Hey, Medical mysteries listeners. It's me, your host, Mr. Ballin. Thank you so much for helping get this show off to such a successful start. Typically, we wouldn't be telling you about a new show on a show that is new itself. But if you dig the style and format of Medical mysteries, then I want to tell you about our newest podcast from Ballin Studios, which I think you'll love too. It's called Runful, and it's part true crime, part horror, and part folklore. Every story has a truly terrifying twist. The host of the show is the master storyteller, Rodney Barnes. Barnes is an award-winning writer, producer, and comic book creator who has truly helped define the horror genre. I'm certain his new podcast, Runful, will redefine the horror genre in podcasting. Every week, Rodney will deliver a new grizzly and harrowing tale guaranteed to make you scream, and it's all brought together with totally immersive sound design. But rather than me just talking about it, I'm going to play a clip from the show Runful. While you're listening, please go follow Runful anywhere you get your podcasts. Episodes one and two are out right now, and new episodes drop every Tuesday.

Okay, here's the sneak peek from our newest podcast from Ballin' Studios called Runful.

I heard about the wind to go by happenstance. About two years ago, I was on a nice fishing trip in the uppers of Minnesota with a couple of old buddies from grade school. Don't ask, it was their idea. Apparently, some folks like to freeze their asses off for fun and minimal returns, at least in my case. Anyway, after about an hour of sitting on a frozen lake, I tossed my lines and told my friends they could find me at the diner by the lake, sipping something very, very hot.

I made my way there. Mifta's hell that I had gone along with this plan in the first place. Ice fishing? Really? I had been convinced fishing in the dead of winter is going to be anything other than wretched. But once I was eating some warm stew with a piping mug of coffee and hair, I started feeling a little better and a little more generous towards my friends and their favorite pastime.

The dining was cozy. The music was good. Vintage motel. There were just a few patrons, one of whom was a young lady at the end of the counter. Eating a burger so fast I was sure someone was coming to steal it. I puzzled over her for a moment. She seemed like one of those people who was both utterly lost and comfortably at home in the world. After my moment of assessment was through, I couldn't help but head over and ask what brought her into this winter wasteland. Surely she wasn't a nice fish or two. She wasn't, it turned out. Her name was Shaneya. She was a gibbe. She grew up on the nearby reservation. And who's to say how we got on the topic? Probably from my comments on the weather. But at some point, she made this remark that had my ears perking up. She said, The temperature isn't the worst thing about winters up here. Listeners, this woman positively reeked of an untold story. One thing you should know about me is that I love an untold story, especially if they have an air of something otherworldly to them. So I asked, pleasant and charming as can be, what she meant by that?

She replied in the deep, desolate guts of winter, If the freeze doesn't get you.

The.

Wendigo will. She told me that in a jibwe, the word wendigo means winter cannibal monster, literally. That right there should tell you most of what you need to know. It's the most bloodthirsty beast in existence. Picture an impossibly tall, hairy Goliath with teeth as big as a forehead. But his worst quality isn't how it looks. Nope. The worst thing about the wendigo is its character. It's curse with an insatiable hunger. No matter how much it eats, it's never full. That's why it's perpetually thin and aching for meat. It always wants more. Far, far.

Shaney admitted no one really knew exactly how Windegos came into existence. Some say it was an ancient evil spirit that possesses a person and compels them to feast upon its kin.

Others think the first wendigo was born centuries ago, when the Europeans began descending on the native island. Some say a band of those colonizing assholes got lost in the woods in the dead of winter and had to eat one another to stay alive.

The taste of human flesh. Well, at least one individual took a liking to it. Let me rephrase.

He.

Craved it badly enough that it drove him nuts. And as he proud the woods, searching for more of the unnatural sustenance, he eventually became more beast than man. So the wendigo wasn't just some monster of the rigid either. It used to be a person with a life.

A.

Soul. Side note here. If that's true and I've come to believe it is, more on that soon, it means we're all capable of becoming this thing. All it.

Takes is a nibble of a friend's toe and the depths of the icy wilderness. Though Ijibwe say one thing, the Cree have other thoughts. Generations of lore is like playing a 1,000-year-old game of telephone, which should have been comforting. But then Chenaya leaned in to whisper, That's why I should listen to her. Because unlike the others, she'd met a wendigo.

And was probably the only person alive who could tell me how horrific a creature it really was. Worse than I could imagine.

If you like what you just heard, please go follow and listen to RunFool right now wherever you get your podcasts.