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Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is The Monster Fact,

a short-form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind focusing on mythical

creatures, ideas, and monsters in time.

Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day, so I figured it would be appropriate and not too late

to feature another monster of Irish origin on the show.

So I'd like to discuss not a leprechaun or a banshee, but rather the Alpluukra,

an invisible creature that crawls down your throat while you're asleep and then proceeds to eat the contents of your belly.

Now, I initially read about this creature in the pages of Carol Rose's, Spiritsies, leprechauns, and goblins, an encyclopedia, and then looked up one of her primary sources on the subject.

Irish author Douglas Hides beside the fire from 1890.

The entity is also discussed in James McCullough's Dictionary of Celtic Mythology, 1998.

But here's the basics.

One allegedly can inquire the out-blue ukra by sleeping near a stream.

The invisible creature, sometimes described as being a kind of fairy, other times a sort of

invisible newt, will crawl down the sleeper's throat and eat the food in his stomach.

Once it has set up shop down there, the creature will just continue to eat any food or most of the food that the human swallows.

As a result, the poor victim of the Alp Lugra grows weaker and frailer, despite always eating eating because an evil spirit in his belly is actually

eating all of the food. The solution, as described by Hyde, is to just eat a whole lot of salt beef

and then lie with your mouth open over a stream. The thirsty Al-Plu-Ukra will then eject itself

desperately in need of a refreshing drink.

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