Haunted Canada: Frozen Flesh, Ghost Ships, and Arctic Zombies

Welcome back, fellow weirdos, to another delightfully chilling slice of Haunted Canada! This week, Jacklynn and Stevie kick things off with a downright spooky listener story from Jacklynn's mother-in-law. Picture this: waking up from a traumatic nightmare only to hear a wind-up musical bear figurine—one that hasn't been cranked in 30 years—eerily playing Bette Midler’s Evergreen at a snail's pace. Spirit guides? Guardian angels? Or just a deeply unsettling celestial wake-up call? Either way, the universe was screaming, "Send in your listener stories for July!!"

Then, the we dive into the main course of primordial darkness: the ill-fated 1845 Franklin Expedition. Sir John Franklin, a seasoned 60-year-old explorer who clearly missed the memo on a quiet retirement, set sail with 130 men to find the fabled Northwest Passage. They rode in two heavily retrofitted, iron-braced ships with incredibly ominous, un-superstitious names: the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror.

What followed was a recipe for absolute disaster:

• Tainted Grub: Three years' worth of tinned food likely laced with lead poisoning.
• Fresh Water Fail: A nifty tech system for melting snow that probably didn’t work.
• The Victoria Strait Ice Trap: Getting hopelessly frozen in what is now Nunavut.

By 1850, local Inuit hunters witnessed a real-life horror movie. Feeble, vacant-eyed, blue-tinged figures came shuffling out of the frozen tundra like literal Game of Thrones White Walkers. Stranded, starving, and half-dead, the final survivors resorted to the ultimate survival instinct: cannibalism!

Want more Weirdos of Whimsy? Check out https://bio.site/weirdosofwhimsy to find everything in one place! From there, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel, grab some official merch, or follow us on Instagram to chat!

Have a bone-chilling story of your own? We want to hear it! Send your scary encounters to weirdosofwhimsy@gmail.com or DM us. Your story might just make it onto a future episode! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

But uh yeah, upon exiting the safety and the warmth of their igloos, they came face to face face to face they came face to face with what was reported as a terrifying sight. A group of feeble, vacant-eyed creatures stumbling towards them.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

You guessed it, Whimsical.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

I hit my mic.

SPEAKER_02 0:53

I was doing the same thing.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Hi, my name is Jacqueline.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

And I'm Stevie.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

And we are so happy to be back with you, fellow Weirdos. Um before we get into today's topic, hi, how's it going? You K hun? Okay. Hi. Okay, honey. Um, yeah, like we we do position this before we get going. And now I've struck it. Listen, I just learned that I can move my mic up and down like an idiot.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

And you can like hold it in touch. It's not like the other mic we used to use. What if I do this?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

What if I do this?

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Like if you watch that? Uh the all you listeners out there, if you ever watch the video, Jack will be talking and I'll just be like, Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:26

He does, he makes love to the microphone.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

Make love to the microphone.

SPEAKER_01 1:31

It's so good.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

But this is what happens when you cheap out on mic arm.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

I mean, listen, I think it's fine. It's great. It's great. But my favorite thing, also, watchers and listeners, my favorite thing too is like obviously we sit here and gab when we're not recording.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

And Steven will just be like, like doing things. I also find that if we're talking to each other, I just naturally start to do this. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

We're just natural um podcasters now. We see a mic, we're like, oh, I'm gonna talk in the mic.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

You know what? It's so funny because in my other life um of traveling around seeing bands a lot, blah, blah, blah. Um, every time they did soundcheck or every time they were just like, we'll just get on stage, the the singer would be like talking to them in the microphone. I'm like, dude, you can just turn around and like talk to them. You know what I mean? Like face to face. No, no. No. Always had to be in the microphone.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

Always in the microphone.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Always was not part of the sound test, just had to be in the microphone. You get it now. You I I totally do. Um, well, let's get into it. So today we have another haunted Canada episode. Yay! We will be covering the Arctic zombies, or more accurately, the mysterious wrecks of the Franklin expedition. Yes. But first, let me take a selfie. Let me take a selfie. Do you remember that?

SPEAKER_02 2:45

I loved it. I was about to do the gay brush, I wish. What's the game?

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Let me take a whole pick and demonetized.

SPEAKER_00 2:52

Eight seconds in. Uh-huh. Not that we're monetized now.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

I don't know. Um, what I was gonna say was Hey, whole picks are great money.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

This is gonna be even better because the story I have to tell is from my mother-in-law. Oh no. So, Karen, sorry, Karen. Sorry that your story is following that.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

This is what the party people come here for.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

It's so true. Okay, so I have a spooky story from my mother-in-law, and I have received permission to share this story. Perfect. Okay. But before I get in, yeah, thanks, Karen. Love you. Thank you so much. She's a huge supporter of the show. She listens, she watches, she loves it. And she also likes says things back to me when I go and see her. Like we talk about things, and then one time I was leaving and I was like, okay, see you later. She's like, it gulps, eh? I love that. So, Karen, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

Thanks.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Um, okay, so before I get into Karen's story, this is sort of an encouragement for all of you who keep saying, Oh my gosh, I have a story, I have a story, I have a story. Send it in. Please. We say with love and passion and encouragement.

SPEAKER_02 4:01

Email us.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

Email us because we are doing our listener series stories um in July. So, like, make it happen. We have a planned.

SPEAKER_02 4:11

Let me just uh double check. It's what is it?

SPEAKER_01 4:14

It is listener stories. It's going to be the last one before we take our software.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

No, I meant our Gmail.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

What are you talking about? Oh, Weird Aswims.

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Well, you can find it uh the link in our all of our bios. Click the link and scroll down. You'll see the email link. Yeah. But I believe it's just weird aswimsy at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Yeah, exactly. Or like find us on Instagram, whatever, send us a message, send us a DM. Yeah. Um wherever you want. Wherever you can. You can send us a voice note if you have our personal phone numbers. Uh because we want to do it the end of July before we go on summer vacation. Which, by the way, heads up, in August, we are taking off.

SPEAKER_02 4:50

We listen, summers are busy.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

So busy.

SPEAKER_02 4:53

We both have a lot of shit going on.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

We got a lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

So we will be taking what August off.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

All of August will be off.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

We'll post some fun stuff. Sure. We'll post some fun stuff.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

We'll engage and interact. Yeah. Um, but yes. So the story. She was having a dream. And I'm not gonna provide all of the details on the dream, but what you need to know, listeners and watchers, viewers, viewers, um, is she was having a snooze. She was waking, starting to wake up, you know, but like still very much sleeping. She's having a nightmare. And the nightmare essentially was about her two granddaughters, and something terrible had happened in her dream. And so she she, you know, was obviously like experiencing some concern and some worry and and some panic in her dream.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:39

And then she says she was awoken by a musical figurine in her bedroom that she has not wound up in like 30 years.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Ooh.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

So I saw the figurine in question. She brought me in and like showed me the room and showed me the figurine. It's this beautiful, cutesy little. Remember those like I don't even know what they're called? They're not porcelain, but like they're like the ballerina. Yes. But it was a bear. She has these like little bear statues. Okay. And you wind it up in the back and it it plays a song.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

And she told me that it's a Bette Midler, I think, song called Evergreen. And she's gonna look up the lyrics to see what that means. So, like, I don't want to add anything, but right? So, anyways, she's like starting to come too, and she's thinking, what is that? Is that part of my dream? What am I hearing? And so, of course, she fully wakes up and this music box is playing so slowly and so eerily. That's creepy, and so she was like, Why? What? And so she decided to actually text her son about the dream she had. Yeah. To be like, this is really weird. I can't explain it.

SPEAKER_02 6:47

And sorry, I can't remember if you said it, but it's a wind up one, not a battery one.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Wind up one. There's no batteries, there's no battery. It is a you have to physically wind it. And she has not touched these things in ages.

SPEAKER_02 6:59

In ages. And those wind-up ones, you have to crank them to play.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

It is a full-blown crank.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

It's not like the weird tech battery ones where like it'll do a weird like mrr or the battery.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Exactly. It it is a full blown crank. So she texts her son, was like, listen, and she kind of explained more about the dream.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

And he was like, that's so creepy. You know, like uh he happened to be taking care of his kids. Like his partner was away at the time, and he was like, Oh my gosh, mom, like this is it, just was very wild in terms of what had specifically happened. It was like a warning. Karen took it as a warning and immediately texts Cam to be like, This and this is what happened in my dream. And he was like, Mom, like, I'm looking after them right now. This is wild that you said that. Anyway, I'm going to play for you. So of course, she didn't get it immediately as it happened, but she she did wind up the thing. Because of course she's like now looking at this thing, being like, How are you playing on your own? So when it stopped, she wound it up to see like, is there something wrong? So by the end of the song, she took a video to show me exactly what she was hearing as she was waking up. Are you ready?

SPEAKER_00 8:26

That's creepy. So slow, so creepy.

SPEAKER_02 8:29

Send that to me also. I will. That's creepy.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

So creepy, so slow.

SPEAKER_02 8:33

Like and years since it's been years.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

She told me that her husband got these figurines for her because they're three separate ones. So she had to figure out like which one it was, and it was that one. And do they all play? They all play. Okay. And it was she knew it was that one because of the specific song. Like she woke up and knew what song it was.

SPEAKER_02 8:50

Yeah. And so Bet Midler.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Right? So I went outside and I asked my father-in-law, I'm like, Do you remember getting it? He's like, No. And she's like, because I've had them for like 35 years.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

Right? I love it.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

So creepy. Yeah. So she took it as like big signs, and like I kind of said, like, oh, like someone knew you were experiencing a traumatic, terrible dream. Or maybe it was like a warning to like wake up and message right away.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

And it was like your spirit guides, your spirit angels, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Because like this dream was like traumatic and terrible.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

So um, yeah. So thank you, Karen, for sending that in. So creepy. We have no idea how it started playing. We tested it, we played around with it. You know when you like sometimes you can jump to like get none of that. It just was not happening. So interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

I mean, and that's the kind of stuff that like spirits and stuff will interact with.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Correct.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

That's like the spirit bells. It's very similar vibes.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

Exactly, right? And because it was so slow, I'm like, are they trying to turn it? Anyway, so if you would like to hear more stories about that, send them in. Send them in. Send them in so we can say we want them all. We want them all. So, Karen, thank you. Love you. I hope I did uh you a, you know, hope you did you good with with telling that story.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

I did you good.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Um, okay, well, and with that, let's keep creeping you out and get to today's topic.

SPEAKER_02 10:07

It's an interesting one.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

It is an interesting one. So on May 19th, 1845, by the way, that was the date that I was writing this exact freaking article. No way. I'm not kidding you. It was the 181st anniversary of this launch. On like literally the exact I wrote this on May 19th, 2027.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

That's cool. That's a meant-to-be moment.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Isn't it? Um, the exact launch day. So on this day, May 19th, 1845, Sir John Franklin, an English-born rear admiral and explorer. Don't know why it's rear admiral, maritime people write him. Um, had set off from his home country of England with two ships and about 130 men to search for the Northwest Passage. Um, this was a waterway through the now Canadian Arctic that connected the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Um at the time, this was still considered a fable, um, and explorers were dedicated to forging the path. So, like people were like, we know we can make it. We know that this pass passage exists.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

No one's been able to do it yet.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

And they were like, we we can do it. Uh so this guy knew what he was doing. Here is a little more about Johnny Franklin straight from Britannica.com.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Yeah, took it straight from the site because, like, why not?

SPEAKER_02 11:25

Why not? Uh that's what it's there for.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

Franklin entered the Royal Navy at age 14, accompanied Matthew Flinders on his exploratory voyage to Australia, 1801 to 1803. Long time ago. Long time ago, and served in the battles of Trafalgar, 1805, and New Orleans, 1815. He commanded the Trent on the Trent on Captain David Buchan's Arctic expedition of 1818, which sought to reach the North Pole. Yes, you're doing great. Thank you. These some some of these sentences in these old timey things. I know, right? Old timey? Sure. Sure. Britannica old time. Wasn't me. Yeah. Uh from 1819 to 1822, Franklin conducted an overland expedition from the western shore of Hudson's Bay to the Arctic Ocean. And he surveyed part of the coast to the east of the copper mine river in northwestern Canada. After his return to England, he published Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea. That's a mouthful.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

I know, right? Not really a catchy title.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

Not at all. Uh, in the years 1819, 1820, 1821, and 1822. And 23.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

I mean, sure. Sure. Again, this is not written by me. This is all from the website Britannica.

SPEAKER_02 12:52

So on a second overland expedition to the same region, 1825 to 27, Franklin led a party that explored the North American coast westward from the mouth of the Mackenzie River in northwestern Canada to Point Beachy, now in Alaska. Right. Great job, Steven. Excellent weekend. Yeah, that was a that was a lot.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

That was a lot, but all to say this person knew what he was doing. Yeah. That's kind of why I wanted to include it, right? Because this wasn't just like, I'm gonna do my first voyage and it's gonna be in the Arctic. No, this guy had done numerous trips like this.

SPEAKER_02 13:27

He was a explorer.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

A seasoned guy. And actually, um, I'm pulling a Steven, and I don't remember if I put this in here or not, but I'm gonna say it now. He was like on the cusp of retiring. Oh he was like almost 60 years old when he ventured into the one that we're about to talk about. That's a risky little game. Man, and especially in like 1840, when you're 60, you might as well be dead.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

Truly.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Now 60 is a young age. Young back. So young. Back then, not so not so much. So back to the story. The two ships were the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Erebus?

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Am I saying that right? Yeah. Which, by the way, in Greek mythology, um, this is the personification of primordial darkness. Who name Erebus means?

SPEAKER_02 14:11

I know. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Great name choice.

SPEAKER_02 14:13

Great name choices.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

Like, would you want to work on those two ships knowing what they're called? I know, right? Terror and Erebus?

SPEAKER_02 14:18

Um ship people. What am I thinking? Sailors and shit like that. Very superstition. Superstition.

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Incredibly so.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

So naming of boats is like a thing, a big thing.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Yes, yes. I don't know why. I don't know why. But that is also what drew me to the story because, like, what wild names? Wild names. Wild names.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

Oh, those ship people.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Oh, those ship people.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Which were maritimers? I don't know. Sailors? Sailors. Ship people. AKA ship.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

Ship people, you know. Um, according to Parks Canada website, these ships were three masted sailing ships, but were originally built as Royal Navy bomb vessels. Yes. These kinds of ships were commonly used in exploration of ice-filled destinations due to their strong framework and robust construction. Robust. Robust. But these two ships were also updated to have iron bracings inside the halls and iron plating on the bows. This would allow the boats to smash through the ice pack or tackle icebergs that they met along their way.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 15:25

Was this before or after Titanic?

SPEAKER_01 15:26

This is definitely way before.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

Way before Titanic.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

Way before Titanic.

SPEAKER_02 15:30

And we know how that turned out.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Oh man. So true. You know, anytime we think we can take on ice, it just doesn't go well. Just don't try. No, just don't do it. So, furthermore, uh, these ships were retrofitted with steam engines as auxiliary power.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Auxiliary power.

SPEAKER_01 15:45

Talk about ingenuity.

SPEAKER_02 15:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:47

So what they did was they took railway locomotive engines, uh, removed the wheels, and included them on each ship for extra power, but only when it was needed. Um, so the ships also had another innovation on board. There were special cooking stoves with tanks above them for melting ice and snow to create fresh water.

SPEAKER_02 16:04

Oh, interesting. That's smart.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

And each ship carried a patented heating framework that distributed the warmth to officers' cabins and, of course, the crew's living quarters. So, like pretty unique stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

And I feel like that was very kind of like modern kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Very ahead of the time.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

Ahead of the time. Yeah. And so the crew and captain were ready to tackle this voyage, knowing they had what they needed to get through this treacherous journey. Yeah. Or so they thought. These enhancements actually hadn't ever been tested on a scale of what they were about to face.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

I mean, right? Like so new. Yeah. Right? So new that they had never been used in this kind of journey.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

So like risky little game.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

Risky game. But that's what you gotta be when you're an explorer. It's true. You know?

SPEAKER_02 16:53

It's true. That's why I will never be an explorer. I like exploring, but like little forests in the backyard. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Same, right? Like no risk, no reward. I'm okay with no reward.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

According to the CBC, the last sighting in the eastern Arctic in August of 1845. This was actually before ice conditions would have allowed the two ships to steer a course into Lancaster Sound.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

Right. So like already bad news off the house.

SPEAKER_02 17:20

Yeah. Uh the eastern entrance to the Northwest Passage. Right. It was the last time the terror and Erebus were seen by Europeans.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Yeah, not great. Not great. So it is believed that in September 1846, the ships were sailing south down the west side of King William Island and most likely got trapped in the ice somewhere in the Victoria Strait. So where we're talking about is now modern-day Nunavut.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

Yeah. Yeah. So while the ships were said to have enough tinned food to last up to three years, some researchers actually claim that this could have also led to their misfortune, as the food could have been tainted with lead from the tin. Because of course, at the time they weren't like super aware that lead poisoning was a thing. So of course that would have led to illness, but also starvation. Because once they started to figure out, like, hey, I can't eat this, they're not gonna eat it.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

You know what immediately came to mind with like the tinned food? Have you ever seen ghost chip? I think so. There's one scene where they find like tinned food and they're like stranded on the ship or something, and they open it. He's eating, it's like, oh, this is actually really good. It's like beans or rice or something. And then he looks down and it's just maggots.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

I do remember that.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

Yeah. And that one has stuck in my mind. There you go. That could have happened too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

Could have somehow been gross when it was packaged, and here it is. So it is possible. Um, not in addition to you know, the food kind of either being ranted or obviously having lead poisoning. Um, it's also possible that that nifty drinking water system didn't actually work well. Yeah. They might have run out of fresh drinking water. Um, of course, illness and diseases could have also set in. Yeah. Um, and when you add all of that together, you do not get a pretty picture.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

Nope. Yeah, there's a lot that could have, could have and would have, and probably did go wrong.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

Go wrong.

unknown 19:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

Uh so cut to 1850. The Inuit people of King William Island, part of today's Nunabut, were not used to seeing many other outsiders other than their own people, and had certainly never met white Europeans before. Sure. That'd be a sight to see. Yeah. So when a group of Inuit hunters were camped around the south side of the island, they got the shock of their lives. The legend goes that outside of their igloos, while on that camp, they heard footsteps. First, some shuffling, and then a more labored kind of marching.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

Oh, and like picture it. You and Sicily It's so good. You and your fellow villagers, you know, on this camp in the middle of nowhere, on like the frozen tundra. Yeah. You're inside and they hear something and they're like, we're all accounted for.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

Yeah. What is that?

SPEAKER_01 20:15

And like, first, of course, their minds, I'm sure, would go to is it you know, polar bear, is it a seal, who knows? Any any sort of animal. But like again, they were in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. All of that would have been scary, especially if it was a polar bear.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

But uh, yeah, upon exiting the safety and the warmth of their igloos, they came face to face, face, face to face, face to face. They came face to face with what was reported as a terrifying sight. A group of feeble, vacant-eyed creatures stumbling towards them. White walkers. White walkers. Literally that. Literally. Eyes vacant, skin frozen and tinged blue. Yeah. Their mouths were there, but no human voice was coming from. These poor souls were barely alive and were believed to be the last few survivors of the Franklin expedition.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Wow. More groups of Inuit people had started to share stories about seeing men walking across the ice already half dead. They also started finding frozen and perfectly preserved corpses that had distinct bite marks on what would have been the softer parts of the flesh. In fact, historians and archaeologists have theorized that the survivors resorted to cannibalism to try and stay alive. Sadly, all perish.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

I knew there was gonna be cannibalism in this story. Did you? I I I figured.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Yeah, yeah. It uh yikes.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

Yeah. Yikes.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

I mean, again, extreme situation, survival instincts kick in if your buddy passes away. Like I don't listen, yikes is all I have to say about that.

SPEAKER_02 21:58

Also, I know. None of this situation is good, and no matter where you're going in like extreme weather conditions. But I would not want to do be an Arctic explorer.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 22:09

Cold is like, uh-uh.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

Forget it.

SPEAKER_02 22:11

Give me a jungle any day.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Yeah. No, I'm right there with you. Because that's an L it's an extra element of just danger immediately off the right.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

So what happened to the ships? Well, according to a CBC article by a man named Brian Case in 2020. 2020. Do you know how often I do that? 2012. Yeah, I didn't even know. I do it all the time. I say 2020, insert like 13, 10, 11. Anyway, 2012. A man named Owen Beattie, a University of Alberta anthropologist and co-author of Frozen in Time, The Fate of the Franklin Expedition, led the very first what would be of 17 searches that took place between 1981 and 2011. Didn't do it that time. The Canadian government even got involved, um, launching their own searches throughout the years. So many artifacts continued to be found over the years. Um, diaries, tools, teeth, and even bones, which cemented a lot of these theories about cannibalism. Because they find the scrapings on the bones, right?

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Always resorts to cannibalism.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

I don't mean to laugh, but I kind of do.

SPEAKER_02 23:15

You can eat me if we ever get trapped anyway.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

Oh, that's very sweet, but baby, I could never survive off of you.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

Thank me, on the other hand, you can dine out on me for a week.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

I'm a delicacy. You are a delicacy. I'm just I'm at one of those like fancy restaurants where you're just gonna try a little plate.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Just a little, yeah. It's just like a little morsel with like a huge leaf of something and some glaze all kind of written out. Exactly. I'm like a barbecue, you know, slab. Remember in the Flintstones, like the Brchiosaurus or Gontosaurus rip? That's me.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

Uh finger looking good.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

So, you know, me if I die first and we get stranded, okay?

SPEAKER_02 24:05

Uh okay. What they did find in 1984, however, were three graves of what would later be identified as three crew members of the expedition. Wild. Wild. Their frozen bodies were exhumed. I love that word. It's a good one. Exhumed.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:24

And their faces were splashed all over the news at the time.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

After many years of searching, a breakthrough appeared to come in 2014 from Parks Canada. Modern technology, traditional Inuit knowledge, and sheer tenacity on the part of the searchers resulted in the stunning find of 2014. Yeah, direct quote. Direct quote.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

The massive breakthrough in finding HMS Erebus didn't actually happen out on open water as you would have think. Uh, it actually went down on dry land. Yeah, just a single day before the ship was finally found. So on September 1st, 2014, a team of archaeologists from the Nunavut govern Nunavut, I should say properly, Nunavut government hitched a helicopter ride to a tiny island in the south, uh, yeah, in the southern search area to check out an old Inuit tent ring. So while walking the shore, their pilot, Andrew Sterling, spotted a weird chunk of rested metal sticking out of the ground. At first glance, it looked like a discarded bicycle fork. I don't know what a bicycle fork is. I was gonna say what? But it's it was it kind of looked like this little like outline of a balloon metal piece. It just like went up and around and down. I say this a lot, but we'll post a photo. Um yeah, so as I mentioned at first glance, it looked like a discarded bicycle fork. It was not, it was a davit pintle, which a specific piece of hardware used to raise and lower small boats. Okay. So it was a dead ringer for the exact blueprints of the Erebus. So they were like, this is actually off of the ship.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 25:57

Right? That was sticking up out of the ground. Crazy.

SPEAKER_02 26:00

Was it still connected to the ship? Do we know?

SPEAKER_01 26:02

No, no, just it was just simply sitting there. It was a piece. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 26:06

So the team, led by Nunavut's director of heritage and archaeologist, Douglas Stenton, also snagged a wooden deck house plug, sure. Sure. Basically a heavy-duty waterproof cork for a rope hole. Now I get it. That night, Stenton brought the loot back to the command center of the Coast Guard ship Sir Wilfrid Laurier. You can bet the room was buzzing as the archa archaeologists hovered over these ancient artifacts, realizing just how close they were.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Nerds love their stuff.

SPEAKER_02 26:37

Nerds love their stuff. They would have been excited. Oh my god, yeah. The very next morning, archaeologist Ryan Harris shifted his search grid based entirely on that bicycle fork. The team went back to their meticulous lawnmower style scanning of the seafloor. Within minutes, they hit the jackpot, the wreck was found.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Crazy. Crazy! Like that's amazing to me. I mean, it sounds I don't want to say boring. Like it's if you were there, that'd be so exciting. A 200-year, almost 200-year-old shipwreck.

SPEAKER_02 27:10

A zombie shipwreck.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

Yes, that you find like wild.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Wild.

SPEAKER_02 27:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

So local Inuit oral history has always insisted one of the ships went down right around where the Erebus was discovered as well. So logically, everyone assumed that the second ship, the HMS Terror, had to be further north, closer to where the crew originally abandoned them in the Victoria Strait. Because of this, search teams spent years dragging high-tech sonar behind tiny boats and launching underwater drones in the northern waters. It was brutal, tedious, mind-numbing work, staring at sonar screens for hours on end, just praying for a little blip.

SPEAKER_02 27:49

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

But history loves a twin. Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

Enter the Martin Bergman, a research ship that had been on the hunt since 2012. On September 3rd, 2016, the vessel was steaming out of I don't know how to say this. Goa Heaven? Joe? Again, nailing cultural names. I'm so sorry. It's spelled G-J-O-A. Yeah. Joe Haven towards that northern grid where they decided to take a wild detour tour into Terror Bay. Did they find Oh my God. They were chasing a tip that sounded almost too good to be true.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

A local that word Haven hunter named Sammy Gojevik had just joined the crew the day before. He casually mentioned to a crewmate that about six years prior, while out on a hunting trip, he'd spotted a massive wooden mass poking straight up through the winter ice inside Terror Bay. While it sounded like a wild personal anecdote, it actually matched decades of whispers and rumors among the Goja Haven locals about a ghost ship hiding in the bay.

SPEAKER_02 29:01

Ghost ship in Terror Bay. The crew decided to trust the hunter's gut, detoured into the bay, and dropped a sonar scanner into the dark water. Boom. I had to be aggressive there. I don't know why.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

Do you love I had no reaction? Because I was like, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

Yeah. Right there on the seafloor, nearly a hundred kilometers away from where the rest of the expedition was mindlessly scanning the northern grid, sat a massive, perfectly upright, three-masted ship.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

Like, come on.

SPEAKER_02 29:34

That would be so cool to see.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

So haunted. I get so creeped out by things underwater. But that would be so unfortunate.

SPEAKER_02 29:41

It's not on its side. It's not, you know, torn apart. It's just sitting there. Perfectly like a fucking ghost.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

Yes. I love it. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 29:48

Uh, when they dropped a remote camera down to investigate, the footage was eerie and stunning. Completely intact crew quarters, a mess hall, and food storage room just waiting at the bottom of the Arctic.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

And it was found in Terror Bay. Like, come on.

SPEAKER_02 30:05

Okay. Was it named Terror Bay after the fact?

SPEAKER_01 30:08

It has to be. I did not look it up. So, like, somebody moving that right now. Wouldn't it be a coincidence? Was Terror Bay in Nunavut named that after finding? I don't know why I have to say it as I type it. I love it. Um, no, the Bay was named in 1910, decades before the wreck was located. Wow. That is even cooler.

SPEAKER_02 30:31

That is so cool.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Get out of here.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

What are the chances?

SPEAKER_01 30:35

Oh, wait.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

Hold on. So while it's been making that up.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Hold on. It goes on to say, and this is just a light Google search, so like I'm not doing my usual hardcore in-depth hink.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

So while I did say the name was uh the bay was named in 1910, it was actually named after the ship itself.

SPEAKER_02 30:54

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

Which did explore the region. And ironically enough, was in fact found in that bay.

SPEAKER_02 31:00

I didn't know that it was down there, but they knew that it had been in the bay.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

Right. They actually, and they had thought for years that it was somewhere in the area. So that's probably what led to the name. But then, yes, absolutely was found within Terra Bay.

SPEAKER_02 31:11

That is so cool.

SPEAKER_01 31:12

That's so cool, right?

SPEAKER_02 31:14

I really like that.

SPEAKER_01 31:14

I also want to say, thank goodness for Inuit Oral Legends.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

Because that information, I think, was the most important piece of it all.

SPEAKER_02 31:25

That was the clinching.

SPEAKER_01 31:26

That was exactly right. So very cool. This is why Oral History Matters from our wonderful cultures who have been here for literally hundreds of years before us. So thank you.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

Um how creepy. Like I got goosebumps when you were re- saying that. Yeah. Just a perfect ship sitting on the bottom of it.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

Sitting at the bottom of like, how often does that happen?

SPEAKER_01 31:47

Oh man. And so we I I I swear to you, I do have links to the media coverage of when this happened. Um, the images of these men who like they exhumed. Yeah, it's wild. They are perfectly preserved. I mean, listen, not perfectly. Well, they're like, it may be 170 years. Yeah. But like their skin is still on. You like you can still see facial features. Like if these poor people's families were still around, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:13

I'm sure they could be like, that's that's why it's so creepy when shit like that, like in the Arctic and up north, starts melting. Oh. Because you find these perfectly preserved things. Yes. And then, but also viruses and pathogens that we're not used to and would fuck us up.

SPEAKER_01 32:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:31

Like the zombie virus could be waiting up there for us.

SPEAKER_01 32:34

100%. But could you imagine, too, like just like these sickly, emaciated people just like shuffling their own.

SPEAKER_02 32:43

Trying to survive.

SPEAKER_01 32:44

And let me tell you something. I I do not blame the Inuit people for not like helping them.

SPEAKER_00 32:50

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

Because again, they would not have known who the if these were real people. Yeah. If you are in the middle of nowhere and you're just used to seeing your own village, your own people, and that happens, I would absolutely think it was like paranormal, something yeah, you know.

SPEAKER_02 33:07

That's like us going outside, and all of a sudden we're seeing like these creepy, crazy zombie aliens just shuffling down the street. Yes. We're not helping. No. We're part of her fucking lives.

SPEAKER_00 33:17

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 33:18

We are staying indoors wearing a tape. Yeah. Wild stuff. Wild stuff. So there's the story of the Arctic zombies and these like the next one. Zombie story. Isn't it? I like that. And like a shipwreck, maritime adventures, survival. Obviously, no one did survive, so like sorry. Not survival. But Unreal. Yeah. Um, definitely check it out. Parks Canada has a bunch of cool images of the ships and like when they actually found it. It's just, it is so cool.

SPEAKER_02 33:46

So cool.

SPEAKER_01 33:47

It is scary. It is wild. I wonder what it would have been like to sit there and be like, I'm on a ship that's exploring the world.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

I'm sure it would have been so cool.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

Again, cool, not for me.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

No. But also imagine back then. Like now we know what's around the world. Like we have access to pictures, videos, we we can travel way easier. But back then, you would have no clue what you're getting into. No. You would have no like images in your brain that you could picture going to.

SPEAKER_01 34:20

It could have been a death sentence. Like these these men probably figured I could die.

SPEAKER_02 34:24

Yeah. Um and they most of them probably just assumed they were.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

Assumed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I didn't include it in this specific story, but um tell you from my reading. So the wife of the captain of Captain Franklin, she was the one who really forged the fight to find them, to like go out and see where they were. Obviously, they could not recover anyone, they couldn't find anyone, but she was like, I know something's wrong. Like she just knew that something had happened. Yeah. Of course, obviously, they do their best to sort of plot out when they would be back-ish. Yeah. And obviously that date passed. And so she really, really rallied. And there were searches back in the day, but obviously they never found anything. Yeah. Yeah. So she tried. She tried. Girl, girl tried to find her man. But um, yeah. Wow. Isn't that so creepy?

SPEAKER_02 35:15

Creepy Arctic zombies. Man. I want to do some episodes about like um like hoodoo voodoo zombies and like the like zombie zombies.

SPEAKER_01 35:24

Yeah, yeah. Zombie zombies.

SPEAKER_02 35:26

Zombie zombies, you know.

SPEAKER_01 35:27

Do you like zombie movies?

SPEAKER_02 35:28

I love zombie zombies.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

Yeah, that's very much your vibe. I really have to be in a mood to to watch fair. Right? I just I don't know why. Zombies is like, that's like the only thing that I'm like, I don't know. I am also not big on gore for as weird as I am.

SPEAKER_02 35:43

And zombies are the gore ones. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_01 35:45

Ugh.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

I can't even think of it. Uh the 28 Days Later. 28 Days Later franchise. All the new movies I'm loving. Yeah. 28 Years Later. Yeah, yeah. Kyle watching. The Bone Temple one. Yes. I haven't seen that yet.

SPEAKER_01 35:58

There are, I will get captivated as I'm walking by of certain scenes, but then I gotta get out of there. I just, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what it is. Um but Sean of the Dead, great. I will always be the movie. Um well, anything else to add about zombies and Arctic stuff? Uh shipwrecks?

SPEAKER_02 36:17

I think zombies are one of the monsters I would not hook up with.

SPEAKER_01 36:23

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:24

Boinkstagram. No zombie boinking here.

SPEAKER_01 36:27

No, because like gross, doo much for me.

SPEAKER_02 36:30

Although the the um alpha zombie and the 28 years later is apparently package.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_02 36:38

Yeah. That went viral when the movie came out.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Okay, well, that's an I'll watch. Let's let's do a quick Google after this.

SPEAKER_01 36:45

Great note. Yeah, there you go. I guess one it there. Um, so thank you so much for listening and watching Weirdos of Whimsy. We will be back again soon with another episode that guides you through the weird and whimsical journey that is our brains. Be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube at Weird As of Whimsy Pod. Watch that space for updates, release dates, and other treats and delectable morsels. Send us your stories.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

Send us your stories. Your stories. Do it now. This is me being stern. Stern. Which is like so hard to take seriously. I can do that.

SPEAKER_02 37:19

You saw me earlier with Merlin. Dom Daddy voice.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

Oh, I mean, I don't want to say yelling. You know, just like sternly making sure that he was listening.

SPEAKER_02 37:27

Yeah, he did not stay on place when Jack came, and I needed to get Dom Daddy voice. I was like, oh, I'm turned off.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

Uh send us your stories.

SPEAKER_02 37:36

Send it.

SPEAKER_01 37:37

Okay. Well, say goodbye, Stevie.

SPEAKER_02 37:39

Goodbye, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

And as always, big gulp, say. Well, see you later.