For today’s episode of Probably Cursed, we look into the Thunderbird stories of Illinois. Before that we look into what happens when you kill your vampire mom, the evacuation of a goblin infested police station, and the drama that occurs when your ghost ex husband is jealous of your new possessed clown doll.

The News

–Man Kills Vampire Mom

–Woman Adopts Posessed Clown Doll and Jilts Ghost Ex Husband

–Goblins Force Evacuation of Police Station

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello boys and ghouls and welcome to the probably cursed podcast. Nice.

This is your probably cursed host, Chris.

And I’m your host, Sheryl.

And for today’s episode, we’ll look into the Thunderbird stories of Illinois, and before that, we’ll look into what happens when you kill your vampire mom, the evacuation of a goblin-infested police station, and the drama that occurs when your ghost ex-husband is jealous of your new possessed clown doll. Now, before we activate the curse-ometer for calibration, we do have some updates on previous news stories that we had done on earlier episodes. The first update, the McDonald’s employee who macheteed his coworker to death because Stevens made him. His court case is currently underway, with the trial closing arguments happening in September.

And the outcome looks like it is hinging on if the guy is or isn’t schizophrenic. Also, the Philippines call center that was kidnapping beautiful people after they raided the office compound. 165 scammers have been deported to China and never allowed to return.

Deported from the Philippines? Yep. Okay. I mean, that feels like a fairly short trip.

That’s true. Yeah. And an update on the 10-foot-tall alien sighted in Brazil. So, it looks like a basketball player, Felipe Mata, has cleared up the whole misunderstanding. When he revealed it was most likely footage of him on vacation. Ah, poor guy. Although he isn’t 10 feet tall, he is an impressive 6-foot-5 and was enjoying the view on a nature hike that day in that area.

Have you ever been mistaken for an alien, Chris?

Not yet. I have frightened people. That’s fair. I walk quietly and sometimes people don’t realize I’ve entered the room. Other than that, no new updates. I tried to look into Baba Vanga’s predictions and none of them seem to have happened yet.

Although she did predict something about the next election not happening in the states. Like the current president’s last president or something weird and, well, there’s an election coming up, so… It’s true. Just wait to see how that pans out.

There won’t even be an election and it’ll just turn into a brawl. That’s right. It’ll be Kamala Harris duking it out with Trump. And in the future, this is how they’re going to decide future elections. You just pit your strongest leader against the other party’s strongest leader and whoever wins gets to be president for a little while.

No, no weapons allowed though. It’s got to be fist to cuffs.

Yep. Just using the whatever God gave you. That is enough for the updates for today. I’m going to activate the Lord Canarvan Curse-O-Meter for calibration. Sheryl will provide the first news story.

Excellent. I’m ready to go. So this article is titled, Oregon Son, 56, is accused of killing his mum by shoving a makeshift stake through her throat. Claims 79 year old was a vampire who was biting him at night.

That’s when they attack vampires.

This article is by Shista Shrivisava for thedailymail.com. A 65 year old Oregon man has been arrested for allegedly stabbing his mother to death believing she was a vampire. Bruce Robert Poe contacted sheriffs on March 12th claiming that he accidentally, accidentally is an air quotes by the way, killed his mother, 79 year old Judy Dee Poe.

I accidentally stabbed her 16 times.

When deputies arrived at his residence they found Poe with his hands and clothes covered in blood holding his mother’s purse and a letter. However Judy was not found at the scene. I wonder what the letter was. Yeah, that’s a good question. Like would it be a letter from like the church saying she’s a vampire or like…

Is a letter from the mom apologizing for being a vampire?

Yeah, that’s a good question. Her body was later discovered about 250 yards from the house near a gold PT cruiser. I like how they need to specify the color of the PT cruiser. Stuck in gravel. According to court records a large round stake which looked like a broken end of a garden tool was protruding from her throat and she had suffered blunt force trauma to the head. Judy was pronounced dead at the scene at 9.55pm by officials. Robert Poe was taken into custody and charged with secondary murder and unlawful use of a weapon. Seems like an improvised weapon. What would be lawful use of a weapon? Courts are weird.

You need a municipal permit for every weapon. That’s right. If you order some nunchucks you need a permit.

During questioning he reportedly told deputies that he believed his mother was a vampire because she would poke him at night causing him to wake up with blood on his sheets. Poke him.

That’s what the article said. Weird. And they didn’t go into any more detail than poking him. The first visual I was getting is she was just jabbing him in bed through the sheets with a finger.

Yeah, that was my thought too. Like, I don’t know how that would make him bleed but… Just poking her.

Poking him with her teeth? Yeah.

Yeah. Feels like that’s a weird way to be a vampire by poking someone in drawing blood but here you are.

Maybe if it’s like you’re a real polite vampire and you sort of like poke them with the end of a stick. And then you just quickly run up and lick up all of the blood.

Yeah. I mean that’s kind of how the vampire bats do it so. Mm-hmm.

So that is the first story I will feed in the second story. I married a ghost named Eduardo who cheated on me. Then I adopted a possessed clown doll. And this is an article from SWNS.

I can promise this is not Chris and I although we do have some possessed clown dolls in our collection. I did not marry a ghost.

Mm-hmm. And you haven’t gotten any clown dolls from the clown hotel in Vegas. This is true. Yet. A woman who claims she married and divorced a ghost has adopted a possessed clown which she says has made her ghostly ex-husband jealous. I also want to interject here. Earlier yesterday you had asked me if this is the same lady who had divorced the ghost because he had fangs. Yes.

That we had covered earlier. I said no. Yeah. Turns out this is the same person.

Ah, excellent. When I originally looked up the story it linked to some other lady who had married a ghost and I’m like oh it’s not the same person. But then I googled the name.

So then this is another update on a story that we’ve already covered.

It’s true. This lady’s life is real interesting. Mm-hmm. Brocard 40 previously married a Victorian soldier ghost named Eduardo but split with him accusing him of cheating and stalking her. So I guess the story’s been fleshed out a little bit more than she found out he had fangs and it was a total betrayal.

Yeah. She recently adopted a possessed clown doll after feeling a connection with it during a stay at the Clown Motel in Nevada. She traveled around the USA with the clown and returned to Oxfordshire to conduct a paranormal investigation. Brocard says Eduardo has grown jealous of the clown and doesn’t want it in the house.

Whoa, if they’re divorced he shouldn’t be living there anymore.

It’s true. You gotta kick him out. Yeah. You gotta sage your ex-husband away. Mm-hmm. While filming a series on haunted locations she found that Eduardo who had been accepting of other spirits seemed unsettled by another ghost. I can instantly tell when Eduardo wants to make a point his energy is very powerful. His presence has been very manageable these days and I only see him from time to time. He does not like the clown though. He watches him and I keep finding the clown by the door.

Subtlety is not Eduardo’s strong point, she explained. He has nothing to be concerned about as I have no intention of marrying a clown ghost. Although that would be funny. The clown is here for research purposes only. Just a brand new sentence.

I was gonna say if you’re gonna adopt a child maybe you don’t say it’s for research purposes only. Mm-hmm.

And I’m not interested in a paranormal love triangle. I know the clown is possessed so perhaps Eduardo has picked up on some bad energy and is just looking out for me. While visiting the clown motel Brocard felt an immediate connection with the clown doll due to their shared love of theater. According to her the spirit inside revealed himself as a carnival performer, a tortured soul performing for unappreciative audiences. When I connect with spirits it’s often their emotions that I feel first.

Sometimes a restless spirit attaches itself to a physical object. In this case the clown doll had been owned or touched by a man who worked as a clown she said. This man was haunted by dreams of stardom but was stuck in the carnival where he was underappreciated. As an artist I can relate to this which is why I think he chose me to convey his message. Imagine working carnivals hoping to be discovered.

Yeah it feels like the wrong place to do that although I guess it depends on how old this ghost clown is. Because like there was a time like when P.T. Barnum was big that like you could have made it pretty big on a carnival circuit.

Brocard felt compelled to rescue the clown and the motel allowed her to adopt it for a full paranormal investigation to learn more or capture evidence of its possession. I wanted to learn more about this man and felt he wanted to be rescued. The clown motel is a competitive environment for clowns with hundreds buying for visitors attention so I wanted to see how he would behave in different settings.

At the moment I only know bits and pieces about him so I plan to learn more over the coming months. After leaving the clown motel Brocard traveled across the USA with the clown visiting Hollywood and even enjoying a night out in Las Vegas.

Did she just take the clown to restaurants and all over the strip with her? I bet she did. I hope she didn’t take it to a strip club. Those ladies have seen enough there I’m sure.

I’m seeing like a little bit more about why Eduardo might be feeling jealous.

Yeah that’s unfair.

Going to visit Hollywood and partying in Vegas. Yeah. He’s feeling a little bit of FOMO. Despite only subtle movements and signs of possession so far Brocard remains vigilant. He’s been a peaceful entity so far often moving on his own but nothing alarming.

I hope that doesn’t change now that I have two ghosts in the house. She plans to launch a clown cam soon to keep people updated on her unique adoption journey. To learn more about Brocard visit Brocard.com. Now that’s free advertising Brocard.

Yeah now I do have one question. If he’s moving on his own how does she know he didn’t just move himself to the door? Maybe he’s sick of her BS and wants to leave. He’s like gosh darn it. Tired of this woman.

Yeah what if it’s the clown making her believe it’s Eduardo being passive aggressive.

Yeah I mean there’s a huge interest in vampires right now and if Eduardo has fangs he’s hot ticket. So what would he have to worry about getting after his divorce his wife.

It’s true although Twilight Girl is all grown up now. Introduced to the idea that you can date a vampire hundreds of years older than you and it’s totally not weird.

Yeah he could easily find another lady.

Okay and Sheryl will now load the final story into the Curse-O-Meter.

Alrighty the story that I have for you is titled cops abandoned police station claim goblins were terrorizing them at night. This is by John O’Wiley.

These are Zimbabwean names that we don’t often hear in Canada. John O’Wally.

That sounds good. Okay this article is by John O’Wally for thedailycaller.com. Officers at a police station in southwestern Zimbabwe have reportedly abandoned their post due to nighttime harassment from goblins. Male officers stationed at the Guambe police station in Bululima claimed that the female goblins were terrorizing them at night. Wait so wait they’re being harassed by women?

I have goblin women.

I don’t know how close goblins resemble human anatomy but it’s interesting they knew immediately they were female. Yeah wish they would tell us how they figured that out.

They’re probably wearing skirts just like on the bathroom door sign.

I’m picturing the female gremlin from gremlins in the whole slinky dress with red lipstick on. But I don’t know if that’s the case.

It was totally that times. However many were at this police station.

We built a police station for the officers and initially they patrolled in Paris however they haven’t been able to stay for extended periods. They described being harassed, bodies violated, doors opening on their own and things climbing on the roof making it impossible to sleep.

I’m afraid to understand how you get violated by a female goblin.

Are they sure these aren’t just monkeys? Like other than the violating of bodies everything else sounds like something a monkey might do. Following a meeting with the officers, the village leaders, police from the nearby town of Plum Tree withdrew their officers from the Guambe station to avoid further endangerment. Police officers have advocated for the turn of law enforcement to Guambe and suggested alternative locations for the station. However a local school in Guambe was unavailable for use leaving the officers to consider repurposing a clinic as an office. We asked them to come back and see if the attacks will continue. Aloho counselor in Goulani told the outlet.

So just go back into the office and see if it’s as bad as you remember. Maybe the goblins have moved on.

Yeah I’d be curious to see why they think that moving the station someplace else will stop the harassment. Are the goblins tied to the police station building itself or are they just harassing the police because they don’t like the police?

Do you know there’s some cultural traditions in the world where you don’t build in a certain place without asking permission from them? Sometimes it’s like fairy spirits or other things or they’ll just totally swarm your day.

No that’s a good call that could be what’s going on too. I don’t know enough about the traditions down there so far up there, across there.

Yeah I don’t know what the Zimbabwe goblin traditions are. Another new sentence. We have those three stories loaded into our Lord Canarvan Curse-O-Meter here. We’re going to get it to spit out the results in order to tell us how cursed these topics are.

Please stand by. For the first story about the man stabbing his mother because she was totally vampiring on him. The Lord Canarvan Curse-O-Meter has determined that is definitely cursed. Even if she wasn’t a vampire all along just being poked in the middle of the night till you bleed all over your sheets.

Yeah it’s just not cool. Don’t do that to your kids.

That’s being cursed with an abusive parent.

Yeah that’s not good and I am disappointed that I don’t know what’s on that letter because I feel like maybe it would provide us a little bit more insight as to what happened.

The top comment I saw on the news site for that said he didn’t stab her in the heart so it’s okay she’ll get better.

As long as she’s not buried in a cemetery with hallowed grounds.

Or to crossroads. The head separated. The garlic stepped in the mouth. Correct. He didn’t do it right. No. Maybe he just wanted to send a message. He didn’t want to do away with his vampire mom.

I can’t wait for the news update on that one.

The court will call to witness the mother. For the second news story about the woman adopting a possessed clown doll. Our Lord Canarvan Curse-O-Meter has determined that is probably benign. Yeah. It’s really just saying that drama is people’s own problems.

Yeah that’s fair. And I also think that so far no one has hurt anyone else. I mean they even said the clown spirit is a nice guy so. Yep.

The only thing hurt is perhaps Eduardo’s feelings.

Which does not affect anyone.

You’re the ex for a reason Eduardo if you’re listening. Okay and the results for the final news story about goblins attacking a police station. Probably cursed. I agree. Yeah. If female goblins are violating you while you’re at work. That’s not good. That’s not good at all.

I wish I could speak to those female goblins and see their side. There’s part of me that wonders what part of the story I’m missing. What’s their beef with the police.

Maybe the police were cat calling the female goblins and they had just had enough.

Yeah. And at that point it’s just a fair game.

And that’s also a probably cursed situation. We just don’t know what direction the curse is coming from. Yes. Correct. Although that would be more of a real curses people. The goblins were sick of it. The real curses men. Yes.

Actually I was thinking of saying that as the readout for the Curse-O-Meter. Cause I was like I feel like the men are.

Well we have the Lord Cnarven Curse-O-Meter calibrated here for the main topic of the story. But before we head into that territory. We’re going to take a quick detour into the probably cursed museum and gift shop. So Sheryl what do you have dropping in our gift shop today?

We’re on artifact 10 right? Yes. Yes. Okay. So today I have haunted artifact number 10 from the probably cursed museum and gift shop. And it is a hand painted ceramic doll statue. It’s kind of unsettling to look at if I’m honest. The doll has like reddish brown hair. Sheryl has it on the table here.

Yeah. Sometimes it helps to have it next to me to feel the weird green eyes staring at me. It’s also wearing a blue dress and it’s holding a doll that looks kind of like her. Only it’s in a pink dress instead. So same hair color. Same hairstyle.

She also has like that rotten milk eye color. Yeah.

Yeah. It’s like it’s bleeding from her eyes. It looks like which is again a bit unsettling. Her hand is her right hand is resting against her face. But there’s some like paint splotched on the top. And when I first saw it, I kind of thought it looked like she was holding her hand up to hit the doll or maybe stab it. Honestly, it might be just a hazard of this podcast that like we start to see malicious intent in random objects.

But when you have a spooky podcast, everything looks like a murder. That’s right.

Anyway, this doll does not look like it’s been professionally painted, which kind of adds to the creepy vibes. It gets just weird and kind of off-putting and it could be yours or you could mail it to an enemy, maybe a coworker you don’t like. If you’d like to be sure that it will actually bring ill will to someone, just leave a note on the Etsy order when you purchase it. And we can put a per curse on it for you. It’s a very versatile gift.

I fully support anyone who wants to buy a creepy doll and just to suddenly sneak into someone else’s possessions.

Yes, we can or cannot confirm that we have done this to Chris’s sister. Hi Sydney. Did you find it? It’s also time for our house haunting update. Chris, why don’t you tell the listeners about the jingling you heard coming from the basement?

Oh right. So I was coming up from the basement and behind me I heard what sounded like someone jingling keys. There was nobody behind me in the room where it would have come from so I’m like, oh maybe it was the dog scratching himself because he got all his tags on his collar. But after I came upstairs the dog was on the other side of the upper floor and there’s no way you could have came from behind me. And he’s a big dog too so he’s not fast or slippery like that.

And then I woke up the next morning to find our TV was on. Like there are no lights on in the house, just the TV. And again, easy enough to blame the dog what if he stepped on the remote yada yada yada but the dog was actually sleeping in our bedroom at the time. So probably wasn’t him.

My first thought after these occurrences happened that somebody was living in our house. So I did a basement to top floor sweep to see if I could find a person. I had no plan for what I would do if I found a person. I did just one thing at a time I suppose.

And we also took the camera that we have this pointed at our probably cursed museum cabinet and turned it around so that it was facing into the room just just in case. A lot of you sure there’s no one in here.

See if any shadows follow me up the stairs.

So that was our fun for the week. We’ll see if more things happen by the time we have the next episode.

If I understand any scary movie ever since we’re giving attention to the spirit right now it makes it stronger.

I hope so I can’t wait to see it move random things in the house while we’re staring at it.

We’ll be real excited. That’ll be good. That’ll be some good social media content.

Interested in your own unsettling experience. Maybe you just want to curse your enemies head over to the probably cursed Etsy shop. Each item comes with a certificate that is signed by both Chris and I so you can just play it with your artifact break to your friends or you can make your coworker paranoid. They got something from a probably cursed store signed by two podcasters. Purchases you make from our shop will support the podcast and put us one step closer to reaching our goal of having a haunted museum. You can find our shop at probably cursed at Etsy.com and for those of you I checked the store before we started recording and there is a bunch of stuff that is just sitting in someone’s cart waiting for purchase. We would appreciate your purchase.

I think there are those people who are hoping that we’ll come back at them with a 20% off deal. The price is the price people. So if you want it you gotta get it.

If you wait it’ll probably mean tears because it’ll be gone forever. And now on to the main topic of today’s episode. In the skies above Illinois creatures have been lurking. These creatures, giant birds, black with a massive wing span were viewed by many over several decades in the state of Illinois.

Many didn’t believe what they saw and were afraid to report it for fear of looking crazy. But others have had a very up close and personal encounter with what is called the Thunderbird. And I’ll say here the reason for today’s topic is because of Sheryl’s birthday this month which she has a big fondness for birds of all types. Even big murder birds.

They’re the best kind of bird.

To start things off the term Thunderbird is sort of a problematic term for a couple reasons. One, it’s derived from indigenous stories of a supernatural spirit that can beat its wings so loud it sounds like thunder. Modern Thunderbird sightings don’t really line up with that description at all. Two, as a cryptid category it’s used to describe a huge variety of large flying creatures of wildly different descriptions like birds, reptiles, and dinosaurs. And because of all of this variance in description I was having a hard time trying to put together an episode about Thunderbirds in general so I eventually just settled on the sightings of Thunderbirds in Illinois which have been happening there for a long long time.

Now when you were looking at the comparison between the different stories and the descriptions were there common features? Could it be a species like for instance blackbirds? There’s a bunch of different blackbirds or corvettes. There’s a bunch of different corvettes.

What I was finding was there’s some stories that resemble condors, some that resemble turkey vultures, others that resemble the flying crocodile, and pterodactyls. Okay. Fair. So it was so broad.

Yeah, they couldn’t be a single species.

It’s kind of like a catch all term. Yeah, okay. Kind of like how bug is a catch all term for a lot of different creatures that bug you. Good to know. I just had to pick one. And I picked one that had the most dramatic story attached to it because a lot of them are just sort of I saw a big thing flapping around in the sky and then that’s the end of the story. There. So the research I used for this episode, one of them was a book called Mothman and Other Curious Encounters by Lauren Coleman. Nice. As well as the eyewitness interview of the 1977 Laundale, Illinois Thunderbird case written by Jerry D. Coleman.

Ooh, cases and like they went to court?

No, they should have brought these birds to court. Now I just realized that Lauren Coleman, Jerry D. Coleman, I didn’t check to see if these two separate cases were written by related people. Ah, interesting. It’s even spelled the same. What if that’s the family Thunderbird business?

I mean, that sounds like a cool business to be part of.

Man, my parents didn’t do anything cool. Mine neither. So stories of giant birds have been tied to Illinois for a very long time. The indigenous people of the area, the Illinois, which is sort of a catch-all term for a gajillion different groups that lived in the area. They had stories about what they called the Piazza, the bird that devours men. According to their oral traditions, the Piazza originally coexisted with people in the area, but during a battle between two warring tribes, the Piazza carried away two warriors, ate them, and thereafter, developed a craving for human flesh.

Good job, Piazza. Just imagine like everybody’s fighting and then suddenly a big bird just shows up and eats two guys. Now, did it take one person from each side or did it choose a side?

I’d imagine it took one from each.

So everyone lived in fear afterwards as the Piazza feasted on the young and old alike. Eventually, one man, Massatoga, devised a plan. He stood out in the open, chanting, acting as bait to lure in the Piazza.

It worked. And when the Piazza came for him, 20 Illinois warriors ambushed the Piazza and killed it. Wow, poor bird. He’s just trying to get a good, tasty snack.

It’s not his fault humans are so tasty. After that, I couldn’t find any other legends or folklorists about the story from the area. So I’m sort of jumping forward to modern sightings of giant birds in Illinois, which seemed to start in 1948. In January of that year, a 12-year-old boy spotted a bird outside as big as a B-29 and he ran to tell his parents about it. He described it as gray-green in color as he observed it flying towards the sunset.

Gray-green in color. Mmm.

Months later, a former army colonel saw a gigantic bird passing 4,000 feet over him as he was having a conversation outdoors with a couple men. He originally thought something was wrong with his eyesight and assumed it was a pursuit craft following two army planes that had just flown over. But when he focused his gaze and saw its movement and size, he could only deduce it was a bird of some tremendous size and he just decided not to point this out to his companions.

I mean, that’s fair. If you’re not sure what you’re seeing is real, you’re just getting up looking crazy.

But a week later, outside a farm, a couple observed what they called a monster bird, bigger than an airplane fly over them. They described it as having a long neck and huge powerful wings. Their observation was later corroborated by a truck driver who saw the enormous bird as well.

Oh wow. So sightings like this continue. All over people, even police officers, are spotting a humongous bird, frequently described as big as an airplane, flapping its wings and flying around, sometimes landing and resting on tree branches that bend under its weight.

I’m surprised it doesn’t crush the whole tree, if I’m being honest.

Mostly just doing its own thing and leaving people alone. That is until the evening of Monday, July 25th, 1977. That night, the Lowe family is hosting a summer cookout, some family and friends in Laundale, Illinois. The Lowe’s son, Marlon, is playing with his cousins, wrestling and playing hide and seek. His dad is grilling and chatting up his friends.

Inside the house, Marlon’s mom and the other women have just finished preparing some more food and are bringing it out for the cookout. During this time, a man across town, while working on closing up his machine shop for the night, glimpses a streak of movement in the sky. As he stops to get a better look, he notices heading towards him are two large birds. They fly right over him and he sees that the shadow from one of them blankets his entire pickup truck. That’s a big bird.

Yup. Back at the Lowe household, all the adults are in the driveway, eating and chatting when suddenly they see the little boy Marlon come tearing around the side of their house shrieking. As all the adults watch, they now see two enormous black birds grabbing at and trying to pick Marlon up. The bigger of the two birds is eventually successful and the two birds start flying off together with Marlon in tow.

This is like one of those folk tales that like he was maybe being too rough with his cousins, gave one a bleeding nose and now he’s just going down.

I curse you with a giant bird. It’s at this time Marlon’s mom Ruth goes into mama bear mode and goes after the birds, screaming and swinging at them. Marlon is carried for maybe a few feet longer when they eventually give up, drop him and fly away.

But how wait, how close to the ground were these birds?

I assume they have to get close to the ground to start with. Yeah. And then.

But like birds can take off. Well, I mean, I guess it depends on the bird. But most birds can take off and like get high really fast. So the fact that these birds are staying so low to the ground is very bizarre. Maybe Marlon was a heavy boy. Yeah, it’s possible they have not described him.

Marlon’s mom Ruth had this description of the birds. It had a white ring around its half foot long neck. The rest of the body was very black. The birds bill was six inches in length and hooked at the end. The claws on the feet were arranged with three front, one in the back. Each wing, lest the body was four feet at the very least.

So for our listeners, our free toes in the front and the one in the back is the perching bird family, the Paceraformis. And I don’t typically eat meat, but continue.

Maybe add food on his shirt. Yeah, on his brain. The entire length of the bird’s body from beak to tail feather was approximately four and one half feet. That’s a big bird. Yeah, that’s a big bird. Afterwards, Marlon’s dad and one of the men drive off after the giant birds to see where they might have landed for the night. Marlon’s mom tries reporting it to the sheriff, but is laughed off by the dispatcher, saying, let me get this straight. A giant bird attacked your nephew. So helpful.

I mean, we’ve we’ve heard stories of giant birds attacking children just not typically in the States.

It’s usually a problem the police should or animal control.

Yeah, animal control should be on top of that.

And that’s really the climax of the story. The next victim of the large birds was apparently a pig that was carried off a couple days later.

I mean, that’s the preferred option rather than people, I guess.

A couple other people later saw the bird perch on a telephone pole and drop a huge foot long rat. That’s a big rat. Yeah, that’s a big rat. Other than that, there’s just more sightings of an extremely large bird flying around. And the last sighting of the bird was on August 11th. So the mom Ruth does say in a statement that a large ground nest was found during the search for the birds and was destroyed and burnt.

Things don’t go too well for the low family afterwards. The mom spent hours in the library trying to identify the bird with no luck, saying a condor is the closest in description to what she saw. But it was the size of an ostrich. The sheriff will only speculate it was a turkey vulture.

And she just tells him I was standing at the door and all I saw was Marlon’s feet dangling in the air. She recalled adding the obvious there just aren’t any birds around here that could lift him up like that.

Sorry, my brain is trying to configure how it’s as large as an ostrich. But the description of a condor is what they said. Yeah, those are quite different body shapes and types. Yeah.

Like maybe the volume of an ostrich in the shape of a condor.

Yeah, that makes a little bit more sense.

She also ends up throwing the county game warden out of her home after he laughs in her face and calls her a liar. So I guess animal control isn’t that helpful.

Well, I mean, we speaking from the point of view of someone who used to work for animal control for the city, we get a lot of weird phone calls from a lot of strange people. So it’s kind of in poor taste to laugh at people, but sometimes it’s really hard not to laugh at them.

You’ve never laughed in someone’s face and called them a liar.

I came really close once. That crazy woman who wanted me to do an autopsy on a coyote because she was convinced that the city water was poisoning animals. I came very close.

She should just get the city water and look for the poisons.

I should have told her if she wanted the autopsy, she was going to have to pay for it herself.

Eventually, the press get ahold of the story and it just goes viral. Everyone’s talking about it and the family becomes a target of ridicule. Pranksters are leaving dead birds on their porch.

Whoa, that’s uncalled for. Yep. Poor birds.

They didn’t say what kind of birds. My hope is they just bought a chicken from the grocery store.

Hey, I hope so too. I hope so too.

Crank callers are also calling their house and the family had to change their phone number twice. Marlon got bullied in school and came home with cuts and bruises often. He’s also become so terrified of going outside, his hair is falling out and refuses to go outside without a hat on.

Hat will not protect you from bird. Yeah. We’ve tried it at home. It does not work.

Is that more to do with the going bald and strange patches?

Yeah, I was going to say that’s probably more likely.

Or maybe on the top of his hat, it’s painted to look just like the ground. Like maybe or maybe he just glued grass to the top of his hat so he could stand out in the field.

Maybe he was going all read Richard’s because his hair was turning white. And he’s like, gosh, I’m six. I shouldn’t have white hair.

And the father, he just refuses to talk on the subject. And at one point he considers selling his business and just moving the family. Actually, it’s probably a good call.

And the other family that witnessed the attack that was at the cookout with them just eventually refuses any and all interviews on the topic. Fair. Yep. And that is the end of the 1970s Thunderbird flap. Pun, pun, pun, pun, pun. The most exciting of all the Thunderbird stories, because like I said, that all the other stories are just a large bird flying around flapping its wings, landing on things.

Which happens a lot.

Marlin did do an interview on a Discovery Channel documentary in 1997. OK. So that would have been put him probably in his thirties or forties at that point. One of the articles I found was more recent within the past 10 years. And they had him lined up to do an interview, sort of a follow up in what he remembers from the time as a child. And he was just a no show at the interview. He just disappeared.

It’s hard because people are going to people are going to ridicule you if they can’t understand what you’re saying or what you’re thinking or what you’re describing. And he may have been picked up by a bird. And his description may or may not be correct. But it doesn’t mean that it didn’t cause some issues or traumatize him.

Yeah, that would put a little bit of fear in your life that you just get picked up by a bird at any time. Yeah. Luckily for him, it’s a bird that almost no one has ever seen.

Yes, this is true. I mean, if it was a seagull that picked him up, he’d have to be a little bit more worried because seagulls are everywhere. These giant birds are fairly elusive.

I wonder how much of this led to the problems with the condors. And I know a lot of that was DDT making the shell soft, but was part of it just people wanted to get rid of condors because they were eating children.

That is a very good question. Hopefully we don’t see a black man parked across our street in the future. Big DDT. It’s just a run by condor hating officials. We’ll load in the underbirds of Illinois into the Lord Canarvan Curse-O-Meter. We’ll get it to spit out its results here. That grown was just Freddie lying down or a demon.

It’s your choice. Please stand by.

The results are probably cursed.

I feel bad for that family. Like I don’t know what they saw because I wasn’t there, but like their lives have definitely been changed for the worst because of it.

That’s correct. Yeah. I mean, they got the worst of the Thunderbirds. Yeah. All the other Thunderbirds just sort of left people alone, just flew around. What worse is people got the Gawk at something?

Yeah, to actually have it ruin their lives. That is, I don’t know. Yeah. Maybe they hit a magpie on purpose once and that’s it. The birds are out to get them.

And for some reason, that one farmer’s pig. Maybe they just wanted some tasty bacon.

I mean, to be honest, pork is delicious. So I don’t blame the bird for eating pork.

Then later on a rat. Yeah. So maybe the pig farmer brought out a shotgun, scared them away.

Or maybe they’re from a dimension with large birds and large rats. Oh, yeah. And they’re just accidentally slipping through a portal into our world.

I don’t know how close Laundale, Illinois is to Skinwalker Ranch, but it’s worth looking into. Well, that wraps up today’s episode of the Probably Cursed podcast.

If you have any episodes, Justin, so you can email us at probablycursedpodcastatgmail.com. That’s all one word.

And if you would like to support our podcast, head on over to our Probably Cursed Museum and GIF shop at probablycursed.etsy .com. We have our Probably Cursed artifacts up there on sale. Also some buttons, pins that I have made and designed and some upcycled, spooky glass figurines are up for sale on there as well. And everything you buy goes to support this podcast and also support our goal of one day opening a Probably Cursed Museum and GIF shop physical location, hopefully at a abandoned, spooky old church or something equally appropriate.

We will also accept donations of abandoned, spooky old churches. Yes.

Until next month, this is Chris. And this is Sheryl.