Mystery Maniacs

🎙️ Episode:  https://share.transistor.fm/s/2064290b
📓 Show Notes: https://midsomermaniacs.transistor.fm/episodes/mystery-maniacs-clues-and-reviews-10-26-26

New Mystery Maniacs Clues & Reviews for 10/26/26!

Show Notes
Unsolved Mysteries

Stephen Fry’s Johann Gutenberg: Creator Of The First Printing Press https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-jkS5qOWS8

MARK'S BOOKS
Mark’s two serial cozy mysteries are almost done, with only five chapters left:

  • Early Days & Old Bones: two detectives, a Roman dig, and a murder in the English countryside
  • The Missing & The Dead: a professor and her horror-novelist husband solve a dual-timeline campus mystery in Bloomington
  • Read Chapters 1–3 free: https://markbellauthor.substack.com/
  • Get new chapters weekly ($5 one series, $8 both): https://www.patreon.com/cw/MarkBellAuthor/home
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Thanks again for listening!
 
Mark & Sarah

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Upcoming Tentative  Schedule

  • October 26: Mystery Maniacs - Clues and Reviews 10/26/26
  • October 28: Mystery Maniacs - Cold Cases - Midsomer Season 10 BINGE
  • November 4: November Newsletter
  • November 9: Mystery Maniacs - Clues and Reviews 11/9/26
  • November 11: Mystery Maniacs - Cold Cases - Midsomer Season 11 BINGE
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Creators and Guests

Host
Mark Bell
Co-host of Mystery Maniacs
Host
Sarah Smith-Robbins
Co-host of Mystery Maniacs

What is Mystery Maniacs?

Mystery Maniacs Podcast is a comedy recap podcast dedicated to British Mystery Television. Formerly, Midsomer Maniacs podcast.

Sarah:

Hey, Maniacs.

Mark:

Hey, Mystery Maniacs. It's Clues and Reviews.

Sarah:

Clues and Reviews.

Mark:

Sarah, the Broken Wood has been nominated for one of their kind of actor production awards, and it is a finalist and best production design. We told you. Yep. Just the amazing work that those people do is getting recognized and I'm really... Like, we watched the first couple episodes of Blue Murder Hotel and we noticed a difference.

Sarah:

Once you once you've experienced quality, you see things that aren't.

Mark:

And we wish all the people who listen to our show from the Brokenwood cast and crew all the best of luck.

Sarah:

Good luck. If we could vote, we would.

Mark:

We definitely would. And we will be returning to Brokenwood. We have one season left to do and one episode, I think.

Sarah:

Yeah. It won't be long before

Mark:

we go. It won't be long and we will be hitting up probably, I would guess, maybe in December, the Oates family Christmas. The solitary best episode of that show ever.

Sarah:

I'm not gonna say it's the best. It is the most insane. Yes. Which makes it very fun. Yes.

Sarah:

It's quite the little present for Christmas.

Mark:

Sarah, I do weird things. Do weird things all the time. And last Sunday, I did a weird thing.

Sarah:

Yeah, you did.

Mark:

I watched. It would be five versions of And Then They Were None. It just got in my head that I wanted to do this.

Sarah:

So I have watched two of them with you, unfortunately.

Mark:

And Then They Were None was written by Agatha Christie. I read the book in high school. It is a transformative experience the first time you read that book because everyone is dead, and there are 20 pages left in the book.

Sarah:

It wasn't always called and then there were none.

Mark:

No. It has a much more controversial title that I'm glad they dropped.

Sarah:

It was 10 little monkeys and then 10 little Indians?

Mark:

No. It was

Sarah:

10 little n words.

Mark:

Yes. And then 10 little Indians. Yeah. And then somebody said, why don't we name it something else? Yeah.

Sarah:

And stop replacing this offensive word. I I knew that it it had an evolving title, I think, and then there were none is better, except it does kinda give it away.

Mark:

It kinda gives it away.

Sarah:

We sort of know what you're in for.

Mark:

Yes. So it was written in '40. Well, it came out in '40. It was written in '39. I can only imagine, like, the the feeling of Fortress Britain and the feeling of imminent invasion and the desolation that they must have felt reading this book when it happened.

Sarah:

Yeah. It probably wasn't a mood lifter.

Mark:

It wasn't probably a mood lifter. But by '43, Agatha Christie herself had written a happy ending. And that's what they used in the stage play. Now the 1945 film version is an American film version. They use the happy ending.

Mark:

It's all happy ending. Okay?

Sarah:

The two young people make it out alive.

Mark:

Yes. The '65 version is British, and it also uses almost word for word the ending from the the happy ending from the stage play, the happy ending from the stage play. And then we get into the fun ones. 1974. So both of those 65 is set in a like a resort in the mountains.

Mark:

There's a gondola that goes very...

Sarah:

Like Alpine?

Mark:

Yes. There's a bad gondola scene where the servant wife is killed in the gondola and things like that. But a 74 is... Bad gondola? Bunkers.

Sarah:

Misbehaving gondola.

Mark:

Yes. It's bad.

Sarah:

Bad gondola. Don't kill the maid. Bad.

Mark:

74 brings us Oliver Reed, fresh off the the devils.

Sarah:

Which is the movie with the nuns. Yes, that's a crazy movie.

Mark:

Elky Summers. I'm like, I'm in already. Like, I'm there already. And three Bond villains.

Sarah:

And didn't they film it like in a hotel in Morocco

Mark:

or They filmed it in an Iranian hotel that had not opened up yet. It's like a high

Sarah:

end resort. Yep.

Mark:

So it's beautiful, but it's very creepy.

Sarah:

I didn't. I watched like five minutes of that one with you and said, I got stuff to do.

Mark:

Yeah. It's very weird.

Sarah:

The eighty nine one that you watched. How many shoulder pads and big teased hair can you fit into one?

Mark:

Eighty nine one, which was called 10 Little Indians, which I'm like, really? Why are they reverting In '89?

Sarah:

Sylvester Stallone's brother's

Mark:

in it. Frank Stallone is in

Sarah:

So is the guy who plays Pluto in the Popeye Yes.

Mark:

And Donald Pleasance is also in it and Brenda Vaccaro.

Sarah:

So Donald Pleasants would have already been in The Exorcist.

Mark:

Yes. Right? It has a has a

Sarah:

Oh, no. He's not in The Exorcist. He's

Mark:

in Halloween.

Sarah:

I thought he was in...

Mark:

No. He's not in Halloween. He's in Halloween. It has a real feel of made for TV movie.

Sarah:

Oh, yeah.

Mark:

In Africa. Don't forget.

Sarah:

There's so much racism.

Mark:

There's so much racism. Colonial to the max. And then we have a big gap to twenty fifteen, which I think is the best version of And Then There Were None. It has Charles Dan.

Sarah:

Charles Dance plays the judge.

Mark:

It has Sam Neal in it. Noah Taylor, Catherine Bailey, all these people who went on and who were either famous already or went on to do. Yeah. You really

Sarah:

you would recognize.

Mark:

You recognize. Seen it. Everyone in it. But, is it dark? It is it is a horror show.

Sarah:

Well, that's that's what I wanted to say is that I didn't realize until you went on this quest that And Then There Were None really is a horror movie.

Mark:

It is a horror movie like Saw is a horror movie.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

Yeah. It is it is deeply unsettling.

Sarah:

Like, we are trapped, and someone is killing us, and none of us are going to survive. It's not a country house mystery at all.

Mark:

And you go with the idea that everyone dies. Yeah. And I I just gotta tell you the ending of the 2015 version is the original ending. And boy, it's a tough one to swallow. They bring it home.

Mark:

They do indeed. Charles Dance is fantastic. Yeah. If you want... So when you know what happens and then Then There Were None, I'm going to spoil an 86 year old book.

Mark:

Okay? The judge is killing everybody and then pretends to get killed and then kills himself.

Sarah:

He's terminally ill from the beginning. He's terminally ill

Mark:

from the

Sarah:

beginning. So he's going out with a bang, taking a bunch of bad people out.

Mark:

Taking a bunch of bad people who are bad but also don't really deserve this.

Sarah:

I don't know.

Mark:

Some of them do. Some of them have

Sarah:

deserve justice.

Mark:

There there there should

Sarah:

be this kind of justice.

Mark:

Not this kind of justice. When you watch And Then There Were None or read the book, you should watch it twice because you watch it the first time and you're like, oh, how the... Everybody's dead. How did that happen? Oh, it was the judge.

Mark:

Then you

Sarah:

have to watch it or read it again knowing that and looking for the clues.

Mark:

And... Oh my gosh. Charles Dance is so incredibly evil in this. Yes. He...

Mark:

He's just like nudge, push, nudge, nudge, push, push. Oh, you're all dead.

Sarah:

Yeah. Yeah. He orchestrates it very, very well. And there are moments his plan is not working the way he thought it would. And so he just- Improvises.

Sarah:

Interjects a little bit. Yep. And then people just do exactly what he expects them to do.

Mark:

The problem I have with

Sarah:

Bad people be being bad.

Mark:

The whole thing. The problem I have is, and I need to double check this in the book. In all these movies, it's like this. All the movies, the judge goes, yeah, I did it all, and never explains how he did it all. Yeah.

Mark:

He is a feeble, sickly old man.

Sarah:

They don't even show, like, flashbacks of him, like, shuffling around in a hidden passageway. Nothing.

Mark:

Nothing like

Sarah:

that. Because it's impossible.

Mark:

And it... Like, there... There's no way he could have done it.

Sarah:

No. Some of them, yes, but not all of them.

Mark:

Like the poisonings.

Sarah:

Because this... Because they start to speed up.

Mark:

Yep. The poisonings and stuff like that and maybe pushing people off cliffs or something, but

Sarah:

no. It's but it's it's crazy. It's really good, but it's crazy. So which ending do you like?

Mark:

I like the original ending because I remember that moment in grade nine when I was first introduced to Agatha Christie, I was like, Oh, it's sort of like Encyclopedia Brown. I was young. Or the Hardy Boys. I was young.

Sarah:

And you just heard that kid sing that song in class.

Mark:

Yes. And I read that book and I got to the end of the story, not the epistological end because there's a letter that you read at the end. Right. It's like 20 pages.

Sarah:

And I was like... Nice fancy word use there.

Mark:

How... Like, it broke my brain as a wee lad. And then, like, over the next week, I read everything from Myagifa Christie. I read I read another two books the next night. I went to the library and was like, give me everything from this one.

Sarah:

One of each, please.

Mark:

Yep. So... And that that really is the beginning of my journey that ends with Mystery Maniacs.

Sarah:

Well, gosh, if you had... If you read And Then There Were None and then you read The Murder of Roger Aykroyd, you must have been like, this Agatha Christie is Trixie. Yeah. Is it always like this?

Mark:

She definitely is.

Sarah:

What do you mean the narrator did it?

Mark:

Well, and then you get to about halfway through all Agatha Christie's and you're like, wait a minute, this was a short story for another group of people.

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

What I'm really pleased in all these movies is there's no Marble and no Poirot.

Sarah:

Yeah. They don't try

Mark:

to do Yeah. Both of

Sarah:

it. Well, they have to die

Mark:

because Poirot would be like, how did the man do it? Yeah. It's impossible.

Sarah:

He'd be like, you you can murder me. Yeah. But first, you have to tell me how you did it.

Mark:

You have to tell me what's horrible.

Sarah:

I can't die without knowing. Poirot never talks like that.

Mark:

My Poirot, the Poirot that lives in my head

Sarah:

talks very angry? Yes. You have the end of the Orient Express Poirot.

Mark:

32 times, no.

Sarah:

Stuck in your head. Other things that we've watched this week that are less compulsive and insane, We started watching Shining Girls on Apple TV.

Mark:

Which is based on a book. It has Elizabeth Moss

Sarah:

in Yeah, I am infatuated with it. I really need to know what happens. We've not finished it yet, but I won't recommend it to everybody because it is rather dark. It is about a woman, a guy who is a serial killer and kills women.

Mark:

We get one season and I don't know if we get resolution.

Sarah:

We better. I think it's a one season show. I think it's a limited series. Yeah. If not, I might have to find some people and shake them.

Mark:

Well, we might have to read the book because we I find out what that

Sarah:

hope the book has satisfying ending.

Mark:

Yes. The book is a single standalone book. It's not part one of a series of AD.

Sarah:

It does have a little bit of metaphysical. I'm not gonna say supernatural. There's something But we don't know yet. Yeah. There's something nonlinear going on.

Mark:

It has the feeling of the prestige.

Sarah:

Yes. It does. Yep. You're right. And I really, really wanna know how it

Mark:

ends, which is good. I will not ruin the prestige. No. It is a solitary experience everyone should have.

Sarah:

It is Solitary.

Mark:

Like, you have to sit with

Sarah:

end singular?

Mark:

No. I mean solitary. Oh. Because you have to sit with the end, understand what it means

Sarah:

And then live with it.

Mark:

And then live with it. Yeah. Because it is a rough one. Yeah. But so good.

Mark:

Yeah. The Prestige is a movie that you have to watch eight times.

Sarah:

You're really selling it. Yeah. It'll traumatize you. You'll have to watch it a lot to understand it and it will scar you forever, but so worth it.

Mark:

And I'm going to go even further. The Prestige, the first time you watch it, you will stop watching it and you will immediately go back to the beginning and watch it again. And there are there are conspiracies in that movie that I still believe 100% that only the people who wrote it or made the movie can convince me is not the case.

Sarah:

Oh, interesting. Yep. Maybe we'll have a few people out there who've never seen it who decide to watch it. Yep. Let us know what they think.

Mark:

I believe Michael Caine is the Chinese magician. I do. Okay. 100%.

Sarah:

Okay. We'll go with that. Yep. So we haven't watched a lot this week because, you know

Mark:

It's Halloween. Busy. Busy. Whatever. Yeah.

Sarah:

Of our lives. But if you need stuff to watch, I would highly recommend that you go back in the catalog and watch some of the Halloween episodes

Mark:

Some spooky episodes. Of some

Sarah:

of the shows that we've covered. Like, my favorite is Poirot's The Halloween Party. Nothing measures up

Mark:

to that episode. I'll watch that again this week.

Sarah:

It's got Ariadne eating her apples. Yep. It's got Poirot.

Mark:

Yep. It's got it's got gardens. Julian.

Sarah:

What's Yep. Ryan. What's his name?

Mark:

Ryan Davis

Sarah:

or Ryan Tate.

Mark:

Ryan Tutt. Ryan Tutt.

Sarah:

Thank It's it's just it's really good. It's very...

Mark:

Plus, it has like it has like salacious relationships.

Sarah:

Yeah. Make a cup of cocoa and watch it if you haven't watched it. And if you haven't watched it recently, go back and rewatch it. It's just as good.

Mark:

Yep. And a couple of other ones that I want to recommend. One, we watched, we did the Brokenwood Halloween house episode. That's a good one to watch. You get to see Chad instead of just hearing about

Sarah:

Chad never dies, really.

Mark:

A show that's on Acorn that I... We recommended it when we watched it, but we haven't mentioned it since, is a show called Dead Still about a man who photographs dead people then

Sarah:

Memento Mori

Mark:

is kind of into mysteries and stuff and it's very good. Yeah. It is. It's very well done.

Sarah:

It's Victorian.

Mark:

And it's a show that should have got more seasons. And speaking of shows that should have got more seasons, Queens of Mystery is kind of spooky and Mhmm. Has that kind of

Sarah:

But very silly too.

Mark:

Yeah. It's kind of

Sarah:

So if you want something light, Yeah. It's a good one.

Mark:

Speaking of not light shows on Acorn that we haven't watched yet, the Red King has been recommended to me by a couple of people. Boy, is that wicker man with a female lead. I watched the trailer in about the first five minutes of it today, and wow, there's Tom Jones songs and people in masks and It was one

Sarah:

of those where you started to watch it and went, nope. Sarah won't wanna watch this too. Stop watching.

Mark:

Yes. So it was only one season. It... I think it's it's only that season. If she ends up in a wicker man at the end of the episode, at the end of the season, I wouldn't be surprised.

Mark:

But...

Sarah:

There's a Miss Fisher Halloween too.

Mark:

Is there? There is a Miss Fisher Halloween. I forget what. Oh. Or is that just spooky?

Mark:

No. That's murder in the dark. They have the Halloween party.

Sarah:

Oh, that's right. The young

Mark:

lady is dead in her her aunt's pool.

Sarah:

Yeah. It's a good one too.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

Yep, so all of those are things that you should definitely check out. Yes. We mentioned last time that Mark finished his books.

Mark:

So I wanna make a pitch for my books here. If you were concerned about me not finishing said books.

Sarah:

I don't want to start it because he might not finish it. I'm done. Look what they've done with the podcast lately. Yeah. Come on.

Mark:

Who knows? Right. Rest assured, I am finished these books, people. My best friend is reading the complete book right now for Martin Bailey, book one Early Days and Old Bones, which is a cozy procedural setting Kent with an archaeological bent to it. So if you're interested in that, there you go.

Mark:

Blackstone Mysteries, the missing and the dead is the other one that's cozy academia mystery set in Bloomington with a married couple. And there's...

Sarah:

No, they're not us.

Mark:

No, they're not us. There's mysteries in the past and mysteries in the future. Sorry, mysteries in the past and mysteries in the present in that $5 get you one of them on Patreon. $8 gives you both of them and $10 gives you a little bit of extra stuff. If you sign up now on Patreon, you will get that the whole book up to this point plus the next five chapters over the next five weeks.

Sarah:

Mhmm. And you'll put links in

Mark:

the show notes. I'll put links in the show notes. And planning is already afoot for books too in the series. Yeah. Yep.

Mark:

Both. And we definitely have some... I I have some cool stuff coming up that I will talk about when we get

Sarah:

I really like the ideas you have for the second books. Yeah. I'm excited about them. I mean, I like the first books, but I think I'm more excited for the second one.

Mark:

The first books are the setup books. Yeah. Right? You gotta explain

Sarah:

But they're good.

Mark:

Who these people are and their adventures. The second books, somebody will put together why I watched and then there were none.

Sarah:

I'm gonna say if you like the kind of mysteries that we cover on this podcast, you will like Mark's books. They're they're really fun.

Mark:

Yes. They're very much like Midsommar in the sense that they are

Sarah:

I was trying to put in a plug for you.

Mark:

Thank you.

Sarah:

I was trying to recommend it. I know. You know? Tell people they'll like it. Yeah.

Mark:

Thank you.

Sarah:

You're welcome. Okay. Let's go on.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

People don't like hearing about Patreon or the video, but they hear that on every podcast they listen to.

Mark:

I know. And we don't mention it very often. So that's why I wanted to mention it today because it's so close to the end, and I actually finished it.

Sarah:

And I legitimately think people who like Broken Wood and Midsommar will like your books.

Mark:

I think so too.

Sarah:

They're right along the same line. Yes. Maybe someday there'll be a show.

Mark:

Oh, that would be crazy. We

Sarah:

try to end these clues and reviews with a little topic to pick your brains about, to pick our brains about.

Mark:

And we have a personal story to tell you.

Sarah:

It's spooky season.

Mark:

It's an unsolved mystery. So what

Sarah:

we wanted to talk about this week was what unsolved mysteries are we legitimately still intrigued by? Mhmm. And we limited it to ones that were not related to violence towards people, that were not about murder mysteries. Because Yeah. Even when those are solved, they're usually just depressing and disappointing.

Mark:

And there's lots of podcasts to deal with that

Sarah:

stuff. Absolutely. And I'm just not into that. Nope. But before we talk about the unsolved mysteries of history or whatever that we personally like, and we hope that you'll send us in yours, something happened to us that was rather weird just last week.

Sarah:

You have to know, and I, you'll be shocked, everybody listens will be shocked by this. We spend a lot of time together. Yes. Including the two days a week that Mark works in the office, we come home for lunch together and then go back to work together. It's really nice that I'm we get to do really grateful that we have that opportunity.

Sarah:

So we are driving home and it is pouring rain like windshield wipers at full speed pouring Dark. It's overcast.

Mark:

But it's overcast, thundery, rainy.

Sarah:

But we're not going fast and we're on our street in a neighborhood.

Mark:

On our street.

Sarah:

Where things are near.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

Okay. So we're about two blocks away from our house and there's a street that intersects with our house. So there is a street sign on the corner. Yep. And we see a little girl who maybe was seven, eight.

Mark:

Seven, eight.

Sarah:

Yep. In a pink dress wearing a black cloak, not a raincoat, not a poncho. It was a cloak.

Mark:

It was full on cloak with hood.

Sarah:

Yes. Hood up down to the ground Yeah. This thing was. Yep. And she was standing at the corner with one hand on the street signpost like she was waiting, but in the rain, really So hard we roll past her going about 15 miles an hour and we get a few houses down and I'm just like,

Mark:

I'm like, we need to

Sarah:

go Did you recognize that little girl? I didn't recognize her. And I thought about the houses that are on that intersection and none of them have a little girl.

Mark:

Mere moments.

Sarah:

Moments. I mean, we rolled maybe three houses along and we agreed we should turn around and go back and I'll get out of the car on the opposite side of the street and just yell, are you okay? Do you need Yep. So we did this. It maybe was two minutes.

Mark:

No, no. Not even that. No, would say it was maybe forty five seconds at the top.

Sarah:

We went back and she was gone. Gone. Not on the sidewalk in any direction. And like I said, the four houses at that intersection, she does not live in

Mark:

any of

Sarah:

four houses. Was

Mark:

Gone. Just Gone.

Sarah:

And we both saw her.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

As soon as we turned around again to head back to home, we were silent. And then at the same time, we both said, we saw her.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

We did not imagine that little girl standing I

Mark:

do not know where that little girl went, but she disappeared.

Sarah:

She must be fast,

Mark:

really fast in pouring There was not a scene of a flapping cloak anywhere.

Sarah:

Nope. We looked down the street. Yeah. I don't know where she could have gone.

Mark:

We looked.

Sarah:

So that was our that was our spooky experience. And then we had another mystery that we had to try to solve.

Mark:

Yes. So it's Halloween. So we have lots of fake pumpkins that we have out every year. But Sarah

Sarah:

I thought I would carve a real pumpkin.

Mark:

Right? Sarah always carves some real pumpkins too.

Sarah:

So I carved the purse... First one, mostly because I wanted to make pepitas.

Mark:

Which are delicious. You did so good this year.

Sarah:

So I put the pumpkin on the top step in front of our house. Yes. And the next morning, Mark goes out like he does every morning to just kinda check on stuff to make sure nothing's fallen over in the night or rolled away. We did have somebody steal stuff one time in all these years, one It's more maintenance, But it's more like just did anything fall over And or the pumpkin I had carved was not only gone, but the lid was sitting kind of like a skew on the ground. And the two battery operated lights that were in it were kind of dropped on the stairs.

Sarah:

And then he found the pumpkin itself about 30 feet down the sidewalk under the streetlight in the grass.

Mark:

Yes. No, it was on the sidewalk.

Sarah:

Not broken. Not broken. Not smashed. Nope. So he picked up.

Mark:

I thought when I picked it up, I was gonna see like animal bites.

Sarah:

I thought it was gonna be busted.

Mark:

Yeah, or busted. Because if

Sarah:

a kid grabs a pumpkin, they're gonna smash it. Yeah. I mean, that's what you do. Yeah. Right?

Sarah:

And it wasn't.

Mark:

Nope. It looked perfectly fine. So I was stumped. Yes.

Sarah:

So I get on my phone and I ask Gemini, can a deer pick up a pumpkin without leaving any tooth marks in it? Because that was the only thing I could do.

Mark:

So here are our culprits, raccoons. Very strong raccoons. Deer or children. Those are our three prime suspects.

Sarah:

Well, the AI says, no, that's not possible. No. If a deer picked it up, you would see teeth marks. Now they don't have teeth up top in the front. They just have a hard palate.

Mark:

My wife knows far too much about deer teeth.

Sarah:

Now, but it said, if it picked it up, it would have had to wedge its bottom teeth into it pretty firmly to lift it. And you would see those teeth marks.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

And it said, check it over thoroughly and get back to me. So I did. No, no teeth marks on Okay. Tell Gemini, no, there's no teeth marks on it. It says, okay, that

Mark:

rules It was the phantom child of Rector Rose.

Sarah:

It says that rules out dear completely. So we're left with people or very determined small mammals like raccoons. Yes. Now it is kind of a hill, so it's possible that a raccoon might've shoved it off the stairs and it would've kind of started to roll that way and it could've pushed it. Timothy ate our pumpkin.

Sarah:

The AI says inspect it for gravel stuck to it, other signs that it rolled. It says, look for small claw marks, small teeth marks that maybe you didn't notice when you were looking for the deer teeth.

Mark:

Which all makes sense.

Sarah:

And come back. Yep. Okay. So I did that. I looked at it.

Sarah:

No. No gravel stuck to it. No scratch marks. Nothing.

Mark:

No.

Sarah:

So I tell the AI, no, that's not there.

Mark:

And I hear from the other room because I'm not part of this.

Sarah:

No, I'm doing this on my phone.

Mark:

Because I'm like, oh, somebody moved it and then put it down there. Yeah. I'm like, okay. That is how it is in my reality. Goodbye.

Mark:

But then from the other end of the room, the other room, I hear.

Sarah:

Holy What?

Mark:

Because Gemini had come up with an alternative hypothesis. It said,

Sarah:

bear with me, but the deer is now back on the table. And I'm like, what?

Mark:

And I'm thinking of like the deer in adventure time that take their hooves off and have hands.

Sarah:

Gemini said a person is still the most likely culprit.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

But it is possible that a deer knocked the top off, and to get to the meat of a pumpkin, stuck its head inside, got its head stuck, and then wandered down the sidewalk trying to get it off, and finally freed it 30 feet away from where it picked it up.

Mark:

If I saw

Sarah:

Which I never would have thought of.

Mark:

With a pumpkin on its head, I would have screamed.

Sarah:

Especially in the dark. The street is pretty dark.

Mark:

It's bad enough that we have the sheeps and the pigs.

Sarah:

I never would've thought of that.

Mark:

No, no.

Sarah:

Now, I don't think it's likely, because I don't think the lights would've fallen out past the deer's head. Nope. If the deer's head was actually stuck. Nope. And the lights were out.

Sarah:

I don't think the deer would have carefully removed the two fake candles out of the inside, set them to the side or dropped them and then stuck its head in the pumpkin. Plus. But I would pay good money for footage of that deer with a pumpkin on

Mark:

its head. It's obviously the phantom girl of our street.

Sarah:

Obviously, ghost girl came and got it and thought better about wanting to smash our pumpkin and set it down gently on the sidewalk.

Mark:

Second of all, we know what the deer looks like because the deer did, in fact, come back and ate the face off it. Yes.

Sarah:

Knocked it on its back.

Mark:

Yep. And made out with it violently. Yep.

Sarah:

Just ate a hole where its face used to be.

Mark:

Yep. It looked like a giant screaming mouth. Yes.

Sarah:

I have a couple more pumpkins to carve. I will spray them with bleach spray so they don't go bad very quickly, and that will deter the deer from wanting to make out-

Mark:

But not the Humans-

Sarah:

Or where-

Mark:

Or the ghosties. My pumpkin.

Sarah:

And that will narrow it down. Maybe I should carve one that just looks like a

Mark:

hat. Maybe.

Sarah:

And then the deer can just wear it.

Mark:

To wear it like a hat.

Sarah:

And eat it like a tasty hat.

Mark:

Yes. I'm not a fan of pumpkin.

Sarah:

I know you're not. So beyond the weirdness of our lives, what are the real world unsolved mysteries that still intrigue you?

Mark:

Well, have one from history that I read about in a people's almanac which would have been probably eighty nine ninety sometime in that time frame and that is the mystery of Spring Heeled Jack.

Sarah:

Oh it's such a good story.

Mark:

So it's nineteenth century England. It's Victorian. Yeah. It's Victorian. London.

Mark:

Roundabout London. On the South Side Of London, a creature left a row of hoof prints in the snow. Now there's

Sarah:

a But two... Only two feet.

Mark:

Yeah. Only two only two feet, not four. Men... And it went over houses Jumped fences. Jump fences, all sorts of craziness.

Mark:

Now we don't have any photographic evidence of this. We don't have anything. But I love the idea that a giant stilt walking demon ran off.

Sarah:

Well, because then people started to say they'd seen it and it has glowing eyes and it breathes fire. And you just have to have this steampunk bad guy in your head after you hear all the descriptions that might not even be of the same culprit. But he did hurt a couple of people. He didn't kill anybody, but he did lure some people out of their houses and then breathe fire at them and that kind of thing. But there's a brand of coffee called Spring Hill Jack Coffee that's got these-

Mark:

Yeah, it's very popular.

Sarah:

There was a Victorian pulp magazine that had an illustration of him on the front, and it is the iconic image. He's got devil horns and jet packs on his feet.

Mark:

It's all super fun.

Sarah:

It's very Murdoch y.

Mark:

It's very

Sarah:

If Murdoch he was real. I'm like you, the mysteries that intrigued me are definitely the historic ones. I go back a lot further than you though. So just a couple of things, if you've never heard of these and you're intrigued by these kinds of things for you to look into, I've got three. I'll start with my oldest one and then go forward.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

So the oldest one that really intrigues me is Gobekli Tepe.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

It's Gobekli Tepe. You'll find it. It's a place in Turkey.

Mark:

Yep. It's really in in archeological shows and YouTubes to talk about it right now.

Sarah:

Because it is amazing. Yep. It was built about 10,000 BCE.

Mark:

Yep, long before

Sarah:

Way before pyramids, way before Stonehenge, way before all that stuff. And it is incredible. You have to go online and just look at some of the photos. There's some excellent videos of it. It is an amazing, amazing archeological spot.

Mark:

And really the beginning of civilization, as far as archeologists can figure out.

Sarah:

It's incredible, but there's so much about it that they don't understand why it's built the way that it is, the way people lived there. Did they live there all year round or not?

Mark:

And I think it's fun to imagine And it's beautiful. It... How and why they created it. Like, you watch enough time team, you're like, how many people did they use antlers to dig this ditch?

Sarah:

Yeah.

Mark:

That that I can see hundreds of people digging a ditch with antlers. Okay. I can see it. But some of the things in GoTepe,

Sarah:

I'm like Go Begley Tepe.

Mark:

Go Begley Tepe. Tempura. Ed Begley Tempura. Jiggly Toupee. Jiggly Toupee.

Mark:

Some of the things I'm like, yeah. I don't know how they did that. I don't know how they do it now. I mean, this is Like ten thousand years ago, they didn't have a crane.

Sarah:

No. And it's built in an era where people were still nomadic. Yep. They were not settling and farming yet.

Mark:

It's the transition from hunter gatherers to agriculture.

Sarah:

Yeah, it's just incredible. So if you've never seen any of the, if you've never heard of it, it's Gobekli Tepe, it's in Turkey. It's very easy to find because everybody misspells it. So every misspelling of it finds it. If you just put in some version of jiggly toupee, Turkey, archeology, you'll find it.

Mark:

And beautiful. There's some amazing pieces of art there.

Sarah:

Oh yeah, but it's just a mystery that they're still unraveling and we may never really know. So that was my first one. My second one is from only one hundred and fifty BCE.

Mark:

Okay.

Sarah:

And that's the Antikythera mechanism.

Mark:

So this is a mechanism that was found off the coast of Yes.

Sarah:

It's an ancient Greek, find. Yep. They think it's one of the earliest computers. Yes. Not meaning an electronic, like silicon chip computer, but like a computing device.

Sarah:

But they don't understand how it was made or what it was supposed to do. And it's really intricate and it's really beautiful. Again, look it up online,

Mark:

the Antikythera mechanism. It's just cool. And there's two schools of thought with this, one I like and one I don't. The one I don't is the alien. No.

Mark:

It's not aliens. You know, it's not aliens, but that thing exists. So we have to figure out how they made it and what it does and why they made it.

Sarah:

Yep. And people have tried to recreate it.

Mark:

Super interesting. It's fascinating.

Sarah:

Yeah. That's super engineering

Mark:

and physics and design and metallurgy and Archaeological experimentation. I love that stuff. Right down to how did they make this?

Sarah:

Yeah. Yeah. And it it does involve some techniques in manufacturing that they didn't have, or that we don't know that they had. So maybe they did, and we're just not aware of it. It's just really cool.

Mark:

The fact... I am always reminded watching any historical and archaeological show is that the vast majority of human existence, there was no writing. Right. Yeah.

Sarah:

Romans did or Greeks did have writing.

Mark:

If there was writing, it's gone and we can't read it.

Sarah:

Yeah,

Mark:

it was on stuff that disappeared. Yeah. Right.

Sarah:

So there's no record that we can find. There's not a manual for it that we just haven't found.

Mark:

This kind of Western culture idea that, oh, we'll just read about how they did. No, that's a very modern new thing.

Sarah:

Yeah. We're lucky to live in an era with records of things.

Mark:

Yes. So, that's definitely one that fascinated me too.

Sarah:

So that's the antikythera mechanism. I think the first time I heard about this next one was in a Leonard Nimoy, what was the

Mark:

In Search Of.

Sarah:

In Search Of.

Mark:

Which I also have watched the entirety of the series.

Sarah:

My dad used to love it. We don't remember watching I that

Mark:

love that show so much. I watched some bad ones, the killer bee one.

Sarah:

Oh, half of them are really stupid. Yeah. And the other half of them are based on real things and have really stupid theories.

Mark:

And it's... And I love Leonard Nimoy. He's a fantastic actor.

Sarah:

Spend the whole time going, that's not how that works.

Mark:

And and he very much is like, well, we don't know. Yes. We do.

Sarah:

I'm just asking questions. Yes.

Mark:

We know it's not aliens. We know it's not secret wizards. Okay? We know it's not Vulcan.

Sarah:

Didn't make it.

Mark:

We did. All that we know for sure. Okay?

Sarah:

So my last one, my last unsolved mystery that I am still so intrigued by every once in while, I just go and look at it, is this thing called the Voynich Manuscript. Yes. And it's from the fifteenth century. It's legitimately old. Yep.

Sarah:

It is medieval.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

Might see it referred to as the Beinecke Cipher, but it's the Voynich Manuscript. It is a two fifty page manuscript that has a mix of botanical and medicinal and geographic and other kind of scientific stuff in it. It's all written in a language that no one is able to decipher. Nope. It references animals and plants that no one can recognize.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

Nobody understands what it is. It's at Yale. That's why they call it the Beinecke cipher because it's at the Beinecke library.

Mark:

There have been a lot of people who are now putting it in AI.

Sarah:

Yeah. What's amazing about it is that you can go online and look at high resolution images of every page.

Mark:

Every single page.

Sarah:

So it is a mystery that can be solved by anybody now. Anybody looking at it could figure it out.

Mark:

Now I'm... I am a well known poo poo on things. Okay? I am a fun sucker.

Sarah:

Yes. You are. I am...

Mark:

I I can... You're like, Sarah

Sarah:

not real.

Mark:

Sarah Smith like ghost. Blah blah blah blah blah blah. It's not a ghost. It's not real. I still don't know what happened to that child.

Mark:

But that manuscript to me, okay, is the most fantastic boondoggle of all time.

Sarah:

And that may be it. It may just be a complete fabrication by some some monk on crack.

Mark:

Who knows? Monk on crack wrote all that down and gave it away to somebody and just laughed and laughed.

Sarah:

Or maybe he was mentally ill. Maybe. And it was all just record of his illness and what he imagined.

Mark:

Greatest work of science fiction ever. Like, all those things make it still fantastic and magical.

Sarah:

The fact that it is written in a language that is internally consistent and nobody understands it is amazing

Mark:

to me. It's just... Oh, chef's kiss.

Sarah:

Yeah. And and if it is a boondoggle, it's still amazing.

Mark:

That's still a fan... Hoaxes are fantastic. Piltdown, Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark:

Like, all that stuff. I love all that Boondahl.

Sarah:

It looks like illuminated manuscripts and, like, church art from from the medieval era. If you think that stuff is beautiful and wacky Yep. Go look it up. And there's one of them? Yes, there's only one.

Sarah:

Yep. It's called the Voynich Manuscript. The illuminations in it are incredible.

Mark:

And it is by far the most famous illuminated manuscript. The second most famous illuminated manuscript is the Book of Kells. Did you know? I didn't know this. There's one of them.

Mark:

Yeah, that's it.

Sarah:

Yeah. And it's massive, isn't it?

Mark:

It's very big. Whole thing is online. Can go look at every single page of it in beautiful high res.

Sarah:

But it's not a mystery.

Mark:

It's not a mystery. But I thought that even though it was all hand copied, there were many more versions of it. No, there's one.

Sarah:

As far as we know.

Mark:

And then within a hundred years of that, there were millions of books in Europe.

Sarah:

That's stunning. It's crazy.

Mark:

Yep.

Sarah:

That poor dude who had to write all that out by hand and then found out about that machine must have been like, damn it.

Mark:

In fact, not to go off esoterically,

Sarah:

but Like if you hand typed a thesis and then found out you could have borrowed a computer.

Mark:

Yeah. Especially in Venice and other northern Italian cities where can copying was a whole industry, there were riots because of the printing press.

Sarah:

Yep. Yep. Because All those scribes are like, now what am I gonna do?

Mark:

All that hand scribe jobs went away overnight.

Sarah:

Gee, there's nothing going on right now that kinda mirrors that.

Mark:

We wouldn't have that stuff that. What technology was like that

Sarah:

at all. Nobody's ever been threatened by a new form of technology that might ruin some jobs.

Mark:

I don't understand how the printing press used up all the power in the water, though.

Sarah:

It must have been loud, though. Like, would you have wanted a printing press next door to your house?

Mark:

Made squeaky sounds. There's a really good

Sarah:

There's probably a clang

Mark:

too. You're into this,

Sarah:

like, I'm

Mark:

into this. Steven Fry. Did a really

Sarah:

great documentary about the printing press.

Mark:

Excellent documentary on the printing press.

Sarah:

Think it did more than than squeak, but but it didn't it didn't pollute the water and put out a bunch of smoke.

Mark:

Yeah, it did because of all the lead. That's true. That they had to... Like the whole lead industry-

Sarah:

They melted lead every day, cast new letters and woodcuts. That's right.

Mark:

Those guys must have had lead poisoning.

Sarah:

Well So it is

Mark:

the same.

Sarah:

Yeah. The Voynich manuscript is really cool.

Mark:

Yes. It is. I totally agree.

Sarah:

I would love to know what mysteries our readers are interested in.

Mark:

Our listeners. Sorry about They don't read. Maybe.

Sarah:

There's a transcript of every episode. Maybe. Maybe they do read it. Who knows? Maybe they're crazy like that, but they probably listen.

Mark:

Yes.

Sarah:

I would love to know what mysteries our listeners are interested in. Like what's that thing that maybe you heard about as a kid that you're still intrigued by that you kinda hope never gets solved because it's more interesting unsolved than it would be solved?

Mark:

I'm kinda glad they didn't find Amelia Earhart this week because it's still unsolved then.

Sarah:

Yeah. I mean, she crashed. Yeah. Probably in the ocean.

Mark:

It's a big ocean and

Sarah:

a little plane. But a team from Purdue University right here in Indiana went to an island where satellite photos had shown some wreckage and they thought it might be hers, and it wasn't. Nope. But those kids got a great adventure and they did a lot of science while they were there. And that's fantastic.

Sarah:

So fantastic. Maybe the Earhart thing was just an excuse to get some funding. Maybe. So they could actually go do science.

Mark:

Maybe. I a special call out to a listener, a hopeful listener. Little girl, if you're out there, please tell us you got home. Okay. Worried about you.

Sarah:

You think little ghost girl listens to our podcast?

Mark:

Who knows?

Sarah:

Would it have been more or less creepy if she had waved?

Mark:

Oh, if she had waved, there would have been a Mark sized hole in the car. Like, goodbye. Like, don't I don't believe in any of this supernatural who hook them. But if I'm faced with the reality that it exists, I'm gone. Good god.

Mark:

Sorry.

Sarah:

It is spooky month. Yes. So we're embracing the spooky. Spooky. What is your spooky that you're that you're interested in?

Mark:

Your unsolved mystery. You're in search of episodes.

Sarah:

Yeah. Killer bees. Bye, Maniacs.

Mark:

Bye, Maniacs. If you enjoyed our crazy podcast today, don't miss out on future episodes. Follow us on social media for updates, beyond the scenes content, and exclusive sneak peeks. Subscribe, like, and share to spread the word. Bye, Maniacs.