Don't Look Under the Internet
Don't Look Under the Internet
DLUTI 183 - Strange Places on Earth
This week, Jason talks about some arches, Mike finds a dent in the ground, Doug burns some trash, and Matt watches traffic.
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Don't look under the internet.
Speaker 2:Hi, everyone hey.
Speaker 3:Hi everyone. So today we're gonna talk about some stuff that Mike told us to look up on today's episode of don't look under the internet.
Speaker 4:We're going to talk about some weird things. Um, I cannot keep that voice up.
Speaker 2:I hate it so much please don't, I will fall asleep welcome to don't look under the internet everybody.
Speaker 4:An internet horror comedy podcast starring yours truly, Doug.
Speaker 1:Oh shit, that's me.
Speaker 3:Matt, oh shit, that's me.
Speaker 4:Jason, oh shit, that's you Me Doubt it.
Speaker 2:Oh shit that's me. I doubt it. Doubt it man Today for doubt it.
Speaker 4:oh shit, that's I doubt it, doubt it, man. Yeah, today for a little bit of delivery housekeeping above your head. Got you bitch, we ain't got none.
Speaker 3:I will say the comments there were a bunch of comments on the episode from last week and one person pointed out on this week's episode. The last two episodes that have been like just random topics. I've been doing the description as like tonight Mike does something, something, something, and somebody understood that it was a Top Gear reference and I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:So thank you fuck you, someone's looking out for.
Speaker 4:Matt, I appreciate that so thanks for identifying that's housekeeping that counts. We had housekeeping.
Speaker 3:Somebody also said that my apostrophe rant means that we should do like a grinds my gears segment, and I don't know that you really want that.
Speaker 2:Maybe that could be like a bonus thing on the Patreon.
Speaker 3:You're gonna get too many angry people.
Speaker 2:My only stipulation it's just gonna turn into political ranting we all get belligerently drunk for it, though, or just like real heated about something next to Ludathon is us for 12 hours just going on rants and tangents?
Speaker 4:yeah, I think that's just info wars. It is us for 12 hours just going on rants and tangents. You know what else you?
Speaker 2:motherfuckers. I think that's just InfoWars it is. That's how they started selling fucking dude wipes. The man tactical wipe. You know what you?
Speaker 4:can't even mosh those. I've seen those in your bathroom at one point.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, no, they were. Hey, I'm here to tell you everybody don't buy them. They are not worth it, they are not for dudes and they also just in all generalities Got them.
Speaker 4:Well, you know, that's what we got Dirty Mike. We're supposed to wipe with them? Man, anyway, it doesn't matter, we're not talking about with them. Man, anyway, it doesn't matter, we're not talking about your wiping. Today we're talking about other mysteries, other than Jason's wiping. We're going to talk about mysterious things Lack thereof. We're talking about mysterious places on Oith Oith.
Speaker 3:Not Jason's underwear.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I thought it would be interesting to make the boys find some mysterious uh destinations, one could say, on our little blue marble called earth. Um uh, who wants to go first?
Speaker 1:fuck, I hate this man.
Speaker 2:I can, if you want, go for it. Um, okay, so it seems I might have a fascination with Japan, um, but that's because they have some, honestly, really fucking cool culture, it's so weird pixelated genitalia.
Speaker 3:Nobody has ever identified this about Japan before guaranteed you're the first.
Speaker 4:a genitalia Nobody has ever identified this about Japan before Guaranteed you're the first None.
Speaker 2:Well, so last time we talked about Japan, or at least as in-depth as I would like to, was when we talked about what was that?
Speaker 1:Okiku the hair-growing doll in the Hyouto region of Japan.
Speaker 2:That was a long time ago, a hairy doll, I think Junko Jintsue, touched Japan for a second, but that was kind of a worldwide thing. But either way, we're going to go to somewhere in Japan called Fushimi Inari. Now this is a shrine to a certain god in the shinto religion, um.
Speaker 2:Now inari is known as the I've been here, you've been here have you really you've been to the fushimi inari shrine, so this is actually known as one of uh one of the haunted shrines in um dedicated to inari. Now, the reason being is, uh, locals have said that the pathways are the only things in this shrine that actually belong to humans. Everything outside of those pathways belong to whatever else might lie beyond um. Now it's. It is one of the biggest tourist attractions in this area, um, from what I've seen, almost all the recommendations say that you will the back entrance, which is like a three mile walk, so it's super popular. However, most people are there during the daytime. However, it's apparently open during the nighttime. They have tours going on.
Speaker 2:You can go visit, and one of the things that makes this shrine stand out from the rest of the Shinto shrines in Japan is the fact that it's lined like.
Speaker 2:One of the main trails is lined with like tens of thousands of these vermilion torii gates which they straddle, this network of trails between the main buildings.
Speaker 2:The trails lead out into the wooded area of the forest um and this is right by uh mount inari, which stands 233 meters and belongs to all this, belongs um to a protected uh set of grounds, to the shrine um, very back of this shrine is the entrance. Like I was saying, this is miles away from the main road, um, and if you go through this back entrance, the first thing you're going to see is these thousands and thousands of rows of gates. And, considering, this is the one of the shrines of the inari which, depending on how you interpret it, is either to like rice, um, it could be to prosperity, it could be to just general well-being and successfulness. Either way, most corporations in the area apparently are superstitious enough to think that dedicating a shrine gate in this area to this, uh, what they see as a kami which, as I understand it, I thought was more of a demon than like a deity, you can just call them the Ruskies, it's fine.
Speaker 2:God damn it, mike. There's thousands of these gates and all of them are dedicated, by some corporation or some deity, to this weird deity for prosperity. Well, if you look at the deity of prosperity, you find out that its actual manifestation is that of a fox, and in Japanese culture, foxes are known to be very tricky. They like to use their words carefully to lure people into deals that might not so much favor the person they're making a deal with, almost like a gin where, yeah, you get wishes, but they have a weird fucked up twist kind of thing.
Speaker 1:What does the fox say normally what does the fox say?
Speaker 2:Yeet, yeet, yeet, yeet, yeet, god damn it. So these are known as kitsune yeet, yeet, yeet, god damn it. So in these are known as kitsune, and that's what these fox devilish demons are referred to. There are hundreds of these statues all over this shrine. Now, all of this to say a ton of paranormal activity in the past. I, I would say, let's see 2013,. Like decade or so, um has been cataloged where people have been walking either by themselves or with one other, like a dedicated loved one, where they would just start feeling this overarching feeling of dread and like cold spots, all kind of like the, the paranormal buzzwords that you might think of. They're kind of experiencing these things. However, zach, one of the things, one of the things that stays kind of constant.
Speaker 4:Did you see what happened? I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1:I don't want to break. I don't want to cut you off. Please go ahead.
Speaker 4:Fucking Aaron Goodwin from ghost adventures. His wife put out a hit to try to get him assassinated and she's in jail now because of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did not get a break. His wife tried to kill him. The ghosts are trying to kill him.
Speaker 2:Fucking poor everyone everything's trying to kill him, jesus. Anyway, sorry, sorry to derail. That was no, you're fine. That's crazy information, though. Yeah, it absolutely did. So, fuck, what was the last thing I said? God damn it. We were talking about these shrines, the foxes, the kitsunes Okay, these demon foxes that are protecting the shrines.
Speaker 2:A lot of the townsfolk have reported seeing different things while walking through this area at night.
Speaker 2:Now, if you look at this place during the day, it's gorgeous, like the colors are vibrant lights everywhere.
Speaker 2:At night, this specific trail that has all of these shrines with dedications to these greedy corporations has thiserie like yellow glow about it, and people have reported hearing and seeing things that line up with like a, an impulse or a, something they need in the moment.
Speaker 2:So one of the stories that was told is this uh, this guy was walking around and he realized that his canteen was empty and the trail that he took on these grounds was far too long and he was kind of at the halfway point so it was going to be a long time. So he was super thirsty and he remembers wishing he had more water and as he ended that thought, he heard like a ka-ch chunk and clunking noise, almost like something being dispensed from a vending machine and over towards the nearest light highlighting part of the trail, there was a vending machine that dispensed two bottles of water and so he went and he took them and he thought nothing of it and he walked on. It wasn't until later that the next time he came around to that part of the trail that there was no vending machine there. There never had been. No one has ever reported remembering being able to buy anything bottled, canned, whatever from that area what scp is this?
Speaker 2:I know that's taking that too, I I know it's super intriguing because, like it's super recent that all of this is taking place. So if we look at this more, you, good old man, I'm sorry, I am so interested by this stuff. So one thing I wanted to say is it's a little backstory on like the, the cultural impacts and like deprivations of foxes and the commie, and so when we talk about things like the kitsune, which are all these hundreds of statues that are on these grounds, they are they, they dedicate themselves to a demon, and it's a demon of trickery, because because foxes are known for giving you 85% of something, but the last 15% is fake, and that's kind of what that symbol means in Japan.
Speaker 4:So I'm sorry on this shrine. Is it the shrine that's haunted or the the land around it, or both situations?
Speaker 2:Well, one of the things that have been noted is that all of the people who have recorded these weird happenings, where they desire something and they get what they want, on the trails of these passive shrines in this area, they've all um, oh my god, I'm so fucked that I smoked. What did you just ask, mike? I'm so sorry. Oh my god I.
Speaker 4:I asked if it's the, the shrine that's haunted or the trails, or is it a both situation?
Speaker 2:it's everything outside the trails. The shrines themselves, apparently, are the things that help protect the trail. So as long as you don't wander from the path that are protected by these shrines, you're fine. The local belief is that everything outside of those paths are uh, belong to the realm of the commie or gotcha so if you, if you stumble off the trail into, like the forest or something, that's when you can get that's when you and they that's what they refer to as falling off that's what the local custom says, if you fell off, that means you've lost your humanity, and either you have not been you like, you don't get seen again, or you've been replaced by something that is no longer human gotcha and that's the local superstition around this place.
Speaker 2:super fucking cool, super interesting. Um, there's a couple of uh twitter posts that have gone viral of people taking images of seeing um orbs trails, and I know that the orbs and trails are a huge discussion topic among paranormal investigators. People who take photos of the paranormal like those are considered to be proof Right, and so there's a lot of those going around. Unfortunately, all the Twitter posts are in Japanese and I don't know how to speak, read or write that.
Speaker 3:So I was trying to find it, but I think it's on another hard drive. I'll have to dig up, but I have a picture that I took here and I'll have to see if there's any orbs.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 4:There you go. That'd be cool, that'd be fucking awesome. So, matt, did you experience anything when you were? Yeah?
Speaker 3:No, it was pretty normal.
Speaker 4:No, no, we stuck to the trail like we went through like that, okay, that long thing that is like a bunch of arches, it's just when you went, did they? Did anyone mention to you or like signs or anything that said don't go off the trail, anything like that I really don't remember anything like that, daddy couldn't read it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, they were probably like stupid fucking americans I'll just let him die let him get replaced, let him go yeah, that's fair, that is the general consensus.
Speaker 2:Uh, like, I looked through the like the, the local subreddit it, and it was just full of people. It'd be spotted with people like this is bullshit, this is bullshit, and you'd see somebody saying like no, no, no. I had a grandmother that had a friend that went into the forest and she wished for this and then all of a sudden, this happened, with this weird twist to it. I don't know, it was super cool.
Speaker 4:Was there any twist to that vending machine story, or is it just that there was no vending machine there anymore?
Speaker 2:That was like the. The guy still thinks about it. This is apparently 15 years later that he told this story. Oh, I get you Okay. So like I don't know if the catch was that like I take up space in your brain now Like that's a shitty twist. The catch was he thought it was two free water bottles.
Speaker 4:But then he went back to his house and he was missing like a buck, fifty from his right.
Speaker 2:Turns out I was lying the whole time.
Speaker 4:All right. Do you have more to add to it, or is that your story?
Speaker 2:so this is a super interesting, weird, creepy place that I found and super cool that you've been there, matt.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't, I don't remember that much about this, but I mean we went to Kyoto and this was one of the things. I mean they're super impressive. Like out in front of the shrine there's like this really really tall arch. That is it's Neato. I don't know, nothing crazy happened, but it's Neato.
Speaker 4:What's up, gamers? I'm here at the archway and I'm gonna go off into the wild to see if I come across any ghosts. Come with me to the nether realm. And then he just fucks off and dies. What did that be? I need Mr Beast to do that fuck off and die. What's his name? We're gonna go film in the suicide forest of the fucking yeah those guys the Pauls.
Speaker 3:I don't ever remember which one is which. Yeah, they're both just Paul, I hear last name Paul and I go.
Speaker 2:I probably don't ever remember which one is which yeah, they're both just Paul. I hear last name Paul and I go. I probably don't care. Hardly know her well, I will.
Speaker 4:If you're cool with it, I'll go next go for it bro yeah so what I'm talking about today and we're done, I brought okay, bye, um, I brought to the to the table here the multiverses multiverses and how to find them with atomic number 83?
Speaker 4:um andrew bichat. Um. I'm talking about the potomsky crater. So, back in 1949, a russian geologist named vatom kolpakov what a name, it's a hard name, vatom kolpakov. We still don't know what it is, still don't know what it is to this day. Um, back in 1949, this russian geologist was conducting an expedition deep into the forested region of irkutsk, russia, and I'm going to butcher a lot of this, I'm sure this is when he stumbled across a very weird, very giant cone-shaped mound, roughly 160 feet tall and 520 feet wide at its base. This whole thing was made up of shattered limestones. Wide at its base, this whole thing was made up of shattered limestones.
Speaker 4:The locals around the area, members of the Yakut and Ivenki tribes warned Vadim against visiting the crater, calling it a cursed and sinister place. They believed that the formation of this weird mound was created, um and was the nest of a fiery bird known as the fire eagle um, and that it's best if you don't fucking go there and disturb the nest. According to the lore around this, this crater, people who dared to go over to the crater would experience feelings of unease, illness or even disappear without a trace. There are animals in the area, the wilderness in general, that avoid this crater. Once you go to this crater, it is eerily silent. That's one of the things that vatom noted when he went up to the crater is that it is eerily silent. That's one of the things that Vadim noted when he went up to the crater is that it is eerily silent. No animals, no life anywhere. Even vegetation avoids this crater. There are trees and everything around it, but none of them ever really touch the crater.
Speaker 4:So, uh, vatom, being the geologist that he is, decided, um, I got to fucking check out more of this shit, dude. And so he brought back information about this crater to the rest of the uh, the world, essentially making it this like publicly, um, like making it public knowledge, essentially. So locals in the area but also believe that this site is haunted. Um, there are many stories of strange occurrences where explorers or even scientists have reported, again, unease while at the site. Um, they even claim that their compasses spin wildly, um, and they feel as though they're being affected by some unknown force. The atmosphere, again is mentioned to be eerie and the air feels like thicker. They say that it's harder to breathe, they feel heavier when they're around this crater. So you're probably wondering yourselves Is it full of radiation? How'd the crater get made? Maybe it's a possibility, so it's full of calm. So lots of questions and how this crater got to be made, because if you guys look up an image, um, I don't have twitch open.
Speaker 4:Um, uh matt did you throw up an image in the discord okay, if you guys look at the image, it's a very unique looking crater.
Speaker 2:It's basically a crater with what looks like an egg.
Speaker 4:In the middle it's an ant nipple. Yeah, it's very weird, and so no one is very positive on how. Did you see the tit of the earth?
Speaker 2:It's like a roused guy's nipple?
Speaker 4:because of the shape? No one's really like that. No one knows for sure how it was made. There are a lot of um theories. First and foremost, one of the biggest theories that is accepted in the scientific community is a meteorite impact um. So the sheer, sheer, size and shape of the formation seems consistent with an impact event. However, despite multiple attempts to study the site, no one has found any remnants of a meteorite. They found no fragments of extraterrestrial material or even high levels of radiation. When studying I'm going to put emphasis on when studying the lack of such evidence has left scientists scratching their heads, unable to conclusively determine whether a meteorite was involved or not.
Speaker 4:Some researchers have linked the crater to the famous Tunguska event of 1908, where an unknown object, basically a giant comet or meteorite, exploded over one of the largest cities in Siberia and it basically flattened hundreds of square miles of forest. The Potomsky crater is roughly 400 miles from the Tunguska site. They believe that this basically what they believe is, while the meteor that was coming down in 1908 was on its way over, another space rock hit that meteor, split it into three pieces. When this happened, this is already also kind of accepted that this meteor got broken up into three pieces. They were never able to find one of the pieces. A lot of them theorize that this is one of the pieces.
Speaker 4:However again, this doesn't explain how this crater is shaped the way it does. If something impacted it's not going to have this weird egg mound in the middle of it. That doesn't make any sense. So another theory that is going by is volcanic activity. Some believe that the Potomac Crater might be the result of some volcanic activity. Its structure, with the cone shape and a smaller central dome, does resemble certain volcanic formations. However, the region where the crater is located isn't known for any volcanic history and no volcanic material was found on site of the crater. So kind of rules out the crater, the volcanic crater theory.
Speaker 4:Another theory is UFOs and aliens. Bb, of course we had to get to them eventually, it was only a matter of fucking time. So some believe that the crater is a result of an alien spacecraft crash landing in the Siberian wilderness. The quote unquote fire eagle of the legends has even been interpreted by some as a poetic description of a fiery UFO coming down from the sky. The lack of clear scientific evidence and combined with the crater's remote location, has allowed for these wacky and kooky theories to come up. That also the UFO thing might also explain the weird illnesses and the radioactivity that was found at one point there. At a lot of UFO sites where UFOs have either abducted people or left marks on the Earth. They do find significant amounts of radiation in the surrounding areas, so that does help lead to that theory as well. There are other theories of secret government experiments, with some suggesting that the crater may be the result of tests conducted during the Cold War. According to these theorists, the strange readings reported by explorers, such as magnetic disturbances, could be the lingering effects of some sort of military test or weapon. However, there is no concrete evidence to support these claims.
Speaker 4:The final theory is a natural geological phenomenon. So in the most recent years of figuring out what the fuck the Potomsky crater is, some have suggested that the crater would be the result of a natural but unusual geological process, such as the gradual accumulation of gases that eventually cause an explosion beneath the surface. This could explain the shape and size of the crater, as well as the absence of typical impact debris. However, this explanation is yet to be definitively proven. It's essentially what they're. They say um, it happens very rarely. I think it's only happened a couple times in our known history. But um, there are these pockets of gas where a sort of like fission or like a fusion reaction can occur, causing an explosion to happen and this pocket of gas does explode. They think something like that could have happened and that would cause the crater that we see, the initial impact crater, and that little bubble is basically like the gas trying to leave and it's expanding, the rock and everything up with it.
Speaker 4:There are a few oddities that go with this as well. First and foremost, um in relative recent years, um trying with trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, some scientists decided they as well. First and foremost, in relative recent years with trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, some scientists decided they were going to test the trees and the plant life in the area to see if they could find anything that might be out of the ordinary, that might explain what the fuck this crater is. Upon testing, they discovered a couple things. One they discovered that the foliage in the area around the crater is roughly about 300 years old. So they're putting the Potomac Crater at roughly about that age as well, because if something came down and impacted in that area, it is going to affect the plant life and pretty much destroy anything around it, causing more plant life to have to grow. So if this is 300-year-old plant life, in theory this crater would be 300 years old.
Speaker 4:They tested the trees, the tree samples in this area and they found that there is radioactive material inside of the trees. Trees were radioactive. They also found that the trees and the plant life in this area were shown to grow at a faster level than the trees outside of the area, and the plant life grew in a more wild and tangled formation, like what you see when you introduce radiation to plants. Now, the reason, um uh, like I mentioned before, the reason that they couldn't find any radioactive material in the crater, is because it is suspected that the radioactive effects have dissolved over time. In testing these trees, they noticed that it was a small amount of radiation and it was decaying. Um, the closer they got to the crater, the less and less radioactive material they found, until they eventually came across nothing at the crater what if it was like a radioactive meteor?
Speaker 3:because if it slammed into the ground then all the radioactive material could have like shot out dispersed on impact.
Speaker 4:Right that is one of the theories. Yes, um, and they, they were able to um, give a rough timeframe of the decay of the radiation. Um, apparently the radiation started to uh, the radiation at the crater basically vanished roughly about 20 years ago. So that's why, back in um you know I'm going to I'll get to this theory in a second, but, um, actually I'll fuck it, I'll talk about it now. So I feel like it was some sort of radioactive uh uh meteor or something that fell.
Speaker 4:Because back when vatom first discovered it, the uh people in that area, the tribe people that lived there, mentioned that if you go close to it it can affect you and make you ill. And the people that went there even said that it makes you ill as well. The scientists that went there and researched there like, oh, you don't feel good when you're there, along with the animals in the area that avoid it. I feel like at that time there was a much higher radiation level and that's what was affecting everything in that area and making everyone feel sick. After we started having the technology to read these radiation levels a lot better, it was a little too late. Those radiation levels expired, you know, 20 years beforehand.
Speaker 4:So it's theorized, like you said, to a radioactive meteor that came crashing down. That explains a lot of the um weird shit that's going on. Another is that um, the fact that compasses and uh, compasses react funny. They also notice that migrate my migratorial birds often will steer clear of the crater mid flight as they are flying over it. So you'll see a flock of birds literally go out of their fucking way to go around the crater, much like a car steering around a pothole. They believe that there is probably some sort of iron deposit or something deep in there that is affecting, that is creating some sort of magnetic field that is affecting A compasses and B birds' direction.
Speaker 3:No, the birds are probably just like man. That's the crater that made Jeffrey grow a third leg. Fuck that place.
Speaker 2:This is starting to sound like the crater from fucking Colorado Space.
Speaker 4:I mean honestly. Honestly, it might be uh weird shit that's happening. Yeah, maybe something inspired something, who knows? But um, birds, when they migrate, they, they use the earth's magnetic field, um, as reference points and they use that as like a guiding, guiding tool, basically a gps. So the fact that birds avoid it and compasses go weird. They think there's a large um either iron deposit or some sort of magnetic material down there as well, um, but the weird things that have not been explained is, in certain folklore there are um uh stories of hauntings if you go to, sort of like yours, jason, where if you go to the uh crater, you either disappear or you come back and you're not you, you're being, you've been replaced by something.
Speaker 4:There is also uh records of random, uh extremely thick uh fogs that just come out of nowhere and are specific to the crater and its surroundings. Um, yeah, and are specific to the crater and its surroundings. That's kind of sick, yeah, so it's definitely mysterious. My favorite thing about this is the fact that no one knows what the fuck is happening and it's shaped so oddly. They also were able to figure out that the crater itself I forget exactly what kind of rock it is, the crater itself is limestone, but the mound on the inside is a different type of rock I forgot what kind, but it's not a rock that is indigenous to the area, from what I recall. So it's very odd. Again, the main theory is meteorite, but that doesn't explain the weird shape that it took on.
Speaker 3:It was so radioactive it gave itself a tumor.
Speaker 4:Right Now, something with this that I keep asking why they just don't do this. They're like oh, there might be like a large iron deposit or something down there, We'll never know. Go to the fucking mound and just drill down. What's stopping you?
Speaker 3:Well, I guess the mound's not radioactive anymore, right?
Speaker 4:no, there's no radio, uh, radio radioactive materials in in the mound anymore. It's it's, it's clear. So what is stopping them from just drilling?
Speaker 2:into the mound. They have light speed drills.
Speaker 4:Exactly, we have those probably because what's the?
Speaker 3:What do we stand to gain from this, really?
Speaker 4:You know, I think I had that thought too where no one's going to want to fund this, because what are you going to get from it? Some iron, we have enough of it.
Speaker 2:There's so much of that.
Speaker 4:Definitely. I bet that's why. But if you really want to get to the end of it, start a fucking GoFundMe to just send a drill down there and see what's on there. It's that easy, I feel.
Speaker 2:It's 130 feet. Didn't the Russians drill like fucking 16 miles into the earth or something?
Speaker 4:Way more than that. They've drilled like 600 or something. It's quite a bit of work.
Speaker 2:It's a ridiculous number and the goal was to be like we don't know what's down there, we just want to see. That's where they found the screams of hell, and that's where those noises come from, which are harrowing and horrifying. It's fake, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3:I've gotten used to them.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but yeah, that's the Potomsky Crater. I thought that was very fascinating. I enjoy it.
Speaker 2:Hell yeah, interesting, that's interesting.
Speaker 3:Mine's fairly short. So my location is it's less of a location and more of a phenomena particular to a location, but mine is one you've maybe heard of before and I'm sure at least somebody listening to this has heard of before it's marfa texas so marfa, marfa marfa so this was actually mentioned in an episode of King of the Hill.
Speaker 3:But Marfa, texas, is a small town that's about two square miles in West Texas that has a population of 1788 as of 2020. The name Marfa is actually Russian for Martha, and the funny thing about Marfa is there are these lights, that there is a big debate about what the source of these lights are. So basically, on clear nights there's this big open area that's like nine miles long between Marfa and a place called Pais Passano Pass, a place called uh pice passano pass, and if you look southwest you just see these lights that move along the land and they like kind of flicker and they move around um from like side to side. And I guess these were first reported in 1883 and it was thought that they were actually native american campfires and so they went out and they took a look and they were actually Native American campfires and so they went out and they took a look and they couldn't find any camps or fires or anything. There was nothing there. So that was never really explained and then it was mentioned again in the 50s and nobody really looked into it and nobody really looked into it.
Speaker 3:But the weird thing is apparently off in the distance here. There is nothing directly in the location that you look at. You look southwest and it's just completely empty space. It's not like there's lights on the other side of this or anything, it's just empty space. It's not like there's like lights on the other side of this or anything, it's, it's just empty space. Um, and so this went on for a while. There is actually a marfa lights festival that I guess they hold every year, and a few different explanations for this have come up. Uh, over the years. There's a guy named brian dunning who said that he thinks that the likeliest explanation for this is that there it's some sort of mirage that's caused by the crazy fluctuations in heat that happen here, because it's like it's desert, but it's also at a really high elevation, so the temperature can fluctuate wildly. At night it can get like 50 degrees colder than it is during the day. So something about the air, like different temperatures, air hitting each other creates lights or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know, um, yeah, in 2000 gas what oh swamp it's?
Speaker 3:swamp gas, yeah, from venus yeah it from the swamp that's in the desert.
Speaker 1:Yes, the swamp.
Speaker 3:Desert In May of 2004, a group from the Society of Physics.
Speaker 3:So this is what everybody thinks is the most credible answer to this, but we'll see what you guys think.
Speaker 3:So, in May of 2004, a group from the Society of Physics, students at the University of Texas at Dallas, spent four days investigating these lights and they recorded them. Um, they recorded the lights and they recorded a, a view of a, like a, a highway that is slightly off, set from where you would actually be looking to see these lights, and they monitored them. It's US Highway 67. And they noted that the highway, while it's not exactly in the direction of what you're looking at, it is visible from the location that you would be looking at these lights from. So they recorded the traffic and they recorded these lights, and they determined that the frequency of light southwest of the, the view park correlates with the frequency of vehicle traffic on us 67. And then they said that the motion of the observed lights was in a straight line, which corresponded to us 67. So, like, um, I guess, if you're looking in that direction, um, like it's like it's like a refraction of light, right that's.
Speaker 3:That's essentially what they're saying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and lights from the cars are hitting the heat in a way to make it refract or something how does that explain the 1850s?
Speaker 3:thank you for just thank you for just doing the rest of my thing. Jason, I appreciate it. Um, I'm so sorry, they said when the group part I'm into it, though I'm into it. When the group parked a vehicle on us 67 and flashed his headlights, this was visible from the view park and appeared to be one of these martha lights. And then they said that a car passing a parked vehicle appeared as one Marfa light passing another at the view park. So, yes, that's the theory. Is that essentially something about the heat or whatever is causing the trap, the lights from the traffic to reflect back from a different direction towards the view park? But, as Mike stated, how does that explain that these initially appeared Apparently in the 1880s, right?
Speaker 3:Um, there was another study in 2008 from scientists from texas state university where they did spectroscopy and used equipment to observe the lights from the marfa lights viewing station. They recorded that a number of the lights could have been mistaken for lights of unknown origin, but in each case, the movements of the lights and the data from their equipment could easily be explained as automobile headlights or small fires. They concluded that, due to the rarity of observation of genuine Marfa lights, those with odd behavior not explainable as car lights. More research was necessary to determine their nature, which means that they did observe things that they weren't actually able to correlate with traffic on the road. So the jury is kind of still out here and there are a bunch of people you can find a bunch of people like videos of interviews of residents and they're like no, uh ain't, no fucking way, it's traffic, them's aliens.
Speaker 4:My cousin Bert. He told me he touched a light.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 4:A light touched my cousin.
Speaker 1:Isn't there.
Speaker 4:I wonder if this is in a similar vein as what's that phenomenon at like sea, where it like distorts like Phantom Morgana or Phantom Morgana you? Is it Phantom Morgana? You know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1:No, Isn't that a?
Speaker 2:similar. No, I'm trying to find something to grasp on.
Speaker 4:Phantom Morgana is like it's when you're at sea or whatever, and you see it like distorts the image that you see and like kind of duplicates or whatever. Hang on, let me see if I can find a thing on it. I wonder if it's similar to that Fate. Morgana, fata Morgana.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fata Morgana, complex form of superior mirage visible in a narrow band right above the horizon. Means Morgan the Fairy. These images are seen as the Italian Strait of Messina. I don't know what the fuck this means.
Speaker 4:I wonder if it's something similar to that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, probably Makes boats look like they're floating off the water.
Speaker 3:I buy that the lights are at least somewhat attributable to the traffic and that the heat is causing these light reflections. God damn.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Reflections or whatever. When you're driving and you see a hot road, you even see that false shadow or whatever on the road too. So I wonder if this all has something to do with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You see the false water on the road when you're driving, but it's just like.
Speaker 3:Because the thing about the 1800s where they were like, let's go out and see if there are any fires, and they didn't find any fires. The thing is, if the heat is causing the light to refract and the light is actually just a reflection of where- the light is coming from. They may have been looking in the wrong place. There could have been fires off towards where the highway is now. Now and then they were just seeing the refraction in some.
Speaker 2:Maybe that's always been like a highly traveled road area like that.
Speaker 4:That'd be kind of cool in your, in your research of this topic.
Speaker 3:Uh, martholomew, yeah, the one yeah, the, the did you extensive?
Speaker 4:did you buy books and everything? Did you by chance, like did you come across where? Like they know exactly where like these lights are coming from, like they can view it from where they are? They're like, oh, that's coming from like 14 miles at this location. Like, can you drive up to where these lights allegedly are coming from? Does this say it all?
Speaker 3:up to where these lights allegedly are coming from. Does it does this say at all? Oh, you mean like, if you were to see a light, like would you be able to approach it?
Speaker 4:yeah, because like my yeah, because my question is like if the mystery is what these lights are and where they're coming from, why wouldn't they on? Like because I'm sorry, did you say how often this occurs? Every night?
Speaker 3:On clear nights where it's not foggy.
Speaker 4:On every clear night they're viewing. Let's say you're viewing it from like 10 miles away, like you said, on this patch of land, or like I'm sitting right here I'm looking at it. It's 10 miles away. Why don't you just send a guy 10 miles forward to where these lights are coming from and see what he sees?
Speaker 2:He would say it's 10 miles in front of him.
Speaker 3:The lights move and they appear and disappear really quickly. That's part of it.
Speaker 4:But if it's a reoccurring thing, you could just send a person out there and just be like hey, and it's a reoccurring thing, so every night you could be like oh, I don't see anything here, go, farther Go farther.
Speaker 3:What a phenomenal question, Mike thing here, go farther go farther.
Speaker 4:What a phenomenal question, mike. I love that mice like. Why not science? Why aren't you? Why not just take?
Speaker 3:a drive, road trip to the lights, take a fucking drone and fly it up, put your face near it but, yeah, drone I think the idea is that these lights are only visible from this platform that you're supposed to view them on. There's something about the angle that you view them, because they have a dedicated viewing spot for the lights that you stand in.
Speaker 2:Just a carbon monoxide deposit and you just trip really hard when you stand there seeing shit.
Speaker 4:Isn't that from a show or something?
Speaker 2:No, the last time we did the Reddit stories, I talked about the guy who had CO2 poisoning.
Speaker 4:No, it's from the Simpsons. It's from the Simpsons. They're like praying to some altar or something and underneath it is a hose that has a carbon dioxide leak. So when they go up to pray, everyone has a stroke, but they see visions and they're like it's a sign from God. It's this, that's what this is. There is also a Simpsons episode that mentions this apparently.
Speaker 2:Oh shit, that shouldn't be surprising anymore.
Speaker 4:Well, do-ba-dang, do-ba-dog, do-ba-do-ba-dope. Well, do you have anything else to touch on it?
Speaker 3:Mood Columnule no, that's all I got. That's super cool.
Speaker 4:Douglas, what do you have?
Speaker 1:so I picked one I feel like is probably fairly well known, but I'm not sure I wanted to touch on it because I thought it's just neat and kind of a cool piece of just history. I guess I I thought it's just neat and kind of a cool piece of just history. I guess I just think it's neat. I'm going to talk about Pennsylvania more specifically.
Speaker 3:Super weird state.
Speaker 2:Hell yes.
Speaker 1:Hell. Yes. For those of you who are not familiar with Centralia, let me give you a little background. It's a small coal mining town that was founded in about the early like early-mid 1800s and it thrived because it had very rich coal deposits, you know, underneath it, and the town grew as mining operations expanded and they reached like a peak population of about like 2,700 residents.
Speaker 1:Now, centralia's fate uh changed dramatically in like the 1960s uh, when an underground mine fire started beneath the town and basically over the following decade, toxic gases, sinkholes, dangerous ground temperatures uh made the town increasingly uninhabitable and by the 1980, efforts to extinguish the fire had failed. So keep in mind that's like 20 years already of just a fire burning underneath the town. It's on fire that they cannot put out. So the government began relocating residents and in 1992, pennsylvania ends up claiming eminent domain over the town and forcing most of the remaining population to leave. In 2002, the zip code was officially revoked and by 2010, only a handful of residents actually remained there and today it's largely abandoned. There's a few buildings and streets still accessible and the fire continues to burn underground to this day and it's probably going to burn for another 250 plus years. So I don't know.
Speaker 3:I think it's like really kind of crazy. Basically, it's insane.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I'll go into a little bit more.
Speaker 1:But basically this town was built over the top of giant just caverns of like coal mines, and there there's a few theories on how they think the fire began.
Speaker 1:So the first theory, which is probably the most like well regarded theory, is that a landfill cleanup fire happened.
Speaker 1:Theory um is that a landfill cleanup fire happened. Um, so on may 27 1962, uh, centralia borough council authorized volunteer firefighters to clean up the town landfill, uh, basically located in an abandoned strip mine, uh, near a road that no one knows and I don't it's very specific but uh, they ignited the dump to reduce volume, which is obviously a common practice, and basically what they think happened was that the pit that they were burning the trash in wasn't quite filled and it was penetrated by the fire and ended up making its way underground into the labyrinth of abandoned coal mines and basically just set everything on fire like a one giant fuse, essentially. Another theory suggests that the fire started a day earlier when a trash hauler dumped hot ash or coal from someone's coal burners into the pit, and kind of the same idea. There's a clay barrier between the trash, the pit and the underground and it just got rid of the clay land or the clay uh barrier and just ignited all the coal under underneath the pit.
Speaker 4:Um oh, sick you can fly there for only $420. That's nice.
Speaker 1:Oh sorry, Brown stripper one way. Yeah.
Speaker 3:One way the plane just melts when it hits the tarmac.
Speaker 2:Just says good luck on the other ticket, oof.
Speaker 1:The third theory suggests that this is actually a fire that had started in 1932, called the Bast Colliery fire, um, which I guess had never been extinguished and just had been slowly burning underground, eventually hitting the area where the coal mine started in in 1962. Um, this is widely disputed, though, by the miners who worked in the landfill and the mines, um, as they were like, yeah, there was never any underground fire until now. So that one seems pretty pretty off kilter for what we're talking about here. But Centralia is really crazy. So I watched a few documentaries on it for the little amount of information that you really need to know about centralia.
Speaker 4:Um, there's like a bunch of like two-hour documentaries which I just I I didn't watch all of because I mean there's not a whole lot to it um I've seen some stuff where like someone will figure it out they're like trying to rebuild, kind of it looks like well, they really can't.
Speaker 4:There's no like there's no, there wouldn't be allowed to do that the grounds are unstable and shit too right, like if you well, I just mean like there's, there's like volunteers to like go there and like they're they, they're like cleaning up the streets and they're like planting trees and shit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's actually a a big uh tourist attraction that came up from this. So there's actually a big tourist attraction that came up from this. So there's a highway 60 or Route 61. It used to be called the Graffiti Highway, so once the town got basically abandoned, people just started just doing giant graffiti along this whole stretch of highway. But in 2020, the fucking government came and dumped dirt all over it so that people wouldn't come there yeah, some fun facts about fallout looking shit.
Speaker 4:I've ever seen someone said it's about, it's the real life, silent hill, and I'm like oh, that's fun.
Speaker 3:I'm pretty sure I was gonna say I think say that yeah, silent. Yeah, I was going to ask Doug if he had any pop culture references going on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this not to be confused with the game this is the inspiration for the movie. Yeah, so this inspired the Silent Hill setting in the movie because basically, when the fire started, it was just raining ash and it was just a black cloud that lived over the city for a while. But the ground gets so hot that there's just like sinkholes can appear almost anywhere at any time Because of the volatility underneath the ground and there's literally four people that fucking live in this town now ground um, and there's like literally four people that fucking live in this town now um, one of the documentaries that I did watch, these guys were like basically driving around trying to find people to interview and then, of course, they finally do find a guy to interview and he's like fucking racist as hell and like one of the four guys in the town. So it's just like sick I don't care for it.
Speaker 3:When black people show up in my town, that's burning.
Speaker 1:Wow, it sounds like you're watching a documentary documentary Matt and that person is John Fetterman, pennsylvania Senator but uh, yeah, one of the other like popular things that people go and visit is there's like a church that still remains there, um, it's the saint mary's ukrainian catholic church and it sits on this hill up on this. Like there's like it's like literally, like perfectly on the top of this little hill, um, where the like the road kind of goes around it, um, and I love the silent Hill movie and you're like yeah, I'm like yeah, that's what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's fucking, it's wild. But yeah, the ground at any point, like I said, can create sinkholes, but it's because the ground is, like in most places, like 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Jesus not only did like, basically, you just like you can inhabit this place and I don't even know why these four people like even live there, because there's so much like, uh, like I think it's like I forget what's coming up, but there's so much noxious gas and like shit that just seeps through everyone's houses that it's just like it doesn't make sense and like, of course I guess it makes sense why this guy sounded like a fucking loony guy when they were talking.
Speaker 3:He's been breathing the gases he's been breathing mercury for two years.
Speaker 1:I don't know. It's just really crazy, like I never like. These are the things that like are real and true life, like there's just oh yeah, oh yeah, centralia, the town that's just on fire, for the next 250 years. It's just there. Okay, guess we'll put that, but uh, yeah, I have on it short and sweet. I just thought it was a cool piece of us history that was interesting and kind of strange and, yeah, just goes to show how the fuckery of things can be. Flint, Michigan is not the only terror that exists yeah.
Speaker 4:That is pretty cool and creepy, I wonder the fact that it's going to be burning for at least another 250 years. That coal deposit must be fucking.
Speaker 3:Enormous. That's why they built a town there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, but I mean like that's an amount where I don't even think they probably were able to fathom that Back then. You know what I mean. I mean they probably didn't realize it when they started.
Speaker 1:That's why they built the town. They were like damn. I hope there's a lot of fucking coal here. I wonder too. I mean, this probably doesn town.
Speaker 4:They were like damn I hope there's a lot of fucking coal here. Damn, it's all on fire. This probably doesn't sound stupid, but why not try to get some of that coal? You know, I know there's shit burning but it's not like all of it will do.
Speaker 3:Just send some kids in there, just like you got this.
Speaker 4:Yeah, just like straight off the top you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's a, a, I think it's. Mount carmel is like the town over and by town over it's a pretty good ways away. But, um, that whole area is really big on coal and like almost like the town itself. 2700 isn't really that big of a town to begin with, right when we think of like places that we're familiar with. Um, but a lot of the people there make their living now even on coal, like it's that's their thing, you know, like that's how they make.
Speaker 2:That's how they're economy appalachia but uh apple land yeah, it's, it's.
Speaker 1:It is crazy to think that this place will still be on fire Long after we exist.
Speaker 2:Long after Mike's kids are dead.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't like that. I mean I, I would hope you don't want your kids to live forever, do you?
Speaker 3:We didn't serve at the fire.
Speaker 1:As the late space ghost said, I was dead long before you were born and I'll be dead long before you die.
Speaker 4:Well, how long was this episode? How long did we go for? Do you know? About an hour and ten 57 minutes hell yeah, let's cap it off, alright, everybody. Well, thanks for joining us on this wacky episode. I hope you have a nice, blessed rest of your day. Look us up on all your socials. We're either deludipod or don't look on the internet. Give us a rating on Spotify, that'd be dope, um, and then we're almost at a thousand we're almost at a thousand.
Speaker 4:Uh, and then I also want you to either go to patreoncom slash diluty pod or dilutycom and uh become, you know, subscribe if you feel you want to chuck in whatever you feel you can and want to, and we would appreciate it. Um, uh, if you go to a town that's on fire, make sure them lips are on fire, because I'm gonna be kissing them.
Speaker 2:I didn't really make sure what else we?
Speaker 4:got there, I didn't like that what else we got.
Speaker 2:Jason, you go get me out of here, a fucking paranoid of that, that whole scenario that was just unveiled in front of our eyes. Don't let that happen.
Speaker 1:Doug hide your peens and beans from Mike. That's about all I got. They're scared his hot lips what moot moot.
Speaker 3:I work in the, in the watch where he and Bob's burgers and dead bodies and I don't know it's beautiful.
Speaker 4:I love it. Bye everybody, have a great day.
Speaker 2:We love you.
Speaker 3:Don't look under the internet. Outro Music.
