Thinking Sideways: Neta Fornario

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking Sideways. I don't know. You never know stories of
things we simply don't know the answer too well. Hold there,
Welcome again to another episode of Thinking Sideways. I'm Joe,

(00:25):
joined as always by Steve and de Yeah. So okay,
we're gonna jump into another unsolved mystery. This we wait,
we cover unsolved mysteries. I thought this was a cooking show. Yeah. Tonight,
on Thinking Sideways, the podcast we discover why Steve can't
remember anything from his life. I was drapped on my

(00:46):
head a lot as a baby. For me, it's just
the booze and lack of sleep. What are we talking
about today? Today we are going to talk about the death,
the mysterious death of Netta for Narreo. So they're looking
at a picture of a right here. This is what
you see on most of the web page is a
deal with this little mystery. Except that's not actually a
picture of her. That's a picture of somebody named Mona Mathers,

(01:09):
who figures kind of in this story a little bit.
But it's not Netta. It's not Netta now now it's Moena.
Do we have a picture of Netta? No, I've not
been able to. I thought that that was Netta for
the longest time checking it out, but now it turns
out that's Moina Mathers. So we're talking about Netta but not.
But yeah, I just wanted to let people know that
if you go check this out in the web and
you see this picture of this kind of good looking

(01:30):
woman with kind of wild she looks crazy. She's got
a bird's nest hair do. Yeah yeah, but she's still
she's still you kind of good looking, you know, but
spite the hair, yeah, despite the crazy hair. Well, So anyway,
let's talk about Netta. Okay, so just a quick brief
intro summary here. In late summer nine, Netta four an

(01:53):
area thuring three years old, resident of London, England, left
London and traveled to the island of Iona and probably
mispronouncing that I think it's Iona, might be Ilana. I
think it's you know, it's in the Scottish Hebrides. It's
um anyway, it's it's one of those little bitty tiny
islands out there that's got a quint little village and
not much else. So anyway, yeah, a lot to that.

(02:16):
She was planning an extended stay there. Uh. In late
November the same year, she went missing. After two days search,
her naked body was discovered on top of a quote
very amount unquote because I'll talk about this a little later,
but everybody believed that this island was like full of
ghosts and fairies and stuff like that. Well, it was
the twenties and you know Scotland. We've talked about this before.

(02:39):
Oh yeah, she had she or somebody most likely her,
had cut a large cross in the turf using a dagger,
which was found near near her body, and laid down
on the dagger. She was not technically completely naked. She
had a very thin black cloak on her, but that
was it. And this is late November in the Scottish Hebrides,
so obviously it must have and really cold. Yeah. Yeah.

(03:02):
Some accounts say that she was clutching some papers in
her hand, one of her hands letters of a mysterious
nature and but other accounts say that those letters were
found in your luggage back in her room. She was
staying with this lady named Mrs McMurray McRae. Uh. Some
say that blue lights were seeing in the vicinity of
her body, but of course there's more than more often
than not, there's blue lights in these mysteries. So yeah,

(03:24):
I know, I know. And a strange man was supposedly
lurking nearby wearing a black cloak. Yeah stalker. Yeah, I know,
the twins obviously. Yeah, maybe he was wearing her black cloak. Yeah.
Any way, back to the start, So why didn't you
go to Iona. Iona's a very tiny island. It's about
a mile wide, about four miles long. You get to

(03:44):
it by taking a ferry from the Isle of Mole,
which is to the east of it. You get to
the Isle of Mole by taking a ferry to there.
Not an easy place I assume for this little journey.
She probably had to take like a long train ride
and maybe then uh you know, a couple of ferry
rides at the like from London. It would have been
from London to the coast, right, yeah, and then on

(04:07):
a ferry and then likely another train across the island
or the bus or a car or something. And is
probably not a whole lot of car traffics. Probably most
of the community's done via train. Yeah yeah, yeah, that
that just doesn't sound like a quick and easy afternoon
johned Now, not someplace you go to the week go

(04:27):
for just the weekend or you just happen to be
at if you just happened to live in the Isle
of mold That it's a quick, easy, happy John from
London one of the ways. Anyway. The population that the
latest census count of the is a hundred and seventy
seven people. I assume it was fewer people back in
those days. The only town is called again I'm sorry

(04:48):
for the mispronunciation, but it's called bail Moore, but the
locals call it the village, Yeah, the village. The island
is also home to the Bay at the back of
the ocean, which is an oddly named bay for such
a backwater ionas has got a really interesting history. It's
and it actually the earliest structure found on the island

(05:09):
was constructed they guess about a hundred years previous to
Christ and it was what they call an iron age
hilltop fort was it was probably something that mainly was
like earthen earthen ramparts kind of thing, probably not as serious,
but but so it's been inhabited for a long time.
But in five sixty three a d A monk named Colomba,

(05:30):
who later became sync Colomba, founded a monastery there. He
had been exiled to the island for various reasons that
I don't really need to get into, but if you
want to hear more about it, I can. I can
point you towards some links. And anyway, so he and
about a dozen other monks founded this monastery, and this
monastery turn as it turned out, would play a crucial
role in converting most of the UK to Christianity, and

(05:50):
the island became a center of a very important monastic system,
and it would also be a major center of learning.
And it's believed, although nobody knows for sure that the
Book of Kells was created there, or maybe at least
part of it was created there. They're not sure if
the Book of Kells was actually created in just one
place or in a number of places and assembled. They're
not refreshed my memory. What is the Book of Kells again?
Look Atkels is a very very heavily illuminated a series

(06:14):
of the Gospels. It's not all of the New Testament,
but but some of it, and very elaborately illustrated. And
it came out of this region. Yeah, and so they're
not sure if it came out purely out of Iona
or not out of iona or just some pages if
it came out of this place. They don't really know
for sure it's it's but it's a very well known
historic Scottish book of the Bible. About yeah, illuminated version.

(06:39):
Do I'm sorry, do we need to tell people what
illuminated means? And so if you don't know what illuminated
text is, it just means that it's been very elaborately
like embroidered and illustrated. You know, you see a lot
in like Italian kind of or like you know the yeah,
actually Italian Catholic stuff, right, it's the like gold filigree

(07:00):
with like drawings along the sides and like with the
huge starting letters and drop caps or what they're called, yes,
and the I think these are the kind of books
where it would take let's just I'm making up a number,
but let's just say five months a month to make
all of the illustrations for one pain and they were

(07:22):
actually gold leafed and all of it and you had
to paint the gold on oh yeah, yeah no. And
if you don't know what one of those are, I mean,
if if you just haven't seen one before, check they're
fantastic to to think that somebody sat there with an
ink pen and a brush to paint all that color

(07:42):
so painstakingly, and then to brush on liquid gold. Yeah,
that's the amazing part. Diana was also a great place
to be for a while. It was the place to
be if you were royalty and you were dead, you
were looking for a place. Yeah. Apparently as of the
year fifty nine, they were sixty kings buried on the

(08:03):
island there because were they buried or interred, They were
interred and and and actually interred can me either being
buried or being put in a like a corrupt or
male often royalty. I don't know, it's my my impression
that often royalty is actually like interred in a masolem
or Yeah. Well, sometimes they would do the burial mound
where they would erect you know, they put everything in,

(08:25):
They give you a little stone structure, and then they
would cover that in the big burial mounds. So I
think that's why it's kind of a gray area. Yeah.
I think in this case they were buried in the
soil though, because the reason that they were buried there
is there was a belief that the soil of the
island was holy and that it would remove your sins
and cleansy so that you could enter heaven more cleanly.

(08:46):
Really interesting. Yeah, and if your royalty and you spent
your entire life like in a scheming and you know,
murdering your opponents in your competition, then you probably want
a little soul clansy before you enter heaven. But anyway, yes,
there were forty eight Scottish kings ain't Norwegian kings and
four Irish kings buried there as of the year fifteen
forty nine. And it's even mentioned in Shakespeare's Macbeth tragedy. Yes,

(09:10):
so yeah, there's a there's a reference to it in there,
and it's the references about Duncan's body He's carried to
columb Kill and colm Kill means Columbus Island, which is
another word for Eona carried to colm Kill, the sacred
storehouse of his predecessors and guardian of their bones. So
even Eana. Really it was a happening spot. If it
made for such an IDEO, that's really surprising. Yeah. Yeah,

(09:33):
And so I'm going into all this this travelog thing
because just as a trying to Yeah, yeah, it's kind
of fun and besides, which maybe explains from motivation because
exactly what why would a person might that be motivated
to ghost, you know, go live on this island. Diona
is also supposedly inhabited by ghosts, fairies, sea fairies and
all kinds of stuff like this. It's got a long

(09:55):
long list of legends about this about this place. So
Netta would find would have found that at active because
she was into the occult, in the astral projection and
stuff like that. She was a member of Alpha a Omega,
which was an offshoot of the Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn, which is another cult group and I don't
know about at that time, but I know that, like modernly,

(10:16):
Shakespeare's Scottish Tragedy is pretty well read and regarded in
terms of kind of occult ghost story stuff. I can
see how it would be a draw um for her
as an occult member, for any occult member really, I mean,
if they if they were read in that sort of
shakespeare lore situation or I guess anymore, it seems yeah,

(10:41):
these guys were and that they weren't just into Shakespeare.
They had all sorts of like magical beliefs. There were
these things called the Secret Chiefs, which were like these
cosmic beings, beings that they believed that they had like
a direct phone line to cosmic chiefs. They're they're they're
called the Secret Chiefs, I think and to see. And
so these were cosmological beings that controlled a lot of

(11:03):
the chaos of the universe, and and they could be
communicated to according to the leaders of these of these cults,
that they could communicate with these people. Uh so, the
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, it was in national
projections and all kinds of stuff. I had no reason
to believe that they were into like any of the
really ugly stuff like you know, human sacrifice and animal

(11:25):
sacrifice and all that stuff. I don't think they were.
Um well now, and maybe I'm thinking of the wrong group,
but I remember there was something that I read about
one of the one of the guys. It was a
founder I had asked for somebody to be buried alive
in front of some building that they had. That was

(11:48):
I believe that was say Colombu built as monastery. Yeah.
I wasn't sure if I was getting it confused, because
I remember there was something about somebody needs to be
buried lying in front of this building. All. Yeah, that
was a friend of his friend volume and then they
know uncover his face so that he can say goodbye
to everybody, and he's obviously having second facity again. Up again.

(12:11):
It's really weird, But yeah, is a weird sect of
Christianity people back in those days. I mean, I guess
life was a little cheaper back in those days, and
he didn't really need to He didn't really expect to
live beyond about at thirty five. So maybe this guy
figured out, what the hell, if I go out on
a high note like this, I'm gonna be sure to

(12:33):
get to heaven the whole. The Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn was founded by Samuel mathers uh the group
with attractive a fair followers ship. In the early nineteen hundreds,
there was a bit of a sex scandal and so
he lost some of his some of his temples, but
the ones that remained that remained loyal to him he

(12:53):
renamed the alphae Omega or in other words, Alpha and Omega,
and then after he died in nineteen eighteen, he was
six seed in the leadership role by his widow, Moyna Mather's.
Moyna Mather's is the one I showed you the picture
of the one, the one who appears on Yeah. So, um,
Netta was a member of this particular sect or cult
or whatever. But she was just a member, right, Yeah,

(13:15):
she wasn't, as far as I know, in any kind
of leadership role. Moya eventually succeeded in expelling someone named
Dionfortune from the Order. The Unfortune was a woman who
actually was friends with Netta for an area, but she
published some of the air some of the cult secrets.
I believe it was in about two she actually published

(13:36):
some of those. And also it was rumored that Moyna
was jealous because her abilities to do things like astral
projection and stuff like that were superior to Moynas and
so she just didn't really like it like her, And
so she succeeded in getting her expelled from the Order,
and Dion went on and joined some other cults and
you know, did pretty well with them and remained friends

(13:57):
with Netta for an area. Anyway, I'll talk about Moyna
and Dion later. So back to Netta. I haven't talked
about Netta much at all so far. We talked about
her for about a minute and a half and giving
a travelog and a history of this alpha and it's
all back story. It's very important stuff. It really pays. Yeah.

(14:19):
Her full name was Nora Emily Aditha Fnario. Her nickname
was Netta, and I don't know Nora's nice. I don't
know about all four names. So she headed to the island,
and she, upon landing, found lodging with a lady called
Mrs McCray. And I had not been able to definitively
establish what Mrs mcgray's full name is, but that's okay,
we don't need to know. She was Mrs McGray. I

(14:39):
seem a kindly old lady. Apparently they became friends at
Netta spent her day's wandering around the island and spent
her nights doing supernatural stuff like trances, astral projection, stuff
like that. So she spent some of her days sleeping.
Probably did a little sleeping too. She also believed that
she could heal people with their psychic hours, and actually

(15:02):
sent a letter to her housekeeper in London. So she
still had her digs back in London, and she had
been in communication, but she in this letter she said
she wouldn't be sending any letters for a while because
she quote had a terrible case of healing unquote to
work on. I don't nobody knows what that means. It's
a little mysterious that she apparently was either healing herself

(15:23):
or healing somebody else. And it's a weird phrase. Yeah,
it's not phrase. I think Netta was an odd person.
I think I generally feel though, that I can get
into the minds of people in this kind of you know,
new age. I've been there, right, Like we've all kind
of had that phase where we go through and we're like, well, yeah,

(15:46):
projection and a tarot cards and all that stuff. I
don't know if you guys did I went through that phase.
I didn't think it too seriously. I read what's his name,
don Juan, Yeah, yeah, yeah, with the the guy who
wrote these books about how he went out to this
guy's yeah, and it was like Carlos Castanana. Yeah, Carlos Castanada,

(16:11):
who it turns out, by the way, I was I
was going to do a little bit about Carlos Castanado
because he's an interesting guy of himself, because he was
the guy I really got into his books when I
was like, you know, eight nineteen years Yeah, that's exactly
what I did. Yeah, yeah, and you get into this
stuff and it turns out the guy was. The guy
was actually very very manipulative and ran a little cult
with a lot of little acolytes and stuff. The guy was, Yeah,

(16:33):
the guy was, and he was a massive fraud. Oh yeah,
and like a drug addict and and like all of that. Notwithstanding,
like you know, we've all kind of been through that phase.
Maybe Steve, I guess hasn't been. But I generally feel
like I can get into this kind of like mindset,
like I can at least understand it a little bit.

(16:54):
But you know, the what is it a terrible case
of healing like that. She was like a little out
of my realm of being able to understand what's going
on there. Yeah, she's so. Nedda was either very gifted
in the psychic manner or she was a bit unbalanced. Yeah,
it could be, but she is. It's it's really kind

(17:16):
of hard to say. It's kind of a kind of
a head scratcher, but apparently her friend Dion believed that
she was psychically well, psychically gifted, very gifted in it.
She also she also told her landlady Mrs McGray that
she sometimes went in to trances and said it at
one time she had gone into a trance that lasted
for a week. What I'm sharing, Mrs McGray found a
little weird, but she she told Mrs McGray that she

(17:38):
shouldn't worry if if she wanted to a trance, and
she shouldn't call a doctor, she should just let it pass.
But she apparently never wanted any major trances while she
was staying there with Mrs McRae. On the morning of
November seventeenth, which was a Sunday, Uh, Nedda started packing
her luggage frantically. When Mrs McGray found her, she told
Mrs McGray that she needed to return to London right

(17:58):
away because several in viduals, she said, we're attacking her telepathically.
This has been Gray was a little skeptical about this obviously, yeah, yeah,
but and then but but then she did notice something odd,
which is that she and again you don't know if
this was inserted into the legend after the fact or what.
Supposedly though, she noticed that Neda's shiny silver jewelry had

(18:21):
basically tarnished black like overnight. And now some people, some
people have metabolisms and skin discretions such that they do
actually tarnish silver, and that well, yeah, it does happen.
Doesn't happen overnight? I cannot think of because I looked
this up to try and find out what causes that,
and it's something Casa doses and I can't think of

(18:41):
what it is, but it is. It's acidic, you know,
it's it's acidic sweat basically. And I can tell you
as somebody who has something at least a minor Kate,
I don't know how long does it take to turn
bright silver black. I don't think I've ever turned to black.
I mean I always stopped wearing it. It might have
been an exaggeration, you know. I'll wear like a sterling

(19:03):
silver necklace or a ring or something like that fairly constantly,
and it takes, you know, a month or two. Yeah,
it's really seriously tarnished. I think that maybe what happened
here is that when she first met Netta fresh off
the boat or silver was shiny and then and she
just remembered it and being shiny, didn't remember it, didn't
notice that much after that. You know, you're living in

(19:24):
a kind of cold neighborhood. Yeah, under your shirt. Yeah,
it's a cold neighborhood. And it's like, yes, it probably
didn't turn black. Ye, I didn't turn dark overnight, and
it probably wasn't actually black. It was probably just darkened.
It's very tarnish. Yeah, although you know, I've got to
admit that silver does if you let it to get

(19:44):
exposed to elements, it will eventually get black. Oh yeah,
I found a quarter recently. I mean, this is this
is a weird little little segue to it. But I
was wandering on a beach and looked down and went, hey,
that's not a rock and picked up what turned out
to be a quarter from So it's pure silver, and

(20:06):
it was pitch black because it had been in the
water for a while and it had just continued to
tarnish and tarnish and tarnish, and to the point that
I had to rub on the front of the face
with my finger for a minute to get the tarnish
to go off enough to be able to read it,
because it just it does happen, but it takes a
while for things to turn that black. But yeah, no,
it does not overnight. So it would either be a

(20:30):
lie or super paranormal, right that everything turned black overnight.
They don't know that it would be a lie. I
wouldn't call it a lie. I would call that a
lapse in observation. Yeah, and she didn't. Necessarily, she might
have said, you know, I noticed at that point that

(20:50):
her silver Chris effects are on her neck and turn
turned really dark. And it didn't say the word overnight.
And then somebody else like sort of interpreted it that way.
But as happens, things get inserted shocking. Yeah, so she
and she might have said something. In the US, she
was probably being questioned by the local authorities whoever they were,
always said, did you notice anything odd about her appearance?
She would have said, well, you know, I did notice

(21:11):
that their silver cross it kind of turned dark. And
in a very religious community, that would be if you're
very strong, your faith and everything is based upon that,
that would be the kind of observation you would think
was important to bring forward, especially if she's doing these
and I don't I'm not gonna sound like I'm ripping
on her, but these kookie things at night that I

(21:34):
don't understand. In other words, her trances up all night
doing who knows what it's like. He's like, wow, that
lady's really weird. She's yeah, I think there might be
some devil's involved. I mean, I'm I'm obviously inferring a
lot of stuff. But with that statement, but you know,
this could be where her mind was, which is would

(21:55):
then prompt her to say, and her silver was extremely
darkly tarnished. So anyway, so that's uh, let's let's go
back to the story for a sec. So Netta, Netta
was packing, packing hastily, as the story goes, and at
that point Mrs Gray mentioned to her that, by the way,
it's Sunday. You do realize that fairy doesn't run today. Yeah,

(22:16):
Neda was a little upset. But then apparently after a
little bit of time by herself in the room, she
came out and said that she changed her mind and
she was going to stay on the island after all.
Did I tell her that she was being psychically attacked?
You know? So maybe she successfully beat back the attack
she put up a shield ball. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah,
it's a little as best super readily. Well, Professor X

(22:37):
does it all the time. Okay, Professor X is a mutant. Well,
so okay, all right, you're right, bad bad analogy I'm
sorry to all her x Men fans out there and friends.
I apologize for waiting Nea and Professor X on the
same page. How many how many of those movies that
they made, by the way, it doesn't made like dozens

(23:00):
were just back to the story, so she said she
changed her mind, and then she left to go walking
around what she liked to do a lot, and she
never came back. So and shed in the evening. Right,
she left in the afternoon, and then supposedly in late
afternoon early evening. In some telling of the story, Mrs

(23:20):
mcgraig got a little worried about her, and so they
started the search then, and other tellings of the story,
she wasn't really paying attention, but she wants to check
her room in the morning, and she wasn't there, and
that's when she got alarmed and searched in. The search began.
Soy the Sunday night or Monday morning, the search began,
and they scoured the island, and not till Tuesday did
they find her body. Uh So, she was at the

(23:41):
south end of the islands, not at the very south
tip or anything like that, but towards the south end,
wearing only a thin black cloak, which in late November
made the local doctor who got to play the role
of c. S I and this particular thing he decided
to cause of death was exposure. Just as a question,
was Mrs Gray able to say, yeah, that she left

(24:02):
the house wearing that or well, that's one of the
things I'm a little, a little kind of wondering about.
There's no mention. Yeah, that's one of the one of
the outsil mysteries here for me is that I'm assuming
she left the house fully closed, sure, and then at
some point decided to take it all off. Surely never
found her clothes, right, Surely if Mrs McGray was saying, oh, yeah,
her silver jewelry had turnished, she would also be like, oh, also,

(24:25):
she was naked except for a cloak. She walked out
of her birth Yeah. Yeah, and she wasn't wearing her shoes.
And certainly if she'd walked out, if you walked out
wearing a cloak, then that might be passable because the
cloak is closed. She can't see that she's naked if
it was a thin cloak, as long as her headlights
aren't on. But she was also found barefoot, so she

(24:50):
walked out wearing a cloak but barefoot. That would have
raised a few eyebrows. So I'm assuming she went out
fully closed and decided to to take it all off
at some point later on, but her clothes in her shoes.
But there's there's also the possibility that she did leave
in just that, just the cloak, and that Mr Mrs
mccraig didn't actually see her leave. But let's say just

(25:13):
heard the front door closed, she said, oh, I'm going
out by yeah, and shut the door and okay, see
you later whatever. And I mean, that's that's a possibility,
because that's the weird thing is where where her clothes?
That's what I've never been able to figure out. So well,
let's just say she left without any of them on,
but the cloak, that's consavable. Well, she buried him somewhere.

(25:36):
They just got blown away by the wind. Yeah, you know, yeah?
Is there I mean was that she was naked with
their naked except for the cloak. She had some scratches
on her on her body, and the soles of her
feet were kind of chewed up, which would probably happen
if you're walking her over rough ground your feet, but
not not on your torso she was walking around the moors.

(25:57):
I'm not sure how heavy and sharp the brushes. The
brush is up there as she's walking around naked, she
could have gotten scratches on her body from just brush. So,
by the way, I do want to point out that
for anybody who's kind of questioning the cause of death,
because the local doctor, he said said it was exposure, exposed,
and he also said maybe a heart attack. But yeah,

(26:18):
he also was not very skilled at his job and others.
He was a local practitioner. He wasn't a mortician, he
wasn't a detailed doctor. He was take this because he
put the cause of death somewhere between ten o'clock on
Sunday night to think nine am on Tuesday morning, yeah,

(26:40):
before she was found. So I mean he's like he's
just covering all of his basis. Might have been exposure,
she might have had a heart attack, she died in
this window. Yeah, there you go, Thank you very much. Essentially,
what we're saying is that he gave as much information
as anyone in this room could have given him. Exactly
my point. I don't think that was was done well. No,

(27:00):
I mean, I I assume that this guy examined the
body carefully, just looking for things like signs that she
was by like clubbed or stabbed or anything like that,
no signs of foul play. Any of us in this
room would do the same thing, right, and then we
would say, uh, yeah, I mean, this guy has probably
seen more dead bodies than we have, so you probably

(27:21):
had a somewhat better better odds of correctly guessing there. No,
I'm not disaccounting his abilities as a doctor and his
observations to make these kind of guesses, but it is
very basic. Yeah, and he was obviously if she was
killed by psychic attack, which will get into later, he
could probably had no means to detect that. Yeah, and Joe,

(27:42):
oh yeah, I know. Okay, now let's jump into theory.
Is our favorite part of the show. You guys have
any theories, I do, but I'm gonna wait for you. Okay. Well,
I was gonna throw a few out. One is that
she was just out wandering, actually got lost, she got confused,
hypothermia was setting in, and as we all know, sometimes
when you have hypothermia, your brain doesn't not quite working right,
just like when we were talking about the the Outlaw Pass,

(28:03):
and so that whole thing. You think you're hot, little
part of hypothermia. Yeah, yeah, so maybe she was a
little bit confused and started taking off her clothes. And
then of course there's a there's the question of that
whole cross that's cut into the ground by the daggers
and by the way, I wanted to ask about that.

(28:26):
How big is this this cross that was carved in
I could never find anything that said was it a
one ft by two foot cross or an eight foot
by six foot cross? Like I can get scale on
this stage. I've never gotten in the scale on it either.
I hear that it's a large cross, so I'm assuming
it's it's like something like five or six feet something

(28:47):
that was big enough for her to lay on. I
had the impression that it was kind of like her
body was like, you know, it was a symbolism, like
of a crucifixion or similar to that. It was it
was about the size of her. I got that impression too,
But I've never seen anything that's either. But so we
don't really know how we three independently and for the

(29:09):
same thing. So perhaps that maybe the or perhaps we
just go to the same place every time. My other
question and this is why I ask about this is
there's this talk about the dagger and the cross in
the ground, but you never hear anything about the dirt

(29:30):
that the soil or what would be cut up. You know,
if I cut this cross in the ground, I, at
least from my perspective, I would presume that I would
cut it out and then I would roll on the
saw or whatever. Top soil is interesting because I thought
it was like just a like two lines. Oh see
see what I heard that. I thought she would literally

(29:53):
cut the growth off so it was bare dirt. Yeah,
but you don't know how much what's an inch? Why
anybody to choose to shovel that's trying to dig up
any kind of plant life and half an inch an
inch deep to try to expose bar dirt? That's not
easy work, which might explain like this, this whole thing
about cuts and scrapes. Although let's be fair, in Scotland

(30:15):
it's either grass or moss, right, true, But where would
that where I never heard anything about this this Let's
just say my my direction was correct, well, that we
never heard anything about a pile of soil or plant
life that had been cast aside for her to lay

(30:36):
in this exposed dirt, which is why I think I
assumed that it was just like two lines right that
like somebody had just done like the line drawing of
a cross under it, just like literally just stabbing the
earth and just gouging it. So it's an audible, a
noticeable cut in the ground, but it's not open. Yeah,

(30:57):
it's also possible to move some turf to have a
more well defined cross. And yeah, it sucked it aside
and nobody, nobody really I thought it was worth to
put into report or anything. Well, and and plus we
don't know like weather conditions, like it's Scotland in November,
it was probably raining. There's a lot of different stuff
that was probably potentially going on there that could have

(31:19):
gotten rid of all that soil anyway, So the cross
is like a little bit of a mystery. But it see,
it does appear that she cutted herself. And as far
as the clothes go, you know, that's still almost still
again if it's windy and might have been blown away.
And again one of these things could be one of
those little details. Maybe there was a little pile of

(31:39):
her clothes right there and it just you know got
lost over time. Because I remember this happened eighty five
years ago, so that and it's an unsolved mystery, right,
I mean that's the other we we often talked about
this on the show that like these unsolved mysteries quote unquote,
like the telling of them gets more and more fantastical
at time goes on and details just like he cares

(32:03):
about that, you know, we've got to get some blue
lights in this. Yeah, and missing clothes and like she
was naked and there were mysterious scratches on the body,
and there was a dude standing right there. Yeah he
wasn't wasn't standing right there, he was lurking nearby. Hey yeah. Yeah.
So this theory is that for some reason she was

(32:24):
out there doing something she got lost and hypothermia, so
just like walking around or whatever, and decided to shed
some layers and maybe do a little later production or
something like that. Or maybe she was doing some spell
that would warm her body, or maybe maybe or maybe
this was going to do a spell that would tell
her the way home because she was lost, or sent

(32:45):
her to London. Oh yeah, maybe that seems that gonna
be kind of impossible to get lost in an island's
only one mile wide. And four miles long. Well, again
I go back to this whole like lack of understanding
of the weather. You know, if it were gray and
like super dark and windy, and if she was hypothermic
and disoriented and she kind of you know, like awoke
into her senses realized crap, like I'm lost and it's cold,

(33:08):
and I don't know I'm naked for some reason, and
it's it's also unnn fact that people don't are in
almost incapable of walking in straight line. So you say
that I want to walk there, I'm going. I know
if I walk north, I will get to some place.
But instead you walk in a circle. So whether it

(33:30):
be a half mile or a uh yards circle, you
continue to walk in a circle. Although to be fair,
if you know the island is as small it is
as it is, you just think, I mean at a
like a fair brisk pace. I walk about a twenty
minute mile, and most people kind of breast place, especially

(33:50):
in those times. So if you just say, okay, well,
the circumference of this is like basically four miles, right,
So if I just like hug the coast, I will
eventually get back to the village, get back. But if
you're freezing cold. You don't want to take the four
mile hike. You're going to try and take the half
mile shortcut. Yeah, probably true. But but we I think

(34:13):
we think we hypothermia pretty well. Another possibility is suicide. Yeah,
maybe she just deliberately went out there and thought, you know,
I'm gonna hypothermia as ways to go are It's not
so bad compared to like say, being eaten by sharks
or being burned alive or something like that. So maybe
she wanted to commit suicide and maybe she figured, hey,

(34:34):
I'll be buried on Iona and the most sacred of islands.
She was all these Scottish kings and she was I mean,
I guess even she had a dagger with her right, Yeah.
So I mean it's even possible that she initially went
out there thinking I'll just follow my dagger. I'll just
follow my dagger, and then you know, like cowarded out
of the last second. Mighty explain the scratches on her
tour so too. I mean, she was trying to stab

(34:57):
the tentative what do they call it? Those? Isn't the
hesitat hesitation marks? Yeah, where she's she's trying, Well, I
just do a little one hurt. What do you hear
these stories about Japanese people committing Harry Carey, you know,
stabbing yourself to death with a sword. It's like, how
do you do that? You have to be really why

(35:19):
they fall on culturally ingrain I just but that's but
you know, it's also why they they the culture says
you fall on your sword because once you're starting to
pitch forward, you can't twist aside fast enough. Yeah, that's
that's the way to do it. Actually, you know, push
the sword into yourself. Now you keep get so suicide

(35:39):
is a possibility. Now the possibility is psychic attacks. She
was done in by a psychic attack. Who yeah, well
the sinister Mouena Mouena Matters, Yeah, sinister, Yeah, her her
friend the unfortunately that's right because she has friends with
friends with Dion and uh shee accused Moena Matters of
murder Netta. Well, I suppose that. I mean again, you know,

(36:03):
we don't know why Netta decided, oh I'm going to
go to this far reaching island that has some psychic powers.
But it might be to get away. It maybe to
like flee. It might have been Yeah, it could have
been do you have the problem with the Way to
Matters series that she died the year before, thank you,
because I didn't want to be like the jerk that
poopoo's this whole theory, but this one is the hardest

(36:26):
one for me to even try because it never went
you never went through Carlos Custodager, I didn't maybe if
she could reach beyond the grave, maybe, But then if
that's the case, I mean, actually Moyenna when of Matters,
actually had more reason to psychically attack the unfortune yeah
than just attack although I don't know how close they were.

(36:46):
If like, it would have been worse for Dion to
like live with the haunting nous of like her friend's
mysterious death. Maybe I don't know why I want to
wait until after she died to do with listen, more
psychic powers. You get more psychic powers after you die. Okay,
all right, that's so that's get that maybe a possibility
next theory, she was mentally disturbed and she just like

(37:10):
I thought, wandering around naked in late November would would
be a fun idea. I gotta be honest. I have
a couple of friends that I worry about this with
that are still like in there somehow, you know, they're
almost thirties somehow in there, like Carlos castanea like weird
psychic attack phase where they you know, every once in

(37:33):
a while I get a text from them that's like
being attacked psychically by blah blah blah, and I'm like, wow, really,
you actually, like you truly believe that it's not like
an attention thing. And I worry sometimes that like wow,
maybe that's like you just are. So this is this
is a this is very but this theory is kind
of related to the first one. Then, yeah, this is

(37:55):
an offshot of the first series. Good a better description
of the first one, right, yeah, yeah, Well the first
theory is that she was not not mentally to range
so much, but the hypothermia cause it was just like, well, okay,
I see this thing o. The cause in this case
is mental mental illness bringing about I'm clothing herself and

(38:17):
getting a hypothermia. So so I yeah, for me, this
theory was for something kind of helps inform theory one, right,
It gives a good reason behind why somebody might be
out there. But there's there there are indications in the
story that this could be right. Her whole. I've got

(38:37):
to get off this island. I gotta pack everything now,
I gotta go. I'm okay, don't worry about it now,
I'm fine. Yeah. Are you sure you're fine? You were
just freaking up? No, I'm fine, It's totally okay. She
didn't say whether the Netta puts some tinfoil over her
head that might have saw off the psychic attacks. Yeah. Yes,

(39:03):
mental disturbance caused her to get naked and die hypothermia. Okay,
next hearing. Maybe she was wanted to do some ritual
and the ritual required her to be naked or nearly
naked in order to do that, and she at this
time was just a little bit too mentally disturbed to
understand what a bad idea this was doing it, this
was exactly Uh So, maybe she decided that she was

(39:26):
going to do a little astral projection, although I had
no I know nothing about astro projection. I don't think
you need to be naked to do it. But she
decided to cut the cross, lay down, do some astro projection,
and her consciousness went out and wanted the universe for
a while, and then when it came back and it
got home, well, she had expired from hypothermia, So maybe
she was doing astral projection, I mean as possible, right,

(39:48):
I Mean, they're like so many things to build on this,
right is. But like if she already kind of thought
that was a thing, she could have been drunk or
like on drugs enough to really believe that and think, well,
I have to be naked to do this. I'm just
gonna lay down for a minute while I do this,
because you know, you don't have to be laying down
to do astral projection, but like maybe you're inebriated and

(40:10):
being laying down feels better, right, Um, I don't know.
And also it wasn't that it wasn't the founder of
um Alpha Omega. He had some sexual scandal happened and
that's why he found it Alpha and Omega. Yeah, so
the hermetic Order of the New Dawn or whatever. So
it's totally possible. I know that it was definitely a

(40:32):
thing in a lot of those kind of alternate psychic
crazy orders in the twenties that like there was a
lot of sexual stuff that went with that. So I
guess it is certainly possible that she there was a
ritual that she was trying to perform or whatever it
involved that sexual component, you know. I mean, you think
about it, if you're a cult leader and you're gonna

(40:53):
like try to attract attractive female followers into your whole thing,
and you're gonna you're gonna teach them all these rituals.
They said, by the way, this requires you to be
completely naked. Like that is one of the most pervasive
like just strands and all of the cults that I've
ever read about is that, you know, it's like almost
always founded by like some thirty or above guy who's

(41:17):
always like, oh, yeah, by the way, I get all
these fifteen year old wives. Yeah, we're gonna have a
lot of sex. It's just part of the religion. It's cool.
It's disturbing because they're they're playing off of people who
are very naive, yeah, or or mentally whatever. The branch

(41:37):
Davidians don in Waco, you know, the Jim Karash was
their cult leader, and that was one of the things. Yeah,
you all come and live in the compound and I
get to have sex with your wives, And it's like
what kind of guy would do that? That was the
thing we just talked about the cult last week with
the Monster with twenty one faces. The cults in Japan. Yeah,
I can't remember, and I know that he it was

(41:59):
like mostly him in the followed him and he was
having sex with all of them. I want to be
a cult leader, seriously, I mean, not the big part
of a lot of cults. And I don't know if
Alpha at Omega was that kind of cult or not,
But I don't know. I'm not willing to discount the
fact that like that could potentially be quote you know,

(42:19):
air quote part of that ritual. Yeah, I don't know
that they were. There's not enough I couldn't find enough
available information about these guys. Shocking. Yeah, I know it
appears that they took the medic the medic physical aspects
of things more seriously than a lot of these these
really weird little cults like the Branch Davidians or Jones,

(42:40):
him Jones, those guys. Yeah, but I can't say what
they are up to. Nobody knows, right because that's part
of it. But certainly enough, if you're if you're gonna
do a ritual that doesn't hurt to be naked, and
so if you're the if you're the cult leader, you're
gonna you're gonna say, you know, you're gonna say, like, hey,
by the way, this you're required to be naked to
do this to this ritual, be three year old young

(43:01):
woman who's super attractive. Again, it's required for some very
base reasons why that happens. And there it is very disturbing,
and I think I'm just gonna leave it at that.
I'm actually gonna move us away from this because I'm
really actually I'm a little uncomfortable continuing to repeat this conversation.
Let's let's talk about some of your theories. Yeah, actually

(43:22):
have two theories that I think both playoff of the
last theory that you talked about. No, not no UFOs alright,
sobot no, no Scottish yetti. But I have I have
two theories here, and this is just based off of
things that I read Ninford and then a little bit

(43:43):
of random research that I did. My first my first
thought is that I think you touched upon this a
little bit, is well, what if she was Devin, you
said this one if she's a little high. Okay, Well,
at the time that she came the island, and I
was reading the accounts about now, they were saying that

(44:04):
she really looked terrible kind of sunken eyes, kind of
a bad pallor about her. And we've talked about the
fact that you know, maybe she's got that the condition
where she's oxidizing the silver a lot, so she could
have had what was equated to some kind of internal

(44:24):
oregan disorder. Well, at that time, there were a lot
of folklore about using heather plants to make teas and
polstices from to heal you. It's never been supported anywhere.
In other words, I've done I've looked at it, and
they're like, yeah, Nick could maybe do something, but we

(44:46):
can't scientifically prove that it does a damn thing for you.
But here's the thing. For years and years and years
on these islands, people used to make beer out of heather,
and they used to only use the fresh new growth
tips of the plant because they didn't have hops. That's
what they used to make the fermentation from. But it

(45:07):
was common knowledge that you didn't go into the older
growth because I guess what was commonplace in the older
growth of those plants that the bread mole that we
talked about. So I could see where she is using

(45:27):
this stuff to try to make yourself feel better, and
she gets some of it. I feel, okay, I feel,
And then she gets a bad batch and she goes
on a bender, not knowing what's going on. And now
she's off, you know, in a in an altered state,
And that would explain she's break from reality basically just

(45:52):
chewing on plants out there. Well, if she made a
pulsterice out of it, which puls this requires heating it up,
that would kill it. So I guess she was making
a t some kind of talk police that you put
on your body, right right, because you gotta kind of
make it into a pace, so you gotta heat it
up and break it down. But if you're making it
as a t and you're just dipping it in water,
it's some of it's gonna survive. So now you're in

(46:13):
an altered state. You have a break from reality, and
off you go. And so let's say the first thing
in the morning, she makes some of that tea, and
she's having a bit of a trip, and that's why
she wants to get off the island. And then she
has some more and she quote unquote evens out and
then has more of that bad badge, and now she's

(46:35):
gone on a really bad trip. And suddenly she is
out there. Man, that's possible. You would think that Mrs
McRae and would I would have noticed her making tea
from this stuff and warned her about the possibilities of
You would think maybe she wasn't in the kitchen. Maybe
she wasn't in the kitchen and so she wasn't paying attention.

(46:56):
Uh So, I mean that could explain why she would
have gone out there and and died from exposure, because
she is just out, just completely passes out. It's also
possible that the other thing that I think could have
happened is as agitated. Is I got the impression that
she was that day and her again her bad pallor

(47:19):
and her physical condition. I mean, they talked about the
fact that she couldn't walk more than a couple hundred
yards at a time before she had to stop and
come back to the house. She couldn't go far afield,
which leads me to wonder if she had some kind
of condition. I wouldn't say, like congestive heart failure, but

(47:39):
she might have been in a situation where she was
getting the beginnings of a stroke. So she's got you know,
what is it when you've got the vein that bursts
in your brain. I can't think of and embolism. She's
got an embolism that's buildings. So she she's losing her energy,
and then she has a small stroke. She wigs out.

(48:01):
That's why she wants to leave because she's gone into
an altered state again, and then kind of calms down,
goes out into the into the landscape, and then has
the major stroke. I mean, if we're having I mean,
if we're going to go that route, you know, things
like a cute kidney failure or like appendicitis, those things

(48:21):
will all render those kind of like san and if
you're in that kind of I guess culture of thinking,
a psychic attack could be causing those things right where
you're like nauseous and you've got a headache, tired, and
then you you're able to just kind of calm yourself

(48:42):
down because you can, you know, people can talk themselves
down from things like that. You say, okay, okay, I'm fine,
I'm just gonna go for a walk. That will make
me feel better. You know, for whatever reason, have this break.
Take your clothes off because you've got a fever maybe
or whatever. It could be so many different year old

(49:02):
again wanted to run in the sea. And you would
assume that any I mean even like a doctor, just
like a family doctor, should be able to say it
was some kind of failure or but but that's that's
that's is basing it upon that he was able to
examine her when she was alive, which she may never

(49:23):
have gone to this guy on the island. It's uh,
it's no, there's not a definitive arrival day. So she
supposedly arrived there somewhere in July or August. So let's
let's say she arrived there at the first day of August.
So it takes to work up to go into a doctor.
Almost she had no particular reason that I know of

(49:45):
to go see the doctor to begin with. So he
may not have had a living symptom to base it
upon for whatever malady that it might have beens. Yeah,
and he wasn't. He wasn't set up to do the
whole you know, like the autopsy and cut her open
and look at her look at her inergery, Yeah, and
do toxicology and see if maybe she had some sort
of poisoning like you're talking about going on. She he
wasn't set up for that okay, so so much for

(50:07):
that theory. Theories good, so Devon, well he really just
kind of disconnected that one and ch those. I don't
remember what I was gonna say, So let's go to Devon.
I don't. I guess I don't really have any theory.
I mean, you know, I'm still like just so fresh
out of my like again, we've been calling it the
Carlos Castel in a phase, right, I can't with certainties

(50:32):
say any of these are wrong. Maybe she was actually
being psychically attacked. Probably not. I kind of doubt that.
I super doubt that. But again, I'm not so far
out of that phase where I can't say it's not
it's not that bizarre. There was somebody just recently, I
think it was up around Mountain Rainier. Somebody took some

(50:53):
LSD some young woman and took off all of her
clothes and just headed out into the woods. It had
bad It happens all the time. There's so many different rs.
I mean, you know, in the twenties, right, so we've
got like all this like bad heroin going around like
and there, and these drugs have existed for so long.
It's a very curious, mysterious death that I have no

(51:18):
good theories on. I honestly am just happy to say
I don't understand it, and it's really weird. I don't
I don't get it either, you know, like this this,
you know, all of none of our theories really addressed
the like cross situation. You know, they say, well, I
don't know, then maybe she went nuts and did that, right,
there's no good for that. None of them really truly

(51:41):
addressed the fact that maybe there was a guy like lurking, right,
I mean, it's it's just weird. Yeah, And I really
discounted the guy lurking in the black cloak because if
you murder somebody or somewhere how involved in her death,
and you sort of learn just lurk for two days,

(52:01):
days for days until why are you going to Why
don't you go lurk somewhere else? I mean, I guess
I generally feel like, you know, there there's in my
like storybook version, there's like something missing here right where
they were like, oh, also, she happened to have a
lover on the island, that's why she was there, and

(52:22):
would you would think that would eventually somehow, but it
never did. So I don't have a good feeling about this.
What's your favorite theory, Well, we can make up another one.
Let's say she was a drug addict and she want
there to try to get away from her dealer, her dealer,
and then at some point she's going to see some

(52:45):
some major or might might it might be that she
established a connection on the island just she happens since
and then was back back in the throws of addiction.
And then one day realizes that she she drops her
Violet Loud nem or whatever it is, and breaks in
and realize, I'm fresh out, you know, and I've got
to go to London and score some more. And maybe

(53:05):
why don't may just be smirched the name of I know,
I know, I know is out there. It's totally out there.
But then she then she thinks about it. She can't
leave anyway, The fairy doesn't go on Sundays, and then
she thinks about and thinks, you know, I really need
to kick this crap instead of doing that. But then
she later on decides, you know what, this just really
sucks and I hate my life. I'm going to go
out and take my clothes off and die. So maybe

(53:26):
that's thank you happy there is no reason to believe that.
By the way, I don't want to be smersed the
name of netaporn areo any more theories none whatssoever. So
that's the end of the theories. If you have theories
of your own, you can always send us an email
at Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. You can,

(53:48):
of course go to our website, which is Thinking Sideways
podcast dot com. Uh. If you're looking to download our shows,
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(54:11):
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successful mystery solving it Thinking Sideways the Podcast. So so well, yeah, okay,

(54:34):
we didn't solve it exactly. We probably we probably, we
probably muddied the water of stuff. But yeah, yeah yeah
sometimes sometimes we we know, solve it well rarely, but
you know, this time, I don't think we quite Either
we solve it or we ruin it. Yeah, we ruined it. Okay, Well,

(54:54):
I think we bumped the lurking guy in the black cloak. Yeah.
I think we pretty much by just ignoring the fact
that he was the blue lights. We just ignored the
blue lights. We paid attention to the blue did we, Yeah,
we said, oh yeah, more blue lights. They're always showing
up in these things. Have you noticed that? So that's
it for this week, folks. I hope you enjoyed the

(55:15):
episode and be sure to tune in next week for
another exciting unsolved mystery here at Thinking Sideways. Bye bye,
bye guys, Bye