PDA

View Full Version : The Green Children of Woolpit



The One
9th February 2016, 08:19
History is rife with strange tales of people who have mysteriously vanished from the face of the earth without a trace, but one area that seems to get decidedly less coverage is the various accounts of those who did just the opposite, appearing out of nowhere cloaked in mystery and emanating questions and puzzles around them that have never been satisfactorily answered. Here we have strangers who have stepped out of thin air from another place, perhaps even another time or plane of existence, and have gone on to leave impenetrable mysteries in their wake to this day. Stepping out of blue and into our imagination, these baffling appearances represent a phenomena every bit as perplexing as strange disappearances. Let us journey into the bizarre world of mysterious individuals who seemingly appeared from nowhere.

One of the earliest, most well-known, and indeed bizarre cases of people appearing out of nowhere occurred in the mid-12th century, when two children mysteriously appeared in the sleepy village of Woolpit, in the English county of Suffolk, and went on to become an enduring mystery known as the Green Children of Woolpit. Allegedly one day, two young children, a boy and a girl, suddenly and inexplicably emerged from a deep pit used for trapping the wolves that terrorized the region in those days. If this wasn’t already odd enough, it immediately became apparent that these were no ordinary children, as they both reportedly had skin that was tinted green, and were dressed in strange, unfamiliar clothing made from an unusual fabric that no one recognized. The children seemed to be more or less healthy but somewhat dazed and confused, and when villagers tried to speak to them they spoke a strange, unintelligible language that no one had ever heard before. Not knowing what to do with these enigmatic children, the locals presented them to a wealthy landowner by the name of Sir Richard de Calne, who took them into his care. Things would only get stranger from there.

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/green-children-930x950-570x582.jpg

The children immediately started crying uncontrollably when they arrived at their new caretaker’s house, chattering with each other in their alien tongue but no one could understand a word of what they were saying. When presented with food, the green-skinned children would not eat anything, even though they made it clear that they were quite hungry. Bread, meat, fruit and vegetables were all offered, but everything was refused by the children until they were presented with beans still in their pods, which they ravenously devoured. For several months this was the only food the children would eat, until they gradually began to consume other things such as bread. Tragically, the boy purportedly became increasingly morose and sullen in this new environment, eventually becoming very ill and wasting away until he died. The girl, on the other hand, seemed to adapt reasonably well to the new world she had found herself in, her green pallor gradually dissipated, and she even started picking up the English language. That’s where things got even weirder still.

When she was able to somewhat express herself in English, the girl began to try and explain where they had come from. She claimed that the boy had been her brother and that they had come from a faraway land located deep underground, where the sun never shone, where it was always dark, and where all of the people had green skin; a fantastical place she called St. Martin. When asked how they had arrived at Woolpit, the girl told the mesmerized villagers that she had been out herding cattle with her brother and had followed the animals into a large cavern. As they plunged deeper into the cavern the girl claimed that they had heard a strange sound like bells, which they followed into the uncharted blackness, becoming more and more disoriented until there was a sudden bright shaft of light that had pierced through the gloom and hurt their eyes. When the children had followed the light they exited the cavern, only instead of their homeland before their eyes it had been the bottom of the wolf trap pit they had been found in. It was a bizarre tale to be sure, and nobody was quite sure what to make of it, although there was all manner of speculation. The girl would subsequently go on to live a relatively normal life in the village, adjusting comfortably to her new home, integrating into society well, and even being baptized and eventually getting married.

The story of the Green Children of Woolpit went on to become a popular tale of curiosity and is still much discussed to this day. It is difficult to know what to make of this story, and hard to ascertain just how many elements actually took place and which are mere myths, exaggeration, folktale, fancy, and fairy tale. There have been a wide range of theories proposed for the Green Children’s origins, ranging from the somewhat plausible to the more far-fetched. The enigmatic children have been alternately theorized as being from a parallel dimension, aliens, inhabitants of some hidden subterranean civilization, feral children raised by animals, orphans with arsenic poisoning or malnutrition which made their skin green, or Flemish immigrant refugees fleeing persecution and a battle that had killed their parents. In the end, no one really knows who they were, where they came from, or indeed how much of the story is even based in reality, and so the story of the Green Children of Woolpit has become an enduring mystery that will perhaps never be solved.

Source (http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2016/02/mysterious-people-who-appeared-from-nowhere/)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_children_of_Woolpit

jonsnow
9th February 2016, 08:50
Red elk tell tales of how humanity came from underground caves .

Zuni Elder Grandfather Mahooty says that humanity came from underground caves in the Grand Canyon where they have a huge underground city within the reservation . This land was recently sold to the government for 100 million casino

At the last ice age the ant people ( grey aliens ) feed then in the caves in the Grand Canyon

Expedition to Sipapu-"Grand Canyon's Lost City
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27puuu2OnmU

by David Hatcher Childress
http://www.crystalinks.com/gc_egyptconnection.html

bsbray
9th February 2016, 17:14
There is another story that seems to have been based on this one, as it has many of the same specific details, but instead of Woolpit, England, it was Banjos, Spain, and instead of the 1100's it was 1887. I came across this Spanish version first in a Reader's Digest book called Mysteries of the Unexplained.


This guy, Jason Colavito, compares the English and later Spanish version on his blog (http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-green-children-of-banjos-another-case-of-false-evidence-and-outright-lies), though he doesn't seem to believe either one of them:



BANJOS CHILDREN
WOOLPIT CHILDREN


Location: Non-existent Spanish Village
Location: Woolpit, Suffolk


Date: 1887
Date: before 1188


Number of children: 2, a boy and a girl
Number of children: 2, a boy and a girl


The children were found in a cave by farmers at harvest time
The children appeared in the village at harvest time


The children spoke a language that was not Spanish
The children spoke a language that was not English


The children wore metallic clothes
The children wore unusual clothes


The children were taken to the house of mayor Ricardo de Calno
The children were taken to the house of nobleman Richard de Calne


The children refused all food except beans
The children refused all food except beans


The color of their skin gradually became white
The color of their skin gradually became white


The boy sickened and died
The boy sickened and died


The girl stated that they came from a land of perpetual twilight
The girl stated that they came from a green land of perpetual twilight


The girl stated that they had heard a loud noise and were pushed through a portal to Spain
The girl stated that they had heard bells and fell into a trance before arriving in England


The girl died five years later
The girl became a servant and a slut, but eventually married and lived a long life




Just because there is this Spanish version based on the English one (and the English version apparently goes all the way back into the medieval period), doesn't mean that the story didn't originally have some underlying truth to it, but it would be hard to figure out what that might be, especially since the Spanish version at least serves as an example of how these kinds of stories can change over time as they change hands.


Here's another interesting page about the story: http://perdurabo10.tripod.com/warehousef/id95.html


There is a high probability noted among historians that most popular myths stem from real events that are retold so many times the details become clouded and altered into folklore. British folklore researcher Dr. Katharine Briggs suggested in her book, A Dictionary of Fairies, that the green children story contained themes prevalent in Faerie lore. These would include the color green, the twilight land and subterranean worlds.

Other theories include the possibility that the Earth is hollow and the green children emerged from a hidden world from down under, they were immigrants from northern Scandinavia who strangely found their way to Suffolk, they were personifications of Nature which accounted for the green color of their skin, or that they were aliens accidentally transported to Earth from another planet or dimension.

In a paper by historical researcher Paul Harris, published in Fortean Studies in 1998, the children may have been Flemish and came from the village of Fornham St. Martin, northwest of Woolpit. At that time, Harris notes that there had been a steady influx of Flemish merchants and weavers from Belgium, and after Henry II became king, these people suffered great persecution, many of them having been slaughtered.

Harris theorizes that the children were orphans after their parents were killed, and that they survived by fleeing into Thetford Forest. If they stayed there for any length of time, without finding much food, they might have suffered from malnutrition. One effect of this is chlorosis, which is a gradual greening of the skin.

Harris suggests the children may have wandered into one of the many underground mine passages in that area which ultimately lead to Woolpit. He perceives the scenario of the two children emerging from the cave in a bewildered state, with a starvation-induced greenish pallor, disoriented by the bright sunlight, dressed in unfamiliar Flemish clothes and speaking the Flemish dialect.

And thus would have been born the legend of the green children.

Jengelen
12th February 2016, 00:09
It sounds like an even older tale about 'Astraos' the 'golden' child who knew all and more than even of the wisest men and even as a boy! This was a Greek tale as I recall.

KosmicKat
12th February 2016, 12:08
I used to live in the area, and one possibility that was mooted was that "Saint Martin's Land" might relate in some way to Fornham St. Martin a village roughly eight miles away in the direction of Bury St. Edmunds. But the part that baffles me the most is that they followed their herd into a cavern. I never heard of any caves in the area (unless Grimes' Graves near Thetford to the north might count), although the site of the Wolf Pit from which the village got its name is still known.

The parallel tale in Spanish suggests that perhaps this was a retelling of a much older story during a time when tales of deep mystery were very popular.