Fairies That Replace Humans

You know what that plumber did. All I needed him to do was clear my tub drain because it was running slow. He was snaking the drain from the outside, and the snake broke through and shattered. My toilet shattered. The snake came through my toilet. I can imagine doing it. And get this, that fucking plumber had taken a leak in my toilet not flushed, and so the fucking snake is just like splashing his urine all around and then you know, oh, there's all this porcelain. And then they had to carry the fucking toilet out of here because they had to go buy a replacement, and so the toilet like leaked from the bedroom all the way out to the door, and I died. Welcome to Scary Miss Surprise, where we talk about scary things that surprised us around the Internet. I'm Edwin, I'm Michelle. Well, you got a new toilet. That's cool. I got a new toilet. So that's been my adventurer recently. That and I took acid for the first time. But other than that, so you know, this week, I was like, what should I talk about? And then I was like, oh, you know what, it's raining, I got to wear my air and sweater. Let's go back to Ireland, you know, let's let's do a little Irish tale because when I was traveling, I picked up a bunch of books. One of my favorite books I got there was a field guide to Irish Fairies, which led me to a phenomenon that I'm going to talk about today. But first, you, Edwin, your neighbor in the village has just had a baby. It's pretty cute. Everyone really oohy gooey over it. But oh no, not you. You're like you gross ew you what a gross little potato fitting for Ireland. Oh, it's a gross little potato. Boy. Baby envy is bad and it puts that baby at risk and at risk of, what you say, getting the attention of the Irish fairies. And if you do that, well that baby could become what the Irish call a changeling. Well that's how you pronounce it. Yeah. Change. I don't know why I thought of changeling. No, I think it's just changed. Yeah. Anyway, let's backtrack, because fairies aren't tinker Bell, because I know, like some people are like, oh, but fairies they're so fun, blue fairy all all the Disney stuff. The thing is is that they aren't that kind, and at best they're neutral and fun to party with. That's what it seems like, like, I think like fairies can throw a good party if you know, you somehow get invited and you're a neutral force. That seems like a lot of fun to go party with. Some fairies. So they're rowdy, Did they get drunk and stuff? They're yeah, they're rowty. They like a party, they like music, they like beauty, all sorts of stuff. So what are the fairies you ask? In Irish lore, I was gonna refer I'm referring back to a Field Guide to Irish Fairies by Bob Curran, and so he had kind of this great, like little introduction to fairies and and I just you know, I think it encapsulates their myth and their legend pretty well. Fairies have always played a major role in Irish life, and different types of fairies are to be found throughout the Irish country side. They were once so feared that it was even forbidden to use the word fairy at all, and a number of other more flattering terms were used to refer to them, such as the gentry or the good people. Who are the fairies? Why are they so feared? They are the old gods from the earth, ancient beings who were once widely worshiped throughout Pagan Ireland, who have all but been consigned to memory, but who can still make their presence felt when the mood takes them. Other sources claim they are fallen angels, those who sat on the fence during the Great Rebellion in Heaven and who were thrown out for indecisiveness. So you know, that battle between good and evil, and then these were the folks that just you know, didn't pick aside. So now they get to wander the earth. And that's true, like you yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember thinking. I remember in my classes for engineering they were like, not choosing is a choice, and I'm like, huh, And it's true. Like when there's all this stuff in a factory going on and you don't decide something, that not deciding, of the lack of decision, you decided to do something. Yeah, I just got chills for I don't know what you said, thinking school, I'm afraid of school. Okay, he's fair, and it's fair. You're having a post traumatic stress and that's true, though yeah. I. According to this theory, Saint Michael, the patron saint of fairies, interceded with God on their behalf, and they were given the dark and remote places of the earth in which to dwell well away from the human habitation. Some were granted the depths of the ocean and became mere folk. Others were sent to the lands under the earth and became goblins and trolls. Others were granted the air and became spirits and sherries, whilst others were given the harsh and barren areas of the countryside and became leprechauns and grogs, what and what and grougs which I was going to do an episode on but there's not enough. But this is a grug. Oh cool. It looks like, uh, that's cool. They can go invisible, and they get mad at you if you don't work hard enough, and so you have to get rid of them by getting a priest. If they're annoying you, they like, won't let you sleep in bed. They're like, get to work, get to work, Get to work. Yet other theories claim that fairies are the last survivors of a prehistoric race who came to Ireland from ancient Greece and brought with them skills and magic, far in advance of their particular age. At one time they were treated as gods, but gradually, as Christianity spread across Ireland, they were treated into caves, lonely glens and hollows, which characterized the Irish countryside, venturing out only occasionally. Fairies can be wilful and capricious creatures, easily offended and quick to anchor. They are often spiteful and jealous of mankind, which enjoys a special relationship with God, which they cannot. Okay, nevertheless, they nevertheless, that description covers all the bases, and that's from that book by Bob Current. But I you know, I think what they're describing is like an elemental something that's just always been here, not human, not not necessarily a demon, but not human, you know, Like that's what you know. I remember being afraid of fairies and stuff back when I was a kid, like as in thinking like, oh, there's a I think it was more of little people flying around that I was like, oh, fair that is, it's the tiny hands. So why would a fairy, as I have described earlier, steal a baby. Why what do you think They want to make it it slave or they want to influence it to continue with their agenda somehow, the fairy agenda. Maybe it's the maybe babies are the only ones that can see them or talk to them, or so, I don't know, I don't know. It appears that fairy women all over Ireland find it difficult to give birth, so many fairy children die before birth, and that those that do survive are often stunted and deformed creatures. The adult fairies, who are aesthetic beings, are repelled by these infants and have no wish to keep them, so they think they're hideous. And you know fairies being like, oh good time. Oh everybody's everybody's attracted. We're like playing music. Yeah, and they're like, oh no, my baby's ugly. It's like freaking like yeah, just a jam, anything goes. They're having a great time. Women in Ireland, fairy women, fairy women in Ireland. The Yeah, it's their Irish hips. No, fairy women in Ireland struggle. Not all women in Ireland. No, that's humans are fine. The fairy women have some problems. So they want to steal a kid. Yeah, So basically they'll swap them out for healthy children who they steal from mortals, so they'll like anyone. Whenever you're cooing over a baby saying that it's super cute, that'll get the attention of the fairies and they'll be like, oh. Basically, what they do is they steal the baby, and then they'll leave. A withered, ill tempered creature will be left in its place, known as a changeling, and possesses the power to work evil in the household any child who is not baptized or is overly admired, And then I wrote this also applies to hot people because adults can also be taken, is especially at risk for the exchange. There can also be adult change links. These fairy doubles will exactly resemble the person and but have a sour disposition, and they'll be cold and aloof and take no interest in their friends and family, and they'll also be argumentative and scolding. Why would the fae want a full grown adult human. I don't know. Well, some folkloris maintain that it's for inner species breeding, so they're kidnapping for you know, of the party, you know, to introduce new blood and strengthen the fay race as a whole. Others take the phrase new blood quite literally. The fay would feed off the stolen human, thinking that the blood and the flesh of the beautiful would be sweeter. The reminds like aliens, like they say that they kidnap humans sometimes to like breathe, Oh, I eat them. I've never heard of aliens eating anybody, but breeding maybe, who knows, but it's it's truly the temperament that makes a changeling. Babies are generally joyous and pleasant, I guess, but the fairy substitute is never happy, except for when some calamity befalls the household insert evil baby laugh. For the most part, it howls and screeches throughout the waking hours, and the sound and frequency of its yells often transcend the bounds of mortal endurance. I don't know why that's so funny. To be a changeling could be one of three types. It could be actual fairy children, a senile fairy who is disguised as a child, which I thought, I love. I know it's so creepy, but I love the idea of ditching Grandma Fairy as like a baby rather a believer as a baby. Yeah, it's like perfect, it's a perfect system. They don't have retirement homes so anyway. Senile fairies who are disguised as children or inanimate objects such as pieces of wood, which take on the appearance of a child through fairy magic. This latter type is known as a stock is what it's called. So when they convert they like sticks, into babies, they are called stock. And they're disguised like how blind do you have to be? Puckered and withered features coupled with yellow parchment like skin are all the generic changeling attributes. This fairy will also have dark eyes which betray a wisdom far beyond its years. I love how creepy this sounds like. Can you imagine a baby with withered skin just looking like you think it's and it's an old person. Actually it's not actually a baby. It's like called cataracts and stuff. And changeling display other characteristics, usually physical deformities, among which crooked back a lame hand are common, and about two weeks after the arrival in the human household, change leaks will also exhibit a full set of teeth, legs as thin as chicken bones, and hands which are curved and crooked as birds, talons covered with light downy hair. Oh that's right. Imagine the disguises the baby with white hair. So no luck will come to the family in which there is a changeling because the creature drains away all good fortune which would normally attend the household. Thus, those who are cursed with it tend to be very poor and struggling desperately to maintain their ravenous monster of a child. I've lived a family here. If you can't tell, like, come on like. The only one of the positive things about a changeling is they demonstrate an aptitude for music, so as it grows, the changeling might take up an instrument like the fiddle or the Irish pipes, and it was such a skill anyone who hears it will be entranced. I was watching Lord of the Rings last night, so I can't do an Irish accent because all I can hear is samwise gams you being like I've been dropping a ave sor uh. So I don't know how to do Irish right now. But there's a quote from a report near Bojo in the County of fear Mug. I saw a changeing one time, and he lived with two old brothers away beyond well. It's it's Samway scamgee, but it's good. It's good. I saw change it in one time, and he lived with two old brothers away beyond the dog's well and looked like a wee wizen monkey. He was about ten or eleven, but couldn't really walk and just bobbed about, But he could play the whistle the best that you ever heard, old tunes that people had long forgotten. That was all he played. Then one day he was going and I don't know what happened to him at all. Wow. Is that a true account? Or is that like some type of well, there's no there's no fruit, there's no name. But yes, apparently that's a true account. I don't know. I would put an asterisk by that. It definitely came out of my Irish fairy book. Um. I would definitely put maybe an osterricks by that account. So how do you prevent your beautiful baby or person from being kidnapped by fairies? Prevention is better than a cure. A number of protections may be placed around an infant's cradle to ward off a changeling, a holy crucifix. Obviously, since they have no relationship with God or iron tongues placed across the cradle will usually be effective because the fairies fear these. I don't know why, but I have heard that iron does like repel spirits. An article of the father's clothing laid across the child as it sleeps will have the same effect. How would you go about having your loved one return to you your so, your child, or your hot boyfriend or girlfriend. You your hot partner has been kidnapped? What do you do? Apparently the answer is to either trick or abuse the changeling to the point of divulging their true identity, so forcing the face. Well, the thing is is that I have some true stories coming up, and they are good. But so how do you trick the most cunning and devious creature ever known? Strangely enough, changling fairies get a big kick out of halved eggshells, so placing them, either placing them about or using them to hold water, is said to elicit uncontrollable laughter, whereupon the changeling will banish and leaving your human in its place. So, uh, you put these like cracked egg shells around? I don't get it. I don't don't get it. I don't think there's much to get They fairies just find them hilarious. I don't think there's much to get there. I don't. They just they can't handle it. They'll start laughing. But uh then you then you know you're onto them, and so they gotta go. How do you hold water in an eggshell? Yeah? I guess you just like scooped the water in the in the half eggshell, like you know when you crack an egg and then you I guess that's really funny. I mean it's their thing, so humor is subjective. Who am I to judge what a fairy finds funny? Also, bagpipes placed in the suspected child's bed or crib is also a common trick. Fairies love music so much that a changeing, no matter how young, will be compelled to grasp the instrument and play like a virtual So, which, what does good bagpipes actually sound like? Like? How would you know? It's just the noise? Makes sense this time? Yeah? I guess. Lastly, to figure out if you have a changeling, fire and outright battery can be used to force the fee to return the human Some methods advocate placing a child or an adult in a hot oven. Others say to hold scalding hot pokers near the mouth while demanding the changeling state its name three times. Still, other folklore insists that only by dunking near drowning the changeling in a bath of foxglove, which is poison. When fox glove tea is poison. Fox glove is a poison plant, which I found very interesting. So anyway you take a bath in fox glove or urine is the only other way to cast out the wayward fairy. You know what's about this is that people have probably tried this. Oh yeah, people did actually try it. Here's the thing that's the legend, right, Like if the legend's really funny and entertaining, Now we have real cases and maybe this takes a possible sad turn, you know, like it's any until it's sad. In eighteen twenty six, a kid named Michael Lahy was born in Kerry, Ireland, lay. He was four years old at the time of his death. He was believed by some in the community to have been a change lang. He could neither speak nor stand. Anne Roche claimed to have supernatural abilities and healing skills, and she ordered two people to bathe the boy in the river every morning, and on the third morning he was held under the water for too long and died. Under cross examination, a witness said the drowning was not done with any ill intent of killing the child, but to cure him quote unquote, to pull the faery out of it. So the court, at the direction of the judge, found Roche not guilty of murder. Author Robert Curran says that the verdict is suggestive of the depths of belief in changelings in the community, and there were several such cases in rural Ireland in the nineteenth century, but perhaps the most famous one and the most fucked up, is that of Bridget Cleary. Have you heard of this? This is a no. So Bridget Cleary is known as the last witch burned in England. So the year is eighteen ninety five. Bridget married this man named Michael Cleary when she was seventeen. Bridget was a smart lady. She and Michael both knew how to read and write, which was kind of unusual, and she was a moderately successful business woman. However, the Clearies were often the focus of gossip. She kept to herself and she you know, was just doing her own thing. People called her snobbish and also so her and her husband had been married for seven years and they'd yet to have any children. His virility was being questioned, which was also you know, hot gossip at the time. But in March eighteen ninety five, Bridget took ill mysteriously, which according to Wikipedia was bronchitis. So she was very sick with bronchitis. Michael, together with his brother in law, Bridge's aunt and cousin, tried to nurse Bridget back to health, but her condition only got worse. After a local doctor said there was nothing he could do, and the priest was called. Michael had all but given up hope. But remember it's still a fairly superstitious time, and in a written statement to the court, Michael had believed that his Bridget had been swapped for a change length because you know, they can swap for adults, and this was the reason of her illness. So last resort he sent for a man named Dennis Gainey, who was known as a fairy Doctor. Gainey's treatments, though so seemingly barbaric and absurd, now were considered standard practice for fairy abductions, which is also in quotes. They included, but were not limited to, forcing the changeling to drink the first milk given by a cow after calving. So you know, you give them milk and they fairies love milk, So though, bring the human back for the milk. Fun fact, Yeah, fun fact, fairies love milk. Gross anyway, Scalding the changeling with a hot poker, dousing the changeling in urine, holding the changeling over fire. All three were said to force the change league to admit that they were indeed a fairy and would break the spell immediately and cause the return of the original person from the fairy realm. Later one evening, around midnight, after one of these lengthy treatment sessions, Michael claimed that he took his wife through her on the floor in front of the fire in the hearth of the kitchen, wielded a piece of burning wind near her mouth, and demanded that she say her name three times. When she failed to do so, Michael doused Bridget with lamp oil and set her on fire. He sounded like a news reporter there that was set her on fire like an asshole. Like a huge asshole. Basically. Several days later, the townspeople noticed Bridget was missing. After a tremendous search, her body was found less than a mile away from her house, wrapped in a sheet, buried in a shallow grave, covered with a small amount of dirt and sticks. So charges were brought against Michael right, but he was claiming fairy abduction as his defense. He was found guilty for manslaughter and served fifteen years in the prison, and then he immigrated to Canada and lived in Montreal. So he went on to live a life which is weird. His legend and the tragic fate of his wife Bridget is still remembered in a children's irin nursery rhyme which goes, are you a witch? Or are you a fairy? Or are you the wife of Michael McCleary, which like, why don't we come up with rhymes like that anymore? Like that's good? But anyway, you could perhaps theorize that the changeling myths stemmed from mysterious illnesses or death. People with little knowledge of medicine and deep superstitions needed something to explain tragic occurrences that were going on around them. An overly fussy baby, a baby born with deformities, adults stricken with mental and physical illness, a sudden infandest syndrome. You know, A changeling. The changeling myth explains all of this, like that is across the board explains all of this. Yeah, I know. But frankly, I think the moral of the story is you should ignore babies and beautiful people and it's for their own good. I mean to do that already. Fine. I used to call it shyness, but I guess it's it's it's it's you're actually a hero. It's so sad though, like, yeah, you know to to do these things home man, Like yeah, but it happens, you know, Like I don't know if I told you Michelle already, but like we ended up at this I was with Carla in Peru. We're doing We wanted to go see this ceremony. It was like a gift to the earth. No, I don't think so. And I started realizing, okay, because when we were up there it was so hot. We were there for like hours, like seven hours up there, like when they were bearing this a gift to the earth, A patcha mama. What is called mother Earth, and this this lady started passing out like she she like she was. We were in a circle and all of a sudden, she just kind of like went limb. We're like, oh my god, right, and I was so pissed, like I was angry because instead of calling emergency services or like because she faded, I mean she fainted twice, right, like this is like more serious. Instead of doing anything, they grab her. This is not cool, but I'm laughing because I'm like, ah, they take her away from the circle and this guy comes by with like this smoke thing and like starts chanting and going in her face and like praying and stuff. I'm like, Okay, if I were in that position, if I'm passing out, please call emergency services because I'm gonna be like I'm gonna haunt whoever, like let this happen, because it's not that I don't believe in this stuff. Yeah, I mean I guess I am skeptical, right, But people they don't do what they're supposed to do because they their beliefs are like you know, I don't know it. Just this is why, like, Okay, if you think this is a fairy and you're doing all these rituals that are killing somebody. I mean, yeah, you're literally setting someone on fire or pissing on them, you know, like you're gonna piss on your baby. You're gonna piss on your baby because it's crying. Like get real. But then again, you know, like I understand how people be, like, you know, you don't have any medical there's nothing, there's nothing to explain it. So you're like, I'll take anything to explain this, Like, but I don't understand the whole what is it, like magical piss Like what is it like? It's probably something about it being a like mortal piss and then like it and they leave. Nobody likes getting pissed on that. Yeah, well there, yeah, there's definitely some people who like it. I don't know if there are listeners, but maybe we don't want to alienate them. We've already we've already alienated Canada. We can't alienate the pea fetish guys. The Golden Shower, the Golden that's it, the Golden Shower guys today too, I'm gonna alienate Canada and Golden Showers. Geez, give you both at the same time. You gotta watch out, like the Canadian Golden Showers contention our demographic. We get a strongly worded email about this. What are we going to talk about next week, Edwin? I don't know. I think it'll be a surprise. Bye.