The Long Strange Trip of the Tromp Family

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I am going to be fired by Forrest, probably, because we gave Ed the night off. All this technology can be weaponized. And then we're talking about the ultimate weapon on the Earth. And that was all tied to Bob Bigelow and Bigelow Aerospace. Highlighter and regular pen? I don't think so, Forrest. I would know about it. This upends everything. This breaks the world. And what was allowed to be in the book is what he knows he can safely say. Did you ask it if it believes in aliens? Astonishing Legends would like to thank MeUndies, Wild Grain, Mint Mobile, Raycon, our contributors at Patreon.com, and you, our listeners, for making tonight's show possible. The family road trip. A tradition for millions this time of year in the United States and more frequently in other countries around the world. These kinds of trips have always been a paradoxical emotional concoction of love, dread, annoyance, and excitement for most of the participants. Something about it often feels forced. And as a kid being dragged along, you might complain the entire time. But when the memory of it fades back into your consciousness decades later, you might find yourself grateful that it ever happened, and maybe even saddened by the fact that you can never go back to that time and place. No matter how mad your little brother made you or how annoying your dad was. But the 2006 family road trip at the center of tonight's story is, well, different. It's the kind you wish you could forget. And when you hear about it, you'll understand why. It started out in a father's attempt to get off the grid and reconnect with those he was closest to. But ironically, it led to everyone being as far from one another as one could imagine. The Tromp family covered 1,000 miles of Australian countryside over five days, zigzagging up and down the southeastern parts of Australia, from Melbourne to west of Sydney. The road ahead was meant to be an escape, but for the Tromps, it became a descent into confusion and paranoia. The trip was also supposed to be tech-free or off the grid, as they'd left behind cell phones, passports, and credit cards. But this was about more than just being unplugged. It appeared they didn't want to be tracked. There was a frantic belief that danger looked around every corner. Mitchell, the 25-year-old son, pulled the plug on the whole thing after the first day and night, abandoning the trip. It only gets crazier from there as his two sisters become worried for their parents. One by one, family members broke off from the trip in wildly unpredictable ways and under strange circumstances, each time raising more questions than answers. What drove a family of five to come apart on what most people consider a routine experience? Did they have a reason to be scared? Were they being followed, and if so, by who? And if they weren't, then what exactly was it playing? Welcome back to Astonishing Legends. I'm Scott Philbrook, and this is Forrest Burgess. I thought getting out was the best idea at the time. But here, in hindsight, I probably should have stayed with them and tried to help. Mitchell Tromp, the only son of the family, to Sky News in September of 2016. Join us tonight as we take a look at one of the strangest family road trips ever documented, the story of the Tromps. And we're back. Thank God we made it back. I thought we were lost there for a minute. Well, I was lost there in the number of N's that were in and here as it was written out. That's always written that way. Well, I know, but have you noticed the new disturbing trend, at least disturbing to me, where people want to emphasize a sound in the middle of a word, like instead of like and, and they put a bunch of A's, or as we used to, or maybe even a lot of N's. And now they put a lot of D's. So they just repeat the same letter at the end of the word. Right. So to me, it would be and. It's an element of style issue. I guess. I'm very disturbed by it. Well, anyway, we were lost there for a second because you wouldn't look at a map. Hey, I have an amazing sense of direction. Trust. Yeah. All right. Okay. You know what? I'm sorry. I hate to interrupt you once again. One time Scott and I were going to a restaurant, I think with a couple of other people. And he did the dad thing where I punched it in to Waze, gave us precise directions for a restaurant and Marina Del Rey. And Scott would not believe it. He's like, no, no, no, that can't be right. That can't be right. And he took his own way. And then we were stuck in traffic for an hour and a half. I don't remember that at all. Okay. It's a convenient loss of memory, I guess, but. Okay. But I honestly, I honestly don't remember that. But Waze, you know, Waze was cool for a minute and then it stopped working. Well, it got bought. It was just all about turning left across six lanes of rush hour traffic. Left turns. I stopped using it. All right, folks. Well, we got a great show tonight. First things first, I have a cold. You can probably tell by listening to me. Sorry about that. But the show must go on. My voice may be changing at various times through the episode tonight since we record it on different days and Sarah puts it all together magically. So forgive me for sounding sort of weird. Some very quick seasonal notes. Firstly, this week marks the first of two shows in a row with no dark week in between them. Then there will be a little break and our annual holiday special, which will be happening on December 23rd with last year's full crew returning. That's right. We'll have our usual unusual suspects round of friends here. Jim Harreld, Micah Hanks, Paul Gledhill, Allison Jordlin, our very own Ed Vecola, and of course, the astonishing Tess Feivel, plus our network friends at the Astonishing After Party. So that's going to be a ton of fun on the bun. Yes, look for that on December 23rd. But we'll have another new episode for you next week, too. And just quickly, thank you everyone so much for the positive feedback about the Astonishing Dead Letter office. Yeah, genuine, heartfelt, sincere thanks. You know, people seem to be digging it almost as much as we love making it. And thank you all very much for having sent on those stories. The new ones are already flowing into our mailbox. And man, I wish Rich was here because that's a real clap and hand rubbing together moment like he likes to do, which you folks can't see, but he does it every time he's very excited to start something. We should actually sample that. Well, say no more. Here is Rich's patented hand rubbing sound performed by the man himself. All right, man. I love that. It really does get you excited. It does. And somehow it puts an image in my mind of Jeff Goldblum as the fly. You know, there's a fly rubs its hands together. Oh, yeah. Just some kind of horrible, delightful, lovely beast. Well, anyway, we'd also like to give a massive shout out to our boys, Ed and Chris. It's scared all the time for passing their 500,000 download mark. That is an amazing milestone for a show that's only a year old. Yeah, it really is. We're so proud of them. All of our shows, by the way, including Astonishing Legends, are on the prowl for more listeners. So visit AstonishingLegendsNetwork.com to find out about everything we have to offer. And please find, subscribe, and review the shows. And most importantly, tell your friends. Everything we offer is very different, but they're also very good. There's something for everybody. So get over there and check that out if you want to see them all in one place. Yeah, and finally, if you've ever wanted to join our Patreon, December is the month to do it. Your first month is 50% off if you join between now and December 31st. Just go to Patreon.com slash AstonishingLegends to sign up and use the offer code ALPAT, A-L-P-A-T, again, A-L-P-A-T, to get your first month half off. Yes, and remember, patrons also get commercial-free versions of the main show, as well as the Patreon-exclusive Astonishing Junk Drawer, and early commercial-free versions of the Dead Letter Office. And we're rolling out AMAs in 2025. Forrest, I guess I should have sent you a memo on that. So sign up now while you can. Remember, use the code A-L-P-A-T, ALPAT, for 50% off for the entire month of December. One last note. We'd like to dedicate tonight's episode to the co-host of Hillbilly Horror Stories, Jerry Pauley. Jerry sadly passed away a few days ago. Yes, it's terribly sad news to relay. It was reported that Jerry passed away around 4 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning. I got to know Jerry and Tracy a little when we all went to New Orleans with Jill and Roger, when the Potter and Family Convention was supposed to take place there in 2018, but it fell through, and we decided to visit the city anyway. They were such delightful traveling companions, very sweet and generous, honest, down-to-earth people, just wonderful people to know, and an honor to call friends. If you were fortunate enough to know Jerry, you'd agree with all the Facebook comments that testified to how generous and caring he was, not only with his charitable causes, but people he helped personally, often with getting their own podcasts started. Anyway, our circle of friends and podcasters has suffered a great loss. God bless you, friend, and Godspeed on your journey. Yes, much love to Jerry, Tracy, the Pelusos, and their entire family. His voice will be sorely missed in our genre. Okay, let's drive into tonight's topic. Oh, I see what you did there, because last time we actually dove into the Carol A. Deering mystery, and tonight we're driving into a road trip mystery. I'm worried we're not going to be able to keep this up. Probably not, but it was fun while it lasted. Yes. All right, so before we get started, we're going to cite our sources, as per usual, and this is one of those legends, though, that nearly everything about it is coming from newspaper articles at the time and later, it was quite the news in Australia. International news, really. It is one of those stories that, as soon as it happened and not long after, people have been sending this to us, and so it's been on our list for quite a while. Yes. So we finally decided, coming through the list, like, hey, this is a heartwarming tale, a family outing road trip, and then you start to really dive into it. This would have been awful, but we've all been on those things. Just look at National Lampoon's family vacation. Yes. In any case, firstly, there's an article with really good information in it from the Sydney Morning Herald, dated September 6, 2016, titled, Bizarre Tale of Trump Family Road Trip, Cloaked in Mystery. And then there's a good one also by the BBC, and they called theirs The Mystery of a Tech-Free Road Trip Gone Wrong. The Trump Family there, and that was published on September 7, 2016, as well. There are a handful of others from the Daily Mail. Well, actually, there's a bunch of them, but these are the more prominent ones we found. So the Daily Mail has one. News.com has all the articles. News.com.au for Australia. Yahoo News. And then, of course, Psychology Today covered it, because that is another angle on this story. So anyway, we'll have as many bylines and links to all these that we can in our show notes as we usually do for this episode. It occurs to me that folks might not know where our show notes are at, because, you know, some podcasts put the show notes right into the description with the metadata of each episode. We don't do that so much just because it doesn't seem like that's where people are going to be looking for additional information, to me, at least, if you're in your car or on your iPhone or your smartphone or whatever playing. So what we have is we have a dedicated web page for each episode of the show, if you didn't already know this. So if you go to astonishinglegends.com, you can find a full page, and it has an embedded player, so you can actually listen to the show there. But also, it has all of our show notes, every link that we used in research. It has a map, usually a Google map of the area. Sometimes it'll have photos, the ones that we can legally use and that sort of thing. And all that stuff's there, as well as offers from our sponsors. That's all on that one page. So if you're interested in going back through sources we've used on any topic we've ever covered, just find the episode page for that topic. Yeah, we've way overloaded you from the very beginning, folks, with too much information. TMI is our thing. The sponsor offers that you hear in each episode are also listed there, so you don't have to quickly get out a pen and write down an offer code. If you want a product that sounds good, you can just go to astonishinglegends.com. But it's a really good place to dig a little more and see where we got our information. So that's kind of the purpose of that. And it proves we're not making it up. Well, I don't know if it proves that. All right, so first things first. It is easy to make jokes about this particular story because, in all seriousness, as strange as this story is, it lacks severe tragedy. No one died or disappeared. Well, disappeared permanently. Yeah, disappeared permanently, I should say. But we want to be respectful to the family here because, at its heart, the story is about people. And we want to keep that in mind. Just because everyone made it through this, that doesn't give people who cover it permission to make jokes at the family's expense, really. So we're going to try and stay respectful of that. What's scary to us about this story is this idea that things are going along just fine. Everything is great. You've got a good life, as you'll hear. They seem to have a pretty good life at the outset of this. And then one day, everything just falls apart for an unforeseen, unpredicted reason. Yeah. Well, you know, as I was reading this, and I get your point, and I can understand how some people, like, if that's your tack on how you do shows is to make fun of things, and, you know, that's just your brand. But as I started reading articles on it, it just wasn't funny to me. Yeah, I mean, it's, I'm sure, I hope that they can look back on it like, wow, that was a weird, wild week for us, and have a little sense of humor about it with themselves. But, yeah, there wasn't anything that just was even to make fun of or, you know, laugh with them. It just sounded like an awful spiral down into just maybe a mental episode. It's still not clear exactly what happened, but they did get the help they needed, so everything was eventually okay. But, you know, in this case, yeah, it's just not something that if you put yourself in those shoes, and in light of that, putting yourself in their shoes, just think about it. Everything seems to them to be okay, and it would be to you. Like, imagine your own family, like, we're fine, nobody here has really any mental issues, and we're happy, the family business is going well, we're working hard, but we're all enjoying ourselves. And that was their attitude for all intents and purposes. That's how they saw themselves, not as, wow, we're all pretty vulnerable here, maybe we need a respite, a retreat to sort ourselves out. This wasn't that, as the father or grandfather of the family had said, like, you know, he's just a normal bloke like me. Like, this is what baffled people that knew them so much that, like, I just didn't see this coming at all. Right. And this could have very easily gone in a bad, bad way, much worse. And, you know, these folks were happy, as you said, right up until everything kind of went sideways. And what point was that? Was it a slow buildup? Did one person snap? So we're going to be looking at all these angles. And, you know, it's also a startling example of possibly something known as falliadeau. So pardon my French, literally, folks. Yeah. But that's a fascinating concept. We've talked about it before in other cases as well, not to the depth that we're going to get to tonight. But first, we need to set the stage. Okay. So we already know from the cold open a little bit about what's at the heart of tonight's Astonishing Legend. And there's a lot more details to share about why this trip devolved in such a strange way. But first, let's take a look at the family at the center of this. We'll talk a little bit more about the geography here in a bit. But just a reminder, folks, this is all taking place in New South Wales, the state of Australia. Forrest, can you introduce us to the members of the Tromp family? Yes. So first of all, their name is spelled T-R-O-M-P. I believe they're of Dutch origin. Yes. There's some famous historical people. If you just put that name into even Wikipedia, that name will come up and you'll see some famous historical people. This is your basic farm family of five here. Mark is the patriarch of the family or the father. He's 51 when this occurred. Jacoba is 53. Her nickname is Kobe. Yeah. Brianna was the eldest child at 29. Mitchell in the middle is 25 and Ella's 22. So we've got the parents and three kids, two daughters and a son. But what's interesting here to me is that when you hear a story like this or you hear the details of this story at the outset and you think of a whole family taking off on a weird road trip, you think of little kids being at the center of that story. These are not little kids. These people are all in their 20s and above. These are relatively mature young adults that are swept up in this with the parents. Yeah. I don't know if that makes it any more odd. I guess, you know, small children would just more naturally go along with what the parents were saying. And of course, they could be influenced heavily. Right. And here, though, you have adult grown children in their 20s. And they also, for the most part, go along with what's happening, at least at first, except for Mitchell. But they're all hardworking, regular folks. Even the youngest daughter, Ella, she had her own business renting trucks, farm trucks out to neighboring farms, I believe. Very industrious people, hardworking, pillars of the community. They're not recalcitrant teenagers. They all started off on what sounded like a unanimously agreed upon road trip. And I don't think they had much of any idea what was going to happen. My sense is that they felt like they needed to go. It was going to be a tech-free week or weekend or road trip. We've been hearing more about that kind of thing since, where parents were saying, like, you know what? Let's not be staring at our phones the whole time. Let's leave the phones behind. We won't be out too far. If we need help, we can stop by a public place. But really, let's focus on ourselves. That's not what it sounds like at the beginning. But yeah, they're not little kids. And they're a pretty tight-knit family. This all kind of makes it even more mysterious in a way. And that's a good point, too. So can you tell our listeners a little bit about the farm? Indeed. So the farm is named Parkview Farm. And they grow red currants. And when you see pictures of it, it's just very idyllic and beautiful. There are red currant growing on lush green stalks. It's several feet high. It's very picture postcard looking here. And then there are pictures of the kids online. And yeah, 20-somethings. They look very average. And you can also see that they keep horses. I think they're Ella's, or she was responsible for caring for them and feeding them. But yes, gorgeous horses and farm. Yeah. And so Ella was into jumping. So they had on the property, the house is, it's a big house, which they had renovated recently. And that'll come up again later. It's got a pool outside. And then on top of that, on a piece of land connected to the house, they have jumps set up for her to practice jumping on. Yeah. So when you look at this one picture of her on the horse and the field with the red currant green leaves growing up, and you don't see the berries on them in that stage. It's just this beautiful, lush green field. And it looks amazing. It looks very idyllic. But here's my question to you. What is red currant? Oh, you've heard of that before, I'm sure. I have. But I'm good for people. No, that's true. That's not available, I'm sure, everywhere in the world. But definitely Australia. I've heard of currants. Some people call it a red currant. And it's from the gooseberry family. That might be also something people have not heard of. But red currant makes great jams. And it's available or used worldwide, but particularly overseas for desserts and pastries where there's fresh berries in the recipe. Our Aussie friends will know Kohl's and Woolworth's, which they just call Woolies there. And I could have guessed that without even knowing. I like to shorten and nickname things. My question to you, sir, though, any relation to the famous Woolworth's chain stores here of historical note? No, only in the way that the name was stolen. I guess in 1924, these five guys started the supermarket chain there. And they took the name Woolworth's for the name recognition from F.W. Woolworth's stores here in the U.S. But there is no other connection. It turns out that F.W. did not trademark the name of his store in Australia. So there was no recourse there. So that's what they named it. And it's still, to this day, a successful chain. Well, it's a last name, but it's certainly trademarkable and litigiously suable. Yeah. And by the way, my favorite lobby of any building in Manhattan is in the Woolworth Tower. Yeah. Which after 9-11, it was hard to get in there anymore. But it was just stunningly beautiful building. Right. And I think at the time it was built, I think it was the tallest building in Manhattan. It was a symbol of success at that time. Yeah. Because Woolworth was the most successful merchant in the country or one of them. Imagine the Walmart of their time. But they had a famous lunch counter. If you're going to mention that, you have to mention the famous lunch counter is also one of the most famous sit-ins for racial equality in the history of North America. And that particular Woolworth's, where that sit-in happened, is about 10 minutes from my house. Oh, really? There you go. Yeah. That was in Greensboro, North Carolina. Not around anymore. It's a museum now. It's here in downtown Greensboro. And you can go in there where the sit-in actually occurred. Wow. And descendants of those folks still live in the area. Okay. Well, lots of history. So storied. In any case, that's who's buying their goods. Yes. The Red Courants. And so, again, pretty successful, pretty large farm, beautiful, nice big house. As you said, there's a pool. There's 18 acres of land. Also, they had an earth-moving business along with the farming. So they got a few things going there, going concerns, as we say, and seem to be doing well. Also, no reported debt that the family had. No real money troubles that we read of. Well, not that we heard of. There were speculation about that'll come up here. There is. When we get into theories. In the articles, though, or at least one of them would say, like, they seem to be debt-free. But then again, that's the very general 10,000-foot level look. Right. When you start talking with people that they knew of, then maybe you start getting inklings of maybe there's something bubbling under the surface. Ultimately, it looks like a pretty good life, at least on the surface. And obviously, we can never all really know what's going on behind the scenes in anyone's lives because what people are putting on Instagram or saying or on their websites for their businesses is never the reality of it. Just watch any episode of Dateline or 2020 to know that. But their situation presents, at least, as pretty great. However, for some reason, Mark, the dad, is apparently feeling nervous about something and is even concerned that he and his family might be in some kind of danger, like danger to their lives. A quick question, though, man, before we move on. Let's talk a little bit about the town that they're in, in Australia, which is just outside of Melbourne, if I said it right, Sylvan, Australia, S-I-L-V-A-N, which is where they are. Can you tell listeners a little bit about what that's like? Absolutely. Sylvan is a small rural town located in Victoria, Australia. It's about 25 miles east of Melbourne in the Yarra Valley region. Scott, what is 25 miles in meters or kilometers since we are- I don't know. See, when I was working on anything that had distance in this, I converted it to miles. Ah, I see. It's probably, 25 miles, though, I believe is about 40 kilometers. We're not measuring this out. It's not. Yeah. Let's talk about Sylvan, where they're from. It's known for its agricultural heritage, particularly fruit farming. The area is famous for its berries. A couple of the more major ones are strawberries and red currants. And so that's why they had a red currant farm. How big is Sylvan? It's not that big at all. I guess the latest census data we have, it shows Sylvan's population around 1,000 to 1,500 people, but also makes it a very tight-knit community. And especially with farms and like those old towns of the U.S., people know each other fairly well. They're in the same business. They know fairly much what everyone else is doing. So I'm picturing rolling hills, orchards, that kind of thing. Am I on the right track here? Yeah, you're pretty close, I would say. You're at least on the right track. Sylvan is nestled in the foothills of the Dandenong Ranges. So yeah, you do have beautiful lush landscapes. It is not the outback, folks, which a lot of us picture. I'm sure people overseas also picture America. It's all this mountains and cowboys, or at least they used to. Big cities, perhaps. But yeah, there's lots of orchards, vineyards, farms in the area. They have the picturesque Sylvan Reservoir, and then there's surrounding parklands. Just picture very much a rural agricultural community where most people are farming or they're doing something farming related. And as we said, if anybody here has grown up in the rural United States, you know the drill. These small towns, strong sense of community, lots of local pride, lots of local farmers markets. Everybody sells their produce. You get probably terrific fresh produce there. But the kind of place where family business, like the Trumps, that's pretty much par for the course there and how people make their livings. Yeah, North Carolina has a ton of small towns like that, and I've lived in some of them. And I know you know this too. Everyone pretty much knows everyone's business. I've lived in towns where anyone on the street can tell you why so-and-so is wearing a cast and what happened exactly. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. Yeah. So when you think about this, though, the Trump family's disappearance would have been major news there. It's not the kind of place where people just vanish without anyone noticing. And you mentioned the Dandenong Ranges. What exactly are those mountains? Well, I guess by our standards here, more like hills, the highest peak Mount Dandenong is about 633 meters. So that's 2,077 feet above sea level. So not your beloved Colorado, Scott. But when it comes to comparing it to the relatively flat landscape of southeastern Australia, it's hilly. How developed is this area overall, would you say? Not real developed. Pretty much undeveloped for most of it. The Dandenongs are known for their lush forests of mountain ash trees, which is what they have. And those are some of the tallest flowering plants in the world. There's fern gullies, hiking trails, picturesque villages throughout the area. It's important mentioning this. We're not just doing a brochure here, but the fact that this family had not at any point really been way out the outback, like out by themselves. There was always a town or even a mid-sized city nearby to where they were. Important to keep in mind that whatever they were doing, they did get spotted at times. And so it's not like there's zero information about what happened during this week-long event here. Yeah. And in the area, it sounds really picturesque. Like it might be a proper destination for people that live in that part of the country. Yeah, absolutely. A favorite getaway for a lot of Melbourne residents. Also, there's a famous scenic railway, Puffing Billy. Oh, yes. That runs through most part of the ranges there. And imagine that, yes, that would be the steam coming out of the locomotive. Puffing Billy apparently has been around since 1900. I would love to take a ride on that. I love old train rides. Yeah, pretty cool. We saw some ourselves in St. Joe, remember? Yeah. Well, anyway, Sylvan, it's right at the base of the Dandenong Ranges. So the Tromps would have been very familiar with that area. That's another thing to keep in mind. It's not like they got lost in totally unfamiliar foreign territory for them. They knew the region fairly well. And again, these are people of the lands. That makes the bigger picture. I guess it makes it pretty wild is that when this family disappeared, they disappeared from an area they knew like the back of their hands. They knew it pretty well. But anyway, now we've got an idea of what the environments, where they're coming from here. And again, we're going to tackle this next question. What was the idea behind this family trip? It's hard to nail down who was the main person having this feeling. But at least one of the parents, either Mark or Jacob of Trump, had become convinced that someone was perhaps trying to kill them and steal their money. Okay, there is that. Some feelings here of paranoia and perhaps, or at least maybe a genuine feeling that something's not right here. We may be in trouble or danger. Now would be a good time to get out on the road. But in leading up to this trip, though, no one else knew. And we were just talking about how everybody else knows your business. No one really ever suspected that anything was wrong. Again, that's why it was so mysterious to people that it's not like other people in town knew that they owed money to somebody who was nefarious or they were involved in a shakedown or blackmail or anything like that. And that's the next question I have. What actually triggered all this? That's a great question. We honestly don't know. And as the articles will say when you read them, we may never, ever find out because this family is going to have to live with this story for the rest of their lives and beyond. Yeah. And that this happened to them. They're well known now for this. And they are just sitting on this. And we don't know really what's going on with them. And the other thing is that once you read the details of what the psychologists found is that they may not know themselves during this, whatever was happening to them may have been forgotten or just part of this fog of a breakdown. And they may not know exactly what triggered it themselves. So, yeah, we don't have any idea what set all this in motion. And, you know, it's not really right to speculate on it, really, because, you know, as near as we can tell, the threat may have been imagined. But if it was, this is the odd part of this turn here, is that more than one family member, they get caught up in this idea. Yeah. And it spreads. 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So, if you're in the mood for something truly craveable and nutritious, try any of Aloha's protein bars. Grab one at your local grocery store or head to aloha.com. Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I recently spoke with IBM's new director of research, Jake Embatta. We discussed his vision for the future of quantum computing. At IBM Research, what we always do is answer what is the future of computing. Whether it's coming up with new algorithms, coming up with better AI, coming up with quantum, or coming up with just how do different accelerators go together. It's our DNA to answer the question of what is the future. Isn't it a perfect problem for IBM because you kind of need to have a legacy of building stuff. Yes. Building actual physical machines. Yeah, it's why I came to IBM. I wanted the experience, the culture of building hard things that others have not done before. Where do you imagine we are in the timeline of this technology? There will come a point when it will mature, right? Yeah. My cell phone is a mature technology at this point. How far are we from that point with quantum? By 2029, we'll build the first fault-tolerant quantum computer. That is one that can run a very, very large, large problem. To learn how IBM is building the future of computing, visit ibm.com slash quantum. Success starts with your drive, and American Public University is here to fuel it. With affordable tuition and over 200 flexible online programs, APU helps you gain the skills and confidence to move forward. Whether you're changing careers, starting fresh, or pursuing a lifelong passion, our programs are designed for people who never stop. You bring the fire, APU will fuel the journey. Learn more at apu.apus.edu. Hi, I'm Wes from Australia, and when I'm driving my truck out in the outback, I like listening to Scott and Forrest on Astonishing Legends. Now let's get back to this. In the big picture, ultimately, the farm is doing okay. The earth moving business too, as far as we know. We don't have any evidence of any real danger or any financial troubles that could explain the fear. Our question is, what started it all? What was the specific trigger, and the reality is we can't find one, right? There wasn't like a phone call from the bank, or like you're getting foreclosed, or we haven't found anything like that in any of the history on this. No. So in reading all the articles and any history we could find, there's nothing that mentions any incident. I don't think anyone else reporting on this or researching it had found anything either. Like I said, if the family could remember, they're not saying or can remember. Whatever it was, August 29th, 2016, at least the parents unanimously, they make a decision, a fiat decision here that they have to get out of the house and right now. When we figured out the date that this happened, I was like, I feel like I remember when this happened because we were already doing the show, and I feel like maybe we talked about it a little bit. I have a vague memory of us talking about this story because it made international news. While the family was missing for several days, it was coming up on the internet and on TV and stuff like that. Yeah, it did pop up. And if you saw any articles that were happening around the time it was actually taking place, what I noticed is that some of the articles stop at a point because they don't know the resolution. It's still in the middle of it when they're doing the articles. Right, exactly. Yeah. It was still in the middle. They didn't have a lot of details. And a case like this, you have to step back a long time, I think. Yeah. Hit the tangent button already because I got one two summers ago now. We're now in the early winter stages here. Remember that MF is not real, lady? On the plane. The lady on the plane. I wasn't really thinking this or putting this together, but that's another case where something weird happens in public that people witness as it's happening. Then you have somebody on camera saying this stuff. Everybody throughout the whole summer was like, what did she see? Then you have all kinds of crazy speculations. Like, I saw an alien guy on the plane. That's what she's talking about. Yeah. And people are just jumping on. This irritates me. But the one guy that was coming out with a video saying, I made that up about the alien guy and the eye blinking vertically just to see how gullible you folks were. Stop it. You're doing it for clicks. Just knock it off. And then sadly, as it was posited by Tiffany Gomez, who came out later and claimed like, yeah, that was me. And I was having an issue. I was having a mental health issue. And I'll speak to that later. I wanted to start supporting mental health issues. And then that was it for that, except to follow her on Instagram and just leading a normal life, a regular life of having fun. But I think it was like, okay, that's enough of that. I really don't want to keep having to answer those questions. Anyway, that's the tangent. But it was a little like that when something like that happens, because the other part of the story is I imagine like, what that happened if it was my family? How would you handle that? As Scott said at the beginning, these are real people. And as we always say about very strange things that happen, it's a lot of what we cover and talk about is how people deal with this kind of stuff. When it happened, to answer your question, yeah, we were doing our three-part series on the Mary Celeste at that time. And can you believe this? The Mary Celeste, that was 255 episodes ago. Wow. Yeah, I cannot frankly imagine that. But for our longtime listeners, where were you when you heard our Mary Celeste series and when it was first posted? Because that's about the timeframe. I just remember Scott was obsessed with a vial of oil that got knocked over, or did it get knocked over? And that being a very important part by somebody. So like, that didn't get knocked over. Sorry. So here's my next big question. We've got five family members here. Are they all buying into this, you think? Or are they all in the, we need to get out of here? It's not clear to me if they all went willingly. I'm not saying that people went under duress because no one was forced at gunpoint or whatever. But do we know if they all went willingly? They weren't all in unison, or at least they didn't claim to be. I'm talking about Mitch or Mitchell, the middle boy here at the beginning. But we don't really know. It's not entirely clear. So even after all the years that have passed, after this thing played out, that's also part of the mystery and an intimate family detail. And again, each of them, maybe you'd have to ask them, but they've not really expounded on this as far as we could tell. So most of our research suggests that the parents were the ones who came up with this decision, like we should get away for a while. To varying degrees, the three adult kids were like, okay, we'll go. And they went along initially. But as the behavior started to ramp up, intensify, and the actions played out during this trip, they weren't all fully on board with their parents' mental states of fear and paranoia. And we're going to talk about all that here in a bit. In my family, when a road trip is on the books, you get out maps. Yes, made of paper. And then you look at the places you want to stop along the way, where you'll be each night and all that kind of stuff. And yes, they have apps for this now, but it's way more fun to do it with real paper. I'm a paper map guy. Well, you and your dad are enthusiasts, right? You love maps. Yeah, I appreciate you both have a love of maps. I do too. Yeah. And maps are not going to crash when the sun flare takes out the GPS satellites. You got a map in your car, you're going to be fine. Oh. So circling back, the thing is you make a plan. And it's my understanding that when they went and investigated the house, there were papers spread out, but they were business papers spread out in the house. There was nothing, there was no kind of trip planning materials that they found. The other thing, as I said earlier, as a lot of folks will do, is let's have a tech-free weekend or road trip. And here, I'd always had the sense that was part of it, but there's an ulterior motive to that in that they may not have wanted to be tracked because maybe they felt they were being followed. And so that goes in with the paranoia here. They just get in the youngest daughter's car, her Peugeot SUV, and just split immediately. Well, I was going to say plan. There really didn't seem like much planning other than, like, let's pick a direction. So Mark, who's the dad, he apparently wanted this to be off the grid because no matter what the root of his fears were here, real or imagined, this is a very smart guy. Again, these are not dopey people. You have to know how to run a farm and manage it. And they seem to be doing that very well. And he knew, though, if they took their cell phones and credit cards, all that stuff is easily tracked. So they decided, don't even get those Faraday bags out. Let's just leave them all behind. So they must have had cash, though, right? I did wonder, like, how are they feeding themselves? Because we're talking about around a week here. And none of the articles really mention anything about how they pay for stuff. One, though, suggests that they did have a bundle of cash with them. I think so. And there's some evidence that comes up later that would suggest they did have some money. But ultimately, it sounds like they literally all just went out rapidly, got in the car, and drove off. The other thing we hear about the aspect of trips, because, again, a lot of people are traveling with their families this time of year. I've heard of this before. People suggest this very thing as a fun bonding type of activity. You've heard of people, like, let's just throw a dart in a map and go there. Let's spark some spontaneity. And we'll have fun. It'll be an adventure. We'll just take some cash. We don't need phones. We'll figure it out as we go. Anywhere. And just get in the car. And yeah, but not in this fashion here. So, again, it seemed there were some very tense, well, intense and tense, quickly ramped up moments here that got these folks out in the car and on the road. The abruptness of all this. They didn't tell anybody about this. It was very out of character for people that knew them. And that reported them missing. The next day, when they didn't show up for work, were responding to any messages. So, people knew something was really wrong right away. And then, of course, we think of other horrible stories, like a high-fleck farm we may cover one day. But just something horrible, like when you hear of a whole family not responding, like nobody's picking up. Yeah, that's going to freak people out. That definitely precipitates a wellness check. So, let's get into the timeline here. August 29th, as we already said, is the day they set off, leaving behind all their tech. As I may have alluded to, everybody except for the middle son there, Mitchell, Mitch Trump, he decided, I better just take my phone in case. Or just was like, this is seeming a little nutty here. Let me just take the phone. But he did want to go, as he said later, like he felt like he needed to possibly help them out because he could sense something was not totally right about this. So, he probably hid the phone, I would think. If his dad is, don't bring anything, he must have squirreled it away or something. I think that's what happened. He didn't hide it for a little bit, but it gets discovered. But the 29th, they all pile into Ella's Peugeot, as we said, the station wagon SUV. She's the youngest daughter at 22 years of age. I'm not sure why they took her car. Maybe it was the best suited for that kind of travel. Yeah. But the other cars that they had were found at the house. And then some had the keys still in the ignition, according to one source. But, I mean, nothing that would point to foul play. No signs of a struggle. Nothing else unusual. So, how do we know that Mitchell's phone got discovered? Well, that's because he threw it out the window. Okay, right. Yeah. As he said, what 25-year-old would willingly throw their cell phone out a window? It's got to be extreme. I wondered, when I first read that, I wondered, too, was he starting to buy into it? Oh, my God. They are tracking us. I have evidence here or strange, mysterious text that showed up. Or was it thrown out the window for him? Or was he like, fine, you don't want this? Out the window it goes. And he just did it because he didn't want to hear about it anymore or thought that might quell and calm the situation. As I go along here in discovering the story, it was my feeling that, well, as he said, it was growing increasingly difficult to deal with them. So, my feeling is that he was like, okay, fine. I'll just, don't have to worry about this. The big brother's not tracking us anymore. I'll just throw it out the window. And that's what he did. Again, this is near Warburton, about 20 miles after they left their house. So, 20 miles into the trip, not very long into the trip. Yeah. So, maybe somebody pinged him. The one piece of tech is removed. Now, they're surrounded by the Yara Ranges National Park. Again, very picturesque town. No for hiking and outdoor activities. Lots of wineries in the area. I can picture it now. Here's the next question, though. Do we know why he threw it out the window? I couldn't find anything that said anything specific about what drove him to actually throw it out. Yeah. I didn't see anything specifically like he mentioned why, but other than I pieced it together that he was growing increasingly irritated, worried, agitated. They all were. Obstensibly, it's like one of two things, perhaps, right? So, it's either he got on board with the idea that, oh, maybe the folks know something I don't. Maybe we are in danger. In case we get in trouble, we should take a cell phone. Or he, like I said, he got out the phone, wasn't thinking about it, wanted to play his favorite game on there. Or somebody rang or pinged him. He gets it out. And then someone else in the family, probably the folks, I would say, the parents, it's like, you can't have that. They'll track us. And they raised such a ruckus that, again, yeah, either they threw it away or he did. They said it's like a Jason Bourne situation. Well, no. You've seen Jason Bourne. Actually, that was Nikki, played by Julia Stiles, where she knows to break the phone in. You take the battery out. That's the other thing, folks, is that you have to take the battery out. Turning the phone off isn't enough, scarily enough. They can still track you. You have to take the phone battery out, ditch the whole thing, and leave it in parts as you walk down the street. If you've seen the movies, you know what I'm talking about. Then you get those burner phones at the kiosk. That's the other movie trope for spy movies. That's pretty much it for day one. They leave behind cars with keys in them. There's not a lot of disarray in the house, other than some business papers, apparently. They leave behind passports. They leave behind phones, except for Mitchells. They don't take any credit cards either. So the only thing we think they have is some cash. And then they're in this car, which is the youngest daughter's Peugeot wagon, and they've all left. So that's Monday, right? Yeah. Start off on a Monday, first day of the week. All right. And we all don't like Mondays, but this was a little extreme reaction. So the second day now is Tuesday. Yeah. That's when Mitch decides, apparently, he's had enough of this. And we don't know what conversations took place, because none of the families talked about this, even all these years later. But they're now in a town called Bathurst, or more specifically, a subdivision of Bathurst called Kelso, a little over 500 miles from their home in Sylvan. And he pulls the plug on the trip early in the morning, I think like 7 a.m., and he decides that he's going to try to get to Sydney, which at that point, from where they are, is about two hours east of Kelso. And he figures if he can get over to Sydney, he can catch a train back to Melbourne, because he doesn't have a car of his own. They only have one car. So if they're peeling off from the trip, everybody who leaves has got to find transportation back to Sylvan if they want to go home. And he may not have had much cash, really, but we're not sure about that. No, but he was able to get on the train. So yes, in Sydney, he does manage to catch that train back to Melbourne, which is essentially a home, since Sylvan is just outside of Melbourne. So now we've gone from five family members, now we're down to four. So there's mom, dad, and the two daughters. This crew, they head on Tuesday afternoon to a place called Janolan Caves. Okay, so what are those? The Janolan Caves are a natural wonder. They're just west of Sydney. 100. Okay, it's in the Blue Mountains region. That's all you need to know. Just ask somebody if you're over there, they'll point you to them. But they're considered one of the finest and oldest cave systems in the world, estimated to be at least 340 million years old. And so those are some of the oldest known open caves on the planet. Oh, that sounds cool. Yeah, the cave system, it's massive. There's 25 miles of multi-level passages, over 300 entrances. Intimidating. Yeah. Picnic at Hanging Rock, is it the Peter Weir film? Yes. Well, that was another famous missing case. Very strange here. Australia is a wondrous, magical, mysterious place. And we mentioned that. They have a ton of their own mysteries. This is just one of them. But this place has huge caverns, stalagmites, stalactites, even underground rivers. They are, as we said, popular with tourists, so they're open for guided tours. But here's the thing, though. It's not clear from anything that we covered in any of the articles if they actually went into the caves. So they went to the spot where the park is, and supposedly they were seen there. That was just a stopping point, perhaps. They don't know if they went inside. They don't know if they went on tour. What drew them there? As we said, they knew the area. They probably knew of the caves. But why stop there, perhaps? I was thinking at first to hide, maybe. But whatever the case, this is where things get even more unraveled further now. Because Ella and Rihanna, the two daughters, take a cue from their brother, Mitch. And then they want to do the same thing. And they just want to pull the plug on this thing. And so, again, though, they don't have a car. It's Ella's car. The family's already in there. The parents, I imagine, are in the front seats driving. This is where things take the first turn afoul of the law, when Ella steals a car for her and Rihanna to take away from the caves. So then they drive this car back towards their home, about 65 miles southwest, as the crow flies. All right. So at this point, Mitchell has already left and is on his way to Sydney, where he's going to try and catch a train down to Melbourne. And now the two daughters are splitting from their parents, who are obviously keeping Ella's car. And on top of that, they've stolen another car and are trying to apparently get back home. This is the second day of this trip, folks. Yeah, already. Things are not going well. So all the kids are peeling off on day two, basically, in different ways at this point. Keep in mind, they all have slightly different mindsets, some more drastically than others, as we'll see. I like the phrasing in one article we read, the Sydney Daily Herald politely said, in a car that was not hired by them. It was not a rental. They just took it. And so, yeah, something must have really gone wrong between these sisters, because now they are also splitting up. Yeah. So again, I'm sure psychologists have really poured over this one, because it's an individual and also a group mind think. She takes the car, Ella here, the car that she stole, all the way back to Sylvan. But for whatever reason, the oldest sister, Rihanna, and she's older by seven years, they split up, her and Ella. And if you're ready for this, she somehow decides she's going to hide in the back of this guy's dual cab F-250 pickup truck. Okay. So she got in the back seat, not the back bed of the pickup, I think, because he didn't notice her. And a lot of people don't, they don't look in the back seats. You should, folks. Yeah. Especially at the gas station, especially if you walk away from the car for a minute. The thing is, he was getting gas, normal day. He probably went in to pay, or maybe went in to get a drink or something. And like, in that time, somebody can climb right in if the doors are unlocked. And the town of Goulburn, G-O-U-L-B-U-R-N. This is around 11 a.m. on that day. Yeah. So she managed to get in there without him knowing, right? So the owner of this pickup, the vehicle here, he was on his way to Canberra for a doctor's appointment. And this is where it gets even stranger. Listen to this excerpt from an article in The Guardian, which was published on September 2, 2016. Whitaker told the paper he had filled his car with fuel at a Goulburn service station about 11 a.m. on Tuesday, and then began driving to Canberra for a doctor's appointment. When he got to Lake George, he felt a kick on the back of his seat, turned and found Rihanna lying on the floor. So he pulled over. He said after about 20 minutes, the young woman sat up and stared straight ahead. It then quotes him as saying, I asked her who she was and if she was all right. She did not know her name and had no idea where she was. I asked her if she needed any water or anything or was in any way injured. And she said no. Then I called the police. Until the police arrived, she mostly sat and stared straight ahead as if she was catatonic. End quote. Whitaker went on to say that Rihanna was well-dressed and had actually offered him $50 for his trouble, which he declined. So it's interesting to me that she's catatonic. That's either a severe state of shock of some kind, or she's having her own personal mental health issue in that moment. This is where it gets really fascinating because firstly, the family is splitting apart. People are going their separate ways, including the two sisters from each other. All of the kids are going their own separate ways. And so this seems to rule out the idea that if there's something going on that represents a mental health challenge for them, that it's not just about the one person leading the rest of the family down this path that they're just going along with to maybe try to help him if it's the dad or whatever, they're all having individualized simultaneous issues, it seems like. That's strange, right? Because that's what this would indicate. Well, that's what I was kind of alluding to a little bit earlier here in that buying into, I wouldn't say buying into this, they're all agreeing to go initially on this trip. And I think the only one that's kind of clear about it, at least what he said later was Mitchell, Mitch saying that he, I think initially didn't want to go or didn't think it was going to be a good idea, but thought he should go just to keep tabs on them because it just didn't feel right and wanted to protect them and help them out if they needed it. So he goes along, but here you have Ella seems to be not suffering from any kind of emotional or mental breakdown, but Rihanna does seem to fully into her own state where she's basically just immobile, doesn't know her own name, is having a fugue state or a mental break here. We didn't go to the effort to find somebody from a psychological standpoint or dive down too deep into that because it gets very technical. And that's also debated from the bit of looking into what I did on the psychological front. It's not every doctor agrees with that or that diagnosis. And it's still a bit of a mystery. Again, psychology is a very murky business because you can't exactly see what's inside someone's head. You can only kind of diagnose symptoms and characterize and categorize the behaviors they're displaying and try and make some kind of diagnosis, but you can't see into people's thoughts exactly. You only know what they tell you and they can't remember everything. You can say, well, it might be this and here's how we can kind of treat that with behavioral modification, some medication. But speaking of, people will say like, oh, they took a bunch of mushrooms and they're all tripping out on goofballs. And it's like, no, they weren't known to take any drugs. Not to skip ahead here, but it just, there wasn't any kind of mental illness that was associated or known to any of the individuals prior to this in the family in any varying degree. So there's no known mental illness. Nobody in the family had a prescription for medication. It was no bad interaction with anything. This was all in the head if there was anything of that. And so what we know here with Rihanna is that this got so intense, it turned her into a state where she was just apoplectic, you know, just unable to function and needed help, which she did get help here. But, but why is she so confused? Like what went on exactly was the two parents and their spiral downward that got her twisted up and she was just a little bit more fragile. And she ended up in a, uh, in such a tizzy that she's wanting to get away just by hiding instinctively in someone else's truck to step to go somewhere else. This is a 29 year old woman. This is not a child. This is not like a kid who has been traumatized. This is a, almost a 30 year old person. So, and then on top of that, if she doesn't know her name or what, where she is, but she knows that the right thing to do is to maybe offer this guy a little money for his trouble or his help. So she understands enough about the world to know how that kind of transaction works. But she can't figure out what to say. And then the other big question here is what happened between her and her sister? Now we don't know anything about the dynamics between the siblings. You know, some siblings get along great. Others don't so much. So who knows? I certainly know in my own family, and I'm thinking about my elders, my aunts specifically, who all are at any given moment, not speaking to each other for varying reasons. Well, but you all went on a big family trip to London and to England, if you historically spoke of. Yes. Right? And did anybody split off from the group due to tensions? Yeah, me and my wife split off. All right. I see. But no, I mean, people always find a way to get along. But yeah, there's certainly been feuds and even months and sometimes even longer that people don't speak to each other. But so, you know, who knows what was happening here? We don't know. And we don't pretend to know the dynamic between the kids here. But they did, no matter what it was, the two daughters did initially flee together. And then for some reason, they split up, which I guess the thing that I wonder when I think about this, and it's part of what lends so much intrigue to the story, is like, did they split up because they had a rational falling out about how best to proceed, where they wanted to go? Should they go back and find their parents? Should they go home? What's the best way to get home? We don't have a car. Did they just have an argument about what to do, or were they both in such a state of mental unwellness that they wound up splitting apart just by the nature of the fact that they were discombobulated? I would think that logic would say that they're, as a group on this trajectory, physically and mentally, emotionally here, but they're all at different paces and elevations, perhaps. Right. And what I see this here, the logic, putting on the Sherlock cap here, that they saw the parents as a little further gone than them. And so I would guess that, or maybe they needed one or another, but Ella, again, who was not diagnosed with any kind of breakdown at all, seemed to be fairly well keeping it together then and afterwards, was not hospitalized for anything. She decides, or both daughters decide, that we need to get away from mom and dad. Right. Or to protect ourselves, or get them help, or just, we need to get out of here, and they need to go do this on their own. And we really don't know what to do. And I can imagine a lot of people of any age, not just 20s, saying, like, I don't know what to do, but we need to get out of here first of all. Yeah. This is not looking good. But so they split off together, and then it seems perhaps that Rihanna, at 29, I don't know, it doesn't matter what the age, but she is in such a condition where she starts to get worse. And then at that point, again, Ella, who's not diagnosed or was listed with any kind of condition afterwards, seemed to be pretty sane and rational. She decides that now Rihanna is posing a threat of some kind, or I need to get away from her. So that's my thinking, is that they both decide, like, yeah, mom and dad are not well, we just got to get out of here. I mean, not terribly sick where they're abandoning them, but just as Mitchell said before, really hard to deal with. And you just imagine arguments are like, mom, there's really nobody chasing us. Or you said there were, and we're not really seeing evidence of that. Lots of arguments, you're cramped in a car for a long time, that would get anybody wound up. Yeah. And the two daughters decide, we need to get out of here. And then between the two of them, I mean, they got out of there so, needed to get out of there so badly, they stole a car, or Ella did. Eventually, Rihanna, because of her condition, was not charged with any kind of theft, but Ella was. I think the charges were ultimately dropped, but she did wind up charged in the beginning of it. Right. No harm, no foul kind of a situation under those bizarre conditions. But, but that's how I think what happened is that they are all in varying degrees, also not just going their separate ways physically, but also just mentally. So first, the first threat was mom and dad, get away from them. And then like Ella's thinking like, oh, she's on board with them. This is not good. I need to get out of here as well. And they do, which is also kind of weird and sad in that people in that state, it wasn't like she ran to the authorities right away. Nobody seemed to, so it may not have seemed that bad. 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. 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. Plant-based ingredients grown in the ground, thoughtfully sourced, and built to keep you satisfied. Their peanut butter cup bar has 14 grams of protein, 10 grams of fiber, and only 5 grams of sugar, which is wild considering how delicious it is. Made with no artificial ingredients or fillers, just something that tastes good and works the way it's supposed to. So, if you're in the mood for something truly craveable and nutritious, try any of Aloha's protein bars. Grab one at your local grocery store or head to aloha.com. Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna. And I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business? My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example? If anybody has more than 10% of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30% more productive today, with the goal of being 70% more productive. Yeah. Wow. So, we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say, you can leverage what we did. We are happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process, because the biggest change is not technology. It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things. To listen to the full conversation, visit ibm.com slash smarttalks. Success starts with your drive. And American Public University is here to fuel it. With affordable tuition and over 200 flexible online programs, APU helps you gain the skills and confidence to move forward. Whether you're changing careers, starting fresh, or pursuing a lifelong passion, our programs are designed for people who never stop. You bring the fire, APU will fuel the journey. Learn more at apu.apus.edu. This is Mallory in Northwest Indiana. And when I'm not looking for Diana of the Dunes, I'm listening to Astonishing Legends. Let's get back to the show. All right. So, last thing before we move on here. Police did get reports. People had seen them at the Janolan Caves. And they went there, but by the time they got there, they were gone. They couldn't find anything. So, there are sightings. They are being reported in various places, because it's all over the news. In Australia, everyone is kind of looking for them. So, it's a bolo, you know, be on the lookout. Well, as we said, it's like they're not totally way out in the middle of nowhere. They've always been, throughout the whole trip, close to small towns, villages, hamlets, whatnot, and the mid-sized cities. And so, people are seeing them as they go. And then their whereabouts are being reported. But no one's been able to really catch anyone, you could say. So, here's a question for you, though. At this point, yes, we said Rihanna is taken to a nearby hospital, right? That's right. And it turns out that Rihanna and Ella's mom, Jacoba, was also in a hospital. But it was in the town of Yass, Y-A-S-S, which is about 45 miles west of Goulburn. So, we'll talk a little bit more about how Jacoba got into that hospital in a second. But the main thing is that we do know that she was hospitalized for mental health reasons rather than physical ones. She wasn't having a physical issue. Exactly. And ultimately, they moved Jacoba from Yass to Goulburn, where Rihanna was, right? Yeah, that's right. They were going to be doing that on Friday. But this is still Tuesday. So, they're in separate hospitals now. And they probably got to do all the math, figure out who's who. But they do wind up putting them together so that they can be treated together and recover together. So, it seems like after Ella and Rihanna left their parents, Mark and Jacoba, then went to Wangaratta, which is now only about 120 miles north of Sylvan, where they'd started out. So, they've gone way up north. Now, they're coming back down. And in Wangaratta, they were apparently seen together in a mall, according to one article. Now, I don't know if that's misinformation, because you know, in the early articles, there's all kinds of things that aren't right. But that is quoted in one article. And that's on Wednesday, August 31st. But then something happened. And Jacoba took public transport, apparently, from Wangaratta to Yass, almost five hours back to the north, away from their home in Sylvan, where she was found wandering the streets on Thursday, September 1st. Yes, exactly. Somebody saw her, tried to get her help. And so, now Mark is, well, he's in the wind, as they say. Yes. Because he's the only one still missing at this point. Yeah. Now, this is Wednesday night. And a young couple, this is also odd, but I can kind of picture this happening, too, just the way this story is laying out here. A young couple, a Wangaratta, reported that they were being aggressively tailgated by a man in a car matching Ella's silver Peugeot station wagon, their CUV, you know the term current? Yes. Scott's a car guy and a crossover utility vehicle guy. Wait, do they call that a Ute over there? No, that's a, what is that? That's a utility vehicle. Well, in some places, this was referred to as a Ute. Oh, that's right. But it's just a station wagon. Yeah, yeah. I've seen a picture of it. It's just a station wagon. No, it's a- It's not even an SUV. It makes the story all that much more classic, as we said at the beginning here, the station wagon from Wally's World. Yeah. I don't know if you mentioned this in your notes, but apparently the young couple was out playing Pokemon Go. So it can be very dangerous and weird, but just be careful when you're out playing Pokemon Go. Well, they get weirded out, and each time they pull over, this guy's tailgating them, and they described him exactly like, no, that's the guy. Each time they pulled over, he would pull up right behind them or right next to them. Well, let's just listen to this excerpt from an article on mamamia.com. Yes, mamamia.com.au on the Tromp family. We'll have a link to it. When they pulled over, the driver, presumed at this point to be Mark Tromp, got out of the car and ran towards them before stopping in the middle of the road, staring at them, and then walking into nearby Meriwa Park, it was believed to be Mark Tromp. So the thing that I thought about when they described this behavior, and again, this actually sort of made me laugh. I'm not laughing at that part of the family here, but it made me think of that sketch that Dave Chappelle did where he was like a character from Grand Theft Auto, one of the early versions, where you're running sideways, and then you just stop and stare, and then you go the other way, because that's what it seemed like Mark was doing here. You know, and he comes up, he stares at them, and then he just turns away from them and goes into a park. Yeah. And by all accounts, he's the one that seems to be most severely affected by whatever's going on. But here's the other thing I want to say for us. I was going to say this a few minutes ago, and we had a technical issue that derailed us for a second, but this is something I wanted to point out. It's hard to imagine that there's something separate going on in all five of these people's heads at the same time. It's just hard to imagine that it feels like it would need to be a result of an outside influence. And, you know, of course, you get onto Reddit and all these other places where people are talking about, what could this have been? Well, carbon monoxide, ergot poisoning, all these different things, which we'll talk a little bit about here towards the end in a few minutes. But, like, it's unusual for everybody to be having a mental breakdown at the same time. Again, when you consider how everything just seemed normal and happy and all their friends and family, it's like, everything's great. I don't know, you know, there's no big deal here. There's no history of mental illness that's reported. There's no history of strife in the family. There's no history of economic difficulties. Yet each person is having their own individual kind of break with reality. Yeah, well, one thought that just popped in my head, when people apply this kind of thing, people will paint that brush or use a brush to paint cases like Kelly Hopkinsville, where it's like, oh, well, somebody thought they said something in the family. You know, there's two separate families there. And then somebody thought they said they saw something weird outside, and then they get whipped into a fervor, and they convince the other people. And then now they're all sharing the same delusion, when it was really just owls, not goblins. It's like, yeah, no. Yeah, by the way, the Psychology Today article that I dug up about this, that we're going to talk about in a few minutes, that's one of the other cases they mentioned. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah, they put this in the same column with that, which I just, I can't. No, it's two separate things. I can't make that connection. That's my point about this, is that they use that, then this is human nature. They'll take one kind of thing, like, you know, same thing we've been talking about ad nauseum all the time, about infrasound. And it's like, well, there you go. That explains so much of all of this, or maybe all of it in total. People are just seeing things, and there's a low vibrational hum that's undetected. And it's like, no, because you know the science on this. And that's what bugs me, too, is that these are often scientists. It's like, you know the science on this. It only happens in a very small percentage of the population, especially with infrasound, where they start to see the same things. But you can produce that effect of, like, moving blobs behind you, the sense of somebody standing next to you when they're not there. But all ghosts now are gray blobs produced by leaky air conditioning ducts. It's like, no, no. And here, like with Kelly Hopkinsville, it's like, okay, then they're all seeing the same things. We're talking about individual minds. Now, you could convince me that these people were convinced that something weird is out in the woods. But maybe like this, they wouldn't all describe the same thing. They're not all totally on the same track. And there was no indication that the Kelly Hopkinsville family saw something slightly different. You know what I'm saying? It doesn't fit this kind of thing here. Here's where, though, I find it fascinating. They may have trickered each other or kind of whipped each other. Well, actually, not all of them, because there is no indication that Mitch was totally bought into any of this. He's kind of, I think he's freaked out. As he said, you know, his dad's his best mate, his friend, his father, he loves him. There was no, like, I hated these people so much I had to get away and, you know, to heck with them, is that I think he just didn't know what to do and needed to get away to his own case. But nothing ever like a mental breakdown happened with him or really with Ella is that they get whipped up into something that they're along with for a bit. And then by the predilection of the other people, the two parents, you know, and the eldest daughter there, that they experienced something slightly different and in different ways and different trajectories. So that's what I'm saying. What's kind of odd in that they, yeah, they kind of each take that seed of a mental, emotional break and went with it. And it turned into compelling their different physical reactions, meaning they all kind of split up eventually on their own. That's another weird thing, isn't it? They're not all like still buying into this, like they are all paranoid to a degree, but they react to it literally separately. And here's the thing I thought about when I found out that Jacobo went back up to the North by five hours on public transportation, by the way, I thought about, and again, I'm doing a lot of speculating here, which at the beginning of the show, it's not a way to speculate. And then all we're doing is speculating. But I thought about a mom being like, oh my God, my babies, my three kids, like, you know, no matter how old they were, I have, maybe she woke up to the fact that they'd all gotten separated and none of them have phones and they're scattered all over the country. And she might've been freaking out about how to like find them or go help them or rescue them or wanting to, with her motherly instinct, get back to them. And that might've been enough to drive her back to the North to try to find. And maybe Mark, her husband was too freaked out to participate in that. So she's like, fine, I'm going back for them now. So, you know, maybe that's what led her to go up there. And maybe that's how she wound up wandering in the streets of Yass. The flip side of that is that, oh, they're in on it too. They're part of this conspiracy. Right. And I need to get away from them as well. That's the other thing you ponder when you see people splitting up like this, when they're such a tight family unit anyway, or normally, and now they all go their separate ways. That was the other odd thing about this case is that they didn't all kind of stick together or one didn't say like, okay, you know what? I'm going to just stop off to the convenience store here for a second and then call the police or the authorities. Like, hey, we're having a crisis here. I need some help. Is that they weirdly, in their own ways, just dealt with it in their own ways. By the way, just a minute ago, I took a break and I did find out that I should be saying Yass, not Yass. So it's Yass. And thank you, Australia. It is spelled the same way as the Yass meme when you're really happy and it's slang for Y-A-S-S. But I guess apparently it's Yass. So anyway, send your letters to Boris Burgess. They've already spent a good 15 minutes tapping out an angry email and halfway through. Yes, yes. Okay, so now it's Thursday. The day before, Wednesday, both Mitchell and Ella had talked to police back at the family home. They both got back home. Mitchell took the train and Ella took the stolen car and the cops were there because everybody's still looking for them. Mitchell tells the police that his parents were paranoid and afraid when he left them. Now, Friday rolls around and Jacoba, or Kobe, as they call her, is transferred to Goulburn, like we said, so that she and Rihanna can be at the same hospital while they're recouping. Right. Now, no mention of Mark is made on Friday. He was not on the map yet. But on Saturday, Mark is finally sighted and he's found just wandering around aimlessly in the street near the Wangaratta airport. I wonder if he was planning on going somewhere or trying to get on a plane. But, you know, aside from his mental distress, now he appears to be in good health at this point. Yeah, exactly. So not too beaten up or bruised, no foul play yet. Everyone, however, now is accounted for. But we still don't know why all this happened and why did it unfold and devolve the way it did? On the following Monday, Ella is charged with stealing a car and still having it in her possession. And Rihanna's charges for the same thing are dismissed under the Mental Health Act. Right. She is determined to be not of her full sound mind. And so those were dismissed. But her sister's charges were not, as we said earlier. And on Tuesday, and I can't remember if this happened on Tuesday, but his police officer brother came to pick him up and take him into care and all that. Of course, there's a lot of press of photographers. And as he's being escorted away, he basically gives the bird to the photographers. Yes. So he's a little, he's a little upset. He doesn't want any press. Of course, I'm sure it's tremendously embarrassing and he's probably still suffering under whatever condition has spun him up. But on Tuesday, he releases a statement, Mark does, apologizing for the costs and the manpower spent looking for him and his family. He does come to his senses and he realized like, hey, that wasn't cool. People were out looking for you. They're worried and it costs a lot of money to go looking for folks. But he never says why they did what they did. And a few days later, as you said earlier, Scott, the police asked for the charges against Ella to be dropped. And six months later, they are dropped finally. So it took a while to suss all this out. I'm sure just because the first thing when you hear from every law enforcement person who's commented, it's like, I would like to sit them down and ask them what happened here. Yeah. Because they still never got an answer. Why, how, all that. So here's the crux of a statement made by Mark Trump after it was all over. Quote, in recent days, my family has been through a difficult period. We will soon be reunited and together. I hope that we will begin to make sense of our ordeal and return to a normal life. I am conscious of the burden these events have placed upon our extended family, friends, and the community resources devoted to our aid. Without reservation, I apologize for the hurt and concern caused by these events. On behalf of our family, I express our deep gratitude to Victoria and New South Wales police, as well as the health care professionals who have looked after our physical and mental well-being. More than anything, my family and I need time to recover and receive appropriate assistance, including mental health services. To this end, we request that media organizations respect our request for privacy. Closed quote. Right. These folks don't have a responsibility to tell us all what happened, even though it's a very public thing. They don't owe us an explanation. As a friend of my wife's says, report to the internet. They're not obligated to do that. No, but of course, people are intensely curious, and I'm sure some are genuinely concerned for their plight. But really, people just want to know what happened again like that. Well, yeah. And I think we all wonder. Everybody wonders, because we're all self-centered at heart, is there something out in the world that could send any one of us into the same kind of downward spiral, just out of the blue like that? But just to briefly recap, this entire family of five leaves together on a tech-free road trip on a Monday, spurred by a fear of loss of life. They drive hours north on Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. The middle child, a 25-year-old son, leaves the trip, setting out two hours to the east for Sydney, where he catches a train home, to Melbourne. That night, the two daughters split off when the youngest steals a car. But on their way back, they too split up, the youngest daughter continuing to drive the stolen car home, the oldest one sneaking into the back of a large pickup truck while it's getting gas. She reveals herself to the driver and is catatonic and taken to a hospital. The son, Mitchell, and daughter, Ella, who stole the car, make it home where they are met by police. During this time, the parents are seen together in Wangarada. But at some point, the mom takes public transport five hours north to a town called Yoss, where she apparently checks herself into a hospital there for help. And she's uninjured. But meanwhile, her husband, the patriarch of the family, tailgates a young couple, appears to be ready to confront them. And then after staring at them for a bit, he wanders off into a public park. So that's what's happening while she is checking in for help. So you can see kind of the overlapping things. And of course, none of the family members know what the other one's doing still at this point. And then he is found two days later, dazed and wandering on the street near the airport, as we said, in that same town. And now the family is finally accounted for, all of them. Aside from the theft of the car, no major crimes have been committed and no one is hurt. And everyone is now safe. But again, what the heck happened here? Let's take a look at the possibilities here. We'll have to start with one that gets suggested on whenever this case comes up, or in a lot of cases like this, everybody's like, ergot poisoning. It's the first thing that comes up, which is a poisoning that you can get from bread. We've talked about this so much now over the years, and I still haven't. I should have this entry committed to memory, but it comes from the fungus that grows on certain grains, like rye, I believe, on the little fiddleheads there. I don't know if you hallucinate. Part of it's a hallucinogenic. It reminds me of, I think, how LSD was cultivated or first discovered as lysergic acid. And that also has been synthesized, I think, from some natural components. And now we're going to get spaced out emails from people who are LSD aficionados. And just now it's totally wrong. Now, my point being is that ergot can occur naturally in grain. And when it wasn't discovered, it seemed like the dancing plague. That's what everyone says that is. But the thing about it is the symptoms of it generally wear off after a day. Right. So that wouldn't apply in this case. These guys were suffering for almost a week. That's exactly right. And so the other thing is that they didn't seem to exhibit the other side effects of these types of poisonings, which is often debilitating nausea, headaches, dizziness. Now, they may have had some of these things. We just don't know. But when they were observed, and again, this is days later. So you do wonder, like, OK, was it something that they ate? They live on a farm. They may have had some foods that were contaminated or had some fungus on them or something. And they went a little loopy, except for the son. He managed or was the one person who didn't eat it. Or I guess the other daughter didn't as well. But they decided to go along with this. So you would think if the parents were acting that irrationally or seemingly that sick, and not everyone in the family was, you would just call the doctor at the beginning. Not decide that we should all go on a road trip right now. Right. Again, so I think, you know, my view is that, yes, mistakes were made. But they all ramped up a little differently. Like, we should get out of here. So again, I don't know how it was presented to the kids. It's just like, you know, maybe you take them at their word like, oh, you know, son, daughters, we need to get out of here. We're in trouble. I mean, nothing terrible, but just we should leave for the day. Go on a road trip. Like, oh, OK. All right. We'll go do that. And then, and then you find out. Then after they're on the road, it's like. It starts getting to, going to crazy town here. Yeah. And then it's like, OK, this is not just somebody is mad at dad for some reason and, you know, wants to punch him. Yeah. This is worse. And then what's going on? You can't really get a handle on it. So I think this ramped up. And then that type of thinking can become a little contagious. Yeah. There was another case. And again, it's not directly related, but folks may have heard of Morgellon's disease. It was in the news, oh, 10, 15 years ago, a lot more, because it was very strange and very mysterious. And again, one of those things where you can make fun of the people, I certainly didn't think it was very fun because, or, you know, just horrible because I believe that these people were genuinely suffering. But what were they suffering from? So the general accepted definition here, Morgellons, M-O-R-G-E-L-L-O-N-S, is the informal name of a self-diagnosed, scientifically unsubstantiated skin condition in which individuals have sores that they believe contain fibrous materials. Morgellons is not well understood, but the general medical consensus is that it's a form of delusional parasitosis on the psychiatric spectrum. The sores are typically a result of compulsive scratching and the fibers, when analyzed, are consistently found to have originated from cotton and other textiles. Okay. I want to interrupt right now and just tell our listeners that for me, it's 12.22 in the morning. Oh, I see. As we're wrapping this episode up. I feel certain that after reading about this spooky Morgellons disease, that I'm going to have a hard time not dreaming about it in about an hour when I go to bed. So thanks for that. Yeah. Well, I make no apologies, my friend. What they say is you should play some Tetris. That people who play Tetris right before going to sleep dream of Tetris. You're right. You know what? I've had dreams of Tetris. Have you? Yeah. Such a weird thing. Back in the day when I used to play it a ton. Really? Yes, I did. And frightfully, I also used to dream of Halo. I played it so much. No, seriously. It sounds awful. No, but the idea of like a thing on your skin with fibers coming out of it, I mean, it's skewed me out. It's people I think you start to have that feeling like bugs are crawling under your skin. Yeah. I don't know. And again, it's mysterious. They don't know where this starts in looking at another. To me, that feels like something, a component possibly of obsessive compulsive disorder, some of the bad manifestations of the real cases of that. People over-diagnose that and they make jokes about it. But it's a very real thing and I could see that being that way, the thing that you suddenly start thinking about and can't not think about it and then it manifests. Yeah, intrusive thoughts. And one thing, well, one thing I was thinking of, and again, we've kind of hinted around and we are by no means knowledgeable about anything really, sociological or psychological. Yeah, to quote John Keel's business card, not an authority on anything. I'm not an expert, but we can look things up. So the case here though, I was wondering if there was some kind of connection or was some kind of form of displacement where something else is bothering you and that manifests into this feeling of creepy crawlies under your skin or you're afraid of environmental pollutants and toxins and that's gotten into your skin. And the strange things, I was watching a lot of this when it was, again, this might've been 10, 15, maybe 20 years ago when it was first starting to come out in the news and people were like, well, what is going on? Is this a real thing? And I do believe that people can manifest all sorts of strange things within their bodies that are real. And then sometimes your genetics go haywire and your bodies can produce odd things. Like a woman who, I think in her hair follicles, she was growing keratin, like fingernail material that was like little spikes. She was like a real life X person and X man where instead of hairs and it was, it was horrible. They were all black, but they came out like fingernails and they were sharp and pointed and it was miserable. Or the guy that has, he lost the antibody to, and you see these guys, they call them the tree people, or at least this one guy and his body had lost the ability to repel the wart virus, the virus that gives you warts in your hands. And so his whole body was just run amok with warts to the point where it looked like he had tree, he looked like a banyan tree, like growths were just coming out of him. And they have to saw them off and, uh, it's just another horrible affliction. That's so strange. But with Morgellons, I saw pictures of the, you know, that the woman who had, uh, were suffering this, she'd taken it. It looked like wet, shiny, small red, and maybe blue fibers that she thought she had dug up from her, you know, from under her skin. And it was very odd. I mean, they look like the, you know, when you see a, uh, a health class chart of red and blue veins and little capillaries, basically just, it was like blue and red. It was like, that is so strange. And then you wonder, okay, if she has got some psychological condition, did she put those in there or did her body actually manifest fibers that are not, that are not biological as these fibers are analyzed, they are thought to have originated from cotton and other textiles. So is it just your body taking on, uh, fibers and, and, uh, you know, like a lint trap and, uh, all these little particles and, and then producing some kind of foreign material in your body. Who knows about all this? My point with this and bringing this up. I'm not on board with it, frankly. Well, listen to this. I don't like talking about it right before I'm going to bed either. Okay. Well, you'll be on board with this. This is the relevant part of all that. And that I do remember a case though, and I think it was Morgellons where the mother of the family, it was like a family of four, had the same condition, thought she had Morgellons or there was fibers or something foreign under her skin. And then the husband came down with it and then the kids came down with it. So eventually the whole family had to be treated for this Morgellons. Right. Right. Okay. I just remember when the family talked, I was like, well, we're trying to care for her. And it was very difficult because, you know, the doctors, they couldn't really find anything in their primary care physicians. Then we went to a psychologist and then, you know, they were saying it was this. And then I think probably because it had taken over that family's life so much that, you know, mom couldn't touch this. It was, she was itchy or irritated or it's like people with like this horrible environmental disease sensitivity. I don't know if you've seen that, like they're, they either believe or they are sensitive to electromagnetic pulses or forces, scents, smells, and they have to live in isolation. There's a village somewhere where people are living. Yes. Where it's free of all of that. Exactly. Which of course, you know, it's like Michael McKeon's character. That's right. And I don't know what the reality of that stuff is. I've never looked into that. Like, is it a psychosomatic or is it a real clinically diagnosed condition? Well, it's probably like this and that the Morgellons and that it's thought to have been again. If you believe it's real, then it's real to you. Well, that's the power of the mind. It can manifest stuff. I firmly believe that. I thought we were supposed to manifest pay raises and fancy cars or not like fibers growing out of my body. Hey, as they say about, no, it's, it's the secret. It's the law of the universe. It gives you back what you dish out. So if you concentrate on that, that's what you're going to get back. It's reflective. That's part of the whole manifesting thing is like, yeah, you ever known sad sack people and like, oh, this will never work. And this is terrible. And I, they sound like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. It's like, this will be terrible. This will ever work. I won't get that. And guess what? Usually they're right. Yeah. And that's why. Self-fulfilling prophecies. Exactly. That's exactly what that is. And if you want more info on that, look up an old book, Dr. Maxwell Maltz. I think it's a psycho cybernetics, which was big in the seventies and eighties. And, you know, I, I believe in that because I've seen it with people. It's just like, oh, this thing's going to break or, you know, I won't get, this won't happen. And then it doesn't. And then it's like, there you go. I told you, I never have any luck with this. And people who don't really think about that, you don't have to like keep manifesting. Well, that's like how, and we haven't talked about this in quite some time because I've moved out of LA a long time ago, but I used to manifest what I called perfectly timed pedestrians, right? Which is like anytime I was needing to pull into a driveway or an entrance to anywhere, which is all you're ever doing in LA, a person would slowly meander right across the driveway. Usually while the nose of my car was facing oncoming. Okay. That's slightly different. Yes. I've been in your car many, many times with you. I'm not controlling the simulation. Well, I don't think you're manifesting human beings. Yeah. It's not a video game where it's like, they're just popping up and spawning as they say in video game parlance. Yeah. What that is, is that you're noticing it. Now I've tried this experiment with myself because a lot of people, uh, this was popular a few years ago, but the whole 11, 11 phenomenon where it's like, there's a whole movie about that documentary about that. And maybe there's something to it. I think, do I see 11, 11 a lot? And then when I was noticing that I was then seeing the time 1234, one, two, three, four. Right now it's 1232. There you go. You're very close to that. So that's the idea though. Now I'm going to glance over at it until it says 1234. What you have to realize though, is that you're looking at the clock a lot and it's usually not 1234. That happens twice a day. Right. So I was, uh, I was usually up that late and then, uh, I'd look over. It's like, oh, there you go. It's 1234. It's like, well, that's not all the time. So when you're pulling in a driveway. Is this a tangent or is it relevant? This is all relevant because, uh, this is tied back to the fact that like, if you want to see the number 23 or you go searching for the number 23, you'll find it. Why? Because you've now directed yourself to be aware of that. And you're going to find, you're going to find it. You're going to see like, oh, there you go. Another pedestrian. It's like, well, Scott, you know, we pulled into three other places today and there were no pedestrians. So. All right. Now it's 1234 here. I felt compelled to point it out. Okay. Yes. I'm going to wrap this up. I know you're itching to get to bed. So here's the point here is that there was a little germination of an idea, an intrusive thought. Boy, I didn't really think about this, but as far as the paranoia angle, the unexplained with William Shatner, the episode was on mind control and a woman was convinced that she had, I think, applied for this government job, required a high level security clearance, didn't get the job. And then she thought she was being harassed constantly. And it goes so far as like harassing phone calls. She thought she was being followed. She thought some people were spitting on her or would pass by and kind of spit at her or in her direction or give her dirty looks. She's like, what's going on? Like, I didn't get the job. I'm not harassing anybody. What's going on? Right. And then she started to wonder, was this some kind of psychological test or training in that? She didn't get the job, but we already got the name and number and location and contact dates for a person who we can experiment on. Right. And you might think like, well, that's ridiculous. That doesn't happen. Like, well, yes, it did with MKUltra. These things do happen, did happen. We have proof of them happening. We just don't know what's happening now. And we don't know the extent or the types of experiments. There's all kinds of experiments. Trust us. The government, they have money to do this and these crazy ideas and follow them through. And then they have willing test subjects or unwilling test subjects. And so I think it's unlikely, perhaps, but not impossible. So in that case of that woman, like she started imagining all these people following her and this kind of plot against her in the sense that she thought she was being experimented on. Like, let's see how batty we can drive this person. You know, just little things here and there. We're like, because weird stuff would happen that shouldn't, you know, people getting an unlisted number. Gaslighting. Yeah. Just, right. Just a subtle ways of like, let's see what happens with this person and track them. Because we, you know, again, she came to us. She's not picked out of random because this all happened after, you know, like she said, she was ready to forget about it. And then here, here this is. So I think with the tromps, something happened, perhaps, like I said, an obtrusive thought. Maybe somebody saw somebody peeking into the windows from the road. Somebody drove by and stared at them too long. You know, it's like there's some little germination of a seed of an idea that what's going on here? Are we being watched? What's happening? You hear a click on the phone. It's like, is somebody tapping the phone? Yeah. That snowballs. Except that analog phone lines are gone now. So we don't get to hear that. You don't get to hear that, but they don't need to. You can guarantee, you've talked about this quite a bit. Everything that you say near your phone ends up as a banner ad. Like, would you like to buy a tank? Yeah. A Russian pocket sub. Everything you type is in some form of mine nowadays. So that's not paranoia. That's big data. Yeah. That's sales. That's money. And everything is data mined so they know exactly where you're going to be before you do it, before you even know it. Like, you always get a Starbucks at 2.30 p.m. during your break on Thursdays and Tuesdays. Right. And why? Because that's a known fact. It's trackable. So if somebody showed up there, you'd think you were being followed. But like, no, they just, it's just data that they can mine from you. So anyway, my point is, I think something like that happened in maybe between or at the same time that the parents did, then that starts to snowball into this bigger idea of paranoia and fear. And it didn't reach Mitchell as fully as it did the other ones or even the youngest daughter. But it did with Rihanna. Yeah. At 29, she is the one who had spent the most time with her parents. Exactly. And so it might have been a larger influence for them because everybody knows your parents. I know that we talked initially about how, well, you would say, oh, it'd be easier to control a toddler or maybe some early teen in this scenario. But by the same token, the older you get with your parents, you might think you're getting freedom, but you're just getting more and more wrapped up with them. Believe me. Yeah. And so they still can exert that. No one will push your buttons like your parents and, you know, the older you get. So I like what you're saying here because the eldest daughter, maybe she was closer to them. And as a result, got more caught up in whatever it was that was going on. If it was psychological in nature. 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. 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. Plant-based ingredients grown in the ground, thoughtfully sourced, and built to keep you satisfied. 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That's code DIYNAIL20 for 20% off at oliveandjune.com slash DIYNAIL20. 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. 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. Plant-based ingredients grown in the ground, thoughtfully sourced, and built to keep you satisfied. Their peanut butter cup bar has 14 grams of protein, 10 grams of fiber, and only 5 grams of sugar, which is wild considering how delicious it is. Made with no artificial ingredients or fillers, just something that tastes good and works the way it's supposed to. So, if you're in the mood for something truly craveable and nutritious, try any of Aloha's protein bars. Grab one at your local grocery store or head to aloha.com. Hi, I'm Leah, and you're listening to Astonishing Legends with Scott Philbrook and Forrest Burgess. Now back to the show. So, how about this? What about that case where all the kids at that girls' school started laughing, like uncontrollably? Well, so if you're going to go, I think for me anyway, for my money, if you're going to go down the mass hysteria route, the road there, we've talked about that quite a bit before with the Enfield Monster and what is, people labeling a lot of these things as mass hysteria or a form, and though, yeah, it's five people, but those have dynamics to them, those labels that aren't applicable here, as well as side effects, because that is more a, well, the other words for mass hysteria or mass psychogenic illness, MPI, people also call it mass psychogenic disorder, sociogenic illness, epidemic hysteria, all these names point to something that happens on a sociological scale in a bigger data set than five people, you know what I'm saying? Because those are community-based things where people don't know each other generally, and they start behaving, but they're in a collective, a small village. What you're talking about is a girl's school in Africa, and that case is known as Tanganyika laughter epidemic. This happened in 1962, and it's still labeled as mass hysteria. Well, again, there's different cases here. When people see, like a group of people, one person points out, like, there's a fireball in the sky, and then there's a huge mass UFO sighting reporting, like the windshield pitting mystery of 1954 that we've talked about before. It happened in Seattle, where somebody said, oh, my windshield's pitted, and then other people reported, and suddenly hundreds of people are reporting pitted windshields. Why? You could talk about the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, where people reported this strange smell. So, in connection to the dancing plague, the laughing incident of epidemic here in Tanganyika, where, let's see, it's close to Zanzibar, and later becomes the modern nation of Tanzania. What happened is that, let's see, January 30th, 1962, and so this is Tanzania. It used to be called Tanganyika. These schoolgirls are, well, one starts laughing. A few start laughing uncontrollably, and then they couldn't stop, and then it takes over a lot of the girls at the school. Right. So, in both situations, we got groups of people, the Tromp family, and the Tanganyika schoolgirls, experiencing a sort of, as you said a minute ago, mass psychogenic illness, or a shared delusional state. Right. But as I would say, as we've covered before in one of Scott's best titles ever, episode 233, What It Wasn't, or How I Learned to Stop Dismissively Categorizing Potentially Paranormal Events as Mass Hysteria. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, great for the SEO. You know, what the idea is, I think, that we found that seemed to fit better was the concept from sociologist David L. Miller, that he called collective action and behavior. It's not people who are hysterical, and they're not ill, in a sense. Right. There's, especially with people like that, you know, like this whole town sees an Enfield monster. Well, like, well, they're not ill, and they're not hysterical. They're just all like, yeah, I saw something weird. I mean, they're upset. Some people are. Some people just saw it, and they're just passing it along. Or, again, not everybody in the whole town saw this thing. Right. But they know the neighbors. And so that's a sociological set. I don't know if that's frame three or what you want to call it, but that is a set within a small town. And here, we're talking about a girl's school, so larger set of subjects of girls. And then we scale it down to a family of five. I don't think it applies. Right. But the similarity I do see is that one person starts laughing, and the other person thinks it's funny. They start laughing, and then it snowballs again. And then they can't stop. And then more people are starting to laugh. Well, again, it starts possibly with the father or the mother. We don't know. Here were the tromps. And then the daughter just kind of succumbs to it. And the son never does. And Ella never does, really. I mean, she was diagnosed as being fine. She just kind of went along with it and stole a car. But again, that tells me people, they were desperate enough. Whatever it was, it was so uncomfortable and disquieting that they just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible in any way. You know, they didn't hurt their parents. Yeah. They didn't really go seek help for them, it seems. But they just wanted to get out of there, like, right now. And if I have to steal a car, we're going to do it. Yeah. So, like, in this, you know, the laughter spread in Tanganyika. As you know, like, it's a boarding school, I believe. And so it's like a family. It's like a, you know, real family, like the tromps. And they're boarding, so they're living together. Yeah. And they possibly shared delusions of paranoia and fear, but in a small group setting, like a family, well, like a station wagon, and you're packed in there. And, but it didn't start, like, again, it didn't start there. But once they got in the car, like, it's a crucible, a pressure cooker. Well, we don't know if it started. I mean, we did say the business papers are spread out around the house. So there may have been, it may have started in the house before they got in the car. In one of the many articles that we looked at, there was a neighbor, of course, neighbors conjecturing. This is just, you know, might be the hot goss or whatever. But one of the neighbors, who was a friend of theirs, because, and I thought this was touching, actually, because the neighboring farmers had rose up to the occasion to help with the farm. Yeah. In their absence. And because it was getting close to time for it to ramp back up. When this went down, there was, it was a slow time. But they were trying to help them get back on their feet. But one of the neighbors in one of the articles was quoted as saying, well, they just did a bunch of remodeling on that house. And that was probably pretty expensive. And so he was conjecturing that maybe they got in over their heads on renovations of their house or something, which is a nice big house. But that's only, that came up once. And that's just a neighbor, like, throwing out a theory. And that the financial pressure may have been what set Mr. Trump off at the beginning, you know, in terms of being overwhelmed, which we've all feel that way every time the monthly credit card bill comes. Well, certainly. But anyway, it's interesting how it is. It's like a contagion. And we can't draw any definite conclusions about it. But still, it's fascinating. However, the other thing that's interesting, and you already brought this up earlier in the show, is that these are all variations on the idea of fallet adieu. Yeah, anything, anytime this case is mentioned, that comes up as well. Right. So, fallet adieu, which is French. Yes, please explain this one. I'm speaking en français. It's a rare psychiatric disorder, also known as, again, shared psychotic or psychosis disorder. And it refers to a situation where two or more people who have a close relationship begin to share the same delusional beliefs. Doesn't it translate to the madness of two or folly, you know, as just the word folly and then to two. And so, the key aspect of fallet adieu is that one person, usually the dominant individual, develops a delusional belief system. And then this belief is then transmitted to and adopted by another more submissive person or the secondary of the persons in the relationship. So, like Tanganyika or the other cases we mentioned, it's almost like a contagious delusional state between people. Yeah. You know, the delusion essentially spreads from one person to another within the close-knit relationship. And this can happen in couples, families, small groups of people even. So, this could be an explanation for what happened to the Trumps. I would say it's possible, certainly. And probably maybe the most normal or, let's say, mainstream mundane possibility here. Well, again, just from the scant facts you have, you'd have to talk to the psychologist to know what they came up with. And you're not going to get that because it's private medical information. So, but you have to keep in mind also that, you know, we have no idea what we're talking about here. Yeah, exactly. But that, okay, that tracks, though, and other experts. Again, when you read the articles, it's like that keeps coming up because that might be the most maybe logical explanation for what had happened. And, you know, Mark and Jacoba may have been those dominant individuals driving the paranoid beliefs or one or the other, could be the husband, could be the wife, or in a weird way, just spontaneously between the two. Well, that's what I'm saying is I don't think one kind of convinced the other, like kept peppering them with these crazy conspiracy ideas until they believed. I think it just may be settled upon. Like, look, I have a lot of a couple's friends and like, they'll tell me something like, oh, we like, we think this is funny or we're going to do this. And it's like, and I will know that's the partner, the partner's idea. Like whoever I'm friends with didn't come up with that. It was their partner that did and they adopted it because they've started to think alike. But just what happened there? What was the first thought or how did that manifest? Because again, when you don't have any history, past history is the best indicator of future behavior, I think it said. And so if you didn't have a history of this, you know, just coming up with tall tales. Right, they didn't. There was no history of mental illness. No, nothing. And in fact, Mike Trump's, I believe, brother-in-law was with the police department in a neighboring town. Yeah, the brother or brother-in-law. Right. As I said, he helped take them home, I think. Yeah. And they were like, there's no history. You know, these are all just normal blokes, as you said earlier. So let me ask you a question though, about Faliadeux, that's not just an idea. That's not conjecture. There's documented cases of this, right? Oh yeah, absolutely. Right. I think one that stands out for us is the case of the Papin sisters, the Papin sisters, P-A-P-I-N. This would be 1930s, the early 30s. Christine and Léa Papin were living maids in France, and then they ended up committing a horrific double murder. Okay, yeah. I've heard of this, but I can't remember the details, I think. Right. So they're living together in isolation. They start to develop shared paranoid delusions, believing that their employer was treating them poorly. May have been the case. Well, eventually these beliefs, they escalated to the point of murder, and then this raises some serious questions about their mental state and the dynamics of their relationship. In Michel Foucault's book, The History of Madness, that book goes into a pretty amazing analysis of that case. Oh, I need to check that out. And so what about another example? That's one example. Are there others? Well, yes, there's the case of that 34-year-old couple, Margaret and Michael. They started to form the same delusions. They had a very close bond. They started thinking alike. And that's where Margaret started having paranoid thoughts about their neighbors plotting against them. Now, we see this all the time on the news and in YouTube videos where people, you know, neighbors have a feud and they get so obsessed by it. Somebody starts dumping snow in the other guy's driveway or your garbage can is over the line on my property. It escalates and they both get so obsessed with it that it ends in violence and murder often. Well, yeah. As did this case. I know a house here in Greensboro where the neighbors are feuding in a beautiful little neighborhood and the driveway runs along the side of the house and the one neighbor, just to bother their other neighbor, painted the one wall that faces the house next door like a bunch of crazy colors. I think bright, bright pink, even though the front of their house looks like totally very mainstream. I don't think the HOA is- The wall that faces the neighbor they don't like. There's no HOA. Oh, there you go. This is just a neighborhood. Yeah. Yeah. I thought they would have a problem with that. No, it's an antagonistic paint job. Yeah. Well, in this case, Michael and Margaret, Margaret started the thinking here where she thought neighbors or outsiders were coming in and quote, spreading dust and fluff and wearing down their shoes, end quote, in their house. And then Michael becomes convinced of this. So, yeah, there are more cases. Also, one that I remember because this was 2008 was the twins in the UK, I think, that ran out into traffic or something. And one of them, I think, stabbed somebody too. That's the Eriksson twins, E-R-I-K-S-S-O-N, Ursula and Sabina, who were, I believe, Swedish. And they were involved in some bizarre behavior, including, as I said, running out into traffic on a busy road. They had shared delusions of paranoia. And the fact that they were twins intensified it because they had that connection that you were talking about earlier. Right. That was more intense that some family members have. It doesn't have to be twins, but a lot of times twins have a more intense version of that. And one of them actually wound up stabbing somebody to death. And they did time. I think they did about five years. And then once they were paroled or released, or once she was paroled or released, I think they both moved back to Sweden. Okay. Yeah. I vaguely remember the names. I don't really, yeah, I didn't really remember that one. But there you go. Another case of that. So it happens occasionally. It's a thing. But I think more often than not, you see the obsession part growing into violence. Malin action or extreme action. In the case of the Trumps, it's fairly extreme. And I think we're lucky that, you know, because it seems possible that this could have gone a lot worse for the Trumps. Yeah. Yeah. So in spite of how it blew up, and we've talked to a lot of people and researched a lot of people on our show that have, you know, the worst thing about everything is the fame, the notoriety, or the infamy that goes along with this stuff. And then just being pestered for the rest of their lives about this one event, this brief moment in their life. That's definitely difficult. And it's, and I'm sure it's difficult for the Trumps, but this could have been much, much worse had it devolved even further into a physical injury for somebody in the family or, you know, somebody outside the family that would have led to incarceration. So in the end, this is kind of a happy story, really, because the worst thing that happened was a car got stolen. And even though we'll never know exactly how this played out, only the family will know that because they're not coming forward with any details and they don't have to, they're not obligated to. Well, as we wrap up here, I just wanted to say, I thought when I first heard about this case that there was going to be some element of, I mean, it's weird enough. Okay. But I'm talking about, okay. Paranormal angle. I don't know, but something that was odd and unexplained, like you sometimes get these little tidbits in the story that are like, wait, what? Yeah. And it's a little bit of a mention could be a description of something that's very odd and a connection. And it makes me think about this other case and this is connected. I assure you, because a lot of people who've heard about this case on the skeptical and debunking side, fair enough and understandable enough, would say it's the same thing. This family had experienced what they thought was a UFO encounter, but really it was some kind of shared, paranoid, delusional fantasy of sorts while also in a car. And a lot of people will know this case. This is the Nullarbor plane, Adelaide. And there's an article here that pretty well sums it up. This is from the Canberra Times. This is from Thursday, January 21st, 1988. And some page seven, if you go to look for it, but it's just titled UFO Encounter, a Nullarbor plane reported. Adelaide. A Perth family say they were terrorized by a UFO, which plucked their car from the road on the Nullarbor plane. Police said yesterday that they were taking the report seriously after investigating damage to the car, which was covered in an ash-type substance. A truck driver and a car driver also witnessed the bizarre event after being chased by the UFO along the Eyre Highway, just inside the Western Australia border. Mrs. Faye Knowles and her three sons, Patrick, 24, Sean, 21, Wayne, 18. Notice the ages there. We're about 40 kilometers west of Mundrabilla, driving around towards South Australia when they first saw the glowing object about 2.45 a.m. yesterday. They told police they had watched it as it chased the truck and car, which were traveling in the opposite direction, before turning and landing on their own vehicle. Quote, it apparently picked up the car and off the road, shook it quite violently, and forced the car back down on the road with such pressure that one of the tires was blown. End quote. A police spokesman said. While this was happening, the family said their voices were distorted as if they were talking in slow motion. Mrs. Knowles told police the UFO turned the car around and placed it back on the road facing the opposite direction. Once they were back on the road, they had jumped out and fled into the bush where they hid for some time before going back and changing the wheel. They drove to Sedona in the far west of South Australia and reported the incident to local police. By chance, crime scene investigators from Port Lincoln were at Sedona and examined the car. Quote, we have to take it seriously. There's no reason why we shouldn't. Sergeant Fred Longley of Sedona Police said. There were too many witnesses for us not to. Continuing the quote, the car was damaged and was covered in ash from the object and they were clearly shaken up. Sergeant Longley said the Knowles drew a diagram of the UFO, which looked like an egg in an egg cup. Okay, that's pretty cool. Our friend Rob has seen an egg UFO. So has Mork from Mork and Mindy. He came in one. But the fact, again, the detail that I love here is that their voices in the car while this is happening were distorted as if they were talking in slow motion. If faked or not factual, like great detail. You get sci-fi points for that. Point being with all this is that people dismiss this as like, oh yeah, same thing. And that they had this shared delusional thing happen where somebody saw something weird, maybe something was dumping ash on them, a truck passing by, and they concocted this thing or just thought it happened and then they all believed it. So a shared delusional experience. However, it doesn't fit with this because there were other motorists on the road that also saw these lights, whatever this thing was. The article that I mentioned earlier from Psychology Today that I had found relating to tonight's topic, it's written by Robert Bartholomew, PhD. This was published in September 19th of 2016. It talks about that case a little bit dismissively, as it does the Kelly Hopkinsville case, which is something that we've covered extensively in the past. But I just want you to hear what he says about this, the last two paragraphs after the same case that you just mentioned. As for the strange aerial light that appeared to follow the car, weather records revealed that at the time of the incident, there had been a temperature inversion in the area. Former South Australian meteorologist Alan Brunt later observed that such events in the region are notorious for refracting light and distorting sizes, shapes, and colors of objects. Brunt believes that the Knowles family saw the distorted image of the headlights of a truck in the distance, which appeared to them as a UFO. Given the lack of corroborating physical evidence and the frightened state of the occupants, it appears that family members fatigued from a long trip under the cover of darkness while traveling on an unfamiliar road mistook an anomalous light for an extraterrestrial spacecraft they believed was pursuing them. It is also notable that based on interviews with the family, they were all in an extremely emotional state, shouting and crying, in quotes. Mrs. Knowles even said she thought they were going to die. I've heard that. He describes the onset of this as like near dawn with the rest of the family asleep, Sean noticed a mysterious light in the distance and became convinced it was a spaceship. After alerting the others, Sean became terrified that the object was pursuing them. He floored the accelerator and the car began roaring down the remote stretch of highway at about 200 kilometers per hour, generating fear and confusion among his groggy passengers. Well, yeah. Again, it's easier to explain if you break it down and isolate elements of the story, but it doesn't explain that another truck driver and another car motorist, automobile motorist, had also claimed that this UFO had chased them, the same light. So did they also have the same delusion? No, they were saying it came from the truck headlights with atmospheric distortion. Well, the truck driver who was shining the lights, would he also have atmospheric distortion with his own headlights? No. Yeah. So I'm not even sure if that's the same truck that they were talking about, but other motorists had reported the same thing. It also doesn't explain the ash covering the car. Also doesn't explain the blown tire. Also doesn't explain the other damage to the car that was witnessed by the police noted in their report. Okay. Now there's a line here that says something about the ash. Mm-hmm. An investigation of the car was conducted by the Australian Mineral Development Laboratory, which analyzed the ash and found particles of clay and salt consistent with what one should expect to find in a vehicle that had recently crossed the sand-laden Nullarbar Plains near the Great Southern Ocean. Right. Well, then it should be on every car on that road. True. Or you would think. I'm with you. And I think the police there would, having patrol the area constantly all the time, would know that that's a common thing with cars. That's a good point. That's a valid point. So again, not trying to knock down each thing. It's like every one of these stories that we cover. It's like you can point to- You can always find data to back up your own personal point of view. But it's just like, I just saw a comment recently, and fair enough, I just didn't believe anything about the Betts sphere. It's like, okay, you know, it's just a valve check ball. It's like, okay, well, and they weren't interested in listening to the story. Fair enough. But the idea that we had looked into it, and that's an easy explanation for that. It's like, well, that's all it is, right? It's like, well, no, because if you look at the actual data and something that Brian Dunning in a Skeptoid article did not do, it's like, okay, the person that said that rolled off the top of their car was miles away from that field. So then you're having to explain like, okay, so he got one of these check valve balls, rolled off the top of his VW bug because he was an artist. He was going to use them in a sculpture. And then somehow the wind blew at miles, a round, perfectly round ball, heavy. Somehow the wind blew that miles into a field over roads and rocks and trees. The size of a bowling ball. Yeah. Exactly. It's like, okay, that seems less likely. And then they asked somebody who was, I think, the president of the check valve ball company and it's like, do you make these like, well, we make something similar, but we don't make anything in that diameter or that dimension, those dimensions. So that's not ours. Yeah. So then you could ignore that. Like, no, no, it's his, that's his. He's just, I don't know. He just can't remember right. Even though he's the president of the company. So yeah, you can hammer that square peg into the round hole to get these to fit. Now, the point being here is that Nullabore, again, people have used that excuse, the same ones that they use for the tromps, but not relatable other than it's a Australian family in a car, you know, like, and they all claim to have had some strange experience and that's about it. But you could kind of paint the Nulls as being like, well, I think they had a little episode there. You know, either they're looking for fame. They, they screwed up their car. They wanted a, an easy, weird way to explain that, which would bring ridicule upon them all, or they were just sleepy. And here, this is a week long thing with the tromps. And yeah, at the end of it, I feel bad for them that they had to go through this because again, you'll never live this down. And that's now on their name and I hope they've recovered. And this is one of the few cases where for their sake, I'm glad nothing paranormal happened. That's going to wrap up episode 298 of Astonishing Legends. Look for new episodes of the Dead Letter Office weekly on Tuesdays, and we'll be back next week with a new episode of our main show. If you're a regular Astonishing Legends listener, you already know about our weekly show, the Astonishing Dead Letter Office, which is part of our main feed, but that's just the start. Be sure to check out the other great shows in the Astonishing Legends network, like the Midnight Library, Scare It All The Time, and Richard Hannum's Paranormal Bookshelf. 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