The Grinning Man: The Unsettling Story of Indrid Cold

In 1966, traveling salesman Woodrow Derenberger claimed he encountered a smiling, telepathic being on a dark West Virginia highway. Unfortunately for him, it was an encounter that would spiral into years of alleged visits, alien worlds, public harassment, Men in Black sightings, and the collapse of his personal life. 

We're diving into the deeply unsettling case of Indrid Cold, better known as The Grinning Man—a figure who looks human, speaks without moving his mouth, and doesn't fit any one description.

But Indrid Cold isn't just isolated to one case. There are reports of other grinning figures in different states, strange phone calls, unexplained lights, and a broader wave of high strangeness spreading across West Virginia. 

One investigator, John Keel, begins to suspect that this isn’t an alien story at all, but something stranger: an ultraterrestrial, a being not from another planet, but from somewhere overlapping our reality.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The original highway encounter and why it feels so wrong
• The rise of the Grinning Man sightings beyond West Virginia
• Why Indrid Cold triggers such a strong uncanny valley response
• The ultraterrestrial theory and how it reframes the entire case
• Skeptical explanations, psychological interpretations, and hoax concerns
• How folklore, culture, and media helped turn Indrid Cold into modern myth

Was Indrid Cold an extraterrestrial explorer? An interdimensional observer? A psychological break under extreme pressure? Or the modern face of an ancient archetype that’s been with us far longer than we realize.

Transcript

Cold Open, Audio Chaos, Quick Recap

Josh 0:03

Aliens.

Travis 0:04

Aliens. Yes. But maybe no. Welcome to the show. Aliens, yes. But holding on for Josh. With Josh on the holding and Travis on the staring. This is a podcast about podcasting where now I can't hear Josh.

Josh 0:33

So let's try this again.

Travis 0:41

Aliens, yes, but maybe no, with Josh and Travis. I'm Travis.

Josh 0:46

I'm Josh.

Travis 0:47

And this is an otherworldly podcast as ambiguous as our title. Yeah. Sorry about that rough start. We had some audio issues to figure out, and it totally made me crap a bit.

Josh 0:58

Everything's fine.

Travis 0:59

It threw me off my game a little bit.

Josh 1:01

The last two episodes, I had audio problems. So we're getting that figured out. We did get it figured out. So this is the new norm now. So we're good.

Travis 1:10

So good.

Josh 1:11

Yeah. Do you remember what we talked about last week?

Travis 1:14

Hmm. No.

Josh 1:15

Oh my goodness. Antarctica.

Travis 1:18

Oh, right. The great frozen tundra. I remember talking about the thing a little bit. Now it's all washing back over me, but that's how I relate to the world is through movies.

Josh 1:28

That's true.

Travis 1:29

Antarctica.

Josh 1:30

Yeah.

Travis 1:30

Right? Wild, crazy place. Very cold. Yeah. Might be a surprise to everybody to learn how cold it is. Very cold.

Josh 1:36

Even outside the weird and supernatural, it's still weird. Like just the natural stuff is odd.

Travis 1:42

Yeah. Alien, you might say.

Josh 1:44

Mm-hmm. Without the aliens, it's still alien.

Travis 1:46

Yeah. Bizarro.

Josh 1:47

So it was an easy aliens, yes, for me, I think. I don't remember that much.

Travis 1:51

I don't remember. I don't know, remember where I mean Antarctica being an alien. Come on.

Josh 1:56

The entire thing.

Travis 1:57

No, that thing that things on Earth. It's normal. Oh, I guess that's true.

Josh 2:00

Well, maybe I should go back and listen.

Travis 2:01

But as far as like moving the needle towards proof that aliens exist, I think I was in the maybe camp, if I remember. Maybe we I don't think we actually did a way in.

Josh 2:10

I don't remember either, but I don't think so.

Travis 2:12

We're slipping, Josh.

Josh 2:13

I mean, maybe they can just go and listen. Find out for yourself.

Travis 2:16

Please do that. Please.

Josh 2:18

Yeah.

Travis 2:18

We get paid on listens, and my kids have been eating nothing but boot laces since we started this podcast.

Josh 2:24

Man, living it up over there. Huh?

Travis 2:26

Yeah. The same one too. Like that nutritional value of those boot laces really starting to diminish.

Josh 2:33

What are the things on the laces? Aglet, the little uh plastic piece on the end of a shoelace.

Travis 2:40

Yeah. That's been preserving some nutrients. It's been trapping it in there. When the nutrient from the proper shoelace runs out, we've still got that aglet that we can dip into. And my kids are really looking forward to that. That'll be like a dessert. Hopefully, the way it lines up, that might be Christmas.

Josh 2:56

We can't afford the whole shoelace, so we just get the aglet.

Travis 2:59

Oh, that's the best part.

Josh 3:00

I guess.

Travis 3:01

Yeah. You cut that open, you release those juices.

Josh 3:03

But but you know what? Just listen. We're starving artists.

Travis 3:06

Yeah, exactly.

Josh 3:08

Yeah. So that was our last episode. We're gonna hop into this one. So we did a quiz at the end to figure out what we were gonna talk about this episode. And I think Travis did really good.

Travis 3:20

No, I did I think I did about as well as you did.

Josh 3:23

Yeah, that's true. We had no idea. We hadn't even heard these words before.

Travis 3:27

No.

Josh 3:27

So it was a very new thing. And it was a I think for me at least, it was the first time I was just completely guessing the entire time. Welcome to my team. Yeah. But before we get into the actual topic, stick around for the end before our quiz, and we will read some fan mail.

Travis 3:44

Maybe.

Josh 3:45

Maybe. If we have some, we'll have to look.

Travis 3:47

Clock is ticking, guys. You have about an hour to send us the letters. So let's let's get on that, please.

Josh 3:55

I love that you always speak as though we're performing this live.

Travis 3:58

Yeah.

Josh 3:58

It's great.

Travis 3:59

You have an hour to do it. Now respond.

Josh 4:01

Yeah. Cast your votes.

Travis 4:02

I mean, it is live for whoever's listening in their ear holes. It's it's live in their ear.

Josh 4:07

Yeah, I guess. But yeah, our topic today is Inrid Cold. Are we saying that right? I don't know. I want to say every time I see it, Ingrid.

Travis 4:15

Yeah.

Josh 4:16

And even doing research and stuff.

Travis 4:17

Or Android, which is how my brain auto-fills some of that. They're like, Ingrid's not a word.

Josh 4:22

I know. And I even though I knew it, I would read it and say Ingrid, and then I'd be like, no, that's not an idiot.

Travis 4:28

And later, his best friend is such a funny name. It's like one of my favorite funny names. We'll talk about that a little later.

Josh 4:37

Yeah.

Travis 4:38

Maybe. Maybe let's just do it now in case I forget.

Josh 4:40

Do you remember?

Travis 4:41

Uh his best friend's name?

Josh 4:42

Yeah.

Travis 4:42

That he brought to meet Woody?

Josh 4:45

Yeah.

Travis 4:45

It's Carl.

Josh 4:47

Oh.

Travis 4:49

So funny. He's like, this is my best friend Carl. He comes from Ganymede. I almost said Gallifrey, but that's Doctor Who. And he's my best friend in the world.

Josh 4:59

Yeah. Okay, let's get this started. Do you want to kick us off with the story?

Travis 5:04

Yeah, I'll start off with a little bit of background.

Josh 5:06

Yeah.

Travis 5:07

And kind of ease us into the story of Indrid Cold. On the night of November 2nd, 1966, nothing special is happening. Just another quiet stretch of Interstate 77 cutting through the dark hills of West Virginia. Woody Derenberger was on his way back to his home in Mineral Wells from a long day of selling sewing machines, which is kind of funny.

Josh 5:27

That is funny.

Travis 5:28

This is like in the world of sales, a day that is long past. And it's white people put no soliciting signs on their house now, I'm sure. So that you don't get sold to at home.

Josh 5:39

When I was a little kid, we had a vacuum shampooer salesman come. How old are you? And he shampooed like two rugs and an entire room. He got really mad when we didn't buy it because he did all that work.

Travis 5:52

Um, I was at a friend's house buying, let's just call it some black market goods. There was a vacuum salesperson in there that was friends with the person that we were buying from, and they had brokered a deal because this guy was sitting with us while our friend was going vacuum crazy on his house, crooked to cranny, under the couch. Like we had to get up and help move furniture so he could vacuum. And this guy was like, Weird. I have to leave right now. I have to leave. What are you doing? It was wild. So that was like my one experience with a maybe door-to-door salesperson. Outside of that, it was like Tupperware ladies.

Josh 6:31

This guy, when I was a kid, he wouldn't leave. He's like, Well, I can trade a vehicle for a vacuum. It wasn't until my dad got home that he was finally able to get him to leave.

Travis 6:41

Okay, so we're at paragraph two.

Josh 6:43

Yeah, let's keep it going.

Travis 6:44

Okay. So long day of selling sewing machines, when out of nowhere, something dropped from the sky and hovered over the road ahead of him. A metallic, elongated object shaped like a cigar or an oil lamp lowered itself until it blocked the entire lane. No sound. Just a craft sitting there suspended inches from the pavement. Darenberger hit the brakes, his truck rolled to a stop, and before he could even register what he was looking at, a panel on the side of the craft opened with a single heavy kthunk. A man stepped out. He was about six feet tall, had olive skin, slick back hair, and wearing a glossy dark blue coat that caught the dim light like polished metal. What set him apart wasn't his face or his clothes, it was the smile. Wide and unnerving. So, Josh, I have a question for you.

Josh 7:28

Yeah. Shoot.

Travis 7:29

If somebody plopped down on the road in a giant metal contraption and was smiling like a maniac, what would be your first thought? I would speed off.

Josh 7:41

Mm-hmm. Reverse or pivot, I would get out of there.

Travis 7:45

Yep. I agree. I think that I would crap my pants so hard my car would not be able to be resold.

Josh 7:53

I would probably leave before he got out.

Travis 7:56

Yeah. Yeah. I think I would be like saying, what the fuck, what the fuck, if something landed right in front of me and be kind of a like freaked out. But then if somebody came out and was just smiling, I would be crying, I think. Yeah. From fear. So he didn't speak with his mouth. Instead, a voice slid directly into Darrenberger's thoughts. Roll down your window. I want to talk to you. The man walked toward the passenger side of the truck, hands it aside, smiling, changing. His presence wasn't threatening exactly, but it wasn't human in the way it should have been. That bit about roll down your window is creepy. It is. That's like I need to eliminate as many obstacles between you as possible.

Josh 8:38

Yeah, if I stuck around and he said that, I'd be like, no, I'm okay.

Travis 8:42

But see my smile? I'm showing my teeth. No, thank you. It's a sign of pleasantness among your people. Just keep going. Ooh, man. Anyway, so what followed was a quiet, unnerving conversation. All of it telepathic. No lips moving, no sound in the air, just the man's voice in Darrenberger's mind, introducing himself as Indrid Cold. He said, We come from a place less powerful than yours. We wish you peace. We eat, we breathe, we sleep, and we bleed, even as you do. Another unnerving thing to say to somebody. Yeah. We bleed too. It's terrifying.

Josh 9:17

Yeah, I mean, and he also made it very clear that he is an alien or not from this place, or I don't know.

Travis 9:24

I mean, yeah, and we'll have more on that later.

Josh 9:26

Yeah.

Travis 9:27

Cold asked a few questions, some simple things like about the town nearby, about the people, about how humans lived. His tone was almost polite. Curious even, like he was studying the area, not just visiting it. After a few minutes, he stepped back toward the craft. The grin never changed, the calm never broke. Before he entered the ship, he gave one more message, one that would end up defining everything that came next. We will see you again. The craft lifted off, shot into the night sky, and vanished. Woody sat alone in the dark, heart pounding, trying to process what had just happened, and whether he realized it or not, he became the center of one of the strangest chapters of American paranormal history. So a couple things about this. Not only was this terrifying, but it ends in what could almost be viewed as a threat.

Josh 10:11

We will see you again.

Travis 10:13

We will see you again. Yeah. Like this isn't over, this exchange that we have between the two of us. Not over, buddy. I'm gonna visit you at your house. I'm gonna visit you at your workspace. I'm going to get you so obsessed with me that it ruins your marriage.

Josh 10:28

He just had foresight. Yeah. I mean, there is a couple of things like rolling down the window when they're already talking. Like, why does that need to happen?

Travis 10:36

It's telepathic. Like, why does the window need to come down?

Josh 10:39

Like, he didn't even need to walk up to the car unless the telepathy has a range. But I doubt it.

Travis 10:45

I don't know. I don't know how telepathy works. Like, we don't have that here that we know of.

Josh 10:50

Like, I do know how it works and it does not need a range.

Travis 10:52

Yeah, it doesn't need a range, but maybe to make him feel a little safer, he put himself in front of Woody and let him know that he was talking to him. So Woody wasn't just getting these thoughts, you know, and then leading him down like a schizophrenic road or a multiple personality disorder. So it like attributed a source to the voice in his head, but still like consider your audience, man. Like you plopped your machine down on a road as this guy was heading home, and then you just grinned like a maniac and walked towards him, talking to him through his mind. I think I would go literally insane from an experience like this.

Josh 11:30

Oh, yeah.

Travis 11:31

I would not be okay after something like this happened.

Josh 11:34

No, not at all.

Travis 11:35

And yeah, the guys in the 60s were built different.

Josh 11:37

I think one of the weirdest things in this whole kind of introduction to the story of how this became one of the strangest paranormal events in American history. I'm just surprised I hadn't heard of this because this guy's pretty popular. The story's pretty popular, and I hadn't heard about this before.

Travis 11:52

I haven't either, but there's a lot, and we'll get into this as we get deeper into this hot dos. Mm-hmm. The effect that it had on this guy and his inconsistent narrative. Like a lot of things changed with his the counting of this experience.

Josh 12:08

Well, I mean, that gets into the public frenzy. So when Woody Derenberger walked into his house that night, he didn't look like a guy who had just seen a strange light or maybe a misidentified plane. According to his daughter Tanya, he looked drained and white as a sheet. His wife asked him what happened, and when he explained, she picked up the phone and called the police. Within minutes, their quiet home became a center of something much uh larger. So first came the locals. So there was the deputy, the police officer, and someone Tanya remembered as being from the Air Force. Then they sat Woody down, took notes, asked clarifying questions, and tried to piece together some kind of timeline of events. And then came the media. A reporter from WTAP TV showed up eager to hear the story firsthand. They weren't subtle about their intentions. They booked him for an on-air interview the very next day. But before dawn, the Derenberger family went from something weird happening to the family of a man who met a spaceman. And then that same night, the Derenbergers faced a second, more unsettling encounter. Tony described three men who appeared at their door dressed bizarrely for the middle of the night, black suits, white shirts, fedores, and sunglasses. These men, I think I know who they are. Unlike Andred Cold, didn't ask questions, but they issued a chilling demand. They said, recant your story, don't tell anybody else about what you saw. And of course, he didn't, right? No, he did.

Travis 13:36

Oh shit.

Josh 13:37

Yeah, he did. Just like most of the people who encounter, I think the men in black.

Travis 13:41

I mean, as as far as we know, right? Yeah. We're only hearing about the people that talked.

Josh 13:47

But there's a lot.

Travis 13:48

There's a lot. But what about the people that don't, Josh?

Josh 13:51

That's true. There could be, and we could be 1% talk, and then there's all these other crazy things. So the very next day, Woody sat for a 30-minute televised interview recounting the entire event to the region. The station not only aired the interview, but also broadcast his home address, which fucking doxxed him. Holy shit. That is I mean, is this before we knew not to do that? You don't give out your home address.

Travis 14:13

Well before doxing is a relatively new term and a relatively discovered weapon to use against people that are whistleblowers and or are whatever.

Josh 14:26

It just seems like that the home address didn't even need to be said. It wasn't where he saw the thing.

Travis 14:31

It wasn't like Yeah, but like if you are looking to like hurt the person or make them feel like they're insane, that's exactly what you do. Like we saw that play. If you remember uh Independence Day, Randy Quaid's character, the whole town knew about him and where he lived. He was in a trailer, and they were like, Oh, the guy's in a butt stuff. Aliens probed him in the butt.

Josh 14:51

Well, I'm thinking this interview, they didn't do that. You know, they weren't trying to hurt this guy.

Travis 14:55

They aired his interview and then said, This is where this guy lives. That's exactly what they did.

Josh 15:00

I think they were just being dumb. It's like worst case scenario. So, because of that, because of the broadcast of his home address, strangers quickly descended upon the property.

Travis 15:11

Uh-huh. A hundred percent.

Josh 15:12

The cars lined the road, the yard filled with people bringing binoculars, lawn chairs, cameras, and children. Lots of children. The police were called repeatedly to manage the massive crowds, all waiting to see if the smiling man might return. So that was kind of the aftermath of that night.

Travis 15:31

Yeah, him reporting.

Josh 15:32

Yeah, that was the 24 hours after. Quick turn of events. Going from selling sewing machines to a public frenzy.

Travis 15:41

Yeah. Not ideal. Probably scares a lot of people from talking about their experience.

Josh 15:46

I mean, yeah. If some of our bigger stories end with that. So do you want to tell us who Ingrid Cold is?

Travis 15:54

You wanna give that another run? What's his name? Indrid. There we go. Do you want to give us a rundown? Nothing would make me happier, Josh.

Josh 16:06

It's a cool name.

Travis 16:07

It's a cool, totally normal name that millions of people have now, Inrid, right?

Josh 16:14

Or will after hearing this podcast.

Travis 16:16

After this podcast. What a great legacy uh this guy Ind has had. I mean, his best friend Carl, wildly successful name.

Josh 16:25

Yeah, that made it.

Travis 16:26

Almost as funny as Kevin. Kevin is another really funny name.

Josh 16:30

That's true. Not bad.

Travis 16:31

It's not a bad it's not a Kevin's not a bad name. Carl's not a bad name, but it's those hard consonants that are just really funny.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Yeah.

Men In Black And The Home Invasion Of Fame

Travis 16:37

Okay. So we're gonna get into a little background of who Indrid Cold is. Not long after the televised interview, Derenberger claimed that Indrid Cold returned. Sometimes he would arrive at the Derenberger home, always calm, always smiling, of course. He's called the grinning man, accompanied by another visitor, a man Woody came to know as Carl Ardo, which sounds so That's two names.

Josh 17:00

Carl Ardo.

Travis 17:02

It's two names. It's Carl Ardo. Not Carl Ardo. Not how I said it, which sounds like a really kind of crappy form of martial arts that you would practice inside of like a closed fast food chain.

Josh 17:16

Yeah.

Travis 17:16

I'm I'm just going to my Carl Ardo class. It really helps me focus. So Carlardo came here with uh Indrid. The pattern stayed consistent, the conversations were telepathic, the demeanor was friendly, and the questions were oddly practical. Cold was interested in understanding human life, family dynamics, employment, and the structure of human settlements. It was almost like someone taking notes for a report. It's exactly what I thought, like spy.

Josh 17:44

Yeah, like a secret shopper.

Travis 17:46

Yeah, exactly. Like a secret shopper. They're going into Earth and they're like, oh, I see this form of government's not really working. Well, we have this and this is working really well. So let's not adopt that. But like you guys are doing this well and that well. Maybe we'll take that on.

Josh 18:04

I could see that.

Travis 18:04

Darren Berger said Indrid Cold began referring to himself as a searcher, a wanderer who traveled between worlds to study other cultures and learn from him. His title was like floating around looking for something, right? Like a searcher you would think a searcher would do. Yeah. So he made some trips beyond Earth. As the months passed, Woody's tale got wilder. He claimed Cold took him on his ship several times, showing him a tour of Cold's vessel. They made a stop near the moon to check out a bigger ship.

Josh 18:37

Awesome.

Travis 18:37

They did a fly over the Amazon.

Josh 18:39

Gotta do that.

Travis 18:40

Gotta do that. Like, I'm never gonna go to the Amazon. And Cold was like, Where do you want to go? I got you. Yeah. He's like Aladdin showing him a whole new world. Yeah. He's like, I want to see the world. And like, well, where do you want to go? And the most exotic place he came up with was the Amazon. Oh, yeah. Which is great, like pretty exotic. You see big snakes and copybara and I dig it. Sure. Eventually they took a trip to Lanulos, Cold's home planet. Nice. Lanulos sounded like a utopian novel from the 60s, which this is where it takes place. Peaceful, hate-free society, long lifespans, one-story houses, monorail transport, and people living simply and kindly.

Josh 19:19

That sounds nice.

Travis 19:20

Woody's wife and children said they also saw Endric Cold. They described him as polite, well spoken, though telepathically, and strangely normal. Normal enough to make the abnormal parts even more unsettling. For the Derenbergers, this became a years-long chapter of their lives. This is wild.

Josh 19:37

Yeah.

Travis 19:38

Where somebody who comes into their life regularly but never speaks out loud and is only through their brain.

Josh 19:43

But still well spoken?

Travis 19:45

Yeah. In English? Ah. And has the same cultural context as we do here?

SPEAKER_00 19:53

Yeah.

Travis 19:54

English, Josh. This is the thing that we talk about so much on this podcast. This is what puts the huge Black spot for me on a lot of these stories is that there are so many languages spoken here. Why is it just English?

Josh 20:08

It's all very different, too.

Travis 20:10

Like people that go to Japan, I we haven't covered any sort of story from Japan or the Middle East or parts of Europe. Are those also in English?

Josh 20:20

I don't know.

Travis 20:21

Or is it native to whatever land? Is it I don't I don't know. This is something for, I guess, future shows.

Josh 20:27

Yeah. We'll have to look into it.

Travis 20:28

But it's something that I'm so fascinated in, is just language.

Josh 20:31

I mean, maybe it's one of those things where they can just match your language.

Travis 20:35

Yeah, like uh the uh the ear thing and Hitchhiker's Guide. Yeah, uh Babble Babblefish. Babblefish, yeah, that goes in your ear. Yeah.

Josh 20:45

Maybe it's that. And there's I mean, there's tons of different sci-fi things where they have some kind of organic or tech translator. I don't know. Maybe.

Family Fallout, Harassment, And A Life Unraveling

Travis 20:54

Babbelfish, that would make sense. So the attention came with a price. Woody's life deteriorated significantly as he continued to speak publicly about cold. The resulting stress had severe consequences. He was plagued by constant harassing phone calls, found it difficult to maintain stable employment, and began experiencing frequent headaches and depression. Ultimately, the pressure caused his marriage to fail, leading Woody to move away from the area.

Josh 21:20

Man, he shouldn't have said anything.

Travis 21:21

So one of the investigators of this that we learned, I don't know if this comes up later, but it wasn't part of our research for this show. One of the investigators started to woo Woody's wife, and she left Woody for this investigator, and then they got married. So, like this experience totally destroyed this guy's life.

Josh 21:44

First, she actually left him and took the kids because the kids were getting made fun of at school. Like, I mean, the whole family was getting harassed.

Travis 21:51

Yeah.

Josh 21:52

She took the kids and left town, basically, and then she ended up marrying one of the investigators, which is wild.

Travis 21:58

What kind of names do you think they were calling in their kids? Alien Butt Baby. Yeah, Alien Butt, Google Eyes, Little Green Baby, Weirdo, Booger Dad, Zitface, Fart Monster, Poopy Pants.

Josh 22:13

Probably just the normal stuff.

Travis 22:14

Just the normal stuff.

Josh 22:16

Yeah. That's what I'm thinking.

Travis 22:18

That sucks though.

Josh 22:20

It does, you know. But yeah, she left. So I mean, yeah, add a little soapy drama to this already crazy story. I'm for it, but I feel bad.

Travis 22:27

I feel bad. I feel especially bad for the kids and the fallout that happened with this family. I don't like to see a family fall apart because of somebody's obsession. What's really upsetting.

Josh 22:39

Yeah. But all of this, this whole story and him coming out, it ended up turning into a phenomenon. And it was called the grinning man. You may have heard of it. I had not. So by now, Ingrid Cold had become kind of the center of Woody Derenberger's world. But outside of his home, in the weeks surrounding that first encounter, something else was happening. People in other states were reporting strange visitors too. And they all had one thing in common the grinning man. So there was the New Jersey sighting, just a few weeks before Woody met Ingrid Cold, two boys, Martin Mouse Moonov.

Travis 23:16

That's illiterate F. That's too many M's.

Josh 23:19

Yeah. And then James Yanchitis. Uh or Yonkaitis, maybe Yonkaitis, were walking through Elizabeth, New Jersey. It was late and they were passing a fence near a housing project when they saw a figure standing perfectly still on the other side. They described him as unusually tall, dressed in a shiny green suit with a deep, unnatural grin and small, beady eyes set far apart. The boys said he didn't speak, didn't blink, and didn't stop smiling. When he finally moved, the boys ran. Local newspapers covered the story alongside reports of bright lights in the sky that same week. And then there was the Lily family in West Virginia, just 40 miles from Mineral Wells near Pleasant Point. Their home had been dealing with months of strange activity, taps on the walls, odd phone calls, objects moving and lights appearing outside at night. But the strangest moment came when their daughter Linda, she was 16, she woke up in the middle of the night to a man standing at the foot of her bed. Fuck. She described him as big and broad, smiling at her, and noticed he was gone the second she screamed.

Travis 24:22

What the fuck?

Josh 24:23

Her family rushed in, no one else was there. To them, it felt like a nightmare. And all these experiences started happening all over the place, and then patterns started to arise.

Travis 24:33

It's weird that this was this fell under like the grinning man umbrella when this could have just been some really fucked up creepy creeper.

Josh 24:43

It could have been, but with all the other weird, unexplained things that were happening, it just seems like with the combination of everything that that just was the cherry on top, you know, kind of just spooky house.

Travis 24:55

Also, like the internet wasn't a thing back then. So forms of communication were pretty thin. I mean, we're looking at like phone calls and newspapers.

Josh 25:05

Right.

Travis 25:05

And so these things maybe walking to a neighbor's house and saying, like, oh my God, did you hear about this thing that happened 40 miles away? Do you think that's also the grinning man? And then that spreads.

Josh 25:17

Yeah, I mean, it could be, but I mean, I don't think this kind of information would spread that fast in such a short period of time.

Travis 25:23

I think that it would. I mean, phones move pretty quick. Like we're looking at a huge event that happened with Woody. Like you said, within 24 hours of his sighting, he was inundated by people, like everybody in his town, and there's going to be some serious bleed over in the next town over, 40 miles away.

Josh 25:41

Well, and some were not just 40 miles away.

Travis 25:43

Some of these events No, this one specifically, though.

Josh 25:45

Yeah, this one specifically. But there was events similar that happened in other states.

Travis 25:49

I'm not talking about the New Jersey sighting, but I I still think that that's weird. I mean, the New Jersey sighting was them seeing a grinning guy in an alley or whatever. But this one specifically, like, was probably just some creep that got into the house.

Josh 26:02

I mean, that is a possibility for sure. But also him not being there instantly after she screamed, just vanishing, that is also something that is kind of unexplainable, you know? So with all these incidences happening all over the place, they had enough where they're able to kind of map out some patterns that were happening. So when investigators started comparing notes, the similarities stood out. These figures were always described as tall, well dressed, unusually calm, and smiling. But the smile was wrong, like someone trying to imitate human friendliness, which is the worst.

Travis 26:37

Mm-hmm. Uncanny Valley. That's what that's called, where it's like close enough to human. They feel like it's a part of human evolution. And the scary part of that is like there was a point where that became what we avoided. Like somebody approaching an early human civilization that looked vaguely human and it made us all scared. It is a terrifying thought. But also, like Uncanny Valley could like bleed over into like somebody who has who is sick or has like a facial deformity or anything like that. And so naturally we would be, especially early on, averse to that kind of thing because we wouldn't want it to spread, right?

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Right.

Travis 27:17

It's all about preserving our little clan or clique here. And if we bring in others, especially if they look a little off, that will affect the health of our group. So there's a lot of xenophobia in those early in early human civilization.

Josh 27:32

Yeah. Okay. So this is when the archetype of the grinning man takes shape. It wasn't long before these sightings became known collectively as the grinning man phenomenon. Not one person, but a type of figure, a strange human-like visitor that seemed to appear just as other weird things were happening. And this is where the mystery gets even deeper because while the Derenberger account is the most famous case, there are a lot of other sightings happening independently.

John Keel Arrives: Mapping A Flap Of Weird

Travis 28:00

Yeah. So by this point, the Smiling Man wasn't just one encounter or one family strange story. There were sightings in multiple states with overlapping details and overlapping timelines. And then a journalist showed up. John Keel wasn't a UFO chaser in the traditional sense. He was a Fortian investigator, someone who studied the full range of strange events, UFOs, apparitions, psychic phenomena, creatures, coincidences, and everything in between. Not much in between there, though. That's a that's all of the things.

Josh 28:29

And that's a that's called a Fortian investigator?

Travis 28:32

Yeah, I guess. I don't know.

Josh 28:33

Someone that investigates everything? Interesting.

Travis 28:36

Uh as I read it, first time I was introduced to that idea. Well, I like it. In 1966, he arrived in West Virginia to investigate reports of strange lights in the sky. What he found was something he later described as a maze of oddities. So we're going to go into Keel's approach. Keel didn't just talk to one witness, he talked to everyone. Nice. That included families who saw lights, farmers who saw figures, teenagers who reported strange phone calls, people describing men in black, which we talked about earlier in the ep. Yeah. And eventually the Derenburgers. His notebooks from that period were page after page of sightings, patterns, and contradictions. Kill came to believe that West Virginia in the mid-60s wasn't dealing with a single phenomena. He thought it was dealing with all of them at once. Which is wild. Yeah. So, like Mothman in this area gets tied into this. So he described the region as experiencing a interesting use of words, a flap of UFO sightings, mysterious visitors, paranormal disturbances, phone malfunctions, and encounters with entities that seemed familiar but odd. So to Keel, Indra Cold wasn't just a friendly extraterrestrial. He was part of a larger category. Beings that could appear human, communicate telepathically, and show up whenever unusual activity was peaking.

Josh 29:56

Which is weird.

Travis 29:57

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh 29:59

But I like I like how this guy's thinking outside the box.

Travis 30:01

Yeah. Okay. It's cool. You're gonna love this next part then. Cool. Keel eventually offered a theory that set him apart from most UFO researchers of the time. He suggested that these beings weren't aliens from other planets at all.

Josh 30:14

Okay.

Travis 30:14

But rather brace yourself doing it. Ultra-terrestrials.

Josh 30:20

I love it.

Travis 30:20

You like it?

Josh 30:21

I do I love that word.

Travis 30:22

Yeah.

Josh 30:23

That's my new word.

Travis 30:24

Yeah. It's like, how do you make something extra? Well, guess what? There's a next step. Ultra. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

Yeah.

Travis 30:32

And that's entities that come from a parallel reality or dimension that sometimes crosses paths with ours.

Josh 30:38

Okay.

Travis 30:39

So within this way of thinking, Indra Cold was actually part of a much bigger system of intelligent non-human forces. These forces were seen as falling into three main categories. Some were helpful, one, some were neutral, two, and others were genuinely dangerous. Three.

Josh 30:57

I like two of those.

Travis 30:59

Yeah. Well, I'm I'm watching. So, listener, we are on a video call. Josh is wearing a leather jacket. Somehow he's managed to roll that leather jacket sleeve up and has a pack of cigarettes in the sleeve. He's got his hair slicked back. Sunglasses. He has a motorcycle in the back. So dangerous is probably one that he likes. He doesn't like neutral, but maybe helpful.

Josh 31:22

Yep. Those are the two I like.

Travis 31:24

Yeah. Danger. Josh has always been a fan of danger. Um, John Keel's work totally changed how people saw Indra Cold. He started looking like a major piece in a much bigger and weirder puzzle of unexplained events. And the center of all this mounting strangeness was the Point Pleasant area of West Virginia. Now, Keel never said cold caused the events or gave any heads up about them, but he did notice something consistent. These strange visitors, cold included, always seemed to pop up right before a big spike in the overall activity. It was like they were checking things out, observing, or maybe even giving a quiet warning to the people caught up in the phenomena.

Josh 32:01

Interesting. That's just an interesting concept. Like I wouldn't, if I were investigating, I probably wouldn't separate the two. And that seems like what he did. He's like, no, he's not the issue. He's coming because of the issue or experience or weird thing that's happening.

Travis 32:17

Sure. Or we're just more susceptible to these experiences within this one region.

Josh 32:23

Yeah.

Travis 32:24

It could be happening everywhere, but for whatever reason, the people within this demographic, the area in which these things are happening, are rising to the surface.

Josh 32:35

Yeah, there is in that area like Appalachia, there is one of those weird triangles, like the Bermuda Triangle, the Alaskan Triangle. There's a handful of those all around the world. So, I mean, this is a hot spot for the strange and bizarre.

Travis 32:48

It it could be also like that idea that, you know, you believe a plane can fly, and then when you want it to land, you believe a little less. This could just be an area of people that really want to believe and interpret all of their interactions that they don't understand or can verbalize as otherworldly.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

Yeah.

Travis 33:08

It's either that or religious. And if you start getting to the religious side of things, then these guys all become what demons, right? Yeah, in possession.

Josh 33:17

Yeah. So there are skeptical sides of the story. Surprisingly.

Travis 33:21

Yeah.

Josh 33:22

Because I'm all in.

Skeptics have their thoughts

Travis 33:23

You're all in? Oh, yeah. Surprising Noah.

Josh 33:26

Up to this point, we've looked at Indrid Cold through the lens of witnesses, investigators, and folklore. But to really understand the mystery, we also have to look at the explanations that don't involve aliens, ultraterrestrials, or interdimensional visitors. So here are the main skeptical frameworks often sourced to the Indrid Cold case. So, one, there's the psychological interpretation. He didn't see anything, like he cracked. Woodrow? Woody?

Travis 33:55

Woodrow Wilson Derenberger is his full name.

Josh 33:58

Oh. So it is possible that Woodrow Derenberger experienced a brief, isolated psychological break or misinterpretation of a real life interaction. Skeptics suggest that the witness may have encountered a real man under poor visibility or stress in his mind-fabricated details. Inconsistencies also exists in his earliest account, where he sometimes called the craft a truck, which is interesting.

Travis 34:24

He also called his car a truck.

Josh 34:26

But I mean, for a truck owner, everything's a truck. It's either a truck or not.

Travis 34:30

Or a van.

Josh 34:31

I do that. I call everything a van.

Travis 34:33

Oh shit.

Josh 34:34

Racey to the van, and it's a boat.

Travis 34:37

And it's a piece of soap.

Josh 34:39

Yeah. I call everything a van. Hey, could you hand me that van?

Travis 34:42

Yep. Do you mean sponge?

Josh 34:44

Yeah. Yeah, whatever. So yeah, in the earlier days, he called the craft a truck instead of a ship. And he struggled with certain details, plus no other claimed witnesses came forward.

Travis 34:54

Yeah.

Josh 34:54

And a psychiatrist later said that he was mentally sound, but that doesn't rule out a potential one-time stress-induced episode. So there was also the idea of cultural influence of the 1960s. So the Cold War era's cultural environment, marked by the UFOs, space race anxiety, sci-fi, and the contactee movement, prompts the question were cold and lanieless, shaped by the times. Skeptics note that the details like monorails and simple utopias and nuclear-powered crafts closely resemble the 1960s futurism, suggesting a possible fabrication. He just kind of went with what already existed in the futuristic view of the society. Yeah. There's also the Gray Barker thing. So Gray Barker was a publisher from West Virginia. He published a lot of different things.

Travis 35:42

Gray Barker Cullen, the hoaxer.

Josh 35:46

Yeah. Woody published his book through Gray Barker, and Gray Barker was known for sensationalizing stories. He admitted to hoaxing other UFO cases, and he believed that kooky books, in quotations, is what he would say, were good for business.

Travis 36:03

Kookie books.

Josh 36:05

So Barker even fabricated the Straith Letter, a fake UFO film, and he fictionalized chapter books sold as nonfiction. Though he never admitted to altering the Derenberger story, his known dishonesty complicates the credibility of the Indrid Cole account, which could have been shaped by his involvement. Gray never admitted, but Woody did say that some of it was sensationalized because Gray said it's better for the reader, get more listeners. So that is a possibility. So it is possible that Woody saw something, and Gray turned it into a much, much bigger thing. Another one, narrative expansion over time. So skeptics note that the story evolved, becoming more detailed, fantastical, and convenient to the era's themes. Lanielus gained a simple cipher alphabet, which was basically a coded thing in English.

Travis 36:56

Well, he couldn't even understand it.

Josh 36:58

Right. But he said it was the galactic language, which is really funny that it translates to English so easily.

Travis 37:05

Oh, yeah. That's like English of the galaxy. Yeah. Common galactic.

Josh 37:11

Yeah, 26 letters in their alphabet, 26 in ours. Each one correlates to one of our letters.

Travis 37:17

They celebrate Christmas the same day.

Josh 37:19

Oh yeah, they did.

Travis 37:20

They're on the Gregorian calendar.

Josh 37:22

Yeah, same calendar.

Travis 37:23

Mm-mm. Which is wild.

Josh 37:25

The space travel descriptions mirrored sci-fi and uncorroborated events were added. So stories often change, perhaps not through deliberate lies, but under pressure and attention and just his life falling apart, I would imagine. There's also memory and trauma and public scrutiny. So the Derenberger family was subjected to significant stress, including harassment, ridicule, relentless phone calls, and intense media scrutiny. While this doesn't prove he was lying, it is important to remember that the stress can alter memories and fear can cause people to fill in gaps. And furthermore, the more Woody discussed cold, the more the story grew, even as his personal life fell apart.

Travis 38:04

Yeah, and it absolutely did fall apart.

Josh 38:07

It absolutely did. I mean, these are just some of the things the skeptics are saying. None of these are wild reasons. Like it all makes sense and it could be a combination of all. But so far, I still do believe either he experienced something and saw something in real life, or it was a break, something snapped for a moment, and he thinks he experienced something. But is thinking that you're experiencing something real enough? I don't know.

Travis 38:34

I mean, it is for that person.

Josh 38:35

Absolutely. Yeah.

Travis 38:36

We talk about that a lot on this pod.

Josh 38:39

Yeah.

Travis 38:40

Personal experience and how it relates to these sightings and experiences. They're all very personal.

Josh 38:46

Yeah. So don't be a dick.

Travis 38:48

Don't be a dick. People are experiencing these things. Don't be a dick and just call them insane because those emotions they're feeling were real for them, right? The experience that they had was real to them.

Josh 39:00

Yeah. And if they are lying, don't worry about it.

Travis 39:04

Whether or not they're lying or not, people are communicating the best they can.

Josh 39:08

Yeah.

Travis 39:09

So just be kind, I guess. Just just be kind to people.

Josh 39:12

Yeah. It's simple, which I've said before. You say it's not simple. I say the idea is simple.

Travis 39:18

Oh no, I've always said be kind. Always. That's like my tagline.

Josh 39:22

Yeah, you have that tattooed on your chest.

Travis 39:24

Well, yeah, I do. And my butt.

Josh 39:26

And I have danger.

Travis 39:27

Yeah. But you also have like danger tattooed on your entire persona.

Josh 39:32

Oh, yeah. They don't need to see the tattoo to know that I have the tattoo.

Travis 39:35

Uh-huh. Exactly. They look at you and they're like, well, fuck, that guy's got danger tattooed on him somewhere.

Josh 39:40

Somewhere underneath that leather coat.

Travis 39:42

Close to his heart, probably. On his chest?

Josh 39:44

Yeah.

Travis 39:44

Definitely.

Josh 39:46

Okay, so do you want to talk about the cultural impact of Injured Cold?

Travis 39:50

Love to. Yes. Okay. Injured Cold became a character the storytellers and filmmakers could reshape to fit whatever atmosphere they needed. The biggest push came. From the Mothman prophecies, both the 1975 book and the 2002 movie. Do you see the movie? No. Okay, that's great.

Josh 40:07

I I know very little about Mothman, actually.

Travis 40:09

It's my wife's absolute knockdown, drag out, with a bullet favorite cryptid.

Josh 40:16

I remember you saying that.

Travis 40:18

Nothing compares for her to Mothman.

Josh 40:21

I was talking to Jordan about this. She's our researcher and my wife. Humble Brag. I just don't know a lot. And I think it's because I'm from the Pacific Northwest. I know a decent amount about Bigfoot, and I've heard a lot about Bigfoot, but I just the Mothman.

Travis 40:36

And like where you are, you know, you're touching butts with Utah, Nevada. There's chupacabra down there.

Josh 40:44

I also lived in uh Washington and Oregon growing up too.

Travis 40:47

Sure. But I'm I'm I'm giving you a broader idea of cryptids, and you are doubling down on just Bigfoot. I'm saying like Chupacabra's kind of close.

Josh 40:57

Yeah, there's more, but East Coast, I think that's a much more popular cryptid because it's it's there. Sure. But yeah, I don't know much. And I haven't seen the movie or read the book or drawn in the coloring books.

Travis 41:12

Mothman is usually viewed around or seen around catastrophic events, almost like a warning.

Josh 41:21

Oh, so kind of like Indrid Cole. Yeah. Or what John Keel said.

Travis 41:26

Yeah. Just like in his book that placed Indred Cole in a network of high strangeness, the movie made him an ominous cryptic entity, not a physical visitor or a searcher. He became a supernatural messenger, a voice delivering warnings tied to looming disaster, fundamentally shifting him from extraterrestrial friend to a figure of dread in the public imagination.

Josh 41:48

Interesting. So are I mean I imagine those books are scary, right?

Travis 41:52

They have to be.

Josh 41:53

The book in the movie, yeah. The Mothman Prophecies, come on.

Travis 41:56

I mean, the Mothman Prophecies was a supernatural horror movie.

Josh 42:00

And was Indred Cold in those?

Travis 42:03

Honestly, it's been a very long time since I've seen the Mothman Prophecies. I don't remember much about this character. As I was doing research, I didn't even look into Mothman.

Josh 42:12

Okay.

Travis 42:13

So what other cultural impacts were there? Josh, I'm so glad that you asked me that. Pop culture embraced Indrid Cold as a positive omen, transforming his image into a quiet signal of a coming event, a warning, a clue, or a shadow. Stories interpreted him in this way, even deviating from original accounts. Folklorists call this narrative drift, where a story shifts to fit a new theme or audience. Cold ceased being a calm, curious figure. He became an entity who knew things. Whoa. Interesting. Like a Nostradamus.

Josh 42:48

So he just kind of fits to whatever anyone needs him to be.

Travis 42:51

And is now able to predict the future and coming events.

Josh 42:54

Okay.

Travis 42:55

Great. Today Andrew Cold shows up in Paranormal Documents, Podcasts, huh? Hmm. Heard of it? Oh yeah. Web series, creepypasta style retellings, and even video games. In 2023, a version of him was added as a rare encounter in Fallout 76. Haven't got to that point yet.

Josh 43:16

I haven't either.

Travis 43:17

Cementing his role in modern weird fiction culture. He works equally well as a sci-fi visitor, a paranormal entity, or a folklore creature.

Josh 43:28

I mean, that checks out. Because I mean, in the quiz, it was like, what is he?

Travis 43:32

Well, you've done the research.

Josh 43:33

So well, I mean, remember last episode on the quiz, what is he? That was one of the questions. And it's like, is he a cryptid? Is he uh and we're just like, uh can't be all of them. It is, and this is why. I know. It's because the story changes.

Travis 43:47

Also, like a multidimensional being could also be an alien because they're not from here. That would put them in both categorizations.

Josh 43:55

Yeah.

Travis 43:56

Cryptid is another thing that we talk about on the spot. Like we just covered a bunch of cryptids back in Spooktober.

Josh 44:05

Oh, that's a fun name. Did you come up with that?

Travis 44:08

Uh no, it's been around.

Josh 44:10

Oh, dang. I was thinking we could have made some big money with that one.

Travis 44:13

I think Cartoon Network invented it.

Josh 44:15

Well, okay.

Travis 44:17

So where were we?

Josh 44:20

Spooktober.

Travis 44:21

Sorry. That's just really funny. So Andrew Colt endures in cultural lore precisely because his ambiguity allows him to serve as a versatile symbol from a modern boogeyman and a bridge between different kinds of paranormal stories to a philosophical visitor.

Josh 44:39

Man, that's I mean, this is just fascinating. I like this story a lot.

Travis 44:43

This is a weird ass story. Like, what the fuck is going on here?

Josh 44:49

When I first started, it kind of reminded me a little bit of the Valiant Thor thing, but I like where this went.

Travis 44:56

Well, there were ties to it. They actually thought this was Valiant Thor, but that was all in retrospect. Valiant Thor kind of came together after the Valiant Thor event, which we talked about.

Josh 45:09

Right.

Travis 45:09

And so when people are looking back at this culturally and looking at these two stories and the way they line up, they're like, oh, well, that must have been Valiant Thor. But the accounts of Valiant Thor weren't as like a smiling man.

Josh 45:22

Yeah, I think it was actually the daughter. So after Woody passed away, his daughter kind of took the reins of this. And I think she even wrote a book. She's added to the story just as much as he did. At one point, one of the off-the-cuff things she said was that it was the same entity, Valiant Thor and Indrid Cold. But that's what kind of makes this a little as eva story. But it, I mean, it's just it's fascinating.

Travis 45:48

Absolutely fascinating. It's kind of like the cheesecake factory of experiences you can have in this world. By that I mean go to the cheesecake factory. You can get anything. You can get anything. None of it's gonna be good.

Josh 46:00

Nope. Or probably fresh.

Travis 46:03

Yeah. No, none of it will be fresh. Nope. No, none. The water maybe. But that probably comes in frozen in blocks. It comes from Antarctic ice.

Theories and Archetypes

Josh 46:12

I don't know. It's most likely tapped to the mall's water supply that's next to it. Yeah. Okay, so let's theorize what injured cold is. Okay. So we have the extraterrestrial visitor. Uh-huh. To Derenberger, injured cold was a humanoid traveler from another planet, a searcher from a place called Lanulos, who meant no harm and simply wanted to understand how humans lived. The telepathy, the calm behavior, the smile, all of it fit the classic mid-century idea of a friendly alien visitor. So it's the most straightforward interpretation, but it's one that shaped the core of the original story.

Travis 46:50

Okay. So there's another theory.

Josh 46:53

Yeah.

Travis 46:53

Thanks for the finger guns, Josh. John Keel believed Cold wasn't from another planet at all, but from a different layer of reality, something parallel, overlapping, and occasionally visible. In this framework, Cold isn't an alien. He's a being capable of appearing human when necessary, a kind of shape or presence that slips into our world during moments of high strangeness. This theory tries to account for the telepathy, the sudden appearances, and the way Cold seemed to weave into multiple types of phenomena that weren't strictly UFO related.

Josh 47:29

Mmm. I love that ultra-terrestrial idea. I love it so much.

Travis 47:34

When do we get to super terrestrial?

Josh 47:36

Mega.

Travis 47:37

Yeah, I think ultra is above mega, where's super? I thought super was lower.

Josh 47:42

It is. Oh man, I don't know that. I don't know.

Travis 47:45

Super ultra mega? Master. Master terrestrial? I don't like that.

Josh 47:49

Well, I'm just thinking like the different Pokeballs. Isn't that the best one?

Travis 47:53

Yeah, but I do not like that. I don't like the lore that Pokemon has created, that it's like master and slave type thing.

Josh 48:00

Oh.

Travis 48:00

It's very upsetting.

Josh 48:02

Well, let's just move on to the next uh theory then. All right, so we have the psychological interpretation. So there's the grounded possibility that Derenberger, like I mentioned before, may have experienced a moment of misinterpretation, stress, or altered perception. A dark highway, an unexpected figure, and a frightening moment could have combined into something far stranger in the memory than in reality. The inconsistencies in Derenberger's earliest statements, the pressure he was under, and the lack of corroborating witnesses all fuel this angle.

Travis 48:36

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Josh 48:39

It's possible.

Travis 48:41

Or, or, some researchers believe the story didn't start as a hoax, but it may have been shaped into one by people on the outside. Gray Barker, a publisher known for fabricating UFO material, was active in West Virginia at the time and had a reputation for improving, quote, stories to make them more sensational. Barker admitted to faking government documents, UFO footage, and even adding fictional chapters to nonfiction books.

Josh 49:10

Oh. That's wild. Yeah. How do you do that? He's just a jerk. Yeah. He's a con man.

Travis 49:16

A n'er to well. Yeah. He never does well. Nair. Nair.

Josh 49:21

The other one is the folkloric archetype. Anthropologists and folklorists point out that Indrid Cold fits a very old template. The human but not quite human visitor.

Travis 49:31

Don't like it.

Josh 49:32

Cultures all over the world have stories about figures who appear during uncertain times, deliver strange messages, or simply stand and watch, always with one detail just slightly off. In the space age, these old archetypes evolved into beings from other planets or dimensions. So that's the folkloric theory.

Travis 49:52

Okay. There's also a middle path between belief and skepticism. The idea that something unusual did happen, but the full story was shaped by emotion, memory, culture, media, and time, like a real event that could have blended with personal interpretation. Witness testimony could have expanded under scrutiny. Writers and publishers could have added layers without anyone fully noticing.

Josh 50:15

I like that one. I like that. Because I mean, injured cold being everything, could the theory be a little bit of everything? So it's a mix of all the theories. Yeah. So it something happened, but then there was also emotion and memory, and then a publisher got it and the media got a hold of it, and then some video game designers and everything just started blending together, and it's kind of created its own entity at this point.

SPEAKER_00 50:41

Okay.

Josh 50:42

I could see that. Yeah. I'm going with that.

Travis 50:45

Okay. That's the theory that you're gonna take on. I'm not gonna take any of them on.

Josh 50:50

Oh. So, in conclusion, out of this whole crazy everything story, what makes Indrid Cold such an enduring mystery is that no single theory explains him. He remains an unreadable figure at the intersection of these interpretations.

SPEAKER_00 51:07

Yeah.

Josh 51:07

He's a visitor, a watcher, a messenger, and a myth. His power lies in the resisting of an actual closed explanation. He is whatever the story requires.

Travis 51:18

Sure. Yep. Right? A man for all seasons, a man for all times. Yeah. I will say I do like the folkloric archetype theory. Yeah. Just like somebody who comes in and helps navigate or push humanity in a certain direction, or even like tiny little clans or smaller cultures. I just I like that idea. And that it's been around for a long time. Also, like it's a little weird, you know, like the human, not quite human type thing.

Josh 51:47

But are those usually archetypes? Are those usually fake? Like those are myths or just kind of no.

Travis 51:54

Archetypes are like if you were to distill us down to our essence, there are certain archetypes that all people fall under.

SPEAKER_00 52:02

Yeah.

Travis 52:03

Um, it's considered there are actually seven storytelling archetypes. So like archetype is not a it's not a myth. It's just like a like a a base version or yeah, like the true form.

Josh 52:16

Sure.

Travis 52:16

Yeah.

Josh 52:17

If I want to quote Plato.

Travis 52:19

Yeah, that's that's what Plato said.

Josh 52:21

Yeah. The archetype thing, it doesn't really explain anything other than like, oh, he's just an archetype, but it doesn't explain if it's real or anything like some of these archetypes.

Travis 52:30

No, it it does. It says that the archetype being that this character has been around through human history forever.

Josh 52:36

So it is the same thing.

Travis 52:38

Or or a searcher, you know, if we're gonna give Indrid Cold that title, you know, he talked about in some of our research, lived 125 to 175 years, right? He was a searcher. That was a job that he could pass on to maybe his kin, or was just a job, much like business development manager or you know, whatever. It could it could have been any number of titles. And this guy happened to apply for this job, got it, and get it.

Josh 53:07

Yeah.

Tease: Mothman Quiz, Red Orbs, And Eyes

Travis 53:07

He served his time for the amount of time that he had on his world. And then when he retired, somebody else took that job.

Josh 53:15

Carl was the assistant searcher.

Travis 53:17

Carl was maybe the assistant to the searcher.

Josh 53:20

Yeah.

Travis 53:20

Yeah. So it could have been, I mean, the way this guy's culture is framed, it is so much like ours. For him to be called a searcher. It's an easy jump for me to say, like, this was just a job he had that he worked for as long as he could and then retired from it and moved on, and someone else took that role.

Josh 53:39

Or it could have been a hobby. It could have been his eat pray love.

Travis 53:42

Sure, he could have been an amateur, an amateur searcher.

Josh 53:45

Yeah. Well, I want to know what you guys all think. I'm sure there's more theories than what we gave. If you guys have any interesting things, or just tell us what you think, that'd be awesome. I would love to hear that. You can do it through fan mail, all the other regular outlets. We're actually gonna read some fan mail. We have fan mail, right? Well, actually, we do not, now that I'm looking.

Travis 54:08

We don't have we don't have any fan mail.

Josh 54:11

We don't have any fan mail, we don't have any new reviews, we don't have anything.

Travis 54:16

If we don't get any fan mail or reviews, we're just gonna talk about something that interests us for as long as we want. Yeah. Don't consider this punishment, but maybe it is.

Josh 54:27

So one of the animes I'm watching right now is Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill. It's pretty good.

Travis 54:34

This is an anime that you were watching. What's that title again? So I can put it into my Unreal Engine?

Josh 54:42

It's Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill.

Travis 54:46

Okay.

Josh 54:47

So it's pretty good. If you like the person in a strange world, you know, someone that gets summoned into like a fantasy world, and that's what this is. It's a guy who gets summoned with a group of heroes. When finding out what his skill is with the other heroes, he ends up finding out that his skill is online shopping. He doesn't really stick around because his skill is not helpful to the heroes that are there to defeat the demon king. I imagine. I don't I don't know if that is the true purpose, but that's usually the purpose. He goes and does his own thing, and he finds that it is a very cool ability that he has, that he has basically an internet browser that will deliver any food that he wants. It costs money, and he gets very powerful companions along his way, and they do it because they love his cooking. The food ends up bringing very great abilities to him and his companions when consumed.

Travis 55:41

That is great. I love that idea so much.

Josh 55:43

That's one of the many animes I'm watching right now.

Travis 55:46

Where do you watch this? Crunchyroll. Classic.

Josh 55:48

Yeah, I'm a mega fan subscriber on Crunchyroll.

Travis 55:51

Mega fan. Top tier. When are you gonna get oh, so mega is the top. It's not a little bit of a few. In Crunchyroll, it is, yeah. Okay. Is there an ultra?

Josh 56:00

There is not.

Travis 56:01

So Mega is the top.

Josh 56:02

Mega's the top should be ultra fan.

Travis 56:04

Okay.

Josh 56:05

Well, uh, thank you for not giving us fan mail. So I could geek out for a second.

Travis 56:10

Yeah. Who knows what we'll hear about the next time we don't get fan mail.

Josh 56:14

Yeah.

Travis 56:14

Good luck. Hopefully we never have to find that out.

Josh 56:17

Yeah. Jordan is not here and is not available for sending us the quiz. So we don't know what our next topic is because that's how the show works. We don't know what we're gonna be talking about. We find out through a quiz that our researcher sends us after we're done recording the episode. It used to be before, but Travis cheated once, and we will not have that again.

Travis 56:40

Although the cheating seems kind of nice compared to the alternative here. Wouldn't you rather have cheating than nothing at all?

Josh 56:48

So I'm gonna dig through her computer.

Travis 56:50

Please God, delete all this. I cannot have Jordan mad at me. You've logged into her email. Are you a hacker?

Josh 56:57

Yep. Okay. It is sent. I know the topic because I had to open it.

Travis 57:03

So I will wait for you to open it and tell me what it is. Yes.

Josh 57:17

What is the topic for next episode?

Travis 57:19

It is Mothman.

Josh 57:24

That's great, because I don't know, but you do know something about them, right?

Travis 57:27

I only know through osmosis, through what my wife has told me.

Josh 57:31

So you could get in trouble.

Travis 57:32

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh 57:34

I'm excited though. Another cryptid. And so far, most of the cryptids we've done have an alien or extraterrestrial origin story.

Travis 57:42

Yeah. I mean, it is believed maybe that cryptids are aliens.

Josh 57:47

Exactly. Or ultra-terrestrials where they can dip in.

Travis 57:51

Dip in and out?

Josh 57:52

Yeah. All right. So I'm excited about this. I don't know much. It's a moth man, right?

Travis 57:59

Yeah. Half moth, all man.

Josh 58:01

Oh, weird.

Travis 58:02

Yeah. The math doesn't really add up. Don't think about it.

Josh 58:04

Well, let's just start off. So, first question. The first widely reported Mothman sighting took place in which Erie location north of Point Pleasant, West Virginia? Is that A, the Silver Bridge, B, the North Power Plant, C, the Ohio Riverbank, or D, the TNT area. Are we talking about the TV station? TNT? I was thinking of the dynamite. Acme. Oh. I have no idea. I'm going to say A, the Silver Bridge. That sounds fantastical.

Travis 58:36

I am going to say I'm going to say the Silver Bridge too. Cool. The sequel.

Josh 58:42

Okay. Next question. Which of the following is not one of Point Pleasant's modern Mothman attractions? The A, the Mothman Museum, B, the Mothman Festival, C, the Mothman Research Center, or D, the Mothman Statue? I mean, it has to be the research center, right?

Travis 58:58

That's what I'm thinking too.

Josh 58:59

Like there's definitely a statue. I'm pretty sure there's a festival.

Travis 59:02

Definitely a festival. Definitely a museum. There's gotta be a museum.

Josh 59:06

Yeah. So I'm going research center. Easy. Come on. Get out of here. All right, next one. Which of the following rational explanations for the Mothman sightings have been most commonly proposed by skeptics? A mutated bat, A. B. A crane or large owl. Get the owls again. C, a human in a jet pack. Or D, a government psyop psychological operation?

Travis 59:31

I'm gonna say mutated bat.

Josh 59:33

Okay. I'm gonna say owl, because that seems to be the trend. Sure. Or at least the military's an owl high up in the sky.

Travis 59:42

Yeah. And owls are big on the East Coast.

Josh 59:44

And they're impervious to bullets? Uh huh. Okay. Next one. What real life tragedy on December fifteenth, nineteen sixty seven became forever linked with the Mothman legend? Is it A, the collapse of the Silver Bridge? B a chemical explosion at the TNT plant. Damn it. C uh the disappearance of the Scarbury family. Or D. A massive Ohio River flood. So what real life tragedy on December 15th, 1967 became forever linked with the Mothman legend?

Travis 1:00:16

This is so close to what we just talked about. Is there anything in our reading that led us to any of these answers?

Josh 1:00:26

I mean, a chemical explosion of the TNT plant sounds like a great origin story, right? Like the Hulk.

Travis 1:00:32

And that's that's why I'm gonna pick that.

Josh 1:00:34

I'm gonna pick that too.

Travis 1:00:35

It just Mine was either that or a massive Ohio River flood.

Josh 1:00:40

Yeah, moths don't like water. If it rains or anything, the moths start going crazy.

Travis 1:00:43

But you know what they love? What? Lamps. The moon.

Josh 1:00:47

So the TNT explosion made a huge light, and then the mothman showed up because he loved it.

Travis 1:00:53

I think he showed up before to warn them of it.

Josh 1:00:58

Well, I don't know.

Travis 1:00:59

But if I was a moth, I'd be like, hey man, keep doing what you're doing. Whatever awful thing you're doing. This is totally gonna pay off for me later.

Josh 1:01:07

Okay, next one. What physical reaction did several witnesses report experiencing while looking into the mothman's eyes?

unknown 1:01:15

Fuck.

Josh 1:01:16

All right. Didn't know that was a thing yet.

Travis 1:01:19

Well, these sound like side effects of like a venereal disease.

Josh 1:01:23

Okay. Temporary paralysis, A. B. Blurred vision, C, burning sensation, or D, immediate nausea. I'm gonna say paralysis.

Travis 1:01:34

Holy shit. The most extreme one?

Josh 1:01:37

Yeah.

Travis 1:01:38

Okay, I'm gonna say immediate nausea. That seems to be what a lot of people experience when looking into at least like for our shows, like a side effect of extraterrestrial nearness, right? A lot of people feel nauseous after it happens. So that's what I'm gonna say. That's my rationale for it.

Josh 1:01:57

Yeah, I was I mean, the nauseous.

Travis 1:01:59

But go ahead and go ahead and think temporary paralysis, like people falling to the ground and not being able to breathe. I that sounds oh, right.

Josh 1:02:07

I just assume just because it has to do with the moth's eyes and like hypnosis or paralysis, those seem to or turn to stone. You know, those seem to go together when eyes are involved. If it wasn't eyes, I probably would have picked something else. Sure. But if there is something with the eyes, I'm gonna go with that. All right, last one. What did witnesses report sometimes seeing right before a mothman sighting? It's probably more moths. Okay. A strange fog rolling in from the river. B, car engine shutting off. C, sparks coming off power lines, or D, large red orbs bouncing above the trees. I'm gonna do the fog.

Travis 1:02:46

I like the fog as well. I'm gonna pick fog. I don't really care about conflict for this quiz.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:54

Okay.

Travis 1:02:55

Yeah, I'm gonna pick fog. Sparks coming off power lines. I think that would be specific to being near a power line. Fog is my mega answer.

Josh 1:03:04

All right. Fog's my ultra answer.

Travis 1:03:06

Top of the top.

Josh 1:03:08

So we're gonna submit and check for accuracy. And oh boy.

Travis 1:03:16

I mean, boy, it looks like I steered you in the wrong direction a couple times.

Josh 1:03:21

Okay, so the first one, the first widely reported Mothman sighting took place in which eerie location north of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. I said the Silver Bridge. You said the Silver Bridge.

Travis 1:03:33

The TNT area?

Josh 1:03:35

Yeah. Come on.

Travis 1:03:36

Like, what is that?

Josh 1:03:38

Which maybe that made it right for the explosion, hopefully. Next one, which of the following is not one of the Point Pleasant's modern Mothman attractions? We said the research center. We are correct. Easy.

Travis 1:03:50

Yep. Easy.

Josh 1:03:52

Next one. Which of the following rational explanations for the Mothman setting has been most commonly proposed by skeptics? I said a crane or large owl. What did you say?

Travis 1:04:00

A mutated bat, like an idiot.

Josh 1:04:03

It was a large owl, like always, with all crypto.

Travis 1:04:07

It looks like a bat. Oh my god. Being read for filth.

Josh 1:04:11

Okay. Next one. What real life tragedy on December 15th, 1967 became forever linked with the Mothman legend? I said the chemical plant, is that what you said?

Travis 1:04:22

I said chemical explosion, a TNT plant. Yes. It was the silver bridge lining up with my first answer, which was wrong. And now this one is wrong. Oh my god.

Josh 1:04:34

Okay, so next one. What physical reaction did several witnesses report experiencing while looking into Mothman's eyes?

Travis 1:04:40

Oh, here's where I eat a bunch of shit.

Josh 1:04:42

I said temporary paralysis.

Travis 1:04:44

I gave you a grip of shit about it. Said immediate nausea, because that is what most people experience after these extraterrestrial events. But it was temporary paralysis.

Josh 1:04:55

It was. I knew it. It was the eyes, man. Okay, last one. What did witnesses report sometimes seeing right before Mothman's sighting? I said strange fog rolling in from the river. That was wrong.

Travis 1:05:07

I said the same thing.

Josh 1:05:08

And that was wrong too. It was large red orbs bouncing above the trees.

Travis 1:05:13

Its eyes glow.

Josh 1:05:15

Interesting.

Travis 1:05:16

Red.

Josh 1:05:16

Okay. Well, this is gonna be a fun one. It's gonna be super fun.

Travis 1:05:19

Love it. My wife is going to be secretly pleased, but probably openly mad that we're covering Mothman.

Josh 1:05:27

Why? Does she think we'll misrepresent it?

Travis 1:05:29

Yeah. Yeah.

Josh 1:05:30

Well, we will do our best not to.

Travis 1:05:32

I mean, look at how we did on this quiz.

Josh 1:05:35

Well, we're gonna learn. We're gonna learn things. It's gonna be okay. Yeah.

Travis 1:05:39

I'm excited about the Mothman though.

Josh 1:05:41

Me too. I I mean, like I said, I don't know much. I don't know a lot about a lot of cryptids. Those board games, the horrified games, one of them is about all the different cryptid monsters. And there was a handful on there I'd never heard of. So I'm new to the cryptid world. So I'm excited. I want to learn about all of them. Once again, let us know what you guys think. Reach out. We really want to read fan mail. We really want to hear from you. We really just want to get to know you, um, watch you, explore you.

Travis 1:06:10

Your body is a wonderland.

Josh 1:06:12

Just all the things. We just want it. And it can't happen unless you message us. So do that.

Travis 1:06:17

You gotta do it. You gotta break that ice.

Josh 1:06:19

Yeah.

Travis 1:06:19

Come approach us at the bar.

Josh 1:06:21

Another huge shout out to Jordan. She puts our notes together, tells us what to do. She writes the quizzes. She made our theme music. She did our graphic art for our cover. I mean, she's just awesome.

Travis 1:06:31

Yeah.

Josh 1:06:32

We could not do this. Well, we talk about it. We could do it. It would just suck without her.

Travis 1:06:35

Absolutely suck.

Josh 1:06:36

This show is a success because of her. So thank you, Jordan. And that's all we have, right?

Travis 1:06:42

That's it. That's all I got.

Josh 1:06:43

Well, we will chat at you next episode. Yeah.

Travis 1:06:46

Catch you on the flippity flop.

Josh 1:06:48

Okay. Bye.

Travis 1:06:49

Bye.