Two Children With Green Skin Climbed Out of a Pit (The Green Children of Woolpit)

Suffolk, England, the 1100s. At harvest time, reapers find two children near the old wolf pits outside Woolpit. Strange clothes, a language nobody understands, and green skin. For months they will eat nothing but beans. Case File #005: Sir Richard de Calne's household, the boy who didn't survive, the girl who described a twilight place called St Martin's Land, the two medieval chroniclers who wrote it all down, and the theories, from "green sickness" to Paul Harris's Flemish orphans of Fornham St Martin. 0:00 Case File #005 0:36 The children in the pit 1:09 St Martin's Land 1:51 How the legend grew 2:24 What the records say 2:49 So who were they? Sources: • William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum, Book I, ch. 27 • Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum • Paul Harris, "The Green Children of Woolpit", Fortean Studies 4 (1998) • Mental Floss, "The Mystery of the Green Children of Woolpit" Strange Ledger: history's strangest true stories, told as case files, with the evidence and the fine print. Narration and character voices are synthetic. Script, research, characters and animation are original. #history #mystery #strangeledger