33.19 - MU Podcast - Roots of Vengeance
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Welcome to Mysterious Universe, Season 33, Episode 19. Coming up on the show, we've got the Ayahuasca Trauma Train, the trees of otherworldly experiences, and how fairies bankrupted DeLorean. I'm your host, Benjamin Grundy. Joining me is Aaron Wright. I was feeling cautious about your segment earlier in the day because you told me what was coming up, but now with the Ayahuasca Trauma Train, I'm even more concerned. Yeah, it's a pretty weird title. I've got...

Where Have My Other Mummy and Daddy Gone by Nigel Utton. So it's very a spacey kind of theme. I'm assuming is this some guy who was like, what, a galactic rebirth? Is that the term? That's what I thought. I started going into it and then I just got hit with the most horrific story I think...

I've covered all year. Thank God it's in plus because it's pretty intense. Yeah, the title comes from something his middle son said to him as soon as he could talk. Some of the first words that came out of his mouth to his father, Nigel, were...

where are my other mother and father? Oh, like a reincarnation kind of thing. Yeah. And we've been speaking about on the last plus show, I covered some karma and reincarnation stories. And so I wanted to go into this and see what the whole story was. And of course, Nigel had grown up in a Christian household. He never thought twice about the concept of reincarnation until he's

son had said this to him. And I thought I'd look the guy up. His name sounded kind of familiar. And the first article I found was this one from the Guardian. I sold my house, came out as gay and stood as a green counselor, life after head teaching. And that's him there. That is a disgusting lifestyle choice. It's revolting. It should be illegal. It is disgusting. How dare he become a green? I know, absolutely atrocious life decision, isn't it?

To become a green counsellor. But yeah, he left a little bit out of the Guardian article. A lot, apparently. He left out that he got one-shotted by ayahuasca and decided to leave his three children and his wife and... So ayahuasca turned him gay? Become a gay green counsellor.

That's a little detail he left out. It's like, I had this major life change and turned my life around 180 and, uh,

It's all because of ayahuasca. Look, I mean, some people could say, well, look, you know, the guy clearly had been struggling for a long time. And after the ayahuasca, it allowed him to be honest with who he is and live his truth. But I'm like, no, the guy just opened up a portal to a bunch of demons. And look what's happened to him. He became a green. Well, it does extend onto these concepts we were talking about on the last plus show with some very sort of difficult to conceive concepts.

karmic retributions that he goes into. Right, because on that show, you were talking about the different types of karma, how typically, you know, commonly you kind of think of karma as being like, oh, well, you have an accident or something like that. Well, that's karma, but it goes far deeper and it's far more complex than that, isn't it? Yeah, different categories of karmic retribution and karmic circumstances and that the word translates to action. Yes. And so, you know, we often think of it in the West as some kind of, it's always has a

moral retribution to it, which isn't always the case. But we'll get into it. It turns out to be a pretty wild story from Nigel Arton. What have you got coming up? I'm looking forward to that. Well, I want to go into this really fascinating article that I found today, which pointed me in the direction of this older book, a couple of older books, actually.

There was an article published over at Isle of Weird by Shane. I don't give the full name, but it's Falling Fowl of the Fintona Fairies. Now, this is something that you and I have touched on. We've looked at the work of Yeats, for example. We've looked at the fairy census. And, you know, there's been collections of reports over the years of people in a modern setting encountering what appears to be some type of supernatural entity. But it's very much a...

like a cartoonish kind of representation. People encounter gnomes and they're literally dressed like garden gnomes or people encounter fairies or they've got a Tinkerbell kind of style about them. So because of that, people tend to go, oh, these are just ridiculous stories that are made up because it's being influenced by what people are watching in the media. But I don't necessarily think that's the case, especially with these stories that we've told. But one of the biggest

that comes out of these sorts of stories, particularly we talk about Scandinavia, for example, is that there's this underlying understanding that, oh, I don't believe in fairies, but I'm not going to mess with them just in case they're real. Oh, so you don't, you know, chop down the fairy tree. Correct. Well,

Well, this happened in Scandinavia. There's great examples of where there was kind of this, it's not necessarily a strict belief, but there is this cultural understanding that certain stones, for example, may hold fairy inhabitants, fae folk inhabitants, and that's their home. And so when they build these large roadways, for example, they build around the stone because no one wants to move the stone because of the retribution that could come from the fairies.

Well, this is actually highlighted in the book Sacred Trees of Ireland. And this highlights, there's a collection of reports, and in fact, also going back to Shane's article over at Isle of Weird, is that in Ireland, there's a bunch of contractors, builders, workers, whether they're working for a private company or for the government, that are asked to cut down trees or asked to move stones. And they go, I don't believe in fairies.

But, and then they're always fearful that something's going to happen to them. And it just so turns out- So do they cut down the tree or not? Well, the people that do cut down the trees, which I'll go into in a moment- They're all dead. A lot of them die. Oh, okay.

A lot of them die. Some of the older cases, it's funny because I also wonder if this is something to do with that whole idea of being scared to death. It's like if a belief can be so strong. Nocebo effect. Yeah, the nocebo effect can kick in. And we've spoken about this with the Aboriginal people of Australia where it's like the pointing of the bone by a witch doctor.

people will just literally lay down and die. It's like this weird effect that comes in, but it's not just amongst the Aboriginals. It's amongst numerous cultures around the world that have described this kind of thing. But even back in the 18 and 1900s, there was that book that was written of people that they felt like they'd been cursed or in other circumstances, fairy shot and end up dying. And there's no reason for their death. This is a little bit more extreme than that because this is an example of where

Those previous cases highlight that there's a firm belief, right? That belief causes the nocebo effect seemingly to take place. In your headline, we had how ferries bankrupted DeLorean. Is this the car company? Yeah, the car company. The DeLorean motor company. It's connected to ferries. Yeah, it's connected to ferries. So it's like with this stuff, just because you don't believe, it doesn't mean that it's not real.

and that something may not happen to you. So Isle of Weird highlights a number of these stories. So let's start off with that. And he writes that on the afternoon of the 16th of April in 1950, you have 72-year-old James McEtsby. He was from Fintona Village in County Tyrone. He left his home and didn't come back. Now, this guy apparently was a creature of habit. So when he hadn't returned home by 8 p.m.,

His neighbours called the police. They were genuinely concerned about him. And search parties, they consisted of police and locals. They were organised. They searched the fields. They searched the forests around the village. They searched his home. They called out his name and he made no replies and they found nothing. Except for after hours of searching in the dark, just as the neighbours and the searchers and the police were about to give up and were fearing the worst, that perhaps something had befallen him, that maybe he'd fallen into something dangerous.

James was found alive and well, but he was standing at the site of a recently felled tree.

So I know it's 1950. I know it's 75 years ago, but this is a relatively recent story in a long history of a belief that fairies and fae folk creatures inhabit trees and other natural locations. So what was his story? So his story was that this actually all began around three weeks earlier when there were workmen who were carrying out improvements and extensions within the Fintona golf course. And apparently one of them,

or a couple of them, accidentally destroyed a fairy thorn. So this is a tree which is long held within Irish traditions to be one of these locations, one of these inhabitants for these lodgings, I'm sorry, for these inhabitant fairies or gnomes or whatever you want to call them. Apparently they'd been granted permission by the landowner who was Raymond Brown Leckie to remove an old

an old hedge, but that also in removing the hedge, bulldozed the fairy tree that had stood alone in a field. And apparently it had been there for around 300 years. Wow. Right? So these are, and that's funny with this as well. Many of these stories I'm going to tell you, it's not just some sapling that sprouted up over the last couple of years. These are trees that have been there for so long. Like we're talking 700, 800 years. Yeah. So I was going to ask, that's just-

really the name that they might use for an old tree. They just call it a fairy thorn. Correct. Yeah. But it has a lot of belief connected to it. There's a lot of culture. There's a lot of folklore connected to it. So even though Mr. Brown Leckie was not so fussed about what had taken place, he really wasn't concerned because he didn't necessarily believe, the locals were extremely furious. Apparently, the villagers were in a rage about what had taken place. And

And Mr. Brown Leckie was like, well, look, you know, for me, the hatchet's buried. It was obviously a mistake. You know, they wouldn't do this on purpose. And I'm not angry because there's no risk of revenge from the fairies. I don't believe in them. Many people do, and they're upset about it, but I don't.

But the thing was, is that just because you don't believe doesn't necessarily mean that something may not happen to you. So the fear, though, amongst the locals was so much that it hit the local headlines. There was a local newspaper called the Northern Whig. Great name for a newspaper. And one of the headlines was the uprooting of the fairy thorn has created a certain amount of talk in the district, as many believe that to do so was to court the worst disaster.

disaster. And that seems to be what took place. So there's a book that was published, which is called The Middle Kingdom, which is another book that I'm going to be talking about. This is Dermot McManus. I've touched on this book in the past, but there's just so much in here.

But he writes that a powerful spirit in human form is what a fairy is. And it's something that should be treated with respect. And in some circumstances, a little bit of fear. But you can tell from this case that the owner of this golf course... Shut it down. Well, not that he meant to. And that's the thing as well. It's funny how when we talk about...

whether it's karma or curses or even haunting spells, that kind of stuff, intention does seem to play a very strong role in a lot of supernatural phenomena. And it's like, if you're like, he didn't necessarily have the intention of cutting the tree down. So not really much happens to him, but the people that cut it down,

Well, they did have, even though it may have been without malice, they've done it and they've had the intention to do it. So that may lead to consequences later on. So Shane writes that there are certain trees such as the white horn, the hazel, the ash and the holly that are known to be powerful spirit trees. And to destroy one of these sacred trees is

It's firmly looked upon as being extremely dangerous, if not fatal. And that part is what plays into this kind of stuff, this belief, this ancient belief. Because it's not just simply, oh, you know, I cut down a tree and I'm going to be late for work the next day. It's like...

no, I cut down the tree. I'm going to be dead for work because I've been involved in a car accident where a tree has just suddenly fallen on my car. This is the kind of stuff that seemingly takes place. Now, is it coincidence? Is it just simply that so many coincidences have happened over so many years in connection with a belief system that it's kind of

you know, kind of reinforced itself? Or is it that there's something really to this? And what's pointed out in the book Sacred Trees of Ireland, this is by Christine Zucchelli, she highlights that, look, this kind of belief, even though in her book she's focusing on Ireland, this is something that is, you know, readily recognized throughout cultures all over the world. It's not just trees, it's stones, it's certain locations themselves, it's water. Water plays a big role. And the other thing that comes up a lot in Ireland is wells.

Wells seem to be connected to this kind of stuff. In 1968, a new road was being built between the Donegal villages. In the middle of this proposed route, there was this Scotch tree. Now, this Scotch tree was like this gnarled, moss-covered, old white thorn tree, but they called it a Scotch tree. Now, the tree was due to be cut down.

But because it was a white horn and it was recognized as being sacred to the fairies, the council actually, they couldn't find anyone brave enough to cut it down. So they get Ray Green in. So the council contacted him and apparently he was their usual tree felling contractor anyway. He'd taken down hundreds of trees to make way for that particular road, but he refused to touch that one. And he's actually quoted as saying, I don't believe in fairies, but this is tempting fate.

So this undercurrent, you know, of this belief there. So the second contractor- Why was this particular one special when he had cut down hundreds of others? Because this particular tree, and this is something that was highlighted in Secretaries of Ireland, they actually have a look about them. They seem to be, it's- Is it just the age? Purely the age? It's not just the age. It's also the structure of the tree. And I know it was silly, but remember when we were talking about

the cases of the phantom Bigfoots that were being seen. And some people in that particular investigation were like, check out these trees. You can tell that the tree is somehow connected to the phantom. It's growing at a weird angle. That's what these trees tend to be. Got a personality to it. Yeah, they tend to be. It's like they've been affected by some type of energy. And some of them are kind of intertwined. And they just behave in a way that makes them... And when I say they behave, they grow.

They form in a way that makes them stand out from other trees. So for him, it's like every other tree hadn't been a problem. This one he knew. And there are little factors that come up. Something was described by Christine, which was, let me see if I've got it here in my notes. It was like,

They're usually more thorny. They've got considerably more thorns on them. Some of them have far too many flowers. It seems like it's over the top for the type of species that it is. Or in the other circumstances, it will never flower. And these are sorts of things that people can pick up. So what do they do if no one wants to cut it down? Or what do they do? Well, listen to this, right? So they've got a second contractor in. This is Bob Harrison. He too refused to cut it down. He also said, I'm not saying that I believe in fairies.

But there was something uncanny about that tree. And that's the other thing that comes up. It's not just simply that, oh, it's a tree. It's like people feel something to it. There's like an energy connected to it that even if you're not psychic or anything like that, it's just like,

This feels different to other trees. When did this take place again? This is the 60s, right? This one was 1968 that this took place. I wonder if you'd have the same problem today considering Ireland's mass immigration. You just bring in some African guy to do it. That's actually a really good question. And then does anything happen to them? Because they don't have the cultural background? Well, actually, well, it might. Connected to

fairies it might and that will come up in a moment um but they finally they contracted a well they contacted a number of contractors and each time they refused to take it down so the council finally just gave up and actually rerouted the new road around the tree but listen to this at a cost of six months to the project and 1.5 million euros imagine that today yeah it's a huge but

But you're also right. Imagine a council today. I know councils spend ridiculous amounts of money on stupid things, but saying, no, we can't get anyone to take the tree down because they're worried it's inhabited by a fairy. So we're just going to spend another 1.5 million euros to take it down. But as pointed out by Christine in Secretaries of Ireland, she's like, there's actually things that you can do.

There's these little rituals that you can do. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Usually you can bargain with the entities. You bring out some witch who says, look, you can have this nice new tree over here. And there's some kind of arrangement. It seems to be a little more...

complex than that. You can't just, there's not really like a soothsayer that can come along and speak to these, although some people claim, but there are like- Sacrifice a pig? I don't know. No, it's not like that. There's, there's famed traditions though, like farmer's traditions. So what you do is if you've got a tree on your land and you acknowledge that it might be the home, you take a boulder of like a meat, a usual sized boulder, like size of a football or something, and you place it at the bottom of the tree and you kind of like to say, ah, well, if it's here in the morning,

then I won't cut you down. And so if you go inside and come out the next morning and the boulder has moved or something like that, then it's like, well, then you've been given permission to cut the tree down.

But if it's not moved and you cut the tree down, well, then there's consequences. So this comes back to an event that took place in 1920. This was a Father Dennis O'Hara, and he wanted to actually build a small rural hospital for the people of the local county. Now, Father O'Hara had raised all the funding. He'd secured the site for the hospital. You know, a rather complicated thing to do, even though despite there was less red tape back in 1920.

But that wasn't the issue. The issue was that the field or the land that he had acquired had not one but two fields.

alleged fairy trees on it. And no matter where the architect positioned the hospital, either one or both of the trees had to be cut down. So this is a complex kind of thing for him. Now, both Father O'Hara and the architect were actually bothered by this prospect. They both had this belief that this is a dangerous kind of thing, but more so from the point of view that they couldn't find anyone in the parish that was willing to bring these trees down. The belief was so strong. So eventually,

They find a man in a neighboring town to do the work. So much like what you just described. Like, yeah, I mean, Ireland's, you know, basically opened up its borders and let everyone in. They get a neighbor in who doesn't seem to hold the same beliefs. A few hours after cutting down the trees, he suffered a massive stroke and died. Oof.

So, yeah, it's like the whole, I noticed in many of these reports, there's a lot of strokes. It's like they seem to follow the same kind of, it's just, look, people suffer strokes. You know, it happens and there's coincidences and you can see coincidences in data. It's like, but just so many of these reports seem to follow the same pattern.

I don't know. It's like the same pattern that makes you go, is that what fairies do? They're all getting myocarditis or something. Yeah, it's really strange. But there were also several other mishaps and the hospital was never completed. It's like it was done. It wasn't just simply the fact that they never built it. How are these fairies going to go? There's a wide range of places. That's enough with these fairies. Let's just raise them to the ground. What are they going to do?

Destroy you. This is a war with fairies. Destroy you and your family and invade your house and cause trouble for your family, follow you through your ancestral lines. Import some temporary workers, you get them to cut the trees down, send them back. But it doesn't work that way because you're the one that had the intention.

It doesn't matter if someone else does it. You're the one that had the intention. What if I use some kind of shell company to cut the trees down? Some type of weird voodoo shell spirit company to protect you. No, I don't think it works that way. So Shane writes that in Fintona, no one doubted that the destruction of the fairy thorn had been unintentional, but what James had done was no accident.

So we're going back to the original report, right? So the first guy, James, that we were talking about. Yeah, what happened to this guy? Why was he missing? So apparently there's this tree that was taken down. I don't know if it was from the same day or maybe he went back later. It doesn't really matter. But he bought wood.

From the fairy tree, from the contractors. Right. So the contractors had cut this tree down. He bought the wood and he set it on fire. He put it in his fire. And apparently from the moment that James put the wood on his fire, strange things began to happen in his home. Oh boy. Invisible bells would tingle. Small creatures which resembled wasps would appear and dart about his house.

But it's like, hang on a second, you've just brought a curse upon your house with this stone. In fact, this is something as well that was highlighted by Christine in Sacred Trees of Ireland. The wood seems to carry an energy of some kind, and it can both have negative and positive kind of connections to it. So in this particular case of what happened to James, he set fire to this wood and it released a bunch of gnome-like spirits or elf-like fae folk spirits inside his house.

There are these old reports and much of what Sacred Trees of Ireland highlights is like these old, like what, 1100s, 1200s up to the 1700s journals of priests, for example, who would journal and diarise what was going on.

And that would obviously diarize some of the customs and the beliefs of the time. But there was this one belief that the wood of certain trees held a certain energy that could actually grant you immortality and could cause you to be able to heal rapidly. So people would seek out these trees. So how would you use that? Well, what they would do is- Hug the tree. Not hug the tree. You need to hold a piece like a talisman. So they would seek out these trees and there would be people that would kind of act.

to bring people in and kind of guide them to the spirit. So that's the soothsaying kind of element that does occasionally come up. And they would then do an offering or something that would say, well, can we cut off this limb? Can we remove this or that? And in fact, some of the reports also highlight that farmers setting their intention, right, they won't even think about it. They'll go onto their land and go, oh, I need to plow that land or I need to cut down that tree kind of in the distance.

And then the following day when they've got all their equipment and they're ready to go and cut it down, they find that the tree has been pruned perfectly that would allow the tree to stay there. Okay. So it's like the intention that the farmer had somehow was picked up by the inhabitants of that tree and they themselves had pruned it. It's not like someone's just going to, it's a weird coincidence that just someone randomly comes and does constructive vandalism and fixes a tree for you. But going back to this belief, right? If you cut off the limbs of these sacred trees, you could turn it into

a talisman. There's this story, I think, from around the 1200s, maybe 11-1200s, of where a priest recorded that there was a hanging that was to be done. There was an execution that was to take place. The person who was accused of the crime and apparently found guilty was taken to the gallows and he was dropped. He just hung there. He was alive. It didn't break his neck. It didn't cause him to suffocate. He's just like,

Okay. Looking at his watch. Yep. We're going to get this done. Apparently they did it eight times, seven more times. What was the problem? So he had a piece of wood under his tongue from this immortal or immortality tree. The executioner removed this piece of timber from under his tongue. They dropped him and he died straight away.

Well, obviously it worked the next time. Yeah. You still haven't explained why this guy went missing. This is the longest time I've ever seen you tell a story. Like, yeah, it started with him missing. What?

Why was he missing? We got to the point where he was burning wood in his home. What's that got to do with him going missing? Well, if we don't forget, right, he's burning wood in his home. It released weird things into his house, including weird bells going on. He's actually unfazed by this. And so what he does, he continues to burn the wood from the fairy tree. And in fact, he'd burnt everything. When he'd burnt everything, he went back to where he'd gotten the wood on Sunday, the 16th of April and got more. Good.

This is not based. This is actually for all hearty. It's folly. So after spending an untroubled afternoon gathering wood at the site, James tied his spoils with a rope and began to drag them home. But as he reached the spot where the old fairy thorn had stood, he suddenly lost his ability to move. He's quoted as saying, I was rooted to the ground. I could not move a foot. And then I tried to cry out, but to my consternation, no sound came out. I was completely dead.

powerless. Now, while frozen like this, James claimed that strange things began to happen around him. He could hear the tinkling of bells that had been haunting his home for the last few weeks. And then he claims two fairies came to him and then a large white house appeared. What? So you know how we did those stories in the past of people coming across like these phantom homes in the British Isles? It's like

It's described in the same way, this strange, large white house. Did he give a description of the faith? No, he doesn't. He just says that this house itself was lit up from the inside and the front door was slightly ajar.

Almost like beckoning him. But he's still paralyzed. He's still paralyzed. He said, I tried to reach the door, but I couldn't. And so he stayed there throughout the night. Now, as he's standing there paralyzed, still with the wood tied behind him, he says, during the night, I became aware of searchers shouting my name and I tried to call out to them. But the strange paralysis continued to silence me. James believes that he was held like this for at least two hours.

his hands clasping tightly the rope the whole time. Then at 11.30 p.m., some of the searchers found James standing motionless in the forest. Their arrival seemed to break the spell or whatever it was, and James was able to follow them back to the village where he went back to his home and his life seemingly unharmed by his strange adventures. And I presume they didn't see the house, obviously. No. The house fade away at some point? That's correct, right? So he actually apparently, he reported this to the police.

And Shane writes here that it's fair to say that the police were skeptical. There was a Sergeant Boland who had led the search for the missing man. He confirmed that James had been found at the site of the fairy thorn tree. This is what he told to the local journalist for the Northern Whig newspaper. And he said, I must say, I heard no bells and I saw no house. And yet this is something that he did. Now, if we go back to Sacred Trees of Ireland and those reports,

There are many reports of where, not a lot, but I should say there are, I shouldn't say that's many, but there are numerous reports of where you've got, it's like a brother and a sister that will go out playing in the woods or a family that will go out and one of them will see something like a house or an entity or a creature or something like that. But the rest of the family or the other people won't. It's like this weird thing in that one person. Now it can't just simply be that that person's

And it's definitely with children, right? Because I know that children are viewed as having the propensity to be more likely to make something up and maybe. But with these reports, the parents know their kids. They know when their kid's lying. They know when their kid's making up a story. And it's highly unlikely that the kid is either drunk or on hallucinogens.

because that's the argument that's often put forward. And it's like, well, no. And if you go back to these old reports as well, normally the family, much like we do today, but like because of modern sewer and sanitation practices, we're not exposed to the same risks. But back then it'd be like, oh, there was like ergot poisoning in the local well and the water supply. Pretty unlikely. You know, it's pretty unlikely. But even if it were to occur, the entire family would be affected, not just one person. So this suggests that they are, they're seeing something. So, um,

Apparently, the locals believed James' story. And apparently, there's some evidence as well that he may not have been the only recipient of the fairy justice because two months after James' encounter with the fairies, the Northern Whig reported that the bulldozer responsible for uprooting this tree had mysteriously and unknowingly tumbled off a lorry while it was being moved to another site. ♪

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Look, that could happen as well, but that fits in with a whole heap of other stories where the fairy justice isn't just with the individual. It's also with inanimate objects connected to people around this. And whatever the truth of this strange tale, the fate of the bulldozer, the people in the town firmly believed that there was something going on and they were taking no risks with their new and improved golf club. So one year later, when the work had been completed, the club members actually came

replaced the fairy tree with a special variety of thorn chosen apparently for its sacred connection to fairies. And the club's captain, a Mr. F McCaffrey, said that he hoped that the fairies would now look kindly upon their gesture.

and obviously not trash things and cause trouble for them. So I thought, yeah, this is quite intriguing, these sorts of encounters. So I went and I dug a little bit more through sacred trees of Ireland. And from the very beginning, she highlights that, look, there's old texts, some of the old surviving texts. There's a legal poem on the rights and duties of a king. This is composed by a 17th century anonymous scribe. But he documents the veneration of sacred trees in Ireland

in Ireland and even highlights penalties for the felling of sacred trees. This goes back, at least this is documented, back to the 1700s. Why wouldn't they be those? Trees are so strongly connected to human beings because they've met our basic needs for a long time. Trees, in a way, have allowed us to actually become the society that we are. They provide shelter and firewood.

timber and wattles to build houses, huts, bridges, fences. And even later on, they've helped in mining and metalwork when it was developed because timber was used for smelting ore. They've served this purpose for a long time. So you can see why this

folkloric relationship has built around these things and that there might be an animism connected to it. It's like this belief that's come up that it's not just the tree, it's the inhabitants, the spirit of the tree. But there's this story as well that I found to be intriguing. Apparently popular amongst medieval scribes was this motive that if you...

It's not even that the tree itself, right? The reason why the tree stands out is because the tree itself has a special origin story. In medieval times, these scribes described these fairy trees that lived for hundreds of years as actually growing from the staff or walking stick of a saint.

So a saint or someone who would be very high up and revered by the local community would come along and they would stick their staff into the ground. It would take root and it would grow into a tree. And apparently this story is reminiscent of the legendary origin of the famous Glastonbury thorn in England. This is a hawthorn tree which grew from the walking stick of Joseph of Arathia, who came to England as a metal merchant

accompanied by the child Jesus. Oh, that's cool. So it's got this weird connection to it. Apparently when Joseph drove his staff into the ground on Christmas Eve to pray with his followers, God responded by causing the staff to bud before them and grow into a tree. Apparently even more recently, plants grown from the cuttings continue to convey good luck and that sort of stuff. Now he needs a new staff.

He does. I'm sure that's not a difficult thing to get a hold of. But there's also this other idea as well that I was mentioning before, the talisman effect of these things. But some of these stories are rather remarkable. So there was a man apparently who had unknowingly received these essentially shoes, kind of like clog things that had leather attached to them, that had been taken from a felled fairy tree. Well, guess what he died of? Dunked.

He dunked too many people? Well, maybe, but what did he die of? A stroke. A stroke. Yeah. He puts the shoes on, immediately dies of a stroke. So they didn't give him magical jumping powers or anything? No, nothing like that. All he got out of it was death. Yeah, pretty much. This is what happens with these things. Like this stuff is- Yeah, these fairies suck. Yeah, they seem to be, they can be quite sinister. Like you've got to pay them. It's like, it's really awkward. You've got to pay them this really high level of respect, even if you-

believe in them. And if you don't, you're done. Like, you're completely done. So we can't have any old trees anywhere because there might be fairies in them and they'll curse us if we touch them? Maybe. So there's this story of apparently a well. This is St. Molling's Well in County Kilkenny where a tree which has protective virtues is

allegedly also grew from a saint's walking stick. It was, however, considered extremely dangerous to profane this tree, and local law knows of a man who chopped some branches for firewood only to return home to find that his house had died of a stroke. No, his house burnt down.

His house burnt down the moment that he returned home. It's like even before he got back. Now you can go, is that a coincidence? How did his house burn down if he was going to get firewood? Because it's like the intention. He's cutting it down because he needs the firewood and the fairies are like, well, you want a fire? We'll give you a fire. And that's what they tend to be as well. It's this weird kind of irony. It's like this ironic punishment that's connected to this kind of stuff. It's like, oh, you want firewood? Oh, we'll give you a fire. Burn your house down. I don't like them.

We need to start a fairy hate league. Which is not going to gel well with my segment coming up, I agree, but...

Some kind of fairy hate league should be in order. Like an offshoot of the alien hate league. Yeah, we could have a subcategory of people that could join. I think that could work. And what happens if you want memberships to both? We'll offer a discount on memberships to both. That works. There's a 16th century biography that relates that when a saint's oak at Kells had been fallen, some bark was taken. Oh, this is the one. I'm sorry. That's the one where, yeah, it was to tan leather for these clogs and turned into a walking boots. The unfortunate man who... I'm sorry, he didn't die of a stroke.

It's even worse. He was smitten with leprosy and then died. And then died of a stroke. And then died of a stroke. A related local legend told of a man who took no chances when he needed firewood during a severe storm. There was a huge ash tree in the townland, and it was known that this particular tree apparently had been in ancient times a giver of nutritious honey or something.

like that. But this was a sacred tree. But in one winter in late 1930, fuel was scarce, and the man decided to cut it down. The night before he intended to fell the ash, he left his hatchet at the tree, I'm sorry. And when he found the hatchet still there in the morning, he took it as permission from the spirits to cut down the tree. He cut down what he needed from it and left it. So this highlights the idea that it's this intention thing.

He asked them. He followed this protocol, and he was fine. And it was said that when people began cutting a sacred tree for firewood or to remove branches in a way that would have detrimented the tree, apparently anyone that did this and didn't ask for permission, they would be hit with sudden pains. They would hear strange voices. And if they themselves did not experience death, their horses and cattle would die.

as a warning sign. Yeah, you're right. It does all link back to the intention and the respect that's given to the other world. It goes back to the native hunter cliche where they thank the spirit for

for their bounty before slaughtering them or before, you know, making the final kill. Yep. This idea of the acknowledgement and respect to the spirits, which is obviously a very old way of thinking that has been lost. Yeah. Uh, there was another one here, which relates to, uh, this was stone. Actually, there was a shrine that had a sacred stone. Uh, apparently the stone, much like what we described with the timber before this stone was reputed to cure headaches, uh,

and had a healing, like it was connected to this well, had a healing well next to it. And there was a hawthorn tree there as well, right? So there's this wonderful stone with this, the entire site,

has got some spiritual significance to it. But in the 19th century, the landlord wanted to end pilgrimages to this shrine and set fire to the tree. Probably not a good idea. Folklore recalls that the man was sitting in his armchair watching the tree burn when suddenly he died the moment the thing was set alight. Probably a stroke. It doesn't say stroke in this circumstance, but I'm going to go with leprosy stroke. Reminds me of Philip Coppin's writing about ancient mining as well, where he said in the Bronze Age, in the ancient Greeks as well, they would...

They would have some kind of acknowledgement and respect. They would send in like a priest or some kind of shaman or

That's right. Into the mind. Like before even breaking the first stone, there would be some kind of ceremony giving thanks to the mountain, some kind of conversation with the mountain spirit to get permission to take the oar. There was always, you know, some kind of, um, at least acknowledgement of the spirit. It seems like in some way there's almost a harmony there. It's like a harmony between the humans that inhabit the land and the land itself. Um,

But in this modern way, because we've dismissed these kind of practices as being superstitious, it's like we just go ahead and do it.

And I wonder if, though, that is to the detriment. Because people wouldn't view it this way. If you've got a modern mind, and there's a bunch of deaths associated with it because some accident takes place or something, it'd just be, well, that's bad luck. There wouldn't be any consideration given to it of, well, did you follow the spiritual aspects of it? Which obviously to a lot of people would seem to be absurd. But these practices, at the very least, in the old country, Ireland and Britain,

Even though people have that phrase, I don't necessarily believe, they still believe enough that they follow through with these rituals. And there must be something to it. It's like this stuff has been happening for thousands, like hundreds and thousands of years. Oh, yeah. It's only the last. At least 8,000 years. It's only since the Industrial Revolution that we lost these ideas. Yeah, that we've really stepped away from it. Now, this book continues. It goes through a whole collection of different types of trees. It talks about festival trees. It talks about, you know, trees of death.

These are ones, and obviously, where people used to be hung from them. I'm assuming that you'd want to ask if you can hang someone from a tree for the fairies because you don't want that kind of happening. There's ancestral trees, the return of the soul, all this kind of stuff comes through. And these are trees that are hundreds of years old that seem to have these ancestral connections through them. But I'll link to the whole thing in the show notes. You can go and pick up this book from Amazon and you can have a look. But what I wanted to get onto a little bit later was some of these other cases where it becomes quite

unusual. There's one example here where there was in the Killeen of Durney, this is in the area of East Clare, there's a legend that apparently there were two majestic ash trees. One of them died eventually from natural causes and fell into the adjoining river and was carried downstream. A carpenter

So without any intention whatsoever, a carpenter came across this tree. He was completely unaware of its provenance. Like he had no idea where it had come from. He'd just found this tree floating in the river that had died of natural circumstances and was floating along. Well, he built a coffin out of it, somehow amplifying its energy because he became the very person buried in it. Of a stroke. Of a stroke. It doesn't say that, but there's a little asterisk there. So I think that means of a stroke.

So isn't that fascinating? It's like he created a coffin out of a magical tree and then it ended up being his coffin. I just like... Who was the coffin for? Maybe it was for him the whole time. Oh, I doubt it. No, no, no. That's the suggestion. It's like there was no...

his death didn't appear to be apparent. And yet once you mess with one of these sacred trees, who just goes and makes a coffin for no reason, what they did, what timber was expensive. It's what they would do. Um, so of course the ancient belief in the existence of another order of beings has been around for a long time. This can be traced to every part of the world. She writes, um,

And it was generally believed in those olden day times that these otherworldly dwellers are thought to be invisible most of the time, but they certainly have the ability to appear and interact with mortals, often presenting generous gifts to those who met them with respect, but also severely punishing those who did not, some of which the cases we've highlighted. But it's true, there were gifts that were given. In fact, one of them that I was going to highlight here for the notes was that there was a man who...

actually had come across one of these trees on his property. And upon deciding not to destroy it for whatever reason, he went and dug elsewhere. So there was this tree and he was going to build his house and his foundations. And he's like, no, no, no.

this is a fairy tree. I'm just going to be very careful. And he kind of bowed to it and then stepped away from it. He started digging. As he's digging, he's ding. He's like, what? And he keeps on digging down. Treasure. Yeah, he found a bunch of buried gold coins. Awesome. That had been left by some, apparently someone else. Pirates. Yeah. I know that I like the British Isles had, you know, some pirate in their waters, but I don't know this again, it fits in though with this ancient idea that it's like, because he respected that tree and he didn't take it down, they rewarded him. Weird twist. True.

Treasure was cursed. The treasure gave him leprosy. Probably did, actually, because it could carry the bacteria. So aside from having solitary positions, fairy trees were often thought to be distinguishable by their strange appearance, as what I've highlighted. So the physical traits would actually vary throughout parts of Ireland, but they tended to have these consistent things like those more intense thorns or completely no thorns whatsoever. You could discern from their unusual formations and their long trunks and the branches starting higher up that these were fairy bushes. But these trees...

Funnily enough, despite many of these tales that I've been telling you, were considered to be indestructible. There were stories of these fairy bushes continuing to grow after they'd been uprooted, cut down, branches cut off, had been set on fire at night, yet the very next morning they would be back alive.

blooming like a beautiful tree. The lone bushes of Ireland are generally thought to mark the assembly places of other worldly communities. So this is why it's like, not only do you have to pay respect to these things, you have to be wary of them.

because this is where these entities that can manifest and they have the ability to be invisible, but they can interact with us, whereas we don't have the same capabilities. And many people have reported that they've noticed enchanting music coming from these particular trees. There's lights around particular trees at nighttime, further contributing to this idea that there are elementals connected to these things.

Now, apparently though, fairies are said to have been seen piling cut off branches from carts and from fires. Like they'll actually go and recover firewood

the branches that have been taken down from their trees. Apparently there's stories that exist of fairy trees that have been marked to be cut down, just suddenly disappearing. So not only are they actually modified, like a story of what you want. Making an escape in the middle of the night. They just take it. They secrete the tree away. Fairies are also said to have evacuated entire areas following the destruction of their homes or trees. There's a lovely story recorded in the 1930s

This is from Donegal. It tells of a man who intended to cut a fairy bush down because some of these branches were blocking his way. When he approached the bush, he found that the fairies had removed all the offending branches. So this is the one that I was telling you before. But this ties in with this reward that comes through as well because he decided not to bring this thing down. He was rewarded.

But also to avoid unwittingly interfering with the fairy tree, caution is taken to ascertain whether or not the bush can be removed without consequences. And that's what I was describing to you with the making of, you know, giving a gift of some kind. But there was one story that really stood out that shows this hubris and arrogance that comes with, you know, mocking this kind of stuff that ties in a way to this weird irony of punishment that these things have. So there was one particular man

who had decided that he had plenty of firewood, but for whatever reason, he decided that he wanted firewood from this particular fairy tree. And despite the fact that other villagers and people around him warned him and they said, no, no, no, don't go and cut down that tree. There's fairies in there. He didn't care. He's like, that's superstitious nonsense. So he runs over to the tree and starts cutting into the tree. Now, apparently as he's cutting into the tree, from it burst a blood-like material. But not only that- Couldn't be sap. What?

Well, of course, sap does look red, but there are stories, and I'll come across a couple of those in a moment. There are stories of people claiming that it's not sap, that there's actually blood in these particular fairy trees, and it transmutes, it changes, right? It kind of splats out, and then it

It changes. But in this particular circumstance, you would think that that was like a warning that was given to him to avoid, you know, it's like, okay, this is definitely a fairy tree because trees shouldn't have blood in them. He persisted. But as he held the axe over his head, the axe head fell off and split his skull in half.

or split his skull and obviously killed him, caused a massive injury. So did he die of a stroke? He died of a stroke, yeah, but it was a stroke from the axe, the axe head hitting him. But do you see this weird irony? He was cutting down firewood and the very instrument or tool that he was using resulted in his death. It's just like...

The fairies use what's available to them. There's this one particular story that comes from the 18th century of a farmer in County Mayo, where apparently he was trying to widen a lane on his land. He suddenly became ill. And this is actually the tale of taking the warning of the fairies as well, because I know we've described them as being rather aggressive and quite nasty. They do give people warnings. There are warnings that come. So when he was trying to widen this lane on his land, he suddenly became ill.

ill when he came to a certain distance from a particular thorn. So the man recovered a couple of days later. He went to resume his work on the same lane, but this time starting from the other side. As soon as he got near this bush once again, he fell ill and was forced to stop. It took the man a few more failed attempts before he realized that a little thorn was the cause of his trouble. He realized that this was a fairy tree. He left it alone. And from that point on, he was okay.

It's like it was given a warrant and he actually listened to it. I hate to think what would have happened to him if he had actually removed it. There's also in 1929 –

There's a publication called Island's Own. It reported that a stream of blood had come from a holly bush in the same county, County Mayo, when cut by a local man. What's even more unusual about this, though, is that he stopped and returned to his farm. And what I told you before is that sometimes the fatal effects are not from the person cutting the tree, but from their livestock. He returned home and found that his animals had been choked by a tree.

What? So it's like he tried to cut down this tree. He found out it was a fairy tree. It spewed forth some type of blood type material and then goes back, finds his cow dead. How can you tell if your cow's been choked by a tree? Because it was actually like in the fork of the tree. So I think cows do that, right? I've seen some of those videos. Idiots. Yeah, they do that thing. So this thing was dead. Like a coincidence that he attacked by, you know, without unwittingly, like we hadn't paid any attention to it. He'd just cut it down. Uh,

Apparently, that was a man who was killed by his hatchet. But in the 1950s, during roadworks in North Clare, a foreman threatened to sack one of his labourers if he did not cut down a conspicuous but obstructing thorn. Reluctantly, the labourer began to soar, but when blood spurted from the bush, he could not be persuaded to continue his task. I've got a story that kind of relates, a personal story. This idea of this kind of karmic justice coming back

At a distance as well. At my studio at home, the other day I went to the studio in the morning and I opened the fly screen doors and on the cover of the fly screen doors was like a million spiders, like little baby spiders they had just hatched. And I think, gross, this is disgusting. So immediately I get the insect spray and I'm just like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no. I get why you did it, but I wouldn't do that. Yeah.

I did it for like 20 minutes, went through the whole can. It was disgusting, like dead baby spiders everywhere. Then I cleaned it all out and got rid of the mother spider and just cleaned it all out. I thought that was gross. That was disgusting. I spent the whole day working in there, fine, don't see another spider. That night, I go to bed, have an early night, have a good sleep, wake up, I'm covered in spider bites. Really? Like spider bites on my elbow, on my legs, like all over me.

freaking spider bites now there isn't a spider in my house no i know your house like i've seen all the um like the fly screening you have and all the we just had the pest guy come through and spray it's no spiders in the house but i kill all these spiders because you've got like bushfire mesh which stops anything getting in your house that night i have and as soon as i wake up and see all the spider bites i think about the genocide of those baby spiders i had done the day before yep

And I'm just like, that's spider karma. So it's the same kind of thing with the trees. Well, I mean, this really ties in. I was thinking when I was reading a lot of these stories, it kind of ties in with like, even though these are probably elementals, right? That's an overarching term that you could use for them. But they're nature spirits. Like there's a different form of nature spirits. And these things, even though they're living in these things, it's also like they seem to have a role. They have a task and it's protecting this stuff. And when you mess with it and upset the balance, it's like there's consequences that come with that. What am I supposed to do? Just...

Just kill the spiders? I guess I could have just left them. Yeah, wait for them to move on. And they eventually would have left. But all they wouldn't have, they would have gotten inside my office. Yeah, I know. It's really hard. Like, it's really hard. No, it's kind of easy. No, I don't know. Just kill them. Well, the thing is, we live, and particularly where you live, it's like you live in Bug Central. So I get it. Like, you'd probably get enough of it where you're like, that's it.

it. It's kind of a principle that you could apply to the trees as well, is that human beings need to be able to live with the dignity of being a human being, which means, yeah, if I find a spider in my house, yeah, I can try and avoid it and try and catch it in a jar. I do that. But it's like, I can just kill it. I can just kill it and keep my house clean if

pests, right? It's the same principle when you're a farmer and you need to plow a field to feed human beings and there's some old tree there. It's like, what's more important? Some thousand-year-old tree or human beings that need to be fed?

I think the thousand-year-old tree. No. Because human beings are more important. But think about it, right? So with many of these stories, what becomes abundantly clear, right? And we've got the benefit of reading this concise kind of, you know, critical analysis of these stories. But there's like for farming communities,

It's like, there's an understanding that look, you can touch all these trees. You can have all these trees. You can do whatever you want with these. Just leave this one alone. And that's the difference, right? I think it's like, yeah, like as human beings, we can touch all this stuff, but we don't have to grab everything. Or if we want to get that particular tree, pay your respect.

Like be respectful in what you're doing. And that's all completely gone now. Do a little ceremony. I don't know if you need to do a little ceremony. Wave the, what's the thing that you burn? The sage. Wave the sage smoke over it. Then you chop the thing down. Well, but you wait for a sign, right? And if the sign is as well that, you know, like you can't do it, you shouldn't do it. But look,

these stories, there's a consequence. And in fact, there's a chapter in here called the fairy vengeance. This is what highlights why this stuff is so dangerous. In the 1940s, there was a tale that was heading around Hilltown in County Down of a woman who broke some twigs from a fairy bush for firewood in order to bake bread from the griddle. This is ultimate revenge because apparently she went home, she used those twigs to bake the bread. She baked the bread. It was perfect.

She puts it out to cool. She turns around. There's a bunch of fairies eating her bread. I'm like, okay, that kind of works. But apparently, the thing is that that's a light story. Many of these stories result in severe supernatural retribution, you know, fatally wounding people, causing blood poisonings, amputations of limbs or fingers, and of course, death that comes up. And this stuff continues over and over and over. There was a story from, again, the local Mayo tradition,

A curiously shaped tree, which once grew on the bank of a local fort, was famed and respected as a fairy tree. In 1854, the owner of the house decided that the tree was needed to be used in his garden, but no one would touch it for fear of the consequences. So the man himself eventually dug it up with his own hands and moved it to the front of his house. The tree thrived at the new site, but the owner suffered a chain of troubles for several years, lost money, and ultimately his fortune.

So it's like, they don't necessarily get you in that they take your life. They take your livelihood. Because he didn't kill the tree. He just moved it. But these fairies, they weren't happy about where the tree had been moved from. Around 1940, there was a story told of several cavern men that were threatened by their employer because they refused to cut down a bush. Did you say cavern men? Yeah, cavern. Several caverns.

I think it's cavern. What is a cavern, man? I think that's like a contractor or like a, it's like an old term for basically being a worker. But apparently they refused to cut down this tree. They knelt down in front of it and begged that misfortune should not befall them because their boss is ordering them to do so. They cut down the tree and the same night their boss suffered a stroke. So you can divert the fairy anger. Yeah.

I like that. Because it wasn't them. Like, they refused to cut it down. Just following orders. They're just following orders, right? The fairy's vengeance usually hurts the individual who cuts the tree, but often there's an additional curse that lingers on the land where the tree had stood.

In the 1970s, there were two prestigious enterprises that were closed down in Ireland after a chain of misfortunes. In both instances, interference with a fairy tree was blamed. So this is where we get into a company known as Frenetka. So Frenetka was a wire factory. Apparently it was extremely successful. One of the biggest employers in Limerick.

but there was this tree that stood at the entrance to the plant and it was considered an obstruction by the owners and attempts were made to move it, but they couldn't move it

And in doing so, apparently they just removed it. For no apparent reason, once it was removed, the machine stalled. The warning signs were not heeded. And when the tree was eventually taken away to another location, severe problems started to rock the company. In 1975, the managing director was kidnapped, but later released. Strikes followed. Interunion disputes took up. They created mayhem. And all efforts to save the company failed when it was closed down finally in 1977.

All because they didn't pay respect properly to the tree. They didn't heed the warning of this tree. I mean, the machine stopping should have been enough. Apparently though, this is one of the headlines of the show, a similar fate hit the DeLorean Motor Company on the outskirts of Belfast. So in the early 1970s, the American born John Zachary DeLorean bought this site on which he was going to build the most advanced factory for the time. It's kind of like the equivalent of a gigafactory.

This lone hawthorn was growing on the plot, and it was firmly believed to be linked with the Wee Folk. Now, workmen preparing the land for construction of the factory made sure to leave the tree alone. They knew. Like, they were local contractors. They knew. They resutely, sorry, resolutely...

Resolutely, I think you mean. Resolutely. Refused orders to cut it down, but one day the tree was gone. So it was suggested that someone had, because the workers wouldn't do it, they just got someone, an outsider in to take it down. From the moment they did that, locals said that the enterprise was cursed. In 1981, soon after the prototype of the DeLorean sports car had received a very positive response from the first series of cars produced, the dire predictions continued.

came true. The plant was badly damaged in riots. The DeLorean brand came under pressure to pay back the loan that he'd taken out for the factory. The following year, he was arrested for involvement in money laundering, drug trafficking, and the factory was closed down for good. I've got some of the footage of the DeLorean factory on the screen. Oh, this is in Ireland. There you go. Yeah, 1981.

Because it really was, I mean, aside from Back to the Future, it was a cool car. And it was stainless steel construction and it was considered, it wasn't very powerful. But yeah, it seemed to have this bright future, but yet they'd knocked down this factory. It's funny. The two results are that it opened the factory in 1981 and the other YouTube result is the factory closing in 1982, like DeLorean ends production. But I guess that's when the company, well, the video's not loading, but that's when the company failed, wasn't it? Or was it later? 1982?

They're back, though. Did you know they're back? Well, I saw that they've got like NFTs now or something. No, this is the new car. Did you see the crypto thing they're involved in? Who cares about crypto? There's a car on the screen. There's a beautiful car on the screen. Is it electric? I presume so. I don't want it. I don't want it. Look at it. It's beautiful. It's electric. I don't want it. I mean, yeah, it's a nice car. It's very nicely streamlined. It just runs on fairy wood. Yeah.

That's how he got his revenge. Yes. You just put logs of fairy trees in the bonnet. It's basically zero point energy. Oh, you know what? I don't actually think it's so pretty anymore. It's a bit like 80s version of the future, but not in a good way. It's nice. Some of the 80s stuff. Oh, I wouldn't drive that. Well, I wouldn't. I mean, if someone gave you one, someone gave you one at DeLorean Company, I'd drive it. Oh, yeah. I'm sure you're a great spokesperson after that rant.

Just stick to my car, thank you very much. Powered by old dinosaur. So there's also these reports as well. A farmer who heeded the warning not to build in a fairy circle was actually advised to build between certain trees instead. Apparently, once he dug at the foundations, he also found a pot of gold. Really? So it's like this treasure. It's like this weird fairy treasure.

Is it the kind of gold that you take it home and it just turns to like chicken poo or something? No, no, it's not like, but it's funny because that's what we hear with like fairies, right? Like people are, they enter into the fairy realm and they take treasures and wonderful things and you're right. They get home and it's like, it's chicken shit or it's, it's, they're being played. I looked up modern stories on GPT and the most recent one was a hawthorn tree from 1999. Yeah.

That recently? Preserved for a motorway. It actually delayed the motorway or the highway for 10 years. Was that Scandinavia? That's Ireland. Oh, that's Ireland. Yeah. Eventually they cut it down.

Where's this one? So in Donegal again, a man went to cut a lone bush that was growing in the middle of his potato field that then caused the potato famine afterwards because he cut it down. Suddenly feeling uncomfortable about his plans, he decided to leave the bush alone. The next morning, he found a pipe beneath the tree with an ounce of tobacco. He believed this had been left for him by the fairies in gratitude. Oh, that's nice. He died of lung cancer. Yeah. That's how

That's how they got him. Because 25 years later, he died of a stroke. And that was the first time he had tobacco, which formed an immediate habit.

And then now he was dead in 20 years. There was a story. I don't have it here. There was this story actually of where it also waits. It's like there are stories of where people cut these trees down and nothing happens to them for years. But then there's, again, this ironic twist of where later on they're like involved in a car accident or something where they run into the tree that they tried to cut down. Well, that story from 1999 of the Irish motorway, they...

have delayed the construction of the motorway because of this one tree. But over the years, it must have been people connected to the developers or the government or whatever. There were people that were going to vandalize it. They tried to cut it down themselves, but no one could cut it down. Yeah, like these immortal trees. Chainsaws would fail or they'd get caught or something else would happen. As of 2024, the bush still stands along the bypass.

So it's still there to this day, but they don't have a picture of it in the article, in the Wikipedia article, which is annoying. Maybe it's a respectful thing that they haven't done that. Oh, you can't take a photo of it. Maybe though. I mean, like certain cultures believe that you shouldn't take photos of certain things because it takes the energy from it. So maybe that's why, or maybe they're worried that it might carry a curse within it in doing so. There's this really cool story though, which is kind of connected to these fairies. It's not necessarily to, I mean, it is about a tree, but it's more about,

the power that these things have because some people claim to be haunted by these things in their dreams after they encounter them and sometimes it's good sometimes it's bad but there's this one story that over a hundred years ago as the story goes a poor man from a local town dreamt for three consecutive nights that he would find a crock of gold under a particular tree in Newcastle in County Meath now he duly travelled towards Newcastle because after you have you know a treasure dream three nights in a row it's probably a good indicator that you should do something about it so

So apparently as he was heading towards Newcastle, about halfway there, he had to shelter from a fierce storm. This terrible storm came in and it's got this, I was thinking about it. It's like missing 411. Many of the cases of people that are fairy led tie in with missing 411 reports where people mysteriously disappear. And if you recall, storms are seemingly connected with a lot of those missing 411 reports. When someone disappears immediately afterwards, the search is impeded by a terrible storm that comes through. I'm like,

It's funny that this guy's had this dream that seems to be connected to this fairy tree and then he's, you know, affected by a storm. But there was a reason why he was affected by this storm. Because as he's sheltering, he's soon joined by a stranger. And to pass the time, the man revealed to the stranger his dream and his intention to look for a treasure underneath this designated tree. Now, to his amazement, the stranger recognized a tree on his own land in Newcastle that fit the man's description.

He's like, but you're not going to believe this. He too revealed that in turn, he had dreamt three nights in succession of a crock of gold under a particular tree in the hometown of the first man. And he was on his way to look for it. So each man dreamed

or man had one of these trees on each of their properties. And because they met, they were able to go and find their gold. And they did. Each man went to the opposing man's property and found underneath it, under their respective homes, riches at the spot indicated by the other man's dream. That's so bizarre. Isn't it bizarre? It's really, really strange. I finally found a picture of the fairy tree that withheld the final construction of the Irish motorway for a decade. If this is some terrible joke, Ben...

I think it is a joke. Look at it. That's the tree. How can you even call that a tree? I saw you fiddling over there. So I was waiting to see like some AI image of a tree in a dress or something. That's because it was so hard to find. That's the actual tree, which is a generous term. That's a bush. Well, they are like thorn bushes. That held back a 90 million pound highway construction.

Give me a break. It's pretty strange. That's just like what happens here with the aboriginals saying, oh, you can't build a bridge because the rainbow serpent will get offended. Look, there's limits, right? This is the thing as well. There's limits. I don't know. Maybe in this certain circumstance, you've got to wonder if there's something else going on. Surely in modern times, what the council or the government would have done

at the very least, acknowledge some type of practice, like get someone to leave a stone there or do an offering or something and then move it on. I get it back in the 1950s of that belief being enough that you could spend 1.5 million euros, but today it's like... Surely that can't be it because it's so small.

Like how hard would it be to just go, I guess that's what they did. They just went around it. They did. Yeah. Pathetic. So then you've got the Middle Kingdom, the fairy world of Ireland. I'll link to this in the show notes at mysteriousuniverse.org so you can go and check it out. This has a collection of the more sinister types of encounters that people have with these fairies and where these things kind of certainly invade your homes. They follow you home. You know, like the one that was described previously,

of the woman who, it's not that sinister, right? But, you know, the fact that they're eating her bread, but then of course the other guy that was burning it and ended up being trapped in some kind of

paralysis. There are dangers in bringing these things home. But of course, Reverend Harris is a story that we know. But also written in that book, there's a story of an unnamed woman who worked as a housekeeper at this sprawling estate. This is in the Irish countryside, of course. And one evening, she decided to take a walk back to her own village to visit her family, a walk that took her through a

Now, this place is known to the locals to be a location where the fairies will dwell. And the woman passed through without incident and she headed down the hill. Yet suddenly she blinked

And she found herself walking the opposite way. She was walking back up the hill. Now, she couldn't understand how this could have happened. So she turned back around and started heading back into the ditch at the bottom of the hill. All she had to do was step over this ditch and she would have been on the road heading towards her village. But every time she tried, she once again found herself going in the opposite direction. It was as if some barrier was preventing her from passing over. And for hours, hours, she

She was stuck like this. It's like she'd just walk down. She'd come straight back up once again. She was stuck. And she said, apparently she saw a search party approaching, looking for her. And she started shouting and waving her hands, but no one could see her. Like that initial report, like no one at first could see what was going on. She claimed that this went on for another hour. And she reported this to a Reverend Harris, um,

And she said it was only after an hour that whatever spell had been cast, that it was lifted and she was able to continue on her way. This isn't an isolated case. There was another case that was highlighted by McManus. He said this was of a man who attended a party at an estate and left to walk home, his path taking him once again across a field. As he walked, he noticed that not only did the field seem to never end, it

it somehow changed and became quite unfamiliar to him, despite the fact that he'd gone through this field countless times before. In this case, the man apparently was quick to understand that he was approaching upon something known as stray sod. Now, stray sod is

as pointed out by McManus in the Middle Kingdom, is that apparently fairies will take a piece of land or grass or something like that, like a small piece, like dirt, a piece of dirt, and will curse it. And like a fairy landmine, anyone who steps upon it will get stuck into one of these weird kind of loops where they can't escape from these things. But he knows a way to avoid this stray sod is to turn all of his clothes inside out. He did so. He stood there, he took everything off, turned it inside out, put it back on. That's the old trick.

it didn't work. He walked around in the field for hours and hours without any sign of a way out before he finally found an exit and headed back up to the house where he had left. To him, it seemed like hours had passed, but the locals had said that only minutes had passed since he had left. So it causes these weird missing time effects as well, which starts then going back into E.T. Yeah, tons of stories like that from the fairy censuses from Simon Young.

People going on single-way walking tracks that they know only take 15, 20 minutes and they're stuck on it for an hour thinking, when am I going to get to the destination? Yeah, there was a story of a woman who, once again, she was walking home and there was this track that she would follow.

And she was with her mother. So this is where the missing 411 kind of stuff comes in because she was reasonably young, but she recalls that her mother was behind her and this path kind of went off to a side. And she remembered that there was something down there that she liked. So she said to her mother, I'm just going to go down and check it out. And mother's like, yeah, okay. So she runs down and disappears. Now for her, she just sits down and she's just looking. She's just looking down at something that, you know, has taken her interest. It doesn't say what it is. And finally, this man approaches her.

And this man is like, where have you been? She's like, what are you talking about? She'd been missing for two days. Two days. And she's like, I've just walked down this path. But it was like she'd been fairy-led. And this comes back to Finnish folklore. Finnish folklore describes something called forest cover. This is similar to stray sod, but basically it's a magical force which is produced by forest spirits that causes people not only to become lost, but also for them to become invisible to other people looking for them.

So it kind of fits in with like Kamikakushi spirited away kind of things. It's got these similar reports, but there's a whole collection of these cases in that particular book, The Middle Kingdom, only to it in the show notes, of course, with everything else, including the original article that got me onto this topic at mysteriousuniverse.org. It's funny that,

They divert a highway for a bush, but when it comes to a fairy circle, they don't care. They just go straight through it, as you can see there. That's strange. So there was this other report as well of where it was a woodcutter, I believe, had gone for a beer or something. So they'd been spending a day with other woodcutters, other colleagues working in the wilderness.

and one of them had, well, they'd gone up for a beer and they had a few drinks. They weren't intoxicated, but they did have a few drinks on board and they start walking back out. And when they walk back out, they walk through a fairy circle, right? Like similar to the one you described. One of the colleagues goes to the outside of it. One of the colleague goes to the inside of it. Of course, you know what's going to happen. The colleague that goes to the inside of that fairy circle

Just disappeared. Like he's gone. And his friend is looking around and yelling. And he thinks his friend is playing a trick on him. So he goes home. Then he goes to check the house the following morning. And the family's like, he never came home. Where is he? So what they do is they head back out.

A whole group of searchers looking for him and no one can find him except one of the searchers puts his foot. He doesn't put his whole body. He puts his foot inside the circle. And when he does so, he can hear him. He can hear the guy they're looking for. What's he doing? Screaming for help. Yeah. He steps into the circle and he suddenly materializes to the guy. And he's able to grab hold of it and pulls him out and pulls him out and he's gone. But then when more people come and start moving and touching and paying attention to it, it's like it no longer has an effect anymore.

It's like it only could get one person at a time. So I'm surprised, you're right, that they would just basically mow through. But maybe they did that because it's like, it's not like these trees. These trees will convey bad luck, but that circle, it's like they've just simply deactivated it. Well, what they don't tell you is that 37 Somalian arborists died in the construction of that highway. Right. Yeah, that sounds probably likely. Yeah.

That's a wrap for this free section of the show. There's a lot more coming up. We're going to go into this man who sold his house, came out as gay and became a green councillor in the UK, all after being one-shotted by ayahuasca.

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