Ep. 34: The Green Children of Woolpit
Kathryn (00:10)
Ready?
Gina (00:11)
Oh I'm so ready.
Kathryn (00:14)
Welcome to I Scream, You Scream. We're your weekly scoop of the most chilling histories, mysteries, and paranormal perplexities. My name is Kathryn
Gina (00:22)
I'm Gina.
Kathryn (00:23)
This month's topic is Creepy Kids. And while we talk about Creepy Kids, we will be eating our own childhood favorite ice cream flavors. Mine is vanilla with Oreo in it, a la Dairy Queen Blizzard, and Gina's is...
Gina (00:39)
Still cookie dough, but the last of the cookie dough. So next time might be different.
Kathryn (00:44)
Okay.
Yeah, I don't know if mine's going to be different next week or as a reminder, ⁓ we do have a chain letter curse going on. So if you're listening to us and enjoying us, you must share with a friend. Otherwise, we will unfortunately need to curse you for life. We don't want to have to do it. So hit that share button and send your friend a link so they can enjoy us along with you. Other than that, grab a spoon and let's dig in.
I did not crush up my Oreos very much, so I'm gonna have to pause to choose, so I'm so sorry.
Gina (01:17)
Cool, while you do that, I can tell you about some absolute fucking heathen behavior I took part in with this ice cream last night. That made it sound really sexual. It's not sexual. So I made cinnamon rolls over the weekend and we had two left. And so we stuck them in the microwave for a little bit and then put a scoop of cookie dough ice cream on top. And it was like a cinnamon roll sundae. It was so fucking good.
Kathryn (01:24)
Okay, I was gonna say what?
Mm-hmm.
Cool. That sounds good.
I do have to share a book I'm reading because I teased you with it earlier. I don't know when it was published. I don't know if it's a new book or if it's just newly translated, ⁓ but the I Who Have Never Known Men book. It's flying off the shelves. You'll, you'd recognize it if you saw it. Do you know, do you know which one I'm talking about?
Gina (01:47)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-mm.
Okay.
It's ringing a bell,
Kathryn (02:05)
or not.
Yeah, you'd know it if you saw it. It, I was putting it off because I knew nothing about this book. I just knew it was flying off the shelves and the demographic who was buying it is us. So I'm like, all right, there's something in here that I need.
Gina (02:21)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (02:24)
It's a phenomenal book. I'm only about three quarters of the way through. I almost texted you to ask if we could bump back this recording so that I could finish. I started it this morning and I cannot stop. I'm almost done. It's so good. And I'm not going to tell you anything about it because it's best if you don't know. The only thing I will say is it is so good and so well written.
Gina (02:34)
You
Kathryn (02:51)
but also very bleak. So if you're in the mood for a feel good, it's not not a feel good, but it's definitely not a feel good. I don't know how to describe it.
Gina (02:55)
Mmm.
Okay.
Kathryn (03:07)
You absolutely need to read this book. Everyone should read this book. It's truly... I'll come back in our next episode having finished it and given an official recommendation, but this is my These are my initial thoughts having not been able to put it down all day long.
Gina (03:11)
Okay.
This is coming at a perfect time, because I'm taking a brief hiatus from Bleak Books to read a funny one. And I'm almost done with the funny one. So once that's wrapped up, I'll be ready to return to the realm of the Bleak.
Kathryn (03:34)
Mm.
Yeah, it's beautiful. It's such a good book. Like, I cannot wait to finish it. And also I'm so sad that I'm going to finish this book eventually.
Gina (03:46)
There's
so many powerful emotions. really do need to read this.
Kathryn (03:50)
I'm feeling so many things today. I honestly
wonder if, so I was ready to record early for everyone listening and this never happens. I'm always the one who's like straggling behind and flustered and like just a mess when I come in to the recording. And today I was like, I wonder if subconsciously I was ready to go early. So I was like, come on, let's get this going so I can go finish. Yeah.
Gina (03:58)
You
⁓ I want to read my book. I
love books like that though, like ones where you just can't stop thinking about it.
Kathryn (04:16)
It's good.
Yeah, this is going to be with me for a long time. can already, again, I'm not done. The last quarter of it could be trash. I don't think it's going to be. But it's definitely one that I'm going to be thinking about for a long time. It's definitely one that I'll reread eventually because it seems like something that you'll get more out of it.
Gina (04:32)
Sweet.
Mm.
Kathryn (04:37)
like the next time you read it, you know, or something different out of it.
Yeah, highly recommend. I will say. So a transition into the next thing I have to say, notes things I wanted to tell Gina about, I have book I'm reading and garden shit. And garden shit has a little smiley face next to it.
Gina (04:43)
sweep.
Mm-hmm
Kathryn (04:58)
And book I'm reading originally had
a smiley face and then it had a sad face and I switch it back to smile and then I switch it back to sad face. So now I just gave it a little straight line mouth face because I don't know what emotion I'm feeling about the yeah, that's my transition into garden shit. It's finally garden seed season. One day just woke up and things were like blooming and ready to go. So now I'm ready to go. So I'm awake and ready to go.
into the garden. And I have something I want to share. I got it on clearance. I want to show it to you.
Gina (05:28)
What?
Kathryn (05:31)
that exciting but I'm excited about it. Look at my little pumpkin planter. Look at him. Yeah I'm so excited. Guess how much it was. So it was originally $70 which I think is way too much for this. Planters are expensive though.
Gina (05:37)
Aww, it's a jack-o-lantern! That's so cute!
70, where did,
where'd you buy it?
Kathryn (05:53)
I got it Stein's. Guess how much I got it for? Originally 70. gosh, Phil said 15. It was 20. Which I think is still good. Yeah. Yeah.
Gina (05:56)
$10.
okay, still a fucking great deal. That's
a great deal. Are you gonna plant your pumpkin in there?
Kathryn (06:08)
Not my pumpkin.
I'm gonna start the pumpkin seeds in it before I put them in the ground. But then I'm gonna do marigolds in it for my front porch.
Gina (06:20)
you
Yay. What else are you growing this year? I know you're growing sunflowers. ⁓
Kathryn (06:24)
Yeah. Anyway. Sorry, I'm a ghost. There we go.
Sunflowers. I'm also doing all of the butterfly and bee flowers. ⁓ Last year I grew a bunch of cone flowers. they didn't bloom in time and then the frost came out of nowhere so I didn't transplant them in time.
So I've got Black Eyed Susan's cone flowers, some milkweed and butterfly weed that I'm gonna put them in. I'm gonna replace some of the gross flowers that the idiots who lived here beforehand or before we did planted. Just, they were just not, they were not the best. I'm gonna like replace all the weeds that they intentionally put here ⁓ with good flowers.
Gina (07:04)
you
Nice.
Kathryn (07:18)
But it
will take a while. And I also have a couple of like I got some Dahlia bulbs. Why can't I say that? Dahlia bulbs. It feels weird, right? Yeah. Dahlia bulbs I'll do peppers and tomatoes in a sec. But I do my peppers like planters also, like pots.
Gina (07:27)
Dahlia bulbs. That's hard to say.
Yeah.
Yeah, we do too. ⁓
Kathryn (07:42)
so that I can move them around and yeah, I don't have
a ton of yard space. ⁓ So the yard is for flowers. There's one corner where the tomatoes are gonna go. And I have herbs over there too, but I'm getting a late start. I'm like the fall garden is like already like I didn't really have a spring garden. Like spring took so long to spring. Yeah.
Gina (08:03)
Well, spring was weird for you. Spring is like, it just
became spring for you. And we're recording this in the middle of May.
Kathryn (08:10)
Right.
Gina (08:11)
On the topic of plants, I got a little Snapdragon plant the other day, which I love Snapdragons. I'm so excited about it. And then we also got a little tomato plant, like a little sapling guy, who we immediately almost killed, but he's back to being happy.
Kathryn (08:16)
my god, cute.
That was a close one. I feel like I remember. When did you get these? I feel like I'm remembering. Okay.
Gina (08:30)
Yeah. ⁓ like maybe two weeks ago? I probably told you about it.
Kathryn (08:36)
Cuz did you go to like a farmers market or something?
Gina (08:39)
Went to a plant sale swap thing. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. So that's exciting.
Kathryn (08:42)
yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Fuck yeah, gardens. I love gardening.
Gina (08:47)
Fuck yeah, gardens, team gardens.
Kathryn (08:50)
Anyway, do you perhaps have a story for me? A very strange and spooky story? ⁓
Gina (08:51)
Anyway...
Just the one.
Just one strange and spooky story today, with many, many theories behind it.
Kathryn (09:01)
I will settle for this one.
Our story begins
Gina (09:05)
So I love a good creepy legend as much as any other girl my age, Every now and then, I find a story that just kind of blows my mind a little bit. And that is what happened with the green children of Woolpit Because on the surface, it's really just a cute little story about a couple of weird kids showing up in
Kathryn (09:15)
Mm-hmm.
You
Gina (09:32)
like a medieval village, we'll get more into it later. But then you start getting into the theories about who these kids were, and suddenly it's like you're unlocking centuries of debate about whether or not these kids were aliens or fairies or a zillion other fucking amazing and wonderful things. So buckle up, my friend, because I'm gonna take you on a journey.
So before we get into the kids, we need to talk about when and where this supposedly happened because it's all kind of a hot fucking mess. So we're in Eastern England in a place called Woolpit in the County of Suffolk. And Woolpit is pronounced exactly how it's spelled, wool, like a sheep, pit, like bottomless pit of despair. Fun fact, the name Woolpit actually comes from wolf.
Kathryn (10:17)
you
The Initial Encounter
Gina (10:22)
pit because people used to dig giant holes in the ground to trap wolves around there. they're a fun fact.
Kathryn (10:28)
Okay, that's so funny because
when you said Woolpit the first thing I thought of was a wolf. And then in my head, I was like, wait, no, that's not what she said. It's wool. Maybe it's for like a pit of sheep. And I was like, but sheep still remind me of wolves because of like fairy tales and stuff.
Gina (10:40)
Alright?
It's because you're fucking psychic.
So this story goes down in the 1100s, possibly during the reign of King Stephen, maybe Henry the second. We're not 100 % clear on that. And the reason why I mentioned these guys specifically is because their collective reigns were not a super chill fucking time. This was a period in history literally called the Anarchy, if that tells you anything. And basically, yeah.
Kathryn (11:07)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (11:14)
Spark notes of it are civil war, chaos, famine, general societal collapse, all of those things, all of those fun things. Shouldn't say fun, all of those things. ⁓ Everyone was paranoid, everyone was poor, things just generally sucked. Also, and this will come back later, a bunch of Flemish immigrants had recently settled in England. Some had been invited over by King Stephen.
Kathryn (11:24)
You
Gina (11:40)
But when his nephew Henry the second rolled in and became king he was like no I fucking hate these people and he launched this big violent campaign to get rid of them Which means that in this region at this time people were very on edge about outsiders So not the most nurturing environment for a couple of kids to rock up out of nowhere. Speaking of which One summer during all of this chaos
A bunch of villagers are outside tending the fields near Woolpit, minding their business, going about their day to day, reaping what they have sowed, yada yada. When all of a sudden, they find two children just kind of standing there, not another adult in sight, like just these two kids by themselves. Kathryn's immediately suspicious.
Kathryn (12:31)
Sorry, I'm just like immediately I'm in like children of the corn type land. Like if there are children standing in a field with no adult supervision, that's an immediate no for me. Sorry. Yeah.
Gina (12:37)
Hahaha.
It's a weird one. Yep, yep. And it gets even
weirder too. So it was a boy and a girl. The boy seemed younger and the girl would later be called Agnes. But at this point, there's no names. Like we do not know who the fuck these kids are. And the kicker is that they are green. Not like feeling a little bit nauseous green, like straight up fucking green skin.
Kathryn (12:51)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (13:08)
and they were found near one of the town's old wolf pits. So the vibe is immediately kind of what you're talking about. People are like, my God, these damn kids crawled up out of the underworld again. Like, what is this type deal? Classic.
Kathryn (13:08)
Okay.
Mmm.
Yeah.
Sick.
Gina (13:25)
And that sense of otherness, that feeling that these kids are different is exacerbated by the fact that their clothes are made from a material that no one recognizes in a style that doesn't look anything like what the villagers had seen before.
And they're speaking a language that no one understands or even recognizes. Like, know how, like, you and I are not fluent in Spanish, but if we hear someone speaking Spanish, we'll be like, I know what that language is. None of that. It was just these kids are, it's gibberish, nothing. So the villagers, have no idea what to do with these kids. So they do the logical thing and they make it someone else's problem.
Kathryn (13:50)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, interesting.
Great,
love it.
Sir Richard and #Beans4life
Gina (14:06)
Specifically,
they bring them to their local lord, who is a guy named Sir Richard de Calne. Now luckily, Sir Richard seems to have been a pretty nice guy by back then standards, because he doesn't immediately kill them for being different. Instead, he tries to feed them, but the kids refuse to eat. And not only did they not eat, they seemed genuinely confused.
by the food they were being offered, no matter how many types of food they brought out, bread, know, whatever, almost like they didn't even know that this stuff was food. They were baffled by it, they wouldn't eat it. So a few days go by and Sir Richard is just like at a loss. He has a couple of starving kids in his house who refuse to eat. He has no idea what to do. Until finally, someone brings in a bunch of freshly picked broad beans
aka fava beans, and the kids devoured them. Like eating raw beans straight from the pod, they gorged themselves on this stuff. And that's all they eat for a while. There were just like two little vegan cryptids basically just living off of beans. But slowly, they start to come around to other foods too. And when they do, the green color of their skin starts to fade. And eventually,
They lose the green entirely and they just look like a normal human color. the decision is made to baptize these children. But unfortunately, the boy who had always seemed like a little bit sickly, he died either right before or right after the baptism. Records are a little bit unclear on which. Either way, very, very tragic. But the girl, Agnes, survives. She keeps living at Sir Richard's place and slowly she starts to learn
English and eventually she starts talking and our girl Agnes has some very interesting things to say.
St. Martin’s Land?
So once she has a good enough handle on English, people start to ask the obvious questions. The first one being, where the hell did you come from? She says that she and her brother came from a place called St. Martin's Land, which is not a place we have on any of our maps either now or back then. We don't know if this is a reference to like our St. Martin, like in this earthly realm, our St. Martin, or if it's another thing entirely.
Kathryn (16:17)
Yeah.
Gina (16:38)
But as a side note, if it is a reference to our version of St. Martin, it does get a little bit more interesting because he's associated with like death and rebirth and things like that. And when you look at what happened to the kids where one died and one survived, there's kind of a parallel there, which is interesting. Anyway, regardless. According to Agnes, everything in St. Martin's land was green. The people, the plants, the food. Green as far as the eye can see, green everywhere you look.
Kathryn (16:52)
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
Gina (17:09)
And what's even weirder is that she said that the sun never fully rose there, like the whole place was in a constant state of twilight. Weird.
Kathryn (17:19)
⁓ that sounds
weird and beautiful.
Gina (17:23)
Mm-hmm, right?
Kathryn (17:24)
immediate thought was like, is she from like a place called St. Just St. Martin or something?
But like, the only one I can think of is, isn't that an island in the Caribbean or something? It's something like that. And that wouldn't, they don't have green people and the sun is shining bright. So can't be that one.
Gina (17:36)
So there are theories about where this could have been in reference to if it is like in fact a real place. There are many, many theories that we're going to go through today and that will come up again. Yeah. So she also said that from where they were in St. Martin's land, there was a big river and across the river, they could see a different brighter country.
Kathryn (17:47)
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm sure, right. Yeah. Yeah.
Gina (18:09)
We do not know what this means. It could have just been a metaphor that like she heard her parents say it and she just repeated it, or it could have been an actual place. We don't know. But when they asked her how she came to be in Woolpit specifically, she said that they were helping their dad with his livestock one day. They were like herding his cows with him or for him or something. When they heard the sound of bells coming from a nearby cave.
Kathryn (18:12)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (18:37)
I know. So they followed the sound and when they emerged on the other side, they were struck by like the brilliant sunlight of our world and its distinct lack of readily available beans.
So she said that she said that they were so disoriented ⁓ by the sudden influx of bright sunlight that they couldn't find their way back to the cave entrance to go back home, which is when the villagers found them and brought them to Sir Richard, which I do want to land for a second on the whole hearing bells in a cave and actually going in the cave. That's brave.
Kathryn (19:11)
Okay, I was gonna,
yeah, I didn't want to interrupt you again, but another thing that I don't do is caves. That's a no, and especially the fuck. I can't just, no, that's a no. We're making a lot of mistakes here. Yeah, for sure.
Gina (19:20)
Mm-hmm.
Ahem.
I know. It's a hard no. It's a hard no for me, man. Yeah. And
that's kind of it. That is the story of the Green Children of Woolpit. From there, Agnes's life fades from historical record. As far as we know... Weird. Weird, yes. As far as we know, she lived out her life like any other English woman. She worked in Sir Richard's household for a while.
Kathryn (19:37)
Hmm.
Hey, that's weird. I, what the fuck? Yeah, that's so weird.
Yeah.
Gina (19:56)
And according to some speculation, she even eventually got married and had a not green kid, which is great. That is speculation though. There are not really records that support that, So before we jump into the theories about this, I want to really quick touch on how we even know this story in the first place, because it's important. So there are two main sources from the same timeframe that this is said to have happened in.
Kathryn (20:06)
Yeah.
weird.
Gina (20:25)
First, there's a guy named Ralph of Coggeshall. I think I'm saying that right. It is very fun to say, even if I'm saying it wrong. And he was an abbot that lived about 26 miles away from Woolpit. And he wrote all of this stuff down. And in his account, he says he got the story directly from Sir Richard, the guy who took care of the kids. The second guy who we use as a source for this stuff is named William of Newburgh.
Kathryn (20:31)
sounds right to me.
Gina (20:53)
who was a historian from way up north in Yorkshire, so a bit further away. Now William is the one that I personally am very intrigued by because like I said, he was a historian. He wasn't someone who just blindly believed weird shit. And in his records of this story, he even admits that he didn't want to write it down at first because it was too fantastical. But he says that he wound recording it anyway.
because there were so many credible sources telling him the same story that he couldn't overlook it. ⁓ He wrote his original chronicle in Latin, but if you translate it literally, he has a phrase that is something like, I am crushed sufficiently that I am forced to believe.
Kathryn (21:39)
⁓ Okay.
Gina (21:41)
So this was not just a bedtime story that people told kids. These were like educated guys recording at the very least what they believed to be true. So this story starts to spread. And after it had been told and retold a few times, people started speculating. And the main theory was fairies, which is something we have not really talked about on this podcast yet.
Were they fairies?
Kathryn (22:08)
We haven't really talked about fairies at all. I feel like you and I, the only time we ever talk about fairies is in regards to... Maybe we haven't. Maybe I just talk about that with Karen because of Colette. I have a little fairy door in my garden and I always give Karen updates on it so she can tell Colette. But I don't think we've ever talked about fairies.
Gina (22:11)
Mm-mm.
I can't think of a time that we've talked about fairies.
Maw.
That's so cute.
Mm-mm. We're gonna talk a lot about fairies today. Yeah, why not?
Kathryn (22:36)
really don't. What's your stance on fairies? Are we gonna talk about it today?
Are we gonna share our opinions?
Gina (22:42)
Sure, fairies can be real. I believe in dog man, like, doors open.
Kathryn (22:45)
Yeah. Why the fuck not? Yeah. Yeah,
I can't, I cannot imagine a world where fairies are not real. That's just my reality. That's, yeah. I just, why would they not be? That's it. I think that's, that's my whole opinion. Like, of course, of course they're real. Yeah. I've, yeah.
Gina (22:58)
Yeah.
Of course, obviously, So the idea,
sorry, I totally steamrolled you, go ahead. okay, cool.
Kathryn (23:10)
No, no, I'm done. was
like, I did a weird thing with my mouth that made it seem like I was gonna keep talking. But I was not, I'm sorry, that was me.
Gina (23:17)
Okay cool. So the idea
was that Agnes and her brother had accidentally slipped into our world from some kind of fairy realm. I do want to talk about medieval fairies for a second because they were not very nice. They were like the creepy, tricksy kind of fairies who would curse your cows, steal your babies, cause you to get lost in the woods for laughs. They were mischievous, they were
Kathryn (23:29)
to me.
Mm-hmm.
Gina (23:45)
flippant, they were so much fucking fun, and some people thought that Agnes and her brother were two of them. If you don't believe in fae, it might sound a little bit silly to us now, but if you look at the details and the lore behind faeries, it kind of tracks. and foremost, the green skin is very fae-coded.
Kathryn (23:49)
Yeah.
Gina (24:06)
Green has been associated with fairies for centuries, even to the point where people were discouraged from wearing green because that color belongs to the fairies and you would piss them off if you wore it.
Perpetual Twilight is also a very classic description of what fairy lands are like. And even the food thing kind of lines up with fairy lore, which says that fae food is kind of dangerous to humans. So these children might've believed that the opposite was also true and refused to eat the human food just in case. Plus, they came from a cave. And in a lot of old European myths, caves were kind of seen as like a portal to another world, which makes sense.
Kathryn (24:27)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Gina (24:46)
So over time, people started seeing this as kind of just a weird fairy crossover event. Like we have a lot of stories about humans accidentally ending up in fairy territory. This just flips it on its head and it's like, nope, the fairies wound up in our territory this time. But it is worth noting, I do wanna point out, there's no record of the villagers saying much of this and there's also no record of the kids being treated badly or anything like that.
Kathryn (25:00)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (25:14)
I just wanted to mention it because I know it's always a big thing when we talk about people who were different in this timeframe, but there was none of that. The whole fairy thing didn't come up until way, way later once the story has kind of had a chance to spread. So this really was kind of an attempt at explaining the unexplainable. And in medieval England, blaming fairies was kind of their version of, it's a glitch in the matrix kind of thing. It was like the catchall.
Kathryn (25:19)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Yeah, that's what I thinking. Yeah.
Gina (25:44)
Psychic.
Kathryn (25:47)
We need, yeah, we're gonna need to do a fairy month because I do, I cannot believe we've never talked about fairies and even just the fae in general, like the whole blanket. Like we don't really, we haven't really talked about that at all. I do actually have a lot of opinions on and we need to talk about them. Cause this is, I like the whole idea that things were flipped on their head.
Gina (25:58)
I
Hmm.
Kathryn (26:09)
And like, because it's rare that you hear a story that, you know, a fairy will accidentally end up here. It's usually, you know, as a result of, you know, someone doing something bad or, you did something that you're not supposed to in the garden or like whatever, you know, or they're trying to trick you. It's rarely like a stumbled into situation. So that's interesting.
Gina (26:18)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And it makes sense if they're kids, like not fully grown fairies,
that they can't, they don't have like the power yet to find their way home or something.
Kathryn (26:39)
Yeah.
Yeah. And if like they're mischievous, maybe they weren't supposed to be near that cave or something like that, you know?
Additional theories
Gina (26:47)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, totally. Mm-hmm. Yep. So that's theory number one. Moving into more modern interpretations, the fairy stuff doesn't go away, but it does start to share space with other very out there theories, starting with the most literally out there, which is aliens. Some people believe that they were literally from another world, as in from another planet.
Kathryn (26:53)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Gina (27:15)
This theory didn't really show up until the 20th century, mainly because aliens were not a huge concern in the 1100s. But by the 1960s and 70s, UFO mania was like in full fucking swing. And Woolpit actually started to become kind of a pilgrimage site for believers. They got a lot of like UFO tourism and things like that. In fact, in 2012, which I think is pretty recent, an astronomer named Duncan Lunan
Kathryn (27:19)
make sense. Yeah.
Gina (27:43)
which is such a fucking good name for an astronomer. Like you could not make that up, right?
Kathryn (27:45)
Wait, how do you become anything else? Yeah, like
you have to be an astronomer with a name like that. That's just one of those names. Yeah, your fate is sealed.
Gina (27:53)
Yes, completely agree. Yes, Yeah,
agreed. Thanks, Dunk. ⁓ But yes, so our boy Duncan Lunan, professional astronomer, published a study suggesting that the kids were part of a failed attempt by aliens to colonize our planet and that the kids basically got accidentally beamed to Earth. That is an oversimplification of what he suggests, but.
Basically, that's what it is. Then there's also another theory that the kids were human, but they were from a community that literally lived underground. Again, sounds super fucking wacky, but there was a medieval historian named Gerald of Wales who once wrote about a boy who went through an underground passage and found a world never fully lit by sunlight.
Kathryn (28:23)
Yeah, that's the vibe. Okay.
So is that where the hollow earth theory comes from?
Gina (28:54)
I don't know if that's where it comes from. I have heard the hollow earth theory, yeah. Yeah, because it was on believing the bizarre. They did like a little thing on it.
Kathryn (28:55)
Have you heard the? Okay. Yeah.
yeah, that's right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't know where that comes from, but that's, that feels like the same thing.
Gina (29:04)
Yeah.
Yeah, yes, agreed. we get to the more scientific explanation of what this could be. This is probably the most believed version of events. ⁓ And this story goes that the kids were Flemish immigrants in a town called Fornum St. Martin, which is a real place, and it could explain the whole St. Martin thing. It's place in England. So.
Kathryn (29:25)
Mm-hmm.
⁓
Gina (29:34)
This theory suggests that maybe their town, Fornum-St. Martin, got attacked by Henry II's anti-Flemish forces. Their parents died in the conflict. They ran away to escape the violence and they wound up wandering to Woolpit, which is only like a three hour walk. So that's completely feasible. And that can also explain the whole not speaking the language thing because they would have spoken Flemish. Also explains the clothing because their styles would have been different. And...
Kathryn (29:57)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (30:03)
There's also a part of it that can explain the green skin. It's theorized that the green coloring could have been caused by something called hypochromic anemia, aka green sickness, which is a dietary deficiency causing your skin to look green. is worth noting that green sickness is usually caused by low iron levels and fava beans are a very good source of iron.
So eating all of those beans could have actually helped them a lot nutritionally, even if it was like the most random food choice ever. I also have another fun fact. This one is about green sickness. So in the 1500s, green sickness was seen by some as like a virgin's disease. And if a woman contracted it, the recommended treatment was to live with men and fuck. And that was something that like physicians would tell you to do.
Kathryn (30:58)
What?
Gina (30:59)
Yeah. Isn't that fucking awesome?
Kathryn (31:01)
Dude,
old-timey medicine is wild. Like, absolutely wild. Man, that's insane. The number of things that they diagnosed that were like, so directly linked to sex is so mind-blowing.
Gina (31:06)
It's so crazy! Yes. Mm-hmm.
So good.
I know.
Kathryn (31:23)
for
how taboo and not allowed sex was. Like, I don't know. That's just, that's a whole, especially for women, like, ⁓ my God, that's just, just, I need to land on that for a second, because I'm like, I'm not surprised and I'm astonished also at the same time. Do you know what I mean? Like, like, yeah, of course. Yeah.
Gina (31:28)
Especially for women.
Mm-hmm.
You
Yes, yes, I didn't see it coming because when I think about the 1500s I
don't really think about people encouraging women to have sex with anybody ever unless it's for the purposes of making a baby.
Kathryn (31:54)
I was gonna say not just for, like there was a lot of like ⁓ forced situations, but for the purposes of having a son, you know, not for the purposes of like, I don't know.
Gina (32:04)
Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And I do think I remember
reading that one of the things was like, if you have green sickness, go fuck somebody. If you conceive a baby, you will survive it or something like that. So there was something to do with like babies in there, but.
Kathryn (32:18)
Okay.
okay. Yeah. See, that makes more sense to me. Wild. Well, all right.
Gina (32:22)
Yeah, yeah. So yes,
there's this whole they were Flemish immigrants, parents died, that whole thing, green sickness theory. But I don't fucking buy it and I'll tell you why.
Kathryn (32:35)
I was gonna say maybe, there
does appear to be some earthly evidence of that. However, I still think they were fairies.
Gina (32:45)
This is why I don't believe this theory. So first and foremost, green sickness was not rare back then. People had dietary deficiencies up, down, and sideways. You would have seen people with that in your day-to-day life. But the sources we have for this story describe the color of their skin as something they had never seen before. It was outlandishly green. Now I'll grant it could have just been a particularly bad case of green sickness, but another but.
Kathryn (32:52)
Hmm interesting
Mmm.
Gina (33:15)
If the whole being Flemish thing is true, somebody would have recognized the language, ⁓ especially when they were brought to Sir Richard, who was an educated guy. Like he might not have spoken Flemish himself, but he would have been like, yeah, that's fucking Flemish, you know? Okay, so that's why I don't believe that one. I throw that out the window. And then there's one more theory that I haven't mentioned yet. It's less fun, but it is still interesting. Basically, some people think that this whole entire thing
Kathryn (33:21)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (33:44)
was made up. Kids weren't real, story wasn't real life. They think that ⁓ people made it up as kind of an allegory, ⁓ almost like a religious parable or a metaphor for how medieval society dealt with
Kathryn (33:47)
I don't believe that. Sorry.
Do you prefer?
Gina (34:07)
Because way back then, and this is kind of fun, medieval historians really loved including weird little things in their records with explanations that don't really hold up today. Like if something went wrong, they would say ⁓ divine punishment. If there was like a weird goat, it's a warning from God, you know what I mean? So if there's a lot of social anxiety over something, sure, green kids can be used as a symbol to explain it. That'll work.
Kathryn (34:17)
Mm-hmm.
Gina (34:33)
So there is a chance that this whole thing was never meant to be read as a literal event ever. But I still don't agree with it, because it's way more fun to believe that this actually happened. So that's the reality I'm choosing.
Kathryn (34:44)
Yeah, for sure.
Gina (34:46)
like I said, the life of Agnes and her brother faded from record, but their story sticks around. one. the centuries, it's popped up in folklore journals, historical analyses, and even books. It inspired The Green Child by Herbert Read and it even made its way into The Man and the Moone which was one of the first sci-fi novels ever written.
Which is very cool. Yeah, that book kind of suggests that the kids just came from the moon, which is like a thing. Sure, fine. I like the other theories better. But sure, why not? Fuck it. Yeah, all of the above. And even now, everyone from paranormal investigators to historians to folklore enthusiasts still argue over what really happened. Were they from another world, a parallel dimension, another country, just like who the fuck?
Kathryn (35:10)
interesting.
Yeah, sure, why not? Who cares?
Gina (35:38)
Who the fuck were these fucking kids. I wanna know so bad, so bad.
The real takeaway
But there's a graduate student named Timothy R. Jones and he recently published an article like within the last month, very recently. Yeah, and he presents a perspective on this story that I really appreciated. So that's kind of how I wanna end things. And his argument is basically we should focus less on where these kids came from.
Kathryn (35:40)
Yeah.
⁓ okay.
Gina (36:05)
and more as their life as it was on our earth. According to him, the important part of the story is that these children were people at the end of the day. And this story tells us a lot about how people made sense of the unfamiliar back then. Because yeah, the kid's arrival was real fucking weird. The whole situation was weird.
Kathryn (36:22)
Mmm.
Gina (36:26)
But once she adjusted, learned the language, found her place somewhere, Agnes stopped being a them really, really quickly. She just became a person, which isn't something I am used to seeing from this time in history.
Kathryn (36:40)
Yeah, I do. Yes, I love that you said that and that you're bringing this up because I felt a little bad by how astonished I was that they were trying so hard to feed them things that they would eat.
Gina (36:52)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (36:54)
That's... that shouldn't be an astonishing thing and I feel bad about it, but I also think that it's valid for me to be surprised by how much they seemed to be cared for when they first showed up. Because, I mean, especially for that time period, but also, like, throughout all of history, that is kind of surprising, I feel bad saying, but I don't think that's wrong.
Gina (37:04)
Totally.
Yeah.
wrong because I think like the shorthand version of like the modern understanding of this period in history is difference was bad, people had to keep their heads down, you had to live by whatever rules society had at the time or else like you were putting your life at risk. And in this instance, like it would have been really easy to be like, those kids are fucking demons or they're witches burn them at the stake or something like that. But that's not what happened. And there's no evidence that the villagers were anything but
Kathryn (37:28)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Gina (37:46)
a true it takes a village type of mentality. Like as soon as they found these kids, they got them a place to sleep, they found them food to eat, they brought them new foods until they found them something that worked. ⁓ Really, like the most, I love every piece of this story, but the most compelling part to me is not the whole where did they come from thing, it's the fact that they were allowed to stay. You know what I mean?
Kathryn (37:49)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Gina (38:16)
Yeah, so with all of these things in mind, with all of these theories that we just ran through fresh in our little brains, Kathryn, what do you think? Do you think they were fairies? Do you buy aliens? Something else in between?
Kathryn (38:18)
Yeah, definitely.
I of course think they're fairies. Yeah, that's it. I think they're fairies.
Gina (38:36)
I have a fun fact about Agnes
that you might enjoy.
Kathryn (38:40)
my God, tell me.
Gina (38:41)
One thing that was noted in the historical records is that she grew up to be a very wanton and impudent woman. She did not follow rules. I know. Yeah, we love Agnes.
Kathryn (38:48)
⁓ lovely. Good. Good.
Yes. Definitely a fairy.
Gina (38:54)
So that's all I got. That's the story of the green children of Woolpit. They're not really creepy kids, but it's just like a weird story about kids.
Kathryn (38:58)
⁓ I love that. No, that's okay.
I think that creepy is... Creepy is a catch-all for a certain vibe. So they're honorary creepy kids. You know? for sure, fairies are definitely creepy.
Gina (39:07)
Yeah.
Yeah, fairies can be creepy.
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (39:16)
Yeah. Well, that was interesting.
I didn't, I knew of that story. I didn't know that story. So that was interesting. I definitely didn't know anything about the whole Flemish situation, which I think adds an interesting layer, especially for the time period and everything we were saying about just how they were cared for. Because that adds a whole other extra like good on them for actually caring for these children situation. When people easily could have been just afraid of them.
Gina (39:41)
I know, yeah.
Kathryn (39:46)
no matter what they were, whether they were real kids or also real kids, but just from a different dimension.
Gina (39:53)
Yeah,
and to be fair, like maybe they did know that the kids were speaking Flemish, but they didn't, nobody wanted to go on record saying that they knew that because the Flemish people were being persecuted. So, cause it was like violent persecution. Henry the second was kind of a dick.
Kathryn (40:02)
⁓ maybe that's, I didn't think of that. Yeah.
You didn't want to admit that you recognize Flemish because that could open a can of worms of like, well, why do you know this thing or whatever? Yeah, that's a good point.
Gina (40:14)
Yeah.
Yeah, or like you don't want to say
that like they spoke Flemish because then they would take the kids away and like if you're a group of nice people who don't want kids to be murdered you don't want it on record, you know, maybe that's part of it.
Kathryn (40:26)
Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ maybe.
What if they were Flemish fairies?
Gina (40:35)
That's the fucking one.
Kathryn (40:37)
There, we solved it. Right, right, right to the guy. What's his name? What's our? Right to the guy. Haven't put it in this paper.
Gina (40:38)
That's the fucking one. Right to the guy!
Duncan, Timothy, we solved it boys!
Kathryn (40:48)
Cool.
Well, thank you for sharing that story. Just as a reminder to everyone listening, if you haven't yet, we'd love for you to avoid getting cursed and sharing our link with your friends so they can join us.
Sorry, join you in listening to this episode. If you've already done that and you're enjoying what you're listening to, we'd love for you to give us a five star rating. ⁓ But yeah, other than that, we will catch you next week for our next creepy kid episode. So until then, little spoons, keep it cool.
Gina (41:24)
Keep it creepy.
