Four Strange Universal Folktales [Folklore Documentary]

This video is a compilation of four smaller videos made in the fall of 2021 on the subject of a special universal folktale in which certain unexplained phenomena recognized by cultures all over the world are attributed to different causes. Although the third installment of this series was published on other platforms, it has not appeared on YouTube until now, as it deals with a sensitive subject, the mere mention of which got channels removed from this platform back in 2021. Before we begin, I s

hould state that the purpose of this video is not to convince you that fairies are real, or that black magic is real, or that other things are real, but simply that strange events for which there currently no undeniable explanations do occur, and that different schools of thought ascribe them to different causal agents. Enjoy. In one of the chapters of his 2019 book Mysteries of Canada: Volume I, this author touched on the bizarre phenomenon of universal folktales- strange stories shared by diff

erent and unrelated cultures across the globe. Nearly every culture on earth, for example, has its ghost stories- tales of apparitions, disembodied voices, cold spots, rancid odours, and autokinesis which are invariably attributed to the souls of the dead, trapped between this world and the next. Hunter-gatherer tribes in all six of the northern continents told tales of hairy, stinking, whistling, stone-throwing wildmen who stole their food in the night and abducted any lone women or children wh

o strayed too far from camp. Stories of colossal predatory birds associated with thunder and lightning are similarly ubiquitous; all across North America, these giant raptors, commonly referred to as ‘Thunderbirds’, were said to be the mortal enemies of an equally-mysterious horned water serpent. Traditional folklore all over the world cautions against whistling at night, contending that nocturnal music invites the unwanted attention of evil spirits or other unsavoury entities. And nearly every

culture on earth, at one time or another, believed in a race of elusive little people who lived in the wilderness and on the edge of civilization, concealed behind some preternatural veil from which they rarely emerged. For at least two centuries, rationalist intellectuals, psychological anthropologists, and professional skeptics have attempted to provide rational explanations for the pervasiveness of folktales such as these, usually proposing that they are symptoms of some universal human condi

tion. Some anthropologists, for example, have suggested that the wildman legend denotes a deep-seated cultural recollection of ancient intertribal warfare, or served to enforce important cultural norms. Some have attributed the universal dragon myth to the discovery of dinosaur fossils, and other monster stories have been dismissed as a products of pareidolia (the human tendency to anthropomorphise inhuman objects) and glimpses of more prosaic animals in the dark. Throughout the course of his re

search, this author has become aware of a very peculiar type of universal folktale which is far more difficult for skeptics to dismiss as the progeny of some inherent human quality. More specifically, this author has observed that there are certain mysterious phenomena which feature in folkloric traditions all over the world, behind which different cultures ascribe different causal agents. In other words, certain cultures across the globe, with no discernable connections with each other, describ

e the same strange occurrences in their traditional stories, but believe that different mechanisms or entities are responsible for them. In this piece, we will examine four different types of strange phenomena and the explanations which various traditions assign to them. The spookiest link between intercultural beliefs that this author has come across are the characteristics which Roman Catholic exorcists claim manifest in the demonically possessed, and qualities which Canada’s Cree and Algonqui

n First Nations historically attributed to victims of Wendigo possession. In order to understand this eerie parallel, we must first come to a basic understanding of the Roman Catholic conception of demons and demonic possession and the Cree-Algonquin perception of the Wendigo. According to Roman Catholic doctrine, prior to the dawn of time, God created a legion of angels to serve Him in Heaven. Drawing from scripture and Sacred Tradition, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that angels

are immortal purely-spiritual entities endowed with intelligence and free will. Prior to the creation of the world, the most brilliant of the angels, referred to today as ‘Lucifer’, rejected God and His supremacy out of pride. A heavenly battle erupted between the ‘Fallen Angels’ who aligned themselves with Lucifer and the Heavenly Host loyal to God, captained by St. Michael the Archangel. The rebellious angels were ultimately defeated and ejected from paradise by the Heavenly Host. Lucifer, in

his fallen state, is referred to as Satan, or the Devil, while his minions are called demons. Catholic tradition contends that the Devil and his demons are consumed by an eternal hatred of God and His creation. As such, their relationship with mankind, Man being “more precious in the eyes of God than all other creatures,” as the Early Church Father St. John Chrysostom asserted in a 4th Century sermon, is defined by two motivations: to tempt people into sinning against God; and to cause human suf

fering, from which they derive a sort of hateful pleasure. Many of those who have written on the subject have suggested that the Devil’s primary goal of luring humans into temptation is most effectively facilitated by a lack of belief in his existence. This concept was perhaps most famously articulated by Kevin Spacey’s character “Verbal” Kint in the 1995 film The Usual Suspects. During a monologue on a semi-mythical crime lord called Keyser Soze, Kint said, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pu

lled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”. This iconic movie line echoes the words of 20th Century American Catholic theologian Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who wrote, in his 1944 book Love One Another, “the demonic is always most powerful when he is denied.” Two years prior to the publication of Sheen’s book, British writer C.S. Lewis inserted the same idea into his epistolary novel The Screwtape Letters, which pretends to be a series of correspondence between a senior demon called Screwtape a

nd his diabolical apprentice, Wormwood. In addition to “[prowling] about the world seeking the ruin of souls,” as Pope Leo XIII put it in his chilling 1886 prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, Catholic doctrine teaches that Satan and his demons, when given the opportunity, sometimes seize control of human bodies, pushing the resident souls aside and using the corpora they commandeer to speak and move- a phenomenon referenced repeatedly throughout the Gospels. Catholic exorcists- priests trained

by the Vatican to cast out demons- contend that people make themselves vulnerable to demonic possession by participating in occult rituals, practicing witchcraft, and living in a state of unrepentant mortal sin. People possessed by demons are said to often display startling and distressing manifestations of their condition, some of which we will explore shortly. Signs of demonic possession are often so conspicuous and frightening that friends and family members of the victim are compelled to see

k the assistance of a priest. In acknowledging the existence of the evil spirit inhabiting the body of their loved one, these concerned compatriots negate the most effective weapon by which the Devil and his demons lead Man into sin, namely disbelief in the diabolical. Since demonic possession does not have any effect on the actual soul of the victim, one might justifiably wonder why demons bother possessing people at all, with the end result often being so injurious to their designs. Exorcist F

r. Jose Antonio Fortea answers this question in his 2006 book Interview with an Exorcist: An Insider’s Look at the Devil, Demonic Possession, and the Path to Deliverance, writing: “While it would undoubtedly be more convenience for a demon not to possess anyone, he does this for one simple reason: to cause suffering. Remember: demons seek to make people suffer, and with possession they can accomplish this in a very direct way. Over the long term, a particular possession may ultimately thwart the

plans of the devil by bringing about a deeper devotion to God in the possessed. But in the here and now, it causes the person to suffer- and a demon cannot resist causing certain suffering in the present. What was said in a previous answer regarding why the devil could not resist tempting Jesus is equally valid here. To resist temptation, one needs virtue, and we cannot expect a demon to be virtuous. He always seeks the benefits in the here and now; he is a slave of his own passions and impulse

s.” In the second chapter of his 2019 book The Devil in the City of Angels: My Encounters with the Diabolical, Roman Catholic evangelist and retired veteran of the Los Angeles County Sherriff’s Department Jesse Romero describes nine of his own personal experiences with individuals whom he suspected to be demonically possessed. Drawing from his own experiences and his consultation with Roman Catholic exorcists, Romero developed a list of characteristics typically displayed by the demonically poss

essed, namely: 1) A sudden capacity to speak unknown languages 2) Abnormal physical strength 3) The ability to disclose hidden occurrences or events 4) A vehement reversion to God, the litany to the Virgin Mary, the litany of the saints, and religious images, especially the cross In four of the nine cases Romero describes in his book, the subject spoke gibberish, made inhuman noises, or conversed with some invisible interlocutor in a language which Romero, who is fluent in both English and Spani

sh, did not understand. Among the most disturbing of these incidents occurred when Romero and a fellow law enforcement officer were working night shift in Cudahy, a Latino-dominant city in southeastern L.A. County with a high population of ex-convicts. That night, Romero and his partner, service pistols drawn, entered a house in which a neighbour reported hearing a single gunshot. Inside, they found a middle aged woman with a shotgun in her lap sitting next to the body of her husband, whose head

she had just blown off. The woman told the officers that an invisible entity in the corner of the room had told her to commit the deed. “Don’t you see him?” she asked, pointing to the corner of the room. “He’s laughing, he’s laughing.” The murderess proceeded to converse with the invisible figure in a language which Romero did not recognize, and continued this eerie discourse throughout the subsequent drive to the sheriff station, acting as if the figure were sitting in the back seat of the pat

rol car with her. In three of the nine personal anecdotes in Romero’s book, the suspected demoniac (as victims of possession are sometimes called) displayed extraordinary physical strength inconsistent with his or her size. The most remarkable of these cases, in this author’s opinion, involved a short, petite Mexican woman in her early thirties, whom Romero refers to as ‘Lola’, whose father had forced her to participate in satanic rituals throughout her childhood. At the invitation of Lola’s par

ish priest, Romero and his wife participated in an informal exorcism, which Romero calls a “healing and deliverance session”, which was intended to free Lola from the demons she claimed were tormenting her. They were joined by the priest, Lola’s mother, and three of Lola’s brothers. During the session, the priest presented Lola with the Holy Eucharist- a consecrated disk of sacramental bread which Catholics believe embodies Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Immediately, the woman displayed demonic m

anifestations. In addition to speaking in tongues, she flew into an implacable rage. Effortlessly throwing off her three brothers, who had been struggling to restrain her, she balled up her fist and cracked the priest on the jaw, sending him sliding on his backside across the floor. Shortly thereafter, she grabbed Jesse Romero by the lapels and threw him violently against a wall, launching him clean off his feet. “Before the session began,” Romero wrote, “the priest had prayed a prayer of protec

tion for all of us, and he told us, ‘God will protect you tonight, nobody will be hurt.’ The only thing that was hurt was my ego: that a petite short woman (weighing about 120 pounds) could toss me, an over two-hundred-pound former kickboxing champion, like a ball.” In only one of the cases in Romero’s book- namely that of the aforementioned Mexican woman- did the subject exhibit knowledge of secret information to which she had not been made privy, the third unusual characteristic which he claim

s manifests in demoniacs. During the healing and deliverance session above described, the possessed woman pointed to one of her brothers and accused him of some embarrassing sin which he had neglected to confess to a priest. “The brother was so humiliated,” Romero wrote, “that he just stood there petrified and did not help in prayer or in holding her down.” Bizarrely, three of the four signs of demonic possession referred to in Romero’s book- namely the ability to speak foreign tongues of which

the subject has no knowledge, abnormal physical strength, and occult knowledge- are characteristics which the Cree and Algonquin First Nations of Canada historically ascribed to those whom they believed to be possessed by a malicious entity they called the Wendigo. The Wendigo, or Weetigo, according to certain native traditions, is an evil spirit which roams throughout the northern wilderness in search of human hosts. People who engage in cannibalism in the cold winter months, when game is scarc

e, makes themselves especially vulnerable to Wendigo possession. Those who become possessed by the Wendigo spirit develop an insatiable craving for human flesh which will eventually compel them to slaughter and eat their friends and relatives, even when other food sources are abundant. Tales of suspected Wendigo possession in the wilds of 17th, 18th, and 19th Century Canada are sufficiently numerous to fill a book, and in fact have been compiled into at least two of which this author is familiar

. Disturbingly, a significant portion of the afflicted who feature in these historic Wendigo accounts are said to be endowed with the same three characteristics which Jesso Romero ascribes to the demonically possessed. In many Wendigo stories, victims are said to have babbled unintelligibly in a language which none of their friends or family members could understand. For example, in an article published in the June 1946 issue of a magazine called the Alberta Folklore Quarterly, an ex-Hudson’s Ba

y Company (HBC) inspector named Philip H. Godsell described an incident which took place at a remote HBC post at what is now the hamlet of Wabisca, Alberta, northeast of Lesser Slave Lake. One day, the fort’s factor, Frank Beatton, was visited by a frightened band of Woodland Cree who informed him that one of their number was possessed by the Wendigo, as evidenced by the strange words that poured from his lips. It must be mentioned that Godsell, who heard the tale from Beatton, suspected that th

e unfortunate native had actually been suffering from a bad case of influenza and had muttered nonsense in his delirium. Another fur trader named George Nelson, who conducted business with the Cree and Ojibwa of what is now Wisconsin, northern Manitoba, and northern Saskatchewan in the early 1800s, saw many Indians who were said to be under the influence of the Wendigo. He described their appearance and behavior in several letters to his father, writing that they would sometimes erupt into viole

nt convulsions, uttering “wild incoherent and extravagant language.” In the vast majority of Wendigo stories, the subject’s fellow band members express their concern that the afflicted will soon complete his transformation into a Wendigo, rendering him extremely dangerous and almost impossible to kill; this alarming facet of Wendigo lore echoes Jesso Romero’s assertion that extreme physical strength is one of the characteristics of the demonically possessed. In most Wendigo stories, the Wendigo-

to-be is executed by the band members, sometimes at his or her insistence, before the metamorphosis is complete. In another of his letters, however, George Nelson describes a rare case in which an afflicted Cree woman appeared to have nearly completed her transformation, acquiring the alarming characteristic of nigh-invulnerability, prior to her execution. In this story, the woman possessed by the spirit of the Wendigo attempted to eat an Indian child in the night, prompting the child’s father t

o spring from his furs and bury a tomahawk in her brains. Nelson implies that, despite receiving this seemingly-mortal blow, the woman proceeded to attack the father, and would have succeeded in killing him were it not for the intersession of his friends, who overwhelmed the woman and put an end to her existence. In another of Nelson’s stories, a Cree man believed to be transforming into a Wendigo was ambushed while walking on a trail through the forest. His own brother, at his own insistence, s

hot him in the chest with his musket. The man dropped to his knees, but soon rose again and, laughing, continued up the trail. Other members of the band subsequently hacked the man to death with tomahawks and ice picks, and burned his corpse on a pyre. The Indians who witnessed this grim cremation claimed that the man’s heart remained unconsumed by fire long after the rest of his body had been reduced to ashes. A third uncanny commonality between the Cree-Algonquin Wendigo tradition and the Cath

olic conception of demonic possession is the victim’s knowledge of secret information he or she had no way of knowing. One of the best examples of this characteristic manifesting in a victim of Wendigo possession is a case which took place during the Northwest Rebellion of 1885- a clash between Metis and Cree warriors of Manitoba and Saskatchewan and the Canadian government. During an event known as the Massacre of Frog Lake, several settlers were imprisoned by members of a Plain Cree war party

and dragged along their campaign trail through the forests of northern Saskatchewan. One day, an old Cree woman who accompanied the warriors on their crusade began to exhibit signs of Wendigo possession, and it was unanimously agreed that she must be executed before she became too dangerous. Four of the settlers who witnessed the woman’s subsequent execution wrote described the event in their memoirs. Only one of them, however- a widow named Theresa Gowanlock- included a particular detail which

links the Wendigo phenomenon with the accounts of Catholic exorcists. In a handwritten manuscript, which was published posthumously in an October 1955 issue of the Montreal-based magazine Family Herald and Weekly Star, Gowanlock described how the old woman, prior to her execution, prophesied that terrible things would happen to the Cree warriors as punishment for the atrocities they committed at Frog Lake. Several days later, the Cree had their final skirmish with government forces at the edge o

f the boreal forest, exchanging gunfire in an event known today as the Battle of Loon Lake. The Cree were defeated in this skirmish, and their campaign ended shortly thereafter. Many of the warriors who committed atrocities at Frog Lake were subsequently hunted down and captured by officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. On November 27th, 1885, six of the captives, along with two other murders from a different band, were executed at Fort Battleford, Saskatchewan, in what was to be the lar

gest mass hanging in Canadian history, apparently fulfilling the prediction of the Wendigo woman. To summarize, three characteristics which Roman Catholic demonologists ascribe to the demonically possessed- namely a sudden capacity to speak unknown languages, abnormal physical strength, and the ability to disclose hidden occurrences or events- are also characteristics which have been observed in those believed to be possessed by the Wendigo. There are certain strange folktales which recur in dif

ferent cultural traditions all over the world. Among the strangest are those which describe the same mysterious phenomena or collections of phenomena to which different traditions impute different causes. For lack of a better term, and in the hope of avoiding unnecessary verbosity, this author has decided to label the weird phenomena which feature in these folktales ‘eventi’, a Latin word meaning ‘occurrence’. In the first part of this four-part series, we examined three similarities between Rom

an Catholic demonology and the Cree-Algonquin legend of the Wendigo. In this video, we will take a look at mysterious braids found on horses, cattle, and automobiles, and the various explanations which different folkloric traditions have for them. There is perhaps no variety of folklore on earth which purports to explain more mysterious eventi attending other folkloric traditions than the various myths and legends regarding the ‘little people’. Variously referred to as fairies, elves, dwarves, g

oblins, and all manner of regional denominations, the subjects of this broad folkloric umbrella are typically described as small, elusive, often mischievous people with preternatural abilities who live in the wilderness and on the fringes of the civilized world. One recurring motif in little people traditions across Canada is the little people’s practice of braiding the manes and tails of horses at night. The ancestors of the Kashubian-Canadians of the Madawaska Highlands in eastern Ontario, for

example, often told their children and grandchildren stories about waking up early in the morning to find mysterious braids woven into the hair of their horses. Their explanation was that little red-clad dwarves had visited their stables in the night to dote on their equine inmates. In his 1972 paper, Vampires, Dwarves, and Witches among the Ontario Kashubs, a linguist named Jan Louis Perkowski observed that nocturnal horsetail braiding appeared to be one of the most defining characteristics of

the dwarves of Kashubian-Canadian legend. “They twist tails and manes,” said one of his informants of this bothersome dwarfish activity. “They bothered horses, they braided them.” Another described an incident from her childhood in which her father found his horses’ manes braided in such a way that they were impossible to unbraid, remarking that she was always afraid to go to the stables for fear of the dwarves. Identical stories appear in Anglo-Celtic Newfoundland, where the braids were attrib

uted to fairies, and along the French-Canadian shores of the St. Lawrence River, where the blame fell on little goblins called lutins. In many of these stories, the coiffured horse was also found lathered in sweat and covered with burrs and thistles, as if it had just returned from a long, hard, nightly gallop through the wilderness. For example, in her 1991 book Strange Terrain: The Fairy World in Newfoundland, folklorist Barbara Rieti quotes a woman from Carbonear, Newfoundland, who claimed, “

One night, my grandmother decided to stay awake in the barn to see what would happen. Around eleven o’clock, the fairies appeared, plaited the horses’ manes, jumped on their backs, and with a cry that could raise the dead, rode through the side of the sable and flew across the yard out of sight. The stable was left intact and my grandmother could scarcely believe her eyes. At twelve o’clock the horses returned, but no one was riding them.” Similarly, 19th Century French-Canadian folklorist Honor

e Beaugrand, in his 1904 article The Goblin Lore of French Canada, wrote that farmers who offended the lutins who abode on their property would be subjected to “a long series of annoyances and persecutions of all kinds… [The insulted goblin] loves to take revenge on the favorite horse of his offender. He will nightly, during months and months, braid or entangle the hair of the tail and mane of the animal, and when the farmer comes in the morning to groom his roadster he will find it in a terribl

e plight; all covered with thistles or burrs. The lutins will even go further than that when they have been gravely insulted. They will find their way into the stable during the night, mount the horse, and ride it at the highest speed until the wee hours of the morning, returning it to its stall completely tired out, broken down and all in a lather of sweat.” Interestingly, mysterious nocturnal animal braids also appear in a completely different type of folktale: that of the ‘poltergeist’. The w

ord ‘poltergeist’ is a German compound word meaning “noisy ghost”- a partly appropriate appellative, as poltergeist activity is characterized by loud knocking, the violent motion of inanimate objects, and other obnoxious antics performed, apparently, by some invisible prankster bent on wreaking mischief. Despite what its German-sounding name seems to imply, however, poltergeist activity is not universally believed to be the manifestation of some impish ghost or spirit, and is, in fact, an interc

ultural eventum itself, as we will discover shortly. Many parapsychologists, as students of psychic phenomena are known, have observed that poltergeist activity tends to occur most frequently on rural properties, and in households containing one or more teenagers. Poltergeists seem to be especially attracted to homes in which the teenagers are female, and tend to be uncommonly drawn to orphans. A remote farmhouse occupied by an elderly couple and their adopted teenaged daughter would appear to b

e the perfect condition for a poltergeist to manifest, and that’s the precise setting in which one of Canada’s most famous poltergeist cases took place. Back in 1922, an elderly Nova Scotian farmer named Alexander MacDonald, his wife, Janet, and their adopted 15-year-old daughter, Mary Ellen, were tormented by a malicious invisible entity which has been dubbed the ‘Fire Spook of Caledonia Mills’. Readers may recall this story from my book Mysteries of Canada: Volume I. The trouble started in the

stables. One cold morning in December 1922, old Alex MacDonald discovered that someone had loosed his horses from their stalls sometime in the night. On another morning shortly thereafter, he discovered that some nocturnal prankster had tethered some of his animals in a different manner from that in which he had left them. Soon, the same mysterious agent began braiding the tails of his cattle in the night. As an anonymous journalist put it in an article in the February 2nd, 1922 issue of the Wi

ndsor Star: “Nothing having been heard of the sea serpent since it was reported frozen in the St. Lawrence River below Montreal, Nova Scotia has been vastly interested in a tale of the performances of alleged spooks coming from Caledonia Mills in Antigonish County, N.S. There in a little isolated valley lived a farmer named Alexander McDonald and his family. But, recently, according to stories he has told his neighbors, Robin Goodfellow or some other spirits [Robin Goodfellow being the name of a

domestic sprite or fairy in English folklore] developed a habit of riding his horses by night, returning them to the stable before dawn in a lather, while other spooks turned his cattle out of the barns and drove them over the landscape, and occasionally braided the tails of his heifers.” Before long, mysterious fires began to spontaneously break out on the MacDonald property. The pernicious activity of the elusive arsonist increased in frequency and intensity until the couple and their adopted

daughter, out of fear for their own safety, abandoned their family home. Although various newspaper articles which covered the incident blamed the mysterious occurences on all manner of stimuli, from ghosts to curses to electromagnetic waves, most parapsychologists who studied the case agreed that the Fire Spook of Caledonia Mills bore all the hallmarks of poltergeist activity. Renowned American parapsychologist Dr. Walter Prince, for example, who travelled to the MacDonald farm to conduct his

own investigation of the case, classified the Caledonia Mills phenomena as such in a report which appeared in the 1922 issue of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. In that article, Prince specifically mentioned the mysterious animal braids as being among the common elements of classic poltergeist activity, writing: “[The term Poltergeist] is applied to cases in which there is an outbreak of such occurrences as stones and other objects flying into windows or about a room,

objects descending ‘out of the atmosphere,’ furniture hopping and tumbling, dishes being broken, horses’ tails becoming mysteriously braided or cut, fires starting without visible cause, and the like.” Although most students of the subject tend to agree on the external qualities of poltergeist activity, there is no universal consensus in the parapsychological world as to the essential nature of the poltergeist, and therefore no general consensus as to what caused the odd happenings on the MacDon

ald farm, bovine braiding included. Some contend that poltergeist activity constitutes acts of telekinesis unconsciously perpetrated by the teenage girls around whom it seems to revolve. Some of those who subscribe to this theory believe that the teenagers unwittingly project “psychokinetic rods” which cause the manifestations. Others propose that such activity is the work of restless or malicious spirits, which derive the energy they need to perpetrate their pranks from the hormonally-driven em

otions of the teenagers whose homes they haunt. Prince himself suspected that the acts of mischief in the Caledonia Mills case, at least, were performed by the hands of Mary Ellen, whom he believed carried out the arson attacks and tampered with her father’s animals in a dissociated state, and was therefore not morally culpable for her actions. In the English-speaking world, mysterious braids found in horsehair are sometimes called “witches’ knots”, implying an old British tradition that the wea

ves are actually the work of witches and warlocks. One need look no further than the local reaction to the Caledonia Mills activity to see examples of this belief among early 20th Century Maritime Canadians. In letters to the editors of regional newspapers, several Nova Scotian farmers- who were presumably of Catholic pursuasion and Highland Scotch extraction, as most residents of Antigonish County were at the time- put forth their opinions that the activity on the McDonald farm, and the animal

braiding in particular, was the product of witchcraft. The aforementioned article in the Windor Star quoted one local woman as writing of the McDonald farm activity, “It is nothing more or less than witchcraft. The animals in the barn prove this to be the case. I thought this thing was done away, but I see that it is reviving.” Another Nova Scotian named James McLean, who hailed from Inverness County, wrote, “My grandfather told me long ago about the same thing happening at his home. One morning

he found his horse in the stable shaking with fear. The animal’s mane and tail had been plaited in a much similar manner to that which was described as happening at Antigonish. Grandfather always claimed it was a witch who was responsible.” This idea that horsehair braids are attributable to witches was referenced in the writings of Sir Andrew Macphail, a celebrated physician, WWI veteran, and professor of medicine from Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest province, situated in the Gulf of S

t. Lawrence off the shores of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. In his semi-autobiography The Master’s Wife, published posthumously in 1939, in which he painted a vivid literary picture of Island life in the late 1800s, Sir Andrew quoted his maternal grandmother as having said, “It was a common event of a morning to see a horse in a sweat, with tangled mane where a witch might well have clung during her nightly ride.” In order to remedy the spell and return the horse to its regular state, his grand

mother recommended placing a threepence silver coin into a white bowl and filling the bowl with water directly from a running spring. While the springwater trickled in, the bowl was to be turned slowly, and a particular incantation recited. When full, the bowl was to be emptied over the head of the afflicted animal. It the ritual was performed correctly, the tangles would unravel. One of the most recent rash of mysterious horse braids to be widely publicized took place in the district of West Do

rset, on the southern coast of England, in October 2009. Horse owners throughout the region found that the manes and tails of their horses had been braided in the night. Many feared that the braids might be markers woven by horse thieves, intended to single out desirable animals which would be stolen at some more opportune time in the future, and thus informed the local police. Those who made such reports were adamant that the braids were not natural tangles, but artfully and delicately-woven pl

aits twisted by skilled fingers. “We were confused as to how it could have been woven the way it was,” one victim reported, claiming that she, her husband, and another horse lover spent a combined 50 minutes unsuccessfully attempting to unweave a deliberately and intelligently-wrought braid; when they found the task impossible, they cut the braid away. Another horse owner named Harriet Laurie told reporters, “When one of my horses’ manes was plainted, it took me some time to unpick, and the wind

had whipped it into a sort of dreadlock, but underneath were three strands neatly plaited.” Police who investigated the incidents allayed fears that the plaits were markers made by horse thieves, instead telling the press that they had “very good information from a warlock” that the braids were being woven by practitioners of “white magic” as part of a pagan ritual. “It would appear that for people of this belief,” Police Constable Tim Poole told reporters, “knot magick is used when they want t

o cast a spell. Some of the gods they worship have a strong connection to horses, so if they have a particular request, plaiting this knot in a horse’s mane lends strength to the request.” This author asserted earlier in this piece that poltergeist activity constitutes an intercultural eventum in and of itself. Indeed, many demonologists, as students of the diabolical are known, believe that loud knockings, the inexplicable motion of inanimate objects, and other mysterious sub-phenomena commonly

associated with poltergeist activity are actually the work of demons or some other variety of inhuman spirit, conducted for the purpose of causing human misery. Among the most vocal demonologists to hold this opinion are the late Ed and Lorraine Warren, a husband and wife team from Monroe, Connecticut, who investigated preternatural activity from the 1950s to the ‘90s. Ed Warren was an amateur artist and WWII U.S. Navy veteran who claimed to have grown up in a haunted house in Bridgeport, Conne

cticut. Lorraine, on the other hand, who was also a native of Bridgeport, professed to be blessed with the gift of extrasensory perception, which she described as a sensitivity to “psychic energy” and an ability to perceive “human auras”. Following the end of the Second World War and Ed’s return from the Pacific Front, the Warrens made their living selling Ed’s paintings. Having developed a fascination with the paranormal as a result of his childhood experiences, Ed would often drive to alleged

haunted houses in New England and sketch the properties, whereupon he would present the residents with his artwork in the hope that they might invite him inside. Thus began his and Lorraine’s lifelong career of investigating paranormal activity. Over the following four decades, the Warrens visited hundreds of haunted sites at which they claimed to have witnessed all manner of preternatural manifestations. Their first-hand experiences, compiled within the framework of their Roman Catholic faith,

led them to develop a well-defined philosophy regarding the nature of paranormal activity which allowed them to bring succor the residents of the homes they visited. Over the years, some of the cases on which they worked have been dramatized in world-famous books and films, such as the 1977 book The Amityville Horror and its movie adaptations, the film The Haunting in Connecticut, and the hugely successful Conjuring horror franchise. The Warrens themselves documented their experiences in eleven

of their own books, and in a turn-of-the-millennia TV series entitled Seekers of the Supernatural, which was moderated by their son-in-law, Tony Spera. Some of the cases with which Ed and Lorraine Warren were involved, including that of the Enfield poltergeist, the case of Annabelle the doll, and the trial of Arne Johnson, are now among the most famous hauntings of the 20th Century. The Warrens’ most horrific experience, however- the case of the Donovan Poltergeist of West Hartford, Connecticut-

remains in relative obscurity, confined to the pages of Gerald Brittle’s 1980 book The Demonologist (which is generally regarded as the best book dedicated to the subject of the Warrens’ career), a few pieces of online media, and several episodes of Seekers of the Supernatural. In the preface to the 2017 edition of his book The Demonologist, author Gerald Brittle writes that “names, addresses, locations, and similar identifying details have been altered where necessary, to protect the identity

of the individuals who were either witness or victim to the phenomena.” This courtesy, while noble, presents an unnecessary obstacle to researchers, and so this author has opted to substitute the false names in the latest edition of Brittle’s book for their real counterparts, which appear in the book’s earlier editions. Members of the Donovan family, whose home was terrorized by the aforementioned poltergeist, include father Ted Donavan, his son Brian Donovan, and Ted’s daughter Patty Donavan, w

ho are referred to in the 2017 edition of Brittle’s book as Peter Beckford, Eric Beckford, and Vicky Beckford, respectively. “According to Ed and according to Lorraine,” began Tony Spera in an episode of Seekers of the Supernatural devoted to the Donovan story, “it’s probably the most horrendous case they’ve [been] involved in in the past 25 years… This case tonight, the Donovan case, is, I believe Ed said, on a scale of 1 to 10, a ten.” “You say it’s a … ten” Ed Warren rejoins later on in the p

rogram. “It’s a … twenty.” According to the Warrens, sometime in 1973, eighteen-year-old Patty Donovan of West Hartford, Connecticut, purchased a Ouija board and began to use it in the privacy of her bedroom. “Bored and lonely,” Brittle explained in his book, “she was seeking excitement. Her family was strict and religious and kept a tight rein both on her and her fifteen-year-old brother, [Brian]. A brooding adolescent, [Patty] had few friends and withdrew into herself. One night, in futility,

she decided to try to find a friend on the Ouija board.” That night, Patty used the planchette to communicate with what she initially thought to be the spirit of a dead boy. The entity played on her vanities, telling her that she was pretty and regaling her with invented details about its former life on earth. When Patty asked the spirit its name, it responded that it was not “allowed” to share that information with any living soul. Patty corresponded with the mysterious entity, whom she came to

regard as her boyfriend, for nearly a year. Finally, on March 2nd, 1974, she begged it to show itself to her. “Nineteen-year-old [Patty Donovan] had crossed the line,” Brittel wrote of the request. “She invited a demonic spirit to manifest. Though the deceived girl gave this permission unwittingly, she nevertheless committed a supernatural transgression of the highest order. What resulted was perhaps the worst case of diabolical attack the Warrens have ever experienced.” In the months that foll

owed Patty’s invitation, the Donovan home was subjected to all manner of indignities which bore the characteristics of classic poltergeist activity. “Stones fell on this house,” said Ed Warren in an interview with Tony Spera.” “They would appear about 20 feet above the roof of the house [and] come down in a slow zigzag manner, defying gravity, hitting the house sometimes very softly, but other times breaking windows. Water would come out of a wall where there were no pipes for water… Knockings,

bangings all over the house, pounding like a gigantic fist, hitting the walls, the ceilings, the floor to the extent that it would actually crack the walls…” Bottles of salad dressing, toothpaste, and other liquids were dumped all over the carpets and flung against the walls. Cabinets filled with valuable china were smashed to pieces, articles of furniture moved about the house as if of their own accord, and obscenities were written on the walls in red ink. It was classic poltergeist activity pe

rformed with extraordinary intensity. On April 12th, 1974, Patty’s father, Ted, sought out the Warrens and begged them to help his family rid their home of their unwanted guest. Ed and Lorraine acquiesced, and visited the home in the company of a young Catholic priest named Father William R. Charbonneau- incidentally, the official Chaplain of the future NHL hockey team the Hartford Whalers, who would go on to become a military chaplain with the rank of Brigadier General in the Connecticut Air Na

tional Guard. Over the course of several months, Father Charbonneau and the Warrens were subjected to a variety of horrors in the Donovan home. Ed was violently slashed on the arm by invisible claws and pinned against a wall by a floating chair. Lorraine, on the other hand, watched an entire door dematerialize before her eyes, dissolving into nothingness in waves- an incident which she claimed was the most frightening thing she ever experienced. “Think of a person with absolutely no compassion,”

said Ed of the preternatural entities which had taken up residence in the Donovan home. “Those spirits in that house, which they call a poltergeist… it’s complete evil. They destroy anything; doesn’t matter what it is. And the more you suffer, the better they like it.” Despite Ed and Lorraine Warren’s firm conviction that the entities in the Donovan house were demonic in nature, one of their experiences in West Hartford strongly evokes the braiding of vehicular animal fibres attributed, in othe

r traditions, to little people, poltergeists, and witches. “Didn’t something happen to your car there?” asked Tony Spera of this experience in an interview on November 7th, 2000. “Let me tell you,” said Lorraine. “We had a brand new Chevette. Brand new. I don’t think the car had 200 miles on it. Ed did not want to park it in their driveway, so he parked it on the street in front of their house… all locked up.” Despite this precaution, Ed and Lorraine later returned to the street to find that the

ir windshield wipers had somehow been torn off the front of the car and placed on the passenger seat. The turn signal lever was also broken off even though the car remained locked. Left with no alternative, the Warrens called a tow truck and had their new vehicle brought back to the Chevrolet dealer for repairs. Later that day, the Warrens received a call from the mechanic assigned to their vehicle, who demanded to know whether they were playing a practical joke on him. “It was very embarrassing

,” Lorraine explained. “The wires underneath the hood of the car were all braided, like you’d braid hair. [They] were all braided together.” In the next video in this series, we’ll take a look at rapid, mysterious, and undesirable physical and behavioral changes which occur in babies, and the various explanations which different folkloric traditions assign to them. As we have established in the first two installments of this four-part series, there are certain phenomena which recur in different

folkloric traditions all over the world, which different cultures provide different explanations for. In Part 1, we examined three similarities between Roman Catholic demonology and the Cree-Algonquin legend of the Wendigo. In the previous video, we took a look at mysterious braids found on horses, cattle, and automobiles, and the various explanations which different folkloric traditions have for them. In this video, we’ll explore a disturbing phenomenon in which babies undergo sudden, dramatic,

and undesirable changes early in life, the cause of which mainstream science has yet to explain. Another tradition shared by both the dwarf lore of the Madawaska Highlands and the fairy lore of Newfoundland holds that ‘little people’ sometimes steal human babies when their parents’ attentions are distracted and replace them with their own deformed and ill-behaved progeny. In his 1972 paper,Vampires, Dwarves, and Witches among the Ontario Kashubs, Jan Perkowski wrote that, according to an elder

from Wilno, Ontario, a dwarf had attempted to abduct an infant born to one of the first Kashubian-Canadian families to settle in Madawaska Country. The diminutive kidnapper was caught in the act, and its plan thwarted. Another informant claimed that the dwarves once successfully pulled off this horrible operation and exchanged one of their own infants for that of a local family while the baby’s mother was working in the field. “It was evident that the child was changed,” the informant said. Fort

unately, the mother cleverly coerced the dwarf into returning her child after snaring it with a homemade trap. Newfoundlandic folklore is filled with similar tales in which fairies are said to have stolen human infants and replaced them with ugly cantankerous substitutes called “changelings”. Folklorist Barbara Rieti included some of these stories in her 1991 book Strange Terrain: The Fairy World in Newfoundland. A considerable portion of Rieti’s material came from the late Marie Meaney, an elde

rly woman from the village of Riverhead, Newfoundland, who was considered a local authority on fairy legends and paranormal occurrences. In 1979, when she was in her eighties, Mrs. Meaney dictated some of these stories to her granddaughter, Colleen, who recorded their conversation, transcribed it, and submitted it to the Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive in St. John’s, the provincial capital. “They used to take the babies,” Meaney told Colleen, in reference to the

fairies. “Long ago, you know… babies would [vanish]… out of the crib, or out of the bed… And the mother would hear the baby screech, screech, and screech, and when she come in to check on the baby’s crib, ‘twas a real old ugly old effigy was in the crib, an ugly old bay, and her lovely baby was gone. So all she could do was mind the baby. She minded that baby for a long time. And after a while, the baby got sick, the ugly old baby got sick or something and died. And when it died, they laid it o

ut for burial, and it was the most beautiful baby that ever was looked on. You see, her own baby was brought back to her and they took the old effigy away.” Another old Newfoundlander whose tale lies in the Memorial University of Newfoundland archives said, “A North Shore woman who wasn’t a good mother or wife and was always off at night came home one morning to find her baby gone from its crib. In its place was a baby with a big head that spent its time bawling no matter what she did for it. Sh

e knew it was a fairy child so she called the priest and somehow he got her own baby back. After that she never left the house again.” Changelings who survived infancy were said to invariably grow up to be unusual children with cognitive and social disabilities. A typical example of this belief appears in the testimony of an old priest from Placentia Bay, whose story appears in Rieti’s book: “On the lower end of Merasheen Island living alone are a family called Travis. There is the father and mo

ther, three sons and a daughter… Her son, ‘dim Pat’, is never there when we come around but you see him hiding behind the door or running off up to the woods. Once I told her I had to meet him. I said I was taking the census for the bishop, so she brought him in. He’s about thirty-two and he’s ordinary but he always wears a skirt made out of canvas like you’d make sails with or you’d wear splitting fish. No pants underneath but the big boots and a shirt and this skirt. He’s right odd but quite i

ntelligent to speak to and he can fish and make little boats that his brothers sell for him. People say he’s a changeling and the fairies took the real one away. They’re always saying that about the odd ones.” According to Newfoundland tradition, the most effective way by which the parents of fairy abductees can coerce the little people into replacing their real baby is to place a shovel in the fireplace until it turns red hot and then threaten the changeling with the glowing implement. If the b

aby is indeed a changeling, legend says it will abandon its crib and flee out the nearest exist. Shortly thereafter, the real baby will be found in the crib. Eerily, there are an alarming number of parents in the Western world today who similarly report sudden, dramatic, and undesirable changes in their own babies. Between the ages of 15 to 30 months, these seemingly healthy infants, whose cognitive developments had hitherto progressed at normal rates, suddenly and irreversibly lose the verbal,

social, and motor skills they had already acquired. Infants who undergo this mysterious and distressing transformation are often diagnosed with severe autism later on in childhood. Instead of accusing the ‘little people’ of swapping their babies with changelings, however, some parents blame their child’s tragic condition, known as “regressive autism”, on the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) (quack), which is often administered to children between 12 to 15 months after birth. The controversial b

elief that there might be some correlation between infantile (quack) and regressive autism, which is routinely condemned as “unscientific” by both the medical community and the mainstream media with a bizarre intensity bordering on mania, is the subject of the 2016 documentary Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe, directed by delicensed British gastroenterologist Dr. Andrew Wakefield. In this documentary, investigative medical journalist Del Bigtree crystallizes the aforementioned suspicion thus

: “We know in medicine that there have been many, many studies proving that (quack) do not cause autism, but the problem I have always had with that is thousands and thousands of parents all telling the same story: ‘My child got a (quack)- usually the MMR (quack)- and that night, or the next day, broke out in a fever, and then when they came out of the fever lost speech, lost the ability to walk, basically regressed into what we know as autism, and never came back.’” Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh, foun

der of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders, echoes Bigree’s statement in a later interview, describing how, while investigating the medical history of children diagnosed with autism in the mid-1990s, she was struck by “the number of families who were reporting that their child had a regressive type of behavior occur right after their (quack). A lot of these parents were showing me footage of their children who had been completely developing normally until eighteen months, and then all of

a sudden, post (quack), had developed incredible regression. Children who had… anywhere close to fifty to a hundred words had completely lost all of their words; children who were extremely attached and interactive with their parents and had suddenly become isolated, no longer responding to their own name; this was all happening right after their MMR (quack).” The documentary goes on to feature the stories of several families whose children regressed into autism shortly after receiving their MM

R (quack). Britons Jonathan and Polly Tommy, for example, describe the tragic regression of their second child, Billy. According to Polly, the founder of the magazine Autism File, Billy had his normal baby (quack) at two, four, and six months. After the last shot, he came down with what appeared to be a mild chest cold, for which he was proscribed antibiotics. Despite the medication, Billy’s condition failed to improve. When Billy turned one year old, Polly took him to the hospital for his MMR (

quack). “The day Billy got the MMR was a living nightmare,” she said. “It was the worst day of my life, to be honest with you.” In a separate interview, Polly’s husband, Jonathan, a clinical nutritionist, described what happened next: “I came in, and I saw him lying in his cot listless. He started this uncontrollable shaking… Imagine coming out of a frozen pond… And I remember [Polly] grasped him and held him really tight to her chest.” The Tommeys rushed Billy to the hospital, where they were t

old that their son had suffered an adverse reaction to the (quack) and had gone into a seizure. Medical professionals assured them that such reactions were common, and that Billy would be fine. Billy’s convulsions eventually ceased, and his parents took him home. “He sat in the bed with us for the night,” Polly said. “He seemed just very, very sleepy. But he didn’t really ever wake up to the Billy that we had before.” “Probably within the first five or six days,” Jonathan continued later in the

film, “the first sign, really, was this vacancy. He wasn’t the same smiley little baby he was before. He had a blank expression…” Polly elaborated on the grim transformation that her son underwent, saying, “His tummy started to get… bloated… He would start to walk on tiptoes. His hair fell out. And this dreadful, high-pitched… whiney scream- developed… And then came the head banging- the constant banging against his crib.” A tearful Jonathan Tommy summarized the grisly episode as “the time where

our boy changed from what he was to… a real tragic, tragic case of a child who regressed into this autistic state and lost everything.” In the fourth and final video in this series, we’ll take a look at mysterious disappearances which occur in swamps and berry patches, and the explanations which two different folkloric traditions assign to them. In the first three installments of this four-part series, we took at certain mysterious phenomena which appear in different and unrelated folkloric tra

ditions, which each tradition explains in a different way. In this fourth and final video, we’ll take a look at unsolved disappearances which occur in very particular locations, and the various explanations which folklore provides for them. Newfoundland folk tradition contends that children and lone travelers who wander alone in particular locations, ecosystems, or topographical features run the risk of being abducted by the fairies and taken to their strange otherworldly abode. Among the most d

angerous of these places are swamps and berry patches. In Strange Terrain, Barbara Rieti includes a number of folktales and personal stories which support this oddly specific fear. “There were marshes nearby on the front of the island where we lived,” said one informant, “and stories were told about fairies which lived there. There was one particular piece of marshland which used to shake like jelly when we would run across it. Stories were told that it would open up and swallow us up like it ha

d done to other people.” Another anecdote was provided by the aforementioned Mrs. Marie Meaney, who told her granddaughter, Colleen, about a young orphan girl whom another couple had adopted. One day, after having some local ladies over for tea, the girl’s stepmother asked her to shake off the kitchen tablecloth outside. “So she took the tablecloth and went out,” Mrs. Meaney said, “shook it out around the door. And just outside of the door was a little place raspberries used to grow. And she sto

pped to pick a few, you know, pick them and eat them, pick them and eat them. And gosh, she never came back. She never came back, and she never came back for two or three days... And when she came back, Missus said to her, ‘Where were you to? Do you know how long you’ve been gone? You were gone three days and a night.’ She couldn’t believe it, you know. She was frightened. But [the fairies] brought her back.” Another story treats with the mother of one Bernadine Flynn of Avondale, Newfoundland.

“One day,” the story goes, “when Mrs. Flynn’s mother was walking across the barrens to bring dinner to her husband (who worked on the railroad line) she stopped to pick a few strawberries… Anyhow, when she looked up she saw the fairies with their babies. They were running across the barren. The fairies were dressed in beautiful clothes which had many bright colors. Mrs. Flynn’s mother was very frightened but since she had her rosary beads with her she started to say it and the fairies left.” Rie

ti included another tale told to her personally by an elderly woman who requested anonymity for fear of ridicule. One morning, when she was about thirteen years old, the informant’s mother went berry picking with one of her friends. They hadn’t been long about their business when the friend looked up to find that the storyteller’s mother had disappeared. The friend searched for the woman all throughout the surrounding forest but was unable to find any clue as to where she might have gone. At 9:3

0 that evening, to her family’s relief and astonishment, the missing woman hobbled through her own front door, dishevelled and exhausted. “She was all [doubled over],” the informant said, “her hair all over her eyes; one shoe on and the other foot bare. And she looked right gone, you know; oh my, I couldn’t describe to you what she was like.” The informant’s mother explained that, early that morning, after filling her basket with berries, she headed over to the larger bucket that she and her fri

end were sharing with the intention of dumping the fruits of her labours therein. During the short walk to the bucket, the woman lost consciousness and lapsed into a dreamlike state. When she came to, she found herself walking along an unfamiliar brook in a particular stretch of barrens, at a location which later proved to lie ten miles from the berry patch, with her basket gone, her coat gone, and one of her shoes missing. Although she was never able to recall what had happened to her during he

r trancelike spell, most Newfoundlanders who heard her experience implicitly believed that she had been taken by the fairies. Fortunately, not all fairy abductees are so ill-used by their captors. In her book, Rieti included a number of brief allusions to incidents in which the abductee- who, in these cases, is invariably a little girl- was fed, sheltered, and treated kindly by her diminutive kidnappers in an uncharacteristic display of goodwill. One girl from the tiny community of Petit Forte,

for example, disappeared for a week. When she returned, she “said that she was with the good people, they were the fairies, see, and they gave her stuff of the hills, they picked berries, and that kept her alive.” Another informant, who hailed from the town of Cupids, wrote, “Years ago, a girl disappeared from [the town]. She was eleven years old, and after searching for over a week, they had given up any hope of finding her alive. However, they did find her in a clearing of wood sitting alone.

She explained that she had been fed and sheltered by a group of small men.” Although it has nothing to do with swamps or berry patches, there is another story in Rieti’s book which is worth recounting here, for reasons which will soon become obvious. In the early 1900s, a three year old girl named Minnie Keith (nee Pine) vanished from the town of Colinet, Newfoundland, and remained missing for nine days. On the last day, a traveller who was returning to the Rock, as Newfoundland is sometimes cal

led, from a trip to the United States found the little girl playing with a seashell on the beach, humming a strange tune. “Although it had rained during the nine days she was gone,” Rieti wrote, “she was neither wet nor hungry.” Another informant to comment upon the story affirmed that “she wasn’t even dirtied, nor was her hair mussed up.” The general consensus in Colinet was that she had been taken in by the fairies. Over the past decade, a former Californian police officer named David Paulides

has singlehandedly invented a new class of folklore revolving around missing people. The implied premise of this modern mythology, branded ‘Missing 411’, is that certain unsolved disappearances can be attributed to the predations of some mysterious force which prowls the wilderness of North America, taking its victims without leaving any olfactory traces behind. To be classified as a ‘Missing 411’ case, a disappearance must satisfy at least one of more than a dozen conditions, which Paulides ca

lls ‘profile points’. One of these conditions is that swamps or bogs feature in the victim’s disappearance or the search and rescue operation which succeeds it. In the Introduction to his 2019 book Missing 411: Canada, Paulides writes, “Some readers will find the fact that many missing people are located in the middle of swamps and bogs a highly unusual place to discover people. I have lost count of the number of times this fact has proven itself to be true. Marshes are one of those places that

the general public won’t casually wander. It could be considered one of those locations where few people ever trek. It is also a place discounted by many SAR personnel as too difficult for the victim to travel.” Another of Paulides’ profile points is “Berries”. In the Introduction to his 2012 book Missing 411: Eastern United States, he writes, “The fact that berries and berry bushes play a continuous role in many disappearances is overwhelming. People disappear and are found in the middle of ber

ry bushes. They go missing while they are picking berries, and some are found eating berries. The association between some missing people and berries cannot be denied.” One berry picker whose disappearance Paulides touched on in Missing 411: Canada was 58-year-old George Wanke. In his sub-chapter on Wanke’s disappearance, Paulides cites an article published in the July 27, 1935 issue of the Winnipeg Free Press. This short column, entitled “Berry-Picker Lost in Bush in Region of Lac du Bonnet”, r

eads: “George Wanke, aged 58 years, of Beausejour, is missing in the bush near Brightstone, about ten miles due west of Lac du Bonnet. Wanke, with a party of about 24 others, left Beausejour by truck Thursday morning for the Brightstone district on a berry-picking expedition. They arrived at their chosen point around noon and spread out on their berry hunting, which was to last until five o’clock, having selected a meeting place. The remainder of the party waited for the return of Wanke until se

ven o’clock, when they returned to Beausejour for more help to search for the missing man. Three truck-loads left for Brightstone Friday morning to make a last intensive hunt, but according to latest information, no word has been received, either at Lac du Bonnet or Beausejour, as to Wanke having been found.” A little more than a month later, another Manitoban berry picker vanished under mysterious circumstances. On Thursday, September 5th, 1935, five-year-old Jack Pike disappeared from a dense

wooded area near St. Norbert- a monastery located about 12 miles south of Winnipeg, Manitoba, at that time- somewhere between St. Mary’s Road and the Red River. Jack’s father, a CN Railway employee named Charles Pike, had a day off work, and had decided to take his wife, his wife’s friend Lilly Jones, his son Jack, and his youngest daughter Charlotte, out to St. Norbert to pick blueberries and choke cherries. Five minutes into their excursion, at about 2:00 p.m., Mr. and Mrs. Charles Pike heard

their son emit a stifled shriek nearby, about a mile from the riverbank. “He screamed as if he was terrified,” his mother told reporters. “It seemed to be choked off in the middle. By the time we reached the spot where the screams sounded from he was gone. There wasn’t a trace of him; he’d vanished into the air, and we haven’t seen a sign of him since.” Charles Pike spent the next three hours tramping through the surrounding bush, calling frantically for his son. Eventually conceding that the si

tuation was serious, he reluctantly postponed his own search in order to call the local RCMP from the phone of a nearby farmer. He spent the night searching for Jack and continued to search the following day, aided by 40 friends and neighbours from the nearby town of St. Vital. The searchers were drenched by intermittent rainfall, inclement weather following the disappearances being another of Paulides’ profile points. Headed by local RCMP officer Constable H.M. Weir and Captain D.G. Gallaugher

of the St. Vital Fire Department, the search and rescue effort continued throughout the weekend, gaining twenty additional recruits from the surrounding area, along with a complement of local volunteers who organized a camp kitchen for the searchers. Some newspaper articles indicate that the search and rescue party eventually swelled to a 2,000-man operation, supplemented by an airplane, members of the 2nd Canadian Motor Machine Gun Brigade, and several boats whose occupants scanned the shores o

f the Red River. “So thick is the brush in that district,” wrote journalist Ben Malkin for the Winnipeg Free Press, “and so difficult is it to maintain a sense of direction, that several of the search parties themselves were at times, and for short periods, lost. Even one of the police dogs used by the searching parties became lost for a short time when it broke away from the main body. At intervals, searchers who broke away, and struck into the bush by themselves, would lose all sense of their

whereabouts, and be unable to reach the highway until they met other searchers, who would indicate the correct direction to them.” Constable Weir was baffled as to what might have befallen the subject of his search. A contemporary newspaper article contended that he considered animal predation unlikely, since “the area is fairly well populated, and searchers found no trace of anything larger than rabbits or grouse.” He also considered the possibility of kidnapping too remote to seriously pursue,

as “the Pike family were strangers in the district, they [had] no known enemies, and their position in life [precluded] the idea of ransom.” Another article stated that one Mr. Drysdale, an experienced woodsman, “confessed he was beaten by the mystifying disappearance of the lost boy,” while searchers Larry Bates and Charles Oakley of St. Vital “were equally baffled”. On Monday, September 9th, 1935, at 12:45 p.m., an unemployed carpenter named Ole Olson, who has assisted in the search, discover

ed little Jack Pike curled up beneath a clump of willows about 150 yards from the Red River, at a location two miles away from where he was last seen. He was unconscious, severely dehydrated, and barely clinging to life. Searchers gently carried him half a mile to St. Mary’s Road, where an ambulance rushed him to St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg. “The finding of the boy culminates one of the most intensive searches for a lost person in the history of the province,” concluded a front-page articl

e in that day’s issue of the Winnipeg Evening Tribune. “More than 2,000 men and women had combed the bush.” Searchers present at the scene of the boy’s discovery, seeing that Jack had not been injured by anything aside from privation and the rough Manitoban undergrowth, suspected that the five-year-old, on the day of his disappearance, had probably panicked when he found himself unable to see his parents, ran into the bush in the opposite direction of his family, and became lost. Jack Pike flick

ered in an out of consciousness on the ambulance ride to the hospital. Upon arrival, his father, Charles, on the advice of Dr. George Shapera, gave him a blood transfusion. Shortly after the operation, Jack came to and glanced feebly at his father. “I think he recognized me,” Charles Pike is quoted as having said. “He put his hand in mine and his eyes seemed to light up when he saw me.” “For a few hours, Jack seemed to be winning his plucky battle,” wrote another front-page article in the Winnip

eg Evening Tribune, “but at 8 o’clock he sank into unconsciousness and injections of adrenaline failed to revive him. His parents had left for their home when their son’s condition appeared better. They were hastily summoned, to arrive just as Jack died.” On Friday, September 13, 1935, Jack Pike was laid to rest in St. Vital’s Elmwood Cemetery. After a sombre funeral, which was attended by hundreds of those who had participated in the search, the tiny coffin was lowered into the grave, the melan

choly sky and bitter wind reflecting the sentiments of those who had come to pay their respects. Another Manitoban disappearance in Paulides’ book which eerily evokes old Newfoundlandic tales of fairy abduction is that of 4-year-old Betty Wolfrum who vanished on May 15th, 1934, one year before the disappearances of Jack Pike and George Wanke, near the rural community of Moosehorn, just east of Lake Manitoba. That day, her father, Carl, placed the sleeping four-year-old in a carriage in front of

his farmhouse before heading into the field to seed. George’s wife, who would typically have looked after Betty while he worked, had taken their sixteen-year-old daughter, Helen, in to town to see a doctor. Although the specific nature of Helen’s malady was never publically disclosed, some newspapers suggested that it had something to do with an “indecent assault” which Helen claimed to have suffered sixteen days earlier at the hands of two local boys. When George Wolfrum returned from the farmh

ouse, he found that Betty was missing from the carriage. At first, he was not unduly alarmed, and began calling out for his daughter, suspecting that she must have woken up from her nap and climbed down to play. When no answers were forthcoming, however, he grew increasingly worried. George’s wife joined the search when she and Helen returned from town later that day. All night, the husband and wife searched for their missing daughter, calling out her name with lanterns in hand as they slogged t

hrough the sloughs and swamps surrounding their farmhouse. In the morning, the Wolframs alerted the RCMP. Carl Wolfrum and a hundred men from the surrounding area, under the direction of Constable R.S. Smith and Sergeant George Clifford of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, proceeded to comb the so-called Spearhill district surrounding the Wolfram farm for any sign of Betty, all the while pummelled by torrential rain. Betty’s mother told the Mounties in charge of the case that she suspected her

daughter had been kidnapped by the family of one of the boys whom Helen claimed had attacked her as revenge for their formal complaint. After five days of fruitless searching, during which the surrounding area was pummeled with torrential rain, Betty was found wandering in a swamp about two miles from her home whimpering “Daddy, Daddy”. The story of her discovery is one of the many strange elements of which her case is comprised. The man who found her, a local farmer named Roy Rosin, headed into

the swamp on a hunch, later telling police that he walked to a certain spot at which a man had been shot to death several years earlier in a dispute over the ownership of a truck. Before heading out that day, he allegedly told his wife that he feared he might not come back alive, telling her, without offering any further explanation, that if he did manage to return, he expected he would be “all broken up”. Like the unnamed mother in one of Barbara Rieti’s fairy stories, Betty was discovered wit

hout her coat and the red hat she had been wearing on the day of her disappearance, and was found to be wearing only one shoe. Dr. Frank Walkin of Ashern, Manitoba, the physician who subsequently examined her, reported, “Examination of the child reveals little loss of flesh and no evidence of dehydration. Furthermore, in view of the fact there have been so many mosquitoes present, it is significant that there are no bites or scratches present. In my opinion, this child has had food, water, and s

ome shelter for the past 3 to 4 days, as I do not believe that any child who has always been delicate could have withstood this long exposure and show so little trace.” Other newspaper articles indicated that Betty was found completely dry, and that her clothing and one remaining shoe were quite clean and pristine considering the duration of her backcountry ordeal. An article in the Montreal Gazette declared that Betty remained in a state of terror following her rescue, and that she hardly spoke

upon arriving home, spending most of her time sleeping and whimpering softly. Another article contended that she “[exhibited] a terror of all men, and [would] not even go near her father, though she [had] always been his favorite child, and was used to accompanying him on all his tasks about the farm.” Eventually, Betty told her mother that, on the day of her discovery, a man had placed her in the slough and told her to walk in a certain direction which proved to lead to her family’s barn. On M

ay 22nd, two days after her return, the RCMP interviewed Betty Wolfrum in an effort to shed some light on her mysterious absence. “The long awaited conversation with the little girl, however, was a distinct disappointment to the hopes of the police that she would supply the key to the mystery,” wrote a journalist for the Winnipeg Evening Tribune, who witnessed the interview. “No longer nervous or frightened of men, Betty prattled gaily to the officers and newspapermen, but vouchsafed no coherent

or significant information as to her doings during her five days’ absence from home.” “The case is baffling,” concluded an article in the Winnipeg Evening Tribune, “and newspaper men and police alike are met with vague answers and a general air of mystery at every turn. They are convinced that there are some in the district who know more about the affair than they have told.” One final element to the story was provided by a neighbouring farmer named George Romein. Romein told the Royal Canadian

Mounted Policemen who investigated the case that, during Betty’s absence, one of his milk cows returned from the busy three days in a row milked dry. Discounting the family feud angle, as David Paulides did in his book, if Betty’s disappearance had taken place in Newfoundland, it would have been considered a classic case of fairy abduction. As mentioned earlier, in other Newfoundlandic stories in which young girls were supposedly abducted by fairies, the victims were found completely dry despit

e the area’s having been subjected to heavy rain, much like Betty Wolfrum. Many victims supposedly abducted by Newfoundlandic fairies went missing or were discovered in swamps, like Betty Wolfrum. Nearly every abduction survivor in Newfoundland fairy lore returned to civilization changed in some way, as the quiet, whimpering Betty Wolfrum appeared to be. And Newfoundland fairies were said to milk cows from time to time, as was George Romein’s cow in the story of Betty Wolfum. Interestingly, Bett

y’s story takes place just 50 kilometres, or about 30 miles, west of a district called New Iceland, whose inhabitants once believed that huldufolk, or elves, inhabited the wilderness surrounding their farmhouses. Thanks for watching! If you are interested in the subject of universal folktales, please consider checking out my book Mysteries of Canada: Volume III, in which I outline some of the different folkloric explanations for cases in which people lose both articles of their clothing and segm

ents of their memory while lost on the bush. This book is available in paperback, eBook, and audiobook format, and can be fully enjoyed on its own, without the first two books in the series. To get yourself or a friend or loved one a copy of this book, please check out the link in the description.