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Speaker 2: here in the mailbag, I got a letter from a listener.
Speaker 2: Now we don't usually read these on the air, but
Speaker 2: this one surprise me, so I'm gonna go ahead and share.
Speaker 2: Listener Mike h asks, Dear Monster Talk, what the fuck
Speaker 2: is up with Zimbabwe goblins? You know, honestly, I didn't
Speaker 2: know the answer to that question, but put some effort
Speaker 2: in and I think if you stick with us by
Speaker 2: the end of this episode, you may join me in
Speaker 2: being slightly less ignorant about this topic. So let's head
Speaker 2: to Southern Africa and see if we can find ourselves
Speaker 2: some goblins. It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Speaker 2: A giant, hairy creature part part net in Luckness, a
Speaker 2: twenty four a mile long bottomless lake in the Highlands
Speaker 2: of Scotland. It's a creature known as the Luckness Monster.
Speaker 2: Monstert Welcome to Monster talk the Science Show about monsters.
Speaker 2: I'm Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner. So today we're
Speaker 2: going to be talking about a belief quite common in
Speaker 2: Southern Africa. I'm usually quite reluctant to cover topics about
Speaker 2: monsters outside of the English speaking world, largely because I'm
Speaker 2: worried I'll have missed some important context that helps make
Speaker 2: sense of both the monster and the people who experience
Speaker 2: or believe in the monster. We all share a common humanity,
Speaker 2: but the varieties of culture are often unique to specific
Speaker 2: places and times, and thus an understanding of those environments
Speaker 2: are necessary to fully understand a concept our practice. Also,
Speaker 2: I had to overcome one of the biggest hurdles to
Speaker 2: tackling a completely new topic, the inertia of ignorance. Even
Speaker 2: though ignorance might be a sort of delightful blank slate
Speaker 2: upon which one can stack piles of easily obtained information,
Speaker 2: I've come to be very cautious about stacking up such
Speaker 2: info because it might be nonsense, or even worse, it
Speaker 2: might be quite recent nonsense masquerading as well aged fact.
Speaker 2: Those perils slow me down in my research, But I'm
Speaker 2: trying to be brave here trying to be diligent in
Speaker 2: my research and hopefully I'm not missing something huge. So
Speaker 2: for me, it's really hard sometimes to try and go
Speaker 2: from a negligible amount of knowledge to the minimum amount
Speaker 2: of knowledge about a topic where I feel confident and
Speaker 2: comfortable talking on the record about something. But I've done
Speaker 2: my best here and hopefully I haven't missed the mark.
Speaker 2: But if I have, we will come back with corrections.
Speaker 2: So for now, let's find out what the fuck is
Speaker 2: up with those Zimbabwe goblins Mobstrtle. I had to stick
Speaker 2: in two quick but important corrections here. When we were
Speaker 2: recording this, I kept sticking an R into the name
Speaker 2: of one of the key characters in the story. His
Speaker 2: name is Cobus Junker, not Corbus, and they called him
Speaker 2: dunker Junker, which is Dutch for dark Junker because of
Speaker 2: his work with occult crimes. And the second correction is
Speaker 2: that when we recorded it, I was working off of
Speaker 2: documents from the mid two thousands, and further reading revealed
Speaker 2: that this cult police work was actually dating back from
Speaker 2: the early nineteen nineties, which makes its close parallels to
Speaker 2: the USA's Satanic penning not just similar, but literally overlapping
Speaker 2: this period of time had many Satanic ritual abuse or
Speaker 2: SRA stories going international, with Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and,
Speaker 2: as we'll be obvious during this discussion, Southern Africa as
Speaker 2: well having satanic ritual abuse cases.
Speaker 3: Monstrutle. Here we are just the two of us again today,
Speaker 3: but I think this is going to be a really
Speaker 3: interesting topic that we're going to delve into. And I
Speaker 3: think you're going to have to tell the story because
Speaker 3: I didn't receive this email. You received a curious email
Speaker 3: recently about a topic that we haven't treated yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It was just a real simple email, and we
Speaker 2: don't normally read this on the air, but it just said,
Speaker 2: dear monster, talk, what the fuck is up with Zimbabwe goblins?
Speaker 3: That's a totally legit question.
Speaker 2: It was like, I don't don't know what is what
Speaker 2: is up with the Zimbabwe goblins? So I went and checked.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, yeah, it's a thing.
Speaker 2: It's a thing. Well, and I had forgotten. I had
Speaker 2: actually looked at this a long time ago, but I
Speaker 2: didn't look it up as Zimbabwe goblins. I was reading
Speaker 2: about the tokolosh which is the local name.
Speaker 3: That's right, Yeah, a different name I've had several different pronunciations.
Speaker 2: As well, and yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, well, so not sure where to begin,
Speaker 3: but what are we talking about and where does the
Speaker 3: story come from? Because I believe it's not only Zimbabwe
Speaker 3: where these tokolosh or goblins are supposedly found.
Speaker 2: This is a creature of folklore that exists in the Zulu,
Speaker 2: the Josa, and the Swazi folklores of that region, but
Speaker 2: especially since colonialism existed South Africa, which is you know
Speaker 2: several sort of those cultural result controls. Old now is
Speaker 2: one political entity. They they it's a widely known creature there.
Speaker 2: It's a big part of It's not like Bigfoot, but
Speaker 2: it is as widely recognized as Bigfoot because these these
Speaker 2: are little goblin like creatures. They're often describes having big ears,
Speaker 2: being hairy, but usually invisible.
Speaker 3: What a nightmare.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, well, and they're widely known enough to show
Speaker 2: up in pop culture, like in commercials and stuff.
Speaker 3: So I found, yes, you sent me that that commercial
Speaker 3: and I was watching it and just reflecting too on
Speaker 3: how similar Australian English can be to South Africa beings.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, but it's that particular one is
Speaker 2: four other thinks kestrel, I think oil, but it's actually four.
Speaker 2: But it's a strange The commercial will make no sense
Speaker 2: if you don't know what a tocalosh is in the
Speaker 2: folklore around it, because it's basically two white guys and
Speaker 2: a black guys sitting around talking about a toko loce
Speaker 2: and how dangerous they are, and they're trying the two
Speaker 2: white guys are trying to scare the air, quoting here
Speaker 2: superstitious black guy. And then the surprise is it cuts
Speaker 2: to the white guy's bedroom where his bed is lifted
Speaker 2: way up in the air on a bunch of castrol
Speaker 2: of five gallon buckets of oil.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, there's the ad. But the joke is, you know,
Speaker 2: they're making fun of him, but really they're the superstitious ones,
Speaker 2: which is I guess progressive. I don't know what the
Speaker 2: point is.
Speaker 3: But it's an old ad too. Yeah, that wasn't a
Speaker 3: recent ad.
Speaker 2: No, No, it is an old ad, old ideas, but
Speaker 2: they are ideas that are still there and that's actually
Speaker 2: part of what we're going to talk about today with
Speaker 2: this story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and what I think was so interesting is to
Speaker 3: say that that was an older ad and so you
Speaker 3: had this listener who contacted you about these goblins popping
Speaker 3: up in the media, and it's just interesting that it
Speaker 3: seems like they do have this kind of cycle. I
Speaker 3: guess where they're in the media and then they for us.
Speaker 3: I guess it's a different thing being here in the States,
Speaker 3: but it is this kind of constant thing that's been
Speaker 3: around for a long time. But I've been wondering, how
Speaker 3: do we get these kinds of stories here in the
Speaker 3: US or in Australia and Europe. Why are we hearing
Speaker 3: about these goblins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's basically two main channels for these goblin
Speaker 2: slash tokalo stories coming into the English speaking world. One
Speaker 2: of them is more prevalent than the other, but I
Speaker 2: think they're both significant in how they frame the stories.
Speaker 2: So the first one is tabloid media. So it used
Speaker 2: to be that if you wanted international stories of monsters,
Speaker 2: the weekly World News, which we've talked about.
Speaker 3: Before, would provide would provide.
Speaker 2: Now, they absolutely made up a lot of their content,
Speaker 2: but they also stole content from other parts of the world,
Speaker 2: because if it was a UFO story from Brazil, much
Speaker 2: more exotic and exciting than a UFO story from Alabama,
Speaker 2: you know, so you know they went with it and
Speaker 2: it said World News on the cover. Here's a quick
Speaker 2: insert to clear up a little bit of a ramble
Speaker 2: from my first attempt to answer Karen's questions about tabloid
Speaker 2: coverage of Tokolosh. While stories of magical beliefs in Africa
Speaker 2: do show up in the papers of Europe, in the US,
Speaker 2: it's usually in the wildly overstated and inaccurate venue of
Speaker 2: tabloid newspapers. These are not journalistic entities concerned with sharing
Speaker 2: unbiased fact. Their attention and outrage engines designed to get
Speaker 2: you to feel things and to buy things. By far,
Speaker 2: the most egregious outlet for Tokolosh stories is the newspaper
Speaker 2: of The Daily Sun. This is a South African paper
Speaker 2: largely targeted at working class black South Africans. Their online
Speaker 2: archive search only took me back to twenty eighteen, but
Speaker 2: in that time they published one hundred and fifty five
Speaker 2: stories focused on the Tokolocean as hijinks. That's about twenty
Speaker 2: five stories a year for the past six years. These
Speaker 2: stories are about sex, masturbation, physical harassment, spiritual warfare, traditional medicine,
Speaker 2: and even the Tokelosh effects on technology. The Daily Sun
Speaker 2: coverage has been criticized for reinforcing racial stereotypes of apartheid
Speaker 2: era South Africa. The Daily Sun is owned by Naspar's Ltd,
Speaker 2: chaired by a billionaire named kuz Becker. When these stories
Speaker 2: of the Tokolosh do reach us here in the US
Speaker 2: and in Europe, they're not usually given the proper context
Speaker 2: about the local beliefs, even when the original context of
Speaker 2: The Daily Sun is intact, when it's happening right there
Speaker 2: in South Africa. It's sometimes difficult as an outsider to
Speaker 2: determine the point of some of these stories other than
Speaker 2: that they're often salacious or have frightening details. But these
Speaker 2: tabloid stories are like shooting stars. They appear regularly, yet
Speaker 2: they're not on a schedule, and they make some light
Speaker 2: but no larger impact. They're all they all look alike.
Speaker 2: They're these tabloid newspapers and they carry all these stories,
Speaker 2: and they tend to exaggerate the superstitious side, they aggurate
Speaker 2: the sexually suggested salt side. Yeah, the assault side, and
Speaker 2: if it makes the government look incompetent or that, they'll definitely,
Speaker 2: you know, look, these poor ignorant people, and how terrible
Speaker 2: they are dealing with this clearly superstition and imaginary creature. Right,
Speaker 2: it really is is other ring and I can't think
Speaker 2: of anything positive to say about it.
Speaker 3: All right, It's well, isn't that silly though, because as
Speaker 3: you're saying, these tabloids are all about this kind of thing,
Speaker 3: and yet they downplay it when it happens in these
Speaker 3: other countries and other cultures, and yet they're purporting the
Speaker 3: exact same thing.
Speaker 2: Well exactly, there's the other flight, right, The flip side is, yeah,
Speaker 2: look at those ignorant, superstitious people. They don't know about
Speaker 2: the real problem, which is lizard people in our pizza
Speaker 2: joints kidnapping our kids. Right, that's lines Yeah, So I
Speaker 2: mean we everybody believes weird stuff, but apparently that there's
Speaker 2: that low bar haha. Look at those guys. It makes
Speaker 2: you feel better about, you know, your dumb ideas because
Speaker 2: you're mocking someone else's you.
Speaker 3: Know, so hey show people.
Speaker 2: Exactly. So that's that's one channel. But that the other channel,
Speaker 2: which I think is maybe more troubling, and that's a
Speaker 2: bi directional channel, and that is Christian evangelicals who are
Speaker 2: taking this folklore and repurposing it as a deliverance demonic content,
Speaker 2: like for you know, only Jesus can protect you from
Speaker 2: these demons. They're not they're not totalish, they're not goblins.
Speaker 2: They're really demonic and they're called up by Satan, you know,
Speaker 2: So basically rewriting the local folklore to make it even
Speaker 2: more senior. Now it's already sinister because these totalish goblins
Speaker 2: in the folk lort they don't come after you just
Speaker 2: because they're out roaming around and having fun. They're typically
Speaker 2: sent by some magic person as a curse on you,
Speaker 2: and there's a whole put together or a magic bag
Speaker 2: of materials to summon the tokalos. They'll bury it near
Speaker 2: your house and now you've been cursed. And this stuff
Speaker 2: fits right into superstitious which cursed type folklore. It fits
Speaker 2: into uh, sleep paralysis because people you know, wake up
Speaker 2: and they camp, move and they feel like they're being
Speaker 2: oppressed by some christ identity. So it totally fits into that.
Speaker 4: And so there's there's it's it's a ride, but but
Speaker 4: by by repurposing it with evangelical Christianity, it's it's getting
Speaker 4: a lot of replay back in the English speaking world
Speaker 4: where missionaries talk about, you know, fighting demons and fighting.
Speaker 2: These entities and the story of fighting a demon in
Speaker 2: a village in Africa and trying to raise money for
Speaker 2: your missionary thing. Oh that's a winner.
Speaker 3: That is what that it is, it is, And you're
Speaker 3: totally making me think of people like bulb Last and
Speaker 3: yes Uh and his uh a spiritual warfare, I guess,
Speaker 3: as he calls it, and how he travels the country.
Speaker 3: At one point, I think he had headquarters here in
Speaker 3: the Denver area, and so I've been to a number
Speaker 3: of his what do you want to call them performances. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And you know, he does have a surprising amount of
Speaker 3: followers who are minorities, and I mean minorities here, not
Speaker 3: necessarily in the world. So people from maybe immigrants from
Speaker 3: Africa and immigrants from Mexico and places like that, who
Speaker 3: really he's manipulating them, I think, and acting as though
Speaker 3: he can save them from these cultural creatures and the
Speaker 3: inherent fears that they have in the societies that they
Speaker 3: grew up in. And he's just really playing on that.
Speaker 3: And as you say, he certainly has that whole stick
Speaker 3: down pat with. Oh, I'm going to be going to
Speaker 3: this country to teach them about you know, removing the
Speaker 3: demons and spiritual warfare and raising money for that, and
Speaker 3: it obviously lines his pockets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that that that's a cookie cutter
Speaker 2: U Ministry template, if you will, that's been reproduced all
Speaker 2: over the place, and it's certainly probably prevalent down there
Speaker 2: in South Africa. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, so now that we've settle that, is there
Speaker 3: anything to these stories?
Speaker 2: Well it's a good question obviously that there's lots of
Speaker 2: news stories. I mean there's like, what do you call that,
Speaker 2: there's ink on paper about this, but but it's it's
Speaker 2: usually again very sensationalized stories about like a police precinct
Speaker 2: being cleared out because of a total ocean investigation or investation.
Speaker 3: Schools and yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's videos of people like trying to catch one
Speaker 2: on camera and you know, yeah it is Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of that. But I think the main thing is,
Speaker 2: you know, just like and when I say this, I
Speaker 2: don't mean it lightly. These experiences are almost identical to
Speaker 2: the sorts of things that happen in poltergeist cases or
Speaker 2: ghost cases or gen case you know, where people start
Speaker 2: to glove everything together as a syndrome, like it's all
Speaker 2: every weird thing that happens becomes part of the experience.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm really glad that you raised polargeist because that's
Speaker 3: exactly what I've seen in that the articles that I've
Speaker 3: read and the videos I've watched, they really do stories
Speaker 3: seem to align themselves to pulpergeist quaint, where you have
Speaker 3: some kind of malevolent ghost, noisy ghost that is causing
Speaker 3: all kinds of problems in the community. There was one
Speaker 3: video that I saw of a gentleman in a community,
Speaker 3: and I think it was in Zimbabwe, and he was
Speaker 3: talking about how this goblin kept attacking his family and
Speaker 3: would appear when the family were eating and would throw
Speaker 3: hot ash into the children's food. Did you hear that one?
Speaker 2: No, I was waiting to hear what happens next?
Speaker 3: Oh, well, it was continuing, and so it was destroying
Speaker 3: their food and they had, I think, sought support from
Speaker 3: the local housards of worship and from priests who had
Speaker 3: come in and blessed the place, and yet this was
Speaker 3: continuing to happen. But a lot of the activity really
Speaker 3: sounded like poltergeist. Yeah, paint and just people things being
Speaker 3: thrown around, things going missing, and just that kind of
Speaker 3: poltageist activity. So it really does seem to be a
Speaker 3: mishmash of planes and phenomena.
Speaker 2: There's almost like a poultry guist syndrome that you don't
Speaker 2: even have to have, like the explanation of poultrygeist, but
Speaker 2: that same sort of cluster of things being thrown, things
Speaker 2: being broken, and then it sort of escalates where people
Speaker 2: feel like they're being attacked and they don't know what's happening. Like,
Speaker 2: you know, you've lost that sense of there is a
Speaker 2: action that happened, and clearly there had to be agency,
Speaker 2: you know, and that's very disconcerting if you don't know
Speaker 2: what's going on. Now, if you have kids in the house,
Speaker 2: it's maybe less disconcerned because you know, those crazy kids
Speaker 2: are up to it again. But you know, if you
Speaker 2: lived alone, it would be really weird. But there can
Speaker 2: be natural explanations for why weird things happen, and you
Speaker 2: have to have that sort of stop lumping it all
Speaker 2: into I'm being haunted and start trying to figure out
Speaker 2: what each incident might be. Because one of the things
Speaker 2: we see, sorry, one of the things we see over
Speaker 2: and over again is things that we can clearly say, Look,
Speaker 2: that has to be a hoax. Someone's doing that to you,
Speaker 2: being mixed in with things that happened to everybody, but
Speaker 2: now it takes on special significance. You know, a clock
Speaker 2: falls off the wall, Well, sometimes nails fail, you know,
Speaker 2: that happens. But if it happens in the middle of
Speaker 2: a poultry guys thing, that's just another part of the
Speaker 2: poultry guys.
Speaker 3: So you can't out of the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just lumping it all together is a dangerous habit
Speaker 2: of mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I mean another thing that you thinking of
Speaker 3: is through looking at some of the videos on YouTube,
Speaker 3: there were some really disturbing stories of children being abused
Speaker 3: or being attacked by these goblins, and they were in
Speaker 3: the care of babysitters or caregivers at the time, who
Speaker 3: would then take them to hospital and say there'd been
Speaker 3: this goblin attack, And so it seems like it was
Speaker 3: a kind of cultural excuse for abuse.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that there's a physical abuse, and not that sexual
Speaker 5: abuse isn't physical abuse, but there's also sexual assault component
Speaker 5: to these stories, and not in the core literature, but
Speaker 5: in the sort of the meta literature around this stuff.
Speaker 2: Anthropologically speaking, medically speaking. People have hypothesized that the tokalosh
Speaker 2: may be a way for people to seek help when
Speaker 2: they're being attacked by someone they know who Otherwise, you know,
Speaker 2: it would like bring down the law, and you know
Speaker 2: it's complicated when a family member is assaulting you. But
Speaker 2: if you can deflect from that and just get I'm
Speaker 2: being attacked by a total ish, Look here are my wounds,
Speaker 2: you might be able to get assistance and help and
Speaker 2: protection without the incurring the wrath of the person who's
Speaker 2: doing the abusing. You know.
Speaker 3: So it's almost like a euphemistic thing way of being
Speaker 3: able to culturally talk about taboo topics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I don't know, like it's hard
Speaker 2: to say the scale of that, but it's it's come
Speaker 2: up in enough of these articles about this from people
Speaker 2: who seem to be well educated about the topic that
Speaker 2: I think there may be something to that. But I mean,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of meta literature around this, because it's
Speaker 2: really big in the southern regions of Africa.
Speaker 1: It's so some you'll find for a long time, right
Speaker 1: for a long long time, and you'll find articles about
Speaker 1: how the media covers the topic, which you know, not
Speaker 1: to whether it's true or not, but just literally just
Speaker 1: sort of like study the ways that the.
Speaker 2: Stories are perceived and presented in the public eye. That's
Speaker 2: not likely to go away, So I mean, it's a
Speaker 2: big part of the culture, will always probably be a
Speaker 2: big part of the culture. So I think understanding that
Speaker 2: and not trying to utter it because it's coming from
Speaker 2: Africa is maybe the best that we can do as
Speaker 2: English speakers to try to sort of get our head
Speaker 2: wrapped around this idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and I think just given that there are
Speaker 3: so many immigrants here from Africa who brought those beliefs here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 3: Share them as well. But I'm just wondering with you
Speaker 3: talking about this sexual assault and the supernatural, I'm wondering
Speaker 3: if and you did kind of mention hagging as well,
Speaker 3: So what's the link there between this kind of thing
Speaker 3: and maybe sleep paralysis?
Speaker 2: Some of these cases that people report are just they
Speaker 2: sound exactly like sleep paralysis. Like they're in bed and
Speaker 2: they wake up and something's pressing on their chest. They
Speaker 2: can't breathe, They sense a presence in the room, you know,
Speaker 2: they sense malice. And as someone who's suffered from sleep
Speaker 2: paralysis and again, if this is the first time you've
Speaker 2: listened to the show or heard us talk about this,
Speaker 2: that's when there's sort of a disconnect between when your
Speaker 2: body is telling you go to sleep and it prevents
Speaker 2: you from moving, but if that gets out of sync
Speaker 2: and you wake up, you may still be paralyzed. That
Speaker 2: the paralysis keeps you from acting out your dreams. But
Speaker 2: sometimes people wake up out of sink and then they
Speaker 2: feel like they can't move because they can't they are or.
Speaker 3: They're hallucinating and they see shadow people or aliens or.
Speaker 2: Ghost Hypnogogic or hypnopompic hallucinations are very common with this.
Speaker 2: So that's that accounts for some of it, but obviously
Speaker 2: can't account for every story. And with anything that's got
Speaker 2: a complex syndrome, and you know, a collection of a
Speaker 2: cluster of symptoms or phenomenon, then you're you're gonna You're
Speaker 2: gonna get a variety. It's not gonna that's not going
Speaker 2: to explain it away. Speaking of explaining, there's a couple
Speaker 2: of things that I feel interesting. The Tokalosh is there's
Speaker 2: this story that maybe because if you live around a campfire,
Speaker 2: you sleep around a campfire, or maybe you're indoors and
Speaker 2: there's this cold and you have a fire. Sometimes the
Speaker 2: circumstances happened, especially around heating furnaces, where it releases carbon
Speaker 2: monoxide or there's too much CO two or these sort
Speaker 2: of things can build up and if you're sleeping on
Speaker 2: the ground, you might die. But if you're sleeping up,
Speaker 2: you know, in a bunk bed or higher up, you
Speaker 2: might live on ye control five gallon buckets. But I
Speaker 2: don't know that that's actually a real thing that's ever happened,
Speaker 2: but it might.
Speaker 3: Be the interesting period.
Speaker 2: It's the kind of story that leads people who you know,
Speaker 2: there's that idea of you heymmerism, the idea that behind
Speaker 2: every legend there's a real true story. And maybe there
Speaker 2: were times when people gathered around a fire at night
Speaker 2: died and someone sleeping up higher didn't. And how do
Speaker 2: you explain that? That's a great idea. But I think
Speaker 2: since goblins and little people and invisible agents appear in
Speaker 2: every culture, we don't need to explain it away with
Speaker 2: the CO two or oxide story.
Speaker 3: So yeah, well I have another question. Sure if you
Speaker 3: have it took a lotion, since they just seem to
Speaker 3: be so common and all these stories coming out all
Speaker 3: the time. Sometimes maybe a spate of stories and then
Speaker 3: it might go away for a little bit, but people
Speaker 3: are always appear to be talking about them. What do
Speaker 3: you do? How do you handle an attack like that?
Speaker 2: Well, that's a great question. The general consensus seems to
Speaker 2: be that in order to fight this black magic, you
Speaker 2: need to go highre up some white magic. And I
Speaker 2: don't mean magic from white people. I mean good magicians,
Speaker 2: good you know, good folk magic to protect. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and that's going to be epotropaic magic. You're to have
Speaker 2: something to help ward off the attacker generally, so you
Speaker 2: might get a charm or spell or be told to
Speaker 2: do some task, you know that sort of thing. And
Speaker 2: then you know, obviously the other thing would be if
Speaker 2: you've got like a house call and your magician came over,
Speaker 2: helped track down where the tokalo totem is that's calling them,
Speaker 2: and dig that up and get rid of it and
Speaker 2: cleanse you in that way, So cleansing ceremonies, you know,
Speaker 2: magical things to hold it away. I guarantee that there
Speaker 2: are going to be Christian responses involving prayer and you
Speaker 2: know that sort of thing. Anointing, you know, just basically
Speaker 2: that dominion gospel and the idea of you know, just
Speaker 2: you know, praying away and declaring dominion over Satan. That's
Speaker 2: another option. Skepticism and critical thinking might be an option.
Speaker 2: You know, It's not as sexy, but it's got some
Speaker 2: great long term effectiveness. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just think this isn't going to go away
Speaker 3: anytime soon.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, It'll just like Bigfoot. I've come down
Speaker 2: after all this research. I don't think Bigfoot's a real creature,
Speaker 2: but I'm one thousand percent sure it will not go
Speaker 2: away because it's become embraced culturally. It's just part of
Speaker 2: our culture. And I guess the other option would be, Karen,
Speaker 2: you could call in the Occult Related Crimes Unit to
Speaker 2: come help you out.
Speaker 3: What so, what's that about? Then? What happens when the
Speaker 3: government tries to get involved in these kinds of crimes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, spoiler, this does not turn out to be
Speaker 2: the X Files. It's now this Unfortunately. What happens is
Speaker 2: I think this started around twenty fourteen something like that.
Speaker 2: It's a good ten years ago. The government got involved
Speaker 2: and created the Occult Related Crimes Unit or the.
Speaker 3: ORC where was this.
Speaker 2: This is in South Africa.
Speaker 3: South Africa, okay, And.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately this did not lead to a decrease in superstition
Speaker 2: or you know, like a public awareness campaign helping people
Speaker 2: understand that total issues, while a wonderful part of our culture,
Speaker 2: are not real things that can hurt you anything like that. No, instead,
Speaker 2: they went full blown satanic panic on this stuff. Really,
Speaker 2: I mean, it is so close to the experience of
Speaker 2: like police units looking for satanic crimes in the eighties,
Speaker 2: it's almost identical. They got a guy named doctor Corbus Junker.
Speaker 2: Heck of a name.
Speaker 3: He is.
Speaker 2: He's got that Bob Larsen vibe. I mean, seriously, he's
Speaker 2: And if you've ever watched any of those nineteen eighties
Speaker 2: police training videos where you've got the tough guy cop
Speaker 2: who's going to help you out to take down Satan,
Speaker 2: you know, we've let Satan run wild in this city
Speaker 2: for too long. And I'm getting too old for this,
Speaker 2: you know. So it really He tells the story of
Speaker 2: going in to investigate what sounds exactly like a poultry
Speaker 2: guist case, and while he's there, an old black man
Speaker 2: comes around and says that he doesn't like all this
Speaker 2: stuff going on, and so Corbus Junker notes that the
Speaker 2: man is old and short.
Speaker 3: And oh not a goblin.
Speaker 2: He thinks he might have been a total disguise. After
Speaker 2: that guy leaves, the Tokalosh haunting stops. Yeah, yeah, there
Speaker 2: we go, and so yeah, case solved.
Speaker 3: So well, this is strange. So you're saying this was
Speaker 3: back in twenty fourteens. This is kind of post apartheid.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely this happened.
Speaker 3: That's really recent. Do you think in any way it's
Speaker 3: been influenced by ghost hunting shows and paranormal TV in
Speaker 3: the States.
Speaker 2: My gut feeling is based on the visuals that accompany
Speaker 2: the articles I've read about Corpus Junker that he's absolutely
Speaker 2: influenced by all pop culture around the supernatural, and that
Speaker 2: would include all the ghost shows and you know, the
Speaker 2: come at Me bros. And the demons and everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely taking it along.
Speaker 2: He looks like he's fully embracing the supernatural is real,
Speaker 2: and you know he's he's got that Malachi Martin vibe.
Speaker 3: You know, right, Yeah, I can see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so unfortunately, when you give authority figures sanction
Speaker 2: to engage with the supernatural, then that's another feedback loop,
Speaker 2: because now it makes people who believe in the supernatural
Speaker 2: further their belief that this is absolutely real. Otherwise there
Speaker 2: wouldn't be a government response, you know, right, And so
Speaker 2: he said doctor one more quick answert As. I was
Speaker 2: researching this episode and kept coming back to one particular question,
Speaker 2: what exactly is Cobas Junker's academic credentials. I see him
Speaker 2: called doctor, and I see him called professor, and on
Speaker 2: sub websites they vaguely mentioned he's got credentials as a sociologist,
Speaker 2: but never mentioned any specific institution or degree. So I've
Speaker 2: put some queries out there, including the doctor Junker himself,
Speaker 2: who I might add, includes the honorific in his email address.
Speaker 2: So I hope that he or someone will explain and
Speaker 2: or clarify. But right now I can't say much about
Speaker 2: his academic credentials other than that his demonstrated expertise on
Speaker 2: this topic reminds me more of Ed and Lorraine moren
Speaker 2: than any actual academically credentialed researcher. On the one hand,
Speaker 2: one does not need a degree to conduct spiritual warfare.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, if you include the honorific doctor
Speaker 2: and everything, including your email address, you might ought to
Speaker 2: explain it somewhere like me. I explain all the time
Speaker 2: that yes, my nom d internet is doctor Atlantis, but
Speaker 2: I'm not from any lost underwater city, and nor do
Speaker 2: I have a PhD. I disclose this all the time,
Speaker 2: but if I hear back from doctor Junker, I'll let
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Oh well, this is yeh, terribly interesting, and I'm just
Speaker 3: wondering where this is going to go. As we've established,
Speaker 3: it's just not going to go away. But I wonder
Speaker 3: how this is going to evolve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. I guess one of the problems
Speaker 2: is that that some of the folklore and the reactions
Speaker 2: to it it sort of reinforced apartheid era stereotypes about
Speaker 2: the people of South.
Speaker 3: Africa and very unfortunate.
Speaker 2: It is unfortunate, and I just I feel like I
Speaker 2: have a better understanding of this now. It is an
Speaker 2: extraordinarily complex topic. It's tied in with all sorts of
Speaker 2: stereotypes and politics and religion.
Speaker 3: In medicine, and it's just.
Speaker 2: Maddening that that the majority of the world's exposure to
Speaker 2: this situation is through tabloid media, which just you know,
Speaker 2: and it's we all are superstitious. Everybody's got weird beliefs.
Speaker 2: It's just.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: I really don't like the tabloids for a thousand reasons,
Speaker 2: and this is just one more.
Speaker 3: So, Yeah, racism.
Speaker 2: I found lots of articles and links about this topic
Speaker 2: that are deeper than just tabli media, so I'll put
Speaker 2: some of those in the show notes if you want
Speaker 2: to check them out. But I think maybe now hopefully
Speaker 2: our listeners are better informed about zimbabwe goblins and how
Speaker 2: they're not just a joke. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really interesting phenomenon.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and there's so much more. So come back next
Speaker 2: week we'll have something else to tell you.
Speaker 3: You will.
Speaker 2: Monster. You've been listening to Monster Talk, the science show
Speaker 2: about monsters. I'm Blake Smith and I'm Karen Stolsner. You
Speaker 2: just heard a discussion about the tokolosh or the goblin
Speaker 2: belief in Southern Africa. I wanted to add one more
Speaker 2: detail about magic in South Africa. According to Wikipedia, there's
Speaker 2: two main branches to this type of magic. There is
Speaker 2: the diviner or the sengoma, and the herbalist, the Janga.
Speaker 2: These healers are effectively Southern African shamans who are iily
Speaker 2: revered and respected in a society where illness is thought
Speaker 2: to be caused by witchcraft, pollution, contact with impure objects
Speaker 2: or occurrences, or through neglect of the ancestors. It's estimated
Speaker 2: that there are as many as two hundred thousand traditional
Speaker 2: healers in South Africa, compared to twenty five thousand doctors
Speaker 2: trained in biomedical practice. Traditional healers are consulted by approximately
Speaker 2: sixty percent of the South African population, usually in conjunction
Speaker 2: with modern biomedical services. These data are from nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: seven to two thousand and seven, so the numbers are
Speaker 2: unverified for today, but it's unlikely there's been any major
Speaker 2: cultural shift. Based on my reading, the sing Gooma uses
Speaker 2: muti magic and this can be a lot of different things,
Speaker 2: but it might be a packet or parcel containing herbs
Speaker 2: or bones or bits of animal or any other powerful
Speaker 2: magical component. Now, we briefly discussed apotropaeics in the episode,
Speaker 2: which is the use of items that can ward off
Speaker 2: magical or supernatural harm. Common examples might be the use
Speaker 2: of holy symbols to ward off demonic influence. Necklaces are
Speaker 2: charms to warn off the evil eye, are fresh garlic
Speaker 2: to ward off European vampires. It's using magic to fight magic,
Speaker 2: and it's the global practice. Fighting the irrational with the
Speaker 2: irrational seems to be pretty rational to our species, and
Speaker 2: I guess the premise of this show is that you
Speaker 2: can also fight the irrational with the irrational, but we
Speaker 2: have a much longer history with the former. Around the world,
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Speaker 2: the most famous cryptids and legendary animals ever reported. Using
Speaker 2: scientific skepticism, meticulous field work in historical deep dives, Joe
Speaker 2: Nichols seeks out hidden clues and real world candidates that
Speaker 2: sometimes reveal that even the most unlikely monster stories may
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