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[Assistant] In fact, he had to pump his brakes a few times to avoid rear-ending it. According to local author Sarah Pitzer in her book Haunted Charleston, a fierce wind was blowing across the bridge at the time, and the driver could feel his car getting buffeted around by it.


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[Assistant] A car that had seemed completely solid and real a moment before, evaporated right before his eyes. But that wasn't the most shocking detail of the story.


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[Assistant] Now, for those who know the full tale of the bridge, it was another detail that seems to be the most chilling. This car that the driver claims he saw was much older than the other cars around him on the road. And it was green.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research by Taylor Haggardorn and music by Chad Lawson.


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[Assistant] Lore is much more than just a podcast. There's a book series available in bookstores and online and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.


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[Assistant] I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite sized episodes to season long dives into a single topic.


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[Assistant] And you can learn more about both of those shows and everything else going on over in one central place, theworldoflore.com slash now.


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[Assistant] On September 25th of 1808, a fisherman named John Peace spotted something unusual on the rocky coast of his little island.


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[Assistant] He lived on the Isle of Stransay, part of the archipelago off the northern coast of Scotland known as the Orkney Islands. He'd been fishing from a small boat along the rocky shore after a night of heavy winds and torrential rain. And while we can assume he might have been familiar with the aftermath of big storms, I'm not sure he expected to discover something so otherworldly. It was the corpse of an animal, but it was unlike any animal he had ever seen.


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[Assistant] Others join him in the examination. Local farmer George Sherar was able to get closer to the corpse since he was on land, and he made a quick inspection of it. It was nearly 55 feet long, roughly eel-like in its shape and form, but with a distinct neck that measured 15 feet in length.


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[Assistant] Combined with the creature's small head and the mane of hair that ran down the back of its neck, the details were just too confusing to help them identify it.


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[Assistant] Today, we know more about the corpses like the one John Peace found, and many scientists refer to them as globsters, a decaying mass of organic matter left behind by the corpses of a whale or a large fish.


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[Assistant] Judging by the length of this corpse, most scientists believe it had been nothing more than an oarfish. But that's not what John and his neighbors thought.


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[Assistant] And though they believed they had discovered the remains of something tossed out of the mysterious depths of the ocean, a creature that most seafaring cultures have whispered about since the dawn of time, but few have ever been able to witness in the flesh.


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[Assistant] It was a beast of wonder and fantasy, but also the stuff of nightmares and dark legends. And we still talk about them today.


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[Assistant] From the illustrations on ancient maps to Hollywood blockbusters, humans have always been obsessed with monsters of the deep.


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[Assistant] And while science has given us more clarity over the centuries, we still wrestle with the possibility that we might have missed something. Something that's still there beneath the cold black waves of the sea.


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[Assistant] And if the tales we find among the pages of history are any indication, we just might be right.


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[Assistant] Before we dive into today's story, so to speak, I think it's important for us to step back and ponder exactly how vast and unexplored the oceans of our planet really are.


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[Assistant] Most of us have heard the basic statistics, right? The planet is roughly 70% water. We know more about the surface of Mars than we do the depths of our own oceans.


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[Assistant] But here's some perspective. The average depth of our ocean is a little more than two miles deep, which is enough to stack eight Empire State Buildings on top of each other and have the top poke through the waves slightly.


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[Assistant] But the deepest parts can be upwards of three times that, making them some of the most remote and unexplored regions on the planet.


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[Assistant] Which is why humans have filled those cold dark spaces with story for thousands of years. In fact, anywhere you find a culture that has encountered the ocean, you will also find tales of legendary creatures. And one of my favorites comes from Japan.


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[Assistant] In Japanese mythology, there is a giant catfish that lives in the mud beneath the island nation. His name is Namatsu, and he is responsible for causing earthquakes just by moving his body.


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[Assistant] And if that sounds familiar to you, you might remember the catfish that gives Link the Quake Medallion in The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past. It's a nice nod to Japanese mythology and an echo of our fascination with the creatures that live beneath the waves.


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[Assistant] Another example of mysterious sea creatures comes to us from ancient European manuscripts.


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[Assistant] It's referred to as the Aspidokalon, which is Greek for shield turtle and is said to be a beast so large that sailors would often mistake it for an island. In fact, there is a fantastic description of the creature in a second century manuscript from Alexandria called the Physiologus. Here's a rough translation.


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[Assistant] It has what appears to be beaches on its hide, like those from the seashore. Believing it to be an island, sailors beach their ships alongside it, and disembarking, they plant stakes and tie up their ships.


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[Assistant] Then, in order to cook a meal after this work, they make fires on the sand, as if on land. But when the monster feels the heat of these flames, it immediately submerges into the water and pulls the ship into the depths of the sea.


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[Assistant] And this idea, a creature so massive that it could be mistaken for an island, wasn't isolated to the Greek world. There's a Norwegian educational text called the King's Mirror that was written about 800 years ago, and it includes details about a similar creature.


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[Assistant] This one is also described as large enough to fool sailors, and when it surfaces from the depths of the ocean, it's said to create a whirlpool that can pull entire fleets beneath the waves.


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[Assistant] By the mid-1700s, the stories of this creature began to evolve. Norwegian writer Erik Pontopodin described it in his book, The Natural History of Norway, as having long, powerful tentacles. And with that small touch, you might not be surprised to learn the creature's name. The Kraken.


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[Assistant] And those tentacles are a common detail. The ancient Greek writer Hesiod wrote about similar creatures nearly 3,000 years ago that he called the Scylla and the Charybdis. Both were said to reach out from the ocean waves with long serpent-like appendages and pull sailors off their ships as they passed.


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[Assistant] Aristotle even recorded an eyewitness encounter with one in his book Historia Animalium.


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[Assistant] It was an important transformation. These nightmares of the deep had long been something you could avoid by simply staying away from strange islands, no matter how natural and tempting they might look. But the tentacles added a new dimension to that fear.


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[Assistant] Now the creature could come for you. It was less an island and more like a serpent, ready to strike when you least expected it.


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[Assistant] The sightings didn't stop though. Roughly 2,000 years ago, a Greek geographer, philosopher, and historian named Strabo recorded the discovery of a mysterious corpse on the coast of ancient Syria. In fact, it sounds a lot like what John Peace and the others experienced that day in 1808 in the Orkney Islands.


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[Assistant] Strabo described the creature as roughly 100 feet long, with jaws so wide that a man on horseback could have ridden through them.


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[Assistant] The pages of history are filled with tales of these mysterious creatures. Sometimes they are never seen, but haunt the lives of sailors like an oppressive superstition. Other times they're actually sighted, whether at sea or on the shore. And those encounters have filled communities with dread and wonder. Either way, they've made their impact on us.


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[Assistant] One last example. This one comes to us, like so many others, from Norway, which isn't surprising given how tied that culture is to the sea. And it's the description of this creature that sets it apart, and also paves the way for future tales that I want to tell you.


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[Assistant] In 1555, the Swedish writer, historian, and archbishop known as Olaus Magnus recorded that many sailors had claimed to see something unusual off the coast of Norway.


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[Assistant] He described it as nearly 200 feet long, with a long, thick neck that could be raised above the surface of the water. It had a mane of dark hair, eyes that seemed to glow red, and razor sharp teeth.


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[Assistant] Looking back nearly five centuries later, it's hard to not see how significant that particular creature really was. It might sound incredibly familiar to most of us today, but in reality, it was one of the first to pull all of those various details together into one monstrous creature. But it certainly wasn't the last.


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[Assistant] Hans Agetta had already accomplished much over the course of his 48 years. He had been born in Norway in 1686 to a religious family and had quickly followed that same path.


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[Assistant] By 1721, he was considered the Apostle of Greenland and founded the settlement of Hope Colony on an island off Greenland's southeastern coast.


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[Assistant] Five years later, that community was moved to the mainland where it would eventually become Newark, the capital of modern Greenland. But Hans stayed busy, traveling all over the region doing work for the church. And it was on one of those missions in July of 1734 that he had an experience he would never forget.


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[Assistant] While off the coast of Greenland, Agetta was on deck looking out over the waves toward the mainland ahead of them, when a shape broke through the surface of the water. According to Agetta, a creature raised its head so high up that it rose above their main top, that small wooden platform that sits near the top of the main mast.


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[Assistant] This creature, he said, was covered in scales and had a long body that could be seen just beneath the surface of the water. From head to tail, Agetta claimed the monster was nearly as long as his ship. But before they could study it more, it dove back beneath the icy waters, flipped its tail into the air, and then slipped away.


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[Assistant] A century later, in August of 1848, a British naval vessel had a similar encounter off the coast of South Africa, near the Cape of Good Hope.


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[Assistant] The HMS Daedalus had been on the way to the small island of St. Helena when one of the sailors spotted an object in the water moving in their direction. As it came closer and the details came into focus, the crew stared in awe.


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[Assistant] It looked like an enormous serpent, but it could raise its neck and head above the waves. At least 60 feet of the beast's length was visible directly beneath the surface of the water. But there was clearly more of the creature deeper down, and it seemed to be just as interested in the ship and crew as they were in it.


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[Assistant] The creature passed the ship quickly, but as it did, the crew was able to get a better look at it. Captain McQueen noted that the diameter of its neck was at least 16 inches and that its head closely resembled that of a snake.


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[Assistant] And while it didn't have the fins one might associate with a fish, it did have something else. A mane of yellowish hair that ran along its back.


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[Assistant] Multiple witnesses from the Daedalus all came forward to share their story with a London scientific journal called The Zoologist, and even provided a number of sketches. Many of those were later published by The Illustrated London News, giving the wider public their first glimpse of the sea creature Captain McQueen had spotted, and naturally spreading the fear.


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[Assistant] That same year, the crew of the HMS Plumper had their own run-in with a mysterious creature, this time off the northern coast of Portugal.


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[Assistant] One of the naval officers made a sketch of the creature, but I can't seem to find a sample of it. Eight years later, in the middle of a calm, sunlit March afternoon, the crew of the Imogene spotted their own sea monster and put the details down on paper.


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[Assistant] In 1905, the Earl of Crawford was out on his yacht, the Valhalla, when two of his friends spotted something in the water. As it happened, both of these friends were naturalists, one of whom was on the council of the Zoological Society, which might explain why they had been watching the water around the ship in the first place.


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[Assistant] According to the story passed along by another member of the crew, Crawford's yacht was off the coast of Brazil in December of 1905, when an unusual object broke through the surface and caught their attention. It stood over four feet high and seemed to move from side to side.


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[Assistant] And then, much to the shock of everyone onboard, it headed in their direction.


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[Assistant] Some of the men were able to produce spy glasses, and they made a quick study of the odd creature. It was long and flexible, like a serpent, with a head they described as turtle-like. Its skin was a dark green with a pale color on its underside, but no one was able to see any more of the creature's body than that.


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[Assistant] After a moment or two, it dropped back beneath the waves and dove hard for the depths of the sea, stirring up foam and bubbles as it went, before completely vanishing.


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[Assistant] Of course, there were more sightings as the years went on. And you know how it is. Once you know you should be looking for something, you're a lot more likely to think you've seen it. Psychologists call it the red car syndrome.


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[Assistant] When you decide that your next car is going to be a red Honda Pilot and all of a sudden you see them everywhere you go. It's not the car that's increased in number, it's just your attention that's been shifted.


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[Assistant] And thanks to those early encounters with mysterious sea creatures, sailors everywhere were experiencing their own early modern version of that. Some of them saw tall necks protruding from the waves. Others saw great humps, like the backs of whales or enormous serpent-like tails.


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[Assistant] And a few of them even managed to mark the details down.


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[Assistant] But there's one story in particular that seems to have it all. A fully visible creature that defies explanation. Multiple eyewitness accounts. And a crew with the foresight to actually make sketches of what they saw.


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[Assistant] And when you have that many pieces of evidence all working together within a single story, it has a way of challenging common logic.


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[Assistant] Life at sea was practically all Arthur Rostron had ever known. Sure, he'd been born on dry land in 1869 to a loving family in England, but by the age of just 13, he'd joined up with the British Navy, kicking off a career at sea that would span decades.


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[Assistant] By the age of 16, he had risen to the rank of second mate aboard a ship called the Gauntlet. It was a merchant vessel, owned and operated by a company out of Liverpool. But his work on the ship took him all over the world.


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[Assistant] Over the next 10 years, he would get to see New Zealand, India, Australia, and both North and South America.


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[Assistant] In 1895, at the young age of just 26, Arthur switched employers and began to work for a large ocean liner company called the Cunard Line. He would work there for the rest of his life, give or take the two years he was away serving in the Russo-Japanese War. But life wasn't always steady and normal.


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[Assistant] So one example took place in 1907. Arthur had been assigned to a brand new cruise ship that was set to make its maiden voyage in May of that year. He would have served as first officer too, but at the last moment his superiors had him transferred elsewhere.


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[Assistant] Which turned out to be a good thing. That ship, the RMS Lusitania, was torpedoed eight years later by a German U-boat, an attack that would help push the United States into World War I.


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[Assistant] He and a fellow officer named H.C. Burney spotted a large collection of debris in the water ahead.


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[Assistant] Watch out for that snag! Arthur called out to the other officer. An adjustment was made to their course and the ship swung slightly away. But not enough that the object drifted farther from the ship. In fact, they still inched closer to it as they passed by. And that's when Arthur saw the object move.


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[Assistant] It's alive, he shouted, and then watched as the features came into focus. A large head was perched atop a long, thick neck that disappeared into the dark water.


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[Assistant] What had originally appeared to be nothing more than a cluster of debris bobbing up and down with the swell of the waves turned out to be a living creature, but one unlike anything Arthur had ever seen before.


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[Assistant] He later recalled wishing that he had a camera with which to capture the beast's appearance. Instead he used a pad of paper and a pencil to quickly note the details he could see.


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[Assistant] The long neck was fully 12 inches in diameter, like a massive log, and it rose 8 or 9 feet above the waves. There were small protrusions at the top of the creature's head, and as far as Arthur could tell, it had no eyes, reminding him of an eel. And then, as quickly as it arrived, it was gone.


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[Assistant] Of course, Arthur made sure to report the sighting to his captain right away. But the man dismissed it, essentially asking Arthur what he'd been drinking. But when they docked in Liverpool later in their journey, the captain asked Arthur again.


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[Assistant] Even then, after a span of time where doubt and second-guessing could have crept in, Arthur was adamant. He had witnessed a sea serpent.


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[Assistant] Later that year, he told his story to reporters at the Daily Mail and even showed them some of his sketches. He was convinced that what he had seen was real and wanted others to know about it. But there were already others who agreed with him, even if he hadn't told them.


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[Assistant] That's because Arthur hadn't been the only person to see the creature.


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[Assistant] In response to his story in the Daily Mail, a woman named Mrs. J.C. Adkins wrote to the publication to inform them that all of Arthur's details matched her experience earlier in 1907, just months before his own.


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[Assistant] Another testimony, this time from a group of fishermen, also landed in the newspapers. It included some of the very same details too. The long neck, the eel-like head, and the overall appearance that reminded them of a giant serpent. A century before the internet would make it possible, it seems the existence of Arthur's sea serpent had gone viral. One last tale.


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[Assistant] Decades after his experience, Arthur Rostran wrote up his memoirs, which were published in 1931. Among the collection of personal stories was the tale of how, one evening at home, Arthur came across a story in the local newspaper. It was about a fisherman who had been found adrift in the Bristol Channel.


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[Assistant] The man had been found alive, but in shock, both physically and emotionally, after drifting without oars or a boat hook for nearly a week.


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[Assistant] When he was finally rescued, he told of how he had rode out for a simple evening of fishing, only to be attacked by a mysterious creature. A creature that matched every detail of Arthur Rostran's own encounter years before.


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[Assistant] The fisherman said that he used every tool available to fight it off, eventually losing his boat hook and both oars. But thankfully, the beast never returned for him, instead leaving him to drift for days until a passing ship caught sight of him and came to his rescue.


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[Assistant] And I find it curious to look at the details of his story from another level.


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[Assistant] This creature, whether a legend or a living thing, seemed to have hunted this fisherman down.


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[Assistant] And then taken away everything he might have used to defend himself. And in the end, we're all in the same proverbial boat.


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[Assistant] Even now, in 2019, the existence of sea serpents is still lurking in the backs of our collective consciousness, like debris floating on the sea, and some of us


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[Assistant] The oceans of our world function a lot like so many of the other remote places we tend to avoid. The deep forests of North America. The highest mountain peaks. The vast stretches of the Sahara.


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[Assistant] Wherever there is a lot of mystery and not a lot of people, legends tend to take form.


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[Assistant] Given enough time, those stories can reach all of us.


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[Assistant] Today we stand at an awkward sort of crossroads. Yes, we have the technology and the passion to explore more of our planet, but we're also just so incredibly insignificant in the face of so much unknown territory. We have the tools, but the job is so much bigger than our ambition. And even now, we're left to wonder, what exactly is down there?


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[Assistant] Stories like the one passed on to us by Arthur Rostran don't exactly make that an easy question to answer, though.


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[Assistant] Clearly, the crew of the Campania, as well as countless other ships over the centuries, all witnessed something unusual and bizarre. But the human mind has a tendency to confuse undiscovered with unnatural, so I wouldn't fault anyone for writing it off as a long series of mistakes.


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[Assistant] Each one could have been nothing more than an erroneous sighting that confused debris with something otherworldly.


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[Assistant] But then again, the details do hint at something else. Maybe.


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[Assistant] At the end of the day we need to weigh the evidence and eyewitness testimony against the credibility of the people who made those claims.


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[Assistant] If that's the case though, then Arthur Rostron passes with flying colors.


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[Assistant] Not only was he a respected career officer on a number of large demanding ships, but he was also looked up to by his peers and deeply trusted by his commanding officers. In fact, his captain knew him to be a deeply religious man, someone who never lied.


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[Assistant] After docking in Liverpool, the captain pulled Arthur aside and gave him one more chance to retract his story. But the younger man declined.


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[Assistant] He really had seen what he had claimed. There was no embellishment or fantasy in his story. Only the facts as he and another officer had witnessed them and he would stand by that story for the rest of his life.


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[Assistant] Rostran would go on to command his own ships, and was later assigned to captain a large passenger liner that crossed the Atlantic between New York and the Mediterranean.


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[Assistant] Because that training would be called upon in 1912.


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[Assistant] That was the year his ship was cutting through the waters of the Atlantic, having just left New York with a full passenger list. But as he and his crew were settling into what would be a long journey, a message was received over the wireless. A distress call.


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[Assistant] Rastran instructed his officers to head to the coordinates, and then walked off alone to pray. The news sounded bad, and the ocean was a dark, dangerous place to be if you weren't in control. Prayer was all he could manage until they arrived.


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[Assistant] They arrived none too soon. Hundreds of people were drifting in the cold water, clinging to a few lifeboats and crying out for help. Rostran managed to rescue over 700 of them, bringing them aboard his already full passenger liner. It was crowded, but they were safe.


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[Assistant] Say from whatever danger the cold Atlantic might have sent their way. And then it was done.


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[Assistant] I certainly hope that you've enjoyed this exploration of our cold, mysterious oceans as much as I did. We know so little about the world beneath the surface, so it's no wonder there's a vast collection of tales that hint at our darkest fears.


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[Assistant] And I have one more that I want to share with you. So stick around after this short sponsor break to hear all about it.


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[Assistant] In August of 2018, the decomposing corpse of a large hairy creature washed up on a Russian beach along the Bering Sea.


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[Assistant] Images of the remains were passed around in hopes that someone might be able to identify it.


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[Assistant] But so far, no one has been able to solve the mystery.


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[Assistant] And it's definitely not the first time this has happened. Some people believe that the Stronze Beast, which I mentioned at the beginning of today's episode, is one of the earliest unusual carcasses to be found. But many others have been discovered between then and now. And while there are many similarities between them all, they seem to span the globe.


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[Assistant] Most of them end up being identified as part of a decaying whale, and it's easy to understand why. Whales have so much fat on their bodies that when their remains begin to decay, they can quickly lose their whale-like features, transforming into a shape that leaves people scratching their heads and whispering about sea monsters.


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[Assistant] There have been others though, that have been less explainable. One of those stories comes to us from South Africa, where an unusual sight was witnessed in October of 1924.


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[Assistant] It all began when locals looked out into the water just off the coast of Margate and saw two killer whales doing battle with an unidentifiable attacker.


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[Assistant] This fight was said to have lasted nearly three hours, and as the crowds watched, they witnessed some unusual details. Whatever the animal was, it frequently used its long tail as a weapon against the killer whales. Others described how it was able to lift itself over 20 feet into the air above the water.


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[Assistant] But the battle ended badly for this creature, and eventually its corpse washed ashore, where it remained until time and nature wore it down to nothing.


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[Assistant] But South Africa is also the location of one final story I want to tell you. Because it's one thing to find unusual remains on the beach and poke it with a stick while pondering its identity.


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[Assistant] And something else entirely to find those remains out at sea, still fresh and clearly visible.


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[Assistant] Which is exactly what happened in 1905, as the steamship known as the SS Armadale Castle was nearing Greenpoint in Cape Town.


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[Assistant] The ship was moving at a fast pace, cutting through the water, when a loud sound caught the attention of everyone on deck. A number of the sailors ran to the side and looked down to see what it might have been, and then began to shout for the captain to come and have a look.


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[Assistant] It was a fish, they cried, but one unlike any of them had ever seen before.


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[Assistant] What Captain J.C. Robinson found when he got there was the body of an enormous creature. The best guess the crowd of witnesses were able to make was that it was nearly 60 feet long, with a body that was at least 8 feet around.


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[Assistant] Of course, there was debate among the sailors about what it really was. Some said it was a large shark, while others were certain it was a whale of some kind.


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[Assistant] The only thing everyone could agree on was that no one had ever seen something like it in all their years at sea. And while that didn't make it definitive, it certainly didn't help calm their fears.


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[Assistant] The captain and his men tried to find a way to pull the animal's body onto the ship, but it was simply too far below them and too large to move.


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[Assistant] In the end, they made a few descriptive notes and then began to discuss what they might call the creature. They finally settled on naming it after one of the men in the crowd, someone with an international reputation, in hopes that it would lend a bit of legitimacy to their story.


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[Assistant] And just what did they name this mysterious creature?


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[Assistant] Pisces rudyardensis, which might sound like a bit too much Latin for most of us, but it actually made a lot of sense. Pisces, of course, means fish, and rudyardensis comes from the passenger's surname, a name almost everyone today has heard of. The author of The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research by Marsette Crockett and music by Chad Lawson.


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[Assistant] Lore is much more than just a podcast. There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two amazing seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more Lore in your life.


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[Assistant] I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic.


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[Assistant] You can learn about both of those shows and everything else going on all over in one central place. TheWorldOfLore.com slash now. And you can also follow the show on social media. We're there on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi.


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[Assistant] The claims were extraordinary. They would chase away your problems, make all your dreams come true, and fix the things that you didn't even know were wrong.


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[Assistant] It was the sort of thing you might find in an Instagram ad, except this item was on the market over a century ago.


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[Assistant] Dr. James P. Campbell had created the magic pill. It was a wafer that claimed to target all those pesky skin conditions that folks wanted to get rid of. Blackheads, redness, dry patches, and even freckles. But it offered more, according to the ad that ran in newspapers around 1890.


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[Assistant] Dr. Campbell's complexion wafers were supposed to smooth out facial disfigurement and soften harsh angles. It promised to lift your spirits, help your appetite, and clear up any painful rheumatism that might be troubling you. Headaches, hay fever, indigestion, you name it. Dr. Campbell's complexion wafers could do it all.


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[Assistant] Except, you know the truth, right? There are no magic pills. No silver bullets guaranteed to solve our problems. No easy fixes to the cards we've been dealt. Yes, a lot of those conditions or issues can be helped, but today we know just how expensive and complicated it is to do that.


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[Assistant] That didn't stop others from selling the same sort of product though. In 1893, an ad ran in the Spokane Daily Chronicle that declared, beautiful women use Dr. Sims complexion wafers. And like all the other ads, it preyed on that ancient eternal desire that all of us have deep down in our


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[Assistant] We long for beauty, and will do almost anything to reach it.


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[Assistant] History is full of stories of desperate people who have lined up for the latest and greatest in items designed to bestow beauty.


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[Assistant] And right alongside them, there have been enterprising individuals ready to offer new and improved ways to achieve it. But if you dig deep enough,


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[Assistant] You'll notice one thing that all those tales have in common.


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[Assistant] Karl Scheele invented green. Not the color, mind you. We can find green all throughout nature, making it one of the most common colors in the world. But Karl was looking for a way to apply that color to other objects. And in 1775, he figured it out.


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[Assistant] It was a pigment based on a recipe of chemicals that included copper, and when it was released, Scheele's green could color almost anything. Book covers, soap, the leaves on artificial plants, wallpaper, and clothing.


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[Assistant] The trouble wasn't how useful the pigment was, or just how many items in a person's life could suddenly become bright green. It was the key ingredients in the pigment. Arsenic.


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[Assistant] Now, thanks to a century or more of mystery novels and detective shows, most people know that arsenic is a toxic substance. But in 1775, that was sort of an afterthought. If arsenic was used in a product, folks generally assumed that it wasn't going to pose a threat. But oh, how wrong they were.


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[Assistant] By the mid-1800s, Shields Green was coloring countless items in the world. In 1861, a young woman named Matilda Schurer worked at an artificial flower maker, crafting those fake vines and leaves into headdresses for customers to buy. And she helped them stand out by dusting them with a powdered version of the arsenic-based green pigment.


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[Assistant] Over an 18-month period, Matilda went from healthy to horribly ill. Her fingernails were bright green, as were the whites of her eyes. Then, on November 20th of 1861, she became so sick that she vomited up green liquid. When the doctor checked her, she told him that her vision had become tinted green. Weeks later, she was dead.


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[Assistant] This dangerous pursuit of beauty wasn't a new thing though, even back in the 19th century. We can find examples as far back as ancient Egypt to find the same delicate balance between toxic chemicals and good looks. But for the Egyptians, their weakness was eyeliner.


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[Assistant] According to historians, everyone from the lowest of servants to the pharaohs themselves used heavy, dark eyeliner on a daily basis. The recipe was a mixture of black and green powders, although I can't find evidence that the green was achieved with arsenic. What it did contain, though, was almost as bad.


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[Assistant] Scientists working with ancient Egyptian artifacts from the Louvre have determined that the eyeliner actually contained two different types of lead, which were not used just as makeup, but to treat scars and other skin issues.


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[Assistant] And amazingly, some studies have shown that it might have been helpful. Lead, it turns out, as a way of breaking down the DNA of bacteria and stimulating the immune system.


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[Assistant] But too much of anything is never a good idea. The trade-off is that lead is toxic in large quantities. Had the ancient Egyptians managed to live longer lives than their average of 40 years, that constant daily exposure to lead might have created newer, more deadly health problems for them. And they wouldn't be the last.


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[Assistant] The Roman poet Ovid left us detailed accounts of how Roman women used a powdered white lead known as Cirusa as a foundation for the rest of their makeup.


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[Assistant] It was a substance that had been around for a very long time, and remained in practice long after the Romans were gone. Which is why, just four years after taking the throne, England's Queen Elizabeth I reached for it.


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[Assistant] She had become queen at the age of 25, but a few years into her reign she contracted smallpox, which left her face scarred forever.


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[Assistant] The white lead powder might have left her face looking a bit too white, but it smoothed out her blemishes as well. This is why every painting of Queen Elizabeth I shows a pale-faced woman, because she felt the need to paint her face white. There was a downside though.


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[Assistant] Over time, that lead powder had a way of corroding the skin beneath it, which necessitated using more and more as the years went by. And that much lead caused other problems, such as hair loss and a deterioration of her mental health.


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[Assistant] She slowly poisoned herself over the years, and today most historians agree that it was Elizabeth's use of white lead powder that ultimately killed her.


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[Assistant] As the years passed by, lead fell out of use in favor of arsenic. Powdered versions of the toxic mineral were used to whiten faces and treat lice-infested hair. Some women used it to redden their cheeks, while others found medicinal uses for it. And then, of course, Carl Scheele's green pigment entered the picture. But it was worse than that.


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[Assistant] Those beauty wafers I mentioned at the start of today's episode, the active ingredient in all of them was arsenic.


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[Assistant] Snake oil salesmen all across America and Europe were packing up poisonous biscuits and selling them as a beauty aid. Not because they wanted to harm people, of course, but because they assumed most customers would gladly deal with a little poison if it meant clearing up their acne or indigestion.


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[Assistant] Stories were whispered, and then they were spread, and then finally everyone bought into it. When it happens on the internet, it's surprising but understandable. In 10th century China though, it was remarkable.


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[Assistant] The stories tell of an emperor whose concubine danced on a golden stage that had been built in the shape of a lotus flower. But it wasn't the dancing that went viral, so to speak. It was her feet.


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[Assistant] According to the legend, before the dance began, this woman had compressed her feet into a more slender, pointed shape.


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[Assistant] Whether or not the tale is true, its influence is unmistakable. For the next 900 years, China would become home to the unusual practice of footbinding.


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[Assistant] And let me be completely upfront with you here. Footbinding is a deep cavernous topic with hours of history and details, and I can't cover all of that for you today. At the same time, it's a painful subject and one with a lot of nuance and passionate opinions.


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[Assistant] Yes, it was a practice of violence against women. Yes, it was a form of social oppression. And yes, it was something that Chinese women felt powerless to reject for nearly a thousand years.


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[Assistant] But it's also the perfect example of that old human tendency to place the pursuit of beauty in fashion over common sense and physical well-being. And that's why I want to briefly mention it today.


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[Assistant] What was foot binding? Oversimplifying it, it was the process of binding women's feet in order to deform and control their shape.


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[Assistant] At the height of its popularity, the binding process would begin between the ages of two and four years old, where the four smaller toes would be bent under the foot and then held there with long cloth wrappings.


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[Assistant] As the foot grew, it would be broken repeatedly to allow those toes to continue curving under the foot. Eventually, growth would slow and it would no longer be necessary to re-break the foot. But the women who suffered through this would still need to keep their feet bound in cloth for the rest of their lives.


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[Assistant] Understandably, this sort of guided mutilation had consequences. It became difficult to walk, and because of that, women became less mobile than men.


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[Assistant] Oftentimes, the bindings would cut off circulation, leading to rotting wounds and infected skin. And if the infection spread to the bones of the toes, they would often fall off, something that aligned just fine with the beauty standards of the day. Brutal, but true.


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[Assistant] Some infections were so bad, though, that they were known to spread throughout the rest of the body. Some historians believe that close to 10% of foot-bound women eventually died from complications with the process, and those that survived were much more susceptible to health problems as they grew older.


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[Assistant] Remember though, that this was done to reshape feet into an ancient ideal of beauty. But while the legend of the emperor's dancer dates back to the 10th century, there's an older Chinese story about a king who finds a tiny shoe and announces his intention to marry whoever could fit their foot inside.


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[Assistant] And if that sounds familiar to you at all, that's because historians think it's one of the oldest roots of the Cinderella fairy tale on record.


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[Assistant] But the Chinese weren't the only culture attempting to bind and contain the human form. Elsewhere around the world, women have been strapping themselves into corsets in order to shape their figure. It's a practice that's centuries old, with simple technology that didn't change much during that time. But in the mid-19th century, something happened.


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[Assistant] In 1828, a French designer introduced a new feature for corsets, metal eyelets and laces. Today, I think they're taken for granted, but in the early 1800s, this was revolutionary. It allowed women to adjust and tighten their corsets whenever they needed or wanted to, giving them so much more control than ever before.


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[Assistant] But as you might expect, that control came at a price.


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[Assistant] Tighter corsets led to restricted airflow, causing many who wore them to faint in public.


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[Assistant] The medical community spoke out against them, but it was like shouting into the wind. This was Victorian society after all, and the corset had become a symbol of a woman's restraint and virtue. Those who didn't wear them were considered promiscuous by their peers.


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[Assistant] But prolonged use of overly tight corsets had a tendency to deform a woman's rib cage, compressing it and reducing the space inside for internal organs.


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[Assistant] Understandably, many women experience shortness of breath, indigestion and the atrophy of their back and stomach muscles. For those who insisted on wearing their corsets too tight, it was quite a price to pay.


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[Assistant] Like I said, people will go to great lengths to be beautiful. Whether it's at the hands of an oppressive societal expectation or a choice made willingly on their own, humans have been making sacrifices on the altar of fashion for almost as long as we've been around.


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[Assistant] Sometimes though, there's more involved. An added layer that makes the pursuit of beauty more complex and acceptable. But new layers bring new complications.


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[Assistant] When it comes to performance art, there are few as beautiful as ballet. Whether it's the elaborate set design of the Boston Ballet's rendition of The Nutcracker or the simple strength of each dancer's movement, ballet is filled with beauty.


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[Assistant] But a century and a half ago, that beauty came with a price.


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[Assistant] Today we have workplace safety requirements and better modern technology. But in the middle of the 19th century, things were a bit more precarious. Stage elements and sets were known to collapse, sometimes in the middle of performances and sometimes right on top of dancers. And in an era when most theaters were built mainly of wood, fire was a constant risk. That's not all that had a tendency to burn though.


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[Assistant] It turns out that the traditional costumes worn by ballet dancers had a tendency to catch fire. And not the sort of fire that starts small and slowly eats away at the fabric. No, these fires were instant and all-consuming. And when there was a person inside that outfit, you can imagine how deadly that could become. Part of the problem was the dress itself.


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[Assistant] They were made of thin, airy muslin, cotton netting and gauze, all of which were open weave fabrics that were practically born to burn. But the other problem was that in the middle of the 19th century, interior lights were all gas-based.


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[Assistant] Everywhere you saw the bright glow of light, you were looking at an open flame. And when you put a dozen or more women on a stage that's lit by a series of small gas lamps, well, you can see how dangerous it quickly gets.


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[Assistant] On the night of September 14th, 1861, those risks weren't put to the test in the Philadelphia venue known as the Continental Theater. The dancers were planning to take the stage that night to perform Shakespeare's The Tempest, and theater owner William Wheatley had hired an English set designer to bring the shipwreck scene to life.


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[Assistant] All 1,500 people in the audience watched as the seas began to rise and rage. As it did, the dancers rushed off the stage to change out one outfit into another, and they had to do it quickly. They needed to help the character Alonzo welcome the shipwreck survivors to Prospero's island.


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[Assistant] Inside the dancers' changing room, gas lamps had been set beside large mirrors, which helped to amplify the light. According to one report, some of the dancers chose to hang their dresses on the mirror frames because their shape made them effective hooks. But that put them far too close to the open flames.


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[Assistant] As the storm raged on in front of the audience, a scream filled the theater, and a brilliant orange glow flared up behind the set pieces.


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[Assistant] Backstage, one of the dancers, a young woman named Zealia Gale, had caught fire, and in her panic she had rushed out onto the stage, her entire body engulfed in flames. Witnesses claimed to have seen her flesh melting off her limbs, before she toppled off toward the audience.


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[Assistant] Wheatley panicked. He ordered the main curtain to be drawn across the stage, but that only hid the visual portion of the tragedy from the people in the seats. He attempted to calm them, but the screams from behind the curtain were overwhelming and terrifying. Not knowing what else to do, he urged the crowd to exit the theater, which they promptly did.


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[Assistant] But the dancers backstage didn't have the same chance to escape. Tragically, Zilia wasn't the only one to catch fire. She was part of a family of dancers from England, and three of her sisters were also in the Continental with her that night. When her dress began to burn, all three of them rushed to help her, only to catch fire themselves.


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[Assistant] Panic broke out in the dressing room. While Xelia bolted toward the stage, the others began to run madly around the room.


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[Assistant] One of the sisters reportedly crashed headfirst into one of the large mirrors which covered her body in a spiderweb of deep bloody cuts. Another forced one of the windows open, perhaps hoping for someone to rescue them, but after a few terrifying moments, that open window became a tempting exit.


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[Assistant] Multiple dancers threw themselves out the window and plummeted to the pavement below.


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[Assistant] Witnesses on the street claimed to hear the sounds of bones breaking as the young women landed. Others inside rushed after Xelia, crashing off the stage and into more mirrors. It was chaos, fueled by fire, and ruled by terror.


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[Assistant] When the tragedy was over, many of the dancers were carried to local buildings for medical care, including a tavern, some houses, and a nearby hotel. But after the chaos subsided, all of them were transported to the Pennsylvania hospital, where physicians fought to save as many as they could.


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[Assistant] In the aftermath of a tragedy such as the one that took place inside the Continental Theater, it would be easy to go looking for someone to blame.


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[Assistant] Amazingly though, William Wheatley, the owner, avoided any public or legal accusations. According to everyone inside at the time, he simply did what he was able to do, and probably saved all of them from a larger catastrophe. But the dancers weren't so lucky.


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[Assistant] Of the ten ballerinas who were part of the production that night, eight of them died as a result of their injuries.


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[Assistant] We make an effort, at least, and I'm not sure I know anyone personally who enjoys leaving the house without first making themselves presentable.


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[Assistant] Maybe it's vanity. Or perhaps it's something deeper. Something more than we can put into words.


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[Assistant] Looking back through the pages of history, it's clear that beauty has been a priority for a very long time.


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[Assistant] And again, that's not a bad thing. And I don't want anyone to feel shamed or attacked just because they enjoy looking good. But what history does teach us is that oftentimes, humans have chosen beauty over safety, and the results have been tragic.


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[Assistant] From poisonous makeup in the ancient world to the modern trend of fake braces applied at home with toxic materials, there doesn't seem to be an end to the ancient tradition of damaging ourselves in order to look perfect.


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[Assistant] The clues have been in our fairy tales for centuries, and they're in the news today, leaving me to wonder if we'll ever catch on and correct ourselves. But humans are notoriously slow to learn things.


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[Assistant] You would think that the tragedy at the Continental Theatre in 1861 would settle the issue of safer ballet costumes once and for all. But that's sadly not the case. Even in France, where the old traditional dresses and set pieces were banned in favor of fire-resistant alternatives, there were those who resisted.


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[Assistant] One was a dancer named Emma Leverie. She was the daughter of a prominent ballerina and a wealthy father who studied at the Paris Opera School. And while it was said that she wasn't the most beautiful young woman in the school, her technique and grace were second to none. Everyone who watched her dance walked away certain that Emma would be a star. And they were right.


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[Assistant] She made her debut appearance at just 16 years old as the lead in La Sylphide, and from there her career climbed higher and higher. After that, she was taken under the wing of renowned ballerina and choreographer Marie Taglioni. If there was one bright flame in all of ballet in the middle of the 19th century, it was Emma Lively.


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[Assistant] In 1860, an 18-year-old Emma pushed back against the new rules regarding fire safety. The new costumes were fire resistant, sure, but the chemicals they had been treated with also made them look filthy and stiff. Emma wanted to maintain the high standards of her predecessors, and this new rule was cramping her style.


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[Assistant] That decision would come back to haunt her though. In November of 1862, while rehearsing for a performance, Emma's skirts brushed over one of the stage lamps and caught fire. She panicked and ran around the stage for a few moments before someone was able to catch her and put out the flames.


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[Assistant] Emma's wounds weren't deep, but they covered roughly half her body, including her waist, back, thighs, and arms. Worse yet, the laces of her corset had caught fire as well, melting into her flesh.


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[Assistant] For the next two days, Emma couldn't move, instead remaining inside her dressing room while wrapped in what must have felt like miles of bandages.


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[Assistant] There were other issues too. Taglioni, her tutor, had rubbed makeup grease on Emma's burns in the immediate aftermath because she somehow believed that the oil would soothe the wounds. Instead, it contributed to the infection that was about to bloom all over her body.


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[Assistant] The months of rest and recovery that followed allowed Emma a chance to rethink her negative attitude toward fire-resistant ballet costumes. But even the tragedy of her own accident and the suffering she had to endure didn't compete with her desire to maintain the old standards.


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[Assistant] If ever I dance again, she told her friends, it won't be in one of those ugly new dresses.


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[Assistant] Sadly, she never had the chance to stand by those convictions. On July 26th of 1863, over eight months after her encounter with the flames, Emma Lively passed away.


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[Assistant] But although she herself was resistant to a safer future, her death spurred much needed change in the industry she loved so much. Gas lamps were redesigned to be safer, and theaters began to store wet blankets backstage, just in case they were unexpectedly needed.


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[Assistant] Emma Lively might have been a shining star in her field, but it's clear that her true legacy was reminding everyone else of the importance of priorities.


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[Assistant] I hope you've enjoyed this bizarre and tragic tour of the intersection between fashion, folklore, and the human desire for beauty. But there's one more story I'd like to share with you, and I think you're going to love it.


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[Assistant] Stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.


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[Assistant] Ignorance can be deadly. As we discussed earlier, the factory workers who colored those floral headpieces with shields green unwittingly poisoned themselves. After the tragic death of Matilda Shurer, a representative from the Ladies Sanitary Association stepped in to investigate her workplace, and what she found was heartbreaking.


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[Assistant] After testing some of the artificial leaves that the women were using in the headpieces, it was determined that one complete headdress had enough arsenic in it to kill about 20 people.


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[Assistant] More troublesome. One of the full dresses that were made at the facility was found to contain about 900 grains of arsenic, which is magnitudes more than the five grains that were considered lethal.


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[Assistant] And this sort of toxic workplace was just one of many. You didn't have to look far to find others like it across the east coast of America, back in England and in major European cities as well.


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[Assistant] Which leads me to one of the most disturbing examples of them all. Felt hats.


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[Assistant] Today we can make felt a number of ways, but in the middle of the 17th century there was only one option.


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[Assistant] Beaver pelts. If you've ever wondered why there were so many fur trappers all across Canada and the western half of North America in the early 18th century, that's a big part of it. Beaver pelts were highly sought after because they made the French hat industry possible.


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[Assistant] Their origins date back as far as the 1300s actually, but it wasn't until the mid 1600s when they really became popular in France. Two centuries later, England caught on, and the demand exploded.


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[Assistant] But beaver hats were expensive because of the laws of supply and demand, but also because they were difficult to make.


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[Assistant] The first step was to felt the fur. And at some point in the distant past, some creative individual discovered that camel urine was the perfect solution to use to break down the fur and make it feltable. But as production increased, some workmen in France began to use their own urine. And that's when something happened.


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[Assistant] Legend says that the urine of one particular worker appeared to be vastly more effective than all his peers.


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[Assistant] After interviewing the man, they discovered why he had been taking medicine for syphilis, a medication that contained a powerful active ingredient, mercury.


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[Assistant] Naturally, the entire industry took notice. And soon enough, every felt hat factory was using an orange-colored solution called mercuric nitrate.


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[Assistant] But before you decide that things couldn't get any more disgusting, let me tell you about the felting process. First, the beaver pelts were matted with that orange solution, before shaping the material into a large cone. Then it was boiled to shrink it. After it was dry, it was ready.


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[Assistant] But boiling water creates steam, and when that water contains massive amounts of mercuric nitrates, you can imagine how toxic that steam would have been. It's said that in facilities that use the orange solution, that poisonous steam would collect on the ceiling before raining down on the workers below, covering them with mercury.


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[Assistant] Steam is also incredibly easy to inhale, and anything suspended in that steam will flow right into a person's lungs. It didn't take long for exposure to these chemicals to have an effect on the workers, but because they were afraid of losing their jobs, they chose to stay quiet and endure it all. But while that guaranteed that they could earn a living, it came at a tremendous cost.


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[Assistant] Side effects of all that mercury poisoning included trembling limbs and hands. In the town of Danbury, Connecticut, where hat making had become a massive industry, those tremors were known as the Danbury Shakes. It was a clever name for an insidious condition, and it was only the harbinger of something darker to come.


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[Assistant] As the symptoms grew worse, they included hearing loss, red fingers and cheeks, bleeding in the mouth, hair loss, bleeding from the ears and more.


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[Assistant] Other symptoms were more invisible, but no less significant. Insomnia, shyness, memory loss, and a loss of coordination. And then there were the violent mood swings and overall paranoia.


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[Assistant] The technical term for the condition is erathism, but to most people it was just madness. And because people are so very good at association, that madness soon became deeply tied to the occupation where it was far too common. If someone was unstable or behaved erratically, it was assumed that they worked in a hat factory. But it did something else.


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[Assistant] Unlike arsenic poisoning among dressmakers or Elizabethan nobles and their lead face paint, this tragic mercury-based condition embedded itself so deeply in popular culture that it's still referenced today. In fact, without it,


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[Assistant] We wouldn't have one of the most memorable and endearing character names in all of literature. The eccentric and unpredictable host of the most bizarre tea party imaginable. The Mad Hatter


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research by Taylor Haggardorn and music by Chad Lawson.


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[Assistant] Lore is much more than just a podcast. There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.


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[Assistant] I also make two other podcasts as well, Aaron Manke's Cabinets of Curiosities and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both of them.


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[Assistant] Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic. And you can learn more about both of those shows and everything else going on in the world of lore over in one central place, theworldoflore.com slash now.


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[Assistant] And while you're at it, you can follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi.


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[Assistant] Clark Stanley stood before the crowd and held the burlap sack carefully away from his body.


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[Assistant] It was the 1893 World's Exposition in Chicago, Illinois, and there were thousands upon thousands of people wandering through the city, enjoying the sights and sounds. But Clark Stanley had something unique to offer.


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[Assistant] After opening the bag, he quickly reached inside and pulled out a live rattlesnake.


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[Assistant] The crowd collectively gasped and then inched backward from the stage. Then, with all eyes watching him, Stanley ran a sharp knife down the length of the snake's body and tossed it into a pot of boiling water.


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[Assistant] A moment later the shimmer of melted fat could be seen on the surface.


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[Assistant] It was the key ingredient in a homemade remedy he called snake oil. But it wasn't his own invention. We have hundreds of thousands of Chinese immigrants to thank for that.


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[Assistant] When they moved to America in the second half of the 19th century, they brought numerous medicines with them, including one made from the fat of the Chinese water snake. It was high in omega-3, and they used it to treat muscle and joint pain. But Stanley only borrowed the name, not the recipe.


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[Assistant] Sure, people bought his miracle cure, and they used it for all sorts of ailments. But Stanley's dirty little secret was that his bottles of snake oil didn't have a single drop of actual snake oil in them. Just a lot of mineral water, some red pepper, turpentine, and a touch of beef fat.


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[Assistant] Mark Stanley was far from the first charlatan to prey on the needs of the sick. And he certainly wouldn't be the last. But he gave us the idiom we now use to classify all those frauds.


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[Assistant] Snake oil salesmen are as old as time. And their business model has always been incredibly simple. To offer a false sense of hope to those in need. For a price. But that's where things get tricky.


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[Assistant] Because some frauds do more than sell bottles of mineral water placebos. They fool dying people into thinking that a cure is just around the corner. That despite all the closed doors a patient might have faced, they alone can offer a way out of their pain and suffering.


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[Assistant] And in the process, they harm the people they serve.


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[Assistant] According to archaeologists, people have been flocking there for thousands of years. Digs have revealed ancient artifacts that point to human activity, and stories among the local indigenous people seem to make it clear why. It was hard to pass up a chance to visit what they considered to be a great healing spring.


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[Assistant] For a very long time, that's about as far as the story spread. But in the late 1800s, white settlers began to hear rumors about the location and started moving in on land that had once been sacred to the Native Americans. And one of the first, as far as we can tell, was Dr. Alva Jackson.


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[Assistant] Jackson had a reputation as a backwards pseudo-healer. Someone who was willing to try anything that might offer a quick fix to medical ailments.


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[Assistant] In 1879, he traveled to the Ozark Mountains in northern Arkansas with a group of hunters, one of whom, a man named Judge Saunders, had some unrecorded problem with his legs.


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[Assistant] You know how people can be when they think they found the miracle cure to whatever ails them. The very notion that there was a spring in the mountains of Arkansas that you could slip into and be cured for free. Well, that was a siren song for thousands of desperate people.


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[Assistant] The result was an entire community built around these mythical water sources known as Eureka Springs. It was an obvious solution in the minds of many people.


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[Assistant] Fresh, clean water had a sort of magical property to it. In an era when urban sprawl and the growing industrial revolution were turning cities into filthy centers of disease and death.


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[Assistant] Hydrotherapy, the ancient therapeutic use of water as treatment for illness, had been experiencing a comeback of sorts. We know the Egyptians used it, as did the Romans, who built elaborate bathhouses with complex plumbing and heating systems, all meant to make it easier for people to use water as a healing tool.


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[Assistant] Throw in a growing romanticism around the notion of returning to nature as a response to urban sprawl, and those springs became magnets for many people.


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[Assistant] In 1881, two years after Judge Saunders' experience, a man named L.J. Calcloche published a pamphlet that lauded the healing properties of the waters there.


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[Assistant] Certain diseases, he wrote, known as incurable, have been brought here and the improvement in the general health was so marked that invalids jumped at the conclusion that they were well.


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[Assistant] Kalkloss might have even had his sights set on some sort of business enterprise that would have taken advantage of that documented power. But it seems that another man beat him to the punch.


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[Assistant] Powell Clayton was an Arkansas legend. Not only had he served as governor of the state for seven years, but he had also served time as a U.S. Senator representing the state in Washington, D.C. And he had an idea.


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[Assistant] What if they turned Eureka Springs into an elite destination spot?


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[Assistant] What if they built something so attractive that it would lure in the sorts of people with disposable cash? Cash that could trickle down to the entire community.


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[Assistant] His proposition was ambitious and it required a corporate name behind it. So he set up the Eureka Springs Improvement Company and set his plans in motion.


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[Assistant] The goal was to build a Victorian pleasure resort. It would be a step up from what the area had been used to for the first few years.


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[Assistant] Rather than making a name for themselves as a destination for the destitute, Clayton aimed higher. In 1886, he began construction on a luxury resort that was meant to turn Eureka Springs into a prime destination for America's wealthy elite. The Crescent Hotel and Spa.


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[Assistant] St. Louis architect Isaac Taylor was brought in to design the five-story building, and limestone was quarried from the nearby White River. Stonemasons from Ireland were hired to lay the stones, and plumbing was installed that guided water from a number of the local springs directly into the hotel.


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[Assistant] It said that guests there could pick from which spring they wanted to drink. Almost like a modern soda machine.


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[Assistant] But it didn't matter how beautiful and extravagant this resort would be. Lurking just around the corner was something darker than he or anyone else could have imagined.


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[Assistant] At first, business was brisk. Those wealthy elites came to Eureka Springs and spent their money for a while.


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[Assistant] But as the years wore on, fewer and fewer vacationers showed up, and that made it harder to keep the doors open year round. After all, resorts are expensive to run, and if the guests weren't showing up, adjustments had to be made.


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[Assistant] In 1908, roughly two decades after opening their doors, the Crescent Hotel and Spa reduced its season from 12 months to just three and used the remaining nine months to run a college out of the building.


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[Assistant] The Crescent College and Conservatory for Young Women.


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[Assistant] From what I can tell, the college made money two ways. Wealthier families sent their young women to live and study there nine months each year, while local students could take classes during the day for a smaller fee.


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[Assistant] That hybrid of resort destination and women's college went on for 16 years. But by 1924, even the college tuition wasn't enough to keep the place staffed and running. The college shut down, and the resort was left with a small three-month window to earn revenue. But the writing was on the wall. And then, the water went bad. There's a bit of irony there, I know.


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[Assistant] The entire reason the community of Eureka Springs existed at all was because of the quality of the water. That's why the town was built. But in the mid-1920s, an outbreak of typhoid, a bacterial infection, spread by contaminated water and food, was linked to three of the local healing springs. The party, it seems, was over. For a while.


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[Assistant] In 1937, a stranger arrived in town and started asking questions about the old resort building.


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[Assistant] He was a smooth talking middle-aged man in a white suit, purple shirt, and a lavender tie. And he wanted to buy the resort and turn it into a hospital of sorts. He still believed in the healing powers of the spring waters and had a plan to treat cancer patients through a method he had learned back home in Iowa.


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[Assistant] The people of Eureka Springs were skeptical. They didn't know who he was, and he was asking them to put their town's reputation and economy right into his hands. And that was a risky endeavor.


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[Assistant] But at the same time, the Great Depression had devastated their community and they were looking for any lifeline they could find. So they eventually said yes.


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[Assistant] But Norman Baker wasn't the savior he claimed to be.


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[Assistant] Yes, he bought the Crescent Resort and Spa and began to remodel it. And yes, patients began to come to town, bringing their money with them.


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[Assistant] But in the long history of snake oil salesman, Norman Baker was one of the worst and had a dark past that he hadn't told anyone else about.


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[Assistant] Born in 1882, Baker had gone through life bouncing from idea to idea, trying to make a fortune for himself.


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[Assistant] While most were failures, he had a couple of successes that he liked to brag about. One was his own radio station, which, at the time he arrived in Eureka, was the second largest station in North America. But the other was the Baker Institute, a sort of pseudo-hospital in Muscatine, Iowa.


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[Assistant] He had studied under two separate people who claimed to have discovered a cure for cancer and had walked away with what he believed to be the perfect treatment, which he put to work inside his Baker Institute.


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[Assistant] Beginning in 1927, Baker advertised on his own radio station, looking for sick people who were desperate for a cure. Thousands flocked to him for help, but most left disappointed, if they left alive at all, that is.


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[Assistant] Baker was eventually kicked out of Iowa when the American Medical Association discovered that he had no medical training at all.


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[Assistant] But he wasn't about to let a little hiccup like that stop him, so he went searching for a new place. A place where he could start over and make even more money selling cures to the desperate. And he found that place in Eureka Springs.


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[Assistant] Baker was a natural salesman. Between his radio station sending the message far and wide and his local mailings that advertised Baker Hospital as the place where sick folks get well, he drew a steady flow of patients to his door.


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[Assistant] But we need to take every single notion we might have about medical care and toss it out the window if we're going to get an accurate picture of Norman Baker's methods.


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[Assistant] His cure for cancer was purely chemical. From what historians can tell, it was a mixture of glycerin, carbolic acid, alcohol and an herbal tea brewed from watermelon seeds, corn silk and clover.


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[Assistant] He also helped patients with changes to their diet, assorted vitamin supplements and a regimen of strong laxatives.


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[Assistant] On the surface, things seemed to have turned around in Eureka Springs. They had been looking for a lifeline to help pull them out from the darkness of an economic depression, and Baker had done that. Everyone was making money again, and because of that, everyone loved him. Well, almost everyone.


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[Assistant] There were a few critics in town who didn't believe his slick marketing messages. They had heard far too many stories of patients arriving at Baker's Hospital only to leave a short while later just as sick, but also full of disappointment and frustration.


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[Assistant] Eventually, those rumors and complaints were enough to draw the attention of Baker's old enemy, the American Medical Association.


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[Assistant] Together with federal authorities, the hospital was investigated and Baker was shut down. But not before he managed to embezzle millions of dollars out of his desperate patients, many of whom tragically died in the process.


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[Assistant] Baker served a short prison sentence of just four years for his financial crimes and was then released in the mid-1940s. He lived out the rest of his life in relative luxury, passing away in 1958 on board his very own yacht.


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[Assistant] But the legacy of that building built to trade a false sense of hope for a handful of cash wouldn't pass away with the man who filled it with so much evil.


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[Assistant] The work that Norman Baker did in the crescent left a stain that no amount of water, however magical, could ever wash off. And it's still with us today.


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[Assistant] The building that once held the Crescent Resort and Spa, and eventually Norman Baker's Pseudo Hospital, would change hands for the next few decades, slowly falling apart as time went by.


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[Assistant] In 1997, new owners took control and began the slow process of restoring the hotel to its original glory. Today, anyone approaching from a distance will get a glimpse of the old structure as it was in 1886. And that's a good thing.


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[Assistant] But the new owners didn't just take possession of an old hotel. They also acquired a building that served for decades as an epicenter of desperation and hopelessness. Remodeling might have taken care of the physical decay, but there are still whispers that suggest the old stories haven't gone away.


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[Assistant] And let's be honest, that's not difficult to believe. Setting aside the days when the wealthy elite walked the halls of the resort, Norman Baker's two-year stay in Eureka Springs did irreparable amounts of damage.


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[Assistant] There are some reports that he attempted to cure brain cancer by cutting open some patient's skulls and pouring the liquid cure directly onto their brain.


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[Assistant] A lot of pain, suffering and death came out of barbaric treatments like that.


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[Assistant] Today, guests of the hotel still bump into the past from time to time, as do the staff who serve them. One of those ghostly visitors is lovingly referred to as Theodora. She appears at the front desk from time to time, asking for her room key, and when the staff look away for a moment to check on her room number, she vanishes.


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[Assistant] That room, number 419, is another place where Theodora can be found.


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[Assistant] Cleaning staff have spotted her on more than one occasion, and visiting paranormal researchers claim to have captured her voice on tape. Whether she's just a figment of our imagination, or an echo of someone who lived and died in the building, we'll never know.


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[Assistant] The old hospital morgue is probably one of the most obvious places to go looking for shadows from the past. Legend says that Norman Baker would conduct amateur autopsies there, attempting to better understand the cancer he was claiming to be able to cure.


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[Assistant] Modern visitors to the space have spoken of cold spots, eerie sounds, and unintelligible voices.


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[Assistant] Speaking of Norman Baker, even though he passed away in Florida, some think his spirit has returned to wander the halls he filled with patients. The most frequent sightings have taken place in or near the old recreation room. Others have seen him on the landing between the first and second floors of the hotel and say that he always seems to look a little lost. Oh, and how do they know it's Norman Baker?


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[Assistant] His clothing, of course. That white suit, purple shirt, and lavender tie are a dead giveaway. And let's be honest, I fully intended that pun.


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[Assistant] On the third floor, multiple witnesses have seen the vision of a nurse pushing a gurney through the hallway.


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[Assistant] One guest in 1987 claimed that she watched this nurse move all the way down the hall before pushing her cart directly through the wall at the end. Most haven't seen her though. Instead, they've only heard sounds that hint at her presence. That telltale squeak of the gurney wheels as she rolls it slowly down the hall.


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[Assistant] One of the most common stories though is about a man named Michael.


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[Assistant] Legend says that he was one of the Irish stonemasons who helped lay the limestone blocks of the hotel. Michael was a bit of a ladies man, though, and had a tendency to desert his job in favor of flirting. It was a character flaw that would eventually get him killed.


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[Assistant] The story tells us that Michael was on the roof one day in 1886 when he noticed a woman far below on the ground. He stepped closer to the edge to try and get her attention and lost his footing, falling to a gruesome death below.


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[Assistant] This legend places the spot of his death as the modern location of room 218. And if the stories are true, Michael has made quite an impact on the guests there.


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[Assistant] People who stay in room 218 have experienced a whole range of unusual happenings. For many, it's as simple as an odd feeling or unexplainable sounds. For others, though, the sightings have been more intense. And maybe due to Michael's nature as a flirt, most of those experiences have been reported by women, not men. Some people never change, I guess.


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[Assistant] But the mark left by his tragic death is still visible from time to time, quite literally. More than a few guests have reported stepping into the room only to find the walls covered in blood, as if someone or something had exploded against them.


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[Assistant] Each time it happens, the guests have run screaming out of the room and called for hotel staff to come and see. When they arrive though, the walls are as clean and spotless as before.


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[Assistant] Whether the experiences in Room 218 have been nothing more than a series of eerily similar hallucinations by frightened guests, or momentary gaps in the veil between our world and the one beyond, it is difficult to say.


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[Assistant] But one thing that is clear is that those who've reported seeing the blood never step foot back inside their rooms. And honestly, who could blame them?


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[Assistant] Sure, walls can be scrubbed or repainted, but who could ever wash that vision from their minds?


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[Assistant] Not even the waters of Eureka Springs can do that.


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[Assistant] Desperate times call for desperate measures. We've heard it said a million times and yet it never ceases to take us by surprise. People will do extraordinary things for a chance, for a possibility, for hope.


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[Assistant] Clark Stanley knew that when he boiled rattlesnakes in front of audiences and then sold them bottles of nothing but mineral water. And they bought his miracle cure-all by the truckload. In fact, Clark Stanley's snake oil liniment sold for nearly 24 years before federal investigators stepped in and tested the product. His punishment for fooling all of those desperate people? 20 bucks.


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[Assistant] In a lot of ways, the people who put Eureka Springs on the map weren't a whole lot better. Sure, the stories of the healing properties of the local waters had been whispered about for centuries before their arrival, but they still own some of that blame.


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[Assistant] After all, they're the ones who marketed the springs as the answer to all our troubles, as the last ray of hope that everyone had been looking for.


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[Assistant] But clearly, the biggest snake oil salesman of them all, at least in Eureka Springs, was Norman Baker.


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[Assistant] He was a textbook example of how if you talk a big enough game and say your lies with enough conviction, some people are bound to assume you know what you're talking about. They'll follow you blindly in a direction of your choosing, even if that path only leads to failure and disappointment.


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[Assistant] But Baker's actions in his Eureka Springs hospital go beyond misdirection.


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[Assistant] If the stories are even remotely true, his patients faced much more suffering than mineral water or lies. Some of them handed over their life savings in hopes that Baker would cure them of their illness. And then they were allowed to die.


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[Assistant] We aren't immune to disappointment, as one final story from the Crescent Hotel and Resort illustrates so well.


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[Assistant] As the story goes, a former hotel owner was closing down the bar one night when one of the guests came in hoping for a drink before bed.


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[Assistant] The owner agreed, pouring him what he asked for and then slid the glass over to him.


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[Assistant] A couple of seats down the bar there was another man, just sitting in silence as the owner went about his closing duties.


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[Assistant] Looking for a conversation, the newcomer called out a greeting, but the silent stranger didn't reply.


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[Assistant] He tried again, but no matter how loud or friendly he was, the silent man refused to answer or even turn his head to acknowledge him.


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[Assistant] Assuming the man was too drunk to talk, the newcomer left him alone and carried on his conversation with the hotel owner. They made small talk and he slowly finished his drink. But when he was ready to leave, he was surprised to see that the silent man had already left. He couldn't remember seeing, let alone hearing, the man leave the bar. It was unsettling, to say the least.


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[Assistant] Back out in the hotel lobby, the man glanced up toward the staircase, probably deciding if he was going to take the elevator or make the long climb up to his room. And that's when he saw the silent stranger again, just standing on the stairs, looking down toward him.


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[Assistant] Finally, letting his curiosity get the better of him, the hotel guest began to climb the steps to confront the stranger. But that's when something unexpected happened.


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[Assistant] As he approached, this hotel guest claimed he felt invisible hands stop him, as if a powerful force had placed itself between him and the Silent Man.


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[Assistant] This force then guided him backwards slowly but firmly until he was left standing at the bottom of the steps where he started. When he glanced back up, the stranger was gone.


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[Assistant] Sometimes the past is eager to brush up against the present and make itself known. And sometimes it isn't.


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[Assistant] If you're the sort of person who keeps their eyes peeled for a glimpse of the unexplainable, for a shimmer of ghostly evidence or the whisper of an otherworldly voice, you might get exactly what you're looking for in the Crescent Hotel. Then again, you might walk away disappointed, but considering the dark history of the place, that's nothing new.


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[Assistant] The history of the Crescent Hotel is one of frustration and disappointment. That much is obviously clear. Thousands of people flock to Eureka Springs looking for a cure, but left empty-handed. And if one final story is true, some of them might still be calling for help.


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[Assistant] Stick around after this short sponsor break to hear all about it.


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[Assistant] The Crescent Hotel is an old building. Anything that was built in the 1880s and is still standing today has little reminders of just how old it is, and the hotel is no exception.


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[Assistant] Rooms that are no longer used. Technology that has been replaced by more modern alternatives. Architecture often acts like a time capsule by preserving areas of an older era.


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[Assistant] In the Crescent, one of those relics is the Recreation Room.


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[Assistant] In its heyday, it was a favorite destination for hotel guests. Norman Baker was even said to go there every day during his ownership of the building.


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[Assistant] But in modern times, the recreation room has been locked and off-limits to the general public. It's unoccupied.


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[Assistant] But if you ask the staff at the hotel switchboard, they might have a different opinion about that. Because they are the ones who keep receiving the mysterious phone calls. Every now and then, they say, at completely random times, the phone inside the recreation room will call the switchboard.


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[Assistant] Assuming someone had managed to break into the off-limits room, staff would go down and investigate. They would take their key, unlock the door, and flip on the lights, only to find no one inside waiting by the phone.


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[Assistant] Each time, they would leave just a little bit frustrated, locking the door behind them as they went.


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[Assistant] Once though, a member of the staff got a bit more than he bargained for. After receiving yet another call from the unoccupied room, he grabbed the key and headed down to see what might be causing it.


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[Assistant] But this time he asked one of the other staff members to keep the mysterious call on the line. Perhaps, if the call is still ongoing, they might catch the culprit in the act.


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[Assistant] When he arrived outside the room, he silently inserted his key into the lock. And then, after taking a deep breath, twisted the key and opened the door. Inside though, was just a bit more disappointment for him.


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[Assistant] The room was still empty and the phone, the one that had placed a call to the switchboard and was still active, was sitting firmly on the receiver.


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[Assistant] While their experiment didn't offer the answers they had been looking for, it certainly did cause them to consider a more frightening alternative to a prank or a wandering guest. Maybe. Just maybe.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research by Taylor Haggardorn, and music by Chad Lawson.


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[Assistant] Lore is much more than a podcast. There's a book series in bookstores around the country and online, and the second season of the Amazon Prime television show was recently released. Check them both out if you want a bit more lore in your life.


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[Assistant] I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both of them. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic.


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[Assistant] You can learn more about both of those shows and everything else going on all over in one place. theworldoflore.com slash now.


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[Assistant] And you can follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. When you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi.


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[Assistant] Nearly 400 years ago, the Austrian city of Innsbruck had a celebrity. But not the way you might imagine.