Skeptoid #999: Day of the Medieval Dead
July 29, 2025
Key Takeaways
- William of Newborough, a 12th-century monk, documented accounts of walking corpses, which modern analysis suggests may be explained by natural post-mortem phenomena, sleep paralysis, and folklore influenced by societal anxieties and beliefs.
- William of Newborough’s rational approach to history, despite his inclusion of supernatural accounts, can be understood as a reaction to the disorder of his time and the prevailing intellectual framework that distinguished between natural wonders (mirabilia) and supernatural interventions (miracula).
- The 12th century in England was a period of significant intellectual and societal change, marked by a ‘mini-Renaissance’ that saw the reintroduction of classical learning and the beginnings of scientific thought, influencing how events and beliefs were interpreted.
Segments
The York Revenant Account (00:03:32)
- Key Takeaway: The first account of a revenant, the ‘Ghost of Anant,’ likely stems from a man’s death after discovering his wife’s infidelity, with his subsequent post-mortem activity and the town’s plague being explained by natural decomposition and societal fear.
- Summary: The podcast details the first of William’s stories about a revenant from York, describing the man’s life, death, and the subsequent ‘walking corpse’ phenomenon, which is then analyzed through the lens of Paul Barber’s research on post-mortem changes and burial practices.
The Buckingham Revenant and Sleep Paralysis (00:07:09)
- Key Takeaway: The story of the Buckingham revenant, where a deceased man allegedly visited his wife, is likely an interpretation of sleep paralysis, a common neurological phenomenon that can cause sensations of immobility and a perceived presence.
- Summary: This segment discusses William’s second account from Buckingham, linking the experience of the widow to sleep paralysis, explaining its symptoms, and how it has historically contributed to folklore about supernatural visitations.
12th Century Worldview and Beliefs (00:13:30)
- Key Takeaway: William of Newborough’s inclusion of moral lapses in his revenant stories reflects a 12th-century worldview where societal order and loyalty were paramount, and the intellectual framework distinguished between natural phenomena and divine intervention.
- Summary: The discussion shifts to understanding William’s broader context, including the social and political landscape of 12th-century England, the distinction between ‘miracula’ and ‘mirabilia,’ and the intellectual developments of the era that shaped how people perceived and recorded events.
Debug Information
Processing Details
- VTT File: Skeptoid_MedievalZombies_Ep999.vtt
- Processing Time: September 11, 2025 at 02:36 PM
- Total Chunks: 1
- Transcript Length: 19,889 characters
- Caption Count: 160 captions
Prompts Used
Prompt 1: Context Setup
You are an expert data extractor tasked with analyzing a podcast transcript.
I will provide you with part 1 of 1 from a podcast transcript.
I will then ask you to extract different types of information from this content in subsequent messages. Please confirm you have received and understood the transcript content.
Transcript section:
[00:00:03.360 --> 00:00:12.880] William Parvus, alternatively known as William of Newborough, was a monk who lived in Yorkshire in northern England in the 12th century.
[00:00:12.880 --> 00:00:24.160] We remember him today because he wrote a key chronicle called The History of English Affairs about events in England between 1066 CE and 1198.
[00:00:24.160 --> 00:00:29.280] Historians particularly like him for his rational and fact-based writing.
[00:00:29.280 --> 00:00:33.840] William himself criticized other people whose accounts stretched reality.
[00:00:33.840 --> 00:00:43.120] For example, he complained that Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote the Arthurian legends down, lied shamelessly and impudently.
[00:00:43.440 --> 00:00:52.240] So, why then did William's history include allegedly true accounts of walking corpses?
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[00:01:59.680 --> 00:02:03.000] Death Valley is calling.
[00:02:03.320 --> 00:02:05.800] Are you ready to answer?
[00:02:09.960 --> 00:02:11.880] You're listening to Skeptoid.
[00:02:11.880 --> 00:02:17.480] I'm Deborah Hyde, guest hosting for Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
[00:02:17.800 --> 00:02:20.600] Day of the Medieval Dead.
[00:02:21.560 --> 00:02:34.920] Welcome to the show that separates fact from fiction, science from pseudoscience, real history from fake history, and helps us all make better life decisions by knowing what's real and what's not.
[00:02:39.080 --> 00:02:57.720] It would not be easy to believe that the corpses of the dead should sally from their graves and should wander about to the terror or destruction of the living and again return to the tomb which of their own accord spontaneously opened to receive them.
[00:02:58.360 --> 00:03:09.480] Did not frequent examples occurring in our own times suffice to establish the fact to the truth, of which there is abundant testimony?
[00:03:11.080 --> 00:03:19.000] I like a good zombie movie as much as the next guy or gal, but William of Newborough never did meet Sam Raimi.
[00:03:19.000 --> 00:03:22.200] So where did these undead come from?
[00:03:22.200 --> 00:03:27.800] And why did William think that the stories were real enough to write down as fact?
[00:03:28.120 --> 00:03:32.200] Well, there are four of them, and they all contain clues.
[00:03:32.840 --> 00:03:44.120] The first account called The Ghost of Anant was transmitted by an older monk and eyewitness, who William said lived in honor and authority in those parts.
[00:03:45.600 --> 00:04:03.200] A certain man of evil conduct, flying through fear of his enemies or the law, out of the province of York, took up his new abode there and labored hard to increase rather than correct his own evil propensities.
[00:04:03.200 --> 00:04:10.320] He married a wife to his own ruin, and he was vexed with the spirit of jealousy.
[00:04:11.280 --> 00:04:21.520] The man pretended to leave town, but actually took up position in one of the roof beams in his marital bedroom to see if his wife had a lover.
[00:04:21.840 --> 00:04:28.880] When he saw that she did, he was so shocked that he fell off the beam and onto the floor.
[00:04:29.200 --> 00:04:36.000] The lover ran away, and the wife took the initiative, saying that her husband's fall had confused him.
[00:04:36.320 --> 00:04:46.720] Seriously injured, he took to his deathbed, at which point William of Newborough's old monk friend arrived and urged him to make his last confession.
[00:04:47.040 --> 00:04:52.640] The evil man was so preoccupied with what he'd seen that he didn't.
[00:04:52.640 --> 00:04:55.760] He died soon afterwards.
[00:04:56.080 --> 00:04:59.040] But that wasn't the end of the matter.
[00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:07.200] This awful man started to emerge from his grave at night and wander around the town pursued by barking dogs.
[00:05:07.200 --> 00:05:10.800] People stayed in their houses in case they were attacked by him.
[00:05:10.800 --> 00:05:23.600] It wasn't long before the whole area was affected by what William calls the vagaries of this foul carcass, that the population suffered from disease and started to die off.
[00:05:24.240 --> 00:05:30.200] Two young men who'd lost their father to the contagion took matters into their own hands.
[00:05:29.520 --> 00:05:34.360] They went to the awful man's grave and started to dig.
[00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:41.880] Now, William especially mentions that they didn't dig anywhere near as deeply as they thought they'd have to to get to the burial.
[00:05:41.880 --> 00:05:46.760] And when they found it, they were surprised at the body's condition.
[00:05:47.400 --> 00:05:58.120] They laid bare the corpse, swollen to an enormous corpulence, with its countenance beyond measure turgid and suffused with blood.
[00:05:58.120 --> 00:06:12.280] They inflicted a wound upon the senseless carcass, out of which incontinently flowed such a stream of blood that it might have been taken for a leech, filled with the blood of many persons.
[00:06:13.880 --> 00:06:19.800] The dreadful being was burned to ashes, and the plague stopped.
[00:06:21.400 --> 00:06:39.240] In 1988, a man named Paul Barber made an interesting study of Eastern European folklore called Vampires, Burial and Death, in which he pointed out that a great many perfectly normal post-mortem changes could be mistaken for life, and often were.
[00:06:39.560 --> 00:06:46.280] One of them was bloating, which can paradoxically make a person look a little healthier than they had been in life.
[00:06:46.280 --> 00:06:51.720] Another is decomposition products, which can look like fresh blood, even though they're not.
[00:06:52.040 --> 00:07:01.640] Barber also points out that people have a hard time digging deep graves in the winter, and being closer to the surface affects decomposition.
[00:07:01.960 --> 00:07:05.240] It's a great book, and I recommend it.
[00:07:05.240 --> 00:07:08.600] Just make sure you've eaten your dinner first.
[00:07:09.240 --> 00:07:15.280] The next of William's stories was about a man from a town called Buckingham.
[00:07:14.440 --> 00:07:21.200] A certain man died and was laid in the tomb.
[00:07:21.520 --> 00:07:36.800] On the following night, however, having entered the bed where his wife was reposing, he not only terrified her on awakening, but nearly crushed her by the insupportable weight of his body.
[00:07:38.720 --> 00:07:41.200] Does anybody recognize this?
[00:07:41.200 --> 00:07:46.720] Surveys suggest that about 25% of you will have experienced something like it.
[00:07:47.040 --> 00:07:54.080] Sleep paralysis is a very common sleep disturbance where waking and sleep phenomena collide.
[00:07:54.080 --> 00:08:03.200] Folklorist David Hufford has studied it in detail and lists the primary signs as feeling that you are awake while strangely being immobile.
[00:08:03.200 --> 00:08:05.840] You can perceive your setting correctly.
[00:08:05.840 --> 00:08:07.920] This isn't some dreamscape.
[00:08:07.920 --> 00:08:11.600] And you may have a deep feeling of dread.
[00:08:11.920 --> 00:08:20.640] Secondary signs include the sensation of a presence and a feeling of pressure on the chest, which can lead to a feeling of suffocation.
[00:08:21.280 --> 00:08:30.400] Sleep paralysis has contributed to a huge amount of folklore and is now understood in neurological rather than supernatural terms.
[00:08:30.400 --> 00:08:38.880] But without a biological explanation, you can see why so many people in the past thought they had been visited by demons or the dead.
[00:08:38.880 --> 00:08:46.880] The townspeople in William of Newborough's account heard about the widow's encounter and started to experience the same thing themselves.
[00:08:47.200 --> 00:08:49.440] It's not too surprising.
[00:08:49.600 --> 00:08:59.440] Sleep paralysis is strongly associated with disrupted sleep schedules, the kind you get when you're worried that a renant is going to try and choke you.
[00:09:00.440 --> 00:09:14.360] Just like the York Revenant, the locals wanted to exhume and burn the Buckingham man's body, but a bishop thought that was very improper, so he wrote a letter of absolution and it was placed on the corpse in the tomb.
[00:09:14.360 --> 00:09:16.600] The menace stopped.
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[00:10:00.840 --> 00:10:06.200] William's third account happened in a town called Berwick, now in the north of England.
[00:10:06.200 --> 00:10:11.240] Just like in the first account, this Revenant was a man who was morally deficient.
[00:10:11.240 --> 00:10:14.600] William calls him the Great Rogue.
[00:10:15.240 --> 00:10:34.200] After his death, he sallied forth out of his grave by night and was borne hither and thither, pursued by a pack of dogs with loud barkings, thus striking great terror into the neighbors and returning to his tomb before daylight.
[00:10:34.200 --> 00:10:48.720] The town procured ten young men, renowned for boldness, who were to dig up the horrible carcass, and having cut it limb from limb, reduce it to food and fuel for the flames.
[00:10:52.160 --> 00:10:56.240] Now that the returning corpse was ashes, the visits stopped.
[00:10:56.240 --> 00:10:59.360] But then a great plague swept through the town.
[00:10:59.360 --> 00:11:03.680] William draws a causal relationship between the cremation and the plague.
[00:11:03.680 --> 00:11:12.800] He said the same disease didn't rage as much elsewhere, which carries the clear implication that it did occur elsewhere.
[00:11:12.800 --> 00:11:19.120] Contagious death is a common theme the world over in folklore to do with supernatural predators.
[00:11:19.760 --> 00:11:26.080] William's fourth revenant was a clergyman to a noble lady in Melrose, in Scotland.
[00:11:27.360 --> 00:11:50.720] This man, having little respect for the sacred order to which he belonged, was excessively secular in his pursuits and so addicted to the vanity of the chase as to be designated by many by the infamous title of Hundeprest or the Dog Priest.
[00:11:53.920 --> 00:12:04.400] So the priest was a keen huntsman, and William is clear to draw a link between this frivolous pastime and the supernatural punishment which awaited him in death.
[00:12:04.400 --> 00:12:16.080] He rose from the grave every night, terrified his colleagues in the monastery, and also went to his former employer, making loud groans and horrible murmurs around her bedchamber.
[00:12:16.400 --> 00:12:26.880] Four men waited in the cemetery one night to see if they could intercept the horrible walking corpse, but when nothing happened by midnight, only one of them stayed.
[00:12:26.880 --> 00:12:37.960] The inevitable clash between the walking dead and the one brave man resulted in an axe wound to the corpse, which was discovered when it was exhumed the next day.
[00:12:38.920 --> 00:12:43.000] So, what are we to make of these four accounts?
[00:12:43.320 --> 00:12:48.920] William wasn't gullible, but he did insist that these stories were true.
[00:12:49.240 --> 00:12:59.320] The discovery of a wound on somebody later is such a frequent narrative device, a prover, if you like, that I think it's clearly been slipped in after the fact.
[00:12:59.320 --> 00:13:06.600] It's fair to say that all of these reports have been optimised into easily transmissible forms.
[00:13:07.560 --> 00:13:15.160] William also placed a great deal of weight on how frequently the stories were told and the social status of the people who told them.
[00:13:15.160 --> 00:13:24.440] But these days we know that even the most educated and important people suffer from the same cognitive failings as the rest of us.
[00:13:24.760 --> 00:13:30.600] And all of William's stories involve an element of moral lapse.
[00:13:30.920 --> 00:13:35.400] In the first account, the evil man had left his lord and moved to another.
[00:13:35.720 --> 00:13:38.840] Twelfth century England wasn't a capitalist culture.
[00:13:38.840 --> 00:13:42.200] You didn't just move to a better boss.
[00:13:42.200 --> 00:13:50.360] William was conveying that the man lacked character by doing something as immoral as leaving the group to whom he owed loyalty.
[00:13:50.360 --> 00:13:55.000] These days we could so easily miss this important part of the account.
[00:13:55.640 --> 00:14:04.360] Anthropologists will tell you how hard it is to leave your own suppositions, your own mental shortcuts, when you're observing a different place.
[00:14:04.680 --> 00:14:08.280] History is a different place.
[00:14:08.920 --> 00:14:13.880] William lived through an English Civil War that is now known as the Anarchy.
[00:14:13.880 --> 00:14:20.720] It lasted a couple of decades, was incredibly brutal, and affected all sections of society.
[00:14:21.040 --> 00:14:30.080] Many historians have suggested that William's structured and traditional values were a reaction against the disorder he saw around him.
[00:14:31.040 --> 00:14:35.840] There's another strange part of 12th-century England that might not occur to us.
[00:14:35.840 --> 00:14:39.760] It was completely divided along class lines.
[00:14:39.760 --> 00:14:44.560] William the Conqueror had established a new aristocracy decades prior.
[00:14:44.560 --> 00:14:52.720] They came from northern France, had a different culture, and spoke a different language from the peasant class they now ruled.
[00:14:53.040 --> 00:14:56.800] Our written records come from that upper class.
[00:14:56.800 --> 00:15:07.360] But the lower classes may well have thought of the returning dead as corpses rather than ghosts, a leftover from Scandinavian belief in creatures called dragus.
[00:15:07.360 --> 00:15:13.520] Dragurs are frequently connected with Bronze Age burial mounds, and England isn't short of those.
[00:15:14.480 --> 00:15:22.080] We could also ask ourselves whether William had the intellectual framework to tell the difference between myth and reality.
[00:15:22.080 --> 00:15:25.440] How did people in the 12th century think?
[00:15:26.400 --> 00:15:32.800] Well, they did know the difference between what they would call miracula and mirabilia.
[00:15:32.800 --> 00:15:40.240] Miracula were wonders caused by a supernatural agent like God, a violation of the normal rules.
[00:15:40.240 --> 00:15:48.160] Mirabilia were wonders, things that people might not understand, but were nonetheless natural.
[00:15:48.800 --> 00:15:51.440] The 12th century was an interesting time.
[00:15:51.440 --> 00:15:54.400] It's often called a mini-Renaissance.
[00:15:54.400 --> 00:15:59.280] The Crusades had reconnected northwestern Europe with the Byzantine and Muslim worlds.
[00:15:59.280 --> 00:16:04.200] The learning from classical times that had disappeared for a few centuries was back.
[00:16:04.520 --> 00:16:08.360] Arabic developments in science and maths were now available.
[00:16:08.360 --> 00:16:14.440] That included Arabic numerals with that vital concept, zero, from India.
[00:16:14.440 --> 00:16:18.280] There could never have been good science without them.
[00:16:18.280 --> 00:16:22.760] Just try doing large calculations in Roman numerals.
[00:16:23.400 --> 00:16:27.080] Society was centralizing and stratisfying.
[00:16:27.080 --> 00:16:34.200] They could now afford to establish a specialist class of people who could do nothing but study and teach.
[00:16:34.840 --> 00:16:42.200] The hard work of precisely differentiating between religion, magic, and science had started.
[00:16:42.200 --> 00:16:45.800] The philosophy of the modern age had begun.
[00:16:45.800 --> 00:16:49.960] And that is where William of Newborough's undead stories live.
[00:16:50.280 --> 00:17:03.720] They're a combination of reasonable misunderstandings of physical phenomena, popular folklore, narrative embellishments, and assumptions that anyone in his era would have made about the way the world naturally works.
[00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:11.240] We continue with more on the Walking Dead in the ad-free and extended premium feed.
[00:17:11.240 --> 00:17:18.200] To access it, become a supporter at skeptoid.com forward slash go premium.
[00:17:22.600 --> 00:17:25.560] This has been guest host, Deborah Hyde.
[00:17:25.560 --> 00:17:32.520] My YouTube channel is Deborah Hyde Folklore, where you can follow my investigations into history, folklore, and belief.
[00:17:32.840 --> 00:17:41.800] The part of William of Newborough was played by Owen Statton, who you can find at WelshStoryteller.com and Time Between Times podcast.
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Prompt 2: Key Takeaways
Now please extract the key takeaways from the transcript content I provided.
Extract the most important key takeaways from this part of the conversation. Use a single sentence statement (the key takeaway) rather than milquetoast descriptions like "the hosts discuss...".
Limit the key takeaways to a maximum of 3. The key takeaways should be insightful and knowledge-additive.
IMPORTANT: Return ONLY valid JSON, no explanations or markdown. Ensure:
- All strings are properly quoted and escaped
- No trailing commas
- All braces and brackets are balanced
Format: {"key_takeaways": ["takeaway 1", "takeaway 2"]}
Prompt 3: Segments
Now identify 2-4 distinct topical segments from this part of the conversation.
For each segment, identify:
- Descriptive title (3-6 words)
- START timestamp when this topic begins (HH:MM:SS format)
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Most important Key takeaway from that segment. Key takeaway must be specific and knowledge-additive.
- Brief summary of the discussion
IMPORTANT: The timestamp should mark when the topic/segment STARTS, not a range. Look for topic transitions and conversation shifts.
Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted, no trailing commas:
{
"segments": [
{
"segment_title": "Topic Discussion",
"timestamp": "01:15:30",
"key_takeaway": "main point from this segment",
"segment_summary": "brief description of what was discussed"
}
]
}
Timestamp format: HH:MM:SS (e.g., 00:05:30, 01:22:45) marking the START of each segment.
Prompt 4: Media Mentions
Now scan the transcript content I provided for ACTUAL mentions of specific media titles:
Find explicit mentions of:
- Books (with specific titles)
- Movies (with specific titles)
- TV Shows (with specific titles)
- Music/Songs (with specific titles)
DO NOT include:
- Websites, URLs, or web services
- Other podcasts or podcast names
IMPORTANT:
- Only include items explicitly mentioned by name. Do not invent titles.
- Valid categories are: "Book", "Movie", "TV Show", "Music"
- Include the exact phrase where each item was mentioned
- Find the nearest proximate timestamp where it appears in the conversation
- THE TIMESTAMP OF THE MEDIA MENTION IS IMPORTANT - DO NOT INVENT TIMESTAMPS AND DO NOT MISATTRIBUTE TIMESTAMPS
- Double check that the timestamp is accurate - a timestamp will NEVER be greater than the total length of the audio
- Timestamps are given as ranges, e.g. 01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:46.720. Use the EARLIER of the 2 timestamps in the range.
Return ONLY valid JSON. Ensure all strings are properly quoted and escaped, no trailing commas:
{
"media_mentions": [
{
"title": "Exact Title as Mentioned",
"category": "Book",
"author_artist": "N/A",
"context": "Brief context of why it was mentioned",
"context_phrase": "The exact sentence or phrase where it was mentioned",
"timestamp": "estimated time like 01:15:30"
}
]
}
If no media is mentioned, return: {"media_mentions": []}
Full Transcript
[00:00:03.360 --> 00:00:12.880] William Parvus, alternatively known as William of Newborough, was a monk who lived in Yorkshire in northern England in the 12th century.
[00:00:12.880 --> 00:00:24.160] We remember him today because he wrote a key chronicle called The History of English Affairs about events in England between 1066 CE and 1198.
[00:00:24.160 --> 00:00:29.280] Historians particularly like him for his rational and fact-based writing.
[00:00:29.280 --> 00:00:33.840] William himself criticized other people whose accounts stretched reality.
[00:00:33.840 --> 00:00:43.120] For example, he complained that Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote the Arthurian legends down, lied shamelessly and impudently.
[00:00:43.440 --> 00:00:52.240] So, why then did William's history include allegedly true accounts of walking corpses?
[00:00:58.960 --> 00:01:03.760] Join us for an exclusive three-day exploration of historic Death Valley.
[00:01:03.760 --> 00:01:11.040] From October 21st to 24th, we'll take you from Las Vegas deep into the heart of this rugged, otherworldly landscape.
[00:01:11.040 --> 00:01:14.880] All transportation, lodging, and meals are included.
[00:01:14.880 --> 00:01:17.600] Your guides will be Skeptoid's Brian Dunning.
[00:01:17.600 --> 00:01:19.120] Hey, I know that guy, he's me.
[00:01:19.440 --> 00:01:22.720] And Death Valley expert, geologist Andrew Dunning.
[00:01:22.720 --> 00:01:31.520] Together, they'll lead you to world-famous sites like Badwater Basin and the Artist's Palate, plus hidden gems that you won't find in any guidebook.
[00:01:31.520 --> 00:01:36.080] This year's trip features all new destinations with minimal overlap from last year.
[00:01:36.080 --> 00:01:41.280] And here's a bonus: Skepticamp Las Vegas begins the same evening we return to Las Vegas.
[00:01:41.280 --> 00:01:46.480] Make it a two-for-one trip and stick around to hear me talk about my visit to Area 51.
[00:01:46.480 --> 00:01:49.920] Details at skeptoid.com/slash events.
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[00:01:51.760 --> 00:01:53.200] Secure yours today.
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[00:01:59.680 --> 00:02:03.000] Death Valley is calling.
[00:02:03.320 --> 00:02:05.800] Are you ready to answer?
[00:02:09.960 --> 00:02:11.880] You're listening to Skeptoid.
[00:02:11.880 --> 00:02:17.480] I'm Deborah Hyde, guest hosting for Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.
[00:02:17.800 --> 00:02:20.600] Day of the Medieval Dead.
[00:02:21.560 --> 00:02:34.920] Welcome to the show that separates fact from fiction, science from pseudoscience, real history from fake history, and helps us all make better life decisions by knowing what's real and what's not.
[00:02:39.080 --> 00:02:57.720] It would not be easy to believe that the corpses of the dead should sally from their graves and should wander about to the terror or destruction of the living and again return to the tomb which of their own accord spontaneously opened to receive them.
[00:02:58.360 --> 00:03:09.480] Did not frequent examples occurring in our own times suffice to establish the fact to the truth, of which there is abundant testimony?
[00:03:11.080 --> 00:03:19.000] I like a good zombie movie as much as the next guy or gal, but William of Newborough never did meet Sam Raimi.
[00:03:19.000 --> 00:03:22.200] So where did these undead come from?
[00:03:22.200 --> 00:03:27.800] And why did William think that the stories were real enough to write down as fact?
[00:03:28.120 --> 00:03:32.200] Well, there are four of them, and they all contain clues.
[00:03:32.840 --> 00:03:44.120] The first account called The Ghost of Anant was transmitted by an older monk and eyewitness, who William said lived in honor and authority in those parts.
[00:03:45.600 --> 00:04:03.200] A certain man of evil conduct, flying through fear of his enemies or the law, out of the province of York, took up his new abode there and labored hard to increase rather than correct his own evil propensities.
[00:04:03.200 --> 00:04:10.320] He married a wife to his own ruin, and he was vexed with the spirit of jealousy.
[00:04:11.280 --> 00:04:21.520] The man pretended to leave town, but actually took up position in one of the roof beams in his marital bedroom to see if his wife had a lover.
[00:04:21.840 --> 00:04:28.880] When he saw that she did, he was so shocked that he fell off the beam and onto the floor.
[00:04:29.200 --> 00:04:36.000] The lover ran away, and the wife took the initiative, saying that her husband's fall had confused him.
[00:04:36.320 --> 00:04:46.720] Seriously injured, he took to his deathbed, at which point William of Newborough's old monk friend arrived and urged him to make his last confession.
[00:04:47.040 --> 00:04:52.640] The evil man was so preoccupied with what he'd seen that he didn't.
[00:04:52.640 --> 00:04:55.760] He died soon afterwards.
[00:04:56.080 --> 00:04:59.040] But that wasn't the end of the matter.
[00:05:00.000 --> 00:05:07.200] This awful man started to emerge from his grave at night and wander around the town pursued by barking dogs.
[00:05:07.200 --> 00:05:10.800] People stayed in their houses in case they were attacked by him.
[00:05:10.800 --> 00:05:23.600] It wasn't long before the whole area was affected by what William calls the vagaries of this foul carcass, that the population suffered from disease and started to die off.
[00:05:24.240 --> 00:05:30.200] Two young men who'd lost their father to the contagion took matters into their own hands.
[00:05:29.520 --> 00:05:34.360] They went to the awful man's grave and started to dig.
[00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:41.880] Now, William especially mentions that they didn't dig anywhere near as deeply as they thought they'd have to to get to the burial.
[00:05:41.880 --> 00:05:46.760] And when they found it, they were surprised at the body's condition.
[00:05:47.400 --> 00:05:58.120] They laid bare the corpse, swollen to an enormous corpulence, with its countenance beyond measure turgid and suffused with blood.
[00:05:58.120 --> 00:06:12.280] They inflicted a wound upon the senseless carcass, out of which incontinently flowed such a stream of blood that it might have been taken for a leech, filled with the blood of many persons.
[00:06:13.880 --> 00:06:19.800] The dreadful being was burned to ashes, and the plague stopped.
[00:06:21.400 --> 00:06:39.240] In 1988, a man named Paul Barber made an interesting study of Eastern European folklore called Vampires, Burial and Death, in which he pointed out that a great many perfectly normal post-mortem changes could be mistaken for life, and often were.
[00:06:39.560 --> 00:06:46.280] One of them was bloating, which can paradoxically make a person look a little healthier than they had been in life.
[00:06:46.280 --> 00:06:51.720] Another is decomposition products, which can look like fresh blood, even though they're not.
[00:06:52.040 --> 00:07:01.640] Barber also points out that people have a hard time digging deep graves in the winter, and being closer to the surface affects decomposition.
[00:07:01.960 --> 00:07:05.240] It's a great book, and I recommend it.
[00:07:05.240 --> 00:07:08.600] Just make sure you've eaten your dinner first.
[00:07:09.240 --> 00:07:15.280] The next of William's stories was about a man from a town called Buckingham.
[00:07:14.440 --> 00:07:21.200] A certain man died and was laid in the tomb.
[00:07:21.520 --> 00:07:36.800] On the following night, however, having entered the bed where his wife was reposing, he not only terrified her on awakening, but nearly crushed her by the insupportable weight of his body.
[00:07:38.720 --> 00:07:41.200] Does anybody recognize this?
[00:07:41.200 --> 00:07:46.720] Surveys suggest that about 25% of you will have experienced something like it.
[00:07:47.040 --> 00:07:54.080] Sleep paralysis is a very common sleep disturbance where waking and sleep phenomena collide.
[00:07:54.080 --> 00:08:03.200] Folklorist David Hufford has studied it in detail and lists the primary signs as feeling that you are awake while strangely being immobile.
[00:08:03.200 --> 00:08:05.840] You can perceive your setting correctly.
[00:08:05.840 --> 00:08:07.920] This isn't some dreamscape.
[00:08:07.920 --> 00:08:11.600] And you may have a deep feeling of dread.
[00:08:11.920 --> 00:08:20.640] Secondary signs include the sensation of a presence and a feeling of pressure on the chest, which can lead to a feeling of suffocation.
[00:08:21.280 --> 00:08:30.400] Sleep paralysis has contributed to a huge amount of folklore and is now understood in neurological rather than supernatural terms.
[00:08:30.400 --> 00:08:38.880] But without a biological explanation, you can see why so many people in the past thought they had been visited by demons or the dead.
[00:08:38.880 --> 00:08:46.880] The townspeople in William of Newborough's account heard about the widow's encounter and started to experience the same thing themselves.
[00:08:47.200 --> 00:08:49.440] It's not too surprising.
[00:08:49.600 --> 00:08:59.440] Sleep paralysis is strongly associated with disrupted sleep schedules, the kind you get when you're worried that a renant is going to try and choke you.
[00:09:00.440 --> 00:09:14.360] Just like the York Revenant, the locals wanted to exhume and burn the Buckingham man's body, but a bishop thought that was very improper, so he wrote a letter of absolution and it was placed on the corpse in the tomb.
[00:09:14.360 --> 00:09:16.600] The menace stopped.
[00:09:19.800 --> 00:09:22.760] Fall is here, and Skeptoid has you covered.
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[00:10:00.840 --> 00:10:06.200] William's third account happened in a town called Berwick, now in the north of England.
[00:10:06.200 --> 00:10:11.240] Just like in the first account, this Revenant was a man who was morally deficient.
[00:10:11.240 --> 00:10:14.600] William calls him the Great Rogue.
[00:10:15.240 --> 00:10:34.200] After his death, he sallied forth out of his grave by night and was borne hither and thither, pursued by a pack of dogs with loud barkings, thus striking great terror into the neighbors and returning to his tomb before daylight.
[00:10:34.200 --> 00:10:48.720] The town procured ten young men, renowned for boldness, who were to dig up the horrible carcass, and having cut it limb from limb, reduce it to food and fuel for the flames.
[00:10:52.160 --> 00:10:56.240] Now that the returning corpse was ashes, the visits stopped.
[00:10:56.240 --> 00:10:59.360] But then a great plague swept through the town.
[00:10:59.360 --> 00:11:03.680] William draws a causal relationship between the cremation and the plague.
[00:11:03.680 --> 00:11:12.800] He said the same disease didn't rage as much elsewhere, which carries the clear implication that it did occur elsewhere.
[00:11:12.800 --> 00:11:19.120] Contagious death is a common theme the world over in folklore to do with supernatural predators.
[00:11:19.760 --> 00:11:26.080] William's fourth revenant was a clergyman to a noble lady in Melrose, in Scotland.
[00:11:27.360 --> 00:11:50.720] This man, having little respect for the sacred order to which he belonged, was excessively secular in his pursuits and so addicted to the vanity of the chase as to be designated by many by the infamous title of Hundeprest or the Dog Priest.
[00:11:53.920 --> 00:12:04.400] So the priest was a keen huntsman, and William is clear to draw a link between this frivolous pastime and the supernatural punishment which awaited him in death.
[00:12:04.400 --> 00:12:16.080] He rose from the grave every night, terrified his colleagues in the monastery, and also went to his former employer, making loud groans and horrible murmurs around her bedchamber.
[00:12:16.400 --> 00:12:26.880] Four men waited in the cemetery one night to see if they could intercept the horrible walking corpse, but when nothing happened by midnight, only one of them stayed.
[00:12:26.880 --> 00:12:37.960] The inevitable clash between the walking dead and the one brave man resulted in an axe wound to the corpse, which was discovered when it was exhumed the next day.
[00:12:38.920 --> 00:12:43.000] So, what are we to make of these four accounts?
[00:12:43.320 --> 00:12:48.920] William wasn't gullible, but he did insist that these stories were true.
[00:12:49.240 --> 00:12:59.320] The discovery of a wound on somebody later is such a frequent narrative device, a prover, if you like, that I think it's clearly been slipped in after the fact.
[00:12:59.320 --> 00:13:06.600] It's fair to say that all of these reports have been optimised into easily transmissible forms.
[00:13:07.560 --> 00:13:15.160] William also placed a great deal of weight on how frequently the stories were told and the social status of the people who told them.
[00:13:15.160 --> 00:13:24.440] But these days we know that even the most educated and important people suffer from the same cognitive failings as the rest of us.
[00:13:24.760 --> 00:13:30.600] And all of William's stories involve an element of moral lapse.
[00:13:30.920 --> 00:13:35.400] In the first account, the evil man had left his lord and moved to another.
[00:13:35.720 --> 00:13:38.840] Twelfth century England wasn't a capitalist culture.
[00:13:38.840 --> 00:13:42.200] You didn't just move to a better boss.
[00:13:42.200 --> 00:13:50.360] William was conveying that the man lacked character by doing something as immoral as leaving the group to whom he owed loyalty.
[00:13:50.360 --> 00:13:55.000] These days we could so easily miss this important part of the account.
[00:13:55.640 --> 00:14:04.360] Anthropologists will tell you how hard it is to leave your own suppositions, your own mental shortcuts, when you're observing a different place.
[00:14:04.680 --> 00:14:08.280] History is a different place.
[00:14:08.920 --> 00:14:13.880] William lived through an English Civil War that is now known as the Anarchy.
[00:14:13.880 --> 00:14:20.720] It lasted a couple of decades, was incredibly brutal, and affected all sections of society.
[00:14:21.040 --> 00:14:30.080] Many historians have suggested that William's structured and traditional values were a reaction against the disorder he saw around him.
[00:14:31.040 --> 00:14:35.840] There's another strange part of 12th-century England that might not occur to us.
[00:14:35.840 --> 00:14:39.760] It was completely divided along class lines.
[00:14:39.760 --> 00:14:44.560] William the Conqueror had established a new aristocracy decades prior.
[00:14:44.560 --> 00:14:52.720] They came from northern France, had a different culture, and spoke a different language from the peasant class they now ruled.
[00:14:53.040 --> 00:14:56.800] Our written records come from that upper class.
[00:14:56.800 --> 00:15:07.360] But the lower classes may well have thought of the returning dead as corpses rather than ghosts, a leftover from Scandinavian belief in creatures called dragus.
[00:15:07.360 --> 00:15:13.520] Dragurs are frequently connected with Bronze Age burial mounds, and England isn't short of those.
[00:15:14.480 --> 00:15:22.080] We could also ask ourselves whether William had the intellectual framework to tell the difference between myth and reality.
[00:15:22.080 --> 00:15:25.440] How did people in the 12th century think?
[00:15:26.400 --> 00:15:32.800] Well, they did know the difference between what they would call miracula and mirabilia.
[00:15:32.800 --> 00:15:40.240] Miracula were wonders caused by a supernatural agent like God, a violation of the normal rules.
[00:15:40.240 --> 00:15:48.160] Mirabilia were wonders, things that people might not understand, but were nonetheless natural.
[00:15:48.800 --> 00:15:51.440] The 12th century was an interesting time.
[00:15:51.440 --> 00:15:54.400] It's often called a mini-Renaissance.
[00:15:54.400 --> 00:15:59.280] The Crusades had reconnected northwestern Europe with the Byzantine and Muslim worlds.
[00:15:59.280 --> 00:16:04.200] The learning from classical times that had disappeared for a few centuries was back.
[00:16:04.520 --> 00:16:08.360] Arabic developments in science and maths were now available.
[00:16:08.360 --> 00:16:14.440] That included Arabic numerals with that vital concept, zero, from India.
[00:16:14.440 --> 00:16:18.280] There could never have been good science without them.
[00:16:18.280 --> 00:16:22.760] Just try doing large calculations in Roman numerals.
[00:16:23.400 --> 00:16:27.080] Society was centralizing and stratisfying.
[00:16:27.080 --> 00:16:34.200] They could now afford to establish a specialist class of people who could do nothing but study and teach.
[00:16:34.840 --> 00:16:42.200] The hard work of precisely differentiating between religion, magic, and science had started.
[00:16:42.200 --> 00:16:45.800] The philosophy of the modern age had begun.
[00:16:45.800 --> 00:16:49.960] And that is where William of Newborough's undead stories live.
[00:16:50.280 --> 00:17:03.720] They're a combination of reasonable misunderstandings of physical phenomena, popular folklore, narrative embellishments, and assumptions that anyone in his era would have made about the way the world naturally works.
[00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:11.240] We continue with more on the Walking Dead in the ad-free and extended premium feed.
[00:17:11.240 --> 00:17:18.200] To access it, become a supporter at skeptoid.com forward slash go premium.
[00:17:22.600 --> 00:17:25.560] This has been guest host, Deborah Hyde.
[00:17:25.560 --> 00:17:32.520] My YouTube channel is Deborah Hyde Folklore, where you can follow my investigations into history, folklore, and belief.
[00:17:32.840 --> 00:17:41.800] The part of William of Newborough was played by Owen Statton, who you can find at WelshStoryteller.com and Time Between Times podcast.
[00:17:42.120 --> 00:17:54.400] A great big skeptoid shout-out to our premium supporters, including the Corvallis Nerd Farm, Chad Walker, Joseph Hellman, and Nate and his son, Alexander Eagle.
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