The one about the Dinosaur God. Deep in the jungles of Africa legends tell of a mythical creature that very well could be a dinosaur that has survived extinction.
Wiki links:
Sound effect credits:
https://freesound.org/people/IchBinJager/
https://freesound.org/people/jamesrodavidson/
https://freesound.org/people/nickerick03/
Loose Transcript:
Wooo hooo Welcome back everybody, to Nightmare Now, I’m your Host Erik Byrne and if this is your first night terror with us, welcome aboard, please keep arms and legs severed or otherwise, inside the podcast at all times. Today we’re getting into a subject near and dear to my heart, Cryptozoology, or is it palentology? Or just zoology? I guess it depends on the evidence we can pull together and a certain willingness to suspend disbelief. If you’re not willing to suspend disbelief, I’m glad you’re still listening. We’re gonna get into some more true historical stuff next week. Probably. Basically as I predicted would happen as a chronic procrastinator I have completely squandered the buffer I had by prerecording the first few episodes. I figured hey I’ll throw a few in the tank and it’ll give me a bit of time to really knock it out of the park and give me time to go on vacation or something later but I guess (F--k it we’ll do it live!) So here we are, merely a day or two ahead of airtime. My laptop is throwing up errors, my fan died, not any of you guys, just the little USB one that keeps me cool in the Airquotes “Studio”. It’s really just a glorified closet, and if you want to see a picture come say hi on our instagram page @nightmare.now it’ll be there. Speaking of which, with this being the first recording post launch I am flabbergasted with the amazing response I’ve gotten, I hit 100 Downloads within the first week, I have a bunch of people checking out the instagram and twitter and I get texts from a few listeners within hours of an episode releasing. Thanks mom! For links to all that social media bulls--t and how to get in touch with me check out the icons at nightmarenow.com and pretty please gimme those juicy 5 star ratings and reviews wherever you’re listening it helps out a ton.
With all that housekeeping out of the way finally we can lumber in to today’s topic. I’d cue the jurassic park theme here but the real nightmare would be john williams copyright claim on my show and nobody wants that. Maybe I’ll pull a vanilla Ice in post and add a high hat cymbal to exonerate myself from any kind of intellectual property infringement. (insert track) That’s better. I’m gonna do my best movie trailer voice now. It’s amazing how annoying your voice sounds on a recording versus in the reverberations of your own skull, but it’s something I’ll just have to live with. Here we go: BWAAAA
IN A WORLD.
EXACTLY LIKE TODAY’S WORLD
BECAUSE IT IS TODAYS WORLD
BWAAAAA
THERE ARE SECRETS
ANCIENT SECRETS
BWAAAAA
LYING IN WAIT WAITING TO BE REVEALED.
SECRETS 66 MILLION YEAR IN THE MAKING
(for copyright reasons)
BWAAA
DEEP IN THE CONGOLESE JUNGLE,
IN THE DEPTHS OF LAKE TELE
A BEAST SLUMBERS
BWAAA
THIS TUESDAY
MOKELE-MBEMBE
RISES ONCE MORE
(ROAR)
TO APPEAR ON A PODCAST
(BWAAA)
That’s right folks we have a real treat set up for you today, we’re looking at Mokele-mbembe, the god beast and potential surviving dinosaur, or colony of dinosaurs deep in the jungle in the heart of Africa. Our main source today is the book drums along the congo where journalist and explorer rory nugent documents his own personal quest to get a glimpse at the beast itself. I’ll throw a link in the show notes if you want to check it out yourself, it’s not a long read and it’s a fun little swashbuckling on site adventure through the jungle.
Who, or what is mokele-mbembe though? There are accounts from westerners all the way back in 1776 when french missionaries found huge unexplainable footprints in the congo. Before you say anything, it’s bigger feet than bigfoot, he’s gonna get his own episode or two later. Later on mokele-mbembe was first reported widely in the western world in 1909 by a zoologist named Carl hagenbeck in his book beasts and men, soon after picked up by the washington post in 1910. I managed to find the news article actually, that’ll be in the notes but it describes the possibility of a half elephant half dragon monster. Later zoological expeditions heard terrifying thunderous sounds and roars in the region and still others found clawed footprints larger than an elephants. Elephants are present in this region but they don’t have claws.
Mokele-mbembe means “one who stops the flow of rivers” in the local language of lingala. The congo river basin and lake tele is certainly a more ancient, more primordial area of the planet. Featuring giant prehistoric ferns and temperatures that never really drop below seventy degrees and rarely come out of the high eighties. Fahrenheit for you non yanks, that’s 26 to 28 degrees celsius. I need to be conscious of my global audience now that we’re world wide, according to my analytics we’ve got listeners in france, india, sweden, the uk, new zealand, canada and here at home across the US. Thank you all!
The humidity hovers around 85-100 percent, making it incredibly muggy all the time. Huge jungle trees stretch to form distinct layers of jungle in the canopy, mid canopy and the ground. As a biologist I found all this stuff super fascinating when rory covered it in drums along the congo, where you have, you know, a hundred square feet of jungle forest and effectively three or more different ecosystems the higher into the trees you go. Different amounts of sunlight, heat and whole separate sets of species populate each zone. In the interest of not making a three hour show just about jungle ecosystems I’ll refer to this stuff only where it’s relevant, or horrifying, as you’ll see later once we get into the jungle parasites and other dangers just to get out to lake tele to even try to find mokele mbembe, man that’s fun to say.
So even before we get our boots wet in a neverending crocodile infested mire, get arrested by congolese authorities, get attacked by poisonous snakes or leopards, (for more about why big cats are scary check out episode one!) and become riddled with malaria, we have to know what we’re even looking for. Now, descriptions of mokele-mbembe have varied over time but the central concept is usually the same. He, or she I suppose, is effectively a sauropod dinosaur. For those of you who weren't as obsessed with paleontology as I was when I was a kid. And still am, let's be honest, sauropods are the big long neck dudes. Tons and tons of flesh and muscle in a lumbering body, a huge tail, and a head atop a ridiculously long neck. Little foot for my land before time fans out there. So mokele mebembe basically fits that description. A sauropod dinosaur ranging in size from a hippopotamus to a towering thirty five feet tall or so. After that general description we kind of have a pick and choose smorgasbord of trims and upgrade packages for it. Many accounts describe a single sharp tusk or horn, picture something like a narwhal for that. Among those accounts it uses the tusks to poke around and slice off it’s alleged favorite food, the malombo fruit. It’s kind of like a cross between a soft coconut and a lemon. They grow on vines. Other less herbivorous accounts depict mokele mbemebe spearing hippos, elephants, leopards, crocs and especially people on its tooth and drowning them in its waters. Don’t piss it off I guess.
Most descriptions agree that he’s a brownish, greyish or rusty color, but beyond that some say it’s scaly, some say slimy and still others say it has short slick fur like a seal. I don’t think anyone has been able to get close enough to touch it and live to tell the tale though. After that you start to get out to the more fringe descriptions, like a line of sharp spines along its spine. Along with spikes at the end of its muscular tail. The locals mention that it has deep blood red eyes too.
Mokele-Mbembe lives in and around lake tele, and also supposedly in underground caves in the region. Now I love this idea, I’m definitely going to do a future episode on the accounts of hollow parts deep within the earth supposedly housing mammoths and dinosaurs and other crazy s--t, it’s one of my favorite parts of esoteric crypto lore and I have some cool books on that stuff kicking around somewhere. Anyway, the lake, caves and perhaps most importantly the rivers is where mokele mbembe makes its home. It uses the rivers to get around, because they snake throughout the entire region and give access to it’s full territory and malombo fruits without it having to knock down a ton of trees and stomp through the forest. Skeptics would point to this as a convenient lack of evidence, but generally, f--k skeptics. Live a little. Or listen to the more accurately historically sourced episodes.
Some people say it’s a physical, undeniable biological creature, a relic from the late jurassic period. Obviously it wouldn’t live that long and would have to breed or otherwise reproduce until now. The climate and jungle ecosystem could technically support such a creature, maybe not at the upper range of its size descriptions but certainly at a large elephant size. It wouldn’t have many if any natural predators and other animals have survived relatively unchanged for much longer and are taken for granted. Obviously we have the living fossil coelacanth, but think too about other animals. Sharks, alligators and crocodiles, other species of fish and lizards. Some stuff survives and justs gets smaller. The animal kingdom goes the same way as freakin ipods. You got the big prehistoric chunkers that could hold eight songs and eventually you get the ipod mini. Same applies to dinosaurs. It’s science.
What’s the alternative though? To a living fossil? Local tribes and even more developed settlements in the area revere mokele-mbembe as a god-beast. A Spirit of the jungle and river. In a survey done in 1980, over half of the respondents there reported that they were christians, but even 90 percent of them reported seeing a witch doctor at least twice each year. This is a region dominated by ancient tradition and a lot of the voodoo stuff that us Americans attribute to Haiti and the Caribbean really originate here. I won’t dive too deep into that today because I’ve got a whole episode planned on haitian voodoo and the zombie phenomena there where I’ll go more in depth on all that craziness. Scopolamine is a helluva drug though I’ll give you that much as a little teaser. But anyway the people, in this region especially of the congo, believe that spirits control everything. There’s spirits for water, for air, for weather, for food, for guns, for love, for life, for the trees, for the sky, for the spring, for the animals, for families, you f--king name it. So many people consider mokele-mbembe to be either a spirit given form or some sort of spirit flesh hybrid. In a way we’re all spirit flesh hybrids aren’t we? This could explain certain lacking physical evidence even in the face of numerous eyewitness accounts.
There’s one part in the book we’re rory and his guide are talking about death and spirits and the like that really made me laugh where he’s talking to his guide, and the guide is upset because they receive news that a guy in a neighboring village has died. Turns out it’s worse that it’s the guides enemy than if it was his friend because now his family is gonna get cursed by the dead guys family and accused of spirit murder because they’ll think his family cursed the dead guy. Rory asked him if they did curse the dead guy and he’s just like “hell yeah we did, f--k that guy!” turns out the congolese justice system isn’t exactly the most efficient machine around so most people turn to spirits and voodoo curses in lieu of litigation. In short, even among the christian or undecided population of the congo, old traditions based around fetishes voodoo and witch doctors carry a hell of a lot of importance in peoples day to day lives.
I’ve also heard people describe the loch ness monster and other more dinosaurian cryptids as ghosts of dinosaurs so that’s a fun third option for the people playing along at home, I don’t really think that’s the case here but their guess is as good as mine. Then of course there’s the possibility of it all being bullsh-t entirely but if that’s the case I’m out a show. Towards the end I’ll probably throw in some skeptical explanations just to be fair and balanced. For the purposes of the rest of the show however, I think we’ll be looking at it as if it truly is a lost dinosaur lineage, avoiding capture and death deep in the jungle for millions of years.
I think now is as good a time as any to paraphrase rory nugent’s trip through the congo, mostly because his book was the highest rated and available on kindle versus a lot of the more referenced texts on mokele-mbembe being out of print or prohibitively expensive. WHAT ARE THE PUBLISHING COMPANIES HIDING? THE PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW! So my man rory has listed himself as a journalist slash explorer, personally I would lead with explorer but that’s just me. He takes a couple of courses in jungle survival and spends a night in central park without getting mugged basically. After that it’s basically off to the races. Imagine a cutaway to to an indiana jones cutaway with the planes and the bum ba dumm dumm ba ba daaa, man I’m really trying to get sued by john williams today huh? So you see the plane flying across the atlantic, maybe the plane stops in france and then pops down to africa. Into the southwest region of the congo. He starts taking pictures of birds and s--t because he’s into that kind of thing and is immediately arrested for being a capitalist spy. He’s apparently got a high enough charisma roll to talk himself out of it, if you’ll forgive the expression, I started a dnd game with a few friends so that stuff has been at the front of my mind. It helps because it’s another more creative energy keeping me sane while I slave away as a lab analyst. Why do you think I started this show anyway?
So Rory gets arrested and basically for the remainder of his trip he is assigned chaperones for his time in the congo. Kind of like the pope episode a few weeks back I really don’t want to get into the politics of the Congo and why they’re worried about capitalist spies. Suffice to say that Russians, Cubans and the Chinese had a pretty big hand in the development of the present day congo. As far as I knew about the Congo before I started researching this episode was the sh--y Congo movie from 1995 with the gray cannibal apes, a cyborg gorilla and tim curry almost saying the N word. That movie and like twenty eight pages of joseph conrad’s heart of darkness. I’ll finish it someday. Luckily I learned a lot about the region and culture and potentially fake monsters dwelling within it. Again we’re a global show.
Rory gets assigned a chaperone and there's a lot of great scene with this dude, Ambroise constantly busting his balls because truth be told he doesn’t want to be hanging around babysitting this dumb mundele, that’s the word for insincere whitey in lingala, all day long. He’s giving him s--t about how if he has to go into the jungle he gets overtime and stuff, and this expedition is gonna help finance his new refrigerator. He gets into all kinds of little adventures in the capital of the congo, brazzaville while he’s trying to secure a travel permit to get to the wild northern region where mokele-mbembe supposedly lives. And he completely confirms the westaboo trope. In every non american country there’s always a few people that base their whole identity on american culture, they do a great version of this in that show welcome to sweden. In fact there’s this whole subculture over in sweden called the raggare that go all out for 1950s americana. I really hope that they’ve committed heinous crimes or something so I have an excuse to cover them.
Anyway rory meets all kinds of people obsessed with american movies from 20 years earlier and more importantly the huge sporting event that was the rumble in the jungle. A famous boxing match between george foreman and muhammad ali that ali won in a big upset in 1974 in zaire. Which eventually becomes the democratic republic of the congo. Some people were so obsessed that they had the entire radio broadcast memorized. The fact that rory had once shook hands with ali, was actually a huge help in securing those permits. Even still there were times when he had to wait in a sweltering office for nine hours only to have the secretary be like, ssss ahhh, the paperwork guy isn’t in today cest la vie huh? Eventually he acquires the permit and ships up north. Not before getting a blessing from a witch doctor near brazzaville. The witch doctor told him what to do and he said OO EE OOOH AAHHH AHH TING TANG WALLA WALLA BING BANG. not really, just as soon as anyone mentions a witch doctor some MKULTRA programming from the alvin and the chipmunks movie kicks in and that’s all I can think of, the old one not the weird uncanny valley cgi ones. He would’ve been better off with the s--tty gimmick song though because what really happened to get the witch doctor’s blessing was much worse. He had to strip down, and no it’s not brazzersville perverts, nobody was stuck in a washing machine. He had to strip down and the witch doctor screamed and spit in his face and dumped a fanta bottle of crocodile oil and honey all over him, again modern society and ancient tradition clashing with the fanta bottle, I love it. This concoction was an invitation to every winged insect within a mile to crawl around on him and suck up the honey and by extension any evil spirits. You know with a bunch of parasitic wasps crawling around my dick and balls I’d probably take my chances with the evil spirits. I guess it’s better than having robert liston operate on you.
Unfortunately for ambroise and his fridge though they said f--k you and your overtime and sent him off with a dude named innocent. Him and innocent take a plane north to impfondo and fly over this city that I would love to do some more research on that’s just a bunch of barges lashed together and stacked on top of each other in the congo river. The pilot has a little extra fuel and flies them over lake tele so they get the aerial view before touching down on a tiny airfield in the jungle. From above tele is a serene black lake surrounded by a black mire with twisted and gnarled trees on all sides. Through the swamp weaves dozens of inlets and rivers and coves, all potentially housing the lost sauropod. They say they haven’t had anyone fly in in over six months because the airfield is only usable if it doesn't rain for three days, a rare occurrence in the jungle. They are effectively stuck there and locked in once they land and their pilot takes off. It’s a hundred and eighteen degrees when they touch down and from here on out it’s all on foot or by canoe.
Rory has some pens and pencils and bubble gum to offer the children of the villages and the tribes and everyone one of them is just like f--k off, cash or nothing. I love that juxtaposition he encounters in all these villages. Like it’s still a primitive way of life but not untouched like out on sentinel island or anything like that. So there’s people fishing with spears and clutching voodoo fetishes but at the same time they’re wearing nike tracksuits and Rams Super bowl champions two thousand two hats, sorry tflo if you’re listening, at least you got yours this year!
One of the biggest parts of the cargo they’re lugging around is literally crates of liquor and pounds of salt, because the traditional gift to a tribal chief is a handful of salt and a bottle of booze. He brings a whole crate of scotch to each village to get in with them and that leads into more than a few hangover style shenanigans where he wakes up suspended in a tree or in a pile of wriggling fish. But hey? When in rome right? They pick up a couple of jungle guides and other people on their quest whilst they go around placating all the surrounding village with booze and cigarettes. Eventually they hop in some canoes and hit the river towards lake tele, but not before being scammed five or six times by different villages.
In one of the first major outings on the canoes they run into a giant crocodile that they annoy with a thrown spear. After getting hit with a spear the croc takes a beeline at the canoe and innocent hits it in the neck with another spear at the last possible moment. If he hasn’t realized it by now, rory sees that the travel through the jungle aint gonna be a walk in central park. Of course they cook and eat the croc because at this point they need to hunt for food. Speaking from personal experience, alligator tastes like, well, it unironically tastes like chicken. Just a rubbery, greasy chicken. According to the book, the crocodile didn’t taste much different.
After this the book reminds me of a game of amazon trail. It was like the oregon trail but instead of dying of dysentery in a covered wagon, you got eaten by piranhas in a canoe. I know I know, the amazon is in south america and the congo is in africa but many of the same principles apply, give me a break ok? Eventually they hit a few random encounters with a poachers canoe and try to scare off a poacher by just blasting their ak-47 into the air. He’s apparently not around, it’s more tense in the story but it’s not really important to the mokelembembe plot. Later on down the river they see a jaguar lapping up water and even see a pair of pygmies hiding in the water watching them, using reeds to breathe. That’s scary as f--k. They could just pop out and hit you with a blow dart and eat you. Maybe they wouldn’t eat you but nugent recalls tales he read in his youth about the yakas in this region that would kill and eat people traveling through this region. I’ve got a couple of episodes planned about cannibals, in fact I originally had an idea for a podcast about cannibals called to serve man, but f--k that would be depressing right? That tangent is basically just to illustrate how f--king scary it is to run into the more remote and warlike tribes out there in the jungle. It’s one thing to sit in a closet and make jokes and talk s--t but it’s another thing entirely to glide through the water in canoe, trying to remain silent as you see small humans watch you through yellowed eyes, under the river water like you’re in the f--king dead marshes in middle earth. Good lord that’s terrifying.
Eventually he runs into a few brits doing their own expedition to lake tele for a geological survey and to see if they can find any new species or what have you and they’re led by this dude colonel rothermel, and I’m basically picturing rourke from disney’s atlantis, just some former military guy leading a bunch of nerds through a hostile environment. I know at least a few of my listeners will know exactly what I mean. The brits are one their way back from the lake and they pretty much laugh their asses off at the fact that rory and innocent are looking for mokele mbembe and offer to offload some of their equipment. Here rory talks about some other expeditions to lake tele throughout the last few hundred years. I think it’s worth doing the same The brits didn’t see s--t. Back in the eighties a guy named roy mackal went out there and got a picture of it… that got ruined by water. He was also some kind of young earth creationist, and his book was like thirty bucks so I wasn’t getting that. Later on another expedition that partially inspired rory’s came back and gave a presentation in new york, and much to everyone’s quote unquote surprise, their only pictures were also… ruined by water.
At this point I’m like what the f--k, why are we reading this still but I’m here for the jungle adventure, I’m also locked in because I don’t have another topic prepped. And I believe god damn it! There’s dinosaurs out there! At least according to hundreds of schizo blogspot pages I came across, and they can’t all be wrong right?
Finally they come to the last, sort of “civilized” village. And with a little help from scotch and salt they narrowly secure a vote to allow them into the deepest part of mokele mbembe’s sacred lair. One of my favorite parts of this exchange is when innocent translates what the village council says after the vote. He’s just like “They ask mokele-mbembe not to kill us and thank us for the booze.” right on. Rory asks the witch doctor in that village if mokele-mbembe might be a goddess rather than a god and he just laughs in his face and is like no way mudele!
The group of six gatherers their last bit of supplies and gets ready for weeks in the wilderness by foot and canoe. They sit through one coming of age ritual in a village and head off, with only one village saying that they should go home, the rest effectively sponsoring their quest. Here, and several other spots in the book, he talks about skin borers. Disturbingly matter of factly. These are parasites that burrow into your skin and get into the bloodstream. I’ll quote the book here holy f--k.
“These worms begin life no larger than a match head, but given the right conditions, they can grow to the size of a small snake within the leg, their growth arrested only by knee joints and ligaments. Eventually they eat through the calf and exit from the skin just below the knee.”
He never gives a proper name for these parasites so I really couldn’t find anything more about them, skin borers just comes up with a bunch of wood boring beetles on google. Compared to parasites that eat your f--king knees, they’re well, boring. I’ve got a great book on parasites I’ll eventually do an episode on, sarah you don’t need to listen to that one, it’s fine, I understand.
They continue on playing another few days of congo trail, avoiding death by malaria, and nile crocodiles and skin borers. The only food some nights is fried grubs like they’re in the f--king lion king, Slimy, yet satisfying. A lot of disney this episode huh? Other nights they’ve got monkey or crocodile, with one of the guides making sure to make a slurry of the brains for desert. He says it’s the only way to gain the creatures power and spirit. With that I feel entirely vindicated in trying to convince people that eating the eyes of the lobster is the only way to gain it’s grip strength for all these years. To my gym bro listeners, monkey brain protein shakes? Yes or no? Let me know at nightmarenowpodcast@gmail.com! One thing that he goes out of his way to mention is identifying monkeys by their vibrant scrotums. I felt it was worth including because we’ve had a lot of scrotum talk on this show, why stop now?
Watching the monkey cook kind of gives me the impression of a cartoon where people are trapped on a deserted island and you envision your compatriots as succulent hams. Rory describes the monkey skin tightening over the fire and looking more humanlike and more tasty each minute. The jungle really can change a mofo. They eat all kinds of crazy s--t out in the jungle, monkeys, hogs, monkey’s hogs, snakes, Which I’ve also eaten and taste like greasy chicken, grubs, plants and more. They use dirt for seasoning, I might have to try that next time I do pulled pork.
One day rory goes off on his own to collect some butterflies and look at birds and he hears a huge roar and a bunch of small trees being knocked over. This is effectively the climax of the book so buckle the f--k up. He starts joggin through the muck and mire of the swamp around lake tele. After whatever monster is tearing through the trees. When he eventually catches up to it he sees a massive heaving grey and black creature grabbing at some fruit. It’s a f--king silverback gorilla. It looks at him inquisitively, perhaps sensing a primate kinship, and then roars, he gets the hell out of there and runs headfirst into a forest clearing where everything is freakishly quiet. Within seconds five pygmies surround him from the underbrush. Yellowed teeth and eyes glaring from behind armed, presumably poisoned crossbows, spears and blowguns. They’re only four and a half feet tall, one on one he might have a chance to whack one and get out but not surrounded. All his memories of stories of cannibals and mutilations come flooding back and he tries to reason with them by pointing to a bird he recognizes and flapping his arms. They hoot and holler at him. He slowly pulls out a harmonica and plays a s--y bit of piano man for them which they seem to like and hands off the harmonica to the one that seems to be the leader, who blows a few sour notes into it and smiles.
This likely saved his life, so follow up on at least one creative pursuit or two in your life. Get that charisma score up! While screwing around with the harmonica, they didn’t immediately murder him. He notices the leader has an infected cut on his foot and pulls out his medical kit to try to treat him on his knees. Immediately negotiations go sour when he tries this, the leader shrieks and kicks him in the throat. Rory backs up slowly and desperately tries to show them the bird sitting in the tree. I s-t you not this is how he escapes: he flaps his arms like a lunatic and points at the bird, they all finally look and he just takes off running. Literally LOOK OVER THERE! POCKET SAND! Jesus christ I hope he brought extra pants because I would be s--tting myself, running through the jungle hearing the whoops and shrieks get further and further behind you. They know the jungle but 3 foot legs can only carry you so f--king far. He’s still lost too! After tracking the gorilla he lost his way and wandered until nightfall. Forcing him to sleep alone in the jungle. I can’t believe he could even sleep. The next morning he awakes with a lungfish flopping against his face. That means water is nearby! He finally makes it back to his canoe and finds the rest of the group the next morning.
With one more monkey brain protein shake they finally reach the shores of lake tele. After spending a little time on the shore they see something far off break the surface of the water. Like a periscope breaching the ocean. The group goes wild and they all fall to their knees, rory goes crazy too, offering them ten, then fifteen thousand francs to get him closer in the canoes. They ignore the offer and tell them to shut the f--k up and get on his knees, this is the moment. Innocent tells him the others are cursing him and to go for it so rory gets in one of the unoccupied canoes and shoves off towards the anomaly. He gets ten, twenty, thirty feet out when he hears an unmistakeable sound (CERCHICK) the rest of the group has their weapons trained on him and innocent. Rory snaps two blurry ( of course they’re blurry) photographs and comes back to shore. One of the guides, Gabriel, admonishes him. “God can approach man, but man NEVER approaches GOD. He would have killed us all.” After he got back to shore the whole group was just relaxed again. No mention about the fact that they were in a mexican f--king standoff five seconds ago. They all watched the beast about a half a mile away for seven minutes and thirty two seconds before it submerges again. I’ll put that picture in the shownotes. After that it’s basically denouement, de new maw? I honestly am less confident in that word than I am in all the local lingala words.
Let’s unpack. First. I’m pissed nobody got speared by mokele mbembe’s tusk, so that was kind of a let down. Second I can’t get f--king oo ee ooo ahh ting tang wall walla bing bang out of my head. Maybe I’ll cover that in the parasite episode. Third. One of my favorite stories about mokele-mbembe I couldn’t find a good place to shoehorn in yet that I want to make sure I mention. So one of the BBC expeditions back in the seventies made a much more cordial contact with the pygmies. They showed them a book of animal pictures and they’re flipping through them and they’re like leopard, hippo, elephant, crocodile sure sure we see that s-t all the time, and then they show a picture of a moose and they’re like WHAT THE F--K IS THAT THING! Later on after showing a gorilla and a few other monkeys, they throw in an apatasaurus and they just are like matter of factly yeah that’s a gorilla that’s mokele-mbembe. I love that, they have no modern schooling, they can recognize all the animals in their region and a f--king dinosaur like it’s nothing and then they see a moose or bear and they think it’s the devil. They treat mokele-mbembe like a foregone conclusion.
Sigh.. I guess I gotta cover the skeptical point of view. I’m fine cutting that off for a brief second to shill for a minute. I’m so grateful for all of you guys listening truly madly deeply. I’m living the dream and swearing on the radio, nobody tell my boss. We’re already starting to build a community across social media and s--t, but I’ve got some homework for you guys before next week. Last week I think I asked you to subscribe wherever you listen.This week I want you to throw me a 5 star rating wherever you’re listening. I work hard on the show! If you want to give me less than five stars I guess you can keep that to yourself or email me at nightmarenowpodcast@gmail.com to tell me how to improve, I’m always looking for feedback! Next week I’m gonna ask you to share the show with your friends and family or something crazy.
Brr I just blacked out for thirty seconds, must have been the marketing persona taking over. Anyway, why might moklele-mbembe not be real slash alive. A lot of the arguments overlap with nessie, it’s very tough to keep a breeding population going for 65 million years, especially without turning up any bodies. But taking that apart, this is an animal with potential mystical powers so we can just that to any of the rest of the debunking the deboonkers points. Furthermore, many large animals are capable of burying there dead. Look no further than elephant graveyards, a wild phenomena on its own. Let alone in the jungle with potentially the fastest natural decomposition in the world. As for the breeding cycle I have no earthly idea. Dinosaurs lay eggs generally I guess, maybe in the caves? Another option is literally seeing an elephant in the water. From far off a trunk could be a neck and they’re a greyish brown color. Fair enough. They still don’t have claws like the found footprints. Lastly the stories of mokele-mbembe might have been unfairly signal boosted. Remember the pokemania of the 90’s or later on in twenty sixteen when pokemon go first came out? That was basically the late eighteen hundreds but for dinosaurs. Everyone and their grandma wanted to see dinosaurs. Because the first dinosaur bones had only recently been found. Maybe I’ll cover the bone wars, that’s a really interesting story in and of itself.
Oh and one more thing, I couldn’t really fit this anywhere else, but there are tales from some of the tribes and villages that a few pygmies managed to spear and kill a dinosaur. Everyone that ate the meat died though. Kind of anticlimactic, kind of hilarious.
Anyway, I’ll leave it up to you to decide if dinosaurs still walk the earth, at least until I cover the texas pteranodons. Heh. I’ve got a huge smile across my face. I love this s--t! Until next week, I’d say sweet dreams, but we all know it’s only gonna be nightmares now!