Better late than never, said the person who sucks at online analytics… The part-time job known as Christmas is over, and we’ve finally had time to edit the episodes we recorded before Christmas.
First up, in our salute to Hanukah, we talk vaguely about some Jewish spirts and demons in between bursts of spouting off pointless facts like the big-headed autistic kid from Jerry Maguire. Cait has a haunted synagogue, Nick compares a historical possession tale to teachings of the Talmud, and Mel has new uses for cat afterbirth. It’s an episode less offensive than you would have thought, but more offensive than you would have hoped.
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It’s Thanksgiving here at The Booze + Spirits Podcast, and we celebrate it like most Americans–by being painfully unaware of the plight of Native Americans and having a big blow-out fight with family members. After a few tales of Native American lore, Nick goads Cait into storming out. Afterwards, Nick and Mel ‘go for a walk with the cousins’ and ramble on about proto-man behavior including Bigfoot, Wendigos, and Facebook. Like a Thanksgiving dinner, it goes on too long and makes you wonder what else you could be doing right now if you didn’t feel so guilty obligated. Happy Turkey Day!
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All our episodes are rocky, but this one is on purpose! Nick and Cait have returned from their adventures in Yosemite, and while out and about they’ve gained a taste for the miner’s life! Nick brings in tales of Native American legends dealing with cave-inhabiting stone giants, and Cait has tales of angry helldogs that protect ancient miners’ claims. Then Cait introduces a dry stone-fruit cocktail to relax with after a long day in the holes.
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Happy Amateur Night! In this episode, Nick and Cait celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a couple of Emerald Isle tales. First up is the ghostly denizens of Malahide Castle, then the story of the fierce aquatic cryptid, the Dobhar-chú. After that, we present a bright and fruity St. Patty’s cocktail alternative to green beer and stout shot-bomb drinks. Éirinn go Brách!
We got research about the Dobhar-chú from all over the internet, but we want to give a special shout-out to In The Dark Air for having a write-up way more extensive than anything we did! Check it out!
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For decades, the forests and back roads of Cannon Beach, Oregon have been haunted by their own mummy-like monster. He harasses teens and jumps into unsuspecting vehicles, and is known locally as ‘The Bandage Man’.
Highway 101 runs up the length of the Pacific Ocean in the continental US. It’s infamous for being an amazingly gorgeous drive, but also extremely winding and curvy as it hugs the coastline, and among the many small seaside towns along the 101 sits Cannon Beach.
A stretch of this winding highway just north of Cannon Beach is the focus of the Bandage Man’s legend. The stretch of road nicknamed ‘Bandage Man Road’ is actually an abandoned part of Highway 101, long since replaced by a more forgiving and less dangerous parcel of pavement. Driving Bandage Man Road has become something of a rite of passage by the local teens after they get their driving license, braving upsetting the Bandage Man on his own turf.
The Bandage Man is known to lurk Cannon Beach’s forests and roads, covered in bandages like the classic Universal Pictures depiction of The Mummy, and is known to reek with the smell of rotting flesh. He is most known for going after parked or passing vehicles, jumping into unguarded truck beds or the back seat of convertibles, and his activity seems to increase on nights of heavy lightning.
Most legends place The Bandage Man’s origin back to the 1950’s, though some go back as far as the 1930’s. The primary story says that he was a logger (though this is sometimes substituted with an electrician or some other tradesman) who had an on-the-job accident and got “chopped up”. He was quickly bandaged up and placed in an ambulance, but the vehicle got caught in a landslide on the highway on its way to the hospital. By the time rescue crews got to the ambulance and unburied it, the injured man had completely disappeared.
Reports of the Bandage Man began almost immediately and have continued through today, though the biggest chunk of reports come from the 1950’s and 60’s. His favorite past time appears to be harassing teens in vehicles. One tale involves a pair of teens who had parked on the side of the road in a pick-up truck for a little canoodling. Suddenly, they felt the truck dip to one side, like someone was climbing into the bed. The whole truck began to shake violently, and the teens looked back to see the Bandage Man in the bed, rocking the vehicle back-and-forth and pounding on the cab. The panicked teens started the truck and drove away, but by the time they got to town the Bandage Man had disappeared.
The Bandage Man’s pattern is fairly consistent: Find teens parked in the road and scare them, disappear before help is available, repeat. He sometimes leaves behind smatterings of smelly bandages or even chunks of rotten meat. One out-of-character but truly horrifying tale tells of him smashing the window to Bill’s Tavern & Grillhouse in town so he could reach in and snatch someone’s dog, running away and eating the poor creature.
Like any good local legend, local pranksters and troublemakers have found ways to use the tales to their own ends. Indeed, there are occasional cases of teens getting caught or admitting to dressing up as The Bandage Man to cause trouble, so in the end it has become challenging to tell just where the line between local legend and local prank lay.
The Phantom Trapper is a ghost seen in the Labrador area of Canada, whose presence is often said to herald the arrival of a large storm.
The person most commonly accredited to being The Phantom Trapper was a man named Esau Gillingham. He was a Newfoundlander who would regularly cross the Straits of Belle Isle into Labrador to trap. Depending on who tells the tale, there’s two slants on the story that are usually told.
The first is that trapping never made Esau the kind of money he wanted, so he ended up setting an illegal still up in the tall spruces. This swill was a foul but effective alcohol made from pine cones, sugar, and yeast, and he called it ‘smoke’, earning him the nickname ‘Smoker’.
The other version of the tale is that he actually brought back very fine, valuable furs whenever he returned, which was kind of fortunate since in this version he was a horrible, raging, hot-headed, woman-attacking asshole. The money he and his skins brought into town were the only thing that would convince the townspeople to put up with him for a short time. But eventually his drunken and ornery side would become too much, and he would wear out his welcome and get kicked out of town until the next time he had a load of furs. He still makes and sells smoke in this version, but it ends up more a feather in his ne’er-do-well hat rather than being a key part of his origin story. In some tellings, he continued selling smoke even though he was well aware that it was poisonous.
Whichever the version we prefer, eventually the Mounties found Smoker’s still, smashed his kegs, and hauled him off to jail in St. John’s for a year. But that time in the cooler just gave Smoker the time he needed to plan the next stage of his evolution.
After being released, he went around begging or stealing every white husky he could in the area, building a new team of dogs–some say a team of 8 while others say as many as 14. He then made himself a suit exclusively of white animal skins, and after restarting his distilling business, painted his komatik and kegs white as well.
Now decked all in white, Smoker began selling his contraband booze again. RCMP tried several times to shut him down again, but his new white camouflaged outfit made it impossible to track him for long in the snow.
There’s several tales about how Smoker met his end. Some say he harassed the wrong innkeeper’s wife and got gunned down by her husband. Some say he got lost while out in the wilderness or maybe got caught in a vicious storm.
My version is that it was his own smoke did him in at the end. While soused on his own drink, Smoke fell off of a fish flake and broke his back. He lay, on the frozen ground, suffering and unable to move for three days. Sensing his time was drawing to a close, and having a pretty good idea what was waiting for him in the great hereafter, he shouted out, “Lord God, don’t send me to Hell! Let me drive my dogs till the end of time, and I’ll make up for all the bad I’ve done!”
Eventually Smoker’s body was found and brought back tp Newfoundland to be buried, but he would not find peace in the grave. Legend tells that even today the howl of the Labrador wind is sometimes joined by the sound of a dog team running through the night.
Some hear them passing by in the snow, while others have heard their traces slapping against the outside of their cabin. Occasionally a person might catch a glimpse of an all white dog team being driven by a figure in white furs on a white komatik, but they never leave tracks in the snow or stop on their eternal run.
Stories tell of a Labrador man who got lost in a blizzard while driving his dog team, and became desperate to find shelter. As he drove on, he was passed by a team of all white dogs piloted by a man in white furs. Sensing this was his best opportunity, he followed the team.
A half-hour later, the lost man and the white driver came upon a fishing village, and hearing the dogs a fisherman stood in the doorway of his hut to see who was approaching. The white driver continued on past with his team, but the lost driver slowed to a stop, thrilled to find shelter, and called out, “Thank you!”
“You’re welcome!” called out the fisherman. “Come in a get warm!” The lost man thanked the fisherman, but corrected him that he was calling out to the other driver. The fisherman just looked at him strangely, and said that he never saw or heard another driver.
Another story involved a man on foot who got caught in a blizzard and had nearly froze to death by the time the Phantom Trapper found him. The trapper easily picked the man up and set him on his sled, covering him with warm skins, and drove towards the nearest inn. Upon arrival, the trapper again easily picked up and carried the man inside, sitting him on a chair next to the fire. The trapper turned to the innkeeper, told him to take care of the half-dead man, and promptly disappeared into thin air.
Hero, villain, or antihero, the Phantom Trapper, or sometimes Damned Trapper, is a proud piece of local folklore. He was fictionalized in the 1972 novel White Eskimo: a Novel of Labrador, and is a respected entity in the local folklore.
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