Do Boeing Planes Have Gremlins? They Wish.

It's dream phone. Basically, you have to find out who has a crush on you, so you have to like call all these numbers and then it's like a recording of like this guy's really good at sports? Is it like an actual device? Is an actual device? Phone? It's a pink phone that you dial. But yes, I had to buy it because it was one of those games that was just like too high tech for my parents to understand at the time. I always wanted Monopoly, actually, but they always told me that I had no one to play with, and they were right. Welcome to Scary Mystery Surprise, where we talk about scary things that surprised us around the Internet. I'm Edwin and I'm Michelle Edwin. You're on a plane, possibly a Boeing plane. Jeez, that reminds me of the If it's Boeing, I ain't going where'd that come from? I like, I think it was on Instagram comment. But anyway, you're a nervous flyer. This is the first time you've been on a plane in a while. You have a drink, You flip through the channels on your in flight screen. Everything is fine, you'll be home soon. You're feeling good, you're mentally sound. Everything's fine. But yes, you did have just a little delicate mental breakdown a little bit ago, so which we've all been there. It's no big deal. True. That's when you see it. There's a strange creature on the wing of the plane. How could this be? You are traveling at high speeds and altitudes and anything out there would freeze to death. You blink. The creature is now face to face with you in the window, breathing on the glass. Oh you can see it fogging the glass with its breath as it stares you deep in the eyes. I mean, how would you feel seeing that? You know, you're almost on a plane every week. So no, like uh uh, like what is it? Like? What does it look like? It's like a human face? Is it like a bird? Is it? But you know, I kind of like left it out. I'm going like a little gobblin esque thing. But this has got to be your mind playing tricks on you, right, Like the doctor said, don't drink on the brain meds, you get it. This is what they're talking about. So you put your drink down, you focus on your screen like you're gonna just watch some TV. You know, the office reruns are playing in front of you. You take a deep breath, You shut your eyes, another deep breath. You look back at the window. The creature is now staring at your screen, also watching the office. It feels you look at it and gives you a little smile, then does a backflip away from the window further down the wing. Heh. It holds contact with you, but slowly kneels down and starts scratching at the wing, pulling it and warping parts of the metal with its hands. Oh no, or claws. Hands are claused. You bang on the window. The thing is shredding the metal and dismantling the wing midair. The airplane's gonna crash. This is bad, obviously, are on high alert, all anxiety through the roof. You bang on the window, You try and stop the creature. It maintains eye contact with you, pulling the wing apart, with a sick smile on its face. It's like a cat in it's litter box, and it's making direct eye contact with you while it's doing that, And it's like strangely intimate but also like a dominance thing. So anyway, that's what this thing is doing. It's uh, shredding the wing. Now, I will probably push that button and call the flight attendant. You do, you call for the stewardess. You put that button. You're just like, there's something on the wing. And she takes a peak. She sees nothing, and she's like, sir, I'm gonna need you to calmp down. And you follow her gaze to the window and nothing's out there. As she turns away, you see the creature pop up again and it waves at you and then continues to shred the wing. Jeez, you're like, look it's right there. Look it's right there. You scream like you're just like, h it's right there. The other passengers are getting nervous because you're acting nuts. I think we've all been on a plane at this point where maybe someone was a little bit weird. I literally was on a plane on my way to Ireland and the guy next to me had a night terror in the middle of the night, so, uh, you know, yeah, you know what actually hurt? Somebody crying singing this flight, But I was so drowsy that I just kind of ignored it. But everybody was peeking, like. It does make you nervous because you're like, what if something happened and you see the right the flight attendants running up the aisle, it's weird, bizarre, well, and it's also like, am I gonna have to do something? Like are you am I gonna have to stop somebody? Or what's going on? Like you're gonna need my belt to tie someone's arms with? And I don't know, you know, like what's going on? But anyway, the passengers are getting nervous. You're acting irrational, don't you see it? It's right there. The plane is gonna crash and we're all gonna die. Oh no, that gets you kicked out of a flight. Like that's you can go to jail for that. I think the steward is like, sir, I'm gonna need you to calm down. You're upsetting the other passengers and you won't calm down. How can nobody see this thing on the wing ripping it apart? The creature waves and smiles at you. You stand up and you run down the aisle. We've got to land this plane. It's gonna crash at this moment. An air marshal steps in along with every other steward is an alpha male on the plane. Someone tackles you to the ground and you feel restraints being put on you. As you start to pass out. You hear over the intercome, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be making an emergency landing for a medical emergency. We apologize for the delay. You look out the window from the ground, you see the little creature looking at you. It smiles before the world finally goes black. When you wake up, the plane is on the ground. You are strapped to a stretcher being put in an ambulance. You start screaming as they shut the doors. Check the wing, Check the wing. For the remaining passengers on the plane, it's been an unnerving day. They're still on the tarmac when the captain crackles on the radio, Sorry for the delay, folks, We've just been hit with some more bad news. Maintenance has found some strange gashes to the wing. We won't be departing after all. This elicits angry groans from the passengers and the faintest giggle. Heehe. My story that I just told is based on that nightmare at two thousand feet that episode of the Twilight Zone. If you guys have ever seen it, Yeah, with William Shatner. It's a classic episode. The thing is, I'm sure Boeing would love this kind of excuse of there being like a weird little thing on the wing for what's going on. Because airline or technology gremlins are nothing new. These folklore creatures have taken much of the blame for malfunctions and machinery around the world since World War II around technology. You said, yeah, the technology gremlins. Gremlins are a specific thing geared toward technology. They're different and actually there's a bunch of military posters that have slogans like gremlins think it's fun to hurt you, use care always. Gremlins are floor greasers, watch your step. Gremlins love to pitch stuff at your eyes where your goggles. Wow, okay, so first time I ever hear of something like that. That's really cool. Gremlins as a concept was popularized during World War Two among airmen of the Royal Air Force RAF, described as little men that would sabotage aircraft. And I think of like a leprechaun, a Tommy Knocker or goblin and imp, you know, like that kind of thing. Although in these posters they are just like little men, tiny men that are tripping people in Greece and stuff like that. So that's just some little mischievous little yeah, described as little men that would sabotage in aircraft. Flight Crews would blame these scissor wielding gremlins for inexplicable accidents which sometimes occur during flights, you know, because it was a new technology at that time. And some people say this actually tracks back to World War One, but apparently there's no documents per se, because this was like a part of the campaign in World War Two. This was part of the folklore in World War Two, especially among British soldiers in the British Air Force. Gremlins were also thought at one point to have enemy sympathies, but investigations revealed that enemy aircraft had similar and equally inexplicable mechanical problems. As such, gremlins were portrayed as equal opportunity tricksters, taking no sides in the conflict, but acting out of their own mischievous and self interest. Ah See, they don't pick sides, they just now go against everyone. Yep, they're just little shits. It is argued that this folklore became morale boosting during the war, and it might have even helped win the war because gremlins were a form of deflecting blame, being the scapegoat, which became super important to morale during the war because it's far easier to blame a fantastic, comical little cree picture that it is to blame a member of your own squad. If say, your oil leaks out of your plane, instead of being mad at Johnny, you could be mad at a little gremlin that sabotaged you. Clearly, that's kind of nice, I know. The gremlin lore actually spread beyond the Royal Air Force by author Ruldahl. His story Gremlins sold fifty thousand copies in nineteen forty three. Dahl had his own experience and an accidental crash landing in the Western desert when he ran out of fuel. It was there that he wrote his first children's novel, The Gremlins, in which the gremlins were the tiny men who lived on RAF fighters. And then this went on to inspire there's the movie Gremlins, there's the Simpsons episode, I mean, obviously the Twilight Zone episode that I talked about earlier. And there's like too many things to mention. It's like that spread that gremlins folklore everywhere, But also there were a lot of men coming home from the war who were said to have encountered gremlins whoa like actual encounters. Yeah, like actual encounters that tinkered with their equipment. One crewman swore he saw one before an engine malfunction that caused his B twenty five Mitchell bomber to rapidly lose altitude, forcing the aircraft to return to base. Folklorus John W. Hasn't, likewise, offers his own alleged eyewitness testimony of these creatures, describing an occasion where he found a parted cable which bore obvious tooth marks, in spite of the fact that the break occurred in the most inaccessible part of the plane. At this point. Has In states he heard a gruff voice demand, how many times must you be told to obey orders and not tackle jobs you aren't qualified for? This is how it should be done upon which Hasn't heard a musical twang wang, And another cable was parted, so another cable broke after what, Yeah, gremlins are weird. They just hate technology. They want to destroy it, and they make things go wrong and everything that is technological. I mean, it's so interesting to see this come up. Number one is used for morale during war. But also this type of description of this type of creature would not exist without the Industrial Revolution, without machinery. There's no such thing as a gremlin in machinery. Geez, it just sounds creepy though, Like to see the William Shatner Twilight Zone episode, it's like a man in an ape costume. I guess it struggled a little bit with visuals back then, but people a should believe this. Critics of course, claim that, you know the stress of combat, the dizzy and heights would cause hallucinations, right, I mean, you're in a plane at war, so it makes sense that you it might have been a coping mechanism just to help explain the problems that happened during combat when something goes wrong. So yeah, it makes sense. Like the fumes, the fumes not exactly the most safe environment to be in, so hallucinations possible. I don't know. I bet Boeen would love to attribute all their problems with the Max to the gremlins. Don't you think it would be a really nice gut out of jail free card. I need to check my flight right now. Yeah, you don't want to be on a Max, dude, I think it's a Max. That's bad news. But anyway, I just want to link back to the iconic William Shatner episode of The Twilight Zone because there's an episode of The Muppets where Ms. Piggy sees a gremlin on the outside of the airplane through the window. All those are references to the same thing. Yeah, all of it's referenced to that episode. But anyway, William Shatner is sitting next to her on the plane and as he claims that he's been complaining about the gremlin for years but nobody does anything about it, which I love. Oh, I found It's nightmare at twenty thousand feet. Yeah, it's an iconic episode. I mean, it's in The Simpsons. Bart sees a thing on a on a plane and like no one believes it. I mean, like it's a reference for everything. A lot of Twilight Zone episodes are like that. They're just so ingrained. Now, Wow, Rod Sterling's a very good writer. At the end that they recognize that it was the guy that I guess at the end of your story, but the wing so at the end of the story. They just take him away in a stray jacket and they they do find the damage, but they don't like acknowledge that he was right. He's lost his mind. That sucks. Okay, that's why it's relevant that he has had a mental breakdown already, because he's already delicate, so he's gotta be taken away. But yeah, I just love that William Shatner is sitting next to Miss Piggy and like validating her seeing the gremlin on the that's a creepy image though with the Twilight Zone. Oh yeah, cover whatever, like just the main image of the thing looking at the window. That's a huge window. I know. Well it's a huge gremlin gremlin. It's like a man and a thing. Wow. Yeah, I think he'd like the Twilight Zone stuff. You know what Gremlins or what I think of like Duende's and goblins and all those things are known to be very mischievous creatures that mess around hydro's stuff, hydri Keys drop things like they just they just want to mess with you. So it makes sense that the gremlin idea. But gremlins for me are creepier, like creepy looking. I know. There's also that movie, Well, just gremlins. I guess where it's like Gizmo and which they're cute and that the gremlins are cute there. Oh geez no, I just remember that weird ugly one and they turn it. Do you feed them after that? Is that the feed you feed them after midnight or something like that and then they turn into that weird thing or you get them wet? Uh? Apparently in the roll Doll lore it's like, oh, what did gremlins eat postage stamp? Just like wait, so they ride on Royal Air Force planes and then they eat pastage stamps. I don't yeah, wait, I'm not understanding how does this work? I guess that does sound like a hallucination if you really like think about it. Yeah, it's just it doesn't make any sense. But I mean, look, hey, it helped win the war. That's all they need. That's good. Yeah, thank you Gremlins for your morale boosters. That are gremlins. It's like pizza parties. Yeah, just like pizza parties. Yeah. Anyway, what are we going to talk about next week? Edwin? I don't know. I think it'll be a surprise scary mystery Surprise is hosted by Michelle Newman and Edwin Comarubyes. This podcast was edited and sound designed by Sarah Borhe's Wendel a VW sound