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

Author: Morbid Network | Wondery
Duration: 01:06:31

Episode Shownotes

This episode is a Fan Favorite that was originally published as Episode 401. We hope that you continue to have a happy and safe holiday!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Summary

In Episode 623 of the Morbid podcast, titled 'Fan Favorite: The Violent Deaths of Bog Bodies', hosts Elena and Ash explore the unsettling topic of bog bodies—human remains preserved in peat bogs since ancient times. They discuss the violent deaths often associated with these individuals, many of whom were victims of murder or ritual sacrifice. The episode highlights the unique preservation processes involving peat and sphagnum moss, while also presenting various cases of bog bodies across Northern Europe, including the Elling woman and Cloney-Caven Man. The hosts mix macabre history with humor, enriching the narrative of these ancient and haunting remnants of humanity.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Episode 623: Fan Favorite: The Violent Deaths of Bog Bodies) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_03
Hey Weirdos, before we unleash today's macabre mystery, we were wondering, have you ever heard of Wondery Plus? It's like a secret passage to an ad-free lair with early access to episodes.

00:00:09 Speaker_03
You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

00:00:15 Speaker_00
You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.

00:00:21 Speaker_03
What a year it's been, you guys. I know that I have a lot to celebrate and a lot to give myself credit for.

00:00:26 Speaker_03
Honestly, the past few years have been pretty tough, especially for me and Elena, and it feels like a good time to step back and, you know, look at your life in this moment and commemorate it with something beautiful, something sparkly even.

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00:01:06 Speaker_03
And Blue Nile actually helped me find this gorgeous tennis bracelet. And tennis bracelets are very in right now. So I went immediately to Blue Nile and they helped me out. And God, it is so beautiful.

00:01:18 Speaker_03
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00:01:31 Speaker_03
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00:02:20 Speaker_03
After drinking cachava first thing in the morning, because that's when I always drink it, I feel satiated for hours. I feel focused, calm, and ready to take on my day.

00:02:29 Speaker_03
Something that I really love to do if I even want like a little bit more protein is just add a scoop of peanut butter to the vanilla and chai concoction that I make, and that, oh, is just scrum-diddly-umptious honey.

00:02:40 Speaker_03
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00:02:57 Speaker_03
We hope that you all had a lovely Thanksgiving with your family. I hope you're stuffed. I hope shit didn't get weird at the dinner table, and if it did, I bet you rocked that shit. Yeah, I hope it got weird and you made it weirder.

00:03:08 Speaker_03
Yeah, I hope you wore a shirt that was provocative and made people angry. Let's go. I hope it was great. And I hope that you watched our freaking video that we put out.

00:03:17 Speaker_03
freaking video though you don't forget we're doing the listen to tales in costume in costume on video every time the one that we just did for november came out on thanksgiving so i hope you watch that with your family and i hope you went and played the sims oh yeah and then watch salad fingers hell yeah and we also hope that you enjoy this resurrected episode kind of like the sims one was resurrected and the beautiful salad fingers was resurrected exactly like that

00:03:46 Speaker_02
Everything is connected. Yeah. Go listen to Bog Bodies because it's a good episode, I think. It's a great episode. I loved that one. I immediately got imposter syndrome. Did you see that happen in real time? Yeah, it was kind of crazy.

00:03:58 Speaker_02
I was like, it's a good episode, I think. I don't know. Maybe not. Actually, it sucks. Don't listen to this. Shut off right now. No, it's a great episode. It is. It's one of those really fascinating, spooky, weird history ones that we just love to dive into.

00:04:11 Speaker_02
Dare I say she's a morbid classic. Oh.

00:04:14 Speaker_03
Oh.

00:04:15 Speaker_02
Oh. Oh.

00:04:17 Speaker_03
Enjoy it, my friends. We love you. Happy Thanksgiving. What the fuck is that? What happened? Do do do. Do do do.

00:04:25 Speaker_01
Don't do your job, Jess. The TV just turned on, guys.

00:04:31 Speaker_02
Leave this in.

00:04:32 Speaker_01
You have to keep this in.

00:04:34 Speaker_02
This is the way to lead into a rerun, okay? So enjoy, enjoy. Hey weirdos, I'm Elena. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.

00:05:08 Speaker_03
whoop there it is we are here and you didn't forget your name this time i didn't i don't know what happened last time it was late at night yeah that's what it was it was a late night recording i zoned out a bit i had a moment zoning i was just on a space level i know usually i feel like that's like a very me thing to do but you were you were not here with us i was on an ash level

00:05:31 Speaker_03
That's scary. I was not. I was on a space level. I was going to say, I don't think you've ever been on an Ash level. Truly. Truly don't think I ever have. Most people haven't.

00:05:42 Speaker_02
That's okay. Only Ash. But you know what? This is my level. Here we are. And we're gonna do something that is, it definitely is true crime, but it's like ancient true crime. Ooh, leave it to you. Because I've always been really interested in bog bodies.

00:06:02 Speaker_03
And you said that to me the other day and I said, I don't know what that means. She said, huh? I was like, are you talking about cranberry juice?

00:06:12 Speaker_02
Um, no, not really. No. Although, uh, who likes cranberry juice? I think Drew. Doesn't Drew? Yeah. Drew really likes cranberry juice.

00:06:20 Speaker_03
of that. Although, who likes, I thought you were like doing a poll really fast. Hey guys, who likes cranberry juice? I also kind of was, I was gonna be like show of hands, do you like cranberry juice? He, that boy loves cranberry juice. He does.

00:06:33 Speaker_03
And like not even cranberry juice cocktail like Regina George, like cranberry juice. That's a lot for me. Yeah.

00:06:41 Speaker_02
Cranberry juice is

00:06:42 Speaker_03
is very aggressive to me. It's tart. Very tart. Yeah, I, this is so yuckas, but I used to drink it when I was constipated when I was little.

00:06:53 Speaker_03
I got constipated a lot when I was little, and my mom would just give me some cranberry juice, so now I hate it.

00:06:58 Speaker_02
And it would work, apparently.

00:06:59 Speaker_03
Yeah, I owe that shit.

00:07:01 Speaker_02
That shit makes you shit. I bet it'll work. Yeah, I can't do a cranberry juice. But you know what? This isn't about cranberry juice. Nah. This is about bog bodies, which are very far off from cranberry juice. Although I guess they're a little, like, sour.

00:07:17 Speaker_02
They should. Their way of being is very sour. Look at the face. I wish you could see the face. It's literally ashes just making a tart face. My nose is all wrinkled. So let's talk.

00:07:31 Speaker_02
I'm sure some of you have probably heard of bog bodies because they've been around. There's been a ton of discoveries in the last several years of these, especially in Northern Europe. Bullshit.

00:07:43 Speaker_03
uh but they're not like don't feel bad if you don't know what they are because like it's weird yeah but and like they're not making as big a deal out of these as i think they should because they make a big deal out of like the randomest shit but like not that i mean this is pretty random shit but it's very random but make a big deal of this it's interesting from what you've you've told me like a little tidbit yeah these are whole ass people

00:08:06 Speaker_03
yeah and in fact oh sorry i interrupted go ahead oh no i was gonna say that have been preserved for like thousands of years okay i'm glad i let you go because elena was looking at like some pictures the other day going through this and there was basically like the remains of somebody and i thought that they had put a wig on this person i was like did they put a fucking wig on them and elena said nar nar yeah that's exactly what i said she said that's his hair and i was like what and i was like that's a two thousand year old

00:08:36 Speaker_02
hair right there. That's so crazy. Yeah, it's wild. So let's talk about what bogbardies are.

00:08:44 Speaker_03
I was in a place of like, narclear, and you were like, let's get to some bogbardies. I don't know what's going on. Okay, tomater. Tomater.

00:08:52 Speaker_02
So we're going to talk. about bog bodies. I'm going to tell you what they are, how they form, what is in a bog that makes these bog bodies stay the way they are. That's my biggest question.

00:09:06 Speaker_02
Because my first thought is the bog of eternal stench from Labyrinth. That checks. That's literally when I hear bog of eternal stench is my next thought.

00:09:17 Speaker_03
I love that you think of that because as we know I think of cranberry juice but like the two ocean spray guys. Oh yeah. Whatever happened to them? What happened to them? I don't watch cable anymore, so maybe they're still there.

00:09:28 Speaker_02
Maybe they're still around. Yeah. Just standing in the cranberry bog. I bet they are. They are. Because bog bodies. Bog bodies. Preservatives. They're bog brothers. These are basically ancient, and I mean ancient, like from the Iron Age. Old. Like BCE.

00:09:46 Speaker_02
So these are ancient bodies found buried in peat marshes and bogs. And again, like I said, in Northern Europe mostly. Okay. We're talking people from as long ago as 8000 BCE. My brain just like can't even wrap itself around that. Outrageous.

00:10:05 Speaker_02
And by the way BCE is before common era.

00:10:08 Speaker_01
Yes.

00:10:09 Speaker_02
And is a newer convention to date things and one that I like. So that's why I'm using it.

00:10:13 Speaker_03
I'm happy for you.

00:10:15 Speaker_02
Thank you. A lot of them seem to come from around, like I said, the early Iron Age, which, like, whoa. And I think that's somewhere around 500 BCE to 400 CE, which is Common Era. Okay. Like, this is wildly old. We're in the Common Era.

00:10:35 Speaker_02
We're in the Common Era. Well, it's outrageously old. Like, this is literally, like, before Common Era and then basically, like, after Common Era. we're in the after. We're currently in the after I would say. Oh shit okay. So this but this is 400.

00:10:49 Speaker_02
So this is way long ago. Whoa. Like three steps ago. Outrageously old is the moral of this story. Love. I mean, these are people who we would only be able to study from things that we find.

00:11:04 Speaker_02
And if we find things, it's like, whoa, we found this ancient thing from 2,000 years ago. Like it's always this amazing discovery. But now we've discovered whole ass people. with their thing still on them.

00:11:18 Speaker_02
Are there any cool things that like we don't know about that we do now? Well, the things aren't even what we're looking at here. It's more what happened to these people. Because a lot of these people died by straight up murder. Bogbardies.

00:11:34 Speaker_02
I don't know why I keep saying Bardies. Bogbardies. Bogbardies. I don't know why it feels right.

00:11:40 Speaker_01
whatever.

00:11:41 Speaker_02
It's not. Bog bodies. It's hard to say. These people were often violently killed. Like they're not just people who died by natural causes, old age, you know, sickness, whatever, and then they were buried in these bogs. Right.

00:11:58 Speaker_02
No, they were like ritualistically sacrificed or straight up just murdered for no ritual. It's like some smiley face killer type shit. It's intense.

00:12:08 Speaker_02
And due to the biological magic of their very unique and specific environments, these bogs, they're found completely preserved, sometimes with all their hair, skin, and clothing still intact.

00:12:21 Speaker_03
like I thought you were done when it was the lady in the lake like I was like oh wow it can't get crazier than that.

00:12:27 Speaker_02
Never done. Here we go. We are always ratcheting it up that huge notch. You are for sure. Always trying to at least. I read a book called Bog Bodies Uncovered Solving Europe's Ancient Mystery by Miranda Aldhouse Green. I bet you did. And it's real good.

00:12:43 Speaker_02
I'm gonna tag it in the show notes.

00:12:46 Speaker_03
If I had seen that on a library shelf I would have been

00:12:50 Speaker_02
That is for you. That's for my girl. I really like she had a very good way of describing everything. She went into like the violence associated with it. She covered so many of these bodies because there's so many.

00:13:03 Speaker_02
I'm only going to cover a little handful today.

00:13:06 Speaker_03
Or are we gonna do like a couple parts later throughout our lives?

00:13:08 Speaker_02
I might do a part two, yeah, talking about more of these bodies because there's just so many interesting ones. But the way that she described and referred to bogs is something I really liked, which sounds weird, I know.

00:13:21 Speaker_02
But she described them like this. She said, bogs were and are special places, miasmic and fearsome. They hover in the tween space between land and water. They are both and they are neither.

00:13:35 Speaker_03
Oh, that's an author.

00:13:36 Speaker_02
Right, like a really beautiful sentence to me.

00:13:39 Speaker_03
Also, can we just like take a moment to study the author shouting out the author? Like, check that out. Author supporting authors. tinyurl.com slash the butcher and the Wren.

00:13:52 Speaker_02
The amount of people that now say that to me, I'm like, yes. We should put that on a shirt. I love it. You should tattoo that on yourself. There you go, just tattoo that word. I'll just tattoo it on my hand. The link will forever be active.

00:14:04 Speaker_02
But yeah, that's just like a really beautiful way of describing a bog. Yeah, it absolutely is. Which is something that is, you think of as like probably stinky and like gross, like a bog.

00:14:13 Speaker_03
Yeah, when I think bog, other than like my guys in the Granbury Bogs.

00:14:17 Speaker_02
Of course, your guys.

00:14:18 Speaker_03
My oceans for men. I also think of swamps.

00:14:21 Speaker_02
Yeah, just like green bubbly stinky water, you know what I mean? Like just yuckiness. It's so funny though, because cranberry bogs are beautiful. That's true, but bog of eternal stench. That's where we're at. So peat is what we're talking about here.

00:14:35 Speaker_02
So peat bogs. Now peat is a material... I just thought you meant a man named Pete. Just peat bog.

00:14:41 Speaker_03
You were like, peat is what we're talking about here. And I was like, well, I was not up to speed then. Peat, P-E-A-T. All right, I'm going to take a seat.

00:14:49 Speaker_02
Peat is a material created by the slow decomposition of organic matter and is often formed in these bogs. The bogs are what I described above and a lot of things can't really thrive in or around them unless they're very specific to bogs.

00:15:06 Speaker_02
So they're formed when shallow bodies of water have plants and such that will fall into the bodies of water.

00:15:13 Speaker_02
And because there's a massive lack of oxygen in these places, it will just lay there and decompose very slowly, like hundreds and thousands of years, basically hanging in a preserved state for quite some time.

00:15:28 Speaker_02
but making the body of water a bog and making the layers of organic material building up over time and decomposing very slowly become peat. Now sphagnum, it's sphagnum, it's hard to say, sphagnum. No, you did great. There it is.

00:15:44 Speaker_02
Sphagnum moss is actually one of the big reasons why peat is able to preserve, and it sounds like I'm saying a man named Pete. It's why peat is able to preserve bodies and other organic material so well.

00:15:57 Speaker_02
Sphagnum lives in bog moss, and when the moss dies, it releases the sphagnum into the surrounding area in the bog water.

00:16:05 Speaker_02
It actually turns, if there's an organic, like a person in there, or even like an animal body, it will turn the skin leathery and kind of brown looking, like it will tan it, essentially. And any hair will seemingly be dyed a coppery red color.

00:16:21 Speaker_03
Oh I thought that man's just had like some motherfucking flow.

00:16:25 Speaker_02
That's because it's it does it turns it a beautiful auburn like coppery auburn. I feel like it's the red that you look for. That I go for. Like that is my like oh I want that red.

00:16:36 Speaker_03
Every time I see it I'm like that's the color. My hairstylist girlies it's like a 734 or like a 743. There you go. Yeah.

00:16:44 Speaker_02
Next time I go to the hairstylist, I'm bringing a picture of a bog body and being like, that's the color I want. Go off, queen. Can you do a sphagnum color?

00:16:52 Speaker_03
Do it.

00:16:53 Speaker_02
But either way, it's very interesting. So as you'll see, any bog body that you will see is a dark color because they've been tanned and their hair is that fiery coppery auburn color.

00:17:05 Speaker_02
Which makes it a little difficult to tell what their hair color was before that.

00:17:09 Speaker_01
Yeah.

00:17:09 Speaker_02
But usually it ends up the more coppery it is the more it was like light it was in real life. I was gonna say. Like a gray or a blonde. That makes sense.

00:17:18 Speaker_03
And then is it like a darker copper if they had darker hair?

00:17:21 Speaker_02
Exactly. Yeah. So bog oaks are the only trees that grow around bogs and the oak that falls into the bog actually also helps with that preservation and tanning process as well.

00:17:32 Speaker_02
So it's like a mixture of things that need to come together but when it does it is like perfect preservation.

00:17:38 Speaker_03
That's crazy. Isn't it wild just like the shit that happens that we don't understand? Science is wild.

00:17:44 Speaker_02
It really is. I've always enjoyed science. It's so interesting. This was blowing my mind while I was reading it. You're blowing my mind. I'm blowing your mind. Poof.

00:18:02 Speaker_03
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00:18:13 Speaker_03
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00:18:21 Speaker_03
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00:20:24 Speaker_02
So only when these bodies are discovered and then taken out and exposed to oxygen, because while they're under there, they're not getting any oxygen, only when they're taken out and the oxygen comes in contact with them, do they really begin to decompose naturally.

00:20:38 Speaker_02
But so many are still preserved today. They're able to keep them in like oxygen sealed tanks, you know what I mean? But they have to do it quick. The transfer process for these things, it's super delicate.

00:20:51 Speaker_02
super fast, you don't want to like fuck with this a lot because they'll start to just fall apart. And they do eventually, they will fall apart, but we can keep them for as long as we can.

00:21:02 Speaker_02
Now, some people believe that a lot of these bodies were placed in the bogs as like a warning almost or some kind of a punishment, a warning to others, because some of them would be staked down in the bog.

00:21:15 Speaker_02
and like held down in the bog, sometimes through their limbs. And sometimes while they were alive, they would be put in these bogs and then like stakes would be run through their arms while they were alive. And then they would be left there.

00:21:30 Speaker_02
And usually they were facing upward. So if somebody came to the bog, they would just see this pale face of a human dead and lying stake down in the bog.

00:21:41 Speaker_03
Fuck a whole bunch of that.

00:21:42 Speaker_02
Yeah and they were being punished because by doing this they were remaining in the in-between place where their body couldn't even decompose. Okay.

00:21:52 Speaker_02
So this was a punishment like we're not even going to allow your body to decompose and your soul to leave. Oh. And if you're stuck in this bog nothing's going to be able to remove your soul for the afterlife. You're going to be stuck here.

00:22:05 Speaker_03
It's like they were creating man-made purgatory.

00:22:07 Speaker_02
Exactly, because bogs have always been looked at as a place where evil spirits live and dwell and they remain.

00:22:14 Speaker_02
This would be somewhere to place someone you wanted to punish, putting them in that dark, evil, and frozen-in-time place to never fully, freely cross over to the other side.

00:22:26 Speaker_03
Sometimes I feel like I'm in a bog. Yeah, don't we all, man? Do you ever feel like you're in a bog?

00:22:33 Speaker_02
There you go.

00:22:34 Speaker_04
Forever.

00:22:34 Speaker_02
Sometimes. And sometimes they would even remove, a lot of times actually, they would remove the person's head and they'd place the head in one part of the bog and the body in another so they couldn't even come together.

00:22:47 Speaker_03
Come together, together as one. I was in a place of beetles.

00:22:52 Speaker_02
I was in a place of ghosts as always. Usually. So yeah, so they would do that. So sometimes people will find these heads of bog bodies and sometimes they don't ever find the bodies.

00:23:03 Speaker_02
what it's real spooky okay are you gonna tell me how like the first bog body was found like who was just like swimming in a bog one day so these i'm gonna tell you about a few interesting bog bodies what we can say is that every single bog body has been found by accident

00:23:21 Speaker_02
Nobody's ever gone in search of a bog body that I can find. There's no fish in bog, right? I don't believe like many things can live in a bog.

00:23:29 Speaker_01
Okay.

00:23:30 Speaker_02
But I'm honestly not positive. Okay. But either way, it's almost always when people are doing peat cutting, which is like removing layers of peat, because we do use peat moths for like, you know, landscaping and shit. Yeah I've heard of that.

00:23:46 Speaker_02
You've heard peat moss? I sure have.

00:23:48 Speaker_02
Yeah like people use it for things so people will go and dredge it up like these big bales of peat essentially and that's when they find these peat bodies or bog bodies because they'll find them in between the layers of peat.

00:24:02 Speaker_02
Do they still use the peat? Sometimes. Sometimes. It happens. Gross. You know, that's why I actually, this is a total sidetrack, but it's like somewhat in there. You are in a place of ash. I am, I am.

00:24:17 Speaker_02
I was watching a TikTok the other night and somebody was talking about, it's the, who's the guy who does the, it was the 90s. Oh, Kevin. Kevin. He was talking about how he had a bone graft in his mouth and they put a cadaver bone in there.

00:24:31 Speaker_02
And then he was worried, he wanted to know who it was from and then he was talking about having a haunted face. I also have a cadaver bone in my mouth. So I have a haunted face too and I never thought about it. That's cool.

00:24:44 Speaker_03
So I just wanted to put that up. I have extra bones in my mouth. There you go, but yours are just natural, not haunted. Yeah, those are mine.

00:24:50 Speaker_02
Yeah, they're just hers. I'm haunted, but by myself. My face is haunted, so that's fun. What if it's like a really shitbag human? Well, I'm grateful for their bone is all I can say. But either way, this peat moss, your peat moss could be haunted. Yeah.

00:25:05 Speaker_03
Oh, absolutely. By a bog body. I don't want any peat moss anymore. I want all the peat moss. That checks. Like, that's awesome. I'm going to call my landscaper after this and be like, hi, remove the peat moss. My fucking imaginary landscaper.

00:25:17 Speaker_02
Yeah, there you go. Hello, remove the peat moss at once.

00:25:21 Speaker_03
I want to call someone and say that. Just call a landscaper. Just any landscaper. We don't have your phone number on our client list.

00:25:28 Speaker_02
I'll be like, ma'am, this is a Wendy's. I don't care. Remove the peat moss.

00:25:32 Speaker_04
Get it out of here.

00:25:34 Speaker_02
Post haste. All right, so we're going to talk about the Elling woman. You know, she's all of these bog bodies. None of them have names. They don't. You know, we can't really tell who they were.

00:25:46 Speaker_02
So they're always named after the area in which they were found. Okay. I was gonna say that, that makes sense.

00:25:52 Speaker_03
I was gonna say that sounds pretty.

00:25:54 Speaker_02
It does. The Elling woman. She was found in Denmark in 1938. I want to go there. She is believed to be from 280 BCE during the Iron Age. Shut up. Shut up.

00:26:06 Speaker_03
Okay. Just for, like, my folks out there, what's the Iron Age? The Iron Age? Yeah. Well, according to Google's self, it is a prehistoric period that followed the Bronze Age when weapons and tools came to be made of iron. Which makes sense.

00:26:22 Speaker_03
Or in mythology, just for, like, my interested mythology folks out there, the last and worst age of the world, a time of wickedness and oppression. Whoa. So, like, two very drastic differences there. Very much.

00:26:34 Speaker_03
Sometimes there was iron and sometimes there was wickedness.

00:26:37 Speaker_02
You know what? And there was a lot of wickedness in these bog body situations. Boom, segue. We're talking about the Elling woman and her discovery was made in, and I'm going to give this my best shot. Hit me. Hoo boy, some of these pronunciations.

00:26:53 Speaker_02
Bejailed scuv doll. I believe it. Bejailed scuv doll by a man named Jens Zachariasen, who was a farmer. So he was cutting and digging peat. like everybody was. Like everybody's all about the peat digging.

00:27:11 Speaker_02
Luckily this was like kind of it was a good removal process because a lot of these bog bodies tend to get either like kind of like cut apart by the peat digging process accidentally or when they are removed from the peat especially like in the 30s and the 50s when this shit was happening they didn't know what they were doing.

00:27:31 Speaker_02
They didn't know what the hell this thing was. So most of them thought they were recent murder victims. So they would pull them out not knowing that these are very fragile and very old.

00:27:43 Speaker_02
But luckily this one had a little bit of a like ease in transfer process. So this farmer, he saw this clear body and was like, oh shit, this is a human.

00:27:56 Speaker_02
And instead of fleeing, or as we're going to find out in another case, this happens, allowing villagers to take pieces of the human being with them. No. That happens in another one. Luckily in this time it didn't happen.

00:28:10 Speaker_02
This guy, Zachariasen, he immediately called the National Museum of Denmark and they were able to remove her properly. So good job Jens. Now it was later determined that this girl was about 25 years old at the time of her murder.

00:28:25 Speaker_02
She was wearing a sheepskin cloak and a cowhide blanket wrapped around her and had more fabric made from cowhide wrapped around her lower body. A lot of these were wrapped in a lot of layers.

00:28:38 Speaker_02
There was also a woolen belt wrapped around her and there was a leather rope tied around her neck with a slipknot. Oh shit. Yeah.

00:28:46 Speaker_03
Do you think that them being like having many layers helped with the preservation, too?

00:28:53 Speaker_02
Honestly, maybe, but to be honest, it's kind of 50-50. A lot of them are found with a lot of layers, but a lot of them are found just naked, with nothing on them.

00:29:03 Speaker_02
And actually, one of the most preserved bog bodies that we're going to talk about, the Talland Man, he was completely naked. Okay, so it doesn't seem to really matter. I don't really think it matters, but I'm sure it doesn't hurt.

00:29:15 Speaker_02
So there was the leather rope tied around her neck with a slipknot, and her back was almost perfectly preserved. And it was immediately apparent that she had long hair that had been intricately braided before she was killed.

00:29:28 Speaker_02
Which this would happen sometimes in ritualistic killings. They would braid the hair. Pictures of this you can find and they're amazing. This braiding is perfectly preserved. It was pleating back then. Exactly. I love that. And it's preserved.

00:29:44 Speaker_02
Like you can see every little bit of that braid. It looks like a wig. Wow. It really does. And it's copper. Her hair is a little darker, so I believe her hair must have been darker in life. But it's wild, it's very amazing.

00:29:58 Speaker_02
It looks like it was done yesterday when you look at it. But her front of her body was a little more decayed, so it was a little tougher.

00:30:05 Speaker_02
Now, further testing done in the 70s, in the 1970s, told scientists that she definitely had been hanged and that was how she was killed. There was a deep laceration around her neck from the hanging.

00:30:18 Speaker_02
She's believed to have possibly been used as a sacrifice to the gods by her village, perhaps like a fertility sacrifice. Could be any number of sacrificial reasons, honestly.

00:30:30 Speaker_04
I'm looking at her hair right now.

00:30:31 Speaker_03
What?

00:30:31 Speaker_02
Amazing, right? Insane, yeah. Now, the next one I'm going to talk about is the Talland man, and I just mentioned him. You did. One of the most incredibly preserved of the bog bodies. He was found by two pea-cutting farmers, May 11th, 1950.

00:30:46 Speaker_02
He was also found in Bajaldskogdal bog in Denmark. You did it. He was found 12 years after Ellingwoman in the same bog. Oh, shit. Isn't that interesting? That is interesting. According, because these bodies are in like layers of peat. Right.

00:31:05 Speaker_02
So like you can sometimes miss them or you get pieces of them.

00:31:09 Speaker_02
Now, according to the book I already mentioned, she said, quote, as they worked, they suddenly saw in the peat layer a face so fresh that they could only suppose they had stumbled upon a recent murder. Oh. He is over 2000 years old. What?

00:31:26 Speaker_02
Which makes his preservation even more incredibly impressive. Scientists believe he was somewhere around 30 to 40 years old when he was killed, which 40 years old would have made him kind of elderly back then. Yeah. Like to be honest. Yeah.

00:31:40 Speaker_02
And it was likely a ritualistic sacrifice. He was found with a braided leather noose wrapped around his neck and he looks like he is sleeping.

00:31:48 Speaker_01
Oh.

00:31:49 Speaker_02
Literally in a fetal position and has a very peaceful look on his face. Where you can see every line and wrinkle like he would just start breathing in front of you. He's naked but he's still wearing a little pointed cap and you can see chin hairs.

00:32:07 Speaker_02
What? Legitimately. They were able to determine his last meal. No. 2000 years ago. What he ate. So he ate porridge, a bunch of grains and some bony fish. And they said it was about 12 to 24 hours before he was hanged and then thrown in the bog. Bony fish.

00:32:26 Speaker_02
They also think someone may have positioned him. Maybe it was like a family member or something like Because a lot of these bodies are tossed in there. A lot of them have looks of anguish on their faces still.

00:32:40 Speaker_02
Because they were like ritualistically killed. Because most of them, I haven't even gotten into yet, some of the worst ones. Some of the ones that were tortured and abused before being killed.

00:32:52 Speaker_02
They are bad and but this guy, the Talland man, he is so peaceful looking. He is so, I'm looking at him right now. And he was found on his side like just sleeping.

00:33:01 Speaker_03
He looks like he was like literally taking a little cat nap.

00:33:03 Speaker_02
Yeah, it's wild. Oh wow, I'm looking at the whole body now. Isn't it incredible? Oh my god. Yeah.

00:33:10 Speaker_02
now the next one i'm going to talk about is the i think it's pronounced the edie girl okay i looked at several pronunciations for this i believe it's edie the girl from edie is a is a bog body from the netherlands she was found may 12th 1897 stop by two peat cutters who were cutting through the peat in a bog that was just near the village of edie

00:33:33 Speaker_02
When they dredged up the layers of Pete, they found her just lying there between the layers. Of course, they freaked the fuck out and ran away. Because honestly, a lot of people probably would.

00:33:43 Speaker_02
And in the eighteen hundreds, they were like, this is a demon, the devil. And they also literally thought it was the devil because she had a big lock of fiery red hair. Yeah, I actually just saw.

00:33:57 Speaker_02
So they thought it was the devil, like they thought they had unleashed it. My God. They're like, he lives in the bog! They're like, he's in the bog, guys.

00:34:04 Speaker_02
But they creeped back and then they just hid her under the peat again, probably because they figured if they left her there, then the demon would stay in the bog or something, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, leave the devil in the bog.

00:34:14 Speaker_02
But apparently she was dug up again over a week later. I think the mayor actually dug her back up. He was like, let's see this. Let's see this daemon in the bog. But she wasn't pulled out of the bog very carefully, unfortunately.

00:34:27 Speaker_03
Oh no.

00:34:28 Speaker_02
Yes, what they could determine was that she was a 16, maybe 14 to 16 year old girl and was killed over 2,000 years before she was taken out of the bog in 1897.

00:34:40 Speaker_02
They used her remaining bones and also the fact that her wisdom teeth had not erupted or formed roots in her mouth to determine her approximate age.

00:34:49 Speaker_03
Damn, isn't it crazy that even back then people had wisdom teeth?

00:34:52 Speaker_02
Yeah, wisdom. Fun fact, I don't have them. But look at that, evolved. They estimate she was only about four and a half feet tall. She was very tiny stature. When she was found, like I said, she had tons of fiery red hair.

00:35:04 Speaker_02
Again, it's important to note that the sphagnum gases turn the skin brown hair red, but they believe she might have had light auburn hair. Okay. So maybe like closer to a strawberry blonde. It was like using overtone. There you go.

00:35:19 Speaker_02
She had a ton of hair, though.

00:35:21 Speaker_03
Yeah, she looked like Merida.

00:35:22 Speaker_02
Yeah, and honestly, though, interestingly, the right side of her very long hair had been shorn off.

00:35:28 Speaker_03
Oh.

00:35:28 Speaker_02
And they believe it was shaved off.

00:35:30 Speaker_03
As, like, a weird punishment, maybe?

00:35:32 Speaker_02
Yeah, like, this is a common thing in a lot of the bog bodies, that the hair was shorn before their interment, basically. Weird. Yeah, it's very weird.

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00:38:14 Speaker_02
Now also, the villagers had come to the place where she was being taken out of the bog. They took several of her teeth, locks of her hair, and even some of her bones. Well, why? Yeah. They just took him with them.

00:38:28 Speaker_03
What? I'm like, you guys think this is a demon and you're like, hey, let me let me get a piece of that.

00:38:33 Speaker_02
Also, I hope they all got haunted as fuck, to be honest. So weird. Like you deserve to have an Annabelle situation, you dicks. Hey red hair. There you go. Annabelle. Annabelle baby.

00:38:46 Speaker_02
Now she was also wearing a heavy wool cloak which she still had on her when they found her.

00:38:51 Speaker_03
I want a cloak.

00:38:52 Speaker_02
And also it appears that she was indeed murdered because there was still a cord made of wool that was wrapped three times around her neck.

00:39:00 Speaker_03
Isn't it wild that like even BCE we were just out here killing people? Oh so much. Like why from the dawn of time has everybody been like kill, murder, kill? Always.

00:39:10 Speaker_02
We've always been the worst.

00:39:13 Speaker_03
Yeah like what is up with this speech?

00:39:15 Speaker_02
And this was so it was tied in a slipknot and was likely some kind of belt that they used. She also had a stab wound to her chest and it was near her collarbone or at the base of her throat.

00:39:27 Speaker_03
Damn.

00:39:27 Speaker_02
And the wound had been made by a knife.

00:39:29 Speaker_03
That's like a shitty area too.

00:39:31 Speaker_02
Basically going for the heart, I would think. Now her face was actually reconstructed in 1992. I saw that. And it was using the body. It's incredible to look at. Richard Neve, who was the artist who did it, and I can't believe that he was able to do that.

00:39:47 Speaker_02
When you look at the bog body, you're like, how the fuck did you do that? That was my instant thought. Amazing. You can see Edie Girl and her reconstruction at the Drents Museum in Assen, Netherlands. We should go. We should go.

00:40:02 Speaker_02
Now the next one I'm going to talk about is the Cloney-Caven man and the old Krogan man. Okay. So two different people? Two different men. Got it. But discovered in the same bog. Okie doke. So in the same year too. In 2003. What?

00:40:18 Speaker_02
Two bodies were discovered within a three-month span of time in bogs in Cloney-Caven, County Meath, and Krogan Hill. They were found by pea cutters, of course,

00:40:29 Speaker_02
Which is, you know, starting to sound like a pretty high-risk job if risk includes finding ritualistically murdered corpses on the regular. That's a risk in my book. Pretty risky. Yeah.

00:40:40 Speaker_02
The first, which again was called the Cloney Cave-in Man for obvious reasons, that's where he was found, was actually accidentally cut in half by the machine used to dig the peat.

00:40:50 Speaker_05
Oh no.

00:40:51 Speaker_02
Yeah, but his upper body showed that he had been brutally murdered. His skull was literally smashed open and his nose, the bridge of his nose, was like destroyed. They believed that somebody used a stone axe to hit him in the head and in the nose.

00:41:07 Speaker_02
That like gives me a headache. It was three blows to the head and one across the body as well with the axe. He was also disemboweled. Bitch. And this is where it gets crazy. His nipples were noticeably cut off.

00:41:21 Speaker_02
And this is important, I swear, I'll come back to it, I'll come back. Oh, it is? He was from all the way back to between 392 and 201 BCE. Yeah, where shit popped off, apparently. Definitely popped off with these guys.

00:41:35 Speaker_01
Literally.

00:41:35 Speaker_02
Now, when he was examined after being taken out of the bog, Cloney Caveman's hair actually looked like it was styled. Is that the one that I saw? No, that was a different one. This one is actually styled using plant oil, they found.

00:41:51 Speaker_02
So it was intentionally styled. That's what they used, like, literally like gel. How cool is that? Isn't that crazy? Yeah, and cool that like the bog didn't mess that up. It didn't mess it up. And it was in what looked like a mohawk almost. Oh, shit. Yeah.

00:42:06 Speaker_02
He was fucking cool. He was. And the makeshift gel had to have been imported from either France or Spain, because that's where that specific plant grows. Yo. Isn't that wild? That is really fucking cool. So cool.

00:42:21 Speaker_04
I was like, this is really cool.

00:42:22 Speaker_02
It is.

00:42:23 Speaker_04
I was really into this.

00:42:24 Speaker_02
This is a weird thing. Yeah. So the National Museum of Ireland actually used samples of Clooney Caven's hair to determine that he ate a lot of, they were able to use hair. to determine that he ate a lot of fresh vegetables. Good for him.

00:42:39 Speaker_02
And because they were recently ingested by him, they were able to say he was murdered in the late summer or early fall, because that's when they would have been fresh. Which like, whoa. Summer squash. That's just so wild.

00:42:51 Speaker_02
They used his crazy hair to say what he ate. And then they were able to determine when he died, because it had to have been fresh and in season. That's why prose asks you what you eat. There you go.

00:43:05 Speaker_03
What your eating habits are like.

00:43:07 Speaker_02
Look at that, always able to take it back. Now, that was the cloney cave-in man. In the Krogan Hill area, they discovered another body. This was the old Krogan man in the Innebog. He was also brutally butchered and dumped there.

00:43:23 Speaker_02
He had defensive wounds on his upper arms where he had apparently tried to stop whatever was stabbing him. But he was stabbed in the arms instead.

00:43:32 Speaker_02
And apparently part of his torture was that he had hazel branches literally threaded through holes that had been cut out of his arms. Girl. Like, whoa.

00:43:44 Speaker_03
Are those like spiky?

00:43:46 Speaker_02
Yeah, they're just like branches, like bendable branches. So they cut holes in his arms and then threaded branches through them while he was alive. That is so fucked up. And they did this.

00:43:59 Speaker_02
They put, like, threaded these branches through him to hold him down in the bog while he was being stabbed in the chest and neck. Oh. Then. Then. His head had been completely cut off his body and he had been bisected. Chopped in half. Oh.

00:44:20 Speaker_02
His nipples were also cut off. Stop. And he was from somewhere between 362 and 175 BCE. Are we gonna get any explanation about the nip-nips? We are. Okay.

00:44:30 Speaker_02
But also they found a braided, I think he was actually naked, like completely, except for a braided armband around his bicep. And it was made of leather and had a bronze amulet in it, which is interesting. He was somewhere between six foot six. Holy.

00:44:48 Speaker_02
He was a tall drink of water. Oh honey. We love a tall man. Calm down over there. And he was well nourished apparently and taking samples from his hair actually proved that he was wealthy enough to eat meat as part of his regular diet which was rare.

00:45:05 Speaker_02
Yeah. And meant he must have been in the upper echelon. Out there eating those turkey legs. So they agree, scientists agree that both of these men were clearly of the upper echelon of social class. They were in their 20s. They were not laborers.

00:45:19 Speaker_02
They were well nourished and showed that they had eaten well in their lives. They also had well manicured nails. which could be noticed immediately. And this meant that they definitely hadn't worked for a living. They weren't doing manual labor.

00:45:32 Speaker_02
This could also mean apparently I found somewhere else that they could determine that maybe these people were thieves and that they didn't work for their living. They stole for their living and that's why their hands were well manicured.

00:45:45 Speaker_02
But they don't believe that with these two because along with how they ate and their hair and they were able to use styling gel essentially. Exactly, these were clearly not just like thieves, these were upper social class.

00:46:00 Speaker_03
Wouldn't it be so cool if like eventually we got, I mean I don't want to get like too many of these bodies of course, but we have so many of them, if we got like so many in the same place where we could kind of like

00:46:11 Speaker_03
trace lineage and everything, you know?

00:46:13 Speaker_02
Like that'd be so cool. I feel like it could actually happen. Like we have so much that we're getting from these.

00:46:19 Speaker_02
And it's like year by year as technology and science like goes forward and just like gets better and better, they're getting more and more from these bodies.

00:46:28 Speaker_02
Because some of the things that when they would first get them, either in the 80s and the 50s and they, you know, even the 90s, they would think one thing, but then we get into the 2000s and everything progressed.

00:46:41 Speaker_02
And then all of a sudden they go, oh, wait a second, that wasn't the case, because now we know.

00:46:45 Speaker_02
Like some of them, there was a couple that they were like, we don't know if this cracked skull is from the layers of peat moss crushing their skull, or if it was a perimortem injury.

00:46:58 Speaker_02
And sometimes they would say they think it's from the peat moss, and then later they would discover No, that was actually done perimortem because we can see evidence of swelling around the wounds. That's crazy.

00:47:10 Speaker_02
Which shows that there was bruising, which shows that there was blood flow while it was happening. That is just like wild. Which is just whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

00:47:20 Speaker_02
uh now the nipple thing please so please no but also please yes please no please yes uh it was important because apparently this led a lot of researchers to believe that these men could have actually been failed kings or people in line of succession who failed to become kings so if you fail to become a king that you

00:47:41 Speaker_02
Oh, I'm going to explain. They rip your nips. So are you ready to hear something a little shocking? I mean, I'm going to say usually from you. Yeah. I'm going to say a sentence. Oh, God, that I didn't know I would ever say. She's she's looking nervous.

00:47:55 Speaker_02
Apparently in Ireland, back in the day, our family, our family sucking on a king's nipples was once suggested as a form of submission. Wait, what? To submit to a king, that is what you did. That's hot.

00:48:16 Speaker_02
I read something that said, isn't it easier just to kneel and kiss a ring? Isn't that just like kiss the ring? Right. Isn't that easier? You gotta get

00:48:27 Speaker_03
undress, you've got to expose your bosom. Kings are just horny is what's happening. Kings are wily. Wily coyote.

00:48:37 Speaker_02
Very wily. Wily nipply coyote. So with that in mind, which I'm sorry you have that in mind now, I apologize, but now we're all here together. That's just funny.

00:48:47 Speaker_02
If you sliced off a king's nipples, then you have officially deemed him ineligible for kingship. So cutting them off this way maybe was a way to remove or even signify the failed kingship.

00:49:01 Speaker_02
Kings or those in line would be ritualistically sacrificed at times, like way back in ancient times, because if crops failed or cattle got sick or something happened in the village... It was the king's fault.

00:49:13 Speaker_02
It was the king's responsibility to sacrifice himself through a ritual to bring back the prosperity to his village. Did he have to cut off his own nipples? He didn't have to cut them off himself, but he had to have them cut off. It's like a lot.

00:49:29 Speaker_02
Gosh, I gotta look.

00:49:30 Speaker_03
I gotta go.

00:49:31 Speaker_02
According to the Irish Examiner, Ned Kelly, who is the Keeper of Antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland, says, quote, cutting them would have made him incapable of kingship in this world and the next. Well, shit, that doesn't seem fair.

00:49:46 Speaker_02
Yeah, so you cut it all from here to the netherworld.

00:49:49 Speaker_03
They're like, you won't even have nipples when you're a ghost, motherfucker.

00:49:52 Speaker_02
I'm saying. But he said there is also the possibility that the nipple cutting was just a degradation thing or a humiliation thing associated with torture and murder. I could see both. Either way, really bad.

00:50:05 Speaker_02
And they do believe that with these two, because of everything else, that these definitely could have been nobles and in line of succession or failed kings. Shit. Yeah.

00:50:15 Speaker_02
Now let's talk about a bog body mix-up that ultimately led to a very, or more very when in relative to these ones, recent murder conviction. What? Yes. This is a bog body mix-up, not to be confused with old Greg's downstairs mix-up.

00:50:38 Speaker_02
May 13th, 1983, Stephen Dooley and Andy Moulds were doing the old peat moss cut and dig thing.

00:50:47 Speaker_03
Everybody out here peat mossing.

00:50:48 Speaker_02
Just all the time. And they were in Cheshire County, England in the London Moss Bog.

00:50:53 Speaker_02
They ended up finding during this process a big ball of peat that was like stuck together and they initially joked that it looked like a dinosaur egg or they were like oh it's like a burst football or something. Spoiler alert it wasn't.

00:51:06 Speaker_02
It was not but then they cleaned it off it was actually a human skull. that was later determined to be a female who was between the ages of 30 and 50 years old.

00:51:16 Speaker_02
It was so well preserved that everyone was like, holy shit, this is a recent murder victim. Like, this is not a bog body from like ancient times. Of course, authorities started looking into recent missing women in the area. This is the 80s, remember?

00:51:31 Speaker_02
And one in particular started to look like it could potentially fit this skull. a woman named Malika Maria de Fernandez, who had gone missing in the 60s. And her case had gone cold. She had never been found.

00:51:44 Speaker_02
When she had originally turned up missing back in the 60s, her husband, Peter Rainbart, was interviewed.

00:51:51 Speaker_02
And due to knowledge of their sour marriage and the fact that he lived feet away from this bog, authorities honestly thought he was possibly the one who caused her disappearance.

00:52:02 Speaker_02
but they just couldn't gather enough evidence to prove it or really to bring him in for much and keep him.

00:52:08 Speaker_02
Now, they had done a full-scale investigation and learned that Fernandez was gone traveling, the person who's missing, had gone traveling a lot, like they didn't really have a close marriage, like things were going wrong.

00:52:22 Speaker_02
And during the time she went missing, she had threatened to tell British authorities that her husband was gay. Now in the 60s that was considered a criminal offense in the UK. Fucking wild. So he would have been arrested.

00:52:36 Speaker_02
She had gone missing after this particular fight.

00:52:49 Speaker_03
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00:53:27 Speaker_03
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00:54:01 Speaker_02
Whether he was gay or not is not what's at stake here. That is, nobody really knows. It was just the fact that it was also the fact that she was going to go to the authorities, whether he was or wasn't, and say he was.

00:54:14 Speaker_02
So it had been decades and no one had found a trace of Fernandez. But Rainbark had been arrested in the interim, and he had been released. He wasn't arrested for that. He was arrested on sexual abuse against several children. Oh, fuck this guy.

00:54:29 Speaker_02
So he's an actual piece of shit. Yeah. Just keep that in mind. For a second I was like, oh, I feel kind of bad for him. Yeah, you don't have to. And then I was like, wow, bye.

00:54:35 Speaker_02
That's why I was like, we don't know anything about this guy except that he's a piece of shit.

00:54:39 Speaker_02
And his cellmates had actually come forward and said that he bragged about killing his wife Chopping her up to pieces and burying her all over his yard Now they dug up parts of his garden and yard and they found nothing of real importance So they bring him in for questioning once they found this skull because it's in the bog next to his house It's a woman and it's in the right age range as soon as they begin to explain what they have found to him.

00:55:06 Speaker_02
He confessed everything He completely admitted to murdering his wife. Twenty something years prior. Yep. He told authorities that he had gone into a rage when she threatened to go to the authorities and he had grabbed her.

00:55:21 Speaker_02
And what he said he did was he had shaken her until she died. Doubt it. Like, OK, like she's not a baby. No. He said he had immediately gone into problem solving mode and he decided he just had to dismember her entire body with an axe.

00:55:35 Speaker_02
including decapitating her, and he tried to burn parts of her, but it wasn't working, so he threw them in the bog. That's why they only found her head so far.

00:55:46 Speaker_02
He just figured it was a matter of time before they found the rest of her body parts, and that's why he admitted it. Either way, he confessed and they'd found her skull. It was a solid case of murder. Wow. Where's the mix-up?

00:55:59 Speaker_02
So off they went to search and gather the rest of Fernandez's remains that were supposed to be in this bog. But searching for hours and days, they turned up nothing. Not one other body part was found, so authorities were like, shit.

00:56:12 Speaker_02
we really have to sure up this head. We have to make sure, you know, we really have to like confirm this is her because if we can't get the rest of her body parts, we got to have this for our slam dunk.

00:56:22 Speaker_02
So Detective Inspector George Abbott had the head sent to Oxford University Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art to be thoroughly examined, thoroughly dated, thoroughly ID'd.

00:56:35 Speaker_02
When they returned their findings, they said, yes, this is a woman between the ages of 30 and 50 years old, but it is also a woman who died about 1,700 years ago. Dude.

00:56:51 Speaker_02
Whoops Oh So when rain Bart was informed of this he of course was like, oh my god Yes, I didn't kill her. Just kidding few glad we cleared that up bring out Ashton Kutcher because I just punked you.

00:57:07 Speaker_02
Oh, I was totally kidding I was playing the long game, but they were like no you definitely did it you piece of shit and you can fit you can admit it to it and Fuck off. Yeah, bye. And his murder charge stood and he was sentenced to life in prison.

00:57:22 Speaker_02
Good. They were never able to find Fernandez's real body.

00:57:25 Speaker_04
Oh, I hope they do someday.

00:57:26 Speaker_02
But he did go to prison for life. He definitely did it. He admitted it to several people, including the authorities. And he was, he admitted it based on a 1,700 year old head that he thought was his wife's. That, that's some wit shit.

00:57:42 Speaker_02
That is some bog body justice right there.

00:57:46 Speaker_04
That's exactly what that is.

00:57:47 Speaker_02
That is some good vibes coming out and being like we're gonna get some justice for this missing woman. I like it. While also finding a bog body. I'm obsessed. I thought that like blew my mind in that case. That's insane.

00:57:58 Speaker_02
When I came across that I was like well shit.

00:58:01 Speaker_03
Do you think that he really buried her where like nobody would find her or do you really think he put her in the bog?

00:58:05 Speaker_02
I think he might have put her in the bog but it's so big and it's like layers and layers of peat moss. So she might be found someday. Who knows where he put her.

00:58:14 Speaker_02
Who knows if he put all of the pieces in the bog and some of them are buried other places like who really knows. He said he tried to burn some.

00:58:21 Speaker_03
He also sounds like a liar too though because they said that I think he killed her obviously but he said he put her in the garden and they didn't find anything.

00:58:28 Speaker_02
Yeah. I think he's a lying sack of shit. Yeah, he's a bullshitter. Either way, he's in prison for life. Goodbye. Fuck that guy. Let's get on to more bog bodies.

00:58:36 Speaker_01
Shall we?

00:58:37 Speaker_02
So let's talk about the Lindau Moss bog bodies. So in the same bog that they found this body in, they found the remains of a very well-preserved 20-year-old man who later, in 1984, the press apparently named Pete Marsh.

00:58:56 Speaker_02
Not where'd they get the peat from. Which is like, okay press. Yeah. Like this is an actual person. Like maybe don't. Okay press. Let's just keep like the naming convention with where they are found.

00:59:09 Speaker_01
Yeah.

00:59:09 Speaker_02
Like we don't need to add some like silly little like peat marsh. Like no. Okay. Rude. Now this body was another one with manicured nails and a neatly done beard and a neatly done hairstyle.

00:59:21 Speaker_03
Nippies or no nippies?

00:59:23 Speaker_02
Honestly this one I don't know if he, I think he did have nipples actually, but he was well nourished and he was obviously of a higher class. He had been placed into the bog naked with only a leather armlet around his left bicep. Hmm. Amulet?

00:59:38 Speaker_02
I didn't see an amulet but there was definitely a braided leather like something around it. Interesting. I wonder if that was like a symbol of something back then. I don't know. This is what we get to find out.

00:59:47 Speaker_02
Like this is what's so cool about these things is we're seeing all these patterns and different things that are connecting people into like well this must be ritualistic because of this. Right. This is what they did back then. It's just so cool.

01:00:00 Speaker_02
But, according to BBC, he was killed with repeated blows to his head. He was then grotted, he had his throat sliced open, and he was forced to swallow mistletoe. Shit.

01:00:13 Speaker_02
Then, still alive, he was pushed with a very severely violent knee to the back while he was kneeling, and he fell into the bog and drowned in the bog water.

01:00:25 Speaker_04
Oh my God.

01:00:26 Speaker_02
Yeah. So the blows showed signs of swelling around two of them, which means he was very much alive when they were inflicted. The last blow was to the top of his head and it forced skull matter into his brain. Ooh. They believe too, this is wild.

01:00:43 Speaker_02
They believe that the noose was tightened as they cut his throat so that it would force the blood out quicker and create more of a show.

01:00:52 Speaker_02
almost spraying it, like basically spraying it out so brutally that they would bathe everyone around him and him in his blood. Hygienic. And what's wild is in the book that I was telling you guys about that I'll definitely tag in the show notes,

01:01:09 Speaker_02
um she talks about how this also is really scary and like very interesting because it shows that they had a very good grasp on anatomy yeah and how the body worked and they were able to like bring these people to the brink of death and then pull them back

01:01:26 Speaker_02
and then bring them again and pull them back. Like it was very brutal, scary, very thought out, very intricate torture.

01:01:35 Speaker_02
And like to be able to know that if you squeeze on that certain vessel as you cut, that it's going to create that wild spray of blood and make it like a show, like theatrical. That's so wild that they were able to think like that back then.

01:01:50 Speaker_02
It's insane. And like have that weird control over a human body. It's just like really creepy. And I hadn't thought of it until Miranda, the author of that book, like brought it up in one of the chapters and I was like, oh, you're right. Right.

01:02:03 Speaker_02
There was also evidence that he had inhaled sphagnum. So he was very much alive when he was pushed into the bog. He inhaled the bog water.

01:02:11 Speaker_03
Oh.

01:02:11 Speaker_02
A lot of overkill with this one.

01:02:13 Speaker_03
Definitely.

01:02:14 Speaker_02
So after that one, we're going to talk about the Graubel man. I believe that's how you say it. This is a wild injury preserved in time forever.

01:02:24 Speaker_02
April 26, 1952, peat cutters, shocking, were doing their thing in a bog near Nebelgarde fern in the village of Graubel, Denmark, when they discovered what appeared to be a very recent corpse entangled in the bog. It was not very recent.

01:02:42 Speaker_02
They actually thought that this was within the last 10 years. They were like, this is a very recent body. And they informed the village doctor and Ulrich Balsev, an archaeologist of this discovery.

01:02:55 Speaker_02
When they came to see it, they were like, whoa, this is wild. And they, in turn, turned this over to the researchers at the Aarhus Museum of Prehistory. This man was over 2,300 years old. Oh my god.

01:03:08 Speaker_02
And he was probably about 30 years old when he was brutally murdered. He was naked. He had a ton of hair that looks very fiery auburn. This is the guy that you saw that you thought had a wig on.

01:03:18 Speaker_03
Okay, he reminded me of the professor from Harry Potter.

01:03:21 Speaker_02
Yes. Right? Lockhart. You're thinking of Lockhart, right? Yes. Yep. Yeah. Lockhart's like crazy hair. You're right. It's very much like that actually. Wow. That's wild. And obviously we've learned that this probably wasn't his natural hair color.

01:03:35 Speaker_02
Maybe he had Lockhart's hair color actually. Perhaps. You know, bog gases and shit. He had well manicured nails and his face had preserved, and this is the craziest part of him, his face was preserved in a horrifically pained expression. I bet.

01:03:50 Speaker_02
He looks like he was grimacing and his mouth is wide open.

01:03:54 Speaker_03
Yeah, because what were they doing to him before? Let's go.

01:03:56 Speaker_02
Yeah. So what's most upsetting is the gaping wound in his throat. It's brutal, this wound. It's not a slice. It's a gaping wound. What? Someone did it with such force and savagery that they almost cut the head off completely.

01:04:13 Speaker_02
It was literally hanging on by skin.

01:04:15 Speaker_03
What did they do, you think?

01:04:16 Speaker_02
Well, according to Bog Bodies Uncovered, that book, there was a huge, very intense slice across the throat and then, quote, some small other cuts with a smooth, sharp bladed instrument that struck the cervical vertebrae, severed the pharynx and made a large hole in the mouth.

01:04:35 Speaker_02
that's how deep it was my oh my it stretched virtually from ear to ear both carotid arteries and the jugular vein were severed he was also stabbed from behind and they believe that a sword or some kind of very big blade like a machete type of thing was used they also found an open wound and a break of his left tibia oh

01:04:57 Speaker_02
They were sure this one occurred while he was being tortured and was caused by some blunt instrument being slammed into his tibia repeatedly until not only did it break the bone, but it opened the skin on top of it.

01:05:09 Speaker_02
Ooh, mama's getting nauseous over here. Mama's literally getting nauseous. They were also able to find that in his stomach, he had last ate porridge with lots of herbs in it, and there were signs of him having ingested ergot.

01:05:24 Speaker_02
Which we talked about ergot in the Salem Witch Trials episode. It is a poisonous fungi often found in grains. It can cause like hallucinogenic like hysteria essentially. And sometimes they think they might have used that in ritualistic sacrifices.

01:05:40 Speaker_02
They would give this person this like hallucinogenic shit as part of the ritual.

01:05:45 Speaker_03
Oh, I'm sorry. My tibia still hurts.

01:05:48 Speaker_02
Yeah.

01:05:48 Speaker_03
You know when you get that, like, if you hear, like, oh, it hurts.

01:05:51 Speaker_02
I know, it hurts. You're, like, want to rub your leg. I'm too much of an empath. So let's talk about the last bog body we're going to talk about in this one. Is this, like, a crescendo type of deal? Um, not really. I mean, it's bad.

01:06:02 Speaker_02
It's definitely bad, but it's like, they're all pretty bad. I mean, yeah. So we're talking about the Holdremos woman. She was discovered in 1879 near Holdremos, Denmark. I hope I'm saying that correctly.

01:06:13 Speaker_02
She was found by Niels Hansen, who was a teacher, and he was digging peat when he saw her. She was thought to have died when she was around 40 years old, which again would make her pretty elderly.

01:06:23 Speaker_02
And she looks elderly, like she looks like an older woman. It was killed around 160 BCE. She was wearing two what they called skin cloaks, but they were like animal skin. Okay. And a woolen cloak. And her hair was chopped off almost to the scalp.

01:06:39 Speaker_01
Oh.

01:06:40 Speaker_02
Her right arm had been viciously hacked off and was found lying next to her. What are you doing? She also had a long leather, like leather type strap that was wrapped around her hair and then twice around her neck. Oh wow.

01:06:54 Speaker_02
Her left arm had been bound to her body with another strap and her left leg had been hacked out as well. And it's believed that she was drowned after being abused and mutilated. My god. Now, that is the Holder-Mose woman.

01:07:09 Speaker_02
Bog bodies are insanely fascinating. The fact that we can tell what they ate and how they lived thousands of years later is wild. My brain will not wrap around it properly.

01:07:25 Speaker_02
When you look at them, and I'm going to cover more of these in another episode just because I can't not read this. It's like very interesting. When you look at them, you just can't.

01:07:36 Speaker_02
come to terms with the fact that that is a 2000 plus year old human being. Not at all. Like you can't do it. Not at all. Because they're not like mummified in the classic sense of mummification.

01:07:48 Speaker_02
Like we've heard about, you know, like like, you know, under ice, some people are preserved for like thousands of years, which is also wild. Yeah. And like mummies are very well preserved. But like this is just and this is water.

01:08:00 Speaker_02
Well, and this is like natural. This is just when water. Yeah.

01:08:03 Speaker_03
like it's so crazy and just like the weird like chemicals and like and just the violence associated with the bog bodies is a very interesting thing my favorite part of the whole entire thing was learning that even back then people were using hair gel yeah like obviously you know that because like as early as like the beginning of time people use like berries and shit for makeup you don't think about it but you don't especially hair gel like i would never think about that to style into like a faux hawk

01:08:29 Speaker_02
kind of thing. So cool. Wild. So that is the beginning, at least, of Bog Bodies. That was really cool. I've literally never heard of those before. Very interesting subject.

01:08:39 Speaker_03
So I hope that you guys enjoyed it too.

01:08:42 Speaker_02
Yeah, I hope you did.

01:08:43 Speaker_03
And we also hope that you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. But not so weird that you make somebody suck your nipples to make you feel noble. Bye. King shit.

01:09:28 Speaker_03
If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

01:09:37 Speaker_03
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01:09:44 Speaker_00
Hello, ladies and gerbs, boys and girls. The Grinch is back again to ruin your Christmas season with his The Grinch Holiday Podcast.

01:09:51 Speaker_00
After last year, he's learned a thing or two about hosting, and he's ready to rant against Christmas cheer and roast his celebrity guests like chestnuts on an open fire.

01:10:01 Speaker_00
You can listen with the whole family as guest stars like Jon Hamm, Brittany Broski, and Danny DeVito try to persuade the mean old Grinch that there's a lot to love about the insufferable holiday season. But that's not all.

01:10:13 Speaker_00
Somebody stole all the children of Whoville's letters to Santa, and everybody thinks the Grinch is responsible. It's a real Whoville whodunit. Can Cindy Lou and Max help clear the Grinch's name? Grab your hot cocoa and cozy slippers to find out.

01:10:27 Speaker_00
Follow Tis the Grinch Holiday Podcast on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Unlock weekly Christmas mystery bonus content and listen to every episode ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.