[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We know about him from a leaflet printed in 1620 with its tiny text and stark black and white woodcut image. And it's not a pretty sight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This man, Wolfgang Gescheder, had apparently been a healthy, normal, middle-aged carpenter in 1604. But then illness took all of that away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It began with a headache before moving onto his limbs. Soon he was completely paralyzed, unable to do anything other than move his eyes and tongue.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The image shows us an emaciated man, naked and twisted upon a small bed. His ribs are like the keys of a piano, his limbs are bone thin, and his eyes are sunken deep in his skull. But he's alive, and according to the heading above him, he was the symbol and landmark of the city. Which doesn't make a lot of sense, I know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The additional headline makes it more clear. It was a 17th century version of YOLO.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's clear from the stories like that of Wolfgang Scheder that when we least expect it, life can change dramatically. Illness has a way of reducing us to something less than what we are, leaving us helpless and afraid.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The pages of history are full of stories of injury and sickness, reducing people to nothing but a shadow of their former selves.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But hidden among those tales is a different kind of story. One that stands out because it shrugs off the typical and trades it in for something much more bizarre and unexplainable. Along the way, it forces us to ask an important question.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mary didn't have an easy life, even from the start.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Born in 1846 to James and Elizabeth, she was the first of five children to fill their Brooklyn home with laughter. But life is never free from pain. It arrives like an unwanted house guest when you least expect it. For Mary, it was the death of her mother.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Illness took Elizabeth down so quickly that she called upon her sister Susan Crosby to come and help. Susan was single and available because of her own personal tragedy. The man she'd planned to marry had died just months before after contracting yellow fever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Soon after arriving, Susan lost a sister and Mary lost a mother. But Susan stayed on to care for the family and fulfill her promise to Elizabeth to specifically watch out for Mary. Molly, she said, using Mary's nickname, is a child of sorrow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That sorrow didn't manifest in the form of mood swings or pessimism, though. In fact, Molly thrived in the years to come.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She attended a local preparatory school that focused on training women to become teachers. She excelled in all of her classes and was on her way toward a promising career in the world of education when life took an unexpected turn.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A short time before she was set to graduate, Molly became ill.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Her body started rejecting most of the food she ate, and as a result, she spent most of her time weak and sick. The illness became so bad that she ultimately had to drop out of school, crushing her hopes and dreams in the process.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Molly's Aunt Susan took her to a number of doctors, but the best diagnosis they could get for her illness was that Molly suffered from indigestion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I know, super specific, but remember that this was the mid-1800s, not the 21st century Mayo Clinic. So we should set our expectations a bit lower. Her prescription was just as unusual too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Horseback riding was recommended as a way to combat the indigestion and bring about healing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Molly began those riding sessions in April of 1864. She chose a horse that was a bit ill-tempered and spent the first couple of weeks getting used to him. After that though, it was just a matter of getting out into the park regularly for long rides in the fresh air. And for a while, it seemed that the therapy was working. A month later, on May 10th, all of that changed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Near the end of a ride, her horse became spooked and violently threw her off the saddle. Molly impacted on the pavement with enough force to break two of her ribs and knock her unconscious. When she awoke, she was in the hospital.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fall had done more than just knock her out and break some bones, though. One of her lungs had been punctured by a broken rib, and it continued to bleed long after the accident. She'd lost all feeling below the waist, too, and her eyesight seemed to be failing as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Vamali was stubborn and brave, and after months of rest and recovery, she was on her way back toward a normal, healthy life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A little over a year after her accident, in June of 1856, Molly planned a little vacation. She was going to travel north to the city of Boston to see friends, and in a move that any of us would find familiar today, she went shopping for new clothes. When she was finished, she took a streetcar home.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When it reached her stop, Molly stepped off, arms full of packages. But the driver of the streetcar wasn't paying attention and he rang the bell and urged the car forward while one of her legs was still on board, pulling the world out from beneath her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Molly was thrown to the pavement in a painful echo of her riding accident. Only this time, she wouldn't stay where she fell, because the streetcar was more dangerous than a horse.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As she landed, her dress caught on a hook that protruded from the back of the car. So when it moved forward at full speed, it actually dragged her with it, like a dented can tied to the bumper of a wedding limo. Witnesses say that the car drove nearly a full city block before the driver noticed and brought it to a stop. It was too little too late though. The damage was done.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A few people managed to carry her to a nearby butcher shop to wait for help. She was unconscious again and had rebroken multiple ribs. She had cuts and scrapes all over her body and blood ran from the corners of her mouth.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But she somehow survived, and a few weeks later she was back home under the care of Aunt Susan and the rest of her family. But life had changed dramatically for Molly. She would never leave her house again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was some recovery. After many weeks in bed, Molly was able to get up and walk slowly around the house with help, but there were complications to that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Specifically, her left leg had become locked in a bent position and refused to straighten fully to the floor. To make matters worse, her eyesight was slowly failing. She experienced intense pains all along her spine, and her right arm would sometimes go numb.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Between all of that and the constant infection in her lungs as a result of the previous puncture, the winter of 1865 to 1866 was a challenge for Molly and her family. In fact, all of the physicians who examined her predicted that death was just around the corner. It was out of their hands, and only time would tell. In February, something changed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Molly fell asleep and failed to wake up, so Susan called for a doctor. They were told that the young woman had passed away, but Susan refused to accept that the end had come, so she took a spoonful of brandy diluted with water, forced Molly's jaw open, and poured it in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In response, Molly's entire body went into spasms before settling back into a death-like stillness. It repeated like that for hours, first silence, then seizures, over and over, while everyone else stood by helplessly. After that, Molly changed again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She went from limp and unconscious to rigid and immovable. It was as if she'd become a mannequin and it was unusual enough that her Aunt Susan became desperate. She gave the doctor freedom to try whatever he felt might help her niece. It was an invitation into a very different world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] First, the doctor stood Molly's rigid body up against a wall and proceeded to rub her limbs with alcohol.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He shaved her head and attempted to use heat to blister her scalp in an effort to release bad fluids. He brought in the equipment necessary to try shock treatment and even went as far as to reposition Molly's bed in the room to better line up with the Earth's magnetic currents.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Eventually, Molly completely lost her hearing and eyesight. In the calm spaces between seizures and rigidity, she stopped trying to move or get up. After a year or so, the only sense she seemed to still possess was touch, communicating through light movements of her fingers on the hands of her visitors.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All the while, they were trying to prevent Molly from starving to death.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They would manage to get food into her mouth and even to swallow it, but soon after, she would vomit it all back up. The doctor tried using liquid food and a feeding tube, but that failed to work as well. Everyone agreed that Molly was wasting away, and if it wasn't stopped, she would most certainly starve to death. But that's where it gets bizarre.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Molly never did starve to death. She carried on with almost no food for months. Sure, they managed to get a tiny amount of liquid into her from time to time, but according to the records that were written down by her aunt Susan, Molly had essentially stopped eating.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She had begun to resemble that historic mascot of Innsbruck that I mentioned earlier, Wolfgang Gescheder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Illness had arrived like a horrible house guest and it was leaving its mark on her body. But something else was happening at the same time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While Molly's body was withering and contracting, something inside of her began to grow and expand. A power that no one was ready to believe. Molly herself later recalled when it happened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] First, I seem to have a consciousness of the position of things around me and the movements of persons without actually seeing them with my eyes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It began innocently enough with her old wristwatch. It had been removed months before and placed on the mantelpiece on the far side of the room. No one could see it from her bed, but somehow Molly could tell them the exact time shown on its face. They couldn't explain it, but it was happening.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It sounds skeptical, I know, but a lot of people assume that she could either somehow see the watch or that she was just making really good guesses about the time of day. I know people who have a pretty good sense of time, but guessing the exact time on a specific watch in a room sounds like an extraordinary accomplishment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After that, Molly turned her second sight to other things. She predicted approaching thunderstorms long before the skies became dark outside, or nearby fire alarms long before they went off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the most unusual predictions involve visitors to the house. Whenever the doorbell rang, she would state matter-of-factly who it was outside on the porch, only to be proven right each and every time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For months, Molly had been trapped inside her body with almost no freedom to speak of. But suddenly, she had become more powerful than anyone else under her roof.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Molly had become the embodiment of contradiction. She wasn't eating and yet she was still alive. She was blind and yet she could see things no one could explain away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And while she spent most of the next 12 years immobile in her bed, lying in the exact same position each and every day, there were brief exceptions to that new normal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Once, she stood up and reenacted an entire wedding with all the talking, singing, and dancing you might expect.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On another occasion, she acted out the motions involved in taking her dog hunting in the woods, even stopping to load her imaginary gun and take a drink of the whiskey she'd brought along.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the unusual behavior didn't stop at simple reenactment. As the months went by, Molly began to speak with the voices of other people. It was as if she had become a radio, and the frequency would change, allowing her to become other people. Whenever this happened though, her symptoms would seem to melt away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One voice identified itself as a little girl named Rosebud, while another was a more grown-up identity named Pearl. Ruby was the fun-loving active voice who seemed less interested in Molly herself and more interested in the world around her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She also demonstrated more of her unusual second sight. She seemed to be able to follow friends and family members outside the house, even though she was trapped in bed. When they came to visit at the end of the day, Molly would describe in perfect detail everything the visitors did that day, right down to their jobs and clothing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She could identify the contents of a sealed envelope, reading word for word the letter inside or describing the people in a covered photograph. When letters or photos were placed in her hands, they say she could read them by running her fingers over them and even identify people in the photographs that way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Naturally, the spiritualist community fell in love with her story.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For a movement of people who believe deeply in our ability to push beyond this world into the next and to become more than we appear to be,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Molly Fancher was both a wonder and a puzzle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They discussed her case at length, hypothesizing about the human body's ability to shift senses from one organ to another, such as moving the sense of sight to the tips of her fingers. But there were far more skeptics than believers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One was a man named Dr. William Hammond. He was a physician who had made a name for himself three decades earlier with his research into digestion. But more recently, he'd been writing about some of the popular cases involving what he called the fasting girls. In fact, it wasn't Molly's unusual gifts that initially caught his attention. It was the claim that she'd gone so long without eating.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His goal was to disprove these sorts of impossible claims, which he called fraud and hysteria.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That word choice, by the way, hysteria, was intentional on his part.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Today, hysteria is a word that carries the connotation of mass panic or uncontrollable fear. But in ancient times, it was a word that covered all manner of symptoms that were believed to emanate from the uterus. In fact, hysteria comes from the root word hysteria, which is the Greek word for uterus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By the time of Molly's story, at the end of the 19th century, hysteria had come to be thought of less as a physical illness and more of a psychological one. Dr. Hammond believed that Molly suffered from some form of hysteria, and that led her to pretend to starve.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Symptoms aside, Hammond was essentially declaring that Molly couldn't be trusted simply because she was a woman.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This dismissive prejudice led Hammond to Molly's home, where he spoke with her family and examined the young woman in hopes of debunking what he viewed as an obvious fraud.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's where he encountered the stories of her second sight and unusual abilities. Curious about their truthfulness, and more than a little suspicious that it was all just part of that same act that included the starvation, Hammond proposed a test.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He went to the bank and obtained a certified check for a thousand dollars and then sealed it in an envelope.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Returning to Molly's home, he placed the envelope in her hand and told her that if she could recite the details inside, who signed it, the amount, and the check number, he would donate that money to a charity of her choice. Molly, though, refused to be tested in such a way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Believing the young woman was more interested in keeping the money for herself. Hammond later extended a similar offer. Only this time he told her she could keep the check if she could read through the envelope.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But Molly was done with being the center of his experiments and politely declined his offer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In 1879, Hammond published a book about Molly and other women in similar situations, entitled Fasting Girls. It was condescending and dismissive, and more than a little sexist. Molly, however,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Stayed in bed. She had arrived there after her second accident in 1865, and 14 years later, little had improved. She would stay in that bed, cared for by family and friends, for the rest of her life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The story of Molly Fancher sits at a very unique intersection. On one side we have that historic lineage of saints and martyrs who used fasting and suffering as a tool to get closer to God.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On the other side though, there's the modern world where Molly's 19th century life connected deeply with both the scientific and medical community. She was a bridge spanning the gap between two very different worlds. She wasn't the first though.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In a lot of ways, our landmark of Innsbruck, Wolfgang Geschader, spanned his own wide gap.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Researchers today believe that while the cot he laid on each day was placed right outside his local church, it was also across the street from the hospital. It's a juxtaposition that contrasts spirituality with science, faith with evidence, and a higher power with an inner strength.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Stories of the unexplainable are never cut and dried, and if our goal is to pin them down on only one side of the line, we'll always end up frustrated.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Looking back, it's difficult to say what really happened to Molly. I think any one of us would have a hard time believing that she lived the rest of her adult life without ever eating again. But the testimony of the people around her seems to contradict that. Or at least, what they were willing to admit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The same could be said for her unusual abilities. Yes, they did appear once her body was broken and limited, and yes, there are a lot of witnesses to her claims. The notion of second sight or remote viewing doesn't necessarily line up with common sense or logic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the end, it's up to each of us to make our own minds up about who Molly really was. She was either an exception to the rules, or an exceptional fraud.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And no matter what she really was, her story was attractive to a lot of people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dr. William Hammond wasn't the only one who wanted to dig deeper into her claims. A spiritualist writer named Abram Daly sat down with Molly in the early 1890s and put together a book about her story called Molly Fancher, The Brooklyn Enigma. And she received a visit from an agent representing another man interested in her unusual talents, P.T. Barnum.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was apparently intrigued by her story as a starvation artist and sent his agent to Brooklyn to offer her a job in Barnum's traveling menagerie. She could stay at home with her powers and suffering, or she could take it on the road and earn herself a handsome paycheck.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Molly, ever the one to avoid the spotlight, declined the offer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In 1916, Molly reached the 50th year of survival from those tragic accidents of her youth. She had recovered very slowly over those five decades and finally regained the use of her arms and eyes. She'd even started eating again, although her diet was mostly liquid, consisting of juices, broth, and water.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As a result, she put weight back on and was stronger for it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But there was another side effect in her return to the world of food. Her second sight faded away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's no way we can definitively say that her starvation and suffering turned on some sort of latent ability within her mind. But I can't help but wonder if it was more than just coincidence.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To celebrate her 50th anniversary of survival, Molly invited hundreds of guests to her house, all who filtered through her room for a chance to shake her hand and say hello.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was food and wine and lots of laughter inside the house that day. It was probably a welcome change, but it was also the last the world would ever see of her. Molly died a few weeks later, at the age of 68. She lived a life that so many of us can relate to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After suffering through two horrible accidents, she began to walk that same long road through life that we all have to tread. The one where we just grit our teeth, do our best, and hope for a better tomorrow.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pain and suffering seem to be something we can all expect at some point in our lives, but Molly showed us there was hope.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She was the living embodiment of the old cliche. Whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research help from Carl Nellis and music by Chad Lawson.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As I mentioned before, I make another podcast called Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, and I really think you'd enjoy it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a twice weekly podcast that explores some of the most bizarre events, objects, and people in history. Each episode is a bite-sized 10-minute collection of two short tales that show you just how unexplainable our world really is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lore exists outside of this podcast, too. There is a book series in bookstores around the country and online, and the Amazon Prime television show is heading into its second season this coming October. Check them out if you want more lore in your life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you can always learn more about everything going on over in one central place. theworldoflore.com slash now


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you can also 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.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just three miles west of the Swedish city of Ronneby stands one of the tallest rune stones in the world. It's been there for over 1,500 years, along with two companion stones, and all of them have a sort of wavy, elongated shape to them, reaching up to the grey sky like broken fingers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They are mysterious, and ancient, and larger than life. And a few centuries ago, they were also in the way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Local legend says that a farmer wanted to use the land in that corner of the field so he set about trying to remove the stones. Again, these things are giants, so as you can imagine, no amount of rope and horses could bring them down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Desperate to get rid of them, he decided to break them with fire, literally burning the stones until they crumbled.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They say it was a calm, windless day when he piled a kindling around the base of the runestone and then set it all on fire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At first, it looked as if his plan would work, but as the flames licked higher, a gust of wind blew in, and an instant later, the man's hair was on fire. He slapped at his head and then fell to the ground, rolling in the grass, but it was too late. Minutes later, the farmer was dead.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Had he been able to read the runes, he might have reconsidered his plan to destroy the monuments. Centuries later, scholars have been able to translate those runes, carved in what we now call Proto-Norse. Here's what they say.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, master of the runes, conceal runes of power here. Unending maleficence and death to he who breaks this monument.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Most of us today don't live near cursed monuments, but we're more than familiar with the idea. Whether it's the Chicago Cubs or the Kennedy family, we have an innate grasp of the meaning of a curse.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some people write them off as fantasy, while others treat them with a healthy dose of respect.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Over the centuries, a few have even become obsessed with them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because if history has anything to say about it, it's easy to get carried away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On March 29th of 1511, the five-week-old infant son of Richard Hewn died unexpectedly while in the care of a wet nurse. Naturally, Richard was heartbroken, and no amount of infant mortality statistics can brush away the grief he must have been feeling. But life had to move on, so the funeral preparations began.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Richard Hewn was a wealthy merchant tailor. He was a generous man by all accounts, but also a successful businessman, which means he had money and influence. But despite all of that, the funeral for his own son took place in the parish of his death, not the parish Hewn called home.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was the first insult. The second came after the funeral was over, when the priest requested payment for the services.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hewn refused, and this set off a battle that lasted years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He accused the priest of extortion and they accused him of sins against the church.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He took them to court and they threatened him with excommunication.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At the end of the back and forth, Hyun found himself waiting trial in jail, and in 1514, they found him hanging dead in his cell.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The assumption was suicide, but more than a few suspected murder, which didn't reflect well on the Crown. So King Henry VIII gathered his council and asked if it might be possible to find the murderer. One of the men spoke up and offered a solution.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, the counselor replied. I've never seen her use any worse magic than looking at one's hand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When asked just what her qualifications might be, a counselor told them all, my lords, she is an Egyptian.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is the moment we desperately need Ron Howard's voiceover to break in. Arrested development style, with a short rebuttal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The woman the counselor was referring to was not an Egyptian in the sense that you or I might think of today.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She wasn't from Egypt or schooled in ancient Egyptian magical techniques. She was just so wildly different from anyone else around her that, to the medieval mind, she must have been from the most mysterious and mystical land they could think of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The technical term for their assumption is exonym. It's when people from outside a specific culture give their own outsider name to a place or people group.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sometimes it was done out of spite, such as when Slavic people used to refer to Germans as Nemtzi, which meant mute, simply because they found the German language to be unintelligible. Other times, it was born out of ignorance, as illustrated here by the tale of King Henry VIII.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Egyptian spoken of in that story was actually a Romani woman. And according to historian Francis Groom, it might just be the first mention of the Romani culture in connection with palm reading. Over time, Egyptian was shortened to Egyptian and then to the racial slur most Americans are familiar with today. The gypsy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thanks to advancements in DNA science, we now know that the Romani people originated from the area now comprised of the northern parts of India and Pakistan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They broke off from their ancestors around a thousand years ago, and have since migrated around the world. Today, there are perhaps 20 million Romani people spread across Spain, England, France, Canada, and many South American countries as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even here in America, thousands of miles from the Europe the Romani have long called home, there are at least one million.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's hard to imagine another culture with such courage to move on and risk new homelands. In fact, that traveling mindset has also fed the stereotypes, turning the racial slur into a general term for anyone who wanders around without roots.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sadly, all of that mysteriousness and migration left the Romani people with the unfair reputation of being untrustworthy. In fact, so many people assumed that the Romani were thieves that they began to refer to the act of being cheated as being gypped.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Most people today are ignorant of that term's offensive roots, so I'm telling you. The more you know, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The truth is, humans have always been horrible at treating outsiders fairly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when your entire culture is built around having to travel from place to place and never settling down, you're always going to be the outsider.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which might explain why the Romani people have been so mistreated over the centuries. Sadly, mistrust has been the least of their persecutions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For a very long time, while slavery was active and thriving in Europe, the Romani people held almost no rights of their own.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In fact, some countries legally classified them as slaves from the 14th century all the way up to the 1840s.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In 1531, England passed the Egyptians Act, accusing the Romani culture of crime, deceit, and black magic, and expelling all of them from the kingdom. And that fearful, ignorant piece of legislation stayed on the books until 1856.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the ultimate act of hatred toward outsiders, the Nazi party stripped German Romani of their citizenship in 1935. They were subject to the same violence and imprisonment as their Jewish neighbors. An upwards of 1 million Romani were killed in extermination camps.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But over the centuries, it has acquired more than just exonyms and ethnic slurs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] More than any other culture in the world, they seem to have attracted a reputation as a magical people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They are mysterious, complex, and gifted in a whole litany of powerful, fascinating abilities. And at the top of that list is the one thing that both enchants and terrifies the people who don't understand their culture. The Romani curse.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Jan Heuers was born in Belgium in 1922 in the city of Antwerp. His father Eugene was an artist and his mother Magda was a human rights activist. They were an open-minded couple who cared less about a person's ethnicity and more about their humanity. And they raised Jan to be the same.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sometime during the summer of 1934, Jan encountered a Romani camp just outside of the city, and in the process, he met a number of other boys his age.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For weeks, he returned day after day to spend more time with them. Partly because that's what children do. And partly due to an attraction he felt to the unique culture that surrounded him there. There was something magical about his friends and their world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The leader of the camp was a man named Pulika.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like Jan, he too was happy for the boys of his camp to have found a new friend, and even though Jan was a gajet, a Romani term for an outsider, Pulika and the others welcomed him in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By the end of the summer, Jan didn't want to leave, so he asked his parents for permission to move to the camp permanently.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I know how crazy that sounds today. Modern parents have a hard time letting their children out of their sight, let alone giving them permission to move in with a whole other community miles away. But as I mentioned before, Jan's parents were very open-minded. And to them, this apparently wasn't that big of a deal, so they agreed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] According to Jan, writing much later in life about his experiences, the camp encountered a challenge one day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Puleka's sister, Karolina, had discovered a small pouch of gold coins she had hidden away was gone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Her first thought was that an outsider had come in during the night and taken it, but there was no way anyone could have known where it had been kept. The most likely thief, she said, was one of their own.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, Pulika called for a public trial known as a crease. The entire community gathered outside of the camp in an open space and Pulika shared his sister's story. Evidence was presented. Theories were expressed. When he was done, he asked for the thief to step forward and confess to the crime. But no one did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Polika's request was met by nothing but silence, and so he was forced to move on to the next step, the sentencing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Walking slowly past each member of his community, he spoke a series of curses over them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here's a sample of what they contained, according to Jan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If, after the administration of the oath, you intend in any way to have profit or pleasure or possession of the gold pieces stolen from Carolina, may God take away your strength and your pleasure. May sterility deprive you of posterity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Clearly, this was heavy stuff, intended to give the thief as much incentive as possible to come clean and confess their crime. As the curses were spoken over the gathered people, each member of the community received them by replying with the Romani equivalent of, I do. They were creating a binding agreement with the foundation of deadly curses.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But no one dropped dead, or became terribly ill that day in the field outside of camp.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everyone assumed that the thief had indeed been an outsider, and in the end, all of the leaders of the community just donated money to Carolina to pay back her loss. But the experience taught Jan Jures much about how the Romani viewed and used curses.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In our modern pop culture fed minds, a Romani curse is a magical incantation that alters the present and future of an individual.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's the plot of Stephen King's novel, Thinner, Come to Life, where a person's life is destroyed as a result of a curse. But to the Romani, that's not how curses work. In fact, they never curse one another at all. They either curse themselves or outsiders, and each type of curse functioned in a different way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Within the Romani community, curses are actually used to keep yourself in check. A curse is a promise, an oath, where you declare what might happen to you if you broke your own word. Janurs learned a number of them from his Romani friends, including, may my blood spill,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The other type of curse was the kind uttered to outsiders, the gage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] According to Yanyurs, the Romani didn't actually believe these curses had magical powers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What they do believe, though, is that the weight of the words themselves can have a deep impact on the lives of the people who hear them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, if a Romani were to pull an outsider aside and say to them, you will die a horrible death, they aren't actually predicting or altering the future of that person.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're planting a seed and letting the receiver's mind take over.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Soon enough, all that person will be able to think of is their impending horrible death. Whether or not it actually happens is secondary to the months or years lived in constant fear of its truthfulness. Which leaves us with a more troubling question to deal with.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's not about whether curses are real and powerful, so much as it is about who's to blame when things go wrong.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Have we really become the victim of a sorcerer uttering dangerous words? Or do our own human minds get swept up in the tidal wave of fear and doubt?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Either way, the results leave us wondering who is in control. The curse? Or the cursed?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thankfully, there's one story from the 19th century that just might hold the answer. It might not be what we're expecting, but the picture it paints for us is troubling nonetheless. Troubling. And more than a little terrifying.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They wanted him to be a lawyer and instead, he fell in love with acting.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Charles was just 17 when he took his first role at a local theater in Dublin, Ireland, but that was enough. Not only was he hooked, but the people around him were as well. Charles was born to act, and by the time he arrived in New York City in 1876, he was 34 years old and the proud owner of an international reputation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was a powerhouse too, dazzling audiences with his various Shakespearean roles while also writing popular plays of his own. So when he arrived in America, everyone wanted a piece of him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The trouble was, there were parts of his life that no one would ever get to see. Because Charles believed that he had been cursed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] According to the memoir of a business partner, when Charles was still a young man in Europe, he encountered a Romani fortune teller who gave the actor a glimpse into his future. He would be famous, she told him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His soul would wander until it could return home.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now I don't know how you go about processing something like that. Maybe you brush it off and ignore it. Or perhaps you look for the silver lining within.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was going to be famous, she told him. At least that was that, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Charles threw himself into the career he loved, and he thrived at it. But deep in the recesses of his mind, there would always be that worry, as if the words spoken by the fortune teller cast a shadow over his bright future.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For 17 years, Charles Coughlin traveled country and performed for sold-out audiences. For a while, he worked as the star of a theater company run by the actress Lily Langtree, author of that memoir I mentioned a moment ago.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A little over a decade later though, he joined his sister Rose in forming a theater company of their own, and it was an immediate success.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The early 1900s were a blur for Charles. He had arrived in America with a woman named Louisa Thorne and their infant daughter Gertrude. Over the years that followed, they were rarely seen apart, traveling with Charles all over America and Canada.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But when the gothic tales of ghosts and murder on Canada's Prince Edward Island caught his attention, Charles took his family to visit and bought a house for them to stay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That home became his refuge for the rest of his life. He would write there every summer, crafting the plays that he and Rose would bring to life on tour throughout the rest of the year. His career regularly took him away and around the country, but he always managed to find his way back to Prince Edward Island. It was where he felt creative and safe and where he belonged. It was home. In 1893 though, everything fell apart.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Charles secretly married a young woman from his theater company, setting off a controversy that landed him on the front page of the New York Times. Louisa, it turns out, hadn't been his legal wife, and Charles had fallen in love with another woman.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The fallout destroyed his reputation, drove his sister Rose away, and ultimately ended the marriage before it could even begin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In June of 1894, he returned to Prince Edward Island, where Louisa miraculously took him back, and the couple tried to move on. His career took longer to heal though.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It wasn't until the end of the 1890s that Charles was ready to head back out on tour, and when he did it, it was to London, not America.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe he hoped that the vast Atlantic Ocean could somehow wash away the debris from his failures. Maybe he was just afraid. I don't know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it seemed to have worked, and so he returned to America.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The end came in November of 1899. Charles and Rose were in Galveston, Texas where their company was performing a play called The Royal Box. But Charles was sick and an understudy had to take over.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For most of the month, he battled that illness, but on November 27th of 1899, he passed away. Charles Coughlin was just 57 years old.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The story doesn't end there, though. After his death, a funeral service was held in Galveston, but there was some confusion about what to do with his body.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] According to the New York Times, his family wanted the coffin transported to Prince Edward Island.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But another article in the very same paper said it would be coming to New York.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not knowing what to do, a church in Galveston placed his coffin in a temporary vault while the decision was made.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then, the most deadly hurricane in American history made landfall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Historians have called it the Great Galveston Hurricane, the Great Storm of 1900, or simply, the Storm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was a category 4 that destroyed nearly 4,000 buildings and killed over 8,000 people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Much of the town was flooded by a storm surge of over 15 feet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And in the process, most of the cemetery where Coughlin's body waited in storage was carried away, swept out to sea by the stormy waves.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In 1904, four years after the deadly hurricane, Charles appeared once again in the New York Times.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The article reported on the rumor that his coffin had been found 18 miles north of Galveston.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But they weren't quite sure if it was true and it was never verified. Then, four years later, something unbelievable happened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two fishermen were walking along the coast of Prince Edward Island in 1908 when they saw something on the rocks. It was a large object and, thinking it might perhaps be a rowboat that had escaped its mooring, they approached it for a closer look. A few strides before reaching it, they knew something was wrong. It wasn't a boat after all. It was a coffin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The two men glanced at each other, and then slowly moved closer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of them spotted a small metal plaque on the top of the coffin, so he leaned in to inspect it. After brushing away the sand and seaweed, he caught his breath as the name engraved upon it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's one of those tools that gets brought out and used more than any other superstition. Life didn't go the way you were hoping. It was a curse. Our actions came with consequences we weren't happy about. Clearly, there was a curse involved. And the more severe those consequences, the more likely humans are to connect those dots.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's understandable then, how the Romani people have been pulled into that superstitious black hole. They're a mystery to a lot of us, an exotic and magical culture that seems to defy the social norms we're familiar with.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Those aren't bad things, but humans are so very good at looking for something to fear. The unknown, the mysterious, the outsider, and the Romani, like the curses we associate with them, seem to fit that bill.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's still a misunderstood culture today, and that means the prejudice and racism they've experienced has never really gone away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Italy has referred to them recently as the Nomad Emergency, and in 2010, France began a deportation program that saw tens of thousands of Romani kicked out of the country. Czechoslovakia even carried out a sterilization program on Romani women between 1973 and 1989.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Clearly, there's still a lot of work to do if we're ever going to cut through the superstitions and lies and see this beautiful culture for what it is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that's the power of perspective. If you dig deep enough, the truth is usually waiting there to be discovered. And it seems that's just as true when talking about Charles Coughlin's amazing floating casket.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We have the tale of the waveswept graveyard on record in two places, both of which were written by people who worked with Charles during his career, although only one of those sources goes on to describe the return journey to Prince Edward Island.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Still, that was enough to get the tale picked up by Robert Ripley, who included Coughlin's tale in his first collection of Ripley's Believe It or Not cartoons. And how could he not? This was an amazing, compelling story.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This publisher, though, wanted a bit more proof, so an investigator was sent to Prince Edward Island to dig up the truth.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Coughlin's daughter Gertrude still lived in the house. And according to her, she had never discovered the location of her father's remains.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The true source of the tale might be the industry Charles worked in his entire life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Actors, producers, the whole world of theatrical performers. It's an industry built around drama and suspense.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sure, maybe they knew something no one else did, contrary to Gertrude and others who swore it never happened. Or perhaps the disappearance of Coughlin's coffin inspired them to simply fill in the blanks. To give a messy story a tidy ending.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whether or not his coffin really did float all the way from Texas to Nova Scotia, we can still see the marks on his life left by that curse.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His relentless pursuit of success, his bizarre and shameful decisions, his longing for a peaceful home, all of it point to a man who knows his days are numbered. It doesn't justify his flaws, but it certainly goes a long way toward explaining their expression in his life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Perhaps the true power of a curse is its ability to alter our actions and decisions and fears, rather than doom someone to a tragic death. Then again, I'm not so sure about that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You see, there's more to that story I told you earlier about the Romani trial that Jan Juris witnessed as a teenager. And if we take it at face value,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It means we have to reconsider everything our rational minds tell us about how curses work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A few years after that community trial outside the Romani camp, one of the women who had sworn that oath lay dying in bed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She hadn't moved from her home in days. Horrible pain consumed her entire body, and she was too weak to speak.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But she still managed to motion for her daughter to go to a particular spot in the corner of the room and then rubbed her fingers together in a sign of money.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The daughter searched for a hidden door or latch, and when she found it, she was amazed by what she saw inside. It was a small pouch of gold coins. One that she had never seen before, and at the same time, she knew exactly where it came from.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She brought the stolen gold over to her mother, whose face was now wet with tears. It was clear that the guilt of her theft had haunted her ever since that trial, the trial where she swore an oath to die in horrible agony if she ever failed to tell the truth. Then, slowly, she closed her eyes, took one final breath, and then passed away.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We all get carried away sometimes, don't we?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research help from Carl Nellis, and music by Chad Lawson.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Special thanks to Francesca Ramsey from MTV's Decoded for walking me through some of the more invisible aspects of the racism and cultural appropriation surrounding the Romani culture. Check her out over at mtv.com slash shows slash decoded. And if you're new around here, welcome to the campfire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Remember, lore is a lot more than just bi-weekly audio stories. You can find lore in print through an ongoing book series from Penguin Random House and on television through Amazon Prime Video. There's also a membership site with extra episodes and a newsletter with episode bibliography and insider updates on all things lore.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can learn about all of that over in one place. theworldoflore.com


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And hey, if you're a social media sort of person, follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and click that follow button. And when you do, be sure to say hello.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The human body is a mystery to us. Well, for most of recorded history, at least. Yes, we've done our best to explore and decipher the secrets inside ourselves, but so much of it has been pure guesswork.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thankfully, the past century of medical research has multiplied our understanding exponentially.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But for a very long time, we've been a slave to assumption.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No matter where you look, early folklore always had a focus on our well-being. Folklore dictated our agricultural techniques, our personal safety, and, of course, our health. And thanks to folk wisdom, our ancestors did incredibly unusual things to fight illness and pain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They cut themselves to let the sickness out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They gave themselves mercury enemas for their constipation. They drank their own urine, drilled holes in their skulls to stop seizures, and chewed tree bark to relieve pain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If someone said it worked, there were always people willing to try it for themselves.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And of course, we've learned a lot since then. We now know that mercury is highly toxic, and that drinking uronurin has zero benefit to our bodies. Plus, it's just gross.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And while there's a lot of archaeological evidence that drilling holes in skulls rarely killed people, it also failed to help them. Sometimes old folk remedies actually worked, though.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Ancient Egyptians discovered that the bark of the willow tree was the best way to relieve pain. It turns out that willow bark is rich in salicylic acid, an active ingredient still used today in aspirin. But accurate treatments like willow bark were more of a lucky guess than scientific know-how.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People are very good at grasping for straws.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's part of our hopeful nature. It's a reflection of our belief that human life can be hacked


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Beginning in the late 1600s and continuing well into the 1800s, America welcomed its first major wave of immigrants.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Many of them came from southwestern Germany and settled in what is now Philadelphia. In fact, the area of the city known as Germantown was once an independent community founded by the earliest of those German immigrants.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Over time, they became known as the Pennsylvania Dutch, which is a misleading term because they weren't Dutch at all. It was just a variation on the word Deutsch, which means German. But along with their common language, these immigrants also brought a unique belief system with them. A mixture of Protestant Christianity and European folk magic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's not uncommon for folklore to blend with a major world religion. The biggest example of this might be the Voodoo of Louisiana, which is a blending of West African Vodun and Roman Catholicism.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It highlights the flexibility of our belief systems. The things we believe are rarely static. They're permeable and ever evolving.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The result was a folk religion, known as Spielwerk or Brauka. It focused primarily on healing and curative practices, but don't think pharmaceuticals. This was a bit more, well, unique than traditional medicine.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was a mixture of passages from the Christian Bible, prayers and recipes that would look a lot like spells to modern readers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this practice leaned heavily on two primary sources for guidance. The first was the Bible, which no practitioner of Brauca would ever be caught without. And for Protestant German immigrants, it makes a lot of sense.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bible passages were so powerful to German-American Christians that many who fought in World War I actually carried small pages of scripture with them as an amulet for protection.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The second primary source was a book called The Long-Lost Friend, published in 1820 by a German immigrant named John George Homan.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In essence, it was a collection of recipes, instructions, and spells that were all aimed at curing physical and spiritual ailments. But it was based on an even older book from 1788 called The Romanus.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Little Book of the Roma, full of unusual spells.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What sort of spells? Well, one was called to prevent witches from bewitching cattle to be written and placed in the stable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Another was Against Bad Men and Evil Spirits, which nightly torment old and young people to be written and placed on the bedstead. And those are just the titles.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] An alternative name for the long lost friend was powwows, a word borrowed from the Native Americans. One that has a lot of magical connotation to it. And as a result, all of this, the spells, the healing, the incantations to ward off evil, all of it became known by that name ever since. They called it powwowing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it turns out, powhowing was treated almost like a family legacy. It was common to find whole lineages of browkers, families that had practiced this combination of folk magic and faith healing for generations.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Families like the Blymeyers. They'd been well-known powwow practitioners for at least three generations. So when John Blymeyer was born in 1896, he represented the fourth.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And all those years within the field had earned the family a reputation. They weren't superstars by any stretch of the imagination. But generations of dedication had at least earned them the respect and patronage of their neighbors. John, though, had health troubles early in his life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At the age of five, just when a little boy should be growing like a weed, John began to lose weight. And not a little, either. John's condition was noticeable, which alarmed his parents. And of course, his father tried all the natural remedies at his own disposal. But no matter what he did, John's rapid weight loss continued unchecked. Which led John's father to a darker conclusion. His son, for whatever reason, had been hexed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if he was going to save the boy's life, he needed to find a way to remove that evil curse.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But this wasn't small magic. A hex was something powerful, something dangerous. So John's father decided that he needed the help of someone wiser, with a level of experience that surpassed his own.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There were a lot of choices out there too. Powwowing seemed to have been accepted everywhere in Pennsylvania Dutch country. John's father could have taken his son to any of the popular, well-known healers in the region. Catherine George, Andrew Lenhart, John Rhodes, even Nellie Knoll, or the deeply revered Mountain Mary.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But there was only one person in the area who came to mind.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While the others were respected, this man stood head and shoulders above everyone else. He was a legend. A leader.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Quite possibly the most talented Hexenmeister in the country. If you needed a cure, everyone knew that Nelson Rehmeyer was the man to see.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nelson Raymire lived in an area of southern Pennsylvania known, appropriately, as Hex Hollow. He was born there in 1868, and by most accounts, he was a shy, introverted boy. As he grew up, he took on the family business of farming potatoes and, of course, learning the ins and outs of pow-wowing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When John Blymyre and his father arrived at Raymyre's doorstep in 1901, he was 33 years old and had grown into a mountain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Descriptions say he was a tall, 200 pound tower of intimidation. But that wasn't his fault. Inside, he was still the shy, private man he'd always been. It was his desire to help others that made having a public life a necessity for him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Raymeyer listened to John's father. He checked the boy over. Then, gave them a prescription.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Mr. Blimeyre was to collect his son's urine in a jar, and then boil an egg in it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Once hard-boiled, he was told to poke three holes in the shell and then find an anhyl to place the egg on top of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nelson assured him that after the ants had fully consumed the contents of the shell, the hex would be gone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, I know. Most of us would probably have just laughed and found someone else to help us. But not John's father. He went home and did exactly what Nelson Raymire told him to do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because that's what you did. This was tradition. It was core to who they were as a culture. And as crazy as it might seem, it worked. John's weight loss stopped.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then, life moved on, as it always does.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] John, perhaps emboldened by his encounter with Raymire, started diving into powwowing on his own within a couple of years. Local legend says that he performed his first cure at the age of seven. He was a child prodigy, some say.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But there was a lot to learn. At the age of 10, John took a job on Raymire's potato farm, and I can't help but assume he also sat at the older man's feet and learned all that he could about pow-wowing. But while things were looking up for John, life was taking a darker turn for Raymire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His wife Alice wasn't a fan of his career choice as a faith healer. Then after doing her best to deal with his growing fame and all the people who kept knocking on their door, she took their two daughters and moved into a nearby house.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alice and Nelson remain married for the rest of his life, but they never live together in the same house after that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In 1909, when John was just 13, he moved to the city of York, maybe 12 miles to the north. He took a job at a cigar factory, but the work there was dark, filthy, and unhealthy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] John made up for it by earning himself a reputation as a talented faith healer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's said that he helped cure one man's eye infection. And when a rabid dog threatened a few co-workers outside, John calmed the dog in a way that seemed almost supernatural to those who were with him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But all that success was overshadowed by something more troubling. His weight loss had returned.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A stronger power than I had got hold of me, John later said. It tormented me almost every day of my life from then on. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. My skin was getting loose on me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] John even claimed that his own power to heal others had left his body.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So at the age of 18, John quit his factory job and poured all his time and focus into finding a cure. Well, not all his time. He somehow managed to fall in love with and marry a woman named Lily.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But John's first love would always be pow-wowing, and finding a cure for his illness fell under that umbrella. Lily would always take second place to that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Years went by. John consulted a number of other local healers, including Andrew Lenhart, who was known for telling more than a few married people that they'd been hexed by their spouse. There were even some murders as a result, although there's no evidence that Lenhart was ever charged with any crimes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it was enough to make John suspect that Lily might be the cause. She responded by having him examined by a psychiatrist, which resulted in a short stay in a mental health facility. But that wasn't the help that John thought he needed, so he escaped and came home. The rest is a blur.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lily divorced him and needing a way to support himself, he returned to the cigar factory. And that's where he was when he finally decided to reach out to Nellie Knoll, an ancient, well-respected powwow witch, to see what she might be able to do for him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In August of 1929, John went to visit Old Nellie.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She was probably 90 years old at the time. She'd seen almost everything over the course of her life, and after she examined John, she told him she could help.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She handed him a dollar bill and asked him to stare at George Washington's face for a long while. When she took the dollar away, the face of the man who had hexed him was imprinted on his palm. A face that John recognized. How could he not after all? The silver hair.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The dark suit. That tall, mountainous frame.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The man who had healed him so many years ago. How could that be the source of his hex?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But there it was, as plain as day, right on his hand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] John might have had respect for Raymire, even a bit of hero worship, but his respect for the faith was deeper. If Nellie Noll said it was true, then it was true. And now that he knew the source, it was time to do something about it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It wouldn't be easy, after all. Old Nellie told him that the hex could only be removed one of two ways. Either he had to somehow get a hold of a lock of Raymire's hair and bury it, or, even more challenging, he had to steal the old man's copy of the long lost friend, and then burn it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So John reached out to two friends from the area. The first was John Curry, a 14-year-old that had worked at the factory with him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] During their brief friendship, Curry came to appreciate and respect Blimeyre's skills as a healer, even working as his assistant for a time. And one of the cases the two men worked on was for the Hess family.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Hesses lived near the Raymeyers and had been experiencing unexplainable misfortune for a long while. The common assumption was that a witch was involved, but no one could figure out just who that witch was. Until Blymyre suggested that it was Raymeyer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wilbur Hess, a hulking 18 year old, immediately offered his help.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On the afternoon of November 26th of 1928, Blymyre and Curry made their way out to Raymyre's house, but the old man wasn't home.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So they walked to Alice's house a short distance away, who told them that Nelson had gone to visit a neighbor. So they waited for him to return. When he did, he invited the two visitors inside.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] According to Blimeyre and Curry, they spent the evening talking about powwowing. It was so late when they finished that the two young men ended up spending the night there at Nelson's house. In the morning, satisfied that they learned enough to do what they needed to do, they left.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back at the Hess farm, they enlisted Wilbur, and the three men prepared to return for a second visit that night.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Close to midnight, Bleimeier knocked on Raymeier's door. He told the older man that he'd left something at the house by mistake and asked if he could come in to retrieve it. Raymeier complied and let them all inside.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So once in, the men surrounded Raymeier. They demanded that he hand over his copy of The Long-Lost Friend, but the older man refused. And I think that shows us two things. First, Raymeier didn't think these men were a threat just yet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And second, his book was far too valuable to just give away. Many powwow practitioners considered their copy of the book to function almost like an amulet. It was powerful, and he wasn't giving it up. So they attacked him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then they dragged him to the kitchen, sat him on a chair and continued to request the book.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The old man, however, was built of stronger stuff. He offered them his wallet and even told them where they might find more money in the house. But no, he told them, you can't have the book.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All three men became furious. They beat Raymire using whatever they could find around them. One man hit him with a board. Someone else threw a chair. And at some point, driven by rage and frustration, Blimeyre took some of the rope and looped it around Nelson's neck. Within a matter of minutes,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Raymeyer, the man who had once saved John Blymeyer's life, the man who had helped a community with his wisdom, was dead.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the three men were left standing over a blood soaked body, with a fog of regret and panic slowly descending upon them. Everything moved fast after that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Blimeyre cut a lock of the dead man's hair and tucked it into a shirt pocket.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of the others decided to make it look like a robbery and retrieved a handful of change that Raymire had told them was hidden in the house. And then they set the body on fire. If they could make it go away, perfect. If it took the whole house with it, even better.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back outside, Bleimeier buried the lock of Raymeier's hair in the yard, and then took a deep breath. He'd done it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He already felt better, more alive and full of health than he had in years. For once, his future looked to be full of hope and possibilities rather than pain and frustration. Everything was better now. Except it wasn't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] While the men were returning to their homes that night, Raymire's body failed to burn thoroughly. And rather than bring the house down around it, only the kitchen showed signs of the damage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which meant that when the mailman arrived the following morning, he didn't find the charred wreckage of a house. He found a crime scene.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] People do unusual things when they lack an understanding of how it all works.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Folklore is that thing that fills the vacuum created by a lack of knowledge.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It helps keep fear from rushing in, like a dam in a river.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And for a very long time, across much of Pennsylvania, Powowing was the dam that held fear at bay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Obviously, folklore surrounding witches is ancient and full of dozens of cultural nuances, but powwowing holds a special place in American history.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's given us that image of the local wise person who always seemed to know the right words for any problem, or the proper medicine, or the best way to ward off something evil.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But powwowing seems to have faded into the past for most Pennsylvania Dutch, thanks in no small part to the Bleimeier trial.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After it was all over, the authorities responded to the superstitious roots of the York Witch Trial by pushing for better education in science. The result was sort of like inoculating a country against measles. Soon enough, it only existed in the most stubborn, out of the way places. But there was one bit of magic left.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You see, the moment she learned of her husband's death, everything clicked in Alice Raymire's mind. The men who had visited that day looking for Nelson, the fire, the rope, all of it. So she called the police and told them what she knew.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bleimeier and the others were arrested a short while later. By the beginning of 1929, all three men were on trial for murder, and they immediately confessed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] John made his case for the reasons behind his actions, of course. He even declared it a success, right there in front of the judge. But none of that mattered in the trial. These men had killed someone in cold blood, and that came with consequences. Life was about to get a lot more difficult for John and his friends.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On January 19th of 1929, all three men were sentenced to terms in prison.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Curry and Hess were paroled a few years later, but John stayed behind bars until 1953, when he was finally released and sent home. He died at the age of 76. No one attended his funeral.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can't help but see the irony in the way things ended for John Bleimeier.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Powerful words spoken over him in a private ceremony.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I can't help thinking that his murder trial would have felt like one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Raymire House is still there today, and you can drive past it if you know where to find it. Nelson's great-grandson lives there now, although locals think the house is inhabited by something else, too. Something darker. It's haunted, they claim. And always will be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke. Chad Lawson is the genius responsible for all of the music today. The Marset Crockett is my research hero.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, Lore's been around for over two years, and you probably have come to expect that every two weeks, a new story's gonna drop in your podcast app. And that's awesome. But Lore is a lot more than just bi-weekly audio stories. Jad Lawson and I are touring the country the second half of this year, bringing Lore live to stages in a city near you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There are extra mini episodes that only Patreon supporters get access to, and there's a companion newsletter for every new episode that's called the Epitaph, where you can get exclusive updates on TV show news, the book series that's coming out next year, and source material for the new episode.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All of that can be found over in one place, lorepodcast.com. And hey, if you're a social media sort of person, you can follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and click that follow button. And as always, thanks for listening.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of my favorite Stephen King novels is Firestarter, which, without giving away too much, is the powerful story of a little girl with a supernatural gift.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] King refers to it as pyrokinesis, the ability to control fire with the mind. And that's a frightening thought. But at the root of the concept is the idea of control. Fire serves the person directing it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But what if that control were gone? What if the flames seemed to take on a mind of their own, and all those tragic, terrible characteristics suddenly became unpredictable and possible?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fire under control is a powerful, life-giving tool. On its own though, it can destroy everything in its path.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's exactly what happened in central London way back in September of 1666. Over the course of four days, fire engulfed building after building, ultimately destroying the homes of over 70,000 people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two centuries later, and a continent away, another fire swept through the American city of Chicago.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After three days of burning, over 100,000 people were left homeless.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These were both accidents, of course. The London fire is thought to have been started in a bakery, while the Chicago fire has traditionally been blamed on a cow kicking over a lantern in the O'Leary barn. But accidents happen. Especially when it comes to fire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Sometimes it's minor, while other times it leads to horrible destruction.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As a result, we fear fire. Yes, it's a tool we can use to our advantage, but it's also a beast of limitless hunger and frightening power. So we hide the matches from our children.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Build safety systems into our homes and maintain teams of brave men and women who stand ready to fight back when fire breaks out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But what would we do if all that power fell into the hands of something out of our reach, invisible and unpredictable? Something with clear malicious intent. Zero regard for human life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Something, perhaps, that's supernatural.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was the dream that unsettled her. They always seem to have a way of doing that, don't they?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In her dream, she'd been at home in the small cottage she shared with far too many other members of her family when an angry bull appeared outside.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The bull was black as night, with eyes that glowed in icy blue. And after a tense moment of silence, it began crashing into the side of the cottage, threatening to knock the little house to the ground. And then she awoke.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Daily life for Esther might sound like a bad dream as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She lived in a small cottage that belonged to her sister Olive and Olive's husband Daniel, along with their two small boys. Her brother William also lived in the house, as did her other sister Jane, who Esther shared a bed with. And if that wasn't enough, Daniel's brother John stayed there as well. Add it all up and Esther had seven roommates.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She was also just 18 years old. That age when we're all still trying to figure out exactly who we are. But Esther was having to do that in the middle of a packed, noisy house. I realize that this is most likely me projecting my social preferences on her, but it must have been maddening.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So while the dream of the blue-eyed bull and the falling cottage might have left her feeling unsettled, daily life most likely washed over her like a tidal wave. She moved on, and by the time evening arrived, it was all but forgotten.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think Bob McNeil had something to do with that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] McNeil was her gentleman caller, a local young man that she'd taken an interest in. He was good-looking, charming, and maybe a bit wild and rough around the edges, something Esther didn't mind at all. But her family did. They weren't a fan of Bob McNeil and told her so every chance they had. Bob McNeil, they told her, was dangerous.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that didn't stop Esther from climbing into his carriage that night. He wanted to take her for a ride.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was late August, 1878, and the countryside around their little town in Nova Scotia was beautiful, even in the dimming light. But there's always darkness, just around the corner. Isn't there?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When they reached the wooded area, McNeil pulled the carriage over and got out, and then asked Essner to do the same.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But McNeil insisted, and he pulled a revolver out of his pocket to show her just how serious he was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Esther was about to scream, or maybe cave in and get out of the carriage, but instead a noise startled both of them from somewhere in the shadows. Another carriage was approaching.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] McNeil quickly shoved the pistol back into his coat and then jumped into his seat and urged the horses to move.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Their journey back to Esther's home was tense. He sped the entire way, and at some point, it began to rain, leaving her drenched and cold.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Life was unremarkable and uneventful for everyone in the cottage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then, on September 4th, Esther awoke in the middle of the night, screaming.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When Jane asked her what was wrong, Esther told her that there was a mouse in their bed. She could feel it, and soon enough, so could Jane. Except, they couldn't see it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the end, they both just went back to sleep, assuming the mouse was now inside their mattress. But the next night, it happened again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This time though, the sounds were coming from a different location.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was almost as if the mouse had moved into a box beneath the bed. So the young women pulled the box out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Before either of them could open it and expose the mouse, the box jumped straight into the air, at least a foot, they said, and landed on its side.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Their screams caught the attention of Daniel, their sister Olive's husband, who came rushing in, but after hearing their story, he just told them to go back to bed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Whatever had happened seemed to sit on that fine line between unbelievable and unremarkable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A type of event that's frightening enough to shock you, but not powerful enough to be provable or worth obsessing over.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the following night, new events crossed that line.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Jane awoke to the sound of Esther thrashing around in bed. She found her sister having some sort of a seizure or fit. Her eyes were wide open and she was grinding her teeth and shaking.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Jane screamed for help, and after a few moments, all six of the other people in the house were standing beside their bed. But before anyone could do anything to help Esther,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The room shook with three massive powerful sounds.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was as if explosives had been detonated, or if your imagination was really creative.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As if something large were crashing against the side of the cottage. Like a bull. When the sound stopped, everyone turned back to Esther. But she no longer needed their help. She was fast asleep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It would be another four nights before anything new happened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Daily life was smooth and uneventful for everyone, it seems.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it wouldn't last. Their short break was nothing more than the calm before the storm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On September 8th, just a couple of hours after everyone had gone to bed, screams came from Esther's room, waking everyone up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When they arrived, they found her having another seizure. Jaw clenched and hands balled up and fists at her side. That's when things started to fly. Literally. First it was a sheet from the bed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then another. Then a pillow flew up and hit Daniel in the face. No one saw who was throwing the items, but they could clearly see it happening. It was like a brief, awkward, supernatural pillow fight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It all stopped, however, when three more loud booms shook the room, after which they found Esther peacefully sleeping once more. Daniel said he'd had enough.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The following morning, he called on the local physician, Dr. Carrite, to come and check on Esther.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Something was wrong with her, he said. She needed help. All of them did. So when Karait walked through the cottage door, most of them probably sighed with relief.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] After his examination was complete, the doctor declared that Esther was suffering from some sort of nervous excitement. It was his opinion that something significant had happened to shock her, and the anxiety from that event was still haunting her.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's when the pillow beneath her head somehow flew out and onto the floor. Someone put it back. But it happened again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Daniel's brother John tried to hold the pillow down, but it continued to fly out and away from the bed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Dr. Carrite was astonished. He'd never seen anything like it in all of his years of practice. But before he could examine her further and try to find a rational explanation for such an unusual thing, the room shook from the sound of more massive booms.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This time though, it didn't stop with three. It kept going, on and on, leaving all of them confused and afraid.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which made it all the more frightening when writing began to appear on the wall over the head of Esther's bed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was as if an invisible finger were scratching words into the plaster.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As each letter appeared, more and more plaster would crumble to the floor. But one of the larger chunks actually levitated upward before flying directly toward the doctor's face.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The booming stopped, as did Esther's seizures. Oddest of all, though, was how the writing slowly began to fade away, almost as if it were evaporating, vanishing back into the realm it had come from. The things were far from over.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The following day, Carrite returned to check on Esther, but found that the same violent activity was still occurring.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The booming noises were still happening from time to time. But as much as the family searched the house, they just couldn't seem to find the cause.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Daniel was increasingly frustrated. Once, standing in Esther's room with a handful of others, he shouted out for the thing to tell him how many people were standing in the room. Everyone heard the response. Five slow knocks, one for each person present.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Chairs and other small pieces of furniture would be seen sliding across the floor, or sometimes levitating up and into the air.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On one of the doctor's visits, a handful of potatoes appeared from nowhere, aimed straight at his head. I know. Potatoes. No one ever admitted to throwing them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was Esther who suffered the most though. Her seizures and fits refused to go away. But she was also talking in her sleep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One afternoon, Olive walked in to find Esther mumbling quietly. When she stooped down to listen, she heard her sister describe the terrifying evening she'd spent with Bob McNeil on the night of August 28th.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Olive began asking around. Maybe McNeil was somehow responsible for all of this. His behavior certainly fit the description of the traumatic event that Dr. Carrite had originally blamed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But every person she asked in town gave her the same puzzled look.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] McNeil, they told her, had gone missing days before. The night of August 28th, in fact.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That wasn't the only thing the community was whispering about, though. Esther and her strange, invisible assailant had become the talk of the town. So much so that neighbors and strangers began to knock on the cottage door, hoping for a chance to experience the odd events for themselves. And they were never disappointed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All signs pointed to something bigger than a neighborhood prank.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With McNeil nowhere to be found, a growing list of eyewitnesses to the events, and the seemingly supernatural nature of it all, it was becoming more and more obvious that something darker was at work. The clues were there. Everyone could see them. Like smoke on the horizon. But as everyone knows, where there's smoke, there's fire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The family decided that a new plan was in order. If the invisible attacker would not leave Esther alone, perhaps Esther should try to escape it. So she and Jane were moved to a different room in the house.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If it worked, the spirit might actually give up and leave. In theory. In practice though, it wasn't so simple.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The very first night they slept in the new room, their invisible assailant followed them, waking Esther in the middle of the night with a loud, otherworldly voice. It told her that it planned to burn the house down. Jane, however, never heard a sound.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] More voices followed the second night. The spirit told Esther that it had once been a living person, but that had been many years before.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Excited by this new revelation, Esther called out for the others to come and listen. But just like Jane, they were all deaf to the voice. That's when the fire appeared.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was a lit match that seemed to spark into existence high above them against the ceiling before falling to the floor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Jane rushed over and stomped her foot on it to put it out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But almost immediately, a dozen more burning matches appeared in the air and fell to the floor like a rain of fire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This time, everyone helped to put them out, but as the collection of little flames was extinguished, one more landed on the dress that Esther had left on a chair. The fabric caught fire, and at the same time, something invisible moved the dress onto the floor and then pushed it under the bed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For one frightening moment, it looked as if the spirit, or ghost, or whatever it was, might just have its way and burn Esther alive. But at the last moment, Daniel reached under the bed and pulled the dress back out, and then stomped on it. And then, it was over.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No more flames that night. No more falling matches. No more burning dresses.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it left everyone feeling very afraid. Because what if, right? What if one of those matches had fallen in a room no one was in?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What if one had landed on something more flammable than the floor or a dress? Three days later, that's just what happened.