Speaker 1: You're listening to an air Wave media podcast.
Speaker 2: This is side two of our look at the Kentucky
Speaker 2: Goblins of nineteen fifty five. If you have not listened
Speaker 2: to side one, please fast forward this tape to the
Speaker 2: end and flip it over to start with side one.
Speaker 1: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 3: A giant, hairy creature. Part eighte part masts in Luckness,
Speaker 3: a twenty four mile long bottomless lake in the Highlands
Speaker 3: of Scotland, in the creature known as the Luckness Monster.
Speaker 4: Monstertal.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Monster Talk, this science show about monsters. I'm
Speaker 1: Blake Smith my co host doctor Karen Stoleno. We'll be
Speaker 1: back soon. Last week we introduced the story of the
Speaker 1: Kentucky Goblin Attack of nineteen fifty five. In that introduction,
Speaker 1: I told you the story of how the Sutton family
Speaker 1: of Kelly, Kentucky claimed that one hot August night, their
Speaker 1: tiny farm had been attacked by mysterious beings. In the
Speaker 1: aftermath of that event, the story went out on newswires
Speaker 1: and radio broadcasts, and soon their little farm was overrun
Speaker 1: with the curious. But after days would know further signs
Speaker 1: of the invaders. The community seemed to turn on these
Speaker 1: poor farmers, and soon they were reticent to repeat their story.
Speaker 1: Since those original events, there have been many theories on
Speaker 1: what happened that night. Some believe aliens attacked the farm,
Speaker 1: some believe the whole thing was a hoax. If you
Speaker 1: look at the case on Wikipedia, you may find an
Speaker 1: entry that suggests that owls and alcohol are at the
Speaker 1: root of the story. We'll be taking up that version
Speaker 1: in more depth than Part three of our coverage, but
Speaker 1: for now, let's look at the research beneath that version
Speaker 1: of events, and to do that we need to talk
Speaker 1: with the researcher behind it, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiries
Speaker 1: lead investigator Joe Nickel. Joe Nichol is one of the
Speaker 1: world's most famous skeptics and is a paranormal investigator who's
Speaker 1: always tried to use the scientific method as the basis
Speaker 1: for his research. We've had Joe one Monster Talk several
Speaker 1: times and once again we've linked to as many books
Speaker 1: in our show notes at MonsterTalk dot org. Lately, Joe's
Speaker 1: been calling himself a para natural naturalist. He explores the paranormal,
Speaker 1: but tries to find natural explanations in two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: some fifty years after the events at Kelly, Kentucky, Joe
Speaker 1: was invited to investigate the case, and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: his findings in this in depth interview. Monstertle, Welcome back.
Speaker 1: It's great to have you here. You've been someone whose
Speaker 1: career I followed for a long time and who I
Speaker 1: try to emulate whenever I can, when it's appropriate.
Speaker 3: Well, I think there are three or four of you
Speaker 3: in the world. Yeah, it's a rare it's a rare group.
Speaker 1: It is a tiny group.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just form a fan club, it would you know,
Speaker 3: it would please me greatly. But no, Seriously, I have
Speaker 3: had a long career. I'm approaching I guess by twenty
Speaker 3: nineteen will be my fiftieth year doing what I do.
Speaker 3: And uh, let's hope I make it beyond absolutely.
Speaker 1: And you may be the only professional monster hunter in
Speaker 1: the world who operates using scientific skepticism as your primary
Speaker 1: mode of conduct.
Speaker 3: Well, I think I think I may be. I'm also
Speaker 3: maybe the only miracle detective, the only real ghost hunters.
Speaker 3: It's a motley motley bunch of personas. But I sort
Speaker 3: of invented what I do, kind of like Sherlock Holmes,
Speaker 3: who told Watson, you know that he took stock of
Speaker 3: his you know, his pluses and minuses, and his work
Speaker 3: was a good fit for him and he was the
Speaker 3: only one in the world. And Watson said, kind of incredulously,
Speaker 3: you know what, the world's only detective. And Sherlock said, well,
Speaker 3: the world's only private consulting detective. You know, you need
Speaker 3: a few adjectives, as do I. But I've I've tried
Speaker 3: to put together an approach and let's see how well
Speaker 3: it works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's check it out with one of the more
Speaker 1: intriguing monster stories out there. I just got through reading
Speaker 1: a big stack of paperwork about this case. And so
Speaker 1: it's called a lot of different things. I'm calling it
Speaker 1: the Kentucky Goblin case, but the Kelly Hopkinsville case. He's
Speaker 1: probably got a lot of different h.
Speaker 3: And there's lots of lots of names. I think the
Speaker 3: Goblin is a little bit you know, there's there's too
Speaker 3: much emphasis us on the drawings. The drawings are, in
Speaker 3: my opinion, not accurate, but we'll get to that. It's
Speaker 3: certainly a case that maybe let me say what I
Speaker 3: what I do with a case like that, because I've
Speaker 3: I've done, you know, lots and lots and lots of cases,
Speaker 3: and I have some ideas about what should come first
Speaker 3: and what should come much later. I try to suspend
Speaker 3: notions of belief or disbelief early on. I think it's
Speaker 3: a mistake to get to too quick to decide where
Speaker 3: something's going, because then you're into confirmation bias and you're
Speaker 3: you can you know, you could take this case in
Speaker 3: any of several directions and make a convincing case for it.
Speaker 3: Picking and choosing, I try to first look at first
Speaker 3: things first. So with with Kelly, the first thing we
Speaker 3: have is we have a part of a flying saucer,
Speaker 3: and the description of it is that it was a big,
Speaker 3: big fiery something or a big fireball, words to that effect.
Speaker 3: And when we consider that that occurred during the Percied
Speaker 3: meteor shower, and that other people were seeing meteors, I
Speaker 3: think we can be pretty sure that what was seen
Speaker 3: was a meteor. And we don't you know right away.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking there's an actual nucleus for the story. In
Speaker 3: other words, a made up story might not have a
Speaker 3: real meteor at the onset, but a real story might.
Speaker 3: So I'm just just looking at things, and I'm thinking, Okay,
Speaker 3: we've got to what appears to be a meteor. And
Speaker 3: then further confirmation from that would be that it was
Speaker 3: said to have sort of go over into that there gully.
Speaker 3: And that's very much like what happened at flat Woods,
Speaker 3: West Virginia a few years before, where some boys on
Speaker 3: a playground saw a fiery UFO apparently land on a
Speaker 3: hill and they rushed up and they saw and you
Speaker 3: know the story. They eventually got dark and they they
Speaker 3: encountered a being that I have identified as a barn
Speaker 3: owl because it is very very specific to scriptors, and
Speaker 3: of all the creatures on this planet, I believe it
Speaker 3: fits the barn al best of anything. So that's I'm
Speaker 3: looking at this idea of this this UFO sort of
Speaker 3: landing over in the gully, and that's recognizable as a
Speaker 3: very familiar illusion people see meteor and it always, I mean,
Speaker 3: there were just many of these instances where it landed
Speaker 3: just over there, usually just out of sight behind a
Speaker 3: tree line or a hill or something, and it looks
Speaker 3: because it's large and sort of awesome, it just looks
Speaker 3: really close and it looks like it landed just over there.
Speaker 3: And that's what happened. I feel quite sure at Kelly
Speaker 3: that that was that familiar meteor illusion that we're so
Speaker 3: familiar with, and so there was no spaceship. So when
Speaker 3: I soon find critters, I don't think they're extraterrestrial. That's
Speaker 3: not my first thought, although that was certainly the thought
Speaker 3: of the Langford's and tailors and Suttons and all those
Speaker 3: eight adults and three children who lived in that house
Speaker 3: or who were there for a time. And then at
Speaker 3: some point we get to starting to look at at
Speaker 3: the fanciful part of the monsters plural. It was thought
Speaker 3: that's something some kind of humanoid or anthropomorphic, like slightly
Speaker 3: anthropomorphic figure had come from the flying saucer. And I
Speaker 3: know that a lot of skeptics are very quick too,
Speaker 3: because they don't understand what's actually happening. It seems to
Speaker 3: me they're very quick to say, well, that was a hoax.
Speaker 3: And I saw that with flat woods just as a
Speaker 3: quick side trip, because it's it's I think it's very relevant.
Speaker 3: I was to write some articles for a UFO encyclopedia
Speaker 3: some years ago, and we re read on things like
Speaker 3: crop circles and so forth, and at the end of
Speaker 3: which I said, well, are you doing anything with flat woods,
Speaker 3: because I thought of that as sort of my area.
Speaker 3: And I said, oh, I've got someone who's written a
Speaker 3: piece on that. He says it was a hoax. And
Speaker 3: I said, you listen to me if you believe anything
Speaker 3: I ever tell you, you believe that was positively not
Speaker 3: a hoax. And there was sort of silence, and I said,
Speaker 3: I tell you what, how about I write a piece
Speaker 3: and then you can just decide which piece you find
Speaker 3: most convincing, and that's up to you, you're the editor.
Speaker 3: And my piece appeared, and I never heard any more
Speaker 3: about this hoax hypothesis. But I think the person said, oh,
Speaker 3: there couldn't be any kind of creature like this. Look
Speaker 3: at listen to this, and there's no such things. So
Speaker 3: these people made it up. And I had had the
Speaker 3: benefit of actually going there, and among many other things,
Speaker 3: the fact that they had actually seen a flying saucer
Speaker 3: meteor which had been seen over three states. I knew
Speaker 3: they didn't make that up, so I was already willing
Speaker 3: to at least listen to, you know, and think, so
Speaker 3: I think we have to be careful. One of the
Speaker 3: pieces of evidence I had was one of the guys
Speaker 3: who was there that night with the sheriff and others.
Speaker 3: It's a little, very little community, and he told me,
Speaker 3: he said, those people were absolutely frightened. He said, the
Speaker 3: Lemon boy, Jean Lemon, he said he was throwing up.
Speaker 3: And I recognized that as a sure sign of hysteria.
Speaker 3: So I believed that they in fact had an encounter.
Speaker 3: And then, as I say, I've explained it as that
Speaker 3: scary nocturnal treator known as the Varnell came right at
Speaker 3: them with those terrible claws and a high pitched hissing
Speaker 3: sound and just scared them to death. So if I
Speaker 3: look at the Kelly case, I'm looking at okay, I
Speaker 3: think we're good. With the flying saucer and the sheriff
Speaker 3: and some of the others thought these witnesses were telling
Speaker 3: the truth. There was certainly a bunch of them, you know,
Speaker 3: there were a couple of characters in there, and they
Speaker 3: were doing a lot of shooting. But I'm persuaded, to
Speaker 3: make a long story short, that several things are going
Speaker 3: on in that story that don't sound like a hoax
Speaker 3: to me. It's got too many moving parts, it's got
Speaker 3: a lot of contradictions from one person to another, but
Speaker 3: just the kind that you get when people have actually
Speaker 3: seen something. There's some independent corroboration of some of the details.
Speaker 3: There's physical corroboration. I mean, they absolutely did shoot shoot
Speaker 3: off guns, because there are shotgun pellets in the door,
Speaker 3: in the frame of the window. There were holes in
Speaker 3: the screen, and I know people want to argue over
Speaker 3: some of those urge caution upon them. Shotgun shells were
Speaker 3: picked up here and there, and so there was shooting.
Speaker 3: And the skeptics at the time is that, oh, they
Speaker 3: just poked holes in the screen with a tobacco stick.
Speaker 3: Are probably pretty pretty far off. If they had to
Speaker 3: fake the gun, the bullet holes, if they had to
Speaker 3: fake that, why were there actual shells around? I mean,
Speaker 3: imagine a scenario where you and I are out there
Speaker 3: going to make up a story and we say, hey,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, let's shoot off our uns. But then
Speaker 3: let's go in and poke holes in the screen. Yeah,
Speaker 3: let's just the fake holes in the screen. I mean,
Speaker 3: it just doesn't make any sense. Besides, ultimately, we don't
Speaker 3: know every detail about the shootings. There were probably if
Speaker 3: you count them up from Isabelle Davis's book. They're certainly
Speaker 3: a number of shots, maybe eleven or more inside and out,
Speaker 3: probably much more. Some neighbors heard nothing, others heard what
Speaker 3: sounded like a small war. So we can't be very
Speaker 3: definite about all of this. But shots were fired, because
Speaker 3: I know that shells were picked up inside and outside
Speaker 3: the house. I've looked closely at that, and so what
Speaker 3: really interests me about the case is to look at
Speaker 3: the creek what impresses me. And I was pleased to
Speaker 3: find that my friend Brian Dunning had been impressed with that.
Speaker 3: He got it from me, but I sold him on it.
Speaker 3: How many similarities there are to this case, to this creature,
Speaker 3: to the great horned owl, And there are more than
Speaker 3: people suppose, I think, And the pictures don't. I know.
Speaker 3: If you put a picture of the Goblin beside the Horndell,
Speaker 3: who may think it's not very similar. But in fact
Speaker 3: I've listed here, I can go over the list a
Speaker 3: little bit quickly, at least twenty five points of similarity
Speaker 3: that I have, many of which I find quite quite distinctive,
Speaker 3: and that persuades me that they were seeing a real
Speaker 3: creature and that it's quite terrestrial. For example, the Great
Speaker 3: Horndell would have been in that place in time without
Speaker 3: any problem. That would have been its habitat. There were
Speaker 3: never more than two creatures seen it at any time.
Speaker 3: So the fact that a couple of the good old
Speaker 3: boys who were prone to exaggeration and being embroidering stories
Speaker 3: or being excitable, however you want to put it, there
Speaker 3: probably were a pair of creatures, and that would be
Speaker 3: Horndell's who are monogamous in mate. It was at night,
Speaker 3: which is these are nocturnal creatures. And to even say specifically,
Speaker 3: and let me compliment Isabelle Davis for what I think
Speaker 3: was a very good job from her perspective, trying to
Speaker 3: do very you know, very difficult work under very difficult
Speaker 3: circumss is. But I find her her book very helpful.
Speaker 3: I I'm sure she's not a skeptic like me, and
Speaker 3: she's not going to buy maybe my Great Horned l
Speaker 3: but I'll do my best. But she certainly put a
Speaker 3: lot of effort into putting in detail. And so she
Speaker 3: takes the time to tell us that them, that Billy
Speaker 3: Ray and Uh and Lucky were the two the two
Speaker 3: main guys who were shooting him up, that that they
Speaker 3: had noticed and and uh, Glenny Langford, who was maybe
Speaker 3: the most sensible person there, a matriarch, family matriarch, and
Speaker 3: and not given to much exaggeration. Uh, she's very clear
Speaker 3: about what she saw on things. So we know from
Speaker 3: these people that when they turned on the lights, these
Speaker 3: creatures seemed to favor the dark and always were coming
Speaker 3: to the house from a dark area, seeming to want darkness,
Speaker 3: and this would be consistent with a nocturnal creature that
Speaker 3: has very excellent night vision. Her account was that the
Speaker 3: figure was about two and a half feet tall. Now
Speaker 3: there are other estimates of three feet or four feet.
Speaker 3: I'm going to prefer Glenny Langford because at two and
Speaker 3: a half feet that's not much of an exaggeration. The
Speaker 3: great Hornedelle could be twenty five inches over just over two.
Speaker 1: Feet, and she seemed to be a very serious, sober.
Speaker 3: Relis right, deeply religious and not sophisticated. None of the
Speaker 3: people were, you know, urban sophisticates perhaps, But I don't
Speaker 3: say that disparagingly because that's the kind of country I
Speaker 3: come from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm a.
Speaker 3: Kentuckian and they're just unsophisticated rural people. But anyway, she
Speaker 3: comes up with a figure of two and a half
Speaker 3: feet tall. Let's take that for the moment. And it
Speaker 3: had it had a large round head, and repeatedly it
Speaker 3: was said, there was no neck. This is we're talking
Speaker 3: an owl here. It had large ears, So we can
Speaker 3: eliminate barn owls and bar owls because they don't have
Speaker 3: they're not true ears, of course, they're what are called
Speaker 3: ear tufts. But let's just call them ears because they
Speaker 3: looked like ears sticking up, and they were triangular and
Speaker 3: pointed at the top, just like the great horned owls.
Speaker 3: Is it had this creach sure or creatures had big eyes.
Speaker 3: They were larger than the human's eyes. They were looked
Speaker 3: like they were around almost on the side of the head.
Speaker 3: That's a little bit of an exaggeration unless you look
Speaker 3: at the great horned owl from the side and you'll
Speaker 3: see how that effect would look like that from the front.
Speaker 3: Even they have wide spaced eyes, and they have the
Speaker 3: facial discs extend over on the left and right of
Speaker 3: the eyes, so that they do if you were not
Speaker 3: seeing things really clearly, might very well look like the
Speaker 3: eyes were way over almost to the side of the head.
Speaker 3: The eyes are they said we're shining or glowing, but
Speaker 3: of course we know whenever people say they're glowing in
Speaker 3: our world they're talking about eye shine was yellow eye shine,
Speaker 3: and again that's the eye shine of the great horned owl.
Speaker 3: This is not, for example, not mothmen, not the bardelll
Speaker 3: I've identified as mothman, which has this bright red shining
Speaker 3: eyes like bicycle reflectors. They said the eyes never moved,
Speaker 3: and that would be true for the great horned owl.
Speaker 3: It does not move its eyes. They did say that
Speaker 3: it never moved its head either, and I think there
Speaker 3: might be a little mistake in there, because they tended
Speaker 3: to think it moved its whole body, but it didn't
Speaker 3: move its eyes. The horned owl can move just its
Speaker 3: head remarkably well. But I always expect a few little
Speaker 3: discrepancies in these misidentifications, because if they were exactly accurate,
Speaker 3: they probably would have said, oh, it's just an owl.
Speaker 3: That they didn't They were misled by the idea of
Speaker 3: a flying saucer and an extraterrestrial figure, and it looked
Speaker 3: most people have not seen an owl at night with
Speaker 3: a little bit of hyper terrestrialism in the presentation, right,
Speaker 3: So if we just to go on through the list quickly,
Speaker 3: long arms twice as long as the legs. Well, of
Speaker 3: course the great hornedel doesn't have arms, but look at
Speaker 3: it from the front, and they said it raised its
Speaker 3: hands nearly every time it got ready to afloat, it
Speaker 3: would raise its hands up over its head. I found
Speaker 3: various references to that, and have the page numbers. And
Speaker 3: of course if you look at the great hornedel from
Speaker 3: the front, it's wings you're seeing. It's sort of on edge.
Speaker 3: And let me invite people to look at pictures of
Speaker 3: that and to look at because they said at the
Speaker 3: ends of the arms were big hands. The great horned
Speaker 3: owl has what looks for all the world like five
Speaker 3: fingers on the end of each wing. It's really rather
Speaker 3: striking if you've not seen that. And so it also
Speaker 3: has the claws that were mentioned. Of course, the claws
Speaker 3: aren't the hands. And there's always some little shift of
Speaker 3: that because sometimes they're describing the ends of the wings
Speaker 3: and sometimes they're describing the feet when it's on the window.
Speaker 3: But in any case, it definitely mentioned claws that got
Speaker 3: in Billary Taylor's in his hair right. He went out
Speaker 3: and it was on the roof and it must have
Speaker 3: touched him or something. The word talon's was used a
Speaker 3: few times without being very specific, but again I'm happy
Speaker 3: to just put that language into the discussion. They said
Speaker 3: the creature walked awkwardly, as if on stilts, and an
Speaker 3: awkward gait is of course characteristic to an owl. They
Speaker 3: said the legs were spinlely, as spinley as broom handles,
Speaker 3: or it was stick like, and that's of course exactly
Speaker 3: what we're expecting here with the owl. That's a perfect
Speaker 3: description of an owl's legs. They said it floated, but
Speaker 3: of course it put its arms up. In other words,
Speaker 3: it would have floated at one point forty feet from
Speaker 3: a roof to the fence. And this absolute silent movement
Speaker 3: is characteristic of an owl because their wings are so soft,
Speaker 3: the flight as noiseless.
Speaker 1: They can just glide, which is really bad if you're
Speaker 1: a little rodent.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right. And in fact, they were walking
Speaker 3: around in the yard, probably partly looking in the dark
Speaker 3: areas away from lights, looking for field mice. That's what
Speaker 3: that's why they're walking on the ground. And so the
Speaker 3: floating ability referred to a few times is significant. It's
Speaker 3: people talk about owls having just that ability. It's remarkable.
Speaker 3: The creatures, the extraterrestrial creatures had a tendency to perch.
Speaker 3: They're described on the roof, They're described on the limb
Speaker 3: of a maple tree. They're described on a fence, so
Speaker 3: they're given to perch. And that's again, this behavior is
Speaker 3: just so perfect for the great hornedel. They said it
Speaker 3: was glowing or shining, but I think they're just referring
Speaker 3: to the light under parts of it, maybe being having
Speaker 3: a sheen or being caught in light. I can't do
Speaker 3: much with that, you know. Actually, a pair of preachers.
Speaker 1: Right going to say I did find an article where
Speaker 1: at least one birder claims that there's some evidence he
Speaker 1: found that owl's glow. I thought that was really interesting.
Speaker 1: I didn't see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's usually there's a whole there's a whole lot
Speaker 3: of information about that. I've run across that all my life.
Speaker 3: Pretty much, barn owls and others are said, and there's
Speaker 3: even in this case, since you're insisting on bringing this up,
Speaker 3: that one place where the creature landed, the police, the
Speaker 3: sheriff and others found a sort of a luminous spot
Speaker 3: there on the ground, which might indicate that when the
Speaker 3: animal was knocked off a fence or something, that that
Speaker 3: had in fact left some of this glowing material. People
Speaker 3: have talked about a fungus, but it's it's pretty scientifically doubtful.
Speaker 3: It's never really been absolutely verified. It's it's it's somewhere
Speaker 3: along the sort of like Bigfoot. It's people report it,
Speaker 3: but it's it's not been absolutely certified yet, right.
Speaker 1: I'm skeptical of that as well. But I thought it
Speaker 1: was an interesting article. I'm gonna put a link to it.
Speaker 3: It is interesting, and I was particularly taken by the
Speaker 3: luminous spot on the ground. I thought that was really striking.
Speaker 3: But I don't make anything of it from my point.
Speaker 3: It could be any of a number of other things.
Speaker 3: Something something rubbed off the animal, maybe some of the
Speaker 3: feathers or something, and maybe there was just a sheen
Speaker 3: from the light or something, a trick of light. That
Speaker 3: there was a pair of creatures. I mentioned and if
Speaker 3: you read the accounts carefully, and I believe it was
Speaker 3: Glennie and maybe one other person who said, yeah, they
Speaker 3: talk about there being all these those boys do, but really,
Speaker 3: at any one time we never saw more than two,
Speaker 3: really right, maybe three? And my count is two, and
Speaker 3: I believe there were two owls. Owls are territorial, and
Speaker 3: they're fearless, and they're persistent, And that's exactly the behavior
Speaker 3: that we had there. No one noticed a mouth that's
Speaker 3: as would be expected. Perhaps it had sloping shoulders. It's
Speaker 3: the if it's the owl, if you if you look
Speaker 3: at a great horned owl, realize that people are kind
Speaker 3: of misperceiving what it is. But but like I've had
Speaker 3: with people doing the Flatwood's monster and mothman and other
Speaker 3: creatures of various kinds, if you look and make a
Speaker 3: little allowance for error, when people don't recognize what they're
Speaker 3: actually seeing, the bits and pieces of it are often
Speaker 3: quite quite strikingly correct. And we have multiple witnesses. Hard
Speaker 3: to pull off a hoax with this many people that
Speaker 3: would have played out this way. And again the sheriff
Speaker 3: had uh and his deputies had had thought that they
Speaker 3: seemed genuinely excited. And believe it was Billy Ray that
Speaker 3: his his pulse rate was extremely hot. Thought he was
Speaker 3: pardon it.
Speaker 1: Was one hundred and forty beats per minute. Yeah, quite double.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if that's correct, then again you can tell I
Speaker 3: could make a good case that it was a hoax
Speaker 3: if I were inclined to do that, But I unfortunately
Speaker 3: know too much about great horned owl to find that.
Speaker 3: It just would be an astonishing number of coincidences. If
Speaker 3: you and I were making up a hoax about a
Speaker 3: monster because we wanted some attention or wanted to make
Speaker 3: money or do something, wouldn't we make it scary? Then
Speaker 3: he kept saying, you know, it wasn't hurting nobody. Yeah,
Speaker 3: in the house, she thought when it raised its quote
Speaker 3: unquote arms, it was sort of trying to peaceful and look,
Speaker 3: I come bearing though you know, I'm raising my hands.
Speaker 3: She's putting a very old fashioned human interpretation of that.
Speaker 3: It was simply raising its wings, I think. But I
Speaker 3: think we would want a more awesome creature, maybe glowing
Speaker 3: red eyes and a fierce look, and it would be
Speaker 3: doing terrible things and attacking. And if we were making
Speaker 3: up a story, this story has got again too many
Speaker 3: moving parts. It kind of happens back and forth and
Speaker 3: round and round, and it's kind of a comedy of
Speaker 3: errors and so forth, just like it would be if
Speaker 3: a pair of territorial owls was there and the good
Speaker 3: old boys, drinking or not. I talked on my visit
Speaker 3: to the area, albeit you know, half a century later,
Speaker 3: but I talked to Trooper Ferguson, who had you been there?
Speaker 3: And he thought that they had been drinking, and that
Speaker 3: the whole story came out of out of a container,
Speaker 3: as he put it. I don't think so, but I
Speaker 3: give him his, you know, his due that he had
Speaker 3: a sense of things. A lot of controversy over whether
Speaker 3: they had been drinking. Glenny wouldn't have allowed it. I
Speaker 3: don't think it could have snuck outside, and I'm drunk,
Speaker 3: may well have been. But but you know, so for.
Speaker 1: Me, I was gonna say, even if they were drinking,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that that would lead to a group delusion.
Speaker 1: You know, that seems like a stretch, you know.
Speaker 3: I think that's I think that's exactly right. And and
Speaker 3: I'm going to go out on a limb here, so
Speaker 3: to speak, and suggest that probably you and I both
Speaker 3: have been rip roar and drunk, and we didn't see
Speaker 3: flying saucers and extraterrestrials, not so far.
Speaker 1: But I'm willing to continue experimenting.
Speaker 3: Not so far or anything else much from mere alcohol right.
Speaker 3: So you know, and I say that is that you
Speaker 3: know a young person from the sixties who doesn't remember
Speaker 3: all of the sixties. And we were experimenting with various things.
Speaker 3: And I use the word experiment advisably. But in other words,
Speaker 3: if we look at everything in some detail, the best
Speaker 3: explanation I can come up with is that these hapless
Speaker 3: people ran a fowl of a couple of owls, and
Speaker 3: the owls ran a fowl of some people, and nobody
Speaker 3: knew what the hell was going on, and owls behaved
Speaker 3: like owls, and people behaved like people, and they never
Speaker 3: never can kind of came to one accord. I think
Speaker 3: again the story, you know, when the after the police
Speaker 3: come and there are all the lights and everything. Of course,
Speaker 3: the owls retreated after it got dark again and everybody
Speaker 3: was gone, they came back. They're very persistent creatures, and
Speaker 3: they were not not afraid of anything and came back
Speaker 3: as is their wont And that part of the story
Speaker 3: rings true to me. It's an awfully extra repeat of
Speaker 3: things for a good hoax.
Speaker 2: It just.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of mundane qualities to the story,
Speaker 3: including the appearance of the critter that persuades me that
Speaker 3: if we postulate a meteor shower and at the time
Speaker 3: we're talking about and the illusion of a meteor scene
Speaker 3: as just landing over there, and we see some people
Speaker 3: caught off guard by some owls who have fooled people
Speaker 3: as ghosts and hands and devils and so forth far
Speaker 3: back in time, and in this case we're associated with
Speaker 3: something extraterrestrial. And while the people didn't recognize parts of
Speaker 3: it very well, you could see how if you read
Speaker 3: a little bit between the lines. My hypothesis is that
Speaker 3: it's a great horned owl a pair. Yeah, And that's
Speaker 3: my solution to the case. And I don't know if
Speaker 3: Isabelle Davis would agree with me, but I've tried my best.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, I don't think any solution satisfies everything that was
Speaker 1: cited that night, including I mean, well anything, but I
Speaker 1: think that comes very close and is completely plausible. I
Speaker 1: would suspect that people who who disagree with your findings
Speaker 1: would probably point to things in the story, like it's
Speaker 1: described as looking like a washtub, but the pictures that
Speaker 1: were drawn don't look like washtubs either. They don't look
Speaker 1: like no.
Speaker 3: And and we have to be really careful there because
Speaker 3: they seem to have talked about the washtub is the
Speaker 3: description of the flying saucer, but I know it was,
Speaker 3: or to say it was about the size of a
Speaker 3: of a big bucket or something. But yeah, yes, one can,
Speaker 3: one can go through. But there are a lot of
Speaker 3: conflicting statements, a lot of things that argue one way.
Speaker 3: But then you can say, well that only takes you
Speaker 3: part way, and then you lose ground, but point out
Speaker 3: the rest of that. But it's very difficult to imagine
Speaker 3: that so many elements fit so well with with a
Speaker 3: great horned owl. It is really, i would argue, impressive,
Speaker 3: very unlikely, just the odds that if somebody made up something,
Speaker 3: we could find something that worked so well and had
Speaker 3: so many corroborative details. The yellow eyeshine, for example, the
Speaker 3: awkward walk on stick like legs, and so on and
Speaker 3: on that it floated and it seemed to perch and
Speaker 3: so forth. It's just really, and that's that's the nature
Speaker 3: of what I do, is to I've learned. I learned
Speaker 3: to my lesson long ago not to be too quick
Speaker 3: to make a superficial comparisons and slap it onto something,
Speaker 3: but to take plenty of time in a given case.
Speaker 3: Of course, I'm accused of applying owls to many cases,
Speaker 3: and bears to many bigfoot and otters to many lake monsters.
Speaker 3: But if people read my work carefully, when I'm talking
Speaker 3: about very specific cases, I usually have quite a number
Speaker 3: of corroborative details in a particular case. And what I'm
Speaker 3: trying to do is to come up with what I
Speaker 3: call the preferred hypothesis. And this is a term I've
Speaker 3: kind of coined or not. I may have stolen it
Speaker 3: somewhere in graduate school, but I think I made it up.
Speaker 3: It's not much of.
Speaker 1: A but at least nickeled it.
Speaker 3: I nickeled it, that's right, and maybe nickel and dimed
Speaker 3: it even But it's the preferred hypothesis. I did this
Speaker 3: in some of my doctoral work, and I needed to
Speaker 3: have sort of a how do we know when we've
Speaker 3: solved a literary mystery? I said, how do we know that? Sometimes?
Speaker 3: Of course we just have something iron plaid and that's that,
Speaker 3: and but but quite often we have competing notions, and
Speaker 3: we certainly do it Kelly. And what I try to
Speaker 3: do is is using Okham's razor to say that the
Speaker 3: hypothesis with the fewest assumptions. In other words, before we
Speaker 3: get to extraterrestrials, we should see what what terrestrial creatures
Speaker 3: we have? Well, we have we can have a pair
Speaker 3: of great hornedel's at our disposal. There. Well, let's just see.
Speaker 3: You know how well that works out. I think it
Speaker 3: works out just damned well. And so I would I
Speaker 3: would argue that you would not be able to come
Speaker 3: up with another hypothesis for the creature. I doubt that
Speaker 3: you could even come up with a different variety of owl.
Speaker 3: That I mean, for example, I can eliminate several based
Speaker 3: on the eye shine and and and the ear tufts
Speaker 3: and so forth. They're just we can be pretty specific.
Speaker 3: So we come down to is it is it a hoax?
Speaker 3: Or is it a great horned al? And my money
Speaker 3: is on the great horned l It is the preferred
Speaker 3: hypothesis I maintain. And so if someone wants to depose that,
Speaker 3: they have to not. They can't just not like my hypothesis.
Speaker 3: What they have to do is find an absolutely fatal
Speaker 3: flaw in it, and I don't think there is one,
Speaker 3: or they have to have a better hypothesis with more
Speaker 3: corroborative details, not several different hypotheses or pieces of them,
Speaker 3: like different three or four different creatures working working at
Speaker 3: the same the same farm at different different times. You
Speaker 3: can't play around like that or pick and choose. You
Speaker 3: have to have the simplest one with the most explanatory details.
Speaker 3: And I gave it a lot of thought, and I
Speaker 3: don't think that it's very threatened that hypothesis.
Speaker 1: I am a bit biased in favor of a naturalistic explanation,
Speaker 1: and this does seem to fit. I'll tell you one
Speaker 1: other thing. I think it's interesting. I'm a hunter, not
Speaker 1: an active hunter, but I used to be, uh and
Speaker 1: I did a lot of bird hunting. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that's interesting in this story is the creatures
Speaker 1: floating in the air, gets shot, flips and then continues
Speaker 1: going right. I have seen that happen when you use
Speaker 1: a small shot on a large bird. Like my grandfather's
Speaker 1: farm has a lot of crows, and you know, rather
Speaker 1: than poison them or other stuff, sometimes when I was
Speaker 1: out there, I would occasionally shoot at them with insufficiently
Speaker 1: large shot. So if I had like a small bird
Speaker 1: load and I shooted a crow that's a little bit high,
Speaker 1: I would hit the bird would just flip in the air, recover,
Speaker 1: and keep on going. And as far as I could tell,
Speaker 1: it never killed them. It just they just got scared, right, And.
Speaker 3: I think those owls might have been shot up a
Speaker 3: little bit. But my pellet. Lots of hypotheses that are
Speaker 3: favored are not perfect. But to replace them as the
Speaker 3: if with favored status, they can't be just you hrump
Speaker 3: about them. You need to have a you need to
Speaker 3: have a better one, right, And if you're if your
Speaker 3: hypothesis is that, well, it's it's some other natural creature,
Speaker 3: then I dare you to name it and work it through.
Speaker 3: If it's that it's some extraterrestrial creature, then you're gonna lose.
Speaker 3: Just on the basis of Oakham's razor, the person who
Speaker 3: tries that will just lose because he's having to make
Speaker 3: humongous assumptions that are not necessary. Which is more likely
Speaker 3: that there's a whole other realm of creatures that look
Speaker 3: remarkably like owls that are coming to the planet Earth
Speaker 3: and flying saucers when there wasn't a flying saucer apparently,
Speaker 3: and behaving in certain ways that are quite owl like,
Speaker 3: and yet they're they're extraterrestrial that's that's not gonna fly
Speaker 3: really very well. So I think there there There are, though,
Speaker 3: about three categories of hypotheses here. One is the extraterrestral one,
Speaker 3: and Isabelle Davis and others are going to probably you know,
Speaker 3: go down clinging to that. The other is that it
Speaker 3: could be a hoax. And the third is that it's
Speaker 3: a naturalistic explanation, specifically again using the Great horned owl.
Speaker 3: It's just you're just not going to be able to
Speaker 3: pull in any old kind of owl. There are problems
Speaker 3: that you need to have an owl that's common to
Speaker 3: that area, and it has to look and act like
Speaker 3: this owl. And the Great hornedell is very very much
Speaker 3: in play. So much true.
Speaker 1: And I was gonna say, there's also the psychology of fear.
Speaker 1: There is visual limitations. We don't know what kind of
Speaker 1: vision this family had. I know that they were not
Speaker 1: wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they needed glasses. I don't know how accurate they
Speaker 1: were as shots. I suspect that when the place, I
Speaker 1: don't think.
Speaker 3: They were very good shots. I'm a little disappointed with
Speaker 3: although I'd be rooting for the owls. Well, yeah, behind
Speaker 3: the fence. But I I I'm not sure. I think
Speaker 3: they were excited. I think they're the creatures were a movement.
Speaker 3: I think the shot into the window casing is probably
Speaker 3: reveals what happens. The creature was moving, they tried to
Speaker 3: shoot through the window but hit the the window casing.
Speaker 3: All rings true enough to me.
Speaker 1: And it happened overmuch time too. I mean, there was
Speaker 1: a lot going on. The story is compressed, but the
Speaker 1: time lapse there. You know, there's people going in and
Speaker 1: out of the house. At one point, the kids are
Speaker 1: going in out of the house, even though the people
Speaker 1: out there shooting. There's a lot going on before they
Speaker 1: get so uptight up, so scared that they jump in
Speaker 1: the car. It was you know, yes, so it's.
Speaker 3: But yeah, you're doing a good job with the dynamic there.
Speaker 3: And I think your argument about the flipping of the
Speaker 3: animals is a contribution to the argument that you could
Speaker 3: work out uh in writing somewhere. I think that's a
Speaker 3: that's a good point. I was intuiting that, but I
Speaker 3: hadn't actually maybe seen that phenomenon like you have. I
Speaker 3: think that's worth a little time to zero in on it. Maybe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've seen it on dove fields many times, you know,
Speaker 1: and those are little bitty birds. So I'm just suspecting
Speaker 1: that Al could probably pull the same trick. That's just
Speaker 1: that's my gas based on other birds i've seen do it.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, but.
Speaker 3: I so we're looking, we're looking at a bird, because
Speaker 3: we've got to have something that's floating forty feet from
Speaker 3: the naturalist hypothesis, right, you know, we're not seeing we're
Speaker 3: not seeing a raccoon, we're not seeing whatever. And and
Speaker 3: so we're seeing we're seeing a bird the spindley legs.
Speaker 3: And it's almost charming that they think it's got really
Speaker 3: long arms and there they're so earnestly describing some of
Speaker 3: these features and fairly accurately describing their misperception that it's
Speaker 3: really kind of I found it kind of endearing because
Speaker 3: once you see a picture of a great horned owl
Speaker 3: with its wings held up over its head, it looks
Speaker 3: just about like they're saying. And and there are the hands,
Speaker 3: these these fingerlike five of them, one short, but I
Speaker 3: think I think there I counted five on each wing
Speaker 3: in a picture that I that I had looking you
Speaker 3: see exactly, Oh, I see what you're I see what
Speaker 3: you're saying, and several things that they mentioned, and you think, well,
Speaker 3: why did they think that? That's not quite And then
Speaker 3: you look at the particular features of the great horned
Speaker 3: al and you see, oh right, they're seeing it in
Speaker 3: bits and pieces. It's dark. They're excited, but cumulatively they're
Speaker 3: sort of putting together some elements that theme I think
Speaker 3: have evidential value, just like with flat woods. You know,
Speaker 3: missus May saw those terrible claws. They described the shape
Speaker 3: of the face as like ace of spades, and that
Speaker 3: heart shaped face is very distinctive. It made a high
Speaker 3: pitched hissing sound. That's the barn now, and so on.
Speaker 1: I want to say something else about this, and that's
Speaker 1: I think you've mentioned the sincerity of the witnesses. And
Speaker 1: I think there's a perception from some people who aren't
Speaker 1: sort of steeped in scientific skepticism that when you come
Speaker 1: up with explanations like this, you're you're somehow detegrating the
Speaker 1: people who are making these claims. And I don't think
Speaker 1: that's the case, and I'm sure you would.
Speaker 3: I don't either. I think there are people who do
Speaker 3: detegrate them, and those are the debunkers. And the dismissers
Speaker 3: who oftentimes will suggest, oh, they were probably drunk, and
Speaker 3: you know me, I resent and resist that approach. I'm
Speaker 3: usually quite respectful to people. I listen to them, and
Speaker 3: I yes, at some point I may occasionally kind of
Speaker 3: caricature of finding or something a little bit, but by
Speaker 3: and large, I listen to people when I can, I
Speaker 3: give them the benefit of the doubt. I'm not quick
Speaker 3: to suggest that something is a hoax just because I
Speaker 3: can't explain it. I try to, you know, not be
Speaker 3: in a hurry and to say, well, let's think a
Speaker 3: little bit more. What are we Basically what's this creature?
Speaker 3: Basically like what are they? What category would it be in?
Speaker 3: And so I mean, and if you do that bit
Speaker 3: by bit, you you come up with a pretty clear
Speaker 3: picture of the great hornedell. And I prefer to to
Speaker 3: that approach, realizing, of course, someone could could come up
Speaker 3: with a fanciful animal and be a hoax. But in
Speaker 3: my experience, when you put all the elements together and
Speaker 3: do a sort of holistic study of everything, trying to
Speaker 3: get some idea of how did it start in this
Speaker 3: case with an actual meteor, I think very credible. During
Speaker 3: the Persian shower, and there were other people who saw
Speaker 3: meteors very credible and describing that illusion. And I think
Speaker 3: that's a good starting point to say, well, let's just
Speaker 3: let's just build on that. And then they saw a
Speaker 3: creature and they were predisposed to think and they were
Speaker 3: caught off guard by it. And most people again have
Speaker 3: not seen an owl of any kind at night under sudden, surprising.
Speaker 1: Circumstanines right exactly.
Speaker 3: People think they all, I know what an owl looks like. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you do, because you see them in children's picture books
Speaker 3: and stuff. But in the nineteen fifties, yes, you knew
Speaker 3: what an owl was, but you probably hadn't seen one,
Speaker 3: and you probably didn't have much of an idea of
Speaker 3: what they might look like under some odd circumstances and
Speaker 3: surprised suddenly surprising and frightening you and scaring you. And
Speaker 3: so I think all those things taken together, we make
Speaker 3: a judgment about a case, and there's no absolute DNA
Speaker 3: certainty in such a case. There's a preponderance of the
Speaker 3: evidence and multiple bits of corroborative evidence that persuade me.
Speaker 1: I agree, Joe, and I really think you did a
Speaker 1: good job on this. I want to say that I
Speaker 1: think one other thing on throughout is I probably make
Speaker 1: some comments when I close out the episode. But when
Speaker 1: the authorities came to investigate, even if they had hit
Speaker 1: these owls in left bird feathers everywhere, nobody was looking
Speaker 1: for that. Because everybody was describing metallic, silvery looking you know, creature.
Speaker 3: Oh exactly exactly, there would be nothing really to have
Speaker 3: found on the roof or the ground that we wouldn't
Speaker 3: just a casual look, what are you looking for? Bigfoot tracks?
Speaker 3: And in fact, if I think if you and I
Speaker 3: had been called to that the next day and it
Speaker 3: really had a little time to you know, speculate as
Speaker 3: we have, we would have gone and looked for things
Speaker 3: like owl pellets in areas of out on the fringes
Speaker 3: to see if maybe we could find and we would
Speaker 3: look for feathers, We would look for some things to
Speaker 3: see whether there might have been population of owls in
Speaker 3: the area. But they don't leave obvious traces. An owl
Speaker 3: walking in your yard is not leaving any kind of
Speaker 3: obvious traces, and so people weren't looking for feathers and
Speaker 3: owl pellets and the like, and the bird footprints mashing
Speaker 3: the grass and so they didn't see anything. But I
Speaker 3: don't that doesn't there was no flying saucer because that
Speaker 3: was an illusion and the other critters had fled.
Speaker 1: I think that is a very plausible explanation, and I
Speaker 1: hate to say it. As much as I'd like it
Speaker 1: to be monsters. I think it's more plausible than monsters.
Speaker 3: Joe. Well, you know I often say this in a
Speaker 3: particular matter. I say that I have some good news
Speaker 3: and some bad news. The bad news is it wasn't
Speaker 3: really monsters. The good news is nobody listens to me.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've heard you say that before. That's
Speaker 1: great story of my life.
Speaker 3: Well, and you know, I do like to again, I
Speaker 3: try to be respectful of people on the other side,
Speaker 3: and uh, sometimes it pays off. My wife and I
Speaker 3: were down in Pennsylvania a couple of years ago and
Speaker 3: we went to see a Frank Lloyd write masterpiece Falling Water,
Speaker 3: and I said, let's stay in a cabin and let's
Speaker 3: do a little big footing and there's some stories in
Speaker 3: the area and stuff. So she was, you know, she's
Speaker 3: always ready to do anything like that. So we did that,
Speaker 3: and we were went into the campground's office and there
Speaker 3: were some people there finishing up, and we waited. They
Speaker 3: left and we did our business, got our keys and everything.
Speaker 3: Walked outside. Well, the first group was waiting for us.
Speaker 3: There are four people, two couples waiting for us. And
Speaker 3: the guy came up and he said, excuse me, are
Speaker 3: you Joe Nichol? And I said, I am, and I
Speaker 3: can prove it, and I handed him handed out wood
Speaker 3: in the and they said, well, you know, we we
Speaker 3: know what you do, and we we like the way
Speaker 3: you approach things. You're on the other side, but we
Speaker 3: don't think of you as an enemy, and you know,
Speaker 3: and I joined right into the spirit of that, and
Speaker 3: I said, you know, I often feel more akin to
Speaker 3: you guys than I do fellow skeptics who are of
Speaker 3: the debunker stripe, because they wouldn't be out here. And
Speaker 3: they said, we give you that you go into haunted
Speaker 3: houses and you're out. We can witness that you're out here,
Speaker 3: and so on. And we had a nice friendly talk
Speaker 3: and in fact, one of the guys even admitted I'm
Speaker 3: becoming more skeptical. I said, well, don't let me rush
Speaker 3: you take your time.
Speaker 1: And eat into it.
Speaker 3: But uh, I like the idea that that sincere people
Speaker 3: can look at things, those who call other people names
Speaker 3: and are nasty and on both sides, I've had people
Speaker 3: really nasty to me from you know, the UFO side
Speaker 3: or some of the other sides, but I've I've also
Speaker 3: had some very good responses in all areas, people friendly
Speaker 3: to me and you know, just say, okay, we disagree,
Speaker 3: but we we share some interests, and we both uh,
Speaker 3: you know, will admit if somebody's got a good point,
Speaker 3: and and so on. So I hope we continue to
Speaker 3: do that, and little by little maybe people change their
Speaker 3: minds a bit, and skeptics can do a better job
Speaker 3: by being a little more open minded and not being
Speaker 3: so quick to jump to conclusions, and believers can listen
Speaker 3: a little more to the hard facts or a ledge
Speaker 3: facts of the skeptics, and we'll all be better for.
Speaker 1: It, I believe.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: I believe right now, in this day and age, having
Speaker 1: the critical thinking tools to filter out what's true and
Speaker 1: what's not true, or what's real and what's implausible is
Speaker 1: really undervalued and way more important than it ever has been.
Speaker 3: So yeah, absolutely, exactly, exactly, And there's so much fun
Speaker 3: in doing the work if you really are interested in
Speaker 3: trying to solve a mystery. I don't find it drudgery
Speaker 3: to spend hours looking at at owl traits or or
Speaker 3: reading over descriptions of shots fired and trying to sort
Speaker 3: them out or whatever. Rather than sort of a woe
Speaker 3: is me, and oh how boring this is and I'm
Speaker 3: sick and tired. No, I relish it. I find that
Speaker 3: this is this is the game, as a foot Sherlock said,
Speaker 3: and it's it's worth doing and we can actually much
Speaker 3: of the time enjoy doing it, enjoy the quest, and
Speaker 3: if we come up with something, we can be pleased
Speaker 3: with it.
Speaker 1: It is so much fun. That's why I enjoy this
Speaker 1: kind of work. And I know when we started this,
Speaker 1: or we plan this, I was going to try to
Speaker 1: get you in and out quickly. But I feel like
Speaker 1: I could still keep talking to you for another hour,
Speaker 1: and I know you don't have time for it.
Speaker 3: Well, I better go and let you go. So it's
Speaker 3: been good talking with you monster.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
Speaker 1: I'm Blake Smith, and you just heard an interview with
Speaker 1: CSI investigator Joe Nickel on his research into the Kentucky
Speaker 1: Goblins of nineteen fifty five. I think in these first
Speaker 1: two parts of our research into this case, we've talked
Speaker 1: about the environment in which the sighting's emerged. This was
Speaker 1: not the first story of little space people to hit
Speaker 1: the news during this time. In fact, the story seemed
Speaker 1: to be in the air, sometimes literally. Prior to the
Speaker 1: sightings of these creatures, something had been seen in the sky.
Speaker 1: There's good reason to believe it was a meteor that
Speaker 1: had primed the witnesses to at least be thinking about
Speaker 1: visitors from another planet. Two of the witnesses were outside
Speaker 1: and came back inside talking about having seen these creatures,
Speaker 1: again priming everyone for something unusual, and then they saw
Speaker 1: the creatures themselves. In this interview, Joe outlined many parallels
Speaker 1: between the descriptions made by the witnesses to great horned owls.
Speaker 1: He admits that the owls don't look much like the
Speaker 1: drawings made by the sketch artist, but the individual details
Speaker 1: mentioned in the accounts matched up quite nicely with a
Speaker 1: pair of great horned owls. We'll talk more about how
Speaker 1: one might reconcile the differences in the American Goblins Part three,
Speaker 1: which I hope to bring you quite soon Monster Talks
Speaker 1: and official podcasts of Skeptic Magazine. The opinions expressed in
Speaker 1: the show are those of myself and my guests and
Speaker 1: do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Skeptic Magazine or
Speaker 1: the Skeptic society.
Speaker 6: We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Monster Talk. Each
Speaker 6: episode we strived to you the best in monster related
Speaker 6: content with a focus on bringing scientific skepticism into the conversation.
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Speaker 5: Hi, my name is Barry Carr, and I'm here with
Speaker 5: Tom Flynn and Jim Underdown talking about the upcome Sicon
Speaker 5: conference this October in Las Vegas. So, Tom, Jim, what
Speaker 5: are you looking forward to coming out to Sikon.
Speaker 3: I cannot wait.
Speaker 5: I will be hosting the disco party on Saturday night
Speaker 5: and it's is it a zombie disco party? If you
Speaker 5: want to addressed as a zombie, that's fine, That's what
Speaker 5: we're building it as a costume party, so come as
Speaker 5: you like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're actually going to have cash prizes and
Speaker 1: dancing and drinks.
Speaker 4: Is it true that the grand prize will be a
Speaker 4: big bowl of brains?
Speaker 5: Well, leaving the brains and the zombies aside. This is
Speaker 5: a conference with some heavyweights in the skeptical community. For instance,
Speaker 5: we have Richard Dawkins, Lawrence Kraus, James Randy, Eugenie Scott.
Speaker 5: The list actually goes on and on. We have almost
Speaker 5: forty speakers coming or more. We have workshops of course,
Speaker 5: entertainment as we mentioned anything you particularly want to see.
Speaker 4: My dear friend Richard Wiseman will be here also from
Speaker 4: the UK, author of Corcology.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to see him.
Speaker 4: And don't forget Richard Saunders from Australia. It's going to
Speaker 4: be Richard's busting out all over. It's a richness of Richards,
Speaker 4: it absolutely is.
Speaker 6: I'll be gambling too at some point.
Speaker 5: No, no, the skeptics do not gamble. Skeptics don't gamble. We
Speaker 5: know the odds, we don't do.
Speaker 4: If my experience last year is any indications, skeptics do
Speaker 4: not gamble, Skeptics win.
Speaker 5: I have a skeptics, Harry, I have a system that
Speaker 5: is guaranteed to win.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna grab a stack of chips and run.
Speaker 4: There you go. Okay. The New Yorker writer Maria Kannakova
Speaker 4: is going to be receiving the Ballast Award for Critical
Speaker 4: Thinking for her most recent book.
Speaker 5: Right, The Confidence Game. Yeah, Maria was a speaker last year.
Speaker 5: She spoke about The Confidence Game last year. This year
Speaker 5: she's talking about her new book, which is about luck.
Speaker 5: So what better talk about luck?
Speaker 6: Shel vindicate me.
Speaker 1: The Skeptical Toolbox people will be.
Speaker 6: There, Ray Hyman, Jim Elcock, Harriet Hall.
Speaker 5: And speaking of skeptics groups that are coming, we had
Speaker 5: the Skeptics Guide to the Universe, the Whole, the Whole
Speaker 5: Show with the Whole Cruz coming this year.
Speaker 3: It seems a little skeptic heavy, don't you think that's conference?
Speaker 5: This is the skeptic heavyweight event of the year. It
Speaker 5: does not get better, it doesn't make you better than
Speaker 5: so we hope to see you there. It's October twenty
Speaker 5: sixth to the twenty ninth at the ex Caliber Hotel.
Speaker 5: It's the one that looks like the Big Castle. You
Speaker 5: know you'll see it when you fly into the airport.
Speaker 5: You see the towers rapunzels there.
Speaker 4: It's the one that looks like the Walt Disney Opium Dream.
Speaker 5: So come check us out in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: Monster Talk theme music's by Pete Steely Monkeys. Thanks again
Speaker 1: for listening.
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