Having said that I’d prioritise posting on r/badhistory, I really haven’t had time to do much there either, and what I’d like to say about the movie ‘Last Voyage of the Demeter’ wouldn’t fit there anyway, as it’s a fictional spin-off of a piece of fiction. However, given that the ship ‘Demeter’ from the novel ‘Dracula’ and its adaptations was directly based upon a real ship, it’s possible to critique the design through an historical lens. I have a bit of spare time, so here goes for the three people who might be interested…
For those who don’t know, Dracula in the novel is conveyed to Britain on board a ‘Russian’ schooner named the ‘Demeter’, sailing from Varna in Bulgaria, which wrecks on Tate Hill Sands at Whitby. Dracula comes ashore in the form of a wolf (as Van Helsing makes clear following the initial identification of the beast by the press as “an immense dog”). One of the disappointments of the 2023 movie adaptation of this portion of the story is that this happens off camera, but that’s not what I’m here to ramble about. I’ve been waiting for a version of this film for decades – as well as various film and TV segments depicting the ship (the best of which for my money are the 1979 Langella version, and the 1992 Oldman), we had several dedicated pieces of media all within a few years – a 2008 BBC radio play, a 2010 limited comic book series (‘Bram Stoker’s Death Ship: The Last Voyage of the Demeter’), a 2012 short film (‘The Final Voyage of the Good Ship Demeter’), and a 2014 book (‘Dracula’s Demeter’). Meanwhile the movie adaptation of the same chapter of Stoker’s novel had already been written back in 2006 – you can read it here. It then entered development hell for the next 15 years (whether or not any of those other projects drew from it as opposed to the original novel, I don’t know). I enjoyed it well enough, and understood that it had to introduce new elements to pad out a few pages into a feature, but it changed too much that was provided by Stoker, and for no reason. That includes the nature of the ship herself. In the novel, in a direct lift from the real ship that she’s based upon (the ‘Dimitri‘ from Narva in Estonia), she’s described as a “schooner” and “a Russian from Varna, and is called the Demeter. She is almost entirely in ballast of silver sand…”. Even the detail of her cargo is taken from the real ship. Incidentally, Stoker made an error here. By changing her home port to ‘Varna’ in Bulgaria, he made her a Bulgarian ship, since Bulgaria was then an autonomous principality (whereas Estonia really was part of the Russian Empire). For more detail we can turn to Stoker’s notes and the coast guard report that he kept a copy of. Dimitri was a two-masted schooner (not, as one newspaper claimed, a brigantine) of 120 tons. This agrees with Stoker’s plausible Demeter crew count of five, plus two hands, a cook, and the captain – eight men in total (plus a stowaway vampire). There’s a wonderful Frank Meadow Sutcliffe photo (best online copy here) of the Dimitri – she’s beaten up and dismasted, but you can clearly see her size because of all the people on and around her. I say all this because whereas the ship in the 1979 movie (you can see the 14 foot studio model of here) was very accurate (as is the topsail schooner in 1922’s legally-different Nosferatu), both the ’92 and 2023 ships are completely wrong. These are three-masted with ‘gaff’ rigged foresails. The Coppola ship is fully gaff-rigged, making her (at her apparent scale) a ‘brig’ (fun fact – this model also appears in ‘Dracula: Dead & Loving It’). The 2023 ship is of a completely different and much larger design with gaff-rigged foremast and fore-aft (schooner) rigged main and mizzen, making her a ‘barquentine’. She also lacks the very large rear deckhouse of Dimitri (although so do all depictions, even the ’79, which has a small one). This change facilitated a much longer (at least 50ft longer?) ship providing more space for Dracula (and the other stowaway) to hide, although it makes the crew of eight (plus a child) less plausible. Had they made the foremast fore-aft rigged, she could have been the ship of the novel (since neither her size nor weight are referenced there). As it is, it was just one more unnecessary divergence from the source material, albeit a minor one compared to the story changes. Still, it could have been worse. The original script referred to her as a “steamer-sailer”…
I’ve taken to posting BSH-style articles on Reddit’s r/badhistory because, frankly, it’s quicker, it gets a LOT more views than this blog (I’m down to maybe a dozen of you per post), and people looking for commentary on historical nonsense are more likely to find it there than relying upon Google’s increasingly terrible indexing to turn up my blog. I’m not closing the blog down by any means and I might crosspost things back here but in the meantime those of you interested should ‘join’ r/badhistory and watch for my posts or check back there occasionally. You could follow me, but I post a lot of other nonsense that’s not relevant so I wouldn’t recommend that.
This is really cool. I never thought we’d get an answer to this one. My friend Rich Fisher at the Vickers Machine Gun Collection & Research Society posted a video on the old chestnut that “the whole nine yards” refers to the length of machine gun belts. As he shows for the Vickers and I’ve covered in general, it really isn’t. Thanks to his comments section I was referred back to the Wikipedia page on the phrase where, it turns out, someone in the last decade found not only a much earlier cite than the 1907 baseball reference but what is likely to be the true origin of the phrase. It comes from an old joke story about a judge who asks someone to make him three shirts out of nine yards of cloth only to receive a giant shirt made from “the whole nine yards”.
Although we’re lacking a “missing link” between the two, the expression must have gained currency from there, perhaps initially as a way to say someone wasn’t up the task and was trying too hard to compensate. If so, it then morphed slightly into the more positive form from 1907 (and indeed to this day), used any time someone gives maximum effort or gives “110 percent”. Alternatively the phrase simply got remembered and repeated (went “viral”, effectively) while the the long and not exactly hilarious joke itself was forgotten. I wanted to share this with readers even though the answer is now prominently displayed on Wiki for all to see because, like me, you probably don’t check on specific Wiki pages very often.
Ever since I covered the interpretation of the Kelvedon Hatch nuclear bunker I’ve been meaning to go back and watch the predictably terrible ‘Most Haunted’ episode filmed there (Series 13 Episode 6 from 2009). If you’re as much of a masochist as me, you can find a copy on YouTube. Here goes!
The introduction as usual has presenter Yvette Fielding outlining the existing ghost stories about the site that they’re ostensibly there to investigate (and usually end up ‘finding’). She mentions “a great figure…seen moving from room to room witnesses indicate that it appears to be the figure of an unusually tall elderly lady…” Odd – neither the RAF nor Home Office were known to recruit elderly women. Fielding tells us of “dark figures” in the sick bay and “the figure of an RAF officer” both claimed to be “re-running” their “daily duties” and “…a scientist who is very unwelcoming to any guests that enter his domain is thought to haunt the site after his untimely death.” There’s no evidence that anyone died in the bunker at any point. When the site was an RAF ROTOR radar bunker staff didn’t live in the bunker, they were bussed there and back each working day. So for an RAF ghost to even make sense he’d have had to have died ‘on the job’. Of course I can’t prove that he didn’t, but we don’t even have a superficial real-world identification here. They haven’t bothered to research whether such a thing ever happened. The scientist and medical staff and/or patient ghosts are also implausible. No-one lived in the bunker during the 1960s UK Warning and Monitoring Organisation use of the site or during government headquarters phase of occupation either. In fact the place was entirely unoccupied (other than the surface guardoom) outside of occasional exercises, so this is even less likely. Presumably this scientist is supposed to have died during an exercise? Again there’s no evidence of that. The sick bay was never used for its intended purpose, unless of course someone got a ‘booboo’ on an exercise but that’s hardly likely to result in a haunting. Of course you can argue that these supposed deaths would be subject to the Official Secrets Act but by the same token this means there’s no way to verify that a corresponding death even happened, much less that people are really seeing/experiencing the resulting ghosts. None of these entities puts in an appearance during the show proper, surprisingly. Finally Fielding mentions “…a negative entity here some believe to be of a demonic source that engulfs unsuspecting people in a cloak of darkness, so frightening is this phantom and its actions some people refuse to enter this area.”
We move to “resident historian” Leslie Smith who blethers briefly about “spies and double-agents” being a “dreadful reality”. Not here they weren’t – these bunkers had nothing to do with the likes of the Secret Intelligence Service. Anyway, she doesn’t seem to be saying that they were – just that the people that worked here were likewise subject to the Official Secrets Act and the associated “weight of knowledge”. This goes nowhere – I assume the implication is that this has resulted in some sort of negative ‘psychic energy’ or something but a) she doesn’t explain this and b) she’s supposed to be the historian, not an accomplice for the psychic medium du jour. She goes on…
“…the deeper you go into the bunker right deep down there is a dark presence there, an evil presence that rises up and makes the area black so even if the lights are on people can’t see and stumble about, it’s said…”
This is presumably the same thing Yvette was on about earlier. Clearly this phenomenon didn’t manifest while they were filming (although they love to turn the lights off themselves of course) and it certainly didn’t when I visited. I’m sure lights have gone out or been turned out while people have visited on ghost hunting trips, but if this was happening regularly I think the bunker’s Tripadvisor reviews would be suffering.
We are then treated to “world renown [sic] medium, lecturer, teacher and bestselling author” Patrick Mathews who gives us some truly vague drivel in the bunker’s sick bay, not about the obvious (but problematic) ghosts of patients or doctors etc but ramblings about the “owner of the land” who he imagines was fighting the purchase or the construction of the bunker. More on that in a moment.
Then comes the most pathetic moment of the whole episode. Fielding asks fake psychic medium Patrick Mathews “what sort of time period” and he pauses, at which point someone off-camera (who apparently can’t remember when the bunker was built either but doesn’t want the editor to have to jump-cut to the answer) whispers “when it was built”! You can hear it here at 03:03:35. To Mathews’ credit he’s remembered the rough answer and is trying to come up with a plausible answer (one from ‘spirit’ rather than the script or guidebook) – not to when the bunker was built – but to when this imaginary protester might have been protesting. He eventually arrives at “19…give or take 50? Okay maybe a little before that because there was talk about…” and trails off there. In reality the ROTOR system was conceived and locations chosen in 1950, not before. The bunker wasn’t built until 1952 so it’s highly unlikely that there was “talk” prior to 1951.
The supposed reason for his protest isn’t the loss of farmland or anything, it’s this pish;
“…this wasn’t worth the sacrifice to save others and disrespect those who have already passed [pointless interjection from Yvette here] because he’s saying, ‘cos I’m going with this and he’s saying about the, the, the, digging, the, the discovery and all of a sudden there were bodies discovered here okay, and it was almost like a hush-hush type thing or like a secret thing or not talked about he says because he’s going like this like “shh” it wasn’t said so when they were building or putting this all together there were burial grounds or something to that or…the burial of what?…either mass graves, a war site of some type of battle that the people were here they must have discovered bones…”
Of course no-one bothers to do any basic research to see if anything archaeological was found on-site and his nonsense is interrupted by a claim from the crew to have heard something spooky.
We then move downstairs to the Government Departments (not ‘Department’ as the CGI map says) and a different ‘spirit’ appears who is apparently “screaming” because his face melted and “burnt badly”. Mathews never reveals where he was going with this in terms of where these bodies might have come from, when or how they died – possibly he’s aware of Matthew Hopkins and witch-trials, although you wouldn’t expect him to have specified a male ghost. Anyway, he continues his storytelling with;
“…right now they’re showing me digging and digging so I’m taking when they built this building or whatever it, you know, the area while they were digging there must have been bodies found because I see digging, I see them holding up a bone right and the bones that they found, the people the spirits were not pleased with the way they were handled okay…”
At this point Ciaran calls Mathews out regarding the first spirit being unhappy that the government was taking his land because of these burials. He suggests that if burials were found the government would have just moved the construction somewhere else. I actually don’t believe that in a 1950s context – the site was carefully chosen and this was well before any requirement to stop work to carry out a full archaeological survey let alone change location. They’d have recovered the remains, they might even have called in an archaeologist but there would have been no requirement to relocate. Still, it makes Mathews think on his feet and come up with a new justification that the owner didn’t want to give up his land but was forced to. This is true on one level, that this was a compulsory purchase. But did the original owner resist? No evidence of that. The current owner is the grandson of the original and nowhere has he ever said that his father resisted, for reasons of ancient burials or otherwise – I’m sure he had his misgivings but it wouldn’t have been the ‘done thing’ to voice them. Again if we’re to believe this we have to assume conspiracy and cover-up, one that the owner of the site could easily corroborate, but they don’t even try (or they did and he refused). This man is also claiming to be in touch not with some distant occupant of the site but with the current owner’s dead grandfather, seems rather near the knuckle. It’s perhaps telling that he did not take any active part in the filming and just took the money. I don’t blame him.
The rest of the episode is the usual faffing around in the dark claiming to have heard footsteps, voices or other noises to no result, despite what “sceptic” O’Keefe claims at the end about one incident possibly being “paranormal” because no-one heard a door shut. In other words this episode is practically identical to every other that I’ve subjected myself to, but worse in a way because it lacks even the usual superficial attempts to connect the claims being made with any oral or (god forbid) written history of the site in question. Unfortunately Most Haunted kept going on along the same lines on TV until 2019 in one form or another and has been (sort of) revived as a stage show. As this is getting…mixed reviews (amusingly, posted to the wrong page), this might be the final “dead cat bounce” for the franchise, which really should never have survived the infamous “Mary loves Dick” incident.
Sorry to those of you still reading this page – it’s been ages I know. Over the Christmas period I’ve had some time to come back and revisit a documentary on the werewolf that I was involved with. This was the series ‘Mythical Beasts’, produced by Windfall Films for the Discovery Science channel in 2018 (still available in the UK via Sky or presumably NowTV). Normally if I appear in something it’s directly working with the presenter, but in this case there was no presenter, just a series of talking heads and a voiceover. I appeared briefly in the ‘Call of the Werewolf’ episode (episode 9) effectively at the behest of one of these experts, social anthropologist Garry Marvin. Garry was brought in to cover the inevitable Beast of Gevaudan segment. At the time I thought the episode was exclusively about La Bête, and wrote this article on that story and how silver bullets DO figure in the story but did not seem to stop the beast. I believe I did pass that information on to Garry or the producers but if so they did not include it. This is, in fact, the only piece of evidence tying the Beast to the traditional werewolf. It is likely (as author Jay Smith believes) that at least some peasants believed that the Beast was a werewolf i.e. a man in wolf form, but there is absolutely no period evidence of that beyond the attempt to kill it with silver. Even then, that attempt was shown to have failed, and no historical werewolf was able to wreak such havoc without being caught or killed. There is also no direct link between werewolves and silver at this time. It was a perceived remedy for basically any supernatural entity or charmed human. So even its usage doesn’t necessarily mean that the user thought they were fighting a werewolf. The vast majority of the evidence is in favour of a special supernatural animal of some kind (mostly thought to be a monstrous wolf or hyena, today all but certain to have been several wolves). So in the scheme of things the Beast is only adjacent to the story of the werewolf and, by rights, I shouldn’t even have appeared!
This blog does a decent job of recapping the episode, although they have misunderstood the point about silver bullets – it’s not that they were unlikely to kill, it’s that they’re less likely to kill than a lead bullet, being lighter and thus less penetrative and less likely to smash bone. They also include the point that people often report something or someone apparently being unaffected by gunshots when in fact they’ve just missed. They over-egg how inaccurate period firearms were, unfortunately, and they use a clip of me to do it. To be clear, smoothbore muzzle-loading firearms are nowhere near as ineffective as people think, but in a high-stress situation like this, it would be far harder to hit and kill a large animal with one of those than with a modern rifled repeating arm, which was my intended point. The dangers of simplifying nuanced points for a general audience, unfortunately. The segment also goes astray slightly in implying that ordinary musket shot would not kill a man-eating wolf. The real point was that it might not immediately kill one, such that the hunters might, along with ongoing deaths, assume that they had hit but not killed it.
As an amateur werewolf historian of sorts myself, the rest of the episode was… lacking, sadly. We have Brian Regal, an actual historian, commenting on the mythology of silver bullets, which was fine. I see he has a (by his own admission) “not to be taken too seriously” theory that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection led to a downturn in werewolf belief because he showed hybrid animal humans can’t exist. This definitely shouldn’t be taken seriously, I’m afraid. Belief in the werewolf was already significantly subdued by 1859, and humans are quite capable of sustaining belief in magical things regardless of their buy-in on scientific theories. More importantly Regal has, like so many, misunderstood what the true historical/folkloric werewolf really was. It wasn’t a hybrid of man and wolf like the Hollywood beast – it was a man (or demon) in the shape of a wolf. No belief in hybrid man-animals required. Thankfully this idea wasn’t included in the episode, but unfortunately it repeatedly missed the same point – not everything wolf-related is werewolf-related.
I have skipped again. The actual narrative here begins with that of King Lycaeon, introduced by an actual Classicist. Now, some werewolf scholars suggest that Lycaeon is unrelated to the medieval/early modern northern European werewolf, and I see their point. But the basic trappings of a man (men, actually, since there’s a wider myth of the men of Lycaea turning into wolves periodically) effectively cursed to into a wolf are there. I personally think it’s a valid touchstone, even if direct continuity from this to the ‘golden age’ of werewolfery isn’t evidenced. However, things quickly go off the rails as they bring in archaeologist Miles Russell, who explains his (very valid but irrelevant) research into animal and animal-human hybrids that we’re told are “disturbingly similar” to the werewolf. Except they’re not. Even King Lycaeon, who is famously depicted as a man with a wolf’s head, was not originally described as such – he merely, like all later historical werewolves, turned into a full wolf. The documentary goes on to make this very point via “mythologist” Winnie M Li is not a folklorist or historian, rather an author of fiction, but she’s absolutely right. However, this completely undermines the programme-makers’ own initial proposal that werewolves were physical hybrids of man and wolf (only fictional werewolves are). Confusingly, Li also, elsewhere in the same programme (backed up by Pluskowski), suggests that the entirely separate medieval concept of the hirsute wildman “probably contributes to a nation of what the werewolf would have been”.
We then go back in time to the famous Upper Palaeolithic ‘Sorceror’ artwork from the cave of Les Tres Freres in France. The link here is supposedly the hybrid creature’s “wolf’s tail”. Even if that WAS supposed to be a wolf’s tail, the rest of the beast isn’t a great match for any kind of wolf – it has antlers for goodness’ sake. Another archaeologist, Aleks Pluskowski, then introduces the idea of Viking wolf-warriors. This is more relevant but as Christa Agnes Tuczay explains in her chapter in ‘Werewolf Histories’ (ed. De Blecourt, p.76), there were actually three ways in which a warrior might be wolflike, only one of which is akin to the Germanic (in origin) werewolf i.e. men who physically become wolves. The programme doesn’t actually explain any of this, choosing to focus entirely upon the famous berserker who merely behaves like a savage wolf (wearing a pelt), complete with a rather misleading animated scene of warriors in wolfskins physically transforming into Hollywood wolf-men. Nor does it mention the third wolf-warrior aspect, which is psychic projection of a spectral wolf-form while the body lies in torpor. This isn’t physical werewolfery but it’s closer than the warrior who merely channels (imagines) the strength of an animal in combat. Onyeka Nubia briefly mentions the same trope in an African context, merely serving to underline how un-werewolf-like this idea really is. By this point we’ve spent a lot of screentime covering things that are mere backstory to the ‘true’ werewolf of northern European folklore.
Pluskowski mentions the description of accused werewolf Peter Stumpp, whose eyes “in the night sparkled like fire” – the programme suggests that this was a way to tell a werewolf from an ordinary wolf. Indeed, the eyes of a werewolf are sometimes mentioned as somehow noteworthy, but this is usually because they are red or sometimes human-like. Stumpp’s eyes may allude to red werewolf eyes or to normal shining wolf eyes, it’s not entirely clear. In any case the programme’s anatomist Joy Reidenberg then redundantly explains how ordinary wolf eyes work, claiming that people would have mistaken the reflective shine for something demonic. Of course, all wolves have this feature, and it’s a huge reach to suggest that all wolves spotted at night under some sort of light were automatically thought werewolves, especially since domestic dog eyes do the same thing and people had been living with them for thousands of years.
Pluskowski shows us a church mural depicting a man-eating wolf in hell – as he points out, the only animal shown to exist there. The narrator explains that the Christian church changed the popular view of wolves from something powerful and positive to something evil. All of this is good stuff, and is at least relevant background to the actual werewolf as a concept. Unfortunately he then brings in the ‘roggenwolf’ or rye-wolf, a ghostly wolf believed to inhabit farmer’s fields. The documentary narration (not Pluskowski, notably) claims that someone bitten by the rye-wolf would themselves be “cursed to transform into a wolf” and then mentions darkening skin, ravenous hunger and violent convulsions. This leads them (and Aleks) into claiming that this was the result of ergot poisoning. They mention the same theory as applied to the Salem witch trials, a theory that has been thoroughly debunked. I’m skeptical of it here too, since as plausible as it sounds (assuming these symptoms really do appear there really is no need to invoke a medicalised explanation for folklore – people are very capable of coming up with what now seem like crazy ideas without any external stimulus beyond something like failing crops or ill health. They expand it to a general explanation of at least some accused werewolves, a claim for which we have no evidence. More importantly, the rye-wolf and the werewolf are NOT the same thing. Wikipedia makes the connection, pointing to Mannhardt (‘Roggenwolf und Roggenhund’, 1865, pp.31-32) who says that the rye-wolf was sometimes, in his time, referred to using the word ‘werwolf’, i.e. the two myths were conflated in contemporary folklore sources. However, Mannhardt himself emphasises that this is a confusion of two traditionally distinct ideas (well after the era of the werewolf trials), and points out that there is nothing in werewolf folklore to support the idea that rye-wolves were werewolves (a good example of Wikipedia editors not researching beyond the first source they find).
Worse still, Reidenberg reappears, backed up by “mythological consultant” Richard Schwab, bringing in the old werewolf medicalisation chestnuts of Hypertrichosis (excess hair) and Porphyria (a disfiguring sensitivity to light). No folklorist or historian of werewolf belief takes these theories seriously as the werewolves of folklore were not hairy men who hid from daylight as the movies depict (other perhaps than those suffering from Lycanthropy, the mere belief that one is a wolf). Reidenberg also references the full moon, suggesting that this explains why werewolves were thought to appear at full moon. Now, contrary to common academic claim today, there is an association between humans changing into wolves and the moon. The only Roman instance of a werewolf, Petronius’s Satyricon (which is mentioned in the programme), a 9th century source in the French Bibliothèque Nationale and the early 13th century Otia Imperalia by Gervase of Tilbury all mention the moon albeit none specify the full moon. We can’t really speculate what phases the other writers thought were significant, but Petronius did mention that the moon was shining brightly (“like high noon”), which sure as heck sounds like the full moon to me. Still, even if we accept that there was a common belief that werewolves came out on the full moon, there’s no link here with these medical conditions.
Overall, the documentary isn’t a total waste of time but, like most of its ilk, is far too keen to paint the werewolf as a universal trope rather than focus upon the beast for which the werewolf was named – the northern European person (usually a man) who becomes an actual wolf by means of pelt, belt, or ointment. There is precious little of this in the episode and so much rich history of ‘real’ werewolf belief that could have been included. Pluskowski in particular makes good contributions but is clearly pursuing his actual research interests of notions of human and animal in general, not the werewolf as a discrete historical or folkloric concept. Although most of the participants had actual credentials, few of them knew much about the werewolf of folklore, and not one actual folklorist was interviewed. Unfortunately this is par for the course with this kind of subject matter, which is invariably sensationalised since most viewers approach it solely from a popular culture background. There were far too many of them as well, resulting in precious little screentime for them or the ideas presented. It’s also unfortunate that the show was clearly made on a very low budget, featuring simple digital artwork and very crude and repetitive CGI. I’m not sure that I dare attempt the vampire episode…
The almost-certainly-fake Arthur grave cross supposedly found in 1191 in Glastonbury. From Camden’s ‘Britannia’ (1607, p.166)
You can’t beat King Arthur for some good BS history (see my previous piece on the supposed bronze origins of the Sword in the Stone here). Unfortunately today’s complaint is aimed at the subscription TV service History Hit, which is nearly always excellent. I’ve worked with them myself (not that this is necessarily evidence of them being excellent, but I wouldn’t work with them if they weren’t). Their King Arthur documentary that was recently released for free on YouTube but, despite the current historiographical trend being strongly sceptical of Arthur’s historicity, they appear wholly accepting that he really was a ‘Dark Age’ warlord. Let me be clear – we have no more evidence for this Arthur than we do for Robin Hood, and even less reason to believe that he was based on a real historical figure. Pointing to mentions of random ‘Arthurs’ in early sources and conflating them with the mythical arthur is like me seeing Luke in the bible and trying to claim that this was Luke Skywalker. Bad Archaeology covered this in 2011 but I most strongly recommend Professor Nick Higham’s 2018 book ‘King Arthur: The Making of the Legend’. I don’t want to post chunks of it here but luckily he has been interviewed by ‘History’s Most’ and there brilliantly summarises his position at the beginning before going into more detail. Definitely check it out.
Back to History Hit. In defence of presenter Matt Lewis, he’s a proper historian, but his period is decidedly later than that claimed for any historical Arthur, and I doubt he wrote the script. Despite the title of the video, there is a legitimate angle here, being the appropriation of Arthur by the English. However, for some reason they stop short of the logical conclusion here (ably laid out by Higham) that, before being nicked by the English, Arthur was likely invented as a British folk hero who would return to reunite Wales with the swathes of Britain that had been conquered by the Anglo-Saxons. Arthur had defeated the invaders before and would come again to kick them out once and for all. So few people realise that the historical Arthur is total bunk, so it’s a real shame for one of the only factual long-form historical documentary makers to not only fail to address this, but to outright reinforce the idea that he did exist.
They also make a specific claim that irked me. At 11:21 in the video they say;
“…between two stone pyramids 16 feet deep in an oak hollow the monks of Glastonbury Abbey discovered a grave…covered by a large stone that appeared plain. When they lifted it the monks found a large lead cross. When they removed the cross they found an inscription on the stone underneath it read here lies entombed King Arthur with Guinevere, his second wife, on the Isle of Avalon. And so it appeared it really was King Arthur’s grave buried with Guinevere who is described as his second wife, though who he’d been married to before is nowhere recorded. There was a perfectly preserved braid of her golden hair in the grave and one over-enthusiastic monk jumped down, but when he lifted it up to show it to his brothers it disintegrated and blew away on the wind. The monks also found in the grave a perfectly preserved sword; the sword of King Arthur, the legendary Excalibur.”
Firstly, I want to be clear on this – there is NO evidence that a sword was found at Glastonbury. None. More anon. This is important because although some sort of grave was likely excavated and the inscription (which was not on the stone, famously, but rather a lead cross buried with it) did physically exist, the presence of a sword would make this a warrior grave and thus more plausibly that of an historical Arthur. In fact, I have issues with the way in which all of this information is presented. It is presented as factual and at no point is the possibility (strong probability in my view) of an incorrect interpretation or an outright hoax raised. They do point out how lucrative it would have been for the monastery to “engage with the story of an early medieval warlord…” but that’s as far as they go; they don’t question whether Arthur really had been found (again, it’s unlikely that he even existed, let alone his remains found). They reinforce this later on by lamenting the loss of the bones, lead plate etc as though, if they hadn’t been lost, we might today have archaeological evidence of the real King Arthur. Let’s be clear here – this discovery is universally regarded as a hoax by all serious authors, even by those who place stock in the existence of an historical Arthur (I don’t, for what it’s worth). Our earliest source for it is Gerald of Wales’ ‘De Principis Instructione’ (1193-96) who is a mixed bag as far as reliability goes. He thought that beavers bit off their own bollocks and threw them at their attackers. Even at the time people had their doubts about at least some Arthurian stories. As Robert Bartlett notes in ‘England under the Norman and Angevin Kings: 1075-1225’ (2002) Gerald himself informs us that the term “a fable of Arthur” (Arturi Fabula) was being used metaphorically by his enemies in the sense of a “fictitious and frivolous” story. Still, Gerald was writing just after the alleged discovery and claims to have seen the cross (interestingly, not the remains) with his own eyes. I think we can accept him as a somewhat reliable primary source here. Indeed, many accept that the monks found some sort of interment – after all they were sitting on a ton of already-centuries-old graves, although Radford’s claim to have located the monks’ excavation is now debunked. The problem is that the only part of the find that ties it to Arthur (other than the claim that his bones and skull were comically large) is the supposed lead cross with its inscription;
“Hic iacet sepultus inclytus rex Arthurus cum Weneuereia vxore sua secunda in insula Auallonia”
As Nitze wrote in 1934; “It is unnecessary to comment on the evidently faked character of this inscription.” By which he means, I suspect, that it’s not only out of character with any period epitaph, it’s simply too “on the nose”. Not just King Arthur, but the “famous King Arthur” – with specific and curiously redundant mention of the Isle of Avalon. If Arthur was so famous, why the need to say so? If Glastonbury was already identified as Avalon, why would they need to say so? Regardless of that, when have you ever seen a grave marker of any kind that included the place of burial? Why is Arthur called “King” on the cross when Arthur was not referred to as king or inclitus until Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Geoffrey Historia Regum Britanniae (1138)? The obvious answer to all of this is that the cross was a recent forgery inspired by a mid-late 12th century understanding of who Arthur was or might have been.
This is the view of Christopher Berard, whose 2019 “Arthurianism in Early Plantagenet England: from Henry II to Edward I” is the most recent and most comprehensive discussion on the cross. Berard also points to Aelred Watkin who compares the lettering on this 12th century tympanum in the north doorway of Stoke-sub-Hamdon church in Somerset. At best, the cross’s lettering is inconclusive and could as easily be ca.1190 as ca.500. The monks had plenty of vintage carvings, documents and coins (e.g. the silver penny of Cnut that Oliver Harris suggests is the best match) to refer to for something convincingly old, although personally I don’t think conscious replication of old text would have been a priority in the medieval mind (historical accuracy is a recent concept) but Berard believes the lettering, like the cross and the whole shooting match, is late 12th century, and I think he’s absolutely right. Just to include a Welsh author (since Arthur may have been a pan-British myth, but our evidence is all Welsh) Thomas Price chap writing as far back as 1842 was also sceptical. There is a fascinating and very strong hypothesis that part of the motivation for ‘finding’ Arthur’s grave was to put paid to Arthur as a Welsh hero who might yet return, and to recreate him as a very heroic but also very demonstrably dead Anglo-British figure. Clearly this superstition didn’t afflict Price, an enlightened Victorian Welshman.
The association with Henry II is itself dubious, since him receiving a tip about the gravesite doesn’t make chronological sense – Henry II finds out about it 1171 but doesn’t bother to act on it before his death years later in 1189. The grave is discovered separately by monks a year or two after that. More importantly, as Charles Wood points out in ‘Fraud and its consequences: Savaric of Bath and the reform of Glastonbury’ (1991, in Essays C. A. Ralegh Radford p. 273-283) this was just the last of a series of improbable discoveries that began just after the near-destruction of the abbey by fire in 1884 (an aspect that History Hit don’t mention). Saints Patrick, Indract, Brigit, Gildas, and Dunstan were all supposedly found in the abbey grounds one after the other – yet Dunstan already had a known burial site at Canterbury, where he had been archbishop. Arthur was the final ‘find’. Glastonbury was also a hub for the forging of historical documents. Basically, anything coming out of medieval Glastonbury needs to be treated with the same scepticism as the present-day post-New Age Glastonbury!
Back to the sword. Amusingly, Wikipedia’s cite for the sword being unearthed at Glastonbury Abbey is Aurell’s ‘Henry II New Interpretations’ (2007, pp. 362-394) which (p. 389) says the exact opposite!
“..excavations at Glastonbury. An exhumation almost certainly took place, albeit at the beginning of the reign of his son, King Richard I, possibly in 1191.’ In that same year, Richard I, on his way through Sicily to the Holy Land, granted Excalibur, which is unlikely to have been a sword unearthed during the Glastonbury exhumation, to Tancred de Hauteville.”
I don’t know why History Hit have made this assumption, but they’re certainly not the first. Christopher W. Bruce’s ‘The Arthurian Name Dictionary’ (1999, p.177) says:
“In 1191, King Richard the Lionheart supposedly presented ‘Caliburnus’ to his ally, Tancred of Sicily. We may assume that a sword was “discovered” some time during the reported discovery of Arthur’s body at Glastonbury.”
We may not assume that, Christopher! To be fair, he wasn’t the first to make this connection. Edmund Kerchever Chambers in his 1927 ‘Arthur of Britain’ (p.124) has:
“Richard I, crusading to the Holy Land, gave Arthur’s sword Caliburnus to Tancred of Sicily on 6 March 1191. It is not said that he professed to have found it with the bones. Perhaps it is a reasonable inference that he did…”
Perhaps indeed. The oldest claim that I can find dates from an 1860 piece by W. Lucas Collins in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine;
“Richard Cœur de Lion is said to have visited this tomb at Glastonbury, and to have been presented by its guardians with the actual sword Excalibur, which he subsequently transferred to Tancred of Sicily.”
Collins’ reference is the Chronicle of John Brompton (ca.1195), but this is only his source (rather than the Gesta Regis Henrici) for the Tancred gift claim, and absolutely does not mention a sword found at Glastonbury. Again, is nothing more than an assumption based on the admittedly close proximity of the two events and, presumably, the lack of any mention of the sword being extant prior to 1191. I personally don’t find this compelling in the slightest. Any sword that’s spent 600 years in the ground is not going to be in any fit state for gifting (although this might explain why it immediately disappears from the historical record!). If the sword Richard I gave to Tancred as ‘Caliburnus’ was from Glastonbury, it was an old piece from a local collection. If it wasn’t, it could have been a sword dug out from the royal collection with some claim to be Arthur’s sword. Perhaps it was assumed to be due to some inherent feature (perhaps just being thought to be old enough). As late as the 17th century the ‘Line of Kings’ at the Tower of London included a figure of William the Conqueror equipped with a massive matchlock gun. Historical accuracy is a modern concept and, in the context of absolute monarchy in the medieval period, so is objective truth. If the King pronounced a sword to be that of King Arthur, it was. It’s even possible that this was a misunderstanding and ‘Excalibur’ was a very early ‘prop replica’ of some sort merely intended to pay tribute to the original (although admittedly I’ve never heard of such a thing, whereas swords with spurious histories are basically as old as swords). We will never know, but what we can be sure of is that the actual Excalibur was not discovered at Glastonbury. There was no actual Excalibur and there was no actual Arthur either.
If you want to read more and understand the context here, please head over to this comprehensive study of Glastonbury’s archaeology from Roberta Gilchrist.
The flag version of the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces cap badge (Wikimedia)
In 2019 Ukraine’s Special Operations Command officially adopted a new unit patch featuring the head of a wolf with two arrows in its mouth. This was no ordinary wolf, however – it was explicitly identified by the unit as a вовкулаку or werewolf and the patch explained as follows:
“According to legend, Cossacks with supernatural powers who could turn into wolves could catch arrows with their hands or beat them off”
I was of course curious as to what folklore – or modern understanding of it – had inspired this. There is a fair bit of Cossack folklore portraying them as invulnerable, akin to Viking wolfskins or berserkers but usually without the animal skins. For the most part these ‘Kharakternyks’ are Slavic versions of the folkloric “hardman” – a man charmed to protect him from any attack, notably bullets. Indeed, all the folklore I can find on this relates to bullets and cannonballs, not arrows. This is despite folklore as late as the 19th century making reference to arrows, but never in the context of warriors being impervious to them, as far as I could see. It would have been difficult to incorporate round bullets or cannon shot, so using arrows makes design sense, I think. They are still “shots” being stopped (and in one case also destroyed) by the werewolf.
This patch followed an even more interesting cap badge approved upon their formation in 2016. This featured a wolf in profile, unusually wearing a broad belt or girdle. The issue version can be seen in this promotional video; the belt is positioned more vertically and the wolf’s mouth is more open. To get the obvious bit out of the way first, yes, this is a werewolf. The werewolf of folklore was always… just a wolf. It might be unusually large, be missing a leg or tail, or have human eyes or even a single human leg (!), depending where and when we’re talking about, but it was never the hybrid wolfman or monster of 20th/21st century fiction. So right away this symbolism is actually historically accurate. Likewise the fork (an early form of the Ukrainian trident, missing its central tine) and the motto “I’m coming at you” (perhaps better translated in this context as “I’m/We’re coming for you”) are indeed associated with Prince Sviatoslav I. This raises the main query with this symbolism, in that Ukrainian warriors turning into wolves (i.e. being werewolves) doesn’t seem to have been common, as Ukraine implies. Sviatoslav was compared to a wolf (some say leopard) in historical documents but was never claimed to have become one. Prince Vseslav of Polotsk, not mentioned, was also said to be able to take the form of a wolf. As to the idea that Cossack magicians or ‘Kharakternyk’ (Характерник) being werewolves by default as the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) claim, well, that may be a reach. I can’t find anything to support that in the historical sources. However, I did find one historical Cossack who was actually supposed to have this power – Ivan Sirko (Іван Сірко). Oddly there’s no mention of his wolf form on his Wiki page, only (without cite) on the Kharakternyk page. At least one legend (found in English in ‘Cossack Motifs in Ukrainian Folk Legends’ by RI Shiyan, 2006) confirms that he was indeed thought to be able to turn into a wolf as the modern popular sources suggest. That’s good enough for me as an historical basis for the insignia, even if it may not extend to other Cossacks (if anyone does know of other evidence, let me know – it’s certainly plausible enough).
The belt is an important element in this design. B.A. Rybakov in ‘The Paganism of Ancient Rus’ (Язычество Древней Руси) writes of the волк-оборотень or волхв-волкодлак, the ‘wolf-werewolf’ (likely a similar etymological cock-up as that which led to the French loup-garou) or ‘warlock-werewolf’, a “man who adopted a wolf’s form by means of a magic belt”. He references the renowned Slavic folklorist Aleksandr Afanasiev’s ‘Poetic Views of the Slavic Nature’ (Vol. 3, 1865):
“According to Russian beliefs, vovkulaks are of two kinds: they are either sorcerers who take on animal form, or ordinary people, turned into wolves by sorcery spells.
Sorcerers usually roam like wolves at night (that is, in the darkness induced by black clouds), but during the day they again perceive human forms; they are in close intercourse with unclean spirits, and their very transformation into wolves is accomplished with the help of the devil.”
The magic or nauz belt (пояс-науз) is very interesting and is loosely explained in this article on the Ukraine SOF website. It seems to derive from Ukrainian/Kievan Rus folklore around the practice of tying knots and objects into amulets, bracelets and belts in order to achieve magical effects. In this context, that would be transformation into a wolf. In the rest of Europe, such belts were made of wolfskin (if they weren’t actual whole wolfskins). This is not specified in the Slavic version but given that some period artwork does depict belts and pouches made of furred pelt, it’s possible that this was supposed to be taken as read. The SOF author refers to it as a “battle-belt” and claims that the werewolf can only be recognised by the belt he still wears in wolf form. I’ve never seen a folkloric source that mentions a wolf wearing a belt – it’s implied that the belt turns into a wolfskin or disappears.
Even if the belt did remain on the wolf, it probably shouldn’t in theory be the tanned cowhide multiple-strapped cheres (черес) belt depicted on the insignia. According to Rybakov the ‘nauz’ (пояс-науз) as worn by magic-users in human form (he too does not mention wolves dressed in belts) was recognisably a magical belt due to being tied into complex knots. The Nauz was frowned upon and even banned, which wouldn’t make sense if one couldn’t tell one apart from an ordinary leather belt. Still, the belt on the badge does its job, which is to convey to a modern Ukrainian/Slavic audience that this is a Cossack in wolf-form – it’s what a modern Slavic audience would recognise as a ‘Cossack’ belt. Since this allows the badge to feature a folklore-accurate wolf rather than a Hollywood wolf-man, I’m all for it.
Afanasiev mentions the nauz only once, and without reference to the werewolf at all, so it’s quite unclear on what basis Rybakov links the two, but without going very deep into foreign language folklore I’ll have to take him at his word. He does include an image of a bracelet from Gorodishche that may depict a werewolf complete with his nauz, although even his own caption includes a cautious question mark. To me it could easily be a hunting hound wearing a harness. Still, whether or not he’s on the money regarding the period folklore here, he reflects 20th-21st century conception of it and is no doubt the touchstone for the modern Ukrainian understanding of werewolf folklore that underpins the SOF insignia. We know this for sure because an early (2015) variant shown here (top right) is clearly closely based upon the original 12th century bracelet artwork, with the implied belt around its middle replaced by the gold cheres belt of the final version (with only two straps). It’s actually a shame they didn’t go with this version as it’s even more rooted in tradition. This then evolved into two possible designs, with the chosen one being the left hand of these. I should note that the various Ukrainian SOF training units adopted an entirely different version of a (were)wolf’s head in profile without the arrows, as can be seen in this video, making three different in-service versions of werewolf artwork. Overall this is a very cool use of folklore to help create an identity and tradition for a brand new unit. It does imply that all kharakternyks were thought to be werewolves, but it is at least based on a real historical piece of folkloreI. It conflates the magical nauz with the ordinary cheres belt, but does so for sound design reasons. It flies in the face of the werewolf as a bad guy, which in Christian Europe he has nearly always been, but it reflects older tales (notably Scandinavian) in which warriors are identified with, and sometimes as, the werewolf as a battle-beast – not someone you’d invite to dinner, but someone you want protecting you even if you didn’t even know they were there. Which, of course, is exactly the image that special operations forces want, and need, to project. If I may make a rare dip into politics, I have to say that so far, the SSO have shown themselves more than worthy of this symbolism in their fight against Russian aggression. Of course folklore is in any case always evolving and being reinvented, as the wider history of werewolf beliefs and stories shows: I thoroughly recommend the 2015 book ‘Werewolf Histories’, edited by Willem de Blécourt and Daniel Ogden’s The Werewolf in the Ancient World (2020). Ogden also has a short summary here of the extent to which the werewolf can be seen as a ‘universal’ myth, even if all the details over the millennia.
The Guardian have released this article about a document that’s supposedly been identified as Geoffrey Chaucer’s own handwriting. For one thing, that remains to be seen – the scholar making the claim hasn’t even published his research yet, let alone had it accepted. For another, despite making the highly specific claim that it’s a “note asking for time off work” the paper apparently couldn’t be bothered to tell readers what the heck this note actually says. It took me about an hour to attempt a translation and ultimately to find this very helpful Victorian source that explains most of it. Which gives us a complete translation of:
[If it] please our Sire the King, grant to Geoffrey Chaucer that he may have sufficient deputy in the office of Controller at the wool wharf of London, for whom the said Geoffrey be responsible, during the term that the said Geoffrey be Customs Controller for our said Sire in the aforesaid Port.
The original Old French in case you’re curious is:
Plese a nostre Sieur le Roy granter a Geffroy Chaucer, qil puisse auoir suffisant deputee en loffice de Comptrolour a le Wolkee de Londres, tiel pur qi le dit Geffray voet respounder, durant le terme qe le dit Geffray soit Comptrolour de la Custume nostre dit Sieur en le Port suisdicte.
Some useful context (but no English translation, although Google Translate handles the Latin variant just fine) here. NB ‘Le Roy Lad Grante’ means roughly ‘The King Has Granted’ and is not in the same hand.
Clearly, this petition (which is what it actually is) is not, despite The Guardian’s attempt to appear relatable, “a note asking for time off work” – it’s a request that he be permanently replaced in the role, since having been appointed by the King, he couldn’t just resign.
By the by, a very belated thank you to my stalwart subscribers – I have never had the time or will to chase you, but you have found me anyway and for that I am very grateful. If you have any interest in historic firearms you can find me on the Royal Armouries YouTube channel. I do as much debunking there as the format permits 🙂
I’ve just come across this cool piece of art on Facebook (I like the use of the memento mori as used on period headstones) with the following Revolutionary War quote above it; “…the shirt-tail men, with their cursed twisted guns, the most fatal widow and orphan makers in the world.” – London Paper -1775
It’s a real quote, and the date is correct, but it’s not from a London paper. It’s from the diary of an American general – General Arnold, who is expressing his envy of fellow commander Daniel Morgan’s famous corps of riflemen. So it’s not the British quaking in their boots – it’s the American ‘brass’ praising their own men. The full quote, from ‘Chronology of the American Revolution: Military and Political Actions Day by Day’, Bud Hannings (2014, p.54) is;
“Morgan with his coon-tailed caps and leather jerkins and long rifles from the mountains of Virginia, I wanted; cursed, twisted guns, the most fateful widow and orphan makers in the world … shirt-tail men, the British came to call them.”
Hannings doesn’t cite the quote and I can’t find it anywhere else, but it is referenced in ‘Collections, Topographical, Historical & Biographical…’ Vol.3, 1824, p.383, so is presumably accurate. Even if not, it’s definitively a self-congratulatory American quote, not a fearful British one. Not that Britons didn’t fear riflemen, and they certainly respected them – even creating their own equivalents. But something about the turn of phrase seemed unlikely from the perspective of an enemy. It’s also worth noting that their ultimate contribution was not war-winning. The Revolutionary War was won by the conventionally trained, equipped and deployed Continental Army, not by rifle-armed militia who were not numerous enough to make that kind of difference. At that period light infantry alone, especially not untrained militia, were not capable of winning wars. America won its freedom by building its conventional military strength and alliances, but that’s not as romantic as the plucky “shirt-tail men” – the only bit of the quote that might once have been spoken by a British officer. However, if it was, it was likely spoken with contempt, not admiration.
I’ve been aware of Scientology’s history at Saint Hill Manor near East Grinstead, Sussex, UK for many years. What I hadn’t realised is that several other occult/esoteric/religious organisations are also located in the area as this recent Facebook video and this Telegraph article relate. That is, the so-called Church of Scientology, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons), the Rosicrucian Order and, apparently, various pagans.
On the face of it, I have to admit that this seems pretty weird. It even prompted a 1994 Channel 4 documentary called “Why East Grinstead?”, although this did a very poor job of answering its own question. Some speculate that either magical ley lines or the Greenwich meridian are somehow relevant. It’s worth noting that they’re not all that close together – see this hasty map – none are not actually based in East Grinstead but are located in the countryside nearby. Also, by no means all of the sites in question are unique as far as their parent organisations go. By far the most famous thing in (near) East Grinstead is Scientology’s Saint Hill Manor HQ – but this hasn’t been their HQ since 1967 (established in 1955) and today is one of four “Advanced Orgs” (warning, link to Scientology’s website here). So it’s certainly noteworthy that this facility is there, and it’s the closest of the three at just a mile or so beyond the outskirts of the town. The Rosicrucians do have their current UK HQ in the area, although it’s about 10 miles away at Greenwood Gate, Blackhill, Crowborough. This was not established until 1976 (see The Rosicrucian Digest). Interestingly a Rosicrucian presence did appear in the area in 1955, the same year that Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard opened Saint Hill Manor, in the form of the publishing company New Knowledge Books, which had just moved to East Grinstead from a London address. The owner was Rudolf Steiner, Rosicrucian and founder of anthroposophy and sometimes said to be “the German L. Ron Hubbard”. Hubbard for his part was a member of the Rosicrucian Order in the 1940s and borrowed some aspects from it. Given the apparent timeline all of this would seem to be coincidental – Hubbard had already bought the Manor the year prior.
Then we have the Church of Jesus Christ etc etc – the Mormons. This is their London Temple, one of two “temples” in the UK – there’s also a special “visitor’s centre” church for a total of three Mormon establishments in the country. Interesting that one of these should be co-located with Scientology, but that in itself is hardly unusual – you’ll find Mormon churches and Scientology centres in numerous British cities. The only difference here is that both are higher-level sites within their respective organisations but that is again unsurprising. Ordinary church-level buildings are going to be located in urban areas, special ones with any kind of ‘retreat’ role are going to be in the countryside – but require good road and rail links so that members/delegates can easily get to and from them.
The Opus Dei site, Wickenden Manor (four miles from East Grinstead), was established in 1964 according to the book ‘Historia del Opus Dei’ (2021), but unlike the others this not a particularly significant site, being only one of three “retreats” that they maintain – they have 13 other sites around the country for actual “work”. Opus Dei is also the odd one out here – it’s not a cult or religion in itself, it’s merely an evangelical wing of the Catholic Church. For both reasons I think it’s a bit of a red herring here.
Finally there are the claims of druids, satanists etc meeting in the woods. This is a very common claim for woods all over the country, usually teenagers messing about, sometimes neo-pagans actually practicing their rituals, never actual biblical Satanism. The only evidence of any organised presence of any group associated with these beliefs is from the 1994 documentary, when members of the Pagan Federation are filmed at Stone Farm Rocks near East Grinstead. But neo-pagans are everywhere – there needn’t be (and as far as I can tell, wasn’t for these people) any particular reason to choose that area over any other nice wooded rocky bit of English countryside. If you’re making a documentary about unusual beliefs in any part of the UK you’ll find neo-pagans to interview, especially in the populous south-east of England, so close to London. So again, this seems like a red herring. The same goes for the dowsers that were featured – dowsers are everywhere. Nor are they necessarily esoteric in their beliefs – many are convinced they’re doing science (they’re not, dowsing doesn’t work). There’s really no evidence that anything unusual in the area has attracted these various groups. The suggestion that either the meridian or ley lines being somehow significant is laughable. Only the alleged pagans would find the ley lines significant and the route of the Greenwich meridian is wholly arbitrary and, ironically, science-based, nothing to do with esoterism, the occult, or anything else. I’m with the local museum manager and the Canon asked in the documentary – it’s just coincidence. At most, Hubbard’s choice might have influenced or emboldened some of the others. Perhaps they thought they would be less likely to get hassle if there was already a controversial alternative group nearby that, until the 1990s, didn’t attract too much negative attention (and once they did, being by far the wackiest, would take any flak from locals!).
The BS Historian 
