Yeti To Rumble

Spring, 1879. A tall Cree man named Swift Runner walks out of the bush at Egg Lake alone and says his family starved over the winter. Thing is, he doesn't look like a man who's been starving. Russell follows that winter back into the oldest Cree and Ojibwe stories of the wendigo, a spirit of hunger that can never be full, and on to a red rock at Moose Factory where the elders say a heart of ice is buried.

Sources:

1. Gabriel Druillettes and Claude Dablon, letter from Nekouba, July 2, 1661 — The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, ed. R. G. Thwaites, vol. 46, pp. 261–263 (quoted in Cecil Chabot, "Cannibal Wihtiko: Finding Native-Newcomer Common Ground," PhD thesis, University of Ottawa, 2016)

2. Basil Johnston — The Manitous: The Spiritual World of the Ojibway (1995); description quote via Wikipedia "Wendigo"; "indulge its self-interests" quote (p. 224) via "Windigo Violence and Resistance," Humanities/MDPI 2024; "reincarnated as corporations" quote (p. 235) via MDPI and "Wendigocene," Toronto Journal of Indigenous Studies

3. Algernon Blackwood — "The Wendigo" (1910), Project Gutenberg eBook #10897 (setting north of Rat Portage; "My feet of fire!"; "the Call of the Wild personified")

4. Wikipedia — "Wendigo" (Cree/Ojibwe terms, Blackwood popularizing the spelling, Pet Sematary), accessed Oct 2026

5. Hammerson Peters — "Swift Runner" (Mysteries of Canada, 2023), citing Fred Bagley, "The Last of Canada's Cannibals," RCMP Quarterly, July 1942; J. P. Turner, The North-West Mounted Police 1873–1893 (1950); Father Hippolyte Leduc in the Saskatchewan Herald, Feb 9, 1880; Judge Hugh Richardson's report

6. RCMP Veterans' Association Vancouver — "Swift Runner" (Ric Hall)

7. Library and Archives Canada — RG13-B-1, vol. 1417, file 138A (Swift Runner capital case file); "first legal execution which has taken place in the North West Territories" (period report via genealogy index)

8. James R. Stevens — "Zhauwuno-geezhigo-gaubow (Jack Fiddler)," Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13 (arrest June 15, 1907; Globe headline; Sanders, Smith, Lousley quotes; death Sept 30, 1907; Joseph's trial Oct 7, Perry quote; release order Sept 4, 1909; Chief Josias Fiddler, 1989)

September 1961. A Chevy sits dead in the middle of Route 3 in New Hampshire, and Barney Hill is out in a field with binoculars, looking up at a figure in a window that won't look away. Russell and Mitch start there and work through the whole alien field guide: grays, Nordics, hybrids, mantids, Tall Whites, and reptilians. Every era seems to get its own aliens. What that means is the part we couldn't close.

Sources:

1.  Walter N. Webb — "A Dramatic UFO Encounter in the White Mountains, New Hampshire: The Hill Case" (NICAP report, Aug 30, 1965; includes Betty Hill's typed Nov 1961 dream account) — nicap.org/reports/610919hill_report2.pdf

2. John G. Fuller — The Interrupted Journey (book, 1966; includes Dr. Benjamin Simon's introduction and hypnosis transcripts, Feb 22, 1964 session)

3. Ben H. Swett — "Betty and Barney Hill" (first-person account, bswett.com; session dates Jan 4–Jun 27, 1964)

4. Martin Kottmeyer — "Entirely Unpredisposed: The Cultural Background of UFO Abduction Reports" (Magonia 35, Jan 1990)

5. Martin Kottmeyer — "The Eyes that Spoke" (Skeptical Briefs, Sept 1994) and "The Eyes Still Speak" (REALL News, 1998; quotes Betty Hill via Jerome Clark, The UFO Book, 1998)

6. Martin Kottmeyer — "Graying Mantis" (REALL News, May 1999)

7. Jason Colavito — "Alien abduction at... The Outer Limits" (blog, 2012/2014) — "The Children of Spider County," aired Feb 17, 1964

8. Wikipedia — "Barney and Betty Hill" and "The Bellero Shield" (air date Feb 10, 1964), accessed Oct 2026

9. George Adamski & Desmond Leslie — Flying Saucers Have Landed (book, 1953), as quoted by Denver Public Library Special Collections, "The Man Who Met a Venusian (Allegedly)"

10. Budd Hopkins — Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at Copley Woods (book, 1987)

11. The Confessionals podcast — Episode 359, "Extraordinary Contact," interview with Debra Jordan-Kauble (July 27, 2021)

12. Whitley Strieber — Communion: A True Story (book, 1987; chapter 1 and March 14, 1986 hypnosis session)

13. BeyondCommunion.com — "Ted Seth Jacobs: An Interview with the Artist" (Oct 6, 1999)

14. Hawes Publications — New York Times adult hardcover nonfiction No. 1 list (Communion, May 10, 1987)

15. Charles James Hall — Millennial Hospitality (self-published, 1st Books, 2002; fiction disclaimer on copyright page)

16. Paola Harris — "Interview of the Month: Insider Charles Hall and the Tall Whites" (interview, paolaharris.com)

17. Michael E. Salla — "Interview with Charles Hall" (Exopolitical Comment #23, Dec 3, 2004)

18. Wikipedia — "David Icke" and "Reptilian conspiracy theory" (Sillustani 1991, Wogan Apr 29, 1991, The Biggest Secret 1999, Protocols in The Robots' Rebellion 1994), accessed Oct 2026

19. Foreign Policy — "No, 12 million Americans don't believe the country is run by shape-shifting lizards" (Apr 2, 2013) — Public Policy Polling survey

20. Maj. Paul W. Henderson, 100th Bomb Wing, Pease AFB — Information Report 100-1-61 on the Hill sighting (Sept 1961; buzzing "like someone had dropped a tuning fork," heard again near Ashland), reproduced in Webb 1965 and Fuller 1966

21. Project Blue Book Hill file — Form 112 "Additional Item" and AACS Form 96 extract (Pease precision approach radar, 0214 local, Sept 20, 1961; "Time and distance between the events could hint of a possible relationship"), as quoted in Air Command and Staff College Research Study 0450-74 (1974) — nicap.org/reports/0450-74.htm

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Did the people of Easter Island cut down every last tree to move their statues, and starve because of it? That's the story most of us grew up on. Russell, Jake, and Kade check it against the roads, the rock gardens, the rats, and what the Dutch actually saw in 1722.

Sources:
. Terry L. Hunt and Carl P. Lipo — Revisiting Rapa Nui (Easter Island) "Ecocide" (Pacific Science, 2009)

2. Carl P. Lipo, Terry L. Hunt, and Sergio Rapu — The "walking" megalithic statues (moai) of Easter Island (Journal of Archaeological Science, 2013)

3. Carl P. Lipo and Terry L. Hunt — Mapping prehistoric statue roads on Easter Island (Antiquity / related mapping work, 2005)

4. Terry L. Hunt and Carl P. Lipo — The Statues That Walked (book, 2011)

5. Jared Diamond — Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (book, 2005); Science exchange defending ecocide framing (2007)

6. John Flenley and Paul Bahn — The Enigmas of Easter Island (book synthesis)

7. Sean W. Hixon, Carl P. Lipo, et al. — The colossal hats (pukao) of monumental statues on Rapa Nui (Journal of Archaeological Science)

8. Jo Anne Van Tilburg / Easter Island Statue Project — experimental transport and ahu research (EISP publications)

9. Museo Antropológico Padre Sebastián Englert — Mata Moai (moai eye) find, Ahu Nau-Nau, Anakena, 1978 (museum documentation)

10. Claudio Cristino et al. / Tongariki project literature — Ahu Tongariki excavation and 1990s restoration

11. Carl P. Lipo et al. — Megalithic statue (moai) production on Rapa Nui (PLOS One, 2025)

12. Christopher M. Stevenson, Sonia Haoa Cardinali, et al. — agricultural / lithic mulch and land-use studies on Rapa Nui

13. Valentí Rull et al. — climatic-ecological overviews and CLAFS hypothesis (Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2016–2018)

14. Víctor Moreno-Mayar, Bárbara Sousa da Mota, Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas et al. — Ancient Rapanui genomes reveal resilience… (Nature, 2024)

15. J. Stephen Athens et al. — Hawaiian lowland forest / Pacific rat paleoenvironmental comparisons

16. Katherine Routledge — The Mystery of Easter Island (Mana Expedition fieldwork, 1919 publication)

17. Historical summaries of Roggeveen 1722, González 1770, Cook 1774, and the 1862–63 Peruvian slave raids / 1877 population nadir (cross-checked secondaries)

18. Spongebob

It's September 1950, two miles off the Golden Gate. A Navy ship sits in the fog and the crew works hoses on deck and what comes out is not seawater. The cloud drifts inland, mixes with the real fog bank, and from the Embarcadero you cannot tell which gray is weather. That week was Operation Sea-Spray, an open-air bacterial test San Francisco was never warned about.

Mitch's Podcast: The Gamer High Council https://open.spotify.com/show/5MCyP4DEsY6BZNYCeQU8yM?si=6dba3f7a06714e09

Sources:

1. U.S. Army Chemical Corps Biological Laboratories — Special Report No. 142: Biological Warfare Trials at San Francisco, California, 20–27 September 1950 (Camp Detrick, 22 January 1951)

2. Wheat, R. P., Zuckerman, A., and Rantz, L. A. — Infection Due to Chromobacteria: Report of Eleven Cases (A.M.A. Archives of Internal Medicine, October 1951)

3. U.S. Senate, Committee on Human Resources, Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research — Biological Testing Involving Human Subjects by the Department of Defense (hearings, 8 March and 23 May 1977)

4. Nevin v. United States, 696 F.2d 1229 (9th Cir. 1983)

5. Washington Post — Army Conducted 239 Secret, Open-Air Germ Warfare Tests (9 March 1977)

6. New York Times — Type of Germ Army Used in Test Caused Infection Four Days Later (13 March 1977); Judge's Decision Expected Soon in California Germ Warfare Case (15 April 1981)

7. UPI — Supreme Court rejects Nevin appeal (3 October 1983)

8. Leonard A. Cole — Clouds of Secrecy: The Army's Germ Warfare Tests Over Populated Areas (book, 1988)

9. Mahlen, S. D. — Serratia Infections: from Military Experiments to Current Practice (Clinical Microbiology Reviews, 2011)

10. Rebecca Kreston — Blood & Fog: The Military's Germ Warfare Tests in San Francisco (Discover / Body Horrors, 2015)

11. SF Examiner — Years before 1st Fleet Week, Navy quietly sprayed S.F. with germs (Marcus White, 3 October 2023)

12. KQED — The True Story of the Military's Secret 1950 San Francisco Biological Weapons Test (2025)

13. Popular Mechanics — Darren Orf, Operation Sea-Spray feature (22 June 2026)

Halloween night, 1991. Fog on Bray Road outside Elkhorn. A high-school student’s front tire lifts like she hit something soft then there’s nothing on the asphalt. No blood. No body. Then something runs out of the fog straight at her, chest pumping, and gets hold of the car before she can floor it. We walk the Bray Road nights: the roadside kneel, the kid who watched a “dog” stand up, and the county file that already said Werewolf before the papers gave it a name.

Mitch's Podcast: The Gamer High Council on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5MCyP4DEsY6BZNYCeQU8yM?si=ce7e66138f3e4d6a

Sources:

1. Linda Godfrey — Tracking down 'The Beast of Bray Road' (The Week / Walworth County Week, Dec. 29, 1991; scan via Walworth County Community News)

2. Linda S. Godfrey — The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin's Werewolf (Prairie Oak Press, 2003)

3. Dan Plutchak — anniversary / editorial recollections on the 1991 story (The Week, 2006)

4. Archer Parquette — The Legend of the Beast of Bray Road (Milwaukee Magazine, 2020)

5. Adrian Wydeven — The History of Wolves in Wisconsin (Wisconsin DNR)

6. Darren Naish — Werewolves in America; the Tale of Dogman (Tetrapod Zoology)

7. Seth Breedlove / Small Town Monsters — The Bray Road Beast (documentary, 2018)

8. Walworth County Community News — Linda Godfrey obituary coverage (Nov. 2022)

April 16, 2016. Over Mosul. A U.S. recon sensor catches a smooth metallic-looking ball for about one second no wings, no clear engine heat then it’s gone. Seven years later, off Greece, a military IR feed tracks something just above the ocean. The crew writes sharp ninety-degree turns at about eighty miles an hour. Then the lock drops. Both clips are public now. Neither one has a finished name on the file. Tonight: the Mosul orb, the Greece turns, and the paper trail that still ends on unresolved.

Mitch's Podcast: The Gamer High Council https://open.spotify.com/show/5MCyP4DEsY6BZNYCeQU8yM?si=49fedb6cb37c41c1

Sources:

1. DOW-UAP-D33 — Mission Report, Greece, October 2023 / Misrep 9329374 (USCENTCOM MDR 26-0019; PURSUE Release 01, May 8, 2026)

2. DOW-UAP-PR34 — Unresolved UAP Report, Greece, October 2023 infrared video (DVIDS / war.gov PURSUE Release 01, May 8, 2026)

3. U.S. Senate Armed Services Subcommittee — AARO hearing with Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick (April 19, 2023); GovInfo transcript CHRG-118shrg60390

4. NASA Independent UAP Study Group public meeting — Kirkpatrick remarks on metallic orbs (May 31, 2023)

5. Jeremy Corbell / George Knapp / Weaponized — Mosul Orb still release and later full-clip coverage (2023; July 1, 2025)

6. Dustin Slaughter / The UAP Register — FOIA litigation release of Mosul Orb full-motion video (July 1, 2025)

7. The Black Vault — Mosul Orb document archive summary (MC-12 / FMV notes, 2023 reporting)

8. UAP Disclosure Files / PURSUE UFO Tracker — Greece PR34 and D33 file summaries (2026)

9. Contemporary reporting on ISIS control of Mosul through 2016; liberation battle began October 2016

The Mary Celeste left New York on November 7th, 1872, bound for Genoa with ten people aboard Captain Benjamin Briggs, Sarah Briggs, toddler Sophia, and seven crew. Ten days after her last log entry, the Dei Gratia found her drifting near the Azores: wet, disordered, and empty. British vice admiralty hearings in Gibraltar ran into 1873. Surveys, chemical tests, and conflicting theories piled up. We cover the court evidence, the empty alcohol barrels, Arthur Conan Doyle’s later fiction, and why the people from that voyage were never found.

Sources:

1. Vice Admiralty Court, Gibraltar — Mary Celeste salvage hearings (court proceedings, Dec 1872–Apr 1873)

2. Jess Blumberg / Smithsonian Magazine — Abandoned Ship: The Mary Celeste (article, Nov 2007)

3. Royal Museums Greenwich — The mystery of the Mary Celeste (museum essay)

4. Charles Edey Fay — The Story of the Mary Celeste (book, 1942; archival salvage study)

5. Paul Begg — Mary Celeste: The Greatest Mystery of the Sea (book)

6. Brian Hicks — Ghost Ship: The Mysterious True Story of the Mary Celeste and Her Missing Crew (book, 2004)

7. Macdonald Hastings — writing on Briggs and the abandonment decision (quoted in secondary maritime histories)

8. Andrea Sella / UCL — pressure-wave alcohol-vapor hold experiment for Channel Five (2006)

9. Anne MacGregor & Phil Richardson — The True Story of the Mary Celeste (Smithsonian Channel documentary research)

10. Arthur Conan Doyle — J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement, Cornhill Magazine (short story, Jan 1884)

Project 112 and Project SHAD were run out of the Deseret Test Center in Salt Lake City from 1962 to 1973, and the military denied both existed until CBS broke the story in May 2000. Sailors aboard the USS George Eastman and USS Granville S. Hall were exposed to sarin, VX, Q fever, and tularemia. Aircraft sprayed Oahu. One test ran inside Pearl Harbor. In March 1968 a VX release at Dugway Proving Ground drifted 27 miles into Skull Valley and killed thousands of sheep, and the Army paid rancher Alvin Hatch $376,685 while admitting nothing. Mitch and Russell go through the declassified fact sheets, the Senate testimony, and the two studies that complicate all of it.

Mitch's Podcast: The Gamer High Council on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5MCyP4DEsY6BZNYCeQU8yM?si=5f85f7304c814d4a

Sources:

1. U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Personnel — The Department of Defense's Inquiry Into Project 112/Shipboard Hazard and Defense (SHAD) Tests, S.Hrg. 107-861, hearing of October 10, 2002 (congressional hearing record)

2. Institute of Medicine — Long-Term Health Effects of Participation in Project SHAD (Shipboard Hazard and Defense), National Academies Press, 2007 (congressionally mandated study)

3. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine — Assessing Health Outcomes Among Veterans of Project SHAD (Shipboard Hazard and Defense), National Academies Press, 2016; committee chaired by David J. Tollerud (follow-up study; Table 2-1 is the source for test names, dates, ships, and agents)

4. U.S. Government Accountability Office — Chemical and Biological Defense: DOD Needs to Continue to Collect and Provide Information on Tests and on Potentially Exposed Personnel, GAO-04-410, May 14, 2004 (government report)

5. U.S. Government Accountability Office — Chemical and Biological Defense: DOD and VA Need to Improve Efforts to Identify and Notify Individuals Potentially Exposed during Chemical and Biological Tests, GAO-08-366, 2008 (government report)

6. Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Health Affairs) — Project 112/SHAD unclassified test fact sheets, released 2002–2003, health.mil (primary government documents)

7. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs — Project 112/Project SHAD, Public Health and Compensation program pages (agency guidance on eligibility and presumptive status)

8. Public Law 107-314 — Bob Stump National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003, signed December 2, 2002 (statute requiring DoD disclosure to VA)

9. Leonard A. Cole — Clouds of Secrecy: The Army's Germ Warfare Tests Over Populated Areas, 1988 (book)

10. Jim Woolf — Salt Lake Tribune reporting, 1998, on the previously unreleased Army report concluding VX caused the Skull Valley sheep deaths (contemporaneous journalism)

11. Richard Nixon — Statement on Chemical and Biological Defense Policies and Programs, Fort Detrick, Maryland, November 25, 1969 (presidential statement)

12. Military.com — investigative feature on the 1968 Dugway sheep incident, February 26, 2026 (journalism; source for the $376,685 settlement to rancher Alvin Hatch, Rep. Richard McCarthy's May 1969 hearings, and Utah's economic dependence on the military)

13. CBS Evening News — May 2000 investigative reports that first publicly broke the existence of Project 112 and Project SHAD (broadcast journalism)

In 1913, a German army captain wrote down the first account of mokele-mbembe, a creature Congo Basin locals said could stop the flow of rivers. Since then, researchers including biochemist Roy Mackal and engineer Herman Regusters have led expeditions to Lake Tele hoping to prove a living dinosaur survived extinction. We cover the 1981 Regusters sighting, the 1983 Agnagna encounter, the creationist funding behind many of the searches, and why sightings are climbing again today. Nearly fifty expeditions in, the mystery still isn't settled.

Mitch's Podcast: The Gamer High Council on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/5MCyP4DEsY6BZNYCeQU8yM?si=db07686bce744394

Sources:

1. Roy Mackal — A Living Dinosaur? In Search of Mokele-Mbembe (book, 1987)

2. Bernard Heuvelmans — On the Track of Unknown Animals (book, 1955)

3. Redmond O'Hanlon — Congo Journey (book, 1996)

4. Abbé Liévain Bonaventure Proyart — Histoire de Loango, Kakongo, et autres royaumes d'Afrique (book, 1776)

5. Captain Ludwig Freiherr von Stein zu Lausnitz — German colonial-era wildlife survey report (1913)

6. Herman Regusters — expedition account published in Cryptozoology journal and Munger Africana Library Notes (1981–1982)

7. Donald Prothero — quoted in Loxton & Prothero, Abominable Science! (book, 2013)

8. National Geographic — "What's behind the strange rash of 'dinosaur' sightings in the Congo?" (article)

9. IFLScience — "Sightings Of The Legendary Mokele-Mbembe 'Dinosaur' Of The Congo Are Increasing. What Is Going On?" (article)

10. UPI Archives — "An amateur explorer who says he discovered a dinosaur-like..." (news article, 1985)

11. Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World — television series segment on the Powell/Mackal expeditions (1980)

12. Wikipedia — "Mokele-mbembe" (reference article)

13. Wikipedia — "Lake Tele" (reference article)

14. Damn Interesting — "The Tracks of the Mokèlé-mbèmbé" (article)

15. Wondermondo — "Lake Tele" (article)

16. Frontiers of Zoology — "Was a Mokele-mbembe killed at Lake Tele?" (investigative blog post, 2012)

Straight from the Department of War's fifth UAP release: DOW-UAP-D101, the Gulf of Oman gunship encounter from September 2021, and four 2026 FBI FD-302 interview forms that haven't been covered anywhere else. Cold orbs on infrared. A digital video recorder that "inexplicably failed." Red lights along a mountain ridgeline. A witness who tried his thermal optic and got nothing back. This episode goes case number by case number, straight from war.gov.

Mitch's Podcast: The Gamer High Council https://open.spotify.com/show/5MCyP4DEsY6BZNYCeQU8yM?si=b3b09b884daa4549

Sources:

1. U.S. Department of War — DOW-UAP-D101, Intelligence Information Report, "Multiple Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Observed Maneuvering Erratically and In Formation Over Gulf of Oman During AC-130 Gunship Live Fire Training on 8 September 2021" (government document, dated 27 April 2022, declassified 7 August 2026) — war.gov/UFO, release 05

2. U.S. Department of War / AARO — DOW-UAP-PR117 through PR122, Unresolved UAP Report, Gulf of Oman, 2021 (six government video clips, released 7 August 2026) — dvidshub.net

3. Federal Bureau of Investigation — FBI-UAP-D032, FD-302, "Slow-moving Objects," 2026 (government document, declassified 7 August 2026) — war.gov/UFO, release 05

4. Federal Bureau of Investigation — FBI-UAP-D033, FD-302, "Thermally Elevated Aerial Object," 2026 (government document, declassified 7 August 2026) — war.gov/UFO, release 05

5. Federal Bureau of Investigation — FBI-UAP-D037, FD-302, "Multiple Red Lights," 2026 (government document, three pages, declassified 7 August 2026) — war.gov/UFO, release 05

6. Federal Bureau of Investigation — FBI-UAP-D040, FD-302, "Multiple Red Lights," 2026, telephonic interview of the second witness (government document, declassified 7 August 2026) — war.gov/UFO, release 05

7. Federal Bureau of Investigation — FBI-UAP-D038, D039, D041 and D042, digital renderings, Multiple Red Lights, 2026 (government images, released 7 August 2026) — war.gov/UFO, release 05

8. U.S. Department of War / AARO — FBI-UAP-PR007, "Slow-moving Objects," 2026 (government video, 10 seconds, released 7 August 2026) — dvidshub.net

9. U.S. Department of War — PURSUE programme page, presidential directive text, and the archive definition of "unresolved" (government website, 2026) — war.gov/UFO

10. Sean Parnell, Assistant to the Secretary of War for Public Affairs — statement on the fifth PURSUE release (government press release, 7 August 2026)

11. Pete Hegseth, Secretary of War — public statements on the PURSUE releases (2026)