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0:44

Hello,

0:49

welcome to Shortcuts. I'm JC Long and

0:52

you're listening to a spooky episode

0:55

recorded on location

0:58

by the sea at Craig

1:00

Tower spooky caravan

1:03

park.

1:11

I'm at a caravan park in

1:14

Ayrshire on the west coast

1:17

of Scotland. The

1:19

wind around me is

1:22

so strong it goes whoo

1:24

as if a person's calling out to us.

1:30

We're right by the sea and

1:32

I'm going to walk down to the beach. Yesterday

1:37

when me and my daughters went there we

1:39

saw washed up the biggest

1:42

jellyfish I've ever seen. Bigger

1:44

than... This

1:47

is Shortcuts. Bigger than a football.

1:50

Brief encounters. Bigger than a

1:52

round coffee table. True stories. As large

1:54

as a small rug. Radio

1:57

adventures. It was massive. And

1:59

fabulous. sound, sound, frightful

2:02

today. What's that? Creature

2:04

feature. I want to see.

2:08

If I can see any other creatures. Her

2:12

skin sort of grows over his face, and

2:14

what sort of eyes and senses he had will

2:16

just get obscured. And then he

2:19

just really just becomes like a part of her

2:21

after that. If Satan

2:23

were an insect, he'd be a cave

2:26

cricket.

2:31

Let us begin with

2:33

a story that emerges

2:36

from the deep, thousands

2:38

of meters below the surface. You're

2:41

entering a dark room, lined

2:44

with hundreds of jars. Chains

2:47

hang from the ceiling. There

2:49

are rows of ten-foot-long metal

2:51

tanks dividing the room, sealed

2:54

cardboard boxes everywhere,

2:57

and the faint smell of spirit peer

3:01

into the gloom to come

3:03

face to face with a creature

3:06

that is rarely seen.

3:24

It's an amazing feeling, thinking that what I'm

3:26

doing must still be

3:28

around hundreds of years after I'm dead. And

3:31

that every time I write a note or make

3:33

a comment about something, I have to think

3:36

about the people in the future who

3:38

will be reading that note and fully understand

3:40

what I'm talking about, because I occasionally

3:42

find things that Victorians have written and I haven't got

3:44

a clue what they're talking about, and I kind of hate them.

3:47

So that has made me very conscientious

3:49

about the people who are going to come after me. Some

3:53

of these jars are well over a meter tall. There's

3:55

probably over a million

3:56

tons of meters in time. Dark

3:57

build platter pettas and echidnas. And occasionally,

4:00

And you see animals within animals within animals.

4:02

I think that's Charles Darwin's handwriting. We

4:05

have a young hippo

4:07

there, an otter. I mean, some of the jars you

4:09

can see here probably haven't been opened in Corpus.

4:11

Maybe even 100 years. There was a horse

4:13

in one of those tanks over there. We've got some

4:16

iguanas and burros. This

4:18

one has two great white sharks in it. Don't

4:20

know why the lobster's there. I have to ask,

4:23

what is in there? A giant squid

4:25

and part of a colossal squid. They

4:27

don't smell good, I can assure you. This snake

4:30

here is a king cobra. And

4:33

this was actually used as a prop in

4:35

a Tom Cruise film. And these are

4:37

Chinese paddlefish. And

4:40

these are now believed to have been completely...

4:43

You can open this tent, if you like.

4:45

Extinct. So

5:12

this is a very rare kind of black

5:14

tip shark. And this

5:18

was put into preservative.

5:21

And then it was brought into the country in somebody's suitcase.

5:25

And you can burp this sometimes, it'll get

5:27

there, isn't it? And now it's in this curled

5:29

up shape forevermore. It's

5:34

like a library. Some

5:37

animals are just a delight

5:40

to preserve. But if it's a very

5:42

weird shape thing, then you have

5:44

to curl it up and then force

5:47

it into the jar. And sometimes you just don't have

5:49

the right size of jar. Like we have a very miserable

5:51

shark over there, which is the skin

5:53

of a shark. And they've taken its backbone

5:56

out and they've just kind of scrunched it into

5:58

the jar.

6:14

The deeper you go, the sort of weirder

6:16

things get. It's

6:20

very odd looking. It

6:24

doesn't at first glance look like a fish.

6:28

The sea devil is more the American name

6:30

for them, and then the British name tends to

6:32

be anglerfish. It's

6:37

very kind of knobbly and it's covered

6:40

in little spines. The

6:44

tail doesn't have the sort of webbing that

6:46

a lot of fish fins typically have. It

6:48

almost looks like a sort of hand with long

6:51

tendrils coming out of it.

6:56

It doesn't have very big eyes. The eyes are almost

6:58

invisible because it doesn't really need

7:00

eyes. It has a glowing

7:03

lure on the top of its head. That's how

7:05

it catches its food. It sort

7:07

of sits down in the dark and moves its lure

7:09

around. And

7:14

then this huge big mouth has

7:16

lots and lots of needle shaped backwards

7:19

pointing teeth. And some of them also have

7:22

quite big sharp teeth

7:24

in the back of their throat as well. So

7:26

you'll have one set of teeth in

7:28

the jaw sort of grab you and then

7:31

you get sort of fed back and then the teeth in

7:33

the throat will kind of grip you. But

7:48

there are actually two in here. So

7:52

the big meet along one is

7:54

the female and on

7:56

her underside there's this very

7:59

weird

9:59

looks at the strange mythology

10:02

that's grown up around the critter in the mid-Atlantic

10:05

United States, one

10:07

who's often found in the gloom of burnt basements.

10:11

Radio producer Jesse Dukes has long

10:13

been fascinated by the horror stories that

10:15

surround them. If you don't

10:17

know what a greenhouse camel cricket looks

10:20

like, and you're not arachnophobic,

10:23

may I encourage you to look them up? I've

10:26

looked them up. It's terrifying.

10:29

They look like a monster created

10:32

in a lab, specifically

10:34

to scare human beings. Like

10:37

all good horror stories, this one

10:40

begins with a move to a new house.

10:43

The first voice you're going to hear is

10:45

Jesse's friend, Emma.

10:48

The first time I saw one was

10:50

when it was in our new apartment in

10:52

Belmont, and we were

10:54

in the process of moving in. So the

10:57

rooms were mostly empty.

10:59

I think I was just there before

11:01

all the furniture was there, just looking around. I remember

11:04

seeing something in one of the rooms and

11:07

not understanding what it was.

11:10

I got

11:13

closer and closer to it, and it

11:15

was that kind of thing where your brain is trying to catch

11:18

up with what you're looking at. I

11:20

was like, is that a

11:22

spider?

11:25

And it was just like this horrible thing

11:29

with these legs kind

11:31

of spiking

11:33

up around it and this

11:34

stripey, humped

11:37

back that just made me want to

11:39

end it all right there.

11:45

The creature in Emma's home was

11:47

a greenhouse camel cricket, the

11:49

Estramena a Sinemora. She

11:52

was right smack dab in the middle

11:54

of the region where they've become very common

11:56

in basements and damp, dim places.

12:00

Many people, including me, find them

12:02

creepy looking. Some people call

12:04

them cave crickets. Some call them spider

12:07

crickets because of their long legs that

12:09

spread all around their body. And

12:12

they are infamous.

12:13

Spider crickets are creepy and not

12:16

scared of it. There's

12:16

a lot of camel crickets that horrify me. It's

12:18

very cool. If you were an insect,

12:20

he'd be a cave cricket. It

12:22

seems like greenhouse camel crickets give people

12:25

what writer Jeffrey Jerome Cohen calls

12:27

a category crisis. The

12:30

brain doesn't know if it's seeing a cricket

12:32

or a spider. And somehow that confusion

12:34

makes it even scarier to people.

12:37

And there's something that they do that most people

12:39

talk about.

12:41

And then

12:41

the worst thing happened, which is that

12:44

it jumped at me. And

12:46

it chased me down the hallway. It

12:49

actually chased me down the hallway. It was like

12:51

hopping after me.

12:52

I've seen them do this. I mean, maybe

12:54

not chase me, but leap right

12:57

at my face. It's creepy.

13:00

And Emma and I aren't alone in this. The

13:02

internet is full of cricket jumping

13:05

stories. First one I saw was in my living

13:07

room. The thing was perfectly still.

13:09

Yes, harmless, but still freaky. It

13:12

jumped right at you. It jumped

13:14

directly towards me. And hit

13:16

my leg. And I went and I was breathing. They

13:19

uncoiled their back legs. And

13:21

started to come across. Larger

13:23

size. Jump at people.

13:25

Jump at people.

13:30

Now, for the record, camel crickets are hurt.

13:32

They don't bite. They don't sting.

13:35

So why do they leap at us? It's

13:38

easy to squish them. Well,

13:40

Jesse, I was responding to

13:42

the fact that you were convinced that camel

13:45

crickets jumped at

13:47

your face. Undoubtedly. That was

13:49

their strategy. And to

13:52

me, that seemed suspicious. My

13:54

friend Ben studies insects. He's

13:57

an entomologist. Well, after thinking about

13:59

it...

13:59

and seeing how alarmed you were about the fact

14:02

that it was like, oh, they're going after my face,

14:04

they're going after my face. I wasn't alarmed. I was fascinated.

14:07

I thought, well, that might be a startle

14:09

strategy,

14:11

that if there's a predator coming close, having

14:14

an unpredictable and possibly towards

14:17

the predator, which would be completely unpredicted

14:20

by a predator, naturally

14:23

you would expect it to go, oh, there's this

14:25

big being and go the opposite

14:27

direction. But no,

14:29

it'll go ping, ping,

14:32

left, right, maybe kind

14:34

of forward, maybe towards

14:36

my face, but it's

14:39

really unpredictable. It would be

14:41

enough for them to evade and

14:44

to have that moment where the

14:47

predator would pause and then they

14:49

get away. And what made you think

14:52

of the startle hypothesis? Because

14:55

I've been startled by it. I mean,

14:57

obviously.

15:01

Ben's a scientist and he's

15:03

suspicious about the face-sleeping idea.

15:06

So I asked him, how could we settle

15:08

this once and for all? How

15:11

would we do an experiment to test whether chemo-crickets

15:13

leap at the source of danger?

15:17

Okay, what I would do is I would look for a

15:19

really humid basement with a lot

15:21

of cardboard boxes and debris and

15:24

one that people haven't gone into for a long

15:26

time. I'm just free-forming

15:29

here, but what I would like to do is

15:31

maybe make a mask of

15:34

a face like a Jesse Duke's

15:36

mask and have it on a

15:38

stick or something and then to

15:44

put that face out there and then see

15:46

the reaction and then do it again and do it again.

15:49

But you see, I don't have that desire to

15:51

actually prove this because I don't believe it's true. You don't

15:53

believe this is true, so you're not interested in doing

15:55

this? Oh no, you know what? Don't

15:57

you think that the possibility of insects engaged?

15:59

in behavior to start or predators

16:02

would be an important

16:03

breakthrough in our understanding of insects in

16:05

general that was focused on the

16:08

fact that on the original your original

16:10

print premise was that they come at your face

16:12

i don't really think become at your face i do think it's

16:15

possible they come at the

16:17

predator that we only have certain

16:19

amount ben actually seems can a hostile

16:21

to this idea i thought scientists

16:23

were supposed to be curious burnham guess

16:25

not i later talked with

16:27

one of his entomologists colleagues gay

16:29

williams she

16:30

works for the state of maryland predator

16:33

as a kind of evolutionary

16:36

advantage

16:36

mechanism yeah yeah

16:38

i would have to say who we

16:39

see also didn't like gambling

16:42

and she knows kimmel crickets but she

16:44

thinks they jump in random directions

16:46

when a person startles them

16:47

they're not trying to get the and

16:50

what's the benefit if of if radek

16:52

said it's what's the benefit of rabbits

16:55

leaving it the wolves we talked about this

16:57

for a long time and after

16:59

a while i think i figured out why she doesn't

17:01

like the bluffing theory both

17:04

gay williams and ben study bugs

17:07

they find them fascinating and admirable

17:09

and they know that people have irrational

17:11

fears of bugs or

17:13

have a friend very good friend

17:16

who like to shoot them

17:18

with a bb gun in his garage

17:21

and i said scott they're

17:23

not coming after you they're not gonna do

17:25

anything people if you

17:27

have a sort of baseline they're

17:29

coming to get me that usually

17:32

means that the raid comes out the

17:34

fog the house there's drinking

17:36

lamps trying to kill i'm so that's

17:39

why i try to really point out

17:41

the people that these are totally

17:43

innocuous

17:44

so for the scientists this

17:46

idea that kimmel cricket sleep at people

17:49

is a dangerous miss and

17:51

if people believe dismiss they're

17:54

going to be more likely to kill them in

17:56

some nasty way so

17:58

finally most out is to get

18:01

a huge bottle of raid that

18:04

you could spray it from a really

18:06

far distance and it had a really targeted

18:09

spray. So basically you just had

18:12

this can of raid a close up

18:14

time and then when I saw one

18:16

I would back away from it as far as I

18:19

can and hopefully I'd have that can and then I would

18:21

just rain raid down

18:23

on it

18:23

from a distance.

18:26

I mean this is horrible, it

18:28

was horrible because not only did our house

18:31

smell like raid but also like

18:33

it's horrible to kill an insect. I mean

18:35

it feels bad you know because you

18:37

immediately go from being like insanely

18:40

terrified to feeling like I am a total

18:43

doofus who just killed this poor bug

18:45

in probably a way that was pretty unpleasant

18:48

for them because I was too scared to

18:50

go up to it and do the like jar

18:52

and paper envelope

18:55

thing where you just throw it outside but the reason that I

18:57

was too scared to do that is because I was

18:59

afraid it was going to jump on me because that's what they do. I guess

19:03

it's like a defense mechanism or something you know

19:06

they they will jump

19:08

at you.

19:16

The possibility that camel crickets

19:19

are bluffing us doesn't actually

19:21

horrify me. I

19:23

find it fascinating the idea

19:25

that a tiny creature completely

19:28

harmless can scare something that is a thousand

19:30

times bigger it would be like

19:32

if I could terrify a dragon just

19:35

by leaping at it and making a scary

19:37

face. Unlike my spoilsport

19:39

friend Ben I believe

19:41

it's true and it makes me admire

19:44

the camel crickets. When

19:46

I have a scary thing I need to do ask

19:48

for a raise ask somebody argue

19:51

about a bill negotiate with a roommate about

19:53

the missing rent. I imagine

19:56

myself as a camel cricket leaping

19:58

towards the thing that terrified me. me. Mandibles

20:01

extruded, legs akimbo. And

20:05

it helps. And now when

20:08

I see a camel cricket, I get

20:10

excited. Are they going to leap? Which

20:12

way? They don't scare me

20:15

anymore. Fascination

20:17

can replace fear.

20:21

Hold on.

20:22

They are terrible

20:24

and no one likes them. No one

20:26

cares about them. And

20:28

no one

20:30

wishes them the best. But

20:34

you just have to live with them.

20:37

And also they don't bite or sting. And

20:39

even if worst case scenario one

20:41

of them gets on you, I have been through that. Well

20:44

actually that wasn't quite true. The

20:46

worst thing that happened though is that one

20:49

time I

20:50

was in

20:51

my bed and I

20:55

sensed, I just

20:57

with like a sixth sense

21:01

but not like I see dead people.

21:03

A different sixth sense. A seventh

21:06

sense. I turned my

21:09

head and there was one on my pillow.

21:11

The same pillow that my

21:13

head had just been on. And

21:15

so I proceeded to absolutely

21:18

go ballistic and like

21:19

scream

21:21

my head off. But

21:23

anyway that was the worst thing that had happened

21:26

in terms of the camel crickets to have one so close

21:28

to me. And you know it might have been on my head

21:31

and gotten off my head and onto the pillow for

21:33

all I know. But I guess my

21:35

advice would be to

21:38

just accept them. They are

21:41

harmless

21:41

and just

21:45

try to get on with your life. That

21:54

was Made For Us by Jesse Giggs. Thanks

21:57

to Emma Rustbone, Gay Williams,

21:59

Ben

23:44

shelter

24:00

five feet lower than the roof I normally perched

24:02

on and I treated them very

24:05

poorly. I need to win their trust to begin

24:07

with or win their trust back because

24:10

you know I think we as a species

24:12

have lost it.

24:16

Then I started to notice pigeons in

24:18

human art, in books, in paintings,

24:20

in movies. I think it was while I was watching

24:23

Home Alone 2 when I really began to pay attention.

24:26

I realised we talk about pigeons really

24:28

quite a lot and we're doing all

24:30

this talking behind their backs. So

24:34

I decided to do something about it. I

24:36

began to make notes whenever I came across pigeons

24:38

in art and I go out

24:40

now and look for pigeons

24:43

and I tell them

24:44

what we've been saying. Okay

24:47

so from Mary Poppins which is 1964

24:51

where Jane Darwell plays the character it's

24:53

called The Bird Woman and

24:56

The Bird Woman sings the song about feed the birds.

24:59

It's a positive presentation of pigeons because

25:02

she's inviting people to help the pigeons

25:04

to feed the pigeons but on the other hand the pigeons

25:07

are treated as pitiable creatures they

25:09

can't look after themselves they need intervention

25:12

and she is a social outcast that's very clear

25:14

like she's both feared and also overcoming

25:17

the fear you go towards. Home Alone 2 Brenda

25:19

Fricker plays the character of I think

25:22

the pigeon lady. Now she feeds the pigeons off

25:24

that's what she does she's covered in pigeons when I first see her

25:27

and Kevin is terrified of her. And the pigeons

25:29

never get

25:29

redeemed she gets redeemed. The pigeons don't.

25:32

We still think well

25:34

she's mad because she likes the pigeons and she wants

25:36

to feed the pigeons. Oh there's some pigeons, the ducks

25:38

seem to be coming up against the pigeons. I

25:41

just want no interest. When

25:44

I find pigeons represented in human art

25:46

I ask three questions. The first, what

25:48

is this art using pigeons to say?

25:51

To film Anguish which is originally

25:53

Angustia there's a pigeon right at the

25:55

beginning of it who's kept in a cage by

25:58

the mother and father. There What

26:01

is this art saying about pigeons?

26:04

A pigeon sat on a branch contemplating existence. That

26:06

opens with dead pigeons stuffed on a branch,

26:08

sadly. But there's this kind of idea, there's

26:10

lots of static film shots and it kind of feels like

26:13

you're seeing things through maybe a pigeon

26:15

sat on a branch's point of view. So

26:18

could lead to identification with a pigeon. And

26:21

finally,

26:23

what is this art saying to pigeons?

26:26

That is,

26:27

what does this tell pigeons about

26:29

us?

26:30

I might tell this pigeon about memes. Actually,

26:34

I think there's hope in memes. I'll

26:36

send a pigeon meme this morning, which

26:38

I can show to the pigeon. There we are. See,

26:42

I think it's a screen

26:44

grab from TikTok, very close up on

26:46

somebody's face. And

26:49

over it is written, My Roman Empire

26:51

is that pigeons were domesticated by humans 10,000 years

26:53

ago, only to be suddenly abandoned

26:56

and deemed dirty and now can barely build

26:58

their own nests because they don't know how and

27:00

live around humans because that's all they know. The

27:03

Roman Empire thing, that's quite hard to explain. There's

27:06

basically a meme being going round of men being

27:08

asked by their wives, how often do you think about

27:11

the Roman Empire and the men saying every day? I

27:13

don't know how that became the whole thing, but it is a whole thing. So

27:16

now my Roman Empire has become a shorthand for

27:18

my obsession with something, which

27:20

is pigeons in this case. I found out

27:22

recently that humans domesticated pigeons

27:25

between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago, and

27:28

then for some reason or other,

27:30

we decided we didn't like them anymore.

27:32

We threw them out.

27:33

The pigeons you see on the street, they're feral

27:35

domesticated pigeons.

27:37

We took them in,

27:39

we earned their trust, and

27:41

then we betrayed it. It's just sort of walking

27:44

away. That is... Oh,

27:47

it's turning round. Is this feedback? It's

27:50

hard to load.

27:52

Is it coming to walk? Yeah,

27:54

this is the problem.

27:55

I can't really read the pigeons'

27:57

body language enough to know what the feedback is. I

28:03

don't think that looks like I'm being pretty

28:04

visited. I'm not

28:06

being very strong, Pigeon. I'm

28:10

kind of ambivalent. I

28:14

have a lot of things to do for Pigeon, but if

28:16

the Pigeons are still listening after that documentary,

28:18

I would like to say, if you continue

28:20

to nest in the gables above my daughter's

28:23

bedroom window, I will have to

28:25

try to get the pest control man again, and he

28:27

will probably bottle up

28:30

the gable, you'll fly

28:32

to next door, and then

28:34

you'll just come back and somehow get in again. So

28:37

let that threat terrify

28:40

you.

28:48

Thank you for listening to this

28:50

creature feature. I

28:53

trust you are not too scared to

28:55

sleep, quake

28:58

in your boots. And

29:00

if you enjoy today's podcast,

29:03

you can find many more programs

29:06

to terrify and delight

29:08

in equal measure at bbc.co.uk,

29:12

for its last radio

29:15

four, or

29:17

on the BBC

29:18

sounds of

29:20

Spooks app.

29:26

About 2.30 in the

29:28

morning, and every

29:30

time in that

29:31

moment of waking, I would see the man standing

29:33

in the corner. In

29:36

here, uncanny, fear

29:39

free, you were just walking, non-responsive

29:42

without talking, without blinking, it

29:44

seemed like something interesting.

29:48

Terrifying real life encounters

29:50

with the supernatural. What

29:52

I saw in that house frightens

29:54

me, and I wish I'd never seen

29:56

it. Listen on BBC

29:59

sounds.

29:59

if you dare.

30:31

Sign up for a 30-day free trial with

30:33

promo code BBC23. Brilliant

30:36

TV awaits.