Lost Tapes Chronicles: Wendigo

We're there are creatures science refuses to recognize. If our eyes see it, if our cameras capture it, does it exist? Do you believe? Hello everyone, and welcome to you get another episode of scary Stories we tell. I am your host, Christash, and I'm joined essentially at this point by my co host on these lost aage chronicles, your friend and mine, an artist, a man among men, a bro among bros, maggidiat gosh shucks, hey gang, oh shucks?

That what you do with corn? Yeah? Does it have the juice? It does? It's cold.

I'm so glad so I got rid of all my socials, but thank god I have friends that it's still spend. Just be a little bit on the custom corn Kids cameos right now going for one hundred and forty five dollars over at cameo dot com if you're interested. Probably by the time this episode airs, corn Kid will be old News x ten. Corn Kid will be old news next week. Right.

Maybe I don't know, as long as that poor kid actually gets to exist this childhood and guts to enjoy that Cameo star jore that Colt or however he says it, Colin Yeah cold on the juice. But on this episode of the Culture of the Culture Cast. Yeah all this episode Daddy, on this episode of Scary Stories, we tell we are talking about the seventh episode of the third season of Lost Tapes. That episode is titled When Togo Colon American cannibal When to go Colon sounds terrible of itself. Well, if you get if you might meet a Whendigo, you may end up in its colon.

Yeah, very much so. Yeah. So this episode aired October nineteen twenty ten, about twelve years ago, and it is all about the when Togo, When Togo being the boy. It's it's kind of like a skin walker in a lot of ways. It is a mythical Native American indigenous people creature that invokes feelings of greed and hunger and it cannibalizes human Yep, the classic.

You know, it's kind of like a skin walker. It has to do you are cursed as a skin walker because you're practicing black magic as a whenigo you are can you can still be human? It's yeah, it's kind of strange. It's very much a you pick the wrong place, the wrong time type of scenario. Yeah, you know, the Whendigo in this story is kind of an interesting interpretation.

Shit, so that's not a way I'm plinting. Yeah, right, because in this, in this it's in this it's a person, and in story it's a creature like it is a it is a creature or a spirit or a spirit that possesses a person. So I guess there it could be either. I think that's kind of open. Well, the interpretation normally is one or the other.

And according to legends, when a windigo can be created when a human eats someone else, you know, cannibalizes their body, and you know, even if they're having to do it for reasons to survive, it doesn't matter, you know that, you know, it could possess someone who was who's very greedy and gluttonous. But the stories that I've heard about whendigoes are you know, it's someone who is eating another person by choice or by situation. Right in this story kind of does that correct? I'm you know, I'm a little impressed, but yeah, using using a cannibalism as a vehicle for the identity theft aspect of those creatures. But it's pretty neat.

It's a great concept, and I don't know, and all around very popular myth and urban legend. It definitely hey, it does fall under cryptid. I'm proud of them for that. I truly am. And honestly, this is like one of the episodes that a lot of people remember most I totally know why.

Yeah, well he hasn't. It's it's interesting. It is definitely different. It's different than the episodes we've gotten kind of like this one up until this point. You know, we'd like more authentic to what the OG seasons were, which is right nice.

Yeah, you know, I was gonna say that that Skinwalker episode, I remember neither one of us liking it very much, but it definitely lived within the world of like where you would expect Skinwalkers to be, expectations for skin Walkers if they were going to be in this kind of show what have you? Yeah, I mean this, I would agree this episode kind of really trafficks in what my expectations are for this kind of episode about when it goes and yeah, you know, it's a pretty generic setup. Some college kids go out into the woods in the Appalachians. They get lost. One of them eats something and becomes a when to go and then starts eating the rest of them.

And then two people three people through a search party shows up looking for them. So there's two pieces of footage. There's the footage from the initial people who get lost, and then there's the footage from the people who come to save them. Spoilers. Everybody dies, Yeah, true, true to form for the third season is indeed everybody to think.

I was about to say, at this point, the expectation should be, you see somebody in this show, They're gonna die. Yeah, don't get too attached. I mean, there's nothing to get attached to. These are very much broadly painted stereotypes. Not much of it, not much of a character in the show doesn't need that truth.

Yeah, especially for how the writing goes with some of these. But I will say, like this one, it was very tropy, it was very predictable. But what I will say is they leaned into it in all the right ways that you should considering, Like they still stuck to their guns on the cold open quote unquote by having the first chunk of footage, like you were saying, is having like the og squad and what happened there, and then it picks up with like the seemed like park Ranger was like the not Enigma Corporation. No, I think they fucking forgot about Enigma Corporation. We're in the last four episodes and we've only, like in season three, we only had like what three Enigma Corp episodes so far, right, Yeah, I think so good.

Yeah, So I guess that's just kind of like, ah, well we forgot who cares they were? Yeah, they were so incompetent that every single one of them died because well, and we will see them again in the next episode at least. But oh but again, like every episode so far this season, I feel like, you, with the way that they've been set up, you could have made a case to just have them in every episode. Yeah, you could have weaseled it. But honestly, I kind of appreciate episodes like this where it doesn't even like, it doesn't belabor the point it does the Spooky Woods tropes very competently, right, Honestly, it's very serviceable, and it's a nice little exchange where we get like some creature feature aspects in it too at the end, which was very rewarding.

I was not expecting that. So good on them for actually throwing something up. Well, and that is the thing about this episode that kind of makes me and clearly yourself think about it as more of a first season episode is it doesn't really do anything with the Whend It gooes story. It really is just like what you're expecting and in doing that kind of generic story. I mean, the setup for this episode is almost identical to the setup for the Supernatural episode that's like the second or third episode of the show that is about when it goes in that episode, it's almost the exact same setup.

People get lost in the woods. In this story it's you know, the park rangers whoever looking for him, and Supernatural it's the Winchester brothers. I don't know how else you tell the story. I mean, I guess you could tell like Donner party or something to that effect. But this is like the easiest setup, right well, and it's tried and true.

Some Yeah, I feel like there's nothing to it bad go with. They really aren't. They're they're almost archival to a point, and wind it goes around naturalistic creature. They're not a city bound creature. I mean, you could do Whend It goes in a city that could be interesting, but just very difficult.

Yeah, but at the same yeah, exactly but at the same time, like this is the kind of thing that exists in the natural world. It's it's folklore. I mean again, it's an indigenous people. You know, the people the Algonquins in this country are where this comes from. And those are the Great Lakes regions of this country.

That's Canada and Michigan and all those areas in that area of the world. This comes from them. And you know the Ojibway word windigo, which is again like we're we're at the point with this show, with this episode where they decided, let's actually do the thing that we've done at one point in this show. And I don't know why they decided to come back to it all of a sudden, because they really strayed so far away for so long. Yeah, it must have been like the a squad, this was their assignment.

They're like, hey, guys, can you just do the wind to Go episode? Like we'll put it close to the end of the season, so it feels like we didn't just fail from the start. But I mean, the only thing that I will say that I will complain about just ever so slight, ever so slightly, because this is a very good episode. I do appreciate what they did here, and they even brought back the animal facts or in this case, the lower facts. My main complaint is all of those lower facts are white old men.

It would have been nice to actually get a bit more of like a diverse perspective. But once again, for twenty ten, what can you do? And I'm sure they didn't have like all of the fun days there, but it comes from speed dial, so it comes and it comes, but it comes from a indigenous people's tradition, so that should have been represented. Yeah, and I mean also understand that like that you know, as part of previously mentioned was like yeah, and the people of that like standpoint probably don't want to talk about it, which is totally fair. I just think that it could have been a bit more diverse on that front.

But hey whatever, Well, but I agree with you. It is one of those things where as I sit here and think about it, that would be something that would be like focused on if you did it now. It's making is making sure of that because again, like that's where these stories come from, and that's where the tradition comes from. And especially when it's like are you well like in this region US space where It's like, it's not like you have to find somebody way over the fucking like England to make commentary about it. We translated from another language like these through indigenous people, like they probably speak English too, so right, I think, Yeah, I do agree with you that the talking heads there's not a lot of variety.

They're kind of like the same people. I mean, look, I love Lauren Coleman as much as the next person, but like, I don't need to see him in every single episode like the Bigfoot episodes, yeah, because that's kind of his bread and butter, but like, yeah, every single episode, Like I don't I think they could have. Yeah, I think there's just some failings with this show at this point that I don't I don't understand them as failings because they feel like easy to avoid pitfalls. Yeah, it's just one of those where it was like the medium mentality of the day, and this was a highly experimental show that I'm sure they didn't really know how long it would go on or how much facts they could actually cram in without it turning into like a PPS special.

Yeah. So I also understand this choice, I truly do, because it was probably just like a couple interviews where they just had a couple of topics sheets being like and we're going to talk about the one, right, let me ask you about this, let me ask you about this, let me eddy and just see what they can pull from. So it's a very uh, you know, economic choice, but it's just not very interesting. It's one of those things where it's like that is like the one thing that would keep it from being like an absolute perfect Lost Tapes episode, in my mind, is just getting that rounded up just a little bit more well, And I totally agree, and you know, I hadn't even really thought about that, but I also at this point kind of feel like that the fact stuff they really don't try on their Oh that's why, like when it's apparent, I'm paying attention to it, because that was like one of my favorite little campy hooks in the first season was it's like, oh, and they're throwing animal facts in as hell?

Yes, right, it just died And I don't know why it did. I mean I could we could probably suppose and make make presumptions about why, namely the fact that you know, the show was probably not as popular with them that it is without them, at least in their minds, at least with the crowd that they're trying to get exactly, which I think is the people that are talking about this show now, is it having scared them? Would be what the nine to fifteen crowd exactly. And the animal the animal facts do take you out of the moment. So if they were trying to scare little kids, it probably don't want some quick facts about moths and snakes thrown in there.

So fair, I gotcha, right, But at the same time, like that was part of what made the show interesting, and that's kind of that was kind of part of the charm. That wasn't kind of part. It was part of the charm of the show. And to lose it, and to lose it and not really replace it with anything, I mean, I guess to replace it with more scares and quotations like the show is not scary. I mean, I guess, I mean, I guess, let's put ourselves in the mindset of someone who's like nine to fifteen saying it in twenty ten.

Yeah, I'm sure it definitely would have resonated. I think the first season probably would have been like really eerie to me, especially like the first handful of it like in the mid twenties now, right, Like those are people that are in their mid twenties, so this would have been like the kind of people that we see on YouTube talking about this show. Bengo exactly. I was. I was twenty when the show came out, Like I had missed it for me being scary, Like I was eighteen to twenty for the run of the show, Like that's right, you know, I was in graduating high school and going into my first and second years of college like this, I just didn't have animal planets.

I saw it when I was at home, like I saw it when I was living in my parents' house in oh eight, and then when I moved to college, like I never saw it again. So I never saw the second season to the show. So that should give you an idea of like even my commitment into the show then was I wasn't like hunting it down, so it was passive for sure. Yeah, and again like that, I think that kind of goes to my feelings about the show almost overall, is like the show in and of itself has become passive. Yeah, they definitely, Yeah, they kind of accepted the fact that they weren't being taken seriously that they were just kind of scaring kids, and so they just kind of leaned on that one as opposed to like really stick and buy their guns and making something really really intense.

Yeah. I mean at one point, at one point it was a haunted exhibit and now it's just like a haunted house like ride, like a county fair. Yes, but at the same time, this episode is that done rather well. I mean you kind of hit all the notes. You have the campers out in the woods, you have the rescue team that comes to get them, you have a little bit of gore.

Like you said, there are some kind of monster movie moments, yeah, which are Okay, I guess I don't it's the show it this point, just like it's just this is as close we get to a slash or in this show. Is what it feels like this maybe not I mean maybe not thinking about the second the next episode, so oh yeah right right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know. It's weird like this episode. In my mind, would this episode jibe in the drive in the first season of the show, really like, would it feel out of place? Because it kind of feel like it would.

First season of the show was so tonally flat and like and like stylistically flat, and this is there's a little bit of style going on here. Oh definitely, like the whole thing with the camera like hanging upside down and it's going around in a circle. Like I don't know who was who directed this episode outside of the yeah, outside of the group of people that they had directing the show to begin with, because my god, like somebody actually gave a shit all of a sudden. They were having a lot of fun with this one. And I say, I don't know who directed it.

You know why, because there's actually no director's credited on IMDb, so I can't I can't give credit due directed it. But the fact that there's actually something kind of strangely stylistic going on in this episode, I applaud it immensely because I was just like, for sure, where did this come from? Jared? I was this was like one of the few episodes where I'm like, oh, it's when to go. I know how the popular creature is get treated, so right right, I'm just gonna put this.

I'm gonna put this on while I'm standing at work, And then I had to stop and like watch it every now and then being like, holy shit, they're doing a great job. Well. And that's the thing about this episode is they actually again by really leaning on and again it's it's not like we don't know what the when to Go is. It's just a Cannibal I mean, Jesus Christ. And they don't over explain it, right, I mean it's really pleasant, right.

I mean he even used the when to Go in Hannibal a lot. The they I guess it's at the first season, first or second season, the thing where he's like, it's Hannibal in a suit with the antlers and is like blacks. Yeah. I mean they use the whend to go in that show to really good effect, and it's nice to see this show kind of using it to good effect too, because outside of this Supernatural and that, like, I don't the movie that recently came out, turget the name of it? Is it wrong Turn?

No, I know what you're talking about. Yeah. I got asked to go as as a date, but I can't because I pass out at theaters if they're too gory or flashy. So isn't I guess Until Dawn has Wendy goes the PS four game with Rammy mallick, Have you played that? No kidding, No I haven't, but I keep up on games as they come out, even if they don't have the show.

Yeah. I again, like Whendo goes for Me aren't something that I really It's not that I don't care about, but I think the way that I've seen them, all the times that I've seen them in things, it feels so kind of one note, and yeah, it seems they contrived after a while. It's a great design, but it can be like way overused for no real reason. I like the idea of the window, like I like the idea of like you can use the Wind to Go as like a metaphor. I mean, I guess if you tell the story like in the eighteen hundreds, you could tell us tell it as like a story of like westward expansion, and like the White Man, it's never enough, it's never enough for that whole entire ship.

Yeah, like it's never enough for the White Man, but you tell it like the Wind to Go is the White Man types. I don't know, you could do a movie like that and and kill like I'm sure it priority exists even but I'm sure, I'm sure, I'm sure it does already exist, but like you could use the wind to go to represent stuff, which I appreciate. I mean yeah, it's just this is a very like straightforward retelling of a wind to Go story. People get lost in the woods, they don't have any food, they have to eat whatever. Explain what he eats.

So see, now I got my wind to Goo movie story. So since it's you're like the Great Lakes area, and there's always those accounts where people are like a drift after their boat crashes. That it comes down to the whole cannibalism thing. What if it was a when to go on a raft after a shipwreck, That's how I would do it. I mean again, like there's a keep it fresh.

I don't know if that really abides by law, but it's kind of like the thing on a raft. Well, but that's the thing about when it goes that I really appreciate, is it you could transpose it elsewhere and like take that idea. I mean again, Hannibal used it, so you know that's not especially for like heavy symbolism, and absolutely it's so choice, yeah exactly, And that's and that's kind of what I'm driving at. It's like the when to go almost is better as like representative of something than just like telling it as the story. Oh yeah, you know, like telling it flatly is just like it's just a creature.

I mean, you know, the design of the creature is cool. It kind of at least in this it has the head the skull as a head, which is cool, cool to look at. Yeah, with the antlers, hell yeah, with the antlers in the skull, it's cool. I mean, you know, I've seen it represented as kind of like a big beer creature before, but I like this. I like this like white exposed bear skull idea that that we've seen it in a couple I mean, I think Supernatural may have even done it.

But it's a really uh it's really kind of shocking to look at and kind of like it really it's arresting that kind of that white skull with the antlers, especially if you're coming across in the dead ass night right the forest, it's like, oh, it's just a little dear guy, and it's like, uh, never mind. I think the thing that cracks me up though, is the characters have to act as dumb as possible to die like beyond the dumb beyond, like aggressively dumb. Yeah, well, I'm gonna leave you and I'll be right back. He hasn't come back in like thirty minutes. Where is he.

I'm gonna go kill him as you hear him like being crunched up and murdered out in the woods, Like what the actual fuck is going on here? Come on, guys, seriously, Oh we put it? Check it out? No? Yeah again, Like you know, that's where the show's kind of weak writing comes in, is that it's like you had the characters being like aggressively idiotic.

So not a fan of that, because again the show traffics and all kinds of other problematic stuff, like really kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel and going like, oh yeah, now we have these like moron characters on top of everything else, like come on, And I guess you could have bypassed that, because if I were to redo this episode and just give like a little tiny scooch, I would kind of ditch like the other two people in the second sweep. I would just have a park ranger that has to do their rounds at night to make sure that everybody's clear at the parks, and then no matter what, like they know kids went missing. They have to check out this spot. They run into the Wendy Go at one point in time, and maybe they get away, but they have to keep doing their rounds.

So it's like a late phases thing in my mind. Will they just they just wanted they just wanted more bodies, more, more gore, and like I don't even think it's not even really good gory. I mean no, no, right, they just see anything spectacular. They re used the same shot essentially twice of the When to Go killing someone with the axe. They show it twice, like the exact same like h like, okay, cool, it wasn't scary either time.

No, it wasn't the scariest part of the episode is when there's that camera doing that circle and you see the herd the woman in the whend to go fighting and it's like okay, like I can finally like see something happening. And then it's like two seconds not even oh yeah, they didn't want to expose too much, but boy, that was a good two seconds. What I think, you know, overall, this is probably the best episode of this season so far for me, oh for the season absolutely oh fuck yeah, are you kidding me? There's really one I will remember. Yeah, and everybody dies at the and it makes sense.

Yeah right, yeah, I mean once again, I'll always roll my eyes with the fact that's so far. I don't think anybody in this season has survived, but that's fine, Like maybe one. I think the people that survived, the people that's the only people that survived were the Enigma Corp. People in Zombies and Strogoy because those are the same people from episode to episode and then they come back and they catch a quattle episode. Uh that's the same people, yeah, which is like funny because like they don't even really make a big deal out of it in any of the episodes.

Yeah, I was like, I looked it up. I like, I googled it, and I was like, oh, that's the same people, okay, because they like looked like they look very similar well, and the names sound the same. They're like those like cheese ball as like Zander Mooney and Toby far Site Gazer. Right. I remember Mooney just because I think it killer clowns every fucking time.

Yeah, that won't make it dummy out of me, but yeah, the the lack of the Enigma Corporation still makes very little sense to me here, it's unnecessary. It just is if you have them in the show adamant. If you ain't got them, use them right exactly. Yeah, yeah, And you know, in regards to the Whendigo itself, I think yeah, for me, it's more interesting as kind of a because people can be when to go. You can have whend Togo syndrome, which or when to to Go psychosis, which is like you think you need to eat people?

Right, yeah, So like I think that's more interesting. It's like vampiism though, right, Like I guess it would be synonymous to a degree, but that would definitely feed into the animal planet aspect of it that I love. So right, Well, that's the thing like when Togo. The idea of the Wendigo is like a cannibal, but it's like a mystical cannibal at least if you're talking about the human possessed by a spirit, and this is kind of both. It's the human possessed by the spirit, but that person becomes the when to go creature that we know.

So I like when to Go more as like an idea, as like allegorical Probably I think that's more interesting. Yeah, yeah, I mean you can only do this fucking idea. So many times people get lost in the woods and have to fight the wend to Go right, and one of them becomes the wind to Go, Like, you can't you have to be able to do more than that with the premise, because well that's the easiest route to go, obviously, given how many people do it. Just I think you could. I think you could serve the narrative better by not doing that.

Yeah, that's fair. It's good to have like an alternate either way, right. Can you imagine if every single vampire story was somebody having to go to a castle or zombies always have to be like Haitian zombies or something like. That's for me, it's like the When to Go, Like there's not enough variety with the Wend to Go story in and of itself, at least not the ways it's been told that I've seen. I mean, maybe I'm missing out on all this whend to Go content out there in the world, but the things that I've seen all feel very saying.

Even the video game that I was talking about, it's like Kids in the Woods, yep, Like it's no different than any of this, Like it's always like, you know, somebody in the woods, and then in one of the stories, somebody becomes a wind to go in, and the other ones it's just everybody fighting the wind to go together. So yeah, I don't know. I think this episode works almost in spite of what they're talking about. I could see that. Sure, it's always wished there was just a little bit more, but honestly, they worked with what they had, and I think because it was such a simple structure that they could follow, that's probably why I was so successful.

It works for everybody else for a reason because it's super easy and there's not much that one needs to do to land a kids go into the woods and die episode, Like exactly, it's like it's like horror movie premise one be like one A is a haunted house, one B is the haunted woods. Like right, talking about cheap shoot for the weekend, it's like, all right, well keep going down to the woods. Like again, yeah, you're really really not having to do much here, which is good because again I think it lends something to the episode that it's out in the woods and it's you know, it feels like kind of scary, deep dark woods, but then you get into the nitty gritty of the episode, and it's it doesn't do anything different even with the Wendigo story the way we've you know, with the way we know it.

So it's interesting. It was okay, though, it was better than almost everything else I've seen this season, right, which you know, more often than not. I definitely celebrate the riskier choices, but considering they have they have had the opportunity to work with a wealth of splendid, ambiguous ideas and they just haven't quite landed the punch. I think this was this was just encouraging to see a little flash of old Lost Tapes in the third season before we say bicone dios to it. Yeah, even even if they're going essentially to the well of wells with the tropes and everything else, like, it still works.

There's a reason those tropes work, and there's a reason people use them, so tried and true. Baby. Yeah. So so on the next episode of Lost Tapes Chronicles, we will be talking about cats a quaddle YEPI the Serpent God, which is just we'll talk about it when we talk about it, but boy, I'm it's we kind of already touched on it a little bit in this episode, but we're we're this may this may have been the last good episode of this show. I don't know.

Yeah I got words. Yeah I have words as well, So until we share those words with one another, Maggie work, can people find you? You can find me at the trustee website that I have Dolan Museum dot com d O L I N. It's essentially where I keep all my whacking weird artwork. Come come stop eyes, I mean an email as for me ce stash dot com, cstac hiw dot com.

That's my link tree. Go there for all the things that I work on, which are varied and various, very various, very various. Get set times fast. As for this show, big thanks away to Maggie the Odd and Dustin Rutledge for the album artwork for the show. I get to thank Maggie directly right here, right now in person.

And to Alex Malmack of Blondo for the music for the show. You can find him on Spotify just search Blondo. As for us, Maggie, thank you so much for joining me as always. Oh of course, Chris, thanks for having me. And this show could be found at scary Stories wetell dot com.

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That's easy enough. Man. We'll let our good friend of the host of Sightings, mister Tim White, lead us out. No mystery is closed to an open mind. Two