The Demon Leaper, Space X UFO, and 19th Century Ghosy Hoaxers

Welcome to the no Such Thing as Ghost Podcast. My name is Greg. It's your first time listening. I'm a hardline skeptic. My co host here, Andy, how would you best describe yourself?

I'm a believer.

He's a believer. So we are going weekly. We have our normal big stories every other week. Right. Where Andy tells the story. I kind of react to it in my skeptical way. These are gonna be more of we're just kind of grabbing interesting, weird or funny things and telling those stories. And sometimes they tie into some bigger stories. Sometimes they'll be tangentially related, but it's mostly kind of whatever we find.

Right. And the difference here will be Greg will introduce some stories.

Yeah. And usually from.

Not always, but sometimes this week he has brought some to the table.

I have. And it's usually going to be something, you know, from, from the skeptical point of view or something that I just find extraordinarily funny. And I think that's the way that we're going to do it.

That's great.

So let's just jump into it. We're wasting time.

So the first story I'm going to talk about this week takes place here in Louisville, Kentucky, where we are from. If you head over to the old Louisville area near the Walnut Street Baptist Church and you look up toward the sky, you might see the demon leaper.

The demon leaper, okay.

Correct. He is described as a bat like creature with leathery dark skin, strong legs. People describe almost frog like.

Oh, because of the jumping.

Because of the jumping.

Uh huh.

Glowing eyes.

Always glowing eyes.

He's described as able to leap from building to building with ease, even flight, obviously as wings. Bat, light wings. He haunts the tops of all the buildings in the areas, but really focused on Walnut Street Baptist Church. He was sited prior to the construction of this version of the church which was built in 1902, but he was seen in the area back into the 1880s.

Okay.

He sometimes is called the Louisville Mothman now because after the Mothman. Yeah, he was sighted sporadically. He's never really been known to hurt anyone, but he will sneak up behind you, maybe give you a little poke or a scratch. Just lets you know he's there.

Okay.

He's got sharp fangs, doesn't use them to hurt anybody.

Apparently there's all these creatures all have these things at their disposal, Right. They're muscular, they can jump. They're going across rooftops and peering down if they're prey. But no one's really prey. They have all these. The Sharp fangs, the sharp claws. They use them for nothing other than looking intimidating.

He probably eats other creatures, but he. He doesn't like the taste of human.

Has there been pet disappearances in the area? Small dogs?

Possibly.

How tall is this creature again? How big is this fella?

Anywhere from 8 to 10ft tall.

He's 8 to 10ft. Okay, so if I'm thinking about the food chain, this guy is a predator. Why is he eating small dogs? He's 8. He's 8 to 10ft tall. He should be eating humans.

Well, he's humanoid in nature, so maybe.

I don't think that matters. But he's not a human. It's not like he's a. It's not a. It's not a cannibalistic situation.

He's kind of human. Maybe he just has a little bit of morals.

Oh, oh, you think he's like, those.

Things look like me. I shouldn't eat that.

So. But then he also wants to go and, like, I'm gonna mess with these. I'm gonna really scare these guys.

Well, he probably sees people walking by and, you know, shrieking in terror. And he's like, this is fun.

Oh, so, okay, so he. This is. This is learned behavior over time.

Possibly.

Yeah. So he's like, oh, I'm bored, man. I have nothing.

Right. He's like, do you think.

Okay, so 1800. So he's probably. He's been around since then.

There's sites sporadically. They were more prevalent in the early 1900s into, like the 30s.

Gotcha.

Now, occasionally he's talked about you can take walking tours through the area. They do ghost tours all the time. So.

So here's a dumb question.

He's part of that tour also.

Here's a dumb question. Yes. Mostly because none of this is real, but I'm gonna ask you like it real. So were there. Were there more accounts of him sneaking up and scaring people then than there are now?

Yes.

Okay, so here's my theory. And you said he did it for this, like, did it for entertainment, basically. He's got nothing going on.

That's just a. We're.

We're assuming.

I haven't interviewed him yet. We'll when we get him on the show.

Here's what I think. Now he has a cell phone. 1930S, he didn't have a cell phone. He didn't have anything to do.

No, no.

Now he's scrolling TikTok, you know, and he's doom scrolling up on the roofs.

So now, because he is associated with gargoyles right. And Walnut Street Baptist Church has gargoyles on the roof. That's why people think he's spotted there more. He kind of blends in.

Blends in with it.

But you're right. If he has a cell phone now he's just squatting up there on them muscular frog legs. Back to what you keep bringing up. All these creatures have enormous muscle tone.

Well, they're all built to kill and none of them really kill. The beast of Bray Road ate a possum or whatever. Ate a deer.

Ate a whole deer.

I mean they're built to kill and none of them really kill. They feast off carrion. This thing, we don't know what it eats. We don't know its diet. No, no, but we know that it doesn't eat humans. It doesn't sound like there's a lot of pet disappearances. Not a lot of pets that are drained of their blood. Like, it's not.

He's, he's not just sucking the blood out. He's. If he's, how do you know there's.

Been nobody been like, oh, look that.

You don't get that muscular just drinking liquid. You got to have some protein in there.

Well, liquid diet, okay. Yeah, you're right. But I mean, I mean blood has plenty. Well, whatever. All right, cool. I guess. So a big bat like creature in old wolf.

Yes.

Awesome. Anything else?

No, I mean we can. It's just a quick little urban legend that we have.

No, it's fine. It's great. I've never again. Never heard of it.

Never heard of it.

It doesn't sound like it's not very popular.

It's not a real prevalent one. Like I said, it's talked about on the ghost tours in the area and you know, pointed out, but apparently he's probably gone.

It's not one of those big state or regional ones that like, like, oh, you can point to this area, like, oh, that's that Cryptid.

No, no, we don't have a festival for it, like Hopkinsville or something like that for the Goblins. But you know, it's just a cool little, little, little tidbit that I thought fit in here this first weekly episode. Next one I want to talk about is a recent story. Just on October 1st, SpaceX did the launch of Flight 14. And on that launch it was streamed to the public. And on the video there was a little bit of a strange sighting in the background and some people caught onto it pretty quickly. Now I'm going to show you the video of the launch and See if you can see what everybody else saw.

Okay. He just let me watch this video. It looks like there's like a stationary object.

Correct. Just over the horizon of the Earth's atmosphere. This launch went just out in, just out past the atmosphere of Earth. And they kind of hung there for a bit. And they were filming behind the SpaceX ship.

Yeah. It didn't look, I mean, you know, you're getting the movement of the ship. It looks very stationary.

Right.

It looks very, I don't know, the distance away. I don't have that kind of information.

Yeah, it's hard to tell from the.

Footage, but so people are going, oh, that's a. There's a spacecraft hovering above the Earth.

It has a very unique shape similar to the flying saucer design.

It is looks, it does look round. It does look like, has like a.

Rounded middle and kind of thins out on the side.

Yeah, yeah, it looks like a 50s like.

Yeah, yeah, like the old school flying saucer.

I don't know what that is and I don't know enough to say anything about it. Like it's like space debris.

Yeah. They, they quickly came out and gave, you know, some explanations.

Refraction, like light.

Yeah. They're saying some, some possible, like gas le. You know, that got caught in the light, I guess.

Right. And was illuminated by the sun and then angle and maybe flattened out even.

On, in the, Some of the people on like Reddit and stuff were even trying to say like chunks of ice or like you said, debris.

Yeah.

Floating there. And it never really does anything. No, it's very stationary and the video isn't that long. And then they, you know, cut it off and the. Basically the flight was over.

Right.

So there was no follow up to it. They didn't really see it at the time until people started commenting on the video.

Yeah.

So there's no, you know, definitive definition or explanation from the SpaceX.

Well, I think all this stuff gets really dangerous and it's easy to manipulate. I don't know, we're sitting here talking about it, we don't know enough about these things. Like we're not experts in it. And the problem is when, you know, enthusiasts, UFO enthusiasts, extraterrestrial enthusiasts, when they see that stuff, they're like, well, there it is, we did it.

Proof, proof, proof, proof, proof, proof.

Ccc. No, it's something unexplained. I mean, I would not classify that as a ufo. It's unidentified. I don't know if it's flying.

It's a uap.

It's a uap. Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon. But it's not. It's not observable from the Earth. Is that still the same thing?

I would think it's still a uap. It's an aerial phenomenon. Even though you can't technically witness it from the Earth, it's still. Well, it's not technically in the air either. I guess Ariel does.

Right. I mean, so I don't know if that has a different classification and it's.

Sort of flying, possibly.

I don't know if that is the case either.

Right. This may be a new category that we have to come up with.

It might already be. It already exists. Just people don't use it because it becomes too confusing. Yeah, but it's strange, it's interesting, and I would like to know more about it. But it's probably something super mundane. Usually these situations are.

Right.

It's usually something very simple, but it's hard.

It's not like you can investigate it or anything like that.

Right. And I can't sit here and go, no, that's obviously this, because I don't have any of that. I don't have that knowledge.

Right.

Like, so what am I going to do with it? But it's interesting. I'm not against it. We'll have the video posted so everybody else can look at it.

Maybe when we finally get this disclosure, very soon that we've been working on, they'll come out and tell us what this was.

Yeah, sure. Sure, I'm sure. Because that's going to happen. All right, now we've got mine. Somad goes back to 19th century Victoria, Australia.

Ooh, down under.

So there was. Yes, my turn. You get to do the accents. And there. There was a figure called the wizard Bombardier.

The wizard Bombardier.

The wizard bombardier.

All right.

He was seen wearing white robes and a sugarloaf hat. Sugarloaf hat is a tall canonical hat with a wide brim.

Okay.

Okay. So this wizard would attack people and, like, yell at them and scream at them to disorient them, verbally attack them, and then also throw stones or other objects at them. Okay, so let's talk about.

Also one quick question. There was no magic involved there.

There's no magic here.

So he's just wizard appearing. He appears as a wizard.

They call him this.

They call him the wizard and his.

Long robes and his pointy hat.

Because for once, I am unfamiliar with this. So I'm trying to get as much as I can. I'm trying to play Greg here.

Yeah. So. But I want to talk a little Bit about Australia at this point in time, from the late 19th century to up until the First World War. So Australia was kind of a lawless area for the most part. Right. Especially in this area. There wasn't. There were public officials and everything else, but there wasn't like an organized police or peacekeeping force kind of like. Like old New York. There were groups of people that were like police officers and firefighters, but it was mostly volunteers and everything else. It wasn't cohesive group. So you had a lot of hooligans and criminals and just ne' er do wells.

Sort of a Wild west scenario.

A Wild west scenario with even, I would say less. With less law. So basically these were called ghosts because what these people, and it's not just the wizard of bombardier, was other people. What they would do would go to kind of known haunted areas that the public believed were, like, haunted. So cemeteries and other spooky places. They would hang out in these areas and either just to mess with people because mostly they were bored and had nothing to do. There wasn't really entertainment for these people. Right. You're dealing with still very newly settled areas and, you know, not a lot of jobs or anything else going on either. So there was just nothing for people to do. So some of these people weren't robbing people or doing whatever, because they did do that. There was. They assaulted people, they robbed people.

But sometimes that gets old.

Yeah.

You can only rob so many people.

Was just to mess with people. So these. The ghost hoaxers. Right, that's what we'll call them. Would use elaborate costumes and they would also use phosphorescent paint. They would paint themselves in phosphorescent paint so they could glow in the dark.

I think I saw this one. Is this where the kids pull up in the van and they eat a lot of big sandwiches and the dog is usually the one that kind of solves the mystery.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of shenanigans and then they pull the mask off and.

Correct. But they all talk like this and.

They don't sound anything like you can understand the dog. And. And there was actual creatures that wanted to kill them because Australia is full of that stuff.

Right.

Okay.

Yes. Trying to kill. So one such case was Herbert Patrick McLean.

And McLean.

McLean. And so he carried a cat o9 tails and would unfortunately assault women with it.

Oh.

So they placed a bounty. The community and the, you know, leaders of the community placed a bounty on his head. And in response, he declared war against all the authorities and threatened to shoot Anyone who attempted to collect this bounty on him. So nice guy. Really good guy.

I've sounds like an upstanding citizen in the community.

Yeah. We have another one from 1895 that describes a person who dressed as a knight and threatened to behead people. And on his armor he wrote, prepare to meet thy doom.

Wait a minute. I think that's coming up soon too. Okay, that's another. Is it the Avengers level threat?

Oh, yes. Oh, yeah, Doom. There's also accounts of these ghosts strapping coffins to their back to make it look like they have risen from the grave.

That's a little much.

There was a female ghost. She would play the guitar while haunting the grounds near a hotel.

Okay.

Just to mess with the people that were staying there. They really played it. Like I said, they played into the superstitions of the community. And this is just what they did. And like I said, some of it was to commit crime. Some of it was because they were bored.

Why did they. They missed an opportunity here. They all could have been charging money, and it would have been your first haunted attraction.

Yes, but I don't think it was about that. I think it was. I think it was. I think some of this has to do with mental illness. I think some of it has to do with just criminality. And it became, like, this trend because numerous bad actors did this same stuff to varying degrees. Some people did it for entertainment, some people did it for crime. And I think it's a thing that just kind of caught on. Right. People saw a trend happening, and they all jumped in and did it.

Right, Right.

But all this, it was a big problem for the community. Like, the community, like, had enough, because,.

I mean, there's only so many times you can get hit with a cat of nine tails before you've reached your limit.

Yeah. They decided to fight back. So there was one guy, his name was Charles Horman. He was an ex soldier. He came across these guys. He decided he's gonna open fire with a shotgun because. Well, this was also during an assault, too. This ghost was assaulting a woman. So he has a shotgun. He's popping off shells under there, and then he's beating another ghost with his cane. Right.

Okay.

One woman released her pit bull on him and had the pit bull attack him. And then in 1913, a mob formed and beat one of these ghosts who attacked and mostly just scared an elderly man. So they were like, that's enough.

You leave that old man alone.

You leave that old man alone. So but why this trend kind of faded, right? Australia entered World War I. So then, you know, sentiments change around war. You know, Australia lost 60,000 during World War I. So the community in general, even these people, nobody really wants to deal with the death and everything else, because it was for real happening. It was less of a thing. Now, it doesn't mean that there might have been some pockets of this still happening, but it was also, I think, part of the change with Australia, you know what I mean? As they became a more regulated society and things changed just naturally. Right. Over the course of time. And the fact that the whole world changed with World War I. Right.

Yeah.

That's basically the story of the 19th century Australian ghost hoaxers.

Ghost hoaxers. I like it. I'm not against it. I'm against the attacking of women.

Yeah.

But no, I enjoyed this.

Yeah. Yeah. And I thought it was an interesting thing of people playing on the fears that are already there, like. Or the superstitions that were already there. Right. Or these sacred, spooky places and these bad actors, I mean, and using, like the phosphorus and paint. Phosphorus and paint was fairly new invention.

Right.

Right at this time. And they took it, used it to make themselves more scary. And it's weird how it became this trend. It became a thing. Like, there's a few news articles that we'll post in the show notes and everything else for people to look at. But it's interesting how people jump on trends and do things and how some of this stuff was taken seriously in a weird way at first because it spread through the community and the surrounding areas. Like, there are ghosts here attacking people.

Yeah. I would like to know how many people, you know, really thought it was hauntings or, you know, because they were playing up on traditions that were already.

There, which is what made it more effective.

Right.

And so it was people, you know, these bad actors were taking advantage of the fact that the community already had these beliefs in place.

And it's interesting how it spread through the criminal community where one did it and then somebody else was like, hey, that's a good idea. And it kind of went through them, but it was also still in a bubble. So then the community was not aware that it was criminal activity at first.

Well, the weird thing is, I think what's strange about it is the fact that it wasn't exclusively the criminal community either. So you had some of these criminals do it, but it was also other people that were just doing it for laughs. The girl walking around. Woman walking around, playing her guitar near a.

She wasn't beating anybody, I guess. Yeah.

They Weren't doing anything like that. But it was becoming a public nuisance because it was becoming.

Yeah, it was still a problem because the hotel and stuff were trying to get business. And you're out here playing the guitar and spooking them. So then people aren't coming. They're not making as much money.

And it's also the fact that it's just, you know, it could have started as something a lot more innocent. Even before the Wizard Bombardier, that first story that I told. It could have been before that and been a lot more innocent than what it was. It could have been. It's just a prank, bro. And then other people latch onto it. And as soon. As soon as bad actors get ahold of it and make it even worse, it's an annoyance here. And now it's actually dangerous. And then all of it gets grouped in together. But I think that it really started because there wasn't shows for people to go to. There wasn't a lot of stuff to do. It was hard work and then hard work some more. You know, you're trying to. You're trying to build a community. You're trying to. You're trying to do all these things, and you're. You're not given a lot to work with here. And so you had people going, I gotta find something to do.

Yeah. They basically invented cosplaying. They had no money, and they spent every dime they had on phosphorus paint.

Phosphorus paint? Yeah.

And night costumes. Like, sounds. Sounds eerily familiar to a comic con.

Yeah.

Just in the wilderness.

And then it becomes violent.

And then it's valid, which still occasionally it does.

But. Yeah, but that's. That's. That story. I thought it was a fun one, and I thought it was an interesting counterpoint, especially how things change and grow and how they enter into, like, a cultural zeitgeist. Like, that's not a. It's not well known to us. Cause we're not in Australia. Maybe it's a little more known in Victoria, Australia.

Yeah. Maybe they know about it more. And.

But it also. But playing off the suspicions and beliefs of people. And then also, you know what I mean? Like, the first reaction I think was, oh, my God, that's a ghost. Because they're already primed and ready. Because they already had these beliefs when it came to these, like, graveyards and certain areas that they were haunted. Right. Which is. I think. I think the further you go back, the more prevalent that was, in a way, because you are going, yep, that's gonna be a real thing.

And We've kind of talked about that on some of the stories I've presented where, you know, a tale of a certain area and every little thing that's weird becomes that thing to a witness because they're already freaked out. They're already geared into seeing it. Now, in this instance, there was actually a person there, you know, hoaxing.

Right. And luckily all this stuff was well documented by newspapers and everything else. You know, imagine if that wasn't. Imagine that happened 150 years, 200 years earlier.

Right.

Imagine that being spread through community. Imagine the life that it would take on from there, because they would be all considered. These were ghosts that beat the crap out of people.

It could have been a story that I was telling you instead of you telling me then.

Correct. That's how thin this line is that divides these things. How fragile the balance is between myth and folklore and legend. And then what is considered true, you know what I mean? What becomes going, oh, my God, that's the real haunted place. When really it was a bunch of a few wackadoos and some bored people dressing up in robes and bedsheets and whatnot. There's some really great pictures on the news articles, really great drawings of people like pointing a gun at a. Or a ghost holding. Holding a gun.

It's some really good stuff, which might be the difference. You don't get too many reports of haunted houses where people are like, I was sitting in my living room. Next thing I know, this ghost barges in and points a gun at my head.

Yeah.

Like, normally they're, you know, rattling pots and pans and closing doors and stuff.

Right. And there's not a lot of. I mean, and from what I'm understanding, we have the poltergeist thing. We just did the episode, or it's not released yet, but we're going to release about the San Pedro hauntings.

Yes.

And that deals a little bit with this kind of a poltergeist.

With a poltergeist, where it ramps up and then builds up to something a little bit more and a little bit more aggressive than.

Right. But these are actually walking around with a cat of nine tails and hitting women. That's bad. He has a gun. Throwing rocks at somebody. Throwing rocks might be a thing that a poltergeist. They knock stuff over and want to throw stuff all the time, apparently.

Well, throwing rocks is kind of more associated with Bigfoot, which we haven't discussed a lot. He likes to throw rocks.

See, I don't know. He's really big. I don't know why he's throwing rocks. You can just walk him, punch you in the face and cave your head in. But, yeah, that's all I got.

All right, so these are our new weekly episodes that we're going to start doing. Every now and then they're going to be in between ones sort of similar to this. If you like this format, if you are one of our listeners that we've been picking up in Australia and you know of the wizard bombardier, we'll talk.

About it again, man.

Yeah, bring it back up. You know, you can get ahold of us in several ways. You can go to our website, which is no such thing as ghosts Show. There's a little microphone there. You can click on that and leave us a message. Tell us what you liked about this. Tell us about the ghost haunting your hotel with her guitar.

Yeah, this opens things up a lot because we are gonna be doing these kind of quick little things to talk about. And if you find some more stuff that I'm interested in, like the coming from the skeptical side or, you know, something that's a little bit more historical and touches on these things, we want to talk about those things. So send it to us. I would love to talk about those things.

Yes.

This is the opportunity to not have to be, like, laser focused into a topic. We can talk about a few things and then how it connects and some of these things will come up again because it'll be part of a bigger story. And there's a lot of flexibility with these episodes.

If for some reason you're somebody that wants to hear Greg more, then this is the way to do it. This is the way to get that.

Yeah, I can actually tell stories.

Yeah.

Andy TikTok.

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Awesome. What else?

Gmail. No such thing as ghostpodmail.com.

I always forget that exists.

And leave us a rating review on Spotify, Apple, wherever.

You can do it and tell your.

Friends, preferably five stars. Recommend us. Yep.

Yep.

And that's it.

That's it. Really quick one. They probably all will be like this. She has the Stop. It.