0:10

The man leaned against a boulder, taking

0:13

respite in the wind's brief lull. His

0:16

eyes were red, his lips

0:18

cracked and parched. Another

0:21

squall of warm air thick with

0:23

dust hit him again. He

0:26

ducked to shield his eyes and cursed

0:29

its constant rattling round

0:31

his head. It was only

0:33

wind, but it was driving him

0:35

to distraction. The

0:38

man was fifty three year old

0:40

Episcopalian Bishop James

0:43

Albert Pike. In

0:45

early September nineteen sixty

0:47

nine, he and his twenty eight year

0:49

old wife Diane, ventured

0:51

out into the Judean Desert in

0:54

the West Bank. They were

0:56

looking for the place where Jesus was

0:58

supposedly tempted by by the Devil

1:01

for a book Pike was writing. Driving

1:04

out of bethy Hem one morning, they

1:06

turned off the main road onto

1:08

a dirt track, believing they were

1:10

heading north toward Jericho, but

1:13

the track was instead taking

1:16

them further east toward the

1:18

Dead Sea, further into

1:20

the desert. When they finally

1:23

realized their mistake, the couple

1:25

attempted to turn the car around,

1:28

only for it to get stuck in a rut.

1:31

After an hour spent battling

1:33

to free the vehicle with a faulty

1:35

carjack, they were forced to accept

1:38

they were now stranded. They'd

1:40

already drunk the two cokes they

1:43

took with them that morning and had

1:45

no other liquid. With the

1:47

heat steadily intensifying, their

1:49

only option was to get walking

1:51

in the hope of finding help before

1:54

it was too late. Not

1:57

used to the desert environment, the

1:59

heat fell like a great pressure that

2:01

seemed to be pushing them down into

2:03

the dusty ground with each

2:06

step, and without water,

2:08

they became rapidly dehydrated.

2:12

After mercifully coming across a

2:14

large, overhanging rock, they

2:16

stopped to get some pressure shade,

2:20

but James no longer had the strength

2:22

to continue. Diane

2:25

looked out into the desert toward

2:27

a shady looking canyon or waddy

2:30

in the distance, as a wind

2:32

began to pick up, sweeping

2:34

sand into the air like a haze.

2:38

She knew then that she was

2:40

their only hope. If

2:42

she couldn't find help before nightfall,

2:44

they would most likely both die

2:47

there, and so she told

2:49

her husband to sit tight, then

2:51

headed back out into the irrepressible

2:54

heat. James watched

2:57

Diane until her silhouette disappeared

3:00

into the horizon, then lay

3:02

back against the rock and fell

3:04

asleep with exhaustion. You're

3:08

listening to Unexplained, and I'm

3:11

Richard McLean Smith. Hours

3:20

later, James awoke to find

3:22

the sun much lower in the sky, but

3:25

the wind still blowing incessantly,

3:28

feathering grains of sand over

3:30

the desert floor towards him.

3:33

As it tugged at his shirt and blue

3:35

dust in his eyes, it almost

3:38

felt like fluttering. Insistent

3:40

fingers were scratching, even

3:43

clawing at him. He couldn't

3:45

stand it any longer. Perhaps

3:48

if he could follow his wife into that

3:50

shady waddy, he could get out

3:52

of the wind, find her footsteps,

3:55

and walk to safety. James

3:58

staggered to his feet and made

4:00

it a few hundred yards into the waddy,

4:03

where he found a large shaded

4:05

pool of water. He

4:07

took long, desperate gulps

4:09

of the warm, silty liquid, then

4:12

sat down again to rest. But

4:15

still the wind would not leave

4:17

him alone. It

4:20

snaked through the canyon, tugging

4:22

at his hair, ruffling his damp

4:25

cotton shirt. He

4:27

knew in his head that the safest

4:29

thing was to stay put and

4:32

wait for Diane. He had

4:34

shelter and water, but

4:36

he just had to get away from that

4:38

wind with

4:41

a renewed sense of strength and purpose,

4:44

he turned to face the wall of

4:46

the canyon. Finding

4:48

a solid hole to grip, he

4:50

pushed up from the ground and began

4:53

to climb elsewhere.

4:56

Diane had been stumbling across

4:58

the stony desert for hour I was barely

5:01

managing to keep going in the encroaching

5:03

darkness. She

5:06

later said that what prompted her to

5:08

keep going was that if her body

5:10

were found on the way to get help, at

5:13

least people wouldn't think that the

5:15

couple had committed suicide.

5:19

After ten strenuous hours,

5:21

first scrambling up the walls of the canyon,

5:24

then stumbling along a road under

5:26

construction, relief washed

5:29

over Diane when finally in

5:31

the distance she saw the camp

5:33

of the laborers who were building the road.

5:37

As she staggered into the camp, the

5:39

men reached out to stop her from

5:41

collapsing to the ground. They

5:44

sat her down and wrapped a blanket

5:46

around her while they waited for their

5:48

foreman to arrive. Having

5:51

recovered somewhat, Diane

5:53

was then taken to the nearest army

5:55

camp, where she asked the camp's captain

5:57

to help her rescue her husband, but

6:00

with it now long in the night, there

6:03

was little the captain could do. The

6:05

search for James would have to wait until

6:08

the next day.

6:19

It wasn't long before the Pike's abandoned

6:22

car was located just at

6:24

the beginning of a waddy called Mura

6:27

Barat. A few of the

6:29

men helped pull it out of the rut

6:31

in no time. The engine

6:33

still worked perfectly, but

6:36

there was no sign of James.

6:39

James Pike had risen to prominence

6:42

within the Episcopal Church in

6:44

large part due to his outspoken

6:46

liberal views, which were both

6:48

fated and hated in equal

6:50

measure. In nineteen fifty

6:53

eight, Pike was appointed as

6:55

the fifth Bishop of California, in

6:57

which capacity he was an early

7:00

promoter of the acceptance of

7:02

LGBT people into the

7:04

church, civil rights,

7:06

and the ordination of women into

7:08

the priesthood. By

7:11

nineteen sixty six, Pike

7:13

had grown tired of all the politics

7:15

that came with his position. He

7:18

left California and went to

7:20

share a period of sabbatical study

7:23

at Cambridge University in England

7:25

with his son, Jim, one

7:28

of four children from his second marriage.

7:31

In early February, Jim

7:33

left his father in Cambridge and

7:36

returned to the US. A

7:38

few days later, he fatally

7:40

shot himself in the head in a

7:42

New York City hotel room

7:46

just over two weeks later. Having

7:48

just returned to Cambridge from attending

7:50

his son's funeral, James

7:53

walked into the bedroom of the apartment

7:55

he and his son had shared to

7:57

find two postcards that he'd never seen

8:00

before lying on the floor.

8:03

They were positioned at an angle of approximately

8:05

one hundred and forty degrees, apparently

8:09

mimicking the hands of a clock, showing

8:11

the precise time that his son

8:14

had killed himself. It

8:16

was just the first in a number of bizarre

8:19

occurrences that led James

8:21

to believe his son was trying

8:23

to communicate with him from beyond

8:26

the grave. In response,

8:29

Pike dived deeply into

8:31

a very public pursuit of various

8:33

spiritualist and clairvoyant methods.

8:37

He even participated in a televised

8:39

seance supposedly with his dead

8:42

son through the so called medium

8:44

Arthur Ford in nineteen sixty

8:47

six. By nineteen

8:49

sixty seven, Pike had been

8:51

divorced twice and was living

8:53

with his then girlfriend Marion Bergrad,

8:56

when she also committed suicide.

9:00

The following year, he married Diane

9:02

Kennedy, whom he'd collaborated with

9:05

on his book The Other Side,

9:07

in which he outlined his experiences

9:10

with supposed paranormal phenomena

9:12

following his son's suicide.

9:16

The marriage was controversial among

9:18

members of Pike's church, and

9:20

three days after the wedding, Pike

9:23

was barred from performing all priestly

9:25

functions, and so it

9:28

was with Pike free to pursue

9:30

new projects, that in August

9:33

nineteen sixty nine, Pike

9:35

and Diane traveled to Israel

9:38

to conduct research for a new book

9:40

Pike wanted to write about

9:42

the historical Jesus. A

9:45

few days later, they made their

9:47

fateful trip into the desert.

9:56

For three days, with temperatures

9:59

reaching a above one hundred degrees fahrenheit,

10:02

hundreds of off duty soldiers

10:04

searched high and low for James,

10:07

but found no sign of him.

10:10

With little chance that the bishop

10:12

could survive that long out in the

10:14

desert, the official search was

10:16

called off, while a number of Bedouin

10:19

and former army scouts continued

10:21

to look for him. At

10:24

the end of that third day, Diane

10:26

gave a press conference to update

10:28

the media on the situation. Shortly

10:31

after, she received a phone call

10:34

from her family in the States. They'd

10:36

received word from Arthur Ford,

10:39

the self described medium who'd

10:41

apparently helped Pike contact

10:43

his dead son. Ford

10:46

said that Pike was still very

10:48

much alive and sheltering

10:50

in a cave close to where Diane

10:52

had last seen him, but he

10:55

was sick and in need of urgent

10:57

medical attention. After

10:59

that, Diane was suddenly

11:02

inundated by numerous self

11:04

described mediums offering

11:06

to help locate her husband in

11:09

Tel Aviv. One so called

11:11

medium swung a pendulum

11:14

over a large map, then recorded

11:16

the position on the map where it stopped.

11:19

When they repeated the pendulum swing

11:22

over a different map, miraculously,

11:25

it stopped at the precise same

11:27

location. Two

11:29

men were despatched from Tel Aviv immediately

11:32

to locate the spot, but when

11:35

they got there, the place was

11:37

deserted, with no sign of Pike

11:39

having ever been there. The

11:42

following day, the same medium

11:45

attempted a spot of automatic

11:47

writing to see if that might help.

11:50

Holding a pen over a piece of paper,

11:53

they fell seemingly into a trance

11:56

as another spirit entered their body

11:58

and began to move their hand across

12:01

the paper. Snapping

12:03

out of the apparent trance moments

12:05

later, the medium consulted

12:08

the paper on which a message

12:10

was now written. It had

12:12

supposedly come from infamous

12:14

apparent psychic Edgar Case,

12:17

who died almost twenty years earlier.

12:20

The message declared that Pike

12:23

was lying unconscious and close

12:25

to death in a cave on a

12:28

narrow ridge that was hidden

12:30

by shrubs. A

12:32

team of volunteers raced

12:34

back out to the desert and searched

12:36

for the cave to no avail.

12:40

On September fifth, five

12:42

days after Pike had last been

12:44

seen alive, a search volunteer

12:47

close to Wadi Murabarat,

12:50

came across a map, then

12:52

a pair of undershorts, followed

12:54

by some glasses and later

12:56

a contact lens case. It

12:59

was a part that had been laid out

13:01

by Pike, and at the end

13:04

of it, part way down Wadi

13:06

Murabarat, was Pike's

13:09

body, sprawled out on the

13:11

floor at the bottom of a steep

13:13

face. It

13:15

appeared that he'd fallen from high up,

13:18

having attempted to climb out of the

13:20

canyon. The next

13:22

day, he was buried in Saint Peter's

13:25

Protestant Cemetery in Jaffa,

13:27

Israel, and it wasn't long

13:30

before the rumors began that

13:32

something weird had happened to Pike

13:35

while he was out in the desert that

13:37

it wasn't the fall that killed him, but

13:40

rather he'd been driven to his death

13:43

by a weird kind of madness brought

13:46

on by the wind. The

13:54

wind that James and Diane Pike

13:57

experienced on their desert misadventure

14:00

is known in Israel as the Sharav

14:02

and more widely across the Mediterranean

14:05

as the Soroco. It's a

14:07

wind that brings warm air from the Sahara

14:10

and the Arabian Peninsula, with

14:13

many names, the Levante

14:15

in Spain or the Camscene

14:18

in Egypt. Its characterized

14:20

by a temperature roughly twenty

14:22

five degrees fahrenheit higher

14:25

than the seasonal average, and

14:27

south of the Mediterranean, the

14:29

Sorocco is always dry, with

14:32

a relative humidity sometimes

14:34

falling to zero. Some

14:37

believe these two characteristics

14:39

do something fundamental to the

14:41

wind's electrical properties and

14:44

to anybody unfortunate enough to

14:46

be caught in its grip. One

14:49

researcher at the Hebrew University

14:52

in Jerusalem found that almost

14:54

one third of Israel's population

14:57

experience some kind of adverse reaction,

15:00

and the Charaf blows forty

15:02

three percent of the people he tested

15:05

experienced unusually high concentrations

15:08

of the hormone serotonin in

15:10

their blood system when the wind

15:12

was blowing. Serotonin

15:15

causes the constriction of peripheral

15:17

blood vessels, including those

15:19

in the brain and ones that control

15:22

sleep. In modest concentrations,

15:25

it's a natural tranquilizer, but

15:27

too much serotonin produces

15:30

migraines, allergic reactions,

15:32

flushes, palpitations,

15:35

irritability, and sleeplessness.

15:39

That people might be driven to distraction,

15:42

even madness by the wind is

15:44

not a new theory or specific

15:47

to any one part of the world. The

15:50

Greek physician from the fourth century

15:52

BCE, Hippocrates, was

15:54

convinced that certain winds made

15:57

people in ancient Greece sick.

16:00

He wrote that the west winds were worse

16:02

and that people exposed to them became

16:05

pale and sickly, with digestive

16:08

organs that were quote frequently

16:11

deranged from the phlegm that

16:13

runs down into them from the head.

16:16

The French Enlightenment writer, philosopher

16:19

and historian Voltaire spent

16:21

time in England while in exile

16:24

from its native France during the seventeen

16:26

twenties. He wrote that in London,

16:29

when the east wind blew. A black

16:31

melancholy spreads over the

16:33

whole nation. Even the

16:36

animals suffer from it and have a

16:38

dejected air. Men

16:40

strong enough to preserve their health in

16:42

this accursed wind lose

16:45

their good humor. Everyone

16:47

wears a grim expression and is

16:49

inclined to make desperate decisions.

16:53

Even claimed that it was under the influence

16:55

of the East wind that the English

16:57

beheaded King Charles the First and

17:00

opposed King James the Second.

17:03

It hadn't crossed the mind of travel writer

17:06

Nick Hunt how the wind might affect

17:08

his state of mind and well being as

17:11

he set out in twenty sixteen on

17:13

a walking adventure across Europe

17:15

to experience its various winds,

17:18

a journey that became the subject of

17:20

his next book, Where the Wild

17:23

Winds Are.

17:34

Things went as well as expected as

17:36

Nick trekked across the Low Pennine

17:39

Hills of northern England, experiencing

17:41

Britain's only named wind, the

17:44

Helm. He continued

17:46

to enjoy his wonderings as he traveled

17:48

to Trieste, from where he sauntered

17:50

across Slovenia, then down

17:53

the coast of Croatia, enjoying

17:55

chile blasts at the borer a

17:57

frigid blast of air that blows

17:59

across the Adriatic coast from

18:01

snow covered mountains to its northeast.

18:05

Then Nick arrived in Switzerland

18:08

looking forward to sampling the fern,

18:11

a warm, dry wind that blows

18:13

down from the Alps in spring and

18:16

at its most intense as

18:18

the power to bring down cable cars

18:20

and derailed trains. Having

18:23

mentioned his plans to a German friend,

18:26

the person replied, Ah, yes,

18:29

the fern. That's why everyone

18:31

in Bavaria is crazy. Famed

18:34

novelist Hermann Hess had even written

18:37

about the fern as a boy.

18:39

He said that he was afraid of even

18:42

hated that wind. Everything

18:45

was going smoothly as Nick began

18:48

his traverse of alpine foothills

18:50

in the German speaking part of the country,

18:53

until he reached the village of inert

18:56

Kirchen in the Canton of Bern,

18:59

where the fern began to blow. Are

19:03

you sure you want to do this? It's a

19:05

bit a bit windy, shouted

19:08

the owner of a campsite where Nick

19:10

had decided to pitch his tent for the night.

19:14

After repeated attempts wrestling

19:16

with the writhing giant nylon

19:18

manta, ray that his tent had become. He

19:21

managed to peg it down under a

19:23

lone peach tree that thrashed

19:25

wildly in the howling gale all

19:29

night. Nick's tent bucked

19:31

and flapped, while the wind all

19:33

around him bellowed like a banshee.

19:36

He wrote that at some point in the

19:39

next twelve hours it was

19:41

as if something in his brain snapped.

19:44

He struggled for breath as he packed

19:46

his tent the following morning, then

19:49

walked on watching waterfalls

19:51

being blown upwards. His

19:54

limbs felt heavy and tired, his

19:56

mind seemed clouded and foggy,

19:59

and he was overcome with a

20:01

sudden sense of despair. For

20:04

three weeks, the wind continued

20:06

to howl, and Nick's mood

20:08

worsened. Even boarding

20:11

a high speed train to the French

20:13

speaking part of the Swiss Alps didn't

20:15

seem to help. As

20:17

he watched the landscape speed by,

20:20

his anxiety grew. He

20:22

found accommodation with a hospitable

20:25

Buddhist woman clothed in yellow

20:27

robes, but still couldn't seem

20:29

to relax as

20:31

he collapsed into bed. He

20:33

felt plagued by an inexplicable

20:36

apprehension that, in

20:38

his words, something had

20:41

gone extremely wrong on

20:45

waking. The next morning, however, Nick

20:48

stepped outside to find that

20:50

the fern had finally stopped.

20:53

He admired a blue sky peppered

20:55

with cotton wool clouds, and

20:58

was charmed as he watched his host to

21:00

feed her rabbits. Then

21:02

strolled contentedly down the street

21:04

to buy a croissant. Instead

21:07

of looking desolate and forbidding, the

21:09

surrounding hillsides now seemed

21:12

inviting. His dark mood

21:14

had miraculously lifted. Suddenly

21:17

the world was full of possibilities.

21:20

Nick continued his hike down the

21:23

valley with all the gloom from the

21:25

previous few days having completely

21:27

evaporated. Over

21:36

the centuries, there's been general agreement

21:38

that the wind can deeply influence

21:41

our bodies and mines. South

21:43

African biologist and anthropologist

21:46

Lyle Watson, author of the

21:48

best selling New Age classic SuperNature,

21:51

published in nineteen seventy three,

21:54

spent his life trying to make sense

21:56

of natural and supernatural phenomena

21:58

in biological terms. He

22:01

examined and wrote about the effects

22:03

of the wind in some detail in

22:05

his nineteen eighty four book Heaven's

22:08

Breath, A Natural History of the Wind.

22:11

In it, he wrote that it's easy to

22:13

imagine that in human prehistory,

22:16

days with a lot of wind were dangerous,

22:19

with the ability to destroy shelters,

22:22

disperse warning scents, and

22:24

mask the sound of approaching predators.

22:28

Lyle Watson suggested that

22:30

the effect of the wind on the human body

22:33

is to invoke a classic alarm reaction,

22:36

increasing the production of adrenaline,

22:38

speeding up metabolism, dilating

22:41

blood vessels in the muscles and heart,

22:44

widening the pupils, and even

22:46

causing hares to stand on end with

22:48

a prickle of apprehension. A

22:51

study documenting the effect of

22:53

temperatures on physical fitness

22:56

tests found that performances

22:58

reached their efficiency when

23:00

a wind blew on the subjects at

23:02

about twenty five kilometers per

23:05

hour or four four Any

23:08

higher or lower and performances

23:10

began to drop off. One

23:12

American study investigating

23:14

how wind affects the behavior of children

23:17

in the playground found that when

23:19

wind speeds rose above four

23:21

six or forty four kilometers

23:24

per hour, the average number

23:26

of fights that broke out doubled.

23:29

As Lyle says, there is something

23:32

about wind, quite apart from

23:34

its cooling influence, that directly

23:36

affects our well being. Lyle

23:40

hypothesized that the bodies

23:42

of sailors and fishers who

23:44

live constantly under the strain of the wind

23:47

have adapted to the constant stimulus.

23:49

Conversely, many city dwellers

23:52

have lost the ability to withstand it

23:54

sufficiently, leading to increased

23:57

incidences of heart attacks and strokes

24:00

on windy days. One

24:02

study revealed that fifty percent

24:04

of all strokes and myocardial

24:06

infarctions happened when the wind

24:09

was blowing at fourse four or five.

24:12

Strangely, when the wind speed is

24:14

higher, however, the effect is diminished.

24:18

Reaction times can also be effected,

24:21

so much so that, according to

24:23

Touring Clubs SUE, a nonprofit

24:25

representing the interests of motorists

24:28

in Switzerland, in nineteen seventy

24:30

two, traffic accidents in

24:32

Geneva increased by over fifty

24:35

percent when the fern wind

24:37

was in effect. Furthermore,

24:40

as lyell wrights. In nineteen

24:43

seventy six, the medical department

24:45

of the West German Weather Station in

24:47

Freiburg published the results

24:49

of a four year study proving that

24:52

industrial accidents during

24:54

the fern wind required surgery

24:57

sixteen percent more often and

24:59

other medical treatment twenty

25:01

percent more frequently than at

25:03

any other time. Increases

25:06

in hypotension, coronary

25:08

crises, migraine, and

25:10

psychic disturbances both during

25:13

and on the day preceding a fern

25:15

wind were also reported

25:18

Lyle continues, the incidence

25:21

of post operative death due

25:23

to both heavy bleeding and thrombosis

25:26

during a fern wind has become

25:28

so high that in some hospitals

25:31

in Switzerland and Bavaria, major

25:34

surgery is postponed whenever

25:36

possible until the wind has

25:38

passed, and, like

25:41

something out of an Mnite Shamalan

25:43

movie, even suicides

25:45

and suicide attempts sore

25:47

to epidemic proportions throughout

25:50

Switzerland and into Austria whenever

25:53

the Witch's wind, as the

25:55

fern is sometimes called touches

25:58

ground. This

26:04

episode was written by Dianehope

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and Richard McClain smith Unexplained

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as an av Club Productions podcast

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created by Richard McClain smith. All

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other elements of the podcast, including the

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music, are also produced by me

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Richard McClain Smith Unexplained.

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