Episode 623: Fan Favorite: The Violent Deaths of Bog Bodies

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Hello, beautiful people.

We hope that you all had a lovely Thanksgiving with your family.

I hope you're stuffed.

I hope you're stuffed.

I hope shit didn't get weird at the dinner table.

And if it did, I bet you rocked that shit.

Yeah, I hope it got weird and you made it weirder.

Yeah, I hope you wore a shirt that was provocative and made people angry.

Let's go.

I hope it was great.

And I hope that you watched our freaking video that we people angry. Let's go.
I hope it was great.

And I hope that you watched our freaking video that we put out.

Our freaking video.

Don't forget, we're doing the Listener Tales.

In costume.

In costume, on video.

Every time. The one that we just did for November came out on Thanksgiving.

So I hope you watched that with your family.

And then I hope you went and played The Sims.

Oh, yeah.

And then watched Salad Fingers.

Hell yeah. And we also hope that you enjoy this resurrected episode kind of like the sims one was resurrected and the beautiful salad fingers was resurrected exactly like that everything is connected yeah go listen to bog bodies because it's a good episode i think it's a great episode i loved that one i immediately got imposter syndrome there did you see that happened in real time.
I was like, it's a good episode, I think. It's a great episode.
I loved that one. I immediately got imposter syndrome there.
Did you see that happen in real time? Yeah, it was kind of crazy. It's a good episode, I think.
I don't know. Maybe not.
Actually, it sucks. Don't listen to this.
Shut it off right now. No, it's a great episode.
It is. It's one of those really fascinating, spooky, weird history ones that we just love to dive into.
Dare I say she's a morbid classic. Oh.
Oh.

Oh.

Oh.

Enjoy it, my friends.

We love you.

Happy Thanksgiving.

What the fuck is that?

What happened?

Do, do, do.

Do, do, do.

Don't do your job, Jess.

Do, do, do.

The TV just turned on, guys.

Leave this in.

You have to keep this in.

This is the way to lead into a rerun okay so enjoy enjoy hey weirdos i'm elena i'm ash and this is morbid Whoop, there it is.

We are here.

And you didn't forget your name this time.

I didn't.

I don't know what happened last time. It was late at night.
Yeah, that's what it was. It are here.
And you didn't forget your name this time. I didn't.
I don't know what happened last time.

It was late at night.

Yeah, that's what it was.

It was a late night recording.

I zoned out a bit.

I had a moment.

She was feeling zony.

I was just on a space level.

I know.

Usually I feel like that's like a very me thing to do, but you were not here with us.

I was on an ash level.

That's scary.

I was not. I was on a space level.
I was going to say, I don't think you've ever been on an ash level. Truly.
Truly don't think I ever have. Most people have.
That's okay. Only ash.
But you know what? This is my level. Here we are.
And we're going to do something that is, it definitely is true crime, but it's like ancient true crime leave it to you because i've always been really interested in bog bodies and you said that to me the other day and i said i don't know what that means she said huh i was like are you talking about cranberry juice um no not really no. No.
Although, who likes cranberry juice? I think Drew. Drew.
Drew. Yeah, Drew really likes cranberry juice.
I just thought of that. Although, who likes? I thought you were like doing a poll really fast.
Hey guys, who likes cranberry juice? I also kind of was. I was going to be like, show of hands.
Do you like cranberry juice? He, that boy loves cranberry juice. He does.
And like, not even cranberry juice cocktail, like Regina George. like cranberry juice he that boy loves cranberry juice and like not even cranberry juice cocktail like regina george like yeah cranberry juice that's a lot for me yeah cranberry juices is very aggressive to me it's tart very tart yeah i this is so yuckas but i used to drink it when i was constipated when i was little i got constipated a lot when i was little and my mom would just give me some cranberry juice so now I hate it drink it when I was constipated when I was little.
I got constipated a lot when I was little. And my mom would just give me some cranberry juice.
So now I hate it. And it would work, apparently.
Yeah. Oh, that shit.
That shit makes you shit. That shit'll work.
Yeah, I can't do a cranberry juice. But you know what? This isn't about cranberry juice.
Nah. This is about bog bodies, which are very far off from cranberry juice.
Although I guess they're a little like sour. They should.
Their way of being is very sour. Look at the face.
They can't. I wish you could see the face.
It's literally ashes just making a tart face. My nose is all wrinkled.
So let's talk. I'm sure some of you have probably heard of bog bodies because they've been around like there's been a ton of discoveries in the last like several years of these especially in northern europe well shit uh but they're not like don't feel bad if you don't know what they are because like it's weird yeah but like they're not making as big a deal out of these as i think they should because they make a big big deal out of like the randomest shit.
Yeah. But like not the, I mean, this is pretty random shit, but.
It's very random shit. But to make a big deal of this, it's interesting.
These are. From what you've, you've told me like a little tidbit.
Yeah. These are whole ass people.
Yeah. And in fact.
Oh, sorry. I interrupted.
Go ahead. Oh, no.
I was going to say that have been preserved for like thousands of years. Okay.
I'm glad I let you go because Elena was looking at like some pictures the other day going through this.

And there was basically like the remains of somebody.

And I thought that they had put a wig on this person.

Yes.

I was like, did they put a fucking wig on them?

And Elena said, nor, nor.

Yeah, that's exactly what I said.

She said, that's his hair.

And I was like, what?

And I was like, that's a 2,000 year old hair right there. That's so crazy.
Yeah, it's wild. So let's talk about what bog parties are.
I was in a place of like, narcolear. And you were like, let's get to some bog bodies.
I don't know what's going on. Okay, Tomater.
Tomater. So we're going to talk about bog bodies.
I'm going to tell you what they are, how they form, what is in a bog that makes these bog bodies stay the way they are. That's my biggest question.
Because my first thought is the bog of eternal stench from Labyrinth. That checks.
That's literally, when I hear bog of eternal stench is my next i love that you think of that because as we know i think of cranberry juice but like the two ocean spray guys oh yeah whatever happened to them what happened to them i don't watch cable anymore so maybe they're still there maybe they're still around yeah just standing in the cranberry bog i bet they are they are because bog bodies bodies preservatives they're brothers ancient. Yeah.
Just standing in the cranberry bog. I bet they are.
They are. Because bog bodies.

Bog bodies.

Preservatives.

They're bog brothers.

Ancient.

These are basically ancient, and I mean ancient, like from the Iron Age.

Old.

Like BCE.

So these are ancient bodies found buried in peat marshes and bogs.

And again, like I said, in Northern Europe mostly.

We're talking people from as long ago as 8,000 BCE. My brain just like can't even wrap itself around that.
Outrageous. And by the way, BCE is before Common Era.
Yes. And is a newer convention to date things and one that I like.
So that's why I'm using it. I'm happy for you.
Thank you. A lot of them seem to come from around, like I said, the early Iron Age, which like, whoa.
And I think that's somewhere around 500 BCE to 400 CE, which is Common Era. Okay.
Like this is wildly old. We're in the Common Era.
We're in the Common Era. Right, is that right? It this is wildly old we're in the common era we're in the common era well it's it's outrageously old like this is literally like before common era and then basically like after common era so we're in the after we're we're currently in the after i would say oh shit okay so this but this is 400 so this is way long ago whoa like three steps agorageously old is the moral of this story.
Love. These are people who we would only be able to study from things that we find.
And if we find things, it's like, whoa, we found this ancient thing from 2,000 years ago. Like it's always this amazing discovery.
But now we've discovered whole-ass people with their things still on them. Are there any cool things that, like, we don't know about that we do now? Well, the things aren't even what we're looking at here.
It's more what happened to these people. Because a lot of these people died by straight-up murder.
Bog-bardies. I don't know why I keep saying bardies.
Bog-bardies. Bog- Bog bodies.
I don't know why I keep saying bodies.

Bog bodies.

Bog bodies.

I don't know why it feels right.

Okay.

But whatever.

It's not.

Bog bodies.

There you go.

It's hard to say.

Yeah.

These people were often violently killed.

Huh.

Like they're not just people who died by natural causes, old age, you know, sickness, whatever.

And then they were buried in these bogs.

Right.

No, they're not just people who died by natural causes, old age, you know, sickness, whatever, and then they were buried in these bogs.

Right.

No, they were, like, ritualistically sacrificed or straight up just murdered for no ritual. It's like some smiley face killer type shit.
It's intense. And due to the biological magic of their very unique and specific environments, these bogs, they're found completely preserved, sometimes with all their hair, skin, and clothing still intact.
Like, I thought you were done when it was the lady in the lake. Like, I was like, oh, wow, it can't get crazier than that.
Never done. Here we go.
We are always ratcheting it up that huge notch. You are, for sure.
Always trying to, at least. I read a book called Bog Bodies Uncovered, Solving Europe's Ancient Mystery by Miranda Aldhouse Green.
I bet you did. And it's real good.
I'm going to tag it in the show notes. If I had seen that on a library shelf, I would have been, whoop, Elena.
That is for you. Whoop, that's for my girl.
I really like like she had a very good way of describing everything she went into like the violence associated with it she covered so many of these bodies because there's so many i'm only going to cover a little handful today are we going to do like a couple parts i might do a part to our lives yeah talking about more of these bodies because there's just so many ones. But the way that she described and referred to bogs is something I really liked, which sounds weird, I know.
But she described them like this. She said, bogs were and are special places, miasmic and fearsome.
They hover in the tween space between land and water. They are both and they are neither.
Oh, that's an author. Right, like a really beautiful sentence to me.
Also, can we just like take a moment to study the author shouting out the author? Like check that out. Author supporting authors.
TinyRareL.com slash TheButcher and TheWren. The amount of people that now say that to me, I'm like, yes.
We should put that on a shirt. I love it.
You should tattoo that on yourself. There you go.
Just tattoo that word. I'll just tattoo it on my hand.
The link will forever be active. But yeah, that's just like a really beautiful way of describing a bog.
Yeah, it absolutely is. It's something that you think of as probably stinky and gross, like a bog.
Yeah, when I think bog, other than like my guys yeah in the of course my ocean's very men i also think of swaps yeah just like green bubbly stinky water you know what i mean like just yuckiness it's so funny though because cranberry bogs are beautiful that's true but bog of eternal stench that's where we're at. Pe Pete is what we're talking about here.
So Pete bogs. Now Pete is a material.
I just thought you meant a man named Pete. Just Pete bog.
You were like, Pete is what we're talking about here. And I was like, well, I was not up to speed then.
Pete, P-E-A-T. I'm going to take a seat.
Pete is a material created by the slow decomposition of organic matter and is often formed in these bogs. The bogs are what I described above, and a lot of things can't really thrive in or around them unless they're very specific to bogs.
So they're formed when shallow bodies of water have plants and such that will fall into the bodies of water. And because there's a massive lack of oxygen in these places, it will just lay there and decompose very slowly, like very, like hundreds and thousands of years, basically hanging in a preserved state for quite some time, but making the body of water a bog and making the layers of organic material building up over time and decomposing very slowly become peat.
Now, sphagnum, it's sphagnum, it's hard to say. Sphagnum.
No, you're doing great. There it is.
Sphagnum moss is actually one of the big reasons why peat is able to preserve, and it sounds like I'm saying a man named Pete. It does.
It's why peat able to preserve bodies and other organic material so well. Sphagnum lives in bog moss, and when the moss dies, it releases the sphagnum into the surrounding area in the bog water.
It actually turns, if there's an organic, like a person in there, or even like an animal body, it will turn the skin leathery and kind of brown looking. Like it will tan it essentially.
And any hair will seemingly be dyed a coppery red color. Oh, I thought that man's just had like some motherfucking flow.
That's because it does. It turns it a beautiful auburn, like coppery auburn color.
I feel like it's the red that you look for. That I go for.
Like that is my like, oh, I want that red. Every time I see it, I'm like, that's the color.
My hairstylist girlies. It's like a 734 or like a 743.
There you go. Yeah.
Next time I go to the hairstylist, I'm bringing a picture of a bog body and be like, that's the color I want. Go off, queen.
Can you do a sphagnum color? Do it. But either way, it's very interesting.
So as you'll see, any bog body that you will see is a dark color because they've been tanned. And their hair is that fiery, coppery, auburn color.
Which makes it a little difficult to tell what their hair color was before that. Yeah.
But usually it ends up, the more coppery it is, the more light it was in real life. I was going to say.
Like a gray or a blonde. That makes sense.
And then is it like a darker copper if they had darker hair? Exactly. So bog oaks are the only trees that grow around bogs.
And the oak that falls into the bog actually also helps with that preservation and tanning process as well. So it's like a mixture of things that need to come together.

But when it does, it is like perfect preservation.

That's crazy.

Isn't it wild?

Just like the shit that happens that we don't understand.

Science is wild.

It really is.

I've always enjoyed science.

It's so interesting.

This was blowing my mind while I was reading it.

You're blowing my mind.

I'm blowing your mind.

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You can listen to Don't Cross Cat on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. So only when these bodies are discovered and then taken out and exposed to oxygen, because while they're under there, they're not getting any oxygen, only when they're taken out and the oxygen comes in contact with them do they really begin to decompose naturally.
But so many are still preserved today. They're able to keep them in, like, oxygen-sealed tanks, you know what I mean? But they have to do it quick.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The transfer process for these things, it's super delicate, super fast.
You don't want to, like, fuck with this a lot because they'll start to just fall apart. Right.
And they do eventually they will fall apart, but we can keep them for as long as we can. Now, some people believe that a lot of these bodies were placed in the bogs as like a warning almost or some kind of punishment, a warning to others because some of them would be staked down in the bog, like held down in the bog, and sometimes through their limbs.
And sometimes while they were alive, they would be put in these bogs, and then stakes would be run through their arms while they were alive. And then they would be left there, and usually they were facing upward.
So if somebody came to the bog, they would just see this pale face of a human dead and lying staked down in the bog. Fuck a whole bunch of that.
Yeah. And they were being punished because by doing this, they were remaining in the in-between place where their body couldn't even decompose.
Okay. So this was a punishment.
Like, we're not even going to allow your body to decompose and your soul to leave. And if you're stuck in this bog, nothing's going to be able to remove your soul for the afterlife.
You're going to be stuck here. It's like they were creating like man-made purgatory.
Exactly. Because bogs have always kind of been looked at as a place where evil spirits live and dwell and they remain.
So this would be somewhere to place someone you wanted to punish, putting them in that dark, evil, and frozen-in-time place to never fully, freely cross over to the other side. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a bog.
Yeah, don't we all, man? Do you ever feel like you're in a bog? There you go. Forever.
And sometimes they would even remove, a lot of times actually, they would remove the person's head. And they'd place the head in one part of the bog and the body in another so they couldn't even come together.
Come together. Together as one.
Oh, I was in a place of beetles. I was in a place of ghosts as always.
Usually. So yeah, so they would do that.
So sometimes people will find these heads of bog bodies and sometimes they don't ever find the bodies. What? It's real spooky.
Okay. Are you going to tell me how like the first bog body was found? Like who was just like swimming in a bog one day? So these, I'm going to tell you about a few interesting bog bodies.
What we can say is that every single bog body has been found by accident. It's never been.
I figured. Yeah.
Nobody's ever gone in search of a bog body that I can find. There's no fish in bog.
I don't believe like many things can live in a bog. Okay.
But I'm honestly not positive. Okay.
But either way, it's almost always when people are doing peat cutting, which is like removing layers of peat, because we do use peat moths for like, you know, landscaping and shit. Yeah, I've heard of that.
You've heard peat moths. I sure have.
Yeah, like people use it for things. So people will go and dredge it up like these big bales of peat essentially and that's when they find these peat bodies or bog bodies because they'll find them in between the layers of peat do they still use the peat sometimes it happens you know gross you know that's why um i actually this is a total sidetrack but it's like somewhat in a place of ash.
I am, I am. I was watching a TikTok the other night and somebody was talking about, it's the, who's the guy who does the, it was the 90s.
Oh, Kevin. Kevin.
He was talking about how he had to have a bone graft in his mouth and they put a cadaver bone in there. Oh.
And that he was worried, he wanted to know who it was from and then he was talking about having a haunted face. Yeah.
I also have a cadaver bone in my mouth. So I have a haunted face too.
And I never thought about it. That's cool.
So I just want to put that up. I have extra bones in my mouth.
There you go. But yours are just natural, not haunted.
Yeah, those are mine. Yeah, they're just hers.
I'm haunted, but by myself. My face is haunted.
So that's fun what if it's like a really shitbag human well i'm grateful for their bone okay is all i can say but either way this peat moss your peat moss could be haunted yeah oh absolutely i don't want any peat moss anymore i want all the peat moss that checks like that's awesome i'm gonna call my landscaper after this and be like hi remove the peat moss my fucking imaginary landscaper yeah there you go hello remove the peat moss at once i want to call someone and say that just call a landscaper just any landscaper we don't have your phone number on our client list ma'am this is a wendy's i don't care remove the peat moss get. Post-haste.
All right, so we're going to talk about the Elling Woman. Okey-doke.
She's all of these bog bodies. None of them have names.
They don't. You know, we can't really tell who they were.
So they're always named after the area in which they were found. Okay.
I was going to say that, but makes sense. I was going to say that sounds pretty.
It does. The Elling Woman.
she was found in denmark in 1938 i want to go she is believed to be from 280 bce during the iron age shut up shut up okay just for like my folks out there what's the iron age the iron age yeah well according to google self uh it is a prehistoric period that followed the Bronze Age when weapons and tools came to be made of iron. Which makes sense.
Or in mythology, just for like my interested mythology folks out there, the last and worst age of the world, a time of wickedness and oppression. Whoa.
So like two very drastic differences there. Very much.
Sometimes there was iron and sometimes there was wickedness. You know what? And there was a lot of wickedness in these bog body situations.
Boom, segue. We're talking about the Elling woman and her discovery was made in, and I'm going to give this my best shot.
Hit me. But hoo boy, some of these pronunciations.
Bejailed Scovdahl. I believe it.
Bejailed Scovdahl by a man named Jens Zacharysen, who was a farmer. So he was cutting and digging peat like everybody was.
Like everybody's all about the peat digging. Luckily, this was like kind of, it was a good removal process because a lot of these bog bodies tend to get either like kind of like cut apart by the peat digging process accidentally or when they are removed from the peat especially like in the 30s in the 50s when the shit was happening they didn't know what they were doing they didn't know this thing was.
So most of them thought they were recent murder victims. So they would pull them out, not knowing that these are very fragile and very old.
But luckily this one had a little bit of an ease in transfer process. So this farmer, he saw this clear body and was like, oh, shit, this is a human.

And instead of fleeing, or as we're going to find out in another case,

this happens, allowing villagers to take pieces of the human being with them.

No.

That happens in another one.

Luckily, in this time, it didn't happen.

This guy, Zachariasen, he immediately called the National Museum of Denmark, and they were able to remove her properly. So good job, Jens.
Now, it was later determined that this girl was about 25 years old at the time of her murder. She was wearing a sheepskin cloak and a cowhide blanket wrapped around her and had more fabric made from cowhide wrapped around her lower body.
A lot of these were wrapped in a lot of layers. There was also a woolen belt wrapped around her and there was a leather rope tied around her neck with a slipknot.
Oh, shit. Yeah.
Do you think that them being like having many layers helped with the preservation too? Honestly, maybe. But to be honest, it's kind's kind of 50 50 a lot of them are found with a lot of layers but a lot of them are found just naked oh shit nothing on them and they and actually one of the most preserved bog bodies that we're going to talk about the talland man he was completely naked okay so it doesn't so i don really think it matters, but I'm sure it doesn't hurt.

So there was the leather rope tied around her neck with a slipknot, and her back was almost perfectly preserved.

And it was immediately apparent that she had long hair that had been intricately braided before she was killed, which this would happen sometimes in ritualistic killings.

They would braid the hair.

Huh.

Yeah.

Pictures of this you can find, and they're amazing. This braiding is perfectly preserved.
It was plating back then. Exactly.
I love that. And it's preserved.
Like, you can see every little bit of that braid. Wow.
It looks like a wig. Wow.
It really does. And it's copper.
Her hair is a little darker, so I believe her hair must have been darker in life. Oh, okay.
But it's wild. It's very amazing.
It looks like it was done yesterday when you look at it. I'm going to gook.
But her front of her body was a little more decayed. So it was a little tougher.
Now, further testing done in the 70s, in the 1970s, told scientists that she definitely had been hanged. And that was how she was killed.
There was a deep laceration around her neck from the hanging she's believed to have possibly been used as a sacrifice to the gods by her village perhaps like a fertility sacrifice could be any number of sacrificial reasons okay honestly i'm looking at her hair right now what amazing right insane yeah now the next one I'm going to talk about is the Tulland man, and I just mentioned him. You did.
One of the most incredibly preserved of the bog bodies. He was found by two pea-cutting farmers, May 11th, 1950.
He was also found in Bejeldskovdal bog in Denmark. You did it.
He was found 12 years after Elling Woman Ellen woman in the same bog. Oh, isn't that interesting? That is interesting.
According, because these bodies are in like layers of peat. Right.
So like you can sometimes miss them or you get pieces of them. Now, according to the book I already mentioned, she said, quote, as they worked, they suddenly saw in the peat layer a face so fresh that they could only suppose they had stumbled upon a recent murder.
Ooh. He is over 2,000 years old.
What? Which makes his preservation even more incredibly impressive. Scientists believe he was somewhere around 30 to 40 years old when he was killed, which 40 years old would have made him kind of elderly back then.
Yeah. Like, to be honest.
Yeah. And it was likely a ritualistic sacrifice.
He was found with a braided leather noose wrapped around his neck, and he looks like he is sleeping. Oh.
Literally in a fetal position and has a very peaceful look on his face. Well, that's good.
Where you can see every line and wrinkle like he would just start breathing in front of you. He's naked, but he's still wearing a little pointed cap and you can see chin hairs.
What? Legitimately. They were able to determine his last meal.
No. 2,000 years ago.
What he ate. So he he ate porridge a bunch of grains and some bony fish and they said it was about 12 to 24 hours before he was hanged and then thrown in the bog bony fish they also think someone may have positioned him maybe it was like a family member or something like kind of because a lot of these bodies are tossed in there a lot of them have looks of anguish on their faces still because they were like ritualistically killed most of them i haven't even gotten into yet some of the worst ones some of the ones that were tortured and abused before being killed they are bad and but this guy the tallend man he peaceful looking.
He is so, I'm looking at him right now. And he was found on his side, like just sleeping.
He looks like he was like literally taking a little cat nap. Yeah, it's wild.
Oh, wow. I'm looking at the whole body now.
Isn't it incredible? Oh my God. Yeah.
Now the next one I'm going to talk about is the, I think it's pronounced the E.D. girl.
Okay. I looked at several pronunciations for this.
I believe it's E.D. The girl from E.D.
is a bog body from the Netherlands. She was found May 12th, 1897.
Stop it. By two peat cutters who were cutting through the peat in a bog that was just near the village of E.D.
When they dredged up the layers of peat, they found her just lying there between the layers. Of course, they freaked the fuck out and ran away because, honestly, a lot of people probably would.
And in the 1800s, they were like, this is a demon. The devil.
And they also literally thought it was the devil because she had a big lock of fiery red hair. Yeah, I saw that so they thought it was the devil like they thought they had unleashed it my god but they're like he lives in the ball like he's in the bog guys but they creeped back and then they just hid her under the peat again probably because they figured if they left her there then the demon would stay in the bog or something i don't know yeah yeah leave devil in the bog.
But apparently she was dug up again over a week later. I think the mayor actually dug her back up.
He was like, let's see this. Let's see this demon in the bog.
But she wasn't pulled out of the bog very carefully, unfortunately. Oh, no.
Yeah. So what they could determine was that she was a 16, maybe 14 to 16 year old girl and was killed over 2000 years before she was taken out of the bog in 1897.
They used her remaining bones and also the fact that her wisdom teeth had not erupted or formed roots in her mouth to determine her approximate age. Damn, isn't it crazy that even back then people had wisdom teeth? Yeah, wisdom.
Fun fact, I don't have them. But look at that, evolved.
They estimate she was only about four and a half feet tall. She was very tiny stature.
When she was found, like I said, she had tons of fiery red hair. Again, it's important to note that the sphagnum gases turn the skin brown hair red.
But they believe she might have had light auburn hair. Okay.
So maybe like closer to a strawberry blonde.

It was like using overtone.

There you go.

She had a ton of hair, though.

Yeah, she looked like Merida.

Yeah.

And honestly, though, interestingly, the right side of her very long hair had been shorn off.

Oh.

And they believe it was shaved off.

As like a weird punishment, maybe?

Yeah, like this is a common thing in a lot of the bog bodies that the hair was shorn before their interment, basically. Weird.
Yeah, it's very weird. In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan.
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Start your free trial in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today. Now also, the villagers had come to the place where she was being taken out of the bog they took several of her teeth locks of her hair and even some of her bones why yeah they just took them with them what i'm like you guys think this is a demon and you're like hey let me let me get a piece of that also i hope they all got haunted as fuck to be honest so weird like you deserve to have an annabelle situation you dicks hey red hair there you go annabelle and the bell baby now she was also wearing a heavy wool cloak which she still had on her when they found her i want a cloak and also it appears that she was indeed murdered because there was still a cord made of wool that was wrapped three times around her neck.
Isn't it wild that like even BCE, we were just out here killing people. Oh, so much.
Like why from the dawn of time has everybody been like, kill, murder, kill? Always. We've always been the worst.
Yeah, like what is up with this speech? And this was, so it was tied in a slipknot and was likely some kind of belt that they used. She also had a stab wound to her chest.
Oof. And it was near her collarbone or at the base of her throat.
Damn. And the wound had been made by a knife.
That's like a shitty area too. Basically going for the heart, I would think.
Now her face was actually reconstructed in 1992 i saw that and it was using the body it's incredible to look at richard neve who was the artist who did it and like he i can't believe that he was able to do that when you look at the bog body you're like how the fuck did you do that that was my instant thought amazing you see Edie Girl and her reconstruction at the Drenz Museum in Assen, Netherlands. We should go.
We should go. Now, the next one I'm going to talk about is the Cloney Caven Man and the Old Krogan Man.
Okay. So two different people? Two different men.
Got it. But discovered in the same bog.
Okey-doke. So in the same year, too.

In 2003...

What?

...two bodies were discovered within a three-month span of time in bogs in Cloney Caven,

County Meath, and Krogan Hill.

They were found by pea cutters, of course, which is, you know, starting to sound like

a pretty high-risk job if risk includes finding ritualistically murdered corpses on the regular. That's a risk in my book.
Pretty risky. Yeah.
The first, which again was called the Clooney Cave and Man for obvious reasons, that's where he was found, was actually accidentally cut in half by the machine used to dig the peat. Oh no.
Yeah. But his upper body showed that he had been brutally murdered.
His skull was

literally smashed open and his nose, the bridge of his nose was like destroyed. They believed that somebody used a stone axe to hit him in the head and in the nose.
That like gives me a headache. It was three blows to the head and one across the body as well with the axe.
He was also disemboweled. Bitch.
And this is where it gets crazy. His nipples were noticeably cut off.
No, no, no. And this is important, I swear.
Oh, is it? I'll come back to it. I'll come back.
Oh, it is? He was from all the way back to between 392 and 201 BCE. Yeah, where shit popped off apparently.
Definitely popped off with these guys. Literally.
When he was examined after being taken out of the bog, Cloney Caven man's hair actually looked like it was styled. Is that the one that I saw? No, that was a different one.
Okay. This one is actually styled using plant oil they found.
So it was intentionally styled. That's what they used like literally like gel how cool is that isn't that crazy yeah and cool that like the bog didn't mess it didn't mess it up and it was in what looked like a mohawk almost oh shit yeah he was fucking cool he was and the makeshift gel was import had to have been imported from either france or spain because that that specific plant grows.
Yo. Isn't that wild? That is really fucking cool.
I was like, this is really cool. I was like really into this.
This is a weird thing. So the National Museum of Ireland actually used samples of Cloney Caven's hair to determine that he ate a lot of, they were able to use hair to determine that he ate a lot of fresh vegetables.
Good for him. And because they were recently ingested by him, they were able to say he was murdered in the late summer or early fall because that's when they would have been fresh.
Which like, whoa. Summer squash.
That's just so wild. They used his crazy hair to say what he ate.

And then they were able to determine when he died because it had to have been fresh and in season.

That's why prose asks you what you eat.

There you go.

What your eating habits are like.

Look at that.

Always able to take it back.

Hey-oh.

Now, that was the cloney cave-in man.

In the Krogan Hill area, they discovered another body.

This was the old Krogan man in a bog. He was also brutally butchered and dumped there.
He had defensive wounds on his upper arms where he had apparently tried to stop whatever was stabbing him. But he was stabbed in the arms instead.
And apparently part of his torture was that he had hazel branches literally threaded through holes that had been cut out of his arms girl like whoa are those like spiky yeah they're just like branches like bendable branches so they had cut holes in his arms and then threaded branches through them while he was alive.

That is so fucked up.

And they did this.

They put, like, threaded these branches through him to hold him down in the bog while he was being stabbed in the chest and neck.

Oh.

Then.

Then.

His head had been completely cut off his body and he had been bisected, chopped in half. His nipples were also cut off.
And he was from somewhere between 362 and 175 BCE. Are we going to get any explanation about the nip-nips? We are.
Okay. But also they found a braided, I think he was actually naked like completely except for a braided armband around his bicep.
And it was made of leather and had a bronze amulet in it, which is interesting. He was somewhere between six foot six.
Holy. He was a tall drink of water.
Oh, honey. We love a tall man.
Calm down over there. And he was well was well nourished apparently and taking samples from his hair actually proved that he was wealthy enough to eat meat as part of his regular diet which was rare yeah and meant he must have been in the upper echelon out there eating those turkey legs so they agree scientists agree that both of these men were clearly of the upper echelon of social class.
were in their 20s they were not laborers they were well nourished and showed that they had eaten well in their lives they also had well manicured nails oh which could be noticed immediately and this meant that they definitely hadn't worked for a living right they weren't doing manual labor right this could also mean apparently found somewhere else, that they could determine that maybe these people were thieves and that they didn't work for their living, they stole for their living, and that's why their hands were well manicured. Okay.
But they don't believe that with these two because along with how they ate in their hair and they were able to use styling gel, essentially. Imported from fricking like these were clearly not just like thieves these were upper social class wouldn't it be so cool if like eventually we got i mean i don't want to get like too many of these bodies of course but we have so many of them if we got like so many in the same place where we could kind of like trace lineage yeah you know like that'd be so cool i feel like it it could actually happen like we have so much that we're getting from these and it's like year by year as technology and science like right goes forward and just like gets better and better they're getting more and more from these bodies because some of the things that when they would first get them either in the 80s and the 50s and they you know even the 90s they would think one thing but then we get into the 2000s and everything progressed and then all of a sudden they go oh wait a second that wasn't the case because now we know right like some of them there was a couple that they were like we don't know if this cracked skull is from the layers of peat moss crush peat moss crushing their skull or if it was a perimortem injury.

Right, right.

And sometimes they would say they think it's from the peat moss and then later they would

discover, no, that was actually done perimortem because we can see evidence of swelling around

the wounds.

That's crazy.

Which shows that there was bruising, which shows that there was blood flow while it was

happening.

That is just like wild. Which is just, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Now the nipple thing. Please.
Please no, but also please yes. Please no, please yes.
It was important because apparently this led a lot of researchers to believe that these men could have actually been failed kings or people in line of succession who failed to become kings. So if you fail to become a king, they...
Oh, I'm going to explain. They rip your nips.
So are you ready to hear something a little shocking? I mean, usually from you, yeah. I'm going to say a sentence that I didn't know I would ever say.
She's looking nervous. Apparently in Ireland, back in the day.
Our family? Our family. Sucking on a king's nipples was once suggested as a form of submission.
Wait, what? Like, to submit to a king, that is what you did. hot i read something i read something that said isn't it easier just to kneel and kiss a ring like isn't that just like like kiss the ring right kind of like isn't that easy like like you got to get undressed you got to expose your bosom like kings are just whipping their Kings are just horny is what's happening.

Kings are wily. Wily coyote.
Very wily. Wily nipply coyote.
So with that in mind, which I'm sorry you have that in mind now. I apologize, but now we're all here together.
That's just funny. If you sliced off a king's nipples, then you have officially deemed him ineligible for kingship.
so cutting them off this way maybe was a way to remove or even signify the failed kingship. Kings or those in line would be ritualistically sacrificed at times, like way back in ancient times, because if crops failed or cattle got sick or something happened in the village, it was the king's responsibility to sacrifice himself through a ritual to bring back the prosperity to his village did he have to cut off his own nipples he didn't have to cut him off himself but he had to have him cut off oh it's like a lot gosh i gotta yeah i gotta go according to ira the irish examiner ned kelly who is the keeper of antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland, says, quote, cutting them would have made him incapable of kingship in this world and the next.
Well, shit, that doesn't seem fair. Yeah, so you cut it all from here to the netherworld.
They're like, you won't even have nipples when you're a ghost, motherfucker. I'm saying.
But he said there is also the possibility that the nipple cutting was just a degradation thing or a humiliation thing associated with torture and murder. I could see both.
Either way, really bad. And they do believe that with these two, because of everything else, that these definitely could have been nobles and in line of succession or failed kings.
Shit let's talk about a bog body mix-up that ultimately led to a very or more very when in relative to these ones recent murder conviction what yes so this is a bog body mix-up not to be confused with old Greg's downstairs mix-up. May 13th, 1983, Stephen Dooley and Andy Moulds were doing the old peat moss cut and dig thing.
Everybody out here peat mossing. Just all the time.
And they were in Cheshire County, England in the London moss bog. They ended up finding during this process a big ball of peat that was like stuck together and they initially joked that it looked like a dinosaur egg or they were like oh it's like a burst football or something spoiler alert it wasn't it was not but then they cleaned it off it was actually a human skull that was later determined to be a female who was between the ages of 30 and 50 years old.
It was so well preserved that everyone was like, holy shit, this is a recent murder victim. Like, this is not a bog body from like ancient times.
Of course, authorities started looking into recent missing women in the area. This is the 80s, remember? And one in particular started to look like it could potentially fit this skull.
A woman named Malika Maria de Fernandez, who had gone missing in the 60s. And her case had gone cold.
She had never been found. When she had originally turned up missing back in the 60s, her husband, Peter Rainbart, was interviewed.
And due to knowledge of their sour marriage and the fact that he lived feet away from this bog, authorities honestly thought he was possibly the one who caused her disappearance. But they just couldn't gather enough evidence to prove it or really to bring him in for much and keep him.
Now, they had done a full-scale investigation and learned that Fernandez was gone traveling,

the person who's missing,

had gone traveling a lot.

Like, they didn't really

have a close marriage.

Like, things were going wrong.

And during the time

she went missing,

she had threatened

to tell British authorities

that her husband was gay.

Now, in the 60s,

that was considered

a criminal offense in the UK.

Fucking wild.

So he would have been arrested. She had gone missing after this particular fight.
Hmm. Hey, weirdos.
I'm Lindsey Graham from the podcast American History Tellers. And if you're still reeling from Ash and Elena's episode on the Boston molasses disaster and you want to dive even deeper, you're in luck.
My show doesn't usually venture too far into the spooky or creepy, but we've dedicated two full episodes to uncovering fascinating details about this bizarre molasses catastrophe. From the company's negligence to the victim's harrowing stories, we explore how this strange event reshaped industrial safety laws and left an indelible mark on Boston's history.
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Start your free trial on the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today. Whether he was gay or not is not what's at stake here.
Yeah. That is, nobody really knows.
It's whether he murdered someone. It was also the fact that she was going to go to the authorities, whether he was or wasn't, and say he was.
Right, right. So it had been decades, and no one had found a trace of Fernandez.
But Rainbark had been arrested in the interim, and he had been released. He wasn't arrested for that.
He was arrested on sexual abuse against several children. Oh, fuck this guy.
He's an actual piece of shit. Just keep that in mind.
For a second, I was like, oh, I feel kind of bad for him. And then I was like, wow, bye.
That's why I was like, we don't know anything about this guy except that he's a piece of shit. Correct.
And his cellmates had actually come forward and said that he bragged about killing his wife,

chopping her up to pieces and burying her all over his yard.

Now they dug up parts of his garden and yard

and they found nothing of real importance.

So they bring him in for questioning once they found this skull

because it's in the bog next to his house,

it's a woman, and it's in the right age range

as soon as they begin to explain what they have found to him he confessed everything he completely admitted to murdering his wife 20 something years prior yep he told authorities that he had gone into a rage when she threatened to go to the authorities and he had grabbed her and what he said he did was he had shaken her until she died. Doubt it.
Like, okay. Like, she's not a baby, sir.
He said he had immediately gone into problem-solving mode, and he decided he just had to dismember her entire body with an axe, including decapitating her, and he tried to burn parts of her, but it wasn't working, so he threw them in the bog. Oh.
That's why they only found her head so far. Mm-hmm.
He just figured it was a matter of time before they found the rest of her body parts, and that's why he admitted it. Either way, he confessed, and they'd found her skull.
It was a solid case of murder. Wow.
Where's the mix-up? So off they went to search and gather the rest of fernandez's remains that were supposed to be in this bog but searching for hours and days they turned up nothing not one other body part was found so authorities were like shit we we really have to sure up this head we have to make sure you know we really have to like confirm this is her because if we can't get the rest of her body parts we got to have this this for our slam dunk. So Detective Inspector George Abbott had the head sent to Oxford University Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art to be thoroughly examined, thoroughly dated, thoroughly ID'd.
When they returned their findings, they said, yes, this is a woman between the ages of 30 and 50 years old,

but it is also a woman who died about 1,700 years ago.

Dude.

Whoops.

So when Rainbart was informed of this, he of course was like, oh my God, yes, I didn't kill her.

Just kidding.

Phew, glad we cleared that up. Bring out Ashton kutcher because i just punked you whoa i was totally kidding i was playing the long game but they were like no you definitely did it you piece of shit and you can you can admit it to it fuck off yeah bye and his murder charge stood and he was sentenced to life in prison.
Good. They were never able to find Fernandez's real body.
Oh, I hope they do someday. But he did go to prison for life.
He definitely did it. He admitted it to several people, including the authorities.
And he admitted it based on a 1,700-year-old head that he thought was his wife's. That's some wit shit.
is some bog body justice right there that's exactly what that is that is some good vibes coming out and being like we're gonna get some justice for this missing woman i like while also finding a bog body i'm obsessed i thought that like blew my mind that case when i came across that i was like well shit do you think that he buried her where like nobody would find her? Or do you really think he put her in the bog? I think he might have put her in the bog, but it's so big and it's like layers and layers of peat moss. So she might be found someday.
Who knows where he put her? Who knows if he put all of the pieces in the bog and some of them are buried other places? Like who really knows? He said he tried to burn some. He also sounds like a liar, too, though, because they said that.
I think he killed her, obviously. But he said he put her in the garden and they didn't find anything.
Yeah, I think he's a lying sack. Yeah, he's a bullshitter.
Either way, he's in prison for life. Goodbye.
Fuck that guy. Let's get on to more bog bodies.
Shall we? So let's talk about the Lindau moss bog bodies. So in the same bog that they found this body in, they found the remains of a very well-preserved 20-year-old man who later, in 1984, the press apparently named Pete Marsh.
Oh, where'd they get the Pete from? Which, like, okay, press. Yeah.
Like, this is an actual person. Yeah.
Like, maybe don't.

Okay, press.

Let's just keep, like, the naming convention with where they are found.

Yeah. Like, we don't need to add some, like, silly little, like, Pete Marsh.

Like, no.

Okay.

Rude.

Now, this body was another one with manicured nails and a neatly done beard and a neatly done hairstyle.

Nippies or no nippies? Honestly, this one, I don't know if he had. I think he did have nipples, actually.
But he was well-nourished, and he was obviously of a higher class. He had been placed into the bog naked with only a leather armlet around his left bicep.
Hmm. Amulet? I didn't see an amulet, but there was definitely a braided leather, like, something around his leg.
Interesting. I wonder if wonder if that was like a symbol of something back then i don't know they could this is what we get to find out like this is what's so cool about these things is we're seeing all these patterns and different things that are connecting people into like well this must be ritualistic because of this right this is what they did back then it's just so cool but according to b BBC, he was killed with repeated blows to his head.
He was then garrotted. He had his throat sliced open and he was forced to swallow mistletoe.
Shit. Then, still alive, he was pushed with a very severely violent knee to the back while he was kneeling.
And he fell into the bog and drowned in the bog water. Oh, my God.
Yeah. So the blows showed signs of swelling around two of them, which means he was very much alive when they were inflicted.
The last blow was to the top of his head, and it forced skull matter into his brain. They believe, too, this is wild.
They believe that the noose was tightened as they cut his throat so that it would force the blood out quicker and create more of a show, almost spraying it, like, basically spraying it out so brutally that they would bathe everyone around him and him in his blood. Hygienic.
And what's wild is in the book that I was telling you guys about that I'll definitely tag in the show notes. She talks about how this also is really scary and like very interesting because it shows that they had a very good grasp on anatomy.
Yeah. And how the body worked.
And they were able to like bring these people to the brink of death and then pull them back and then bring them again and pull them back like it was very brutal scary very thought out very intricate torture and like to be able to know that if you squeeze on that certain vessel as you cut that it's going to create that wild spray of blood and make it like a show, like theatrical. That's so wild that they were able to think like that back then.
It's insane. And like have that weird control over a human body.
It's just like really creepy. And I hadn't thought of it until Miranda, the author of that book, like brought it up in one of the chapters.
And I was like, oh, you're right. There was also evidence that he had inhaled sphagnum.
So he was very much alive when he was pushed into the bog. He inhaled the bog water.
A lot of overkill with this one. Definitely.
So after that one, we're going to talk about the Grah Bale Man. I believe that's how you say it.
This is a wild injury preserved in time forever. April 26, 1952, peat cutters, shocking, were doing their thing in a bog near Nebelgaard Fern in the village of Graubale, Denmark, when they discovered what appeared to be a very recent corpse entangled in the bog.
It was not very recent. They actually thought that this was like within the last like 10 years.

They were like, this is a very recent body.

And they informed the village doctor and Ulrich Balsev, an archaeologist of this discovery.

When they came to see it, they were like, whoa, this is wild.

And they in turn turned this over to the researchers at the Aarhus Museum of Prehistory. This man was over 2,300 years old.
Oh my God. And he was probably about 30 years old when he was brutally murdered.
He was naked. He had a ton of hair that looks very fiery auburn.
This is the guy that you saw that you thought had a wig on. Okay.
He reminded me of the professor from Harry Potter. Yes.
Right? The hair. You're thinking of Lockhart, right? Yes.
Yep. Yeah.
Lockhart's like crazy hair. You're right.
It's very much like that actually. Wow.
That's wild. And obviously we've learned that this probably wasn't his natural hair color.
Maybe he had Lockhart's hair color actually. Perhaps.
You know, bog gases and shit. He had well manicured nails and his face had preserved, and this is the craziest part of him, his face was preserved in a horrifically pained expression.
I bet. He looks like he was grimacing and his mouth is wide open.
Yeah, because what were they doing to him before? Let's go. Yeah.
So what's most upsetting is the gaping wound in his throat. It's brutal, this wound.
It's not a slice. It's a gaping wound.
What? Someone did it with such force and savagery that they almost cut the head off completely. It was literally hanging on by skin.
What did they do, you think? Well, according to Bog Bodies Uncovered, that book, there was a huge, very intense slice across the throat and then, quote, some small other cuts with a smooth, sharp bladed instrument that struck the cervical vertebrae, severed the pharynx and made a large hole in the mouth. That's how deep it was.
My oh my. It stretched virtually from ear to ear.
Both carotid arteries and the jugular vein were severed.

Oy.

He was also stabbed from behind and they believe that a sword or some kind of very big blade, like a machete type of thing was used. They also found an open wound and a break of his left tibia.
Oh. They were sure this one occurred while he was being tortured and was caused by some blunt instrument being slammed into his tibia repeatedly until not only did it break the bone, but it opened the skin on top of it.

Mama's getting nauseous over here. Mama's literally getting nauseous.
They were also able to find that in his stomach, he had last ate porridge with lots of herbs in it.

And there were signs of him having it ingested ergot.

Which we talked about ergot in the Salem Witch Trials episode. It is a poisonous fungi often found in grains.
It can cause like hallucinogenic like hysteria, essentially. Damn.
And sometimes they think they might have used that in ritualistic sacrifices. They would give this person this like hallucinogenic shit as part of the ritual oh i'm sorry my tibia still hurts yeah you know when you get that like if you hear like oh it hurts i know it hurts you're you're like want to rub your leg i'm too much of an empath so let's talk about the last bog body we're gonna talk about in this one uh is this like a crescendo type of deal um not really i mean it's it's bad it's bad, but it's like they're all pretty bad.
I mean, yeah. So we'll talk about the Haldrumows woman.
She was discovered in 1879 near Haldrumows, Denmark. I hope I'm saying that correctly.
She was found by Niels Hansen, who was a teacher, and he was digging peat when he saw her. She was thought to have died when she was around 40 years old which again would

make her pretty elderly and she looks elderly like she looks like an older woman it was killed around 160 bce she was wearing two what they called skin cloaks but they were like animal skin okay and a woolen cloak and her hair was chopped off almost to the scalp oh uh her right arm had been viciously hacked off

and was found lying next to

her. What are you doing? She also had a long leather, like leather type strap that was wrapped around her hair and then twice around her neck.
Oh, wow. Her left arm had been bound to her body with another strap and her left leg had been hacked at as well.
Why? And it's believed that she was drowned after being abused and mutilated. My God.
Now, that is the Holdermos woman. Bog bodies are insanely fascinating.
The fact that we can tell what they ate and how they lived thousands of years later is insane. Wild.
Like, my brain will not wrap around it properly. When you look at them, and I'm going to cover more of these in another episode just because I can't not revisit this.
It's like very interesting. When you look at them, you just can't come to terms with the fact that that is a 2,000 plus year old human being.
Not at all. Like you can't do it.
Not at all. Because they're not like mummified in the classic sense of mummification.
Like we've heard about, you know, like, like, you know, under ice, some people are preserved for like thousands of years, which is also wild. Yeah.
And like mummies are very well preserved. But like this is just, and this is water.
Well, and this is like natural. This is just this is just when water yeah like it's so crazy and just like the weird like chemicals and like and just the violence associated with the bog bodies is a very interesting thing my favorite part of the whole entire thing was learning that even back then people were using hair gel yeah like obviously you know that because like, the beginning of time, people use, like, berries and shit for makeup.

You don't think about it.

But you don't, especially hair gel.

Hair gel.

Like, I would never think about that.

To style into, like, a faux hawk kind of thing.

So cool.

Wild.

So that is the beginning, at least, of bog bodies.

That was really cool.

I've literally never heard of those before.

Very interesting subject.

So I hope that you guys enjoyed it, too.

Yeah, I hope you did.

And we also hope that you keep listening.

And we hope you keep it

weird. But not

so weird that you make somebody suck your

nipples to make you feel noble.

Bye.

King shit. Thank you.
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