stake. And it's not just the life of one person, but it's the life of entire families and communities. So whether that has some bearing in what happened 25 years after, I don't know. We do have indigenous witness accounts to what happened at the Baldoon mystery. And that's where we get the second path, the second possible answers to what the antagonist is. And you won't see a single mention of it in Neil T. McDonald's book, The Baldoon Mystery. And it's fae, the fae, fairy folk, little people, the wee folk, the good people, the good neighbors, right? Always spoken about with some undertone of affection because you don't want to call them one by their real name and you definitely don't want to call them by an ill name because it will invite their wrath. Protein bars often feel like you're choosing between taste and nutrition. If it tastes good, you flip it over only to discover it's made with a whole paragraph of ingredients you've never heard of. Or artificial sweeteners do all the heavy lifting. It's basically dessert in disguise. You shouldn't have to choose between tasty and nutritious. And that's what makes Aloha stand out. Aloha protein bars nail the delicious and nutritious. They're USDA organic and made with ingredients that actually grow somewhere. It's their whole taste that grows philosophy. 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One of the things I loved the most about doing this with eBay is there was a way for everyone to shop. Sure, people who wanted a pair of my jeans could get them, but people who might be a different size than me could buy accessories. If you're a size eight, you're lucky because that's my shoe size. They could do purses, jewelry, all sorts of things. Some people needed winter wear, some people wanted summer dresses. It wound up being so much fun. To listen to more, check out the full episode wherever you get your podcasts. Find what you love, sell what you don't. eBay, things people love. From Alexandria, Virginia, and you're listening to Astonishing Legends with Scott Philbrook and Forrest Burgess. Now, back to the show. Again, here's another trope. Names are extremely important. As we all know, it's part of the rules of why you're talking about Pennsylvania Dutch folk magic, where you try to get the name of the entity that's harassing you. Hopefully, Jesus will write it down, put it in the envelope, because you need to know who you're dealing with exactly to focus your repelling defensive energy against. And also, we have, again, to bring up more animals here, that there's something symbolic about the animals. Just because I had my notes here, that John Bell witnessed a strange creature that looked like a dog, but had the head of a rabbit on it. So some kind of strange hybrid cryptid that he first witnessed, which was, that was the omen, or one of the first kickoffs that something was not right around there. And then his son, Drew Bell, started to walk up to an enormous bird perched on a fence, much larger than any bird should have been. And it flew away. So you have these kind of omens and signs, and here you have an unusual, it could be just a regular goose, except it has a black wing. Or, as I read, totally black. So something is unusual about, is unnatural about the goose. In the Bell Witch, there was also, was there not a girl in a green dress jumping in the treetops? Yeah, there is a girl swinging, yeah, a girl in a green dress was seen by, I think by Betsy Bell, swinging in a tree who vanished. So the girl that wasn't there, but some other kind of specters, sights and wonders. And so we're seeing this in this case, too, where you, except it's a direct connection, and that's why I was kind of curious about somebody transforming, you know, from human to goose and back again, or suffering that injury, or like I said, it's a sympathetic injury where the person has injected themselves into the goose and can ride around observing and spying and then can transform themselves back except when they're injured. And then now we're talking about something that I think the, probably comes from European folklore and tradition as well as North American indigenous tradition, and that's a belief in the, in the fairy folk. And actually, yeah, and giving them a lot of respect because they can help you, they can be neutral, or they can hurt you, depending on what you're doing. And from your presentation, I noticed kind of an interesting idea that kind of resonated, which was that from the Native American perspective, and also the fae perspective, if you're harming the land, if you're not, if you're behaving like an idiot, and just burning and slashing and not respecting the land itself and nature, you're going to get into trouble, whether it's the fae folk or just your own survival for the winter. If you're not prepared right, if you're not following directions, if you're not giving enough respect to the conditions and environment, you're doomed. So in the Bell Witch and in the Balduin mystery, we see these elements of what happens when you meddle with nature, and specifically what happens when you meddle with the little people or the wee folk. And this is a common feature in both indigenous storytelling, specifically the Anishinaabe, and Hebridean lore. So there's this story called The Fairies on Finlay's Sandbank that was recorded in 1900 can be found on electricscotland.com, in which in the early 1800s on the Isle of Tyree, in which some of the McDonald's were from, there was this system, this relationship of reciprocity that occurred between this family of Smiths. So they were metal workers, and these fairies who lived in a sandbank. And there was an intermediary, a fairy dog, that was the guardian of the sandbank, and the wee folk who lived in it. And each night there would be an exchange in which an incantation would be made, and a kettle would be handed over to the wee folk. And they would bring the kettle into the sandbank, and then in the morning it would be given back to the people. And when I think of a story like this, I'm beginning to see some glimpses of some much deeper ancestral ties to homeland, and this process of reciprocity that is occurring between perhaps the realm of the ancestors that live in this mound by the sea, and this exchange that is then given back to the living people. So they can sustain themselves with this kettle. Well, as it turns out, in most stories, something goes awry. And in the fairies on Finlay's sandbank, there is an occasion in which the wife of the smith doesn't do the incantation right, or something happens where it causes the situation to go south. And the smith finds out that the incantation wasn't done, and the wife is now really upset, and she runs to claim the kettle back from the fairies, who then never visit again, right? They're indignant to what's happened. And they send this fairy dog, who is a very common character in Scottish storytelling and Hebridean lore, to chase the woman down. And she barely escapes into the house with the ancestral kettle or the spiritual kettle and slams the door. But that severs that connection. Now, interestingly, in the ball dune mystery, there is a family dog who is attacked by a kettle. Yes. And a ladle in it, too, as well. The ladle in the kettle, it takes a life of its own, and in front of dozens of people is striking the dog. So is this some inverse narrative, where it's kind of an underhanded way to write back against the wee folk, the stories that were told in their homeland, where it's now the dog that is assaulted by the kettle and the ladle, rather than the people that are assaulted by the kettle, or by the wee folk who possess the kettle? Now, the indigenous perspective is just as compelling, if not more compelling to me. And this part of the story picks up with John Troyer leaving Baldoon. So Troyer goes and witnesses this great spectacle of John T. MacDonald shooting the black goose. The townsfolk in Baldoon see this crazy looking guy with a white beard and a top hat, and right away they call the magistrate, and John Troyer makes his escape. On his way out of Baldoon and back to Lake Erie, he happens to meet one of the most famous missionaries of the day, a man by the name of Reverend Peter Jones, who happened to be a Jibwe. You had a picture of him in your presentation. Yes. This is somebody who visited Queen Victoria, no less. So this was somebody of high social standing. His Anishinaabe name was Gagagawanabe, which means sacred feathers. So this was somebody who walked in both worlds as a Methodist missionary who traveled to indigenous communities and traveled to Europe to visit with the Queen and to visit Western Europe. He visited Baldoon. He saw John Troyer fleeing, and probably this is a moment of great interest said, what is happening? Who is this person with this long beard and top hat? Troyer spills the beans and tells him everything. Everything that happened with the goose, with the bullets flying, the stones, and all of it. But he says, it's over. We solved the problem at Baldoon. Reverend Jones didn't want to leave it at that. So he goes and visits the MacDonald family and reports that nothing happened while he was there. However, he continues on his journey to Wapol Island. And he meets the principal chief, a man by the name of Baozhigishigweishigum, which means his footprints are across the sky. So this was somebody who was also quite prominent within his local community. And Reverend Jones says to Baozhigishigweishigum, do you know what's happening with these white folks across the river? Like, what's going on with the MacDonald family? And the story that Baozhigishigweishigum told Peter Jones is really interesting. Quote, and this is from Peter Jones. Quote, last spring, this white man went and cleared and burnt this grove, and the fairies have been obliged to remove. Their patience and forbearance were exhausted. They felt indignant at such treatment and were venting their vengeance at the white man by destroying his property. The old chief uttered these words as if he fully believed in the existence of these imaginary beings and in their power to harm those who dared disturb their habitations. So we now have multiple sources saying that this isn't just a physical thing that's happening. This is a deeply spiritual thing that's happening. And it's happening because there was perhaps a contract with the space, with this woodlot. At one point, he says a poplar grove. This grove, it was burnt to the ground. And so, Forrest, you're right. There's going to be a response. Well, yeah. No, that's often the thing. You have to leave offerings. You have to ask permission for certain things because you have to live in harmony. And I was thinking about the other, the more broad stories that we've come across that are throughout North America about, I was just thinking, um, these beings, these supernatural beings living within the earth and coming out when things are good, but also, uh, things were, were so terrible with the humans and they were so upset that they went back into the earth. We've heard that as well in Utah with Skinwalker Ranch and the, uh, the Ute and Navajo legends. And that originally when the earth was formed, these supernatural beings, uh, powerful roam the earth and then humans came about and they tried to live in harmony. And then the humans got so obnoxious. It's like, we're out of here. We're going back into the earth. We're going to come out occasionally, but really, uh, we can't stand this anymore. It's like the, it was such an affront and their, their patience was exhausted. And then I've heard the opposite where in some, uh, native lore where humans also were birthed from the earth or autoctilists, uh, where they came out of the earth from their, as their origins and then populated the, uh, the surface. And then there's, uh, you know, these two types of beings, humans and, and other worldly creatures trying to live together, but not getting along all that well. So there's a lot of tension there. Uh, but quickly before I forget, I just want to relay a quick anecdote about, uh, some friends of ours. They both believe in spirits and they've, uh, they love to go ghost hunting. So they're open-minded to that, but the, uh, the man was going to do some repairs on a house that they were in at the time. And it was going to be in an area near the house where it might've been a little bit of landscaping or something that the woman in the, in our anecdote here, believe that there was some activity, like just little weird things that are happening, little fake kind of thing. So she would kind of like leave little offerings and say out loud, like, Hey, we're going to, you know, we're going to cultivate this part of the garden and wrote a tiller. Uh, I hope that's okay. Uh, here's a little offering of, uh, some sweets or honey or something, just more of a fun kind of thing. But she did notice some odd things happening. And then while the, the man in the story was like also believed in kind of, uh, the supernatural world kind of laughed it off. Like, ah, I know there's weird things happening, but it's not the fae. It's not, come on. It's not the fae. So he continued with his work, kind of laughing it off. And then he noticed, like he went in the bathroom and came out as tools are gone. He's like, Hey, are you, are you messing with me? Or did you, did you hide them? No, I didn't do anything. Yeah. Cause now all my tools are gone. She was like, look, I was not, I was not even here in that part of the house or whatever. Uh, so he searched all around and they were in the crawl space of the house. Like he had no idea how all these, you know, electrical tools and hammers and whatnot were now in the crawl space. And she swears I, I didn't touch them at all. There was nobody there. And, uh, after that, he's like, okay, maybe there is something to this. And I should have been disrespectful and I should have asked for permission and made a little offering. So who knows, but it's a modern day little thing where you, if you disturb the land or the property, you should get the permission if they're, if they're about. Absolutely. And I think people who share stories of Bigfoot or Anishinaabe Sabe is, is the name that you would hear often offer similar warning accounts. So if you see the presence of, of this being, whether it's a little person or a big person with hair, it could be a warning. Yeah, it could be a sign that you need to reorient yourself. Perhaps you need to clear out of this area. And when something like that happens, I can understand how that would be such a moving experience that you would leave an offering and perhaps reorient your relations to a place where you witness something that, uh, is sideways to the reality. That we are all nurtured in at the expense of wonder and magic. So kudos to your friend for, uh, for, for that awareness. As you say, when something happens and it, uh, it doesn't have to be that dramatic, but it makes me think of, uh, some other close friends that have mine where they were experiencing some spiritual oppression. And that's the sludge entity where they, they, the critique against them was that, oh, you guys are prone to this. You're Catholic. You're, you're, you're ready to believe in this stuff. So that it happened and you actually caused this, you had troubles to your son. Knowing this, uh, friend of mine, as well as I do, it's like, this is not the first thing they go to for an answer is that they were so exhausted. And again, we're, we're talking about at the beginning of the episode, these kinds of experiences can be so devastatingly exhausting and draining down to your nub where you, you're looking for any solution at all. And it's like, we didn't believe in this stuff. And then I, you know, my friend, John, who said, uh, yeah, and then I just saw something one day. It made me think like, is that something we should try this? I mean, we don't want to seem like kooks, but it's the one thing we haven't, and, and no Western medicine, uh, has provided an answer. And so there's no help there. Your child is getting more and more sick and nothing's helping. It's like, well, uh, let's try this. And if it's a Pennsylvania Dutch horseshoe with a note on it, what's the harm? It didn't cause anything. Or if it's shooting a goose, what's the harm? Right. You just, you'll have a goose dinner at the worst, but it's often turning to something that, well, let's, let's just try this. Even though we don't believe in it. And then you get some result that affirms that belief. It's like, well, maybe there was something to it, uh, because you got some results. And, uh, what I loved about the Reverend Peter Jones is that his attitude is like, yeah, we, we believe in this stuff. And obviously something weird's going on. The thing I liked about the story was that it's also witnessed by a lot of people. And he's a notable. And I was going to ask you like the bell, which story ad notables who came by to check it out. One, Andrew Jackson, who would be president later on. Was there anybody else of, of note really? Cause it didn't seem like a lot of people wrote about this or, you know, wasn't at the time. Was there any celebrities, let's say that came by when they heard about this? Peter Jones was the A-list celebrity. He was the A-list celebrity. Yeah. Yeah. He was, he was, he was in peak form in 1829, 1830s. So to have him, but that actually speaks, I think, to a compelling point that I haven't touched on. And it's a thread in the bell, which as well is that for decades, people don't really talk about it vocally. Right. Yeah. Out of respect, perhaps for the witnesses, or it's mentioned in hushed tones around campfires. You also don't want it happening to you. You, you saw like how it's entertaining. We'll go visit it, but we don't want following you home. And from the native perspective, we often hear, it's like, you don't talk about these things because you draw attention to whatever this is. Absolutely. And that's possibly also why Neil T. McDonald didn't mention the fairy folk in his story. Yeah, that was the question I had for you. And especially after your presentation, because you bring this up near the end of it, but why is that not there? Is it not there because maybe he doesn't believe in them? Or do you think it's more of a, I don't want to mess with them. It's, it's too much of a hot potato. It's a paranormal hot potato. Well, when I think of the account with the dog being attacked by the kettle and the ladle, I think Neil T. McDonald was being subversive and kind of lifting his nose up to the wee folk. in the little people. And when I think about that, I have to consider that this was a man who was writing just at the rise of industrial modernity. Who's got room for fairies when we're conquering nature? Who cares about a grove? We're, we're, we're destroying the place, right? We're making this, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to have corn that's 20 feet high at this rate. So there's actual some, perhaps some subversion that's occurring. Oh, the common attitude that's, I often heard the native saying that the wise man adapts to nature and his surroundings where the unwise man tries to adapt nature to his own needs. You do it by, well, of course, Western society has done it by force really. Is that you, you come in and you just kind of bulldoze everything else. Was it the, it's got an Oak Island. Is it not Dutton the destroyer? Dunham is the guy who tries to just dynamite his way to the prize. Oh yeah, I can't remember his name. And you end up ruining. Yeah, he's the one that just did the most destruction to that island. Yeah, you just, cause you're going to muscle your way in. But when we started the, with the background of the history and the families that moved in. And so Lord Selkirk, that was the only build, you know, when they got here to this place as indentured servants, it's like, Hey, we're looking for a place to stand and a place to grow. And we find out there's one house here and nothing else. And a very harsh winter coming on. It was so brutal. As you were saying, a third of the people died, you're already starting off in misery and it's just so hard to get by. And now you're still not adapting, even though now there's a bit of a community, you're still not living in harmony with nature to a degree. And as you say, you're thumbing your nose at like the local traditions and lore where it's like, eh, but same thing with the La Naine Rouge heading South towards Detroit, where you have people laughing off, you have these sophisticated Europeans laughing off the local traditions and then you get a bad omen and a sign and a visit from some type of we antagonist, as you say. Yeah, absolutely. This is acknowledgement of the situation that's unfolding, regardless of whether you believe in the fae or you believe in the woman of the long low log house or whatever's happening. Like you take away everything. Oh, I don't believe any of this. This is all a bunch of hoopla and it's made up and the, you know, the shore of skepticism, et cetera. What's fascinating to me about that though, is that you've got a separate prominent member of a separate culture saying, oh yeah, there's something going on over there. This is what I think it is, but there's something going on. And that's what we're hearing from lots of different folks. So it's more than just like, oh, I don't know. They're confused or whatever. They, I don't know. Oh, I haven't heard anything about that. Or it's a confirmation that something has happened. It's like we always say in all this folklore, there's the seed of reality and the seed of things that took place and everyone's trying to make sense of it and, and explain, you know, what's happening there. And you talk about, you know, the goggles of 2025 and looking back on this and what they understand, because one of the things they talk about, which you mentioned was the balls of fire that were lighting fires in the house. And if you were to bring that up today in a modern paranormal story, you would call them orbs. And, uh, which the funny thing is I relentlessly for the first several years of our show made fun of orbs. I would like to point out that as it relates to cameras, I do think a lot of times they're lens flares, but I have seen a lot of things since then. And especially the more we were exposed to Skinwalker Ranch and things that are related to what seems to be intersections with other forms of reality that does sound familiar. However, starting fires is a different thing. That's another thing that happened at the Sally house and the nursery there a lot. And it happens in haunted locations, but, and we'll talk about this in a second, but some of these other more extreme events at the house with the fires, and they were dousing the floors with water. It was lighting wet floors. Log comes out of the back of the fireplace and goes under the bed with coals everywhere with embers and constantly. And some of the witnesses were talking about 30 fires lit in three hours and another 50 fires in a day, and they're just constantly on guard trying to put these fires out. And a house that, you know, at one point, yes, they had a fire in the fireplace, but it sounded like later on, they were like, no fire, we're not having any fire, and fires are still starting. And also, a spectral dog. Yes, the dog. That was right. That was, you went right to my next thing, because we talk about the fairy dog, but in addition to that dog, and it's always the black dog, and you always think about Nick Drake and Black Eyed Dog, it's an amazing song. They're with the black shuck. Yeah, and the black shuck and all that, it always comes up. But in this case, when some of the fires are happening, they see this black dog, and they try to chase it off, and it turns and snarls at them, and then it vanishes, and then it's on the roof of a two-story structure that's burning, right? Smiling down with a smirk on its face. And they're not like, oh, that's Rover. That's my dog. He got out. Or what do you mean? They also couldn't figure out how it got on the roof so suddenly. And so there's symbology there. Do you think that's connected to the fairy dog, or do you think that's got different origins? I think there is also a connection to the fairy dog in some of these accounts. And John Troyer has a similarly famous account, separate from Baldoon, in which he was at war with a wizard named Ramsey, who was a fur trader from Detroit, or causing trouble in Detroit. He found his way up to Lake Erie, buried a treasure, and sacrificed a black dog on the treasure. And when Troyer goes to dig it up, the dog comes snarling up at him. And so these stories, these characters have currency. Yeah. And they travel, right? Yeah. So whether you were Pennsylvania Dutch, whether you were Scottish, and I'm pretty certain Anishinaabe also had stories about dogs. They took on a life form, a very ferocious one, that would probably speak to each witness's cultural backgrounds. So whether you were from the Hebrides, whether you were from Pennsylvania, or whether you were from Bekejwanong, you would have been told stories at some point. And then I think what happens is events become like a contagion. If you're witnessing something spectacular, and somebody, maybe somebody says, look, a giant black dog. And then that's all you need to do. And that story now has many different characters, because there's many different people witnessing it. And they would have all heard perhaps different stories. Right. The thing I always wonder, too, because the origins of these things, and again, the filter of the time you're living in, and your own background, and the culture that you brought with you, or that you were, or is indigenous to the area, all of these things, I guess in terms of the, you know, what Forrest used to refer to as the grand unified theory of the paranormal. My question is, you know, as you tell the story, not only from a folkloric standpoint, these ingredients are getting added to it. And they're moving on down the line with it over hundreds of years. But the other question, you have to wonder at a certain point with the number of witnesses who are saying things, it's like, are we part of the manifestation? Is this a stew of sorts in a crockpot, a paranormal crockpot of like, we're all thinking that like, when I'm attached to this story, and if I go out there, even now today, and I'm legend tripping, and I want to go visit the location of the house, I'm already ready to see a black dog. I'm already ready to see the little people. I'm ready to see these things. Maybe, and maybe they are manifesting because so many people are focusing on that. I'm sure people who visit Medjugorje would go with the understanding or with the expectation that they're going to witness some miraculous vision or experience from Christ. Because those stories from the 1980s continue. And so people go with an expectation or same with Fatima, the visions of Fatima. Of course. All right. So within, let me ask you this. I did have some, because I'm the map nerd and the geography nerd, I had a couple of quick questions there. Was Lord Selkirk's like, and I had read where he, you know, he was trying to create this utopia for these folks from Scotland, and everybody was going to get, what was that, 50 acres, I think. But he took for himself 900 acres, right? Yes. And was that on Walpole Island? No, that was on the mainland. That was on the mainland. That was, yes. Do we know where that manor was, where it stood? Is there anything left of that? Yes, we know precisely where it was. Oh, really? Is it still standing? No. Oh, okay. No, it was occupied by the first Indian agent in 1831, so right about the time of the events at the Baldoon Mystery. And then within decades after that, it fell into disrepair and then was probably used for spare parts and then burnt. So that you know, you have, that you can share with us at some point, maybe a location or a place we can look on the map and see where it used to stand? Yeah. So it's private property now, so probably not the exact location. Right, right. Maybe we don't need to dox it. Yeah, yeah, sure. Okay, I'm curious about that. Then the other question is the McDonald House or the father's house and the son's house. Were they close together? I can give you the exact location of that because there is a park known as McDonald Park on the St. Clair Parkway directly across from Walpole Island. Okay. And it's a beautiful spot to go fishing. My daughter caught her first fish there. Oh, that's great. She was heartbroken when we had to let the little person swim with his family again. Raise your hand if you want your nails to look perfect all the time. Me too. I'm Sarah Gibson Tuttle from Olive and June, and this is exactly why we created the Manny System. We wanted to make it possible for everyone everywhere to give themselves a beautiful manicure at home. With our tools and our long-lasting polish, each manicure with our Manny System comes out to just $2. That's right, $2. 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Whether you're in the mood for a comforting classic or something a little more adventurous. Marley's Spoon adapts to your life, from breakfast to dinner, and even those in-between snack moments. The subscription is simple and flexible, so it fits your schedule no matter how busy things get. Go to Marley's Spoon dot com slash offer slash pod 45 for 45% off your first order and free delivery. That's right. 45% off your first order and free delivery. That's Marley's Spoon dot com slash offer slash P-O-D-4-5. Hi, this is Claire Toulouse from the Netherlands, and when I'm out on my bike, I'm listening to Astonishing Legends. Would you say, like these other places, and it's often claimed there as in Adams County where the Bell House, it's a state park facility, my apologies for forgetting exactly what it is, but it's controlled by a park service who maintains it and people can go visit that place and a few others. I was thinking also, like with the wizard clip where the seminary is or the religious center, the communal center there, people go there and they say like, yeah, there's a weird vibe here, like little weird stuff happens here. And there's all kinds of stories, you know, people, yeah, as we know with the Bell Witch, taking a rock or pebble home with them. And then the park service there, the rangers getting these mailed little, you know, rocks and tidbits mailed back to them. It's like, I don't want this in my house anymore. Weird stuff's happening here. Yeah, absolutely. When you go to visit, is there some vibe about the area or the place, anything palpable to you? Or do you think it's, that's kind of long since faded? There's a couple of responses to that. And I think I had touched on this earlier. I fear that some of these stories and the magic that they hold in the telling is being lost. That is a fact. So you would go to McDonald Park and you'll see a plaque about the McDonald family with a story that was actually commemorated by Frank Mann's son, Al Mann, when he was alive, because he has since passed on. Like these are the storytellers who are no longer with us. So you can visit the park with not even caring about what the history or the lore of the place is. But my friend, Christopher Larson, he wrote an article in Fortean Times with Paul Cropper about the Baldoon mystery in 2014. And he went to visit McDonald Park and he had a local guide, Don Shaughnessy Mudford, who carries on the storytelling tradition by dressing up as the witch, no less, and has this wonderful magical quality about her in the telling of the story. So she's giving a tour of McDonald Park to Christopher as they're walking along the side of the road. And Christopher is looking across and saying, oh, is, you know, would the farm have been here? Was it there? A dog came out and was barking at them. And Christopher was like, oh, you know, that's, isn't that an element in the story? Yeah. And Don says, oh, yeah, it is. And then the door opens and who comes out? But the resident with their arm in a sling. Oh, really? Another character. Yeah. So the witch herself, but this, this was benign. It was somebody who lived there, maybe broke their arm and it happened to be in a sling. A bit of a coincidence though. Yeah. So I think that the magic of the place exists with the context, knowing the story. And as those stories are no longer told, I would hate to think that they lose that essence that has, that is almost 200 years because 1829. I do wonder, you know, that the fae, they're timeless. Are they just kind of quiet? Have they, you know, is the, is the age of magic faded a bit or is it just kind of too busy nowadays for most people to notice? But I think one of the families that there's still a lot of stories again, with the, going back to the bell witch there with the area where people have come out and they can see a silhouette of or figure of a woman standing on the hill, watching everybody who just disappears. And it's like, how would you get up there? Where would you go from there? All kinds of strange, magical things. So it has to do a little bit with the land. And I do wonder again, from the native perspective, it's like, there are spots within the land that you respect. And it is more specifically where the land is in little spots where like, this is where these people live. And we're going to, we're going to respect that. And, you know, I've, I've also heard that if you go looking for magic, you won't find it. Yeah. These things happen when, you know, kind of in the periphery of your vision. Oh, right. Right. It was kind of, I just talked about that in a, on a, a dead letter office, a short episode where it's like going to. That episode posted today. Did it? Okay. Four hours ago. And it's actually called Peripheral Presence. So I don't know if you saw it. I know I did. Yeah. So that's an unusual thing for you to bring up right now. But, but the same kind of thing where you could, you could go to gray friars, notoriously haunted, lots of activity. And most people that go there, nothing's going to happen to them. Same thing with the house, which shall not be named. You go there and nothing happens. And it's when you don't expect it, that usually stuff happens. Or if it's meant for you, it happened, then it happens. But you may not know something is meant for you to witness it. But that's a great little story with the dog and the arm and the sling is that now you have something that carries that tradition on when, as they say, you know, a person, or I guess maybe a story dies two deaths once when it, at least with a person when they die and then when they're forgotten and never spoken of again. And that's some, some parts of Native American tradition. That's the case, but also Egyptian. You also die a second death when your name is forgotten and no one remembers you anymore. So I totally agree. These things should be kept alive and, uh, and passed down. And even with the telephone game, as we say, like, yeah, my, maybe not all of it's true, but I do think something otherworldly happened, at least with that many witnesses. Yeah. And I think there's also a gulf between us in 2025 and the settlers in 1829, you know, we are much farther removed from the world than they were. So the world was at their fingertips and in their entire being. So the threshold of experience was not mediated by the comforts of things like technology, warmth, or comfort. So yeah, when you walked out the door, if you saw something, you really saw something. Whereas us, it's like, meh, whatever, I'm just going to go about my business. There's so many weird things that, uh, we come across of our own making that, uh, yeah, we're not shocked by anything until something like that happens. And I think it, it stands out, but that's the, yeah, as you say, it's kind of the, the muting or the watering down, uh, the, the lusting of the ties between, uh, humans and the name and between humanity and nature. And, uh, as most, you know, indigenous cultures will tell you, like, that's not a great sign. That's that Koyaanisqatsi, life out of balance. We got, uh, we have to return to nature, even in Shakespeare, like when things got bad in, uh, in their, their courtly doings, the characters retreat to nature to realign themselves. Cause that's where, where truth and, uh, energy, good energy and all that happens. And then you can return, but yeah, once you get out of balance, bad things happen. But even in nature, in, in particular, in indigenous cultures, there would have been specific protocols for what were considered safe ways of being and what were considered unsafe ways of being. And if you followed unsafe ways of being, you invited dark things. We know, uh, Mike Kishbooker pretty well. And it's like a very level-headed guy, very, uh, he comes at it, uh, as a folklorist, uh, and author and we always try to nail people dead. And I think his thing is like, well, you know, you, you, you weren't there. So who, who knows? You, you have no idea, but some, maybe something strange did happen. He did relay a little personal weirdness. Like I said, that's what I was alluding to. That's at the Catholic religious center. That's still there, uh, that now houses, uh, people, uh, not a rehab, but kind of like a halfway house of some type of community service center there. And something strange did happen. It's like, well, I don't know if that's the wizard clip, but this little odd thing happened. He can't deny it. And with all these other things, uh, that happened, it's like, well, you can at least say, like I said, trying to be again, getting back to your analogy of the canoe of consciousness. It's like, it's much safer to stand on the shore of skepticism. You don't get hurt. You don't get wet. But it's a little more dangerous being in the canoe of belief. On the other hand, it's a lot more fun and, and, uh, you make a lot more progress being in the canoe. Uh, but yeah, you can tip over, you can drown. It's kind of scary. It's dangerous, but it's also exhilarating. And I see that as also a difference between belief and skepticism where, yeah, it's just a lot safer to deny those things because it's like, you're not putting yourself out. You're not putting any of your beliefs out. But no shade at all to anybody who, uh, remains, uh, firmly skeptical about such things or even, uh, has a debunker nature to them. It's just that, yeah, it is, uh, it's the less exciting option, but it's also the safer option to just say like, nah, that's, none of that happened. Uh, but then open the door a little bit like, well, maybe, maybe there are a little tiny invisible folk running around. Maybe there is something strange that happened there at Baldoon. Let's say we, we step off the shore just for a moment in the shallow end. And I can tell you a story that, uh, a very close family member of mine shared with me. I was speaking with them and saying, oh, you know, I'm writing this book on the Baldoon mystery, and I'm going to be giving a talk on the Baldoon mystery. And they said, oh yeah, I don't really care about that story. And I think this is probably a common thing when you tell your family members about what you're interested in and like, yeah, well, let's talk about what we're doing next week for lunch or talk about work or something. Right, right. Not this type of thing. As I was speaking with my family member, uh, they said, oh, something really crazy actually happened. And, uh, when I was visiting a friend of mine, and this is in the Wallaceburg area, they said, we were sitting there, you know, probably just having a coffee and a smoke or something, shooting the breeze. And there were a couple of dogs in the kitchen with them. And my family member said, all of a sudden there was this growling coming from one of the kitchen cupboards and the dogs heard it as well because they ran out of the kitchen. And so my family member and their friend were looking at each other and thinking, is one of the dogs somehow in the cupboard? You know, they walked over and cautiously opened it and there was nothing there. And then the friend said, that's really funny because that's the second time something like this has happened. The first time it was the dog's bowl slid across the kitchen floor and I couldn't get it to do it again, even if I tried. And I think anytime something really odd like that happens, they just went about their business and didn't pay another heed to it. Yeah. We talk about that a lot and that seems to happen. And it makes you wonder about the mechanism of how you absorb that kind of information. And if there's something about human nature that prevents you from paying more attention to it for either out of self-preservation or out of outside manipulation. Yeah. It's much safer to be on the shoreline. That's right. It really is. It really is. The point being is that there was growling from an unnatural source. And my immediate reaction was, well, you know, there's a dog in the Baldoon mystery story, right? And they said, no, I didn't know that. Oh. Like, so this is like, what the heck? Yeah. Well, and then they're like, okay, what time are we meeting at the Black Goose? Yeah. Well, what's the special? Yeah. I haven't experienced much at all in the way of paranormal experiences myself. But as somebody who has heard a disembodied, unnatural, loud growl, we did take heed and we left the area forthwith immediately. It's just like, it's time to go. But here's the thing. I think when you, when it's in your home, you can't just pack up and leave. It's like, you have to deal with it. So kind of like in the barn, like, well, we still have straw hats to make, you know, we still got to continue on. Well, Rick, we just want to thank you for taking the time to come on the show with us. Remind me again, what's the name of your book and when is it coming out? High Strangeness in Ontario's History, and it should be coming out in mid-April. Okay. Well, send us a reminder when it comes out. I will. I will. We'll definitely do a plug. Really appreciate you coming on and lending your expertise to the show tonight. Thank you so much. Well, as a longtime fan, this was a treat for me. We're glad to hear it because we can't afford to pay you. It was a pleasure and an honor, and we love it when we get somebody who is so immersed in a subject and is kind of the definitive voice, we think, on a topic. So thanks once again for your time and for listening and for now being a friend of the show. All right. Thank you. So as we close out here and try to get that 10,000-foot view on what may have been at the root of the Baldun mystery, like a lot of stuff we've covered over the years, I think it's more complicated than any of the simpler explanations. Yeah, I'll agree with you there. You know, we have the story that Neil T. MacDonald, son of John T. MacDonald, who actually experienced all of this, putting the version of the story out there about the old woman, remember, in the long, low log house, coveting his property and possibly shape-shifting into a troublesome black goose to wreak havoc on his land. And then- And actually, I want to interrupt you for just a second, for old time's sake, as much as anything. But I was wondering if you would read this segment from Neil T. MacDonald's book, which we've all drawn heavily from tonight, about seeing Pennsylvania hexmeister John Troyer's daughter, the seer. Now, remember, kids, John Troyer was the man with the long white beard and the magic hat that showed people their dead relatives. Well, okay. Well, hold on a second. It was a top hat. I don't think it was like Frosty the Snowman, or it was, I had fun with magic. And it was, no, I think, as far as the forced scrying goes, I think it was just an effective tool. Maybe it was magic, who knows? But he's certainly a character and a magical looking figure in your imagination. Well, anyway, John Troyer was also the guy who said that witches would visit him at night, turn him into a horse, and then ride him across Lake Erie to an island where they would make him eat rye. So this is his daughter. Also, both of these characters I can picture in my mind, clearly, you know, my imagination. So there's some literary things going on there as well. If they're real people, I mean, wow, imagine running into them. So you wouldn't forget it. So, okay, so this is his daughter, and she told Neil T. MacDonald all of this right before spending nearly three hours, according to the book, looking into the moonstone about the problems they were having. Now, keep in mind, they lived 80 miles away from Baldoon. So in theory, this girl, if she's real, would have had no knowledge of this. Okay, so here's the passage about Troyer's daughter from MacDonald's book. In plain, humble words, eloquent because earnestness is always eloquent, MacDonald told his story of long-protracted suffering. She listened pensively. Then, turning somewhat suddenly, she asked him, Did you ever have any trouble about a piece of land? Not exactly trouble, MacDonald replied. Did not some of your neighbors desire to purchase a portion of your land? And did you not refuse them? That is true, he said, a light breaking in upon him. I see, she said, leaning back in her chair and assuming a wan, painful expression. A long, low, log house. Then she gave an exact word picture of the inmates, so accurate that Mr. MacDonald listened in rapt wonder. Their features, hair, eyes, forms, and even small personal peculiarities were all detailed. I will look into the stone for you, she presently added in a subdued tone. Then the maiden retired to her chamber, and after three hours returned with a worn look as if suffering from acute irritability. It was some time before she could sufficiently control her emotions to speak. While I was looking in the stone, I saw a fire. One of your outbuildings was burnt to the ground just two hours ago. Look at the clock, said the practical elder. We are now eighty miles from Beldoon, and I shall have much faith in her if this is true. Exactly at the hour mentioned, one of Mr. MacDonald's barns was burned to the ground, as they found on their return home. But to continue the interview, Have you, said the stone reader, ever seen a stray goose in your flock? MacDonald thought for a moment, and then replied in the negative, and after more reflection said that he had seen a goose that did not belong to him, and that he had once shot at it. Yes, but it escaped. Of that you may be certain, was the decided reply. No bullet of lead would ever harm a feather of that bird. Ah, he said, how is that? Because in that bird is the destroyer of your peace. Taking the shape of that bird is your enemy. With a leaden ball, asked the girl. What shall I do, asked MacDonald. You shall mold a bullet of sterling silver, and you shall fire at the bird. The first thing I want to say, which is interesting, and it's about all the passages that I think we shared, and I think even Rick shared a few. Everyone who lives in a house is called an inmate. So it's always like described the inmates, and those are the folks that's, I guess, a colloquialism from the time. Those are the residents of the homes that live in these houses. Yes, it's old-timey language. You've got to allow for that. Yes, old-timey language. So one fashionable thing you see in the turn of the century writing in the decades before the turn of the 20th century is that they would spell today with a T-O dash and then day. So today. Right, right. So things change over time. But like, yes, inmate, it's just the residents, they were saying. Yeah, and the other thing about this passage, and Rick mentioned this earlier, but I just love this, you know, the idea that like, oh, yeah, you know what, something's on fire right now, 80 miles away from here, right down the time, because when you get home, you're going to see that I was right about that. And it's just, I love that idea, like the omniscience. And that, again, that's common with the bell witch, the being in two places at once idea, which in this case, it's the seer daughter as opposed to the thing that is theoretically messing with him at home. But still, it's the two places at once are having information, impossible information from a far-off location. Yes, and psychic space, there's no time or space is traversable. So you can, you know, you can see the past, present, and the future. But I would say that the future, this is just my observation, and that the future is often not set. And I think perhaps because of free choice or just things not working out. So even the seers get that stuff wrong. But you should be able to see past events and what's going on currently. And that's what we have here, even though it's a bit like remote viewing. Right. In that you're seeing what's happening at the moment. And again, to write down the time, it is, you're right, it's like the bell witch, with the sermon being said in two different places, you know, especially one in England and then the United States at the same time. And so, yeah, apparently that's a great superpower of those with that ability, is that you can be in any place at any time and visit wherever and have just a bit of omniscience. Not totally, though. Right. That's what I was going to say. You cannot affront God with these kinds of superpowers. You have some sight, like spiritual beings, though, of some power on the other side, but not completely. So now John has figured out that he's got to shoot this goose, as we discussed earlier. So he's gathering his neighbors together because he wants witnesses as they head down to the river. He takes his gun and heads down to the river. So here's a little short section on that. See that one with the black head, whispered John, hoarse with excitement. Then he drew a bead on the doomed bird. For one moment, the bright barrel gleamed over the hanging bushes, and a report stunned the excited listeners. And the strange bird, giving a weird cry, like a human being in distress, struggled to make its way to the reeds with a broken wing. You know, you hear about this stuff. It's like, okay, this is like werewolf, you know, business from the early 1800s, the mid-1800s. And you can kind of laugh at it. And then we're getting modern day reports, if anybody's a fan of, and I certainly am, these kinds of stories. You're getting now reports of shapeshifters and skinwalkers and people at the Sherman's Ranch and shooting that wolf. And I do wonder like, oh, well, then when they transfer back to human form, do they have some kind of wound? There's some maybe tie-in also. So you'll hear about people who claim to know of past lives. Right. And they will research how a past life or past version of themselves had died. And I've heard this a bunch of places, not that it makes it true, of course, but that the person will find like, oh, well, you were shot or stabbed, or you had some great injury in this one location. And that person in the current life form or the current life will have a birthmark in that spot. Yes, yes. Where they were supposedly injured in a past life. So does something continue on through the ethers? Well, here, it's pretty simple to make that connection. And like I said, if you don't believe any of this, then it's just a good literary device. And that, you know, then you see- Not if you don't believe any of this at all. Well, there you go. But also the cry, you know, the description of the cry being human-like. Yeah. In that this thing is not completely just an average black swan, even. It's assuming that shape. It's a ghost. You're just arbitrarily making it a spot. Because, no, the black swan, it's so embedded now in our lexicon here. Yes. But yes, it's a black goose. Either way, it's strange. But the deal is that you may have some other kind of shape. This is the other thing that we've heard quite a bit. I just saw this in, maybe it was the Facebook group. Somebody was describing game cam footage or their experience where they didn't really see anything show up. It was something basically was disturbing a Bigfoot, a gifting site. Oh, right. Where you leave stuff. And they didn't really see anything except a strange mist. My point about how real is this or what is their reality? Since we were speaking about people's version of reality and what was real to them earlier in the discussion tonight, is that what is this thing really? Just a mist floating down the river and people are just seeing a black goose or swan? Or is it really, are you really changing bones? You know what I'm saying? Are you shrinking? Like, how does the magic work? That's what I want to know. Like when skinwalkers, when they transform into a werewolf or dog man or whatever's happening there, is it like American werewolf in London where you're actually like, all right. You're in terrible pain because you're actually stretching bones and sinew and tissue to take on that shape and hair and fangs are sprouting from you. Or is it just perceived? It's a painful experience. So then we move on to other supernatural type creatures, the fae, which are very popular now, even nowadays. Well, they were then as well, fairy pictures. Remember Sir Arthur Conan Doyle being duped by a famous fairy picture and ways of capturing, newish ways of capturing images, which, of course, allows people to put one over on others because now you have just a new way of faking things. But it was a popular belief that always has been, I would contest, that especially in the cultures of Europe and others, you've always had little people and other worldly spirits, the yokai. It's just pervasive. So what is it? Is it just something that's literary and it's just part of our legends and we like to believe and put blame on little peoples when things go weird? Or is it something where people are actually seeing stuff? And remember our discussion with Amelia Cotter. And yes, we owe her some messages. She had sent us a bunch of messages right before the holidays and we're very slow and poor at getting back to people timely. But the idea is that there are – people are seeing gnomes in some form and even real traditional ones with the tunic and the belt. So what's going on there in this realm is that are these real creatures that people are seeing or is it just a literary device that's informed our imagination? So we tend – if something's taking that form or making us see that or we just think we're seeing that. So the idea though that you have these little people that can control stuff and have some magic at their disposal and if you upset them – And they're not to be trifled with. They're not to be trifled with because they have this magic at their disposal. So – but they also have to live somewhat or they have a foot in this world and in theirs and they kind of go in and out. And you can also stumble with your clumsy feet into their world. So you better be careful. But my point being is that it's not just Europe or Asia, Native American. You have indigenous peoples legends that involve little people. And to this day, I think there's some belief that, yeah, there's some spirits or something out there that you don't want to upset. The stichini. That's right. Some of our most popular blogs that Tess has done on our website. Yeah, one of Tess's like – it is, I think, literally the most popular blog post she's ever made. I feel like she's – Not sure why. Yeah, people are looking this up, but there's all kinds of creatures that have been believed in. Maybe the stichini are looking it up. Maybe they've recently gotten the internet. Yeah, well – They're like, what are they saying about us? Well, they're not going away. Here's the thing is that, yeah, as our world has gotten more crowded and more confused and noisy, they still are there. Again, that's my point about people still seeing small little diminutive creatures. We've had more than just a few people write into us about that, seeing them in their apartments. And not that they take these forms or that's – you've trodden upon their place, but they're just popping up here and there all over the place. Yeah. But anyway, I love that idea. I love that there are magical beings out there that mostly will leave us alone, but also don't go off into the woods with them. Well, no matter what the reason was or to see the kernel of truth behind this legend, there's always something that starts these stories. I thought it was pretty amazing that this book, The Baldoon Mystery by Neil T. MacDonald, originally published in 1871, 154 years ago as we record this, had nearly the exact same approach to sharing this astonishing legend that you and I have today, Forrest. In fact, it's how MacDonald closed the book out, and I think it's the perfect closing thought for us tonight. I think so, too. It's a rational, objective way to keep your mind open, but also not throw everything out with the bathwater. There you go. So, here is the passage. In wintertime, the hearth of many a farmhouse has seen gathered around it the lads and lasses, telling half in awe, half in jest, the strange story we have related. That such things may point to moral is most true, and that they should not be forgotten as time flies over our heads, we have recorded them in printed form. We make no remarks on the wonders we have recited. We simply tell the tale as it was told to us, and leave our readers to wrestle with the strange events of The Baldoon Mysteries. That's going to wrap up episode 304 of Astonishing Legends. A very special thank you to our guest, listener, and new friend, Dr. Rick Fair. The main show is dark next week, but we'll be back March 8th, 2025, with a new episode. Look for new episodes of The Dead Letter Office weekly on Tuesdays. Astonishing Legends is edited by Sarah Voorhees-Wendell at VW Sound. Our co-producer is Tess Feifel, who also leads our research efforts and manages our social media. And we're grateful for the hard work of our technical producer, Ed Vakola, behind the scenes. Special thanks to our announcer, John Boland, for lending his voice to our shows. Hi. Perpetuity. Perpetuity? Uh. Hi, I'm Carl from Alexandria, Virginia. F. E. T-O-O-L-I-S. Bye! Our theme, which is available as a ringtone, was composed by Judson Crane at FounderMusic.com. All other music and sound design for the show is composed and created by Alan Caressia. Our logo was created by Tommy Beaver Design, and our animated graphics for social media and YouTube are done by Joshua Sloan at DeadStreetProductions.com. Many episodes have transcripts available. For ones that don't, you can request them by emailing transcripts at AstonishingLegends.com. Astonishing Legends would not be possible without you, our listeners. Visit our store at AstonishingLegends.com or interact with us and other listeners on Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, Discord, and YouTube. You can also visit us at Patreon.com slash AstonishingLegends, where patrons have access to commercial-free versions of both the main show and the Dead Letter office, as well as additional bonus content, including the Patreon-exclusive show, The Astonishing Junk Drawer. No part of this show may be reproduced anywhere without permission. Copyright Astonishing Legends Productions. Good night. Protein bars often feel like you're choosing between taste and nutrition. 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