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[Assistant] So, there you have it. A brief tour of the ancient world and their tradition of sanctuary.


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[Assistant] It's clear that violating it came with consequences. Sometimes that was social, and other times, if the stories are true, the consequences were supernatural. But as the laws surrounding sanctuary became more and more refined, claiming it got even more complicated. And to see that, we have to fast forward to a very different place and time. The Middle Ages of Christian Europe.


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[Assistant] It happened because of a marriage. Not between two people, mind you. No, sanctuary grew and spread thanks to the marriage of the Roman Empire to the Christian Church.


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[Assistant] Remember, sanctuary was a Roman law, but as Rome became more and more Christian, state law often became a rule within the church as well, which is how churches all across Europe became medieval versions of those old temples of Athena.


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[Assistant] Some things had changed, though. For one, murderers were back in the game, with the law allowing them to seek sanctuary inside a holy place. And the churches mostly seemed to be okay with that, often looking at those moments as a chance to evangelize the worst of society.


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[Assistant] There were also some strict rules, too, just like in the ancient world.


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[Assistant] Weapons must be left outside the church, and they even had to specify no bows and arrows because apparently enough criminals tried to shoot at the authorities from church windows that it needed to be spelled out more clearly. Oh, and this covenant of sanctuary could only last 40 days.


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[Assistant] Now a handful of people would eventually receive a pardon from the king or have their charges dropped and be able to leave.


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[Assistant] But most of the time, the vast majority of the time, the person in sanctuary had a decision to make at the end of their 40 days. Stay in town and face the consequences, or claim exile and run away.


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[Assistant] And naturally there were some wild traditions around that process too. In many cases, folks claiming exile were required to trade in their clothing for sackcloth, and they had to leave the church barefoot. Some places even required them to carry a cross as they headed out of town, which they had to do in a straight line, never leaving the road.


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[Assistant] We know more about sanctuary in England than we do the rest of Europe, mostly because the English really love to make and write down lots and lots of laws. Plus, a lot of those old cathedrals are still around, and we can see the physical evidence of the practice right inside them.


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[Assistant] In a number of churches, like Durham Cathedral, for example, they had small chambers that were built above the side doors where clergy could keep a 24-7 watch for people who were seeking sanctuary.


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[Assistant] They even had a special bell called the Galilee bell that they would ring every time someone stepped inside for safety.


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[Assistant] After that, the fugitive would have to confess the crime that brought them there, right down to the specific details like the murder weapon, the dates, places, names, all of that. And thanks to that English addiction to writing everything down, tons of those records have survived to this day.


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[Assistant] Oh, and one other thing. Sanctuary wasn't always limited to the interior of the church. In Beverly, for example, sanctuary actually started two miles away, and that invisible boundary was marked by stone crosses on the four main roads leading into town.


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[Assistant] And if people tried to capture a fugitive inside that two mile ring, they were fine.


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[Assistant] Just how much that fine was depended on how close to the church they were. But it grew exponentially as you got closer, until the final level was a fine that was just called bootless, which meant that it was a price so high that no one would be able to pay it, and so their life was forfeit.


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[Assistant] But my favorite little story from this period comes from London. In 1321, there was a woman named Isabelle of Bury who was inside the church at All Hallows on the Wall, and she was talking to a friend named Joan.


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[Assistant] Now apparently the women were a bit too loud for the church's liking, so one of the clerks, a guy named Gilbert Leiter, came over and asked them to leave.


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[Assistant] But Isabel of Bury did not like to be told to shut up, especially by men, and so rather than leave the church, she pulled a knife and stabbed Gilbert in the chest, instantly killing him.


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[Assistant] Joan freaked out, of course, and bolted from the church where she was immediately arrested for her involvement. But not Isabelle. No, she was smarter than that. She looked around and realized that the safest place she could possibly be was right there inside the church, and she immediately claimed sanctuary.


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[Assistant] I actually like to imagine her doing it sort of like how Michael Scott on The Office declared bankruptcy. But that's just me.


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[Assistant] Anyway, there was a hot minute there where the authorities outside, as well as the clergy inside, didn't really know what to do with her. But they soon decided that sanctuary only applied to crimes committed outside, not inside the church. So they came in and arrested her.


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[Assistant] Isabelle LaBurri was then imprisoned, put on trial, and eventually executed for her crime by hanging. Apparently there were some limitations to Sanctuary, and she had found at least one of them.


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[Assistant] But Sanctuary wouldn't be limited to small crimes and common city folk. Just a century later, in the mid-1400s, it actually became the centerpiece of a major political drama, a tool in a sort of game of thrones that played out there in England. And while Sanctuary typically meant safety,


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[Assistant] It's a complex moment in English history. So complex, in fact, that if I were going to go too deep into detail, you would need to get out a piece of paper and take notes, probably draw some charts and maps too. So assuming that a lot of you are busy doing other things right now, I'm not going to go too far into it, but you do need to know the basics.


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[Assistant] In 1455, a war started between two branches of the same family. England had been ruled by the Plantagenets, and now two different houses of that family, the Lancasters and the Yorks, were battling over who got to sit on the throne.


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[Assistant] King Henry VI headed up the Lancasters, and his cousin Edward IV led the Yorks. And because both houses used a rose as their symbol, the struggle has become known as the War of the Roses.


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[Assistant] In 1461, Edward actually won, claiming the throne for himself and locking Henry in the Tower of London.


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[Assistant] A couple of years later, Edward married a lady named Elizabeth Woodville, who most people didn't really care for.


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[Assistant] Mostly because she lacked all the titles that one might expect for a prospective queen. She just came from a really nice family, which was apparently enough for Edward.


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[Assistant] Now in 1470, some internal strife forced Edward to run away to Flanders, and Henry was set free and placed back on the throne. But when Edward had flown the coop, he had done so alone, leaving his very pregnant wife Elizabeth and their three daughters behind. So what did they do? They ran for sanctuary, of course.


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[Assistant] Interesting detail here. Like I said before, most churches had a 40-day limitation on sanctuary, but not Westminster Abbey. There was no time limit there, and a lot of fugitives just ended up living there for decades. Some historians believe because of that, upwards of a thousand people each year went there looking for sanctuary. So that's where Elizabeth and her kids headed.


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[Assistant] While she was there, she gave birth to a son, Edward V, and enjoyed safety inside the church walls. And then a year later, her husband Edward IV managed to retake the throne, and she and the kids were able to rejoin him. Henry VI, sadly, headed back to the Tower of London.


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[Assistant] Over a decade went by. Elizabeth and Edward had another son, Richard, and the pair of boys were inseparable.


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[Assistant] Also named Richard, I'm sorry, stepped in as protector to Edward's heir, Edward.


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[Assistant] Except he sort of had eyes for the throne himself, so instead of helping the young Edward out, he captured him and locked him up in the Tower of London.


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[Assistant] Elizabeth instantly knew what she had to do and so she returned to Westminster Abbey for sanctuary and they took her in, plus her three daughters and her remaining son Richard inside.


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[Assistant] That's when the dastardly Richard III sent in the big guns. He had the Archbishop of Canterbury go over to Westminster Abbey and talk to Elizabeth.


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[Assistant] According to him, since her nine-year-old son Richard was too young to stand trial, he was also too young to claim sanctuary, so he was taken away, right out from under the protection of the church there, and locked up with his brother Edward in the tower.


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[Assistant] Later that year, Richard III was officially crowned king, and the two boys, the true heirs to the throne, mind you, sort of faded into the background.


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[Assistant] The last time they were seen by people passing by the tower was two weeks after their uncle became king. After that, they vanished.


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[Assistant] Elizabeth, on the other hand, played the long game. A year later, Richard promised to leave her alone, and she left Sanctuary with her daughters. A year after that, Richard was defeated in battle by a newcomer, a guy named Henry Tudor, who took the title of King Henry VII. And who did he marry?


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[Assistant] One of Elizabeth's daughters. Also, I'm sorry, named Elizabeth.


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[Assistant] Elizabeth Woodville would make a few appearances in court over the coming years, but she spent most of her time living at Birdman's The Abbey in London. Now, whether that was an old instinct to seek sanctuary or just a desire for a life of solitude, we will never know.


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[Assistant] She passed away there in 1492, taking her motivation with her to the grave. And with that, one of the most famous uses of sanctuary in English history came to a close. But that didn't mean that there were no more mysteries left to solve.


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[Assistant] I think it's important to remember the power that words can have. Some are malleable, shifting and changing over the centuries to cast off old meanings and put on entirely new ones. Those are the words that often require a roadmap, helping us understand why we use them the way we use them today.


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[Assistant] Other words though are crystal clear. They have this lineage that seems to shoot straight backward in time to a


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[Assistant] A target that still makes sense to our modern minds. And thanks to a combination of the shadows of Latin within the English language and a little bit of pop culture, I'm looking at you, the Highlander, it is very clear that sanctuary is one of those obvious terms.


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[Assistant] History, as I hope you've noticed, is littered with the idea of a safe haven from the outside world that could be found on sacred ground, from the temples of the ancient Greeks,


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[Assistant] All the way up through the centuries to the towering cathedrals of England and Europe, people have a history of running toward their God's house in search of refuge.


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[Assistant] Even that old childhood game of tag, where players could be safe from being tagged if they were touching a certain object or a structure, feels like it's pulled right from those ancient traditions.


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[Assistant] Maybe it's just a feature of human nature. We all crave a safe house.


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[Assistant] Now remember that story of Cylon of Athens who tried to overthrow the government of the city? Well, back in 2016,


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[Assistant] Archaeologists discovered a mass grave containing 80 skeletons, some of whom had shackles on their arms.


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[Assistant] Many historians think that it's all that remains of Cylon and his followers.


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[Assistant] And speaking of skeletons, something else has been discovered.


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[Assistant] Back in 1674, almost two centuries after the War of the Roses, workers doing a renovation of the Tower of London found a wooden chest tucked away beneath an old staircase. And inside it, the bones of two individuals, both of whom were children.


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[Assistant] The bones were gathered up and placed in an elaborate marble urn and then buried in Westminster Abbey.


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[Assistant] They were labeled with a pretty presumptive claim, too. Here lie the relics of Edward V, King of England, and Richard, Duke of York. And then, after a bit of pomp, they were slowly forgotten again.


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[Assistant] Almost a century ago, in 1933, the urn was opened and the contents were re-examined.


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[Assistant] It seems that the bones did indeed match those of two boys in that 9 to 12 year old range, and they even showed some structural oddities that have been seen in other Plantagenet bones. So they were reburied with the assumption that the label was indeed correct in claiming that they belonged to Edward and Richard.


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[Assistant] Over the years, their tragic fate has invited a whole range of theories and stories. And visitors to the Tower of London have even claimed to see their ghosts, holding hands as they float through the halls of the tower. There's even a group of researchers who are out to prove that the boy's uncle, Richard III, wasn't a bad guy after all.


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[Assistant] They've mounted a project to prove that Richard actually saved their lives, sending at least one of the brothers into exile. It's got this whole Da Vinci code atmosphere to it, complete with cryptic symbols carved into a distant church.


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[Assistant] Of course, medical science has come a long way since then. A genetic test could obviously be the definitive way of putting an end to the mystery. But so far, the Church of England has refused all requests to open the urn and study the bones further. For now, the mystery will have to remain unsolved.


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[Assistant] I hope today's exploration of the concept of sanctuary was as enthralling for you as it was for my team and I to put together. There's so much tradition and odd behavior bound up in that word.


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[Assistant] But not all sanctuaries were known as a destination. Some, in fact, worked the other way around. And I have just the story set aside to explain what I mean by that. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.


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[Assistant] The temples of the ancient world might have served as sanctuary for those who needed to slip away. But those buildings were far from empty. In fact, most of them were staffed with teams of special people, whose job it was to run and manage all of the services that those temples offered. And while that's a deep well to dip into,


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[Assistant] There's one group of temple residents that deserve a bit more attention. The Vestal Virgins of Rome. They get their name from Vesta, the goddess of the hearth.


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[Assistant] She was represented by fire and had deep ties to the founding of Rome itself. In fact, it was a vestal virgin named Rhea Sylvia who gave birth to the twin brothers Romulus and Remus, who would eventually establish the city of Rome. In Roman minds, without the vestal virgins, there would be no Rome. So how did the process work?


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[Assistant] Well, Vestal Virgins were chosen for their role between the ages of 6 and 10. They had to be the freeborn children of freeborn parents, both of which were still alive, and be free of physical and mental defects.


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[Assistant] The ancient Romans, you have to remember, were obsessed with perfection. And if the Vestal Virgins represented the core of Rome, that perfection had to apply to them as well.


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[Assistant] Once brought into the temple, they would begin a 30 year service to Vesta. They lived right there in special quarters and, as their name suggests, had to remain chased the entire time. Then, once their term was up, they were free to move on and even get married if they wanted to.


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[Assistant] Most of their time was spent retrieving water from a sacred spring, which they carried in special containers that could not be set down without spilling. And of course, with Vesta being the goddess of the hearth, there was a sacred flame inside the temple, which these priestesses were in charge of keeping lit at all time. A dead flame meant a dead roam, so no pressure, right?


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[Assistant] Now when I first started reading about the Vestal Virgins, my instinct was to be upset about their lack of freedom. Taken from their family, kept inside the temple, never allowed to do so many of the things that their peers could do. It felt cruel. But the truth is a lot more complex than that.


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[Assistant] Yes, those things were true, but as Vestal Virgins, they also enjoyed more rights and privileges than other women at the time. Their legal and financial status was a lot closer to that of men in their day, which made them powerful figures. And yet, there was always the possibility for tragedy.


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[Assistant] You see, every now and then, one of the Vestal Virgins would break her vow of chastity. They were human, after all.


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[Assistant] But their status as Vestas representatives on Earth meant that they also couldn't be punished in the same way. In fact, it was illegal to spill their blood.


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[Assistant] A chamber would be built beneath the ground close to one of the walls of Rome. And a set of stairs would be laid leading down into the room.


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[Assistant] Now if you didn't know what it was for, you might be forgiven in assuming that it was just a nice space. There'd be a comfortable couch, a lit lamp, and small portions of water and bread and other essentials.


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[Assistant] I imagine the place as a sort of home away from home version of their quarters back in the temple. Except this was a home that they would never leave.


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[Assistant] Because after being escorted there upon a covered litter, in a sort of silent parade surrounded by onlookers, the high priest would loudly proclaim her crime and punishment, offer up some prayers, and then send her toward the staircase.


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[Assistant] The former Vestal Virgin would then have to walk down those stairs and sit on the couch. After that, the door would be closed, the stone steps would be pulled back up, and soil would be poured back into the opening. Sealing her in. Forever.


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[Assistant] Lore has been a podcast since 2015 with over 400 million downloads to dates. You can


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[Assistant] Learn more about this show plus the book series and the television adaptation over at lorepodcast.com.


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[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. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for watching.


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[Assistant] Everyone has an opinion. Whether it's politics, religion, popular culture, or brand of coffee, everyone has a preference. For most people, their opinion is set in stone. It's an emotional choice. It's rooted in habit. It's safe and comforting.


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[Assistant] But some opinions are darker. For example, ask anyone you know what their greatest fear is, and you'll get a five minute answer. Their pulse will race. Heck, they might even shudder in front of you. No one wants to die, and no one likes to feel unsafe. And that means everyone has one big fear.


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[Assistant] There are few places in modern culture that represent the loss of choice, the loss of freedom, and the loss of safety more than prison.


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[Assistant] It's a setting that fills us with dread and inspires hopelessness, but somehow also remains oddly attractive. Films like Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile and small screen hits like Oz or 60 Days In each stand as a testament to that obsession. And rightly so.


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[Assistant] Prison to many is a dark collection of pain, despair, guilt, and hatred. And while it might not be the same as physically being buried alive, it never fails to strike fear into even the strongest of hearts.


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[Assistant] But our modern prison system didn't start out that way. Instead, it was built on hope and opportunity and change.


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[Assistant] Like all good intentions though, those goals have been worn down over time by the worst of human nature. Whatever hope and light they might have tried to bring into the world has been washed away by horrible darkness. And no prison represents that evolution more accurately than Eastern State Penitentiary.


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[Assistant] The idea of prison has been around since the dawn of written language. Early legal codes dating back as far as 4,000 years ago listed punishment for illegal behavior. Back then, it was all about retaliation for wrongdoing, but imprisonment was right on the horizon.


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[Assistant] The ancient Greeks dabbled with the notion of captivity. In Athens, the prison there was known as the Desmotarion, which meant the place of chains. You get the idea, I'm sure. It was the Romans, though, who took the concept of prison and turned it into an art form and, trust me, they pulled no punches.


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[Assistant] The Romans built prisons in the worst places imaginable. If it was unpleasant or nasty, it was perfect for holding criminals.


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[Assistant] They used basements, abandoned stone quarries, and even metal cages. The infamous Mamertine prison in ancient Rome was literally built into the city's sewer system. Prisoners ate and slept among piles of wet, rancid human waste.


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[Assistant] With the advent of the castle in Europe, captivity moved inside the fortress, becoming an extension of the crown. It was a display of power, in a sense. In order to encourage people to obey and respect the ruler of the land, they were taught to fear the power those rulers wielded.


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[Assistant] But even then, prison was only a sort of purgatory, a waiting room for the final verdict. It was rarely the end itself.


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[Assistant] Prison for centuries was where criminals would await their trial, and in that way it was oftentimes the most pleasant bit of the process. After their sentence was handed down, the punishment was intensely harsh.


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[Assistant] Painful whipping, physical mutilation, branding with hot irons, and even public execution were all waiting for them outside the walls of their cell. But all of that changed in the 18th century.


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[Assistant] The Age of Enlightenment brought with it a new focus on rational thought, which led to public outcry against violent punishment. Instead, people called for a new type of prison, one that would inspire moral reform and help criminals become better people. It sounded good on paper, and so many countries got behind the idea.


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[Assistant] The British Parliament passed the Penitentiary Act in 1779, introducing the concept of state prisons.


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[Assistant] Prison populations in England had multiplied following the loss of the Northern American colonies, filling up quickly with traitors and rebels. It's ironic when you think about it. Our own Declaration of Independence led to an increase of captivity and imprisonment back home across the Atlantic.


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[Assistant] Those being held for trial were forced to buy their own food and water. Jailers would even sell heat in the winter. That's how bad it had become.


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[Assistant] So Franklin and his fellow reformers demanded change. There were immediate effects that changed much of the system there, but the biggest impact wouldn't be seen for another 40 years.


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[Assistant] After decades of campaigning, funding was finally approved for a new prison. But this building will have a different sort of name. Today, when we hear the word penitentiary, we think of it as a generic term for a prison. But in the early 1800s, it carried a specific meaning.


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[Assistant] The root of the word is penitent, which means to be repentant, to seek change. And that's the attitude that this new prison was meant to embody. A building full of inmates who were no longer awaiting a violent end to their lives, but instead, were improving themselves.


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[Assistant] On the outside, Eastern State was designed to look like a gothic castle. Intimidating, imposing, and impenetrable. One look at the exterior and most people would throw away their life of crime. At least, that was the theory. Inside though, it was different.


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[Assistant] When inmate number one entered the building on October 25th of 1829, he was ushered into a state of the art facility. Criminals were housed in private cells, with shower baths and toilets. Central heating pipes ran throughout the building and into each cell, keeping the inmates warm in the winter.


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[Assistant] Central heating and individual toilets sounded like a fantastic idea, but there were problems with them from the start.


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[Assistant] The plumbing that carried the hot water to each of the cells ran through tunnels that also housed the sewer pipes. As you can imagine, applying heat on a 24-7 basis to pipes that carried human waste is never a good idea. Because of this, the first few cell blocks that were constructed suffered from some offensive odors.


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[Assistant] Early doorways in the building were tiny, requiring inmates to stoop low to pass through. And those doors didn't even open up into the hall inside the building. Instead, the cell doors opened outward into tiny courtyards, where each prisoner was encouraged to be active, to garden, or even to meditate quietly.


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[Assistant] Separating each courtyard was a 10-foot tall wall meant to discourage communication between the prisoners.


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[Assistant] And for those rare moments when a prisoner was being moved through a cell block and could possibly be seen by other inmates, they did so with a cloth bag over their head.


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[Assistant] Walking in on their first day, being moved from one block to another, even going out into their private yard. Each prisoner wore a cloth bag, sometimes with eye holes cut into it, to engender a deep feeling of isolation. And for a while, it worked.


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[Assistant] True to the stereotypes that we've come to expect from prison movies over the years, Eastern State Penitentiary was no stranger to attempted breakouts. This became possible in part because of changes to the layout and the flow of the prison itself.


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[Assistant] Doors were enlarged, access to the internal hallways was opened up, and overcrowding put more than one inmate in each cell.


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[Assistant] Bishy was actually pretty bold. He stayed on the run for seven years and eventually got a job in Syracuse, New York. What was that job, you might ask? He worked as a crossing guard for the police department. Like I said, the man had guts.


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[Assistant] The most famous prison break, though, was Willie Sutton. He was probably the second most famous inmate in Eastern state penitentiary's entire history.


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[Assistant] He checked into Eastern State in 1934. During his 11-year stay there, he tried escaping five times. But it was his last attempt that was an affair to remember.


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[Assistant] Sutton, along with 11 other men, dug a tunnel 12 feet down from cell 68, and then another 100 feet straight out to breach the wall.


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[Assistant] They removed the dirt from their excavations just like the Shawshank Redemption showed us, hiding it in their pockets and then dropping it in the yard. The tunnels had ventilation and support beams. It was a production like none other.


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[Assistant] It took them months, but on April 3rd of 1945, all 12 men slipped into the tunnel and crawled to freedom. Some of the men actually evaded the authorities for a couple of months. Slick Willie, though, was caught within three minutes. And there's a joke in there somewhere, I think.


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[Assistant] Over the century and a half that Eastern State Penitentiary was in operation, more than 100 prisoners managed to break out. Only one of them managed to never be recaptured.


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[Assistant] And I think we get it. People want to escape prison. It happens all over the world. Certainly there are prisons with higher escape numbers, even here in the US. But why the rush to leave?


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[Assistant] Eastern State, it turns out, was originally designed to house a maximum of 300 criminals.


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[Assistant] But that was in the 1830s, and society was changing. In the beginning, most of the inmates were horse thieves. By the 1920s, though, inmates were being sent in with darker crimes. Things like violence and murder. As a result, numbers swelled to an astounding 2,000. That's nearly seven times the original capacity.


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[Assistant] With the shift in prisoner population came adjustments to the philosophy behind the penitentiary itself. Gone were the notions of hard work, solitude, and meditation.


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[Assistant] In the minds of those who ran the overcrowded prison, only one corrective method would actually work.


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[Assistant] Aside from the straitjacket, which was used often as a way of containing unruly prisoners, one of the more frightening methods of punishment was a seat called, affectionately, the mad chair.


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[Assistant] It resembled an old dentist chair, and prisoners would be strapped into it as tightly as possible. Left for days without food, there were rumors that extended time spent in the chair resulted in amputations.


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[Assistant] None of those methods could hold a candle to what is known as the iron gag. To reinforce the no-talking policy on the prisoners, this punishment brought the consequences directly to the offender's mouth.


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[Assistant] It's hard to describe with words, but stick with me and I'll do my best. An inmate's wrists would be chained behind their back with crude manacles, and then a short chain would be connected to the wrists. On either end of the chain would be a small iron clamp, and that clamp was fastened to the tongue.


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[Assistant] Talking, movement, or struggling would all result in the tongue being torn, and it was said that extreme blood loss even led to death in some cases.


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[Assistant] For the eight months that span the summer of 1929 to the spring of 1930, Capone called Park Avenue his home.


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[Assistant] Here's what an August 1929 article in a Philadelphia newspaper had to say.


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[Assistant] The whole room was suffused in the glow of a desk lamp which stood on a polished desk. On the once grim walls of the penal chamber hung tasteful paintings and the strains of a waltz were emitting from a powerful cabinet radio receiver of handsome design and fine finish.


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[Assistant] Even with his better than average accommodations, though, Capone still complained. But it wasn't about the food or the room temperature. No, Capone, bold and brazen mob boss that he was, appears to have been haunted by ghosts of his past. Literally.


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[Assistant] First, the guards and other inmates were confused. There was no one else in Capone's cell. No Jimmy on the cell block.


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[Assistant] Eastern State closed down in 1970, but was reopened in 1991 as a museum. Even without the inmates, something dark seems to have remained behind, and many who have stepped inside for a tour have come away with an experience that's hard to forget.


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[Assistant] The most common sightings occur in one of the guard towers that watches over the building and its perimeter, where a ghostly figure has been seen by many people.


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[Assistant] Others have reported the sounds of footsteps in the hallway, laughter that echoes down through the cell blocks. Soft, mournful wails have been heard there as well.


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[Assistant] The locksmith said that moments after he unlocked the cell, an unseen force rushed out and pressed him against the wall of the hallway. For what felt like an eternity, he was pinned there and couldn't move.


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[Assistant] How inmates deserve to be treated. What role imprisonment should play in the overall realm of consequences and due process. We could explore how motives and methods transform over time, under pressure and through human brokenness. It's a can of worms, and I don't have all the answers. But there's an overwhelming feeling of guilt in all of this too.


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[Assistant] The prison reform that Eastern State represented, at least originally, was born out of a guilt for earlier, more barbaric methods. And each inmate, in their own way, was caught in a prison of their own personal guilt. It's easy to see how anyone trapped inside might feel remorse and want desperately to escape.


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[Assistant] Maybe Eastern State Penitentiary really is haunted. Maybe there are real ghosts that drift through the dark halls and shadows that move at the corner of our vision. Considering all of the horrific things that have taken place there over the years, it seems only natural for there to be some sort of an echo still present.


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[Assistant] Or maybe it's nothing more than madness. Some think it's crazy to believe that there are spirits roaming the halls of a prison, or any building for that matter. It defies logic. It's unprovable. Jimmy never really haunted Al Capone, they say. The man was haunted by guilt. And nothing more.


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[Assistant] It's interesting to note that even after his release from Eastern states, Capone still complained of Jimmy's presence. Back in Chicago and living at the Lexington Hotel, he still screamed for Jimmy to leave him alone. The screams would always bring his bodyguards running, and they would always find the man alone.


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[Assistant] One day, a few weeks after that seance, Capone's personal attendant, a man named Jaime Cornish, stepped into Capone's quarters to retrieve something. When he entered the room, he immediately noticed a stranger standing near the window, facing out to look down on the street.


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[Assistant] He glanced around the room for other visitors. No one was supposed to be in Mr. Capone's room, after all, and the intruder would need to be dealt with. Turning back to the man, Cornish called out for his attention, and then stopped. The man, whoever he had been, had disappeared.


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[Assistant] As I mentioned earlier, cultures throughout history have demonstrated a lot of skill in building prisons that no one wanted to go inside. And as a result, that human craving for independence has led many prisoners to try breaking free.


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[Assistant] Which is why it was so easy to track down one last tale of escaping inmates. This one is a doozy too, and if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll tell you all about it.


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[Assistant] Successful prison breaks are rare, and even the people who do make it out are found rather quickly. Of course, some escapes go down in history because of how badly they failed, but one in particular was so harebrained, it actually worked.


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[Assistant] But piambi wasn't meant for everyone. To find yourself in such a place meant that you had gotten on someone else's bad side.


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[Assistant] Citizens were encouraged to write out any legal grievances that they held against their neighbors and slip the complaints into the box as gaping maw.


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[Assistant] In some cases, all it took was one accusation to land them in Pyombi.


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[Assistant] The complaints were then taken to the Council of Ten, a Venetian governing body that decided whether or not to act on them.


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[Assistant] Those who were found guilty were often members of a community with higher social standing, as well as defrocked priests.


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[Assistant] But even though the prison was inside the palace, on the top floor, no less, that didn't mean that people lived inside the lap of luxury.


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[Assistant] The lead slabs on the roof let in the cold in the winter and collected heat in the summer, making the flea-infested cells unbearable in extreme weather. The ceilings were also so low, some of the prisoners couldn't stand upright.


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[Assistant] In 1756, Giacomo Casanova got a close look at the facilities when he found himself in the jaws of the lion's mouth and the frigid embrace of Piambi's walls.


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[Assistant] He was viewed as an affront to the church and had to be stopped and so he was thrown in jail without so much as an explanation why. But such a resourceful man as he could not be confined for long.


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[Assistant] One day, Casanova was allowed into the garret next to his cell while his was being cleaned. He stumbled upon an iron rod, possibly a door bolt, and a shard of marble. He snuck both objects back into his cell and used the marble to sharpen the point of the rod, which he used to bore a hole in the floor.


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[Assistant] Unfortunately, his attempted escape was foiled when the guards came and moved him to a larger, nicer cell elsewhere.


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[Assistant] Sometime later, Casanova befriended Marino Balbi, a fallen friar living in the cell above his. Balbi had been imprisoned for fathering three children with three different young women and baptizing them all as his own.


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[Assistant] In order for the plan to work though, Belby had to bore two holes in his own cell. One in the floor for Casanova to climb up through, and another in the wall that would lead the men to freedom.


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[Assistant] He then instructed Balbi to cover his walls with posters of the saints and begin boring through behind them. Suddenly, days before they were about to escape, Casanova was hit with another curveball, a new cellmate named Sorodachi.


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[Assistant] And Sorodachi was both a Christian and a snitch.


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[Assistant] Balbi came bursting through the ceiling, fooling Sorodachi and giving Casanova the means to get out.


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[Assistant] In modern terms, they shoshanked their way across the steep, slippery lead tiles and shibby down to a window using ropes made of bedsheets. Once inside the tower level of the palace, they changed out of their prison attire and into some fancier threads.


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[Assistant] To the guards, they looked like visiting politicians who had accidentally been locked within the palace, and so they were set free. They fled via gondola, after which Casanova escaped to Paris, where he went right back to his old ways.


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[Assistant] Thirty years after his daring escape, Giacomo Casanova wrote a memoir all about how he'd done it. And it's probably safe to assume that he was even more popular with the ladies because of it.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with additional research help from Jenna Rose Nethercott, and writing assistance from Harry Marks, and music by Chad Lawson.


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[Assistant] And for fans of the visual format, Lore is also on YouTube. Each new episode is released alongside the podcast, but in talking head video format. Be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss future videos. 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. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.


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[Assistant] In February of 2010, restoration specialists were trying to preserve the hut used by Ernest Shackleton and his team during their Nimrod expedition a century ago, when they found something beneath the floorboards. Keep in mind, Shackleton is something of a legend.


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[Assistant] Born in Ireland in 1874, raised in London, and exploring arctic regions by his 25th birthday, this man was about as tough as they come. He was a naval officer, a real life explorer, a best-selling author, and even had the honor of being knighted by a king. I can't think of anyone more interesting to invite to a party.


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[Assistant] So when restoration began on the Nimrod Basecamp Hut in 2010, there was a sense of awe.


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[Assistant] It was the structure that had once played host to impossible dreams and a spirit that few today are willing to embrace. That little hut was a refuge against a hostile environment, and it was also apparently the hiding place for a treasure, buried by Shackleton himself.


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[Assistant] It wasn't gold or silver, though. It wasn't a relic or some lost piece of history. No, beneath those bare floorboards, restorationists found something else. Three cases of Scottish whiskey. And this whiskey, trapped in the permafrost for a century, was insanely valuable.


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[Assistant] Not just because of its age, and not just because of the opportunity it offered to explore a rare lost blend of scotch. This whiskey was valuable, you see, because it offered the chance to taste the liquid that fueled a legend.


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[Assistant] We're obsessed with those who venture out into the wild. We resonate with those who risk their lives. And while those successful ones often live on as legends in their own right, it's the ones that fail that often stick with us the longest.


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[Assistant] For some people, nothing is more frightening than when the natural world reaches out and crushes our best laid plans.


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[Assistant] When Sir John Franklin set sail from England in 1845, it was his fourth expedition into the Arctic Circle. For years, nations had been looking for the mythical Northwest Passage, a route from the Atlantic to the Pacific that didn't require sailing south to the tip of South America before heading back north.


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[Assistant] Franklin and his team were never seen again. In some ways, it shouldn't have surprised anyone. After all, the expedition set sail in two ships, one named the Terror and the other named after the Greek god of darkness and chaos, Erebus. They were practically begging for tragedy.


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[Assistant] It wasn't until a decade later when another explorer, John Ray, learned of the expedition's fate.


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[Assistant] Trapped in the ice, the crew had made their escape on foot. The cold and lack of food was their undoing, and some believe the party succumbed to cannibalism before the last of them perished. Nevertheless, Franklin and his crew have gone down in history as heroes.


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[Assistant] History has long had a love affair with tragedy. Maybe it's the haunting nature of those lost expeditions and journeys gone wrong that seem to elevate them in popular culture. Maybe it's our obsession with anything that has a passing resemblance to an Indiana Jones movie. Or maybe it's just the simple fact that there are so many of them to talk about.


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[Assistant] Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was the expedition leader for the team that beat Robert Scott to the South Pole in 1911. He and his team returned from their journey as heroes. And while he participated in more adventures, it was the South Pole that earned him his reputation.


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[Assistant] Nearly two decades later, in 1928, an expedition to the North Pole crashed on the ice and vanished. Amundsen, 55 years old at the time, climbed into a rescue plane and headed north to find them. Apparently you can take the explorer out of the wild, but you can't take the wild out of the explorer. Amundsen was never seen again.


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[Assistant] Percy Fawcett was an explorer and archeologist from England who spent much of his professional life in the jungles of Brazil and South America.


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[Assistant] He'd performed tasks for the Royal Geographical Society and served as a member of the British Secret Service for a time.


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[Assistant] Fawcett even formed a close friendship with popular author H. Ryder Haggard, who wrote the equivalent of Indiana Jones novels for the late 19th century reader. And if you've ever seen or read The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the character of Alan Quartermaine was a Haggard creation.


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[Assistant] Maybe it was that friendship that filled Fawcett's head with visions of cities of gold and adventure. In 1925, he managed to raise enough funds to set off for Brazil with his oldest son Jack and one of Jack's close friends. Together, they planned to locate a lost city that Fawcett had named Z.


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[Assistant] It was supposed to be the real life location of the legendary city of El Dorado.


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[Assistant] There are a lot of theories about what happened. Some say the explorer and his partners were all killed by natives of the region.


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[Assistant] Others say that they set up a commune in the jungle and lived out the rest of their lives there. There are even stories that say the end was much less exciting. That Fawcett and the others just walked into the jungle and vanished. Even today, there are those that are still looking for the truth.


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[Assistant] In 1804, Alexander Hamilton entered a duel with United States Vice President Aaron Burr. Hamilton's aim was off, but Burr's wasn't. As a result, Hamilton died from his wounds the following day. Burr lived a long life after the duel, but suffered through the mysterious disappearance of his daughter Theodosia.


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[Assistant] In 1812, she boarded a ship that was meant to carry her away from South Carolina, where her husband was governor, to see her father up in New York. An incredibly fast schooner known as the Patriot left the Georgetown Harbor in December of that year, and was never seen again.


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[Assistant] One of the risks that travelers take upon themselves is that they might never reach their destination. Whether the journey is one of exploration, personal travel, or recreation, there is always the chance for failure. And the farther from civilization, the worse those chances become. Which is why,


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[Assistant] When a group of hikers marched off into the Ural mountains in 1959, the odds were decidedly and tragically stacked against them.


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[Assistant] If ever there was a textbook example of whiteout conditions, the night of February 2nd, 1959 would have been it.


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[Assistant] The team of ten were huddled together inside their tents against the wind and snow and freezing rain. I realized it would be odd to refer to a blizzard as hell, but just because it lacked flames and heat didn't mean it wasn't a place of suffering.


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[Assistant] The trip hadn't started out like that though. They had intended it to be a pleasant expedition into the mountains. No glorious mission or treasure to seek. This was meant to be a recreational trip. That's not how it ended though. Then again, life rarely turns out the way we imagine it would, does it?


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[Assistant] The team was comprised of nine college students from Euro Polytechnical Institute, all of whom were led by their instructor Igor.


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[Assistant] The journey had actually begun on January 27th, a week prior, in the northern Russian village of Vivyazhe, east of the Ural Mountains. They had been transported there by truck, along with their camping equipment and supplies, because the small village was the most northern settlement in the region.


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[Assistant] Beyond those borders they would enter into the wild, a literal no man's land.


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[Assistant] This was a region of Russia that had once been called home by the indigenous people known as the Mansiya, sometimes called the Vogels. Centuries ago, they ruled the northern lands, even fighting against the Russians until they were all finally assimilated in the 13th century.


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[Assistant] Today, most Mansia live in Moscow or other large cities, and there are very few who remain in their northern homelands.


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[Assistant] And these travelers were well prepared. Aside from the expected camping supplies that you might expect, they also set up a communication plan. The trip was a there and back again journey with the goal of reaching Mount Orton within a week and then returning to Viviaget by February 12th. If they failed to check in, Igor had told friends, start to worry.


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[Assistant] It was going to be a dangerous expedition, without a doubt. The terrain was hostile and there was no support network north of the village. Still, the trip began smoothly enough, and the team made good progress. They headed east, and when they reached the foot of the mountains, they stopped and set aside a supply of food for their return trip. That was January 31st. The next day, they started their climb.


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[Assistant] But weather in the mountains wasn't helping them out. It was clear early on that the trip was going to take a lot longer than they had expected, but that didn't stop them.


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[Assistant] Instead, they hiked slow and steady into the wind and snow, aiming north for Mount Autortin. By the end of the day on February 2nd, though, Igor and the others realized they were more than a mile off course. Somehow, thanks in part to the disorienting blizzard, they had drifted west and found themselves on the northern slope of the mountain known as Colet Seacal.


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[Assistant] The smart decision would have been to hike north less than a mile and set up camp in the line of trees below. But they had worked hard to reach such a high altitude, and it would be exhausting to have to climb back up the next day. So the team decided to ride out the storm where they stood.


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[Assistant] Exposed to the wind on the Bear Mountain, with temperatures as low as negative 25 degrees Fahrenheit, it was going to be a long, cruel night.


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[Assistant] It must have been frustrating for them. On a clear day, they would have been able to see their goal of Mount Orton from where they stood. They knew it too. They were so close, and yet it must have felt like they were miles away. Instead of feeling like they had accomplished something, they were left making the most of their mistakes.


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[Assistant] They set up their single tent, unpacked, ate a meal, and then settled in for the night. We know all of this because it's documented in their journals. We have the notes about their travel decisions, the weather reports, and the challenges they faced. We even have photos of the team setting up camp right there on the snow-covered side of the mountain.


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[Assistant] After that though, the records of the team led by Igor Dyatlov are silent. We have no more words from the team members, no more reports, and no way to speak to them now about what happened to all of them. All we have left now are their corpses.


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[Assistant] Let me be upfront here. We don't know what happened to the hikers.


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[Assistant] Well, that's not entirely true. We know they died, but we don't know how their deaths were brought about.


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[Assistant] What we do know is that the details that were uncovered by a later investigation seem to point towards something odd. Something that doesn't seem to fit the preconceived notions of hiking accidents. In the end though, all we're left with are assumptions, unprovable theories, and a feeling of dread.


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[Assistant] I dread because the obvious explanation isn't something that leaves people with warm, fuzzy feelings.


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[Assistant] The night of February 2nd had been cold and snowy, but when the search party finally located the hiker's camp on February 26th, they found the scene of a disaster, not a storm. The tent was covered in snow, something one might expect, but it was also empty. There was also evidence that had been torn in half from the outside.


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[Assistant] Scattered in the snow around the remains of the tent, the search party found the items that had belonged to the hikers. Items that included clothing and warm shoes. Which went a long way toward explaining why so many of the footprints that could be seen exiting the area of the tent had been made by bare, or at least shoeless, feet.


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[Assistant] The Prince all led down the slope of a mountain toward the line of trees that should have been the team's campsite for the night, had they made the right decision. The investigators followed along in that direction with hopes of finding the missing hikers. When they reached the trees below though, what they discovered only added to the mystery.


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[Assistant] The first two bodies they uncovered were located at the outer edge of the forest. Both were clothed in nothing more than their underwear. They discovered signs of a campfire there, hinting that they had perhaps walked down the mountainside in search of better shelter from the storm. But other clues didn't support this.


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[Assistant] Branches in a nearby tree had been broken and snapped off as high as five meters above the snow. Either someone had tried to climb them or something else had broken them. Some have suggested that something very tall had chased the hikers into the trees, breaking off limbs as it entered or exited the woods.


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[Assistant] Three more bodies were found buried in the snow on the slope between the torn tent and the broken trees. The five hikers were all said to have died of hypothermia, according to later medical examinations. But what had happened to the rest of the party?


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[Assistant] In the end, it would take another two months of searching the pass to find the remaining four. On May 4th of 1959, a full three months after the blizzard that ended their journey, they were located in a ravine just 250 feet from the camp. But their discovery introduced far more questions than answers.


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[Assistant] You see, these four were better clothed than their friends, but they hadn't died of hypothermia. Although what killed them remains a mystery to this day, the evidence points towards something unusual. One of the hikers was said to have been missing her tongue.


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[Assistant] Some historians have suggested that she had simply bit it off in a moment of panic, but that wouldn't explain why her eyes were also missing.


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[Assistant] Many others had suffered major skull trauma and their chests had been crushed. The medical examiner who studied the bodies said that the level of force required to create such injuries was on the same level as a high-speed automobile accident.


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[Assistant] Some experts have suggested an avalanche or perhaps a deadly fall, but there was no evidence of either at the site of the bodies.


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[Assistant] That same medical examiner also ruled out the theory of an attack from nearby Mancia people. According to him, the injuries could not have been caused by other humans, because the force of the blows had simply been too strong. In other words, these injuries that the hikers suffered were unexplainable, inhuman, and mysterious.


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[Assistant] These are, of course, all the ingredients a story needs to truly become legendary. Today, the region is referred to as Dyatlov Pass, and it's the unknown element of the tragedy there that has pushed the events deep into the mind of popular culture. This story has a way of leaving many of us feel haunted. Haunted, because it could very well happen to us.


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[Assistant] We can plan for things we understand. We can find safety in them.


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[Assistant] The unknown, though, can leave us as vulnerable as hikers in a blizzard, exposed and unprepared.


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[Assistant] Our obsession with lost parties and expeditions, with people who wander off and disappear, is as strong today as it's ever been. Movies, novels, television shows, and comics have all spent time and effort to recapture the mystery and thrill of the dangerous unknown. Our world seems to be full of it.


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[Assistant] Loose ends have a way of making people feel uneasy. We want answers because answers make us feel safe, but we also want the thrill of a good mystery. We hate not knowing, and yet we also love the idea of the unknown. Ironic, I know. But true.


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[Assistant] Well, what we don't know vastly outnumbers what we do. And most people don't like that.


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[Assistant] Maybe something deeper was going on, though. There are those who believe the Russian government knows the truth. You see, after the investigation was completed in May of 1959, all of the related documents were packaged up and shipped to a classified archive.


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[Assistant] As I mentioned before, the hikers were deep in Mancia territory when the tragedy happened.


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[Assistant] The lazy explanation early on was to blame the indigenous people of the area for the deaths of the hikers. It's been a common crutch for many lost expeditions. Civilized people wander too far into unexplored, untamed wilderness, and they are killed by native tribesmen who feel threatened by the newcomers.


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[Assistant] There was, of course, no evidence of an attack. No clues pointed toward a group of outsiders. No footprints were found that didn't belong to the hikers. And none of the injuries could be explained away with a theory like that.


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[Assistant] But in the end, the answers might very well be found among the Mancia after all. Interestingly, the Mancia name for Mount Orton, the mountain they had been hiking toward but never reached, is translated, Don't Go There.


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[Assistant] Were the Manseah hiding a warning in plain sight all along? Did they know of some reason why travel to that mountain might not be the safest idea? It's hard to say for sure.


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[Assistant] And what about Colet Seacole, where the hikers camped and died that final night?


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[Assistant] The story of the events that took place all those years ago in the Dyatlov Pass have haunted historians ever since, and I'm guessing you can understand why. And explorers have continued to study the evidence, including my friend Josh Gates, who took his Expedition Unknown film crew there in 2019 for two episodes of his seventh season.


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[Assistant] If you want to know just how cold and unforgiving that region is, I highly recommend watching.


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[Assistant] But those frozen mountains of Russia aren't the only place where the unusual has collided with the chilling. My team and I have pulled together one more adventure to take you on. And if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll tell you all about it.


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[Assistant] Mountains are majestic, lining the horizon and beckoning us with snow-capped peaks and promises of glory. British climber George Mallory certainly understood that allure. When asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, he said, because it's there.


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[Assistant] A flippant answer, sure, but he followed through, perhaps even becoming the first person ever to summit, though no one knows that for certain.


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[Assistant] Why don't we know? You'd think the first mountaineer to reach the top of the world's tallest mountain would be shouting his victory far and wide once he returned to camp. But that's the thing. He never came back.


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[Assistant] In 1999, another mountaineer discovered Mallory's remains, preserved by the extreme cold. You see, on Mount Everest, the dead have a way of coming back, and not necessarily in the ways you might think.


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[Assistant] Mount Everest is a beast of a mountain, measuring a whopping 29,000 feet tall, five and a half miles above sea level, located in the Himalayas. But for those skilled and lucky enough to make it, they have to push through the final 3,000 feet, an area known as the Death Zone.


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[Assistant] It's an appropriate name for a place with only one third the amount of oxygen as what exists at sea level. The barometric pressure also makes everything, including people, feel ten times heavier than they actually are. Climbers who ascend that far usually don't stay longer than 48 hours, lest they want to experience organ failure firsthand.


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[Assistant] And if they do die up there, which happens often, the bodies are left behind due to the difficulty in reaching them.


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[Assistant] Lapka Sherpa, who holds the women's world record for the most Everest summits, says she witnessed seven dead bodies lining her path to the top in 2018. She even saw one whose hair was blowing in the wind.


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[Assistant] Since the first British expeditions in 1922, 311 people have died climbing Mount Everest. That comes out to 1 in 20 people, perishing before they ever reach the summit, and 200 of those bodies are still up there.


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[Assistant] And dead bodies are only part of the equation because climbers have witnessed something else awaiting them on the mountain. Ghosts.


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[Assistant] Pemba Dorje, a Sherpa who was believed to have made the fastest ascent in May of 2004 at just over 8 hours, said he experienced something supernatural while he was up there. He said, I saw some spirits in the form of black shadows coming towards me, stretching their hands and begging for something to eat.


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[Assistant] Scottish climber Dougal Haston and his friend, British school teacher Doug Scott, experienced something similar in 1975. They had reached the summit later in the day than they had hoped and wound up spending the night in the death zone on their descent.


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[Assistant] Two big problems were ahead of them. One, they had run out of food. And two, their oxygen supply was running low. The two men dug themselves a snow hole to sleep in and prayed that they hadn't just dug their own grave.


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[Assistant] As they huddled together there, they felt a strong presence of someone or something in there with them, like another climber had scooted in beside them.


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[Assistant] A warm sensation washed over the men, something akin to body heat, as a voice talked to them throughout the night. It comforted them and told them how to survive, which they did. The next day, Haston and Scott descended safely with one heck of a story to tell.


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[Assistant] And on top of it all, theirs had been the first expedition to climb Everest via an uncharted path.


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[Assistant] Their experience with friendly ghosts was not the only one. In 1933, Frank Smith was on his way down through the death zone when he noticed he had company. A phantom climber had appeared beside him. Smith broke his mint cake in half and offered it to the ghost, who must not have been very hungry. He vanished into thin air.


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[Assistant] Sometime later, Smith spotted two dark balloon-like entities hovering above him. Their appearances were not humanoid like the other one before. He described them as having what looked like squat, underdeveloped wings, whilst the other had a beak-like protuberance like the spout of a tea kettle. They distinctly pulsated.


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[Assistant] Naturally, Smith's first assumption was that he had been hallucinating. He even tested his mind by turning away and then back to the various valleys and peaks, which he was still able to identify by name. His mental faculties had not disappeared, nor had the hovering masses.


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[Assistant] A mist eventually rolled in, obscuring them from view, after which they finally left.


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[Assistant] Had all these people really encountered paranormal entities on their expeditions or was it something else? Psychologists believe that extreme mental and physical stress can be responsible for these FOPs or Feelings of Presence on the Mountain.


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[Assistant] Scientists have also placed the blame on the lack of oxygen at high altitudes, which can cause altitude sickness and swelling of the brain. Other explanations include a lack of sleep due to the extreme cold, as well as snow blindness that can cause hallucinations.


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[Assistant] But if you ask any of the Sherpas, like Dorje, they'll tell you science has nothing to do with it. The spirits of dead climbers are real, and they will never know peace until their bodies are finally retrieved and put to rest.


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[Assistant] Sherpas see the Himalayas as both the embodiment and the realm of the gods, a sacred place where the worlds of the living and the dead converge and where climbers can get a peek at their futures if they're not careful. So it goes without saying, if you ever have the chance to go there, please watch your step.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with additional help from Jenna Rose Nethercott and Harry Marks, and music by Chad Lawson.


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


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[Assistant] I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy. My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical. You can learn more about all of our shows and everything else going on over in one central place, grimandmild.com.


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


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[Assistant] Kolo Blaro earned that reputation, though, if we're to believe the stories. It's said that in the early years of the 20th century, the town was home to a very successful, but very disliked lawyer named Biagio Virgilio.


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[Assistant] And it did. It dropped right into the middle of the room and shattered into a thousand pieces. And while no one was injured, the town's reputation took on a dark hue. It was cursed, they say. Hexed. And later events only serve to reinforce that belief.


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[Assistant] Landslides, car accidents, there are even stories of babies born with two hearts or three lungs, and of course, tales of witchcraft.


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[Assistant] Locations take on a flavor over time. Whether it's our hometown or just an infamous spot in the area, we have a tendency of treating locations like people. They have a personality and a reputation. And some, if you listen to the locals, are even cursed.


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[Assistant] When life doesn't go the way we'd hoped, we look for reasons. Claiming that our town is cursed is an easy way to make sense of the accidental, the unexpected, and the unfortunate. But sometimes the evidence is dark and deep, and includes suffering, death, and even utter destruction.


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[Assistant] There's this notion that's almost as old as time itself, that a city or nation that strays too far from its roots or from its moral center puts itself at risk of being cursed. Hebrew legend speaks of the Tower of Babel, which shows how the pride of one's settlement brought about destruction and confusion.


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[Assistant] The ancient stories of Atlantis spoke of the island civilization as technologically and socially advanced, but it was their greed and immorality that led the gods to destroy them. According to the interpretation of the ancient writers, they were cursed by their behavior.


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[Assistant] Other ancient stories speak of a city that once stood in the southern sands of the Arabian Peninsula. It's mentioned in the Quran, the Christian Bible, and even the Arabian Nights. It was known as Yubar, Eram, or Wubar, or the City of Ed.


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[Assistant] And after serving as a trade center for over five millennia, it vanished roughly 2,000 years ago.


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[Assistant] Satellite scans in the 1980s finally provided us with an answer. The city, it turns out, was built on an enormous subterranean cavern, and sometime in 300 AD, it all collapsed.


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[Assistant] There are so many other examples. Port Royal in the Caribbean. The ancient Greek city of Helike. Even Pompeii comes to mind. But these stories aren't limited to dusty cities spoken of in ancient texts.


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[Assistant] Even here in the United States, in a country that's relatively young compared to much of the world, we can find stories of cursed locations and horrible tragedy.


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[Assistant] On November 1st of 1886, tragedy came to Lafayette, Oregon. That was the day that David Corker, a 57-year-old shopkeeper, was found dead in his general store by a customer. The shop had been broken into overnight and Corker had been killed in defense of his store.


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[Assistant] Add to that a handful of eyewitness reports about how Marple openly mocked the shopkeeper and it was hard to ignore him as a suspect. The sheriff visited his home and found a bloody shirt, a scrap of paper in his pocket with blood stains on it, and a collection of tools used for breaking into locked buildings.


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[Assistant] Marple was convicted of murder on April 9th of 1887. His wife and mother both fought the charges. They provided a solid alibi and swore to his whereabouts that night.


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[Assistant] It didn't work though. Marple was hanged on November 11th, just a little over a year after Corker had been found dead. 30 locals gathered to watch as the man was strangled to death at the end of the rope for nearly 18 minutes.


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[Assistant] Marple's mother wasn't allowed to watch the execution, but she could be heard screaming from a distance. She cursed the town, they say, and predicted that three fires would burn Lafayette to the ground. It was easy to laugh off, though. Predictions like that always are. So that's what they did.


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[Assistant] No one was suspicious when a blaze ripped through town in 1895. Towns, especially those mostly built out of timber, have a knack for catching fire. Six buildings were leveled by the flames.


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[Assistant] Two years later, another fire broke out, destroying four more. And then, in 1904, a fire destroyed 16 buildings as it raged across town.


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[Assistant] A random series of accidents, or the product of the curse of a very angry mother. For some, that isn't an easy question to answer.


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[Assistant] Another location that's haunted by tales of a curse is the Dutch village of Saftingen. Well, it was, up until the late 1500s, that is.


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[Assistant] Let me explain what I mean. Safdinga was a middle-age hub for the harvesting of peat. It was situated in what is known as the polders, the floodplains that were separated from the ocean by man-made dikes and dams. And because peat was used at the time as a popular source of fuel, Safdinga was an important community in the region.


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[Assistant] The heat was in such high demand that, according to some historians, the farmers of Saftingo were said to dress in fine silks. They even decorated their workhorses with gold and silver jewelry.


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[Assistant] Of course, this led to a reputation of greed and selfishness, which wasn't helped by the fact that the townsfolk would chase newcomers away with weapons and dogs. Basically, they weren't friendly people and no one likes a jerk, right?


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[Assistant] As the story goes, a farmer was fishing outside Saftenga one day when he reeled in a real-life mermaid. Apparently, she could speak Dutch and she warned the farmer that unless the town straightened up and fixed its greed, something horrible was going to happen.


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[Assistant] The farmer laughed at her, and then decided that a pet mermaid would be nice to have, so he tied her up. Even when the mermaid's husband surfaced and begged for her release, the farmer refused. So the merman uttered a curse. Only its towers will continue to stand tall.


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[Assistant] In 1570, a flood swept through the Dutch coast, flooding the land around the town. 14 years later, in 1584, the Dutch army was fighting the Eighty Years' War and destroyed one of the dikes that held back the ocean. The town of Saftingen was overcome by an enormous wave and was never seen again.


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[Assistant] Today, the region is known as the Feardrunkenland, the Drownedland. But locals say that not all of Saftinga is gone. Somewhere beneath the marsh and water, if the stories are to be believed, the old church tower still stands tall. And on foggy days, they say, you can still hear the bell toll.


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[Assistant] Now, it's easy to limit the history of a place to our American experience, but Illinois is older than that. In fact, the entire area, from the Arkansas River up to Green Bay, was once controlled by the French. They explored the region in 1673, and then claimed it for the crown shortly after.


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[Assistant] They called it Upper Louisiana, and sometimes Illinois Country. Most of the settlers who moved into the area were French Canadians from the north, and the biggest draw for them across the whole stretch of the new territory was fur trapping. The Upper Mississippi Valley was apparently a gold mine for trappers and hunters, and so they moved south to chase their fortunes.


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[Assistant] They built six major settlements along the eastern edge of modern-day Illinois.


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[Assistant] One of those was built near a tribe of Native Americans who took their name from a small tributary that joined the larger Mississippi. There were a lot of variants of that word. White Europeans were rarely ever good at taking a Native American word and carrying it over to French or English in a consistent way. But everyone there began to call the place Kaskaskia.


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[Assistant] Before we move on though, let me briefly explain the geography of this area. You see, Kaskaskia was a settlement built right on the tip of a small peninsula that stuck out into the Mississippi River.


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[Assistant] To the east, you could walk deeper into Illinois territory. Looking west from town would give you a spectacular view across the Great River. That was the territory now known as the state of Missouri. Kaskaskia, in a lot of ways, was a place caught in between.


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[Assistant] And not just geographically. On a social level, the settlement was a mixture of French-Canadian fur trappers, Jesuit missionaries, and local Native Americans.


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[Assistant] The Jesuits brought the structure, the trappers brought the economy, and the indigenous people brought, well, they'd already been there. And like so many other stories about the early days of this country, that meant that they weren't going to get a fair shake.


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[Assistant] One story clearly highlights this disparity. In 1698, about 25 years after the settlement was founded, a Frenchman named Jean Bernard immigrated to Kaskaskia along with his wife and daughter Marie.


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[Assistant] Like a lot of people who moved there, Bernard was a fur trader, and the abundant resources of the area promised to make him a wealthy man.


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[Assistant] He set up his trading post on the edge of town, where it would be easily accessible to the trappers moving up and down the western edge of Illinois. They brought in the fur, he purchased it from them, and then sold it to buyers outside the wild frontier. It was simple and lucrative, and before long he had a thriving business.


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[Assistant] As the trading post grew, Bernard brought on more help. It was common in those early days of Kaskaskia for European business owners to hire local Native Americans to do the manual labor. And that was how one man in particular came to work for the Frenchmen.


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[Assistant] History doesn't remember his name, but the tale does describe how Jean Bernard mistreated the man. He was cruel and unfair toward him, and always gave the worst of the labor to him and the other Native Americans who worked in the shop.


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[Assistant] But this man was different from most of the other Kaskaskians in the region. It seems that the Jesuits had worked with his family decades before, and he himself was raised to speak both his native tongue and French, and that made him more flexible than most. Because of this, Bernard took a liking to the young man, and they formed a good working relationship as a result.


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[Assistant] Bichon Bernard wasn't the only person to take a liking to the Kaskaskian. Apparently his daughter Marie fell in love with the man as well, something that her father was strongly opposed to.


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[Assistant] The legend says that he fired the young man, and then spread word around town that he wasn't to be hired by any of the other businesses. His goal was to drive the man to leave town in search of employment. And apparently, it worked.


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[Assistant] Marie, of course, was heartbroken, but there was nothing she could do. And then, a year later, a group of traders rode into town, and hidden among them was her lost lover. He had returned to claim her hand and take her away, to end their separation and build a new life together elsewhere.


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[Assistant] Somehow he managed to pass a message to her, and they arranged to meet in a secret place later that night. Once together, the couple left town, disappearing down the great Mississippi.


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[Assistant] It's never that simple though. Yes, they had a head start and yes, they had love on their side, but Marie's father wouldn't be defied so easily.


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[Assistant] The moment he learned of his daughter's escape, Bernard gathered together a large group of men, and they rode out of town to hunt the couple down.


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[Assistant] I don't know how they knew to ride north, but that's what they did. Maybe they assumed her lover was looking for work in one of the bigger settlements. Maybe they knew he had friends or family north of Kaskaskia. Whatever their reason was, they followed the Mississippi northward.


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[Assistant] It would have taken them hours, but eventually they tracked the young lovers down just outside of Cahokia. The town of Cahokia was another ancient Native American settlement that had become home to a French outpost. Like Kaskaskia, it was home to a mix of French Canadians and Native Americans, and that made it a good hiding place for a couple like Marie and her true love.


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[Assistant] When Bernard's group found them, they immediately separated the couple. Marie was kept safe and watched over, while the man she loved was beaten and bound with rope. They dragged him to the very edge of the river and then began searching for a large branch or fallen tree that they could manage. When they found it, they dragged it toward their prisoner.


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[Assistant] The young man was tied to the log with yet more rope. We know he spoke French and so did Bernard and his men, so there was apparently a lot of conversation. It's likely that he begged for his life, begged for Marie, begged for freedom.


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[Assistant] But the wrath of an angry father isn't something that words can sway. Not for Jean Bernard, at least. So the work continued.


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[Assistant] When they were satisfied with their knots, the men pushed the log into the dark waters of the river. I imagine them wading out a bit, pushing it along, making sure it made it past all the debris and vegetation growing along the bank there.


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[Assistant] And then they let it go and watched as the young man drifted down river with a current.


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[Assistant] We don't know if Bernard made his daughter watch it all. We don't know if she was whisked away back to Kaskaskia before she could see it all unfold. But we do know that the man she loved shouted from the river as he drifted away.


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[Assistant] His words, they say, carried a powerful curse.


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[Assistant] Bernard would be dead within a year, he claimed, and he and Marie would be reunited forever. And then he added that the town of Kaskaskia itself would suffer, the French there would be destroyed, and even the dead would find no rest in their graves.


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[Assistant] Later that year, Jean Bernard got caught up in a bad business deal. He accused another man of cheating him and challenged him to a duel. Bernard lost the duel and his life.


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[Assistant] Later that year, Marie herself died. They say she wasted away from a broken heart, but her death allowed her to reunite with her lover, and nothing would ever keep them apart again.


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[Assistant] By the 1740s, the British were making moves to take over the territory controlled by the French. They bribed a number of neighboring Native American tribes to join them in a war against the settlers there, and by 1765, the French were run out of town. It seems Marie's true love was right about more than a few things.


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[Assistant] Kaskaskia did its best to persevere, though. After the American Revolution, it became the capital of the Northwest Territory, and then in 1818, it became the first capital of the state of Illinois. But that's only lasted for about a year. And all along, the town kept growing, and by the mid-1800s, it was home to roughly 7,000 people.


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[Assistant] And then, the Mississippi River got involved. In 1844, a flood nearly wiped the town off the map and very few of the citizens stayed to rebuild. Instead, they went looking for a safer place to live.


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[Assistant] The Mississippi has always flooded. It still does. And that made life difficult for anyone who lived along its banks. After 1844, a lot less people in Kaskaskia were willing to take that risk.


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[Assistant] In the years that followed, the Great River did something extraordinary. It moved.


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[Assistant] Slowly it began to change course, shifting to pass by the town on the eastern side rather than to the west. What was once a peninsula was slowly becoming an island instead, and after another major flood in 1881, the shift was complete.


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[Assistant] Today, Kaskaskia is on the western shore of the Mississippi. Thanks to an act of Congress, it's a little pocket of Illinois on the edge of Missouri. Not that most people would notice, though.


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[Assistant] I think that there are a couple of indisputable facts buried in these stories that we would be wrong to ignore.


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[Assistant] First, people love to curse their own town, or the town of their enemies, or whatever town they had a bad day in. We like to blame others for our own misfortune, or tell stories that explain away our bad luck and tragedy. It can't be our own fault, after all, so maybe the town itself is to blame, right?


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[Assistant] And second, no place is safe from tragedy. At some points, whether it takes decades or centuries, every location is going to experience its own fair share of loss and misfortune.


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[Assistant] Fire, floods, natural disasters, or human error. No matter what the cause is, every location will eventually receive a visit from adversity.


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[Assistant] And on their own, these are both sad truths. Together, though, they create a new world. One where cities are cursed and the tragedies they experience are rooted in supernatural causes. Oftentimes, the easiest thing to believe is also the most irrational.


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[Assistant] Still, some locations do seem to have an unusual amount of tragedy heaped upon them, Kaskaskia being a prime example. And it didn't end in 1950.


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[Assistant] Even after that flood, the remaining citizens rebuilt the old Jesuit church and tried to move on. That's all they could do, I suppose. Still, they had to wonder.


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[Assistant] And then, on April 4th of 1973, the Mississippi rose nearly 40 feet above normal levels. The north levees broke, and the river rushed in, threatening much of the town.


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[Assistant] Hundreds of college students from nearby Southern Illinois University, along with the residents of the mainland and dozens of prison inmates, all gathered there to lay sandbags and fight the flood as best they could. But it was no use.


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[Assistant] The new church and most of the town around it were all washed away, and that included the cemetery. Local legend says that the flood of 1973 caused a number of graves to burst open, washing hundreds of caskets along with their occupants into the depths of the river. The dead, just as Marie's lover had predicted, had risen from their graves.


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[Assistant] I hope you've enjoyed today's tour of cursed locations. Clearly, we humans have been enamored with the idea of places in the world that reject peace and tranquility for a very long time. Our stories are full of them, and even the most modern versions seem to have the ring of truth to them.


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[Assistant] But our travels aren't finished just yet. My team and I have tracked down one final spot that you need to know about. And if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll tell you all about it.


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[Assistant] Water and fire are weird. They're opposites and yet also equals. One can cancel out the other, but they each can be as harmless or as deadly as they choose to be. In some cases, they move as though they are alive, with wills of their own. Fires, in particular, can be blessings, eliminating old death to usher in new life.


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[Assistant] In some cases, however, they can be nothing short of a curse.


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[Assistant] And nobody knows curses like the people of Brunswick, Vermont.


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[Assistant] Despite Vermont's idyllic image of trees in the fall, their branches alight with the reds and yellows and oranges of the changing leaves, it's not as wholesome as we might think.


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[Assistant] Brunswick, in the northeastern corner of the state, is home to a group of mineral springs. They're tucked into a lush forested area known as the Northeast Kingdom, just a hop, skip, and a jump away from the Canadian border.


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[Assistant] These springs, which run smack dab into the Connecticut River, are special.


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[Assistant] These six different springs, each only a few paces from each other, all flow into a different pool, each one possessing a different mineral. Magnesium, calcium, sulfur, bromide, iron, and arsenic. At least that's what people say. There's no scientific proof that it's actually true.


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[Assistant] In fact, geologists over the years have tried to explain the science behind this prism-like split in the minerals, but no one seems to agree on exactly what causes it. Of course, that didn't stop Ripley's Believe It or Not from calling Brunswick Springs the eighth wonder of the world.


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[Assistant] That said, Ripley's might have held that title back if they'd known the other thing about the Springs. They're cursed.


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[Assistant] You see, centuries earlier, the Abenaki people had believed that the water from those springs was sacred, possessing powers used in all kinds of healing practices. Although they had no trouble using the water whenever they needed it, the legend says that the Abenaki refused to spend too long near the springs themselves. They would never sleep there.


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[Assistant] One, because the area was hollowed ground, and two, because spirits were known to walk nearby.


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[Assistant] According to the stories, in 1748, a soldier in the French and Indian War wound up wounded during battle. In some versions, the soldier was French and aided by his Abenaki allies, while others claim that it was actually a British soldier and the Abenaki had taken pity on him.


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[Assistant] Regardless, the soldier nearly lost his arm, so the tribe took him to the springs where the mineral-filled waters healed him. After the war ended, the soldier, looking to make a little money, returned to the springs with an idea. And a business plan.


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[Assistant] He wanted to bottle up and sell the spring water to others, which offended the Abenaki. They refused to allow colonizers to abuse their land and the springs for profit, but that didn't stop other white men from trying to do the same thing.


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[Assistant] Eventually, the disputes between the Abenaki and the outsiders became so heated that one of the white men shot and killed an Abenaki father, as well as his child. Legend states that the child's mother was a sorceress. Distraught over the murder of her child, she proclaimed, whoever will try to profit from this heavenly water would always fail.