Ghosts

Have you ever been ghost hunting? I have. But this wasn't at night in an old abandoned house using an electromagnetic field detector in a Ouija board. No, no, no. This was the middle of the afternoon, and I was pulled over on the side of a highway just whilst outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I wasn't here looking for lingering spirits of the dearly departed, but instead for real ghosts. Fossils. The preserve remains of ancient animals that lived right here in my part of the world back when it was an ocean floor millions of years ago. I stood looking at the dark stone of the foot of the cliffside. I wedged my chisel into the sedimentary rock and after landing a few hits with my hammer, I pried away the pieces of shale and limestone and took a look inside. The first ghost I found, the coiled shell of an ancient mollusk. Before fossilization, this would have been maybe something like a seasnail and could have lived over 300 million years ago. Next, the remains of a crynoid, the strange marine animal that when it was alive would have looked like a plant with long feathered arms sticking out the top. And finally, the most impressive ghost of them all. Part of a trilobite, an ancient marine arthropod. If it were around today, it might remind us of a scuttling crustacean with its hard outer shell and many little legs. All in all, it was a pretty successful ghost hunting trip. Whoever says ghosts are hard to find, they're wrong. You just have to know where to look. I'm Sebastian Etchravery and I'm Rotendo Shackleton and this is the BBC Earth podcast. This episode is all about ghosts. We'll uncover the mysteries of some Peruvian ghost dogs. We'll visit a cemetery to observe some creatures of the night. We'll journey to Swalbard, one of the world's most desolate places. And we'll listen to some extinct voices which have been lost from our natural world. You know, it's kind of weird to think of fossils as ghosts because the word ghost likely conjures up images of see through creepy kind of poltergeists that you see in a ghost film. Which, by the way, I do not enjoy at all. But you know, a ghost is exactly what a fossil is, right? Fossils totally have ghost vibes. A fossil can be a lot of things, but basically it's the preserved evidence of life that was once here and living. That can be anything from the actual body that's left behind when an organism dies and just the right way and just the right place. Or something that left a fleeting impression. A fossil is the remains of ancient life reaching through time to have an effect in the land of the living totally ghostly. I actually remember when I was in my last year of high school in South Africa. My class had a field trip to visit the cradle of humankind, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. And it's home to the largest concentration of human ancestral remains on the planet. In fact, it is one of the first places where Australopithecus fossils were found. And Australopithecus is one of the ancient humans that started to walk upright like us and also started to use tools as well. That is fascinating, such a cool fossil in our history. Do you know what makes the cradle of humankind so special? Why have we found so many human fossils there? The area has a network of caves called the Sturck-Fontane Caves. What's thought is that these early humans may have accidentally fallen into the cave or maybe a flood may have carried the remains into the cave. Some thoughts are that they would bury their dead bear. And the cave has the right type of minerals and rock to be able to preserve and fossilize the remains. Oh, that is so cool. The right place or right time to preserve this part of our evolution. But yeah, that's the thing about fossils. One of the reasons they're so fascinating and mysterious is that they're so rare. You never know when you're going to find that one incredible specimen or what answers it might hold if you do. And mystery plays a huge part in our understanding of the natural world too, right? Scientists often hear ghostly stories and folklore from communities about elusive species that have existed for years, but that's so far science has not been able to trace or study. Renata Laiti Pittman heard tales of some mysterious ghost dogs in Peru. She made it her mission to try and find one. My ex boss starts talking about his 30 years research in the Peruvian Amazon. And he starts to describe that other researchers saw this ghost dog. The short-year dog or ghost dog is an elusive canine who is rarely seen and at this point was completely unresearched. And when I heard that, I say that's impossible. Nobody see this dog. They must be wrong. Renata wanted to investigate these potential sightings further, so she booked a ticket to Peru. It's a long trip because you need to fly to the capital of Peru, Lima, and they take another flight and take lots of boats. And after three days I was in this place, one of the most isolated national parks in Peru. As soon as I arrived, I see tracks of short-year dogs everywhere. I made myself box traps from wood boards. I got a different array of baits from banana, meat, and things that could attract the dog. And after a month, I didn't catch anything. I was totally frustrated. A month might sound like a long time, but it was just the start for Renata. She searched in the forest for two years without finding anything but tracks and droppings. Renata decided it was time to change location with hopes that she might finally be able to meet a ghost dog. And it was the right move. Well, the first one we caught using bananas. I was with two of my favorite field assistants, and I remember him saying, "El Perro!" In his entire life, he saw only once, and he is a very good field guide in Peru. So he was completely amazing. The ghost dog looked like a fox. It has a very bushy tail. The color is brownish chocolate, with a very funny nose, pointed nose. We deploy a radio collar on the animal to be able to track it, and then we let it go. After this, we caught two short ear dogs. One was a mother and one was a baby. And this was the only time we followed more than one at the same time. After three days, the mother disappeared. The baby stayed in this area, like it started to move around the tree. When we got in there, we saw a four meters long boa constrictor, and the animal was inside of the belly of the boa constrictor. That's the life of the ghost dog. So that's the reason they are ghosts, to know they have predators. During her many years in the Peruvian Amazon, Ragnata did study and track some wild ghost dogs. but her most important breakthrough came just as she was about to go home. And I was about to finish my study in Peru. One of my assistants found a ghost dog in the market for sale. It was a baby, a two-month-old baby. So we gave him the name of "also," which means "bear" in Spanish. And we started to do walks on the leash to get him used to the forest. We did that for one year. We knew that he was able to find food and defend himself from predators. And when we finally released the short-year dog, it moved away 50 kilometers in three years. And it moved to an area where the non-contacted indigenous group lived. So we are not allowed to study the species in there. We don't have a permit to enter in this area. Three years later, we found that the animal was alive with big sucess. Because we know the animal survived to many threats he found in the forest. He continued to be a ghost dog. It has been more than 10 years since I last saw, so I hope he is still running free in the jungle. Run on also. Run on. Yes, go on, be free! For Renata to go from having no sight or trace of any ghost dog to spending time with one for three years and rewilding it before sending it back out into obscurity. That's pretty amazing. Totally, I also really valued the use of the collar in this study. You know, once the dog had moved back into the protected area, the researchers just had to accept the fact that their data collection was limited to until the collar's battery died. And then he became a ghost again after that. And that doesn't always happen in conservation. Because we want studies to continue for as long as possible, right? We call them longitudinal studies. And I have experience with that in my own research with elephants. We want it to be a lifelong study. But it was clear that this animal had given them more than enough data than they'd ever expected to gain. And it was time for him to return to anonymity after that. He had to go back to his ghostly life. It's where he belonged. But you know, Tendo, there are so many animal ghosts out there. Not just this ghost dog, but I'm talking elusive species without much scientific research published about them at all. Singletons, for example, not the kind that you're thinking about on dating apps. These are species that we only have one single piece of physical evidence for. Like the giant glow spot cockroach, Lucy Hormetica-Luke. Kind of spooky looking. It's got a pattern on its back that looks like a hooded figure with glowing eyes. And that pattern actually glows when exposed to light. Tendo, have you seen this? Do you know what I'm talking about? No, I've not seen it. Hold on. Let me have a look. Okay. I'm sending you a file called glowingroaches.jpeg. Please open it. Okay. Okay. Oh my gosh. Oh my goodness. It's like a glowing mask face. Oh my goodness. It's like very impressive and I recommend everyone to look it up because you would not think that an animal would look like this. It was not really shocked me when I opened that. And while this thing about this cockroach is that this is all we know about it at all. One single individual of this species was collected from a volcano in Ecuador in 1939 and it's never been found since. Oh wow. Yeah, it is a singleton. And while each singleton species is by definition rare, singletons as a thing are actually really common. There was a research study showing that for arthropods. So generally anything that's an arachnid insect, chrystation in the tropics, about 30% of all species that we know about are singletons. And because most animals are arthropods, that means that a huge percentage of all animal life on earth are singletons. We know these ghosts have to exist or have once existed. We have physical evidence we can look at, but so much about them, what their lives are or were like are massive mysteries. Now for a different type of ghost hunt. While pretend to an eye were in Bristol, we went to a local cemetery, the land of the dead to go for a batwalk with former grave digger turned bat specialist or as he calls himself Goth ecologist Dan Flue. So Dan, where are you taking us right now? Just thought we'd have a little walk up through the cemetery through the woodland parts and we're heading up to the top of the cemetery. That is hopefully where we'll see our first bats come out. The sun's just gone down and there's still kind of some blue in the sky. How long do you think we'll have to wait until the bats are ready to come out? I think we got another 10 minutes. Okay. We should see some aerial action. There's still so much awake, so many birds that are still singing. My mind is kind of like they're getting ready for nightfall and getting ready to sleep. Yeah, for me it's the most magical part of the day because you can you kind of fill the air getting cooler. Yeah. The damp rise in you can hear all the birds settling down to rooster making their nice little songs. I don't know if they tell everyone they're going to bed. Yeah. And then yeah you get that kind of excitement that you know the bats are going to be coming soon. Yeah, magic. The house on the left with all the pictures on is what they call the top lodge and is where the grave diggers are used to live. Aha. Back in the heyday of the cemetery. Live together in harmony, rest together in peace is painted on the door of that. It's a little idea for what we're doing now finding the bats that are living here alongside us. We'll just get the kit out. So what kind of equipment are we going to be using today to find these bats? One is like old school where you have to tune into the frequency and one has a display on it and it will show you the calls going across the screen. So what we do that top dial there, you tune that and the idea is when you get a bat on there and you hear a bat you tune it up so that you can hear the most solid sound. Okay. So different species have different calls? Yeah. Yeah. They equate different frequencies. So the common pit strule will be at 45. So it will come across a screen there. 45 kilohertz. That's right. That's the lesser horse to 110. That's a really big variation in frequency. And we're going to be seeing both types of species today. Hopefully lesser horses are really difficult to spot. So what exactly do you do once I've turned it on? Just walk along with your arm like that. Say if you were watching a video on YouTube or you're walking along the street just have it in that kind of position and yeah when you wear something look up and see where it is. Cool. Cool. Something. So that was a pair of notchals. That's our biggest bat in UK like a durable size and I would say they've just come out of a tree. So they're roost and trees? Yep. And they come over from the woodland there. But you can see how high they were as well. Pipestrow will be a little bit lower than that and hopefully you will see one of them. And I kind of think of the lesser horses who's like they kind of cling to things. They don't want to be out in the open. Right. So they're kind of like now hug mulls, they'll hug the trees, they'll hug a hedge, anything. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. That was so cool. They're coming pretty close to us as well which I'm absolutely amazed by it. Just like swooped in and then did like a U turn back away from us. Oh. It's back. Oh. I heard that. Two of yours that's a 45, that's it. Oh my goodness. That's so nice. Oh my goodness. That's so nice. amazing there's another one we've got a couple out there are the old listen to that amazing it the bat that just flew over us went and then picked up a bug just in the path behind you and then went back up yeah when they have zoomed in on the bug it will like be like that and that's how you know that they caught something did you hear the feed in bus? yes yes yes we got it that was so cool they did so the bat flew by and did this kind of like spiral right when it was swooping in to catch the insect amazing it was incredible to see now we're in in tree cover proper it's darker and there's no sunlight little barely any sunlight it's we just can't see them we're just hearing and trusting that they're there so we just got some food I did just remember we are at a cemetery at night I would say is the safest place to be as the batman says yeah the criminals are a superstitious lot yeah that's true yeah and just keep it away on the time it's like an hour after sunset and a bit so I think if we go in and have a wander in here because a lot of the bats will start hanging up now because they've had a good feed yeah and they'll have a little rest (crickets chirping) (crickets chirping) so as you can hear horseshoe bats sang a bit like alien abducted I think they do that's incredible it's so amazing yeah so it kind of felt like it stopped, looked at us but it was like probing like you know sending out a probe like who's these people who knows these people yeah it's amazing people walk up and past year all the time and they just wouldn't believe how important that little spot is for one of the UK's Dwaris bats so yeah and it's amazing that a place that people come to you know pay homage to and remember loved ones is also a place where life is happening as well to write about their heads yeah that was crazy we were like actual ghost busters and when those sounds came through the speakers I loved it it was super out of worldly it was an incredible experience there's something about having the bats fly around you it's kind of like that omnipresence you can sometimes associate with ghosts the ability to be anywhere and see anything once the sun sets and the bats come out you can't see them but you know that they're there sometimes I would feel the wind of one flying right by my head you can feel their presence in this kind of ethereal way it was so cool and since we met Dan I've actually started you know paying attention to the bats in my neighborhood and I can see them feeding from my window most nights which is so cool it's funny because that's the thing that I love and appreciate about bats you know they're all seeing all-knowing senses but it's one of the main things that creeps me out about the idea of ghosts too well I think the good news here Tendo for you and everyone listening is that unlike the ghosts of scary movies these bats are not looking to scare you they're just going about their daily life bats are performing their aerial acrobatics just to catch dinner from the land of the dead to the land of the desolate we're heading to a literal ghost town Svalbard an Arctic archipelago known for its icy tundra local resident and tiktokker Cecilia Blomdall shows us around what you often notice on Svalbard is that the silence is deafening I'm right here now standing on a very open barren plane with a huge mountain range to my left covered in fog and mist and on the right it's pretty open the ocean is just behind a few smaller kind of mountains on my right and it's just silent far away I can hear a fox scream it almost sounds like a bird of some sort but it's a fox during the summer they are covered in their summer fur which is grayish to camouflage them perfectly against this kind of grey and brown tundra and then in the winter they're white fully camouflaged by the snow they're very difficult to spot but outside you can hear them easily that's kind of how you know that they're around you'd rarely see them but you will hear them so on today's hike it is me it's my boyfriend Christopher and our friend Aynar we also have the two lapels with us, the two dogs Grimm and Fenris the only way to explore the island is either by snowmobile in winter or by boat in summer so today we're heading to one of my favorite places it's called Toon Moots Bukta and we're going to stay there for a few days see the beautiful views, maybe go fishing, go hiking or just head out into the silence we have now started our walk towards the cabin that we're going to visit today there is a mama rain there to my left maybe 200 meters away with a little baby rain deer and the baby rain deer is drinking milk from the mom it's such a crazy moment to see they don't fear us at all they're kind of just miding their own business and we are just going to walk past so trying not to disturb them at all of course the mountains are towering just in front of me a thick layer of fog is almost all the way down to the start of the mountain and they're jagged it's very rugged and bare and here on Spa Bard nothing really grows so there are no trees, no bushes all you have is this tundra which looks very much alive though so we've walked about 5 kilometers it clouds above me not like dark as in rain filled clouds but definitely moody clouds it's just all so quiet and eerie you could record some scary movies here it would be very convincing we've just come across some polar bear tracks maybe a few weeks old but even though the tundra is pretty compact the prints from a super heavy polar bear are very noticeable in the terrain they are bigger than my hand stretched out you can see the claw marks at the top you can just imagine the size of the polar bear thankfully they don't look new though it must have walked pretty far since then the guys are about 500 meters away from me now so I need to catch up because I don't have the gun with me for polar bears they do so I need to make sure to stay close because right now I can't see everywhere there are some small mountains and hills and everything so you never know what's lurking behind them so I'm gonna go and catch up (soft music) - Okay, I do have to admit something. The only reason I knew what Svalbard was before going out into the wilderness with Cecilia there was because of the white vault. It's a horror podcast, actually set in Svalbard at a research station, and the sheer remoteness of the place makes it so inherently spooky. It's the perfect setting. That sounds like a podcast that I would probably need other people in the room to listen to it with. (laughing) - It's a really good show though. If you want some nice slow burn horror, technically I don't think there are any ghosts, but I can't promise that. That said though, I think Cecilia does such a wonderful job of helping us appreciate the experience of the life that really does live out there in Svalbard. It's not an easy life, but that just makes it all the more impressive. - Yeah, just that marked lack of noise from humanity. Human noise sometimes can be distracting, and the busyness of life can be stressful as well. And Sebastian, I'll be honest, the forest is my escape from that a lot of the time. I will go on a walk and just allow myself to just be immersed in the natural sounds. And when I'm super stressed, I've also been known to sit in a field of sheep. (laughing) And find solace with her in a sheep. (laughing) It's nothing like what Cecilia lives in on Svalbard, but I can resonate with that. (soft music) - Throughout this episode, we've been introduced to some ghostly components of our natural world. And similarly to our ghost dogs from earlier, there are a number of species on Earth that also have ghost in their common name. Tendo, I would like to introduce you to one of those. This is my ghost mantis. - Ooh, look at that! Oh my gosh! - For those listening who don't know what a ghost mantis looks like, or even what a praying mantis is, mantises are a type of insect, which means that they are an arthropod and small animal with a hard exoskeleton with a segmented body that has six legs. But ghost mantises are special in that, in addition to having one of these dark brown hues most of the time, their bodies are shaped like dead leaves. And they use that as their camouflage to sneak up on pray and to avoid predators, like a ghost. - Such a cool specimen. So how did you come across this one? - This is actually one of my pets. I had this one a couple years ago, and so once it passed away of old age, I decided to preserve it so that I could show other people how cool these animals are even after it wasn't no longer here with me. And you know, a quick trip to the internet told me that my ghost mantis is not alone. There's a lot of other really cool ghostly animals. Like the ghost spiders, which tend to be pale in coloration, very fast and elusive and only come out at night. - Okay. - And there's also ghost sharks, which are also known as, and I think this is a better name, spookfish, due to the fact that they live in extremely deep water and are rarely, if ever seen. - Also, in the plant world, there is the ghost pepper, which is one of the hottest chilies on earth. And it's called the ghost pepper, because the heat sneaks up on you like a ghost. - Honestly, I am way more scared of eating a ghost pepper than seeing a ghost. - The suspense would kill me alone. - I've not wanted to run into one of those in my meal. - Exactly. - So I guess we figured out what it takes to have enough ghost vibes to be called a ghost in the natural world. You've got to be elusive, pale, dead looking, sneaky and creepy, nocturnal, or even just really good camouflage. - Yeah, that makes sense. But you know, on one hand, I do believe that being elusive is cool because many animals thrive in seclusion. And I really do think that we as humans don't actually need to see every single species with our own eyes on this planet. But it is true that when we know the health of our ecosystems, we can actually help prevent many species from reaching extinction. Research tells us that 99% of all species that evolved on earth are now gone. Not just elusive and hard to find, but truly gone. Real ghosts. It's a frightening fact, and the truth is that thousands of species continue to be at threat from extinction. Martin Stewart has made it his life's work to record the sounds of our natural world. Many of these sounds can no longer be heard in the wild. He was the last person to capture this, the ghostly sound of the functionally extinct northern white rhino in Kenya. I've collected over 30,000 hours of natural soundscapes. And 2/3 of that library now is extinct. The northern white rhino in Kenya, I had this chance to go to this conservancy place and I was introduced into these 2/3 rhinos that were there, two females on the male. But the two females were kept together in this enclosure. The guys there, they let me set up a couple of microphones. It was surreal. You're in the presence of something that you know is not going to exist in the near future. Well, they say a picture tells a thousand words, or sound tells a thousand pictures, forever when I'm listening to stuff that I've recorded in my life. And you reflect on these humbling kind of situations that you allow to be in the presence of something so beautiful. As like the northern white rhino, it is a spiritual feeling completely. The BBC Earth podcast was hosted by me, Rotendo Shackleton, and me, Sebastian Etroverri. Our interviews were Renata Lately Pitman, Dan Fleu, and Cecilia Blumdall, with thanks to Martin Stewart for the northern white rhino Southscape. Our producers are Jeff Marsh and Rachel Byrne. The researcher is Seb Masters. The podcast theme music was written by Axel Cacoutier with mixing an additional sound designed by Peregrin Andrews. The production manager is Catherine Stringer, and the production coordinator is Gemma Wuton. The associate producer is Kristen Kane, and the executive producer is Deborah Dugin. The BBC Earth podcast is a BBC Studios production for BBC Earth.