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[Assistant] It was finally on her fourth attempt that Thompson seemed to crack.


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[Assistant] He invited her in, and then began a ritual to see if she could indeed be taught. He wrapped an old snake skin around his shoulders, one that he claimed had come from Marie Laveau's own serpent, and then he placed his hand on her head.


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[Assistant] After conversing with the spirits of the dead for a moment, words that Hurston described as being in a language she had never heard before,


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[Assistant] He nodded. Yes, he told her she could be taught and she was to return at 11 a.m. on Thursday to begin the process.


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[Assistant] That process was long and drawn out too. Upon returning when instructed, she was asked to help set the altar with


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[Assistant] And Hurston did as she was told. When she returned to Thompson's house, he took the snakeskins and gifted her with a ceremonial crown.


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[Assistant] And then she was instructed to lie face down and be still for three additional nights, during which she was told she would have a number of psychedelic experiences that would confirm whether she was accepted or not into his study. When it was over, she had succeeded.


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[Assistant] To celebrate, Thompson and five other hoodoo leaders threw a banquet for her. And honestly, the list of delicious foods served reads like a description of dinner at Bilbo's house in The Hobbit. But while the party might've seemed like a culmination of a whole lot of work, it wasn't the final step.


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[Assistant] At 10pm that night, the entire group piled into an old Studebaker sedan and drove down Route 61, following behind Thompson, who was driving an old pickup truck. After an hour of travel time, they arrived at the edge of a swamp, where they all hiked to a secret clearing near the water.


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[Assistant] There, they chanted and sang while they laid out all sorts of materials they gathered from the woods around them. And then, a crate was opened, and a black sheep was led to the center of the clearing, all while the chanting grew louder and faster.


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[Assistant] Then, and this is not for the faint of heart, so be warned, there was a flash of silver as someone drew a knife across the throat of the poor animal. As it bled to death in front of them, they swept the pooling blood.


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[Assistant] Back and forth across the grass and soil of the clearing until it had all been accounted for. The body of the sheep was then buried and a candle was placed on its grave.


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[Assistant] After that they climbed back into their vehicles and headed home. Their long, fruitful day was finally over. One last thing.


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[Assistant] Hurston did indeed go on to study with Samuel Thompson, and they grew so close that he would later tell her that she would be his final disciple. No one else would ever study at his side. She was it, the end of the line, one that stretched across oceans and generations from the streets of New Orleans all the way back to Africa.


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[Assistant] Thompson told Hurston that his days were coming to a close and that he would soon pass away. So he asked her to stay with him till the end.


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[Assistant] But however much it pained her to decline, she told them that she had so many more stories to go write, and much more research to delve into, and so she left New Orleans and bid her friend goodbye. She never saw Thompson alive. Ever again.


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[Assistant] As a reminder, the only reason the stories we discussed today exist at all is because Zora Neale Hurston got out of her comfort zone and stepped into this special community. Aside from encouraging all of you to stay curious and go learn something new, I think every one of you would find her full article to be super informative.


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[Assistant] For that, you're going to need to track down volume 44 of the Journal of American Folklore and read her entire 100 page experience. It's called Who Do in America. I've put the reference information in the description below to help you search for it.


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[Assistant] Lore has been a podcast since 2015 with over 415 million downloads to date. You can learn more about this show, plus the book series and the television adaptation over at lorepodcast.com. And of course, be sure to click the subscribe button and the bell icon so that you don't miss future episodes. And if you liked this episode, be sure to give it a thumbs up.


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[Assistant] You can also follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that 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] We spend a lot of life learning about the things in front of us. Those little board books that kids love to have read to them are the perfect example. They can point to an object, say the name, and allow something new to embed itself in their mind.


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[Assistant] Which is why I nerd out so often about the work that historians and archaeologists do.


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[Assistant] Because a lot of the time they're doing the opposite of those board books. They point to gaps in the environment or a document and fill in the blank.


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[Assistant] They infer a long-lost reality based on the emptiness it left behind.


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[Assistant] A great example actually hit the news a little while back in January of 2023. Researchers in Denmark announced that they had discovered a massive Viking structure that dates back as far as the 9th century, and all evidence points to it having been an important building, probably used for community and political gatherings.


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[Assistant] But they didn't discover the structure by finding its walls, or furniture. No, they just found the holes that the building's beams once stood in, their width and depth and spacing,


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[Assistant] Humans have been inventing answers to life's mysteries for as long as we've been around. But there's one place in the world where that tendency has been going on for over a thousand years. And as a result, there is a rich tapestry of beliefs and traditions, all based on questions that need answers.


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[Assistant] The landscape is often the biggest clue. Why did the people from a particular place tell the kinds of stories they did? Why did their belief systems grow to include such unique and creative tales? Sometimes the best place to look for those answers is the place they lived. And in that sense, there are few places as powerful as Iceland.


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[Assistant] One of the factors that contributes to that sense of awe is just how sparsely populated the place really is.


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[Assistant] For perspective, Iceland is the second largest island in Europe, right after Great Britain. But where Great Britain has roughly 700 people per square mile, in Iceland that number is nine. Talk about isolation, right?


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[Assistant] Now the overall mythology and belief system in Iceland is really just a transplant by Scandinavian settlers about 1200 years ago. The first to arrive were what historians would call pagan, but soon after Christianity began to work its way inside.


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[Assistant] That's a mix that we'll see play out in stories and practices later on in this episode.


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[Assistant] And let's not forget the weather there. Winters are not particularly harsh, but there's a period of the year where they only get about 4 hours of sunlight each day. And since the island is volcanic, there aren't a lot of trees, so early homes were built out of stone and turf and were very difficult to keep warm. Now why is that important to know?


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[Assistant] Because that sort of environment brought communities indoors during the dark winter months. Families would welcome in orphans and widows to add more bodies to their small spaces. And while they were there, huddled together for warmth, they would do indoor work. Things like weaving, shoemaking, and sewing. And of course, they would tell stories.


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[Assistant] You see, the landscape of Iceland offered those early settlers a lot to talk about. Think about it. Massive waterfalls, deep ravines, towering volcanic mountains, all painted in the light of the aurora borealis. It was a world that begged for exploration, so they told stories about it.


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[Assistant] A great example is that volcanic activity that people had to deal with.


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[Assistant] They were everywhere, with the current count at around 130 volcanoes. In the millennia since the Scandinavians arrived, 15% of those volcanoes have erupted, many of them over and over throughout the years.


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[Assistant] The most famous might just be Hekla, a volcano on the southern end of the island.


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[Assistant] Not only has it erupted 23 times since 1104, but it's prolific, sometimes launching lava bombs into the air, massive chunks of molten rock that can weigh upwards of 12 tons, which is why in the Middle Ages, Hekla was considered a gateway to hell. And they meant that in two ways.


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[Assistant] In one sense, they believe the volcano was home to some version of the Christian hell, where criminals and non-believers would go to be punished. At the same time, though, the mountain rained fire and brimstone down on communities around them, turning their world into a literal hell. But the landscape had something else to frighten people with.


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[Assistant] All of the volcanic activity that helped form the island about 18 million years ago, plus the massive debris that's been thrown out by still active ones, has created an environment littered with massive, oddly shaped rock formations. And they became the perfect focal point for folklore about a specific creature. Trolls.


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[Assistant] These were typically described as powerful and large, but also very dumb giants who lived in caves or mountains of the region. Like the Scandinavian trolls that Iceland's first settlers would have whispered about, these trolls were monsters that loved to feast on human flesh. But they also had a weakness. Sunlight would turn them into stone.


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[Assistant] And yes, if fans of The Hobbit find that familiar, there's a reason for that.


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[Assistant] Now because of this, various large stones around the island have attracted legends about their trollish origins. There's trolltunga, which literally means trolltongue. Because it's an ancient rock formation, that looks an awful lot like a giant stone tongue.


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[Assistant] The troll that it once belonged to, they say, had been bragging about his immunity to sunlight, brazenly sticking his tongue out at it, when he was frozen for all eternity by it.


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[Assistant] There are a lot of other examples too, but my favorite might just be a trio of rocky pillars off the coast of Vic. As the story goes, there were once two trolls who wanted to book passage on a ship. But when the captain turned them away, they got angry and decided to steal the ship instead.


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[Assistant] So the pair waded out into the sea and grabbed hold of it and then began to walk it back to shore. But they were so caught up in the crime that they were committing that they lost track of the time.


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[Assistant] Before they reached the land, the sun rose, turning both the trolls and the ship they were dragging into stone. Those three pillars are all that's left of them today.


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[Assistant] Clearly trolls were a bit terrible at time management, but they certainly did fill a gap in the knowledge of the early inhabitants of Iceland. Between the rocks that fell from the sky and those that were pushed up from below, the landscape of the island was practically crying out for tales that would explain everything.


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[Assistant] But the folklore of Iceland goes beyond hell mountains and chronologically challenged trolls.


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[Assistant] The story is a clever one. It's said that in the days after Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, God dropped by to pay them a visit. Now, since their garden days, the first first couple had been busy producing two children, Cain and Abel.


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[Assistant] So God, maybe trying to be polite and not show off that he saw and knew everything, asked Adam and Eve if they'd had any other children as well. And the truth is, they had. But those other kids were pretty filthy from playing in the dirt. So, not wanting to embarrass herself, Eve lied and said no.


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[Assistant] And as a result of that lie, it's said that God cursed those other children to forever be invisible to the rest of humanity. Hidden, one might say.


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[Assistant] Today, the people of Iceland refer to them as the holdafok, which means the hidden people. Longtime listeners will remember that we've covered a lot of their stories already, but there are a couple of things that I wanted to point out about them.


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[Assistant] First, apparently, elves isn't the most politically correct term for them, so consider yourself warned. And second, they are exactly like us, only better.


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[Assistant] Think about it from the perspective of Icelandic settlers. They were poor farmers, eking out a meager living through hard work in rough conditions. Nothing they had was nice, and very little of life was easy.


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[Assistant] So, it made sense that their vision of the Huldufolk was that these were people just like them, only wearing fancier clothing, using nicer possessions, and with plenty of time on their hands to eat, drink, and be merry.


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[Assistant] From that angle, you can see their longings woven into these stories.


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[Assistant] But their fears also make a few appearances in the stories they told, and a great example are the Landwites. These are nature's spirits that were said to live in the land and the water, and they served as guardians of it and brought prosperity to those who respected it properly.


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[Assistant] One popular story involving wights is found in the saga of King Olaf Trigvesen, who reigned in the late 900s. In the records, it's said that Denmark's King Harald Bluetooth Gormsen was sailing to Iceland to conquer it, and he sent a warlock shaped like a whale out to scout ahead.


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[Assistant] That's when four powerful wights flew out to meet the warlock. They were a mighty dragon, a vulture as wide as the mountains, a huge gray bull, and a giant who stood taller than the tallest mountain. Needless to say, the warlock did not stand a chance.


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[Assistant] After sending the invaders packing, these four whites became known as Iceland's guardian spirits. Today, if you look at the country's coat of arms, you'll see them right there as part of the artwork. Something that's not on the coat of arms, though, is another staple of Icelandic folklore. The draugr.


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[Assistant] In a way, the Draugr are ghosts, but not in the sense that most of us were raised to assume. These aren't built of mist and smoke, like eerie mirages that you can see and walk through. No, Draugr was said to be like you and me, physical and corporeal, but perhaps also stronger and a whole lot meaner.


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[Assistant] You see, the Viking era Scandinavians believed in an afterlife, just not that heavenly. Yes, the noblest warriors got to go to Valhalla, but many others wouldn't make it that far. Instead, their corpses would become animated by some evil force.


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[Assistant] Now most of the time that just left an undead creature living inside a burial mound, but every now and then they would grow restless and break free.


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[Assistant] What they did after that was always up in the air. A draugr might stomp around on the roof of your house and annoy you, or it might kill your livestock. Worse yet, it might kill you and then drink your blood. It was honestly just the worst, most horrific version of a random number generator. You never knew what you were going to get, but it was almost always guaranteed to be bad.


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[Assistant] Interesting side note, there are a lot of similarities between European vampire stories and the Draugr. They are both creatures that rise from the dead to make life difficult. Both are more powerful than the humans they once had been, and for a long time, both were assumed to be connected somehow to the spread of tuberculosis.


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[Assistant] There were differences too, though. Draugr were said to be able to puff themselves up to the size of an ox. Not like a balloon, mind you. No, that extra bulk would be all muscle and raw power. And of course, their bodies were covered in black, rotting flesh, which made them smell. Like a decaying corpse, I guess.


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[Assistant] One other interesting detail, Draugr were sometimes described as having dark bluish skin and piercing icy blue eyes.


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[Assistant] No, maybe those white walkers from Game of Thrones aren't as unique as some people like to think. So,


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[Assistant] How did you kill a draugr? Well, that's tricky. It said that iron could harm them, but it couldn't kill them. No, to do that you had to wrestle them and then defeat them by hand. Then once they submitted, you were supposed to chop off their head and then jump over their body before that still flying head hit the ground.


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[Assistant] Complicating matters further is the fact that the sword that you needed to use to do that came from the Draugr's own collection. But if you could manage all of that, your last step would be a lot easier. Burn the body, and then either bury the ashes, or throw them into the sea.


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[Assistant] But not all draugr showed up to kill cows and challenge farmers to deadly hand-to-hand combat. In fact, some were known to behave in a much more friendly way.


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[Assistant] Although, if one story in particular is any indication, that's still not a good thing.


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[Assistant] Context is king, so let's start there. One of the key features of Draugr were their origin stories. While Western ghost stories usually describe them as the spirits of people with unfinished business, Draugr were typically the reanimated corpses of people who had been disliked or were marginalized in life.


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[Assistant] At the very least, they had a tendency to believe that things needed to be done in a proper way, which drove some of their behavior. And we can see that quality on display in a story from a collection of records known as The Sagas of Icelanders.


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[Assistant] These were narrative chronicles that were meant to document historical events. They were written over the course of maybe 300 years, starting in the 12th century and still being written in the 14th century, but they covered earlier events, stuff from the 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries.


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[Assistant] And one other thing, up until those later ones were written in the 14th century, all of them were pretty much absent of fiction, meaning that the tales they recorded were believed by the writers and readers to be 100% true. So as we dive into this last story, keep that context in mind.


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[Assistant] The tale I want to tell you comes from the Erbigia Saga, written at a monastery in Helgefell around 1230, and it describes events that took place in the year 1000, when a ship arrived on Iceland shores carrying goods and settlers from Dublin.


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[Assistant] Now, one of the passengers was a woman named Thorguna, who was described as a tall, broad-shouldered woman with a stout, powerful build. She wasn't easy to get along with, and kept to herself most of the time. Coupled with her status as an immigrant, all of these details apparently made her a bit difficult for the people around her to like.


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[Assistant] Now her job once she arrived was basically working as a maid servant in another couple's house. And there's this almost tantalizing hint in the story that the only reason she's even invited to work there is because the lady of the house covets Thorguna's nice furniture and her bed linens.


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[Assistant] One day later that summer, something strange happened. It rained blood on the town they lived in. And we could question whether it was actual blood or just red volcanic ash mixed with normal rainwater. But the results were the same. Everything was covered in a thick red liquid, and that understandably freaked everyone out.


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[Assistant] The blood rain dried up pretty quickly though, except for the pile of hay that Thorguna had been working on.


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[Assistant] And she took that as a sign that her own death was coming soon. So she begs the man of the house, Porridor, to promise her two things. That he'll burn her bed linens after she dies, and that he'll transport her body to a Christian church in the town of Skalholt. And Porridor kindly agrees.


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[Assistant] And sure enough, Thorguna becomes sick a short while later and does actually die.


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[Assistant] But instead of burning her bedclothes, Porter just gives them to his wife, since she had wanted them so badly anyway.


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[Assistant] Then, together with a few others to help him, he loads Thorguna's corpse into a wagon, and they all head out for Skalholt.


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[Assistant] Along the way, according to the story, a storm blew in, forcing them to take shelter at some random farm along the way.


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[Assistant] The farmer there allowed them to shelter in the barn and spend the night, but shockingly, he does not offer them food and drink. A major faux pas in that culture. So everyone goes to bed hungry.


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[Assistant] In the middle of the night though, someone stumbled out of the barn and headed for the farmhouse. They were completely naked. But once inside, they began to pull ingredients out of the pantry and cook a massive meal.


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[Assistant] Everyone was hungry after all, and if the farmer wasn't going to provide, they would take matters into their own hands.


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[Assistant] It was the corpse of Thorguna, risen from the dead as a draugr to correct a social wrong. The farmer was frightened, obviously, but also so embarrassed that he apologized and then equipped the burial party with food, clothing, and supplies. And as soon as Thorguna heard this offer, she accepted it and returned to her coffin. Her work was done.


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[Assistant] After eating the meal that the Draugr had cooked for them with a dash of holy water, the text says, the party packed up and left, and continued on until they laid Thorguna to rest where she had originally requested. And when they returned home, Porridor was said to have taken those bed linens back from his wife and burned them. You know, just in case Thorguna wanted to come back for a repeat performance.


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[Assistant] It's a fascinating story, written down in a time when the sagas held nothing but records of actual events.


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[Assistant] Of course, that doesn't mean that a superstitious writer couldn't have chosen to include a bit of fantasy on the page, believing that it sounded real enough for their ears. But it also leaves just enough mystery to truly make you wonder. Oh, and that inhospitable farmer?


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[Assistant] The world we live in has a direct impact on the stories we tell. We can see it in the variety of stories that appear around the globe, each one rooted in a different culture. We see it in the records of people over the centuries as the passing of time changed so much of their human experience. And we see it in the unique places around the world, like Iceland.


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[Assistant] Over the years, I've been able to take you to some pretty special corners of folklore, and each of them has provided us with a little glimpse into how the human mind works in the face of questions and gaps in our understanding. I hope you've been able to see today's tour through the ghosts and monsters of Iceland as another example of that, and possibly something more.


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[Assistant] That island might be a little less crowded than a lot of other places in the world, as far as people go, but it's absolutely littered with stories and legends. And one great way to view it all is through the lens that we tend to see those old Viking warriors, because behind all that strength and aggression, they were frightened people. And how do we know?


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[Assistant] Because when they weren't pillaging or conquering other people, the Vikings were spending a huge amount of their time on real, tangible ways to protect themselves from things like the Draugr.


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[Assistant] One example are the large heavy stones that they drag to rest on top of fresh graves. Sometimes they even place them inside the grave itself on the bodies of the dead. All in an effort to make sure the people they put in the ground stayed there.


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[Assistant] And while it's true that some Vikings were buried with their weapons, many graves show that those weapons were made useless or ineffective by the people who buried them. Because, you know, if the dead are going to come back, why would we arm them, right?


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[Assistant] And there were other things they did, all in the service of combating Draugr. The legs of corpses were often tied together to prevent walking. Sometimes their toes were literally sewn together. Needles were embedded in their feet, and open scissors were laid across their chest.


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[Assistant] The legends of the Draugr have been whispered throughout Iceland for hundreds of years, and these ancient practices and rituals all highlight just how firmly people were convinced that the danger was real. And true or not, in the end they highlight exactly why folklore is so dangerous. Because when we invite it in, just like a Draugr, it can usher something incredibly powerful into our life. Fear.


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[Assistant] The folklore of Iceland is certainly entertaining and enlightening. So many aspects of it have leaked out into the rest of the world, and even today we can find it throughout modern pop culture. They certainly were creative and imaginative folks.


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[Assistant] But medieval Scandinavians were just like you and me. They put their pants on one leg at a time. Except, well, I might need to clarify that with one final story.


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


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[Assistant] If you've played a fantasy role-playing game before, you're probably familiar with the idea of runes. Over the years, the general public assumption about them has transformed from basic, carving-friendly characters borrowed from an ancient German alphabet into symbols that are supposed to impart a magical quality to something.


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[Assistant] In Iceland though, if we want to talk about the symbols of sorcery, we need to talk about staves. These were intricate magical symbols that would be drawn on objects to alter their nature, or to make them more powerful. And where runes often look simple and easy to replicate, staves look more like little drawings with lots of different elements.


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[Assistant] For example, the stave known as the Anger Gapi looks a bit like a circle, but it has a face in the center and leaves that are drawn at the four cardinal points, and it was carved onto the bottoms of barrels to prevent them from breaking.


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[Assistant] The stave called Dreprun resembles a top-down view of a fenced-off farmyard with decorations in the corners, and it was used by bad neighbors to kill the enemy's cattle. Clearly not the best way to make friends and influence people, right?


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[Assistant] And then there's the now broke, which is honestly just too complex an appearance to describe for you here. It was used as a way to get rich, except, well, there's a lot more to it than that. But first, their name. They called them Necropants. Here's how they work.


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[Assistant] Let's say that you're a poor farmer and you have a friend who is sick and dying. So you go visit and ask them to do you a favor. Would you please, you ask them, let me make a pair of pants out of your skin once you have died.


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[Assistant] And yes, I know that question was 100% unexpected, but just stick with me because it's going to get better from here.


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[Assistant] See, if your friend gives you permission and then he dies, you go through the usual burial traditions and have him interred in the ground. And that permission, by the way, is important. Non-consensual necropants do not work.


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[Assistant] Once they've been in the ground a while, you dig them up, and then skin their corpse from the waist down. And you need to be careful. Any hole or tear will ruin the process, so you need to do this in one perfect piece of human flesh. If you can manage it though, you're nearly there.


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[Assistant] The next step is to take off your pants and then step into your newly acquired Necropants and pull them up. After that, you need to steal a coin from a widow and place it in the pockets of these new pants.


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[Assistant] A pocket, by the way, that's basically just the empty scrotum of your dead friend. It's a lovely thought, I know.


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[Assistant] But once that's done, you're set. Every time you reach into that scrotum pocket for some money,


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[Assistant] You'll find it. An endless supply of handfuls of coin. All yours thanks to your brand new Necropants. Honestly, what could go wrong? Well, a couple of things.


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[Assistant] First off, those pants are permanent. You will never be able to take them off once you've put them on.


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[Assistant] Well, unless you convince a friend who can take them off your hands for you.


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[Assistant] But that means that you're going to look pretty odd for the rest of your life if you can't. But hey, money talks, right? Second, that entire process of making your necropants?


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[Assistant] That's black magic, my friend, which means that you have now traded your soul for some earthly riches. And again, if that's what you were after and all you value, then I guess it was worth the price. But it's a cost that needs to be considered.


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[Assistant] And I know that all of this sounds really wacky. I will be the first to admit that it's a piece of folklore that I never really saw coming.


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[Assistant] But it's real, and if you want to see a pair for yourself


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[Assistant] All you need to do is visit the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft in the village of Homovik.


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[Assistant] Because they have a life-size recreation of what a pair of necropants might look like. Right down to the semi-transparent material,


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[Assistant] Fashioned into a roughly sewn pair of pants that's standing on top of a pile of dozens of old coins.


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[Assistant] Is it frightening? Well, that depends on your view of such things. But it's one of those bits of folklore that I simply had to pass on to you.


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[Assistant] Because if you're ever trying to make small talk at the office or a party, the Necropants are always there, safely tucked away in your pocket.


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[Assistant] As always folks, thank you so much for watching. Credits for today's episode are in the description below.


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[Assistant] Lore has been a podcast since 2015 with over 400 million downloads to dates. You can learn more about this show plus the book series and the television adaptation over at lorepodcast.com. And of course, be sure to click the subscribe button and the bell icon so that you don't miss future episodes. Oh, and if you liked this one, click the thumbs up.


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[Assistant] 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] There have been rumors in the art world for a very long time that the Dutch master, Johannes Vermeer, had painted a series of biblical scenes, but no one knew where they were. So, Henry helped them find them.


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[Assistant] The painting he sold them in 1937 called The Supper at Emmaus was hardened and cracked with age, but it was beautiful. And it came with the sort of price tag you'd expect from a rare lost masterpiece. Something close to 4.5 million dollars today. All of a sudden, Henry was a very rich man.


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[Assistant] Over the next few years, he earned even more money, roughly 30 million dollars today.


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[Assistant] had painted all of them himself, imitating this style of a mirror so closely that the experts had been tricked. Then he treated them with chemicals and heat to add what three centuries of aging should have done.


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[Assistant] Henry van Meegeren's deception came to light only after selling one of his paintings to a well-known Nazi. After World War II ended, the art world assumed that he had sold a national treasure to the enemy, and he was tried on conspiracy charges. The only way to prove his innocence was to come clean and reveal the scam.


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[Assistant] History is full of people getting fooled. Honestly, I feel like daily life is often a lot like that, dodging one tricky headline after another, or attempting to not step in yet one more steaming pile of rumor on our way to work.


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[Assistant] Life, it seems, is just one long exercise in avoiding deception.


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[Assistant] But at the intersection of folklore and real life, some events have taken place that force us to ask a most uncomfortable question. What happens when the one who fools us also happens to be the person we trust the most? Ourselves.


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[Assistant] In 1910, Francisco received a diagnosis that frightened him. It was tuberculosis, and his prognosis was grim. So he visited a healer who lived and worked in his community there in Spain, hoping for a cure. That healer referred him to another man, who told him of the perfect treatment, but it was going to be a hard one to swallow.


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[Assistant] You see, the healer's remedy involved drinking the blood of a child and then rubbing their body fat on his chest. And while you'd think that no one would even consider a deed like that as an option, Francisco was desperate.


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[Assistant] The murder they would go on to commit in June of that year would become known as the Crime of Gador. In fact, it became so widely known in Spain that people everywhere began referring to Francisco Ortega as the Spanish Sack Man, a nod to a very old, very common branch of folklore.


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[Assistant] You can find the stories all over the world, and all of them share some eerily similar details. In Quebec, they whisper about the seven o'clock man who comes to steal children who refuse to go to bed on time, stuffing them into a sack and taking them away. In Haiti, he's called Uncle Gunny Sack.


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[Assistant] Again, he's a man with a sack who steals misbehaving children. And in the Bahamas, we have stories of Roland Carte. But what does he put in his cart? Stolen children, of course.


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[Assistant] In Europe, the sackman folklore is everywhere. In Russia and Belarus, there's the babayka. And in Poland, it's known by many names, including the babak, babak, and bobak. There, the creature arrives with the full moon atop a wagon pulled by cats. And of course, it has a sack for the children.


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[Assistant] In Hungarian and Transylvanian folklore, it's known as the mumu, sort of a gaunt zombie-like creature that carries


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[Assistant] You guessed it, a sack. Oh, and who could forget the child-stealing monster known as the Reis Fasu by Goi, which roughly translates as the Copper Penis Owl. I'll, uh, let you make of that what you will.


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[Assistant] The list goes on and on. All of them perfect entries in the world of sack man folklore. The Boribaba of India, the Babaroga of Croatia, the Amiona of Japan. All of them feature a person who arrives to steal your children, and nearly all of them use the same tool. A sack.


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[Assistant] And then, standing nearby, but looking slightly different is a creature from folklore that most of us have heard of before.


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[Assistant] The Changeling. It's common to cultures of the British Isles, and is one of those folktales that has found its way into real live actions and misfortune, mostly because of the prescriptive nature of those stories.


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[Assistant] You see, a changeling was believed to be a young fairy that had been swapped out for a human baby. At some point, when the parent wasn't looking, fairies had arrived, taken their child, and then replaced them with a lookalike. But while the casual observer might never notice a difference, it was hard to fool the parents.


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[Assistant] Naturally, they wanted their real children back. So there was a long list of things one might try to frighten the changeling off and initiate the return of their own flesh and blood. All of them were designed to make it feel uncomfortable.


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[Assistant] Some believed that you could set the changeling down on a pile of dung while others thought that placing it at the shoreline just before the tide came in would also do it.


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[Assistant] In some places, it was believed that the changeling should be placed in a basket and dangled over a burning fire. The assumption was that the fairy child would leap out of the basket and fly up the chimney, and then your own real child would return shortly after.


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[Assistant] As you can imagine, that led to a lot of tragic endings.


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[Assistant] One side note. It's clear from the physical descriptions of changeling babies throughout history that those small differences were really the outward signs of congenital disorders, such as Down syndrome, hypercalcemia, progeria, and others. Life has always delivered unexpected challenges to parents over the centuries. To some, it seems, folklore was the easier way to process it all.


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[Assistant] Taken as a whole though, these stories from around the globe illustrate a belief system that was designed to explain the unexplainable. The whys and hows were answered with story, and then those stories spread. What's clear through all of them though, is that they shared one specific common primal fear. The fear of losing a child.


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[Assistant] Theirs was a normal middle-class family. Husband Percy worked as an insurance salesman and real estate agent in the Louisiana town of Opelousas. He and his wife Leslie were busy with work, life, and raising their two boys, four-year-old Robert and his younger brother Alonzo.


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[Assistant] But like so many other families before them and since, they needed a vacation. So in late August of 1912, they gathered up their camping supplies and headed out to Swayze Lake in St. Landry Parish.


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[Assistant] Although, to think of it as a normal lake might be a bit of a stretch. Picture it more of a swamp with some large patches of water, all surrounded by thick woods.


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[Assistant] It was August, and even that far into summer it could still break a hundred degrees during the day, so I can imagine having the water nearby was lovely. And it was sometime after arriving and getting all set up that Percy and Leslie took their eyes off of Robert, who had been walking around and exploring the camp area. And that's when little Robert, who they usually called Bobby, disappeared.


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[Assistant] Now, there's a lot about this case that quickly took on the look and feel of a folktale. Reports on some of the key moments vary wildly. Some say that Bobby disappeared just before lunch, after a trip to the water for some fishing.


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[Assistant] Others claim it happened as darkness was setting over the woods. But while those differences might impact the scene we imagine, all stories agree that the boy was just gone.


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[Assistant] Naturally, they immediately started looking for him, shouting his name, beating the bushes, and scouring every inch of the forest and water they could see. But it quickly became clear that he wasn't there. So the authorities were called, and a search effort was organized at once.


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[Assistant] Hundreds of volunteers showed up. The Dunbar family was well loved, and everyone wanted to help out. But when it became clear that the boy wasn't hiding behind a tree like some kind of game, they began to assume the worst.


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[Assistant] Maybe he had drowned, or even been eaten by one of the many local alligators. They even went as far as to kill and cut open a number of them just to check their stomach contents. After that, they tossed explosives in the water hoping to dislodge any bodies that might be trapped below. But even after all of that, nothing.


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[Assistant] Searchers did notice that there were railroad tracks near the campsite, though. Tracks that had small, bare footprints near them. And that sparked another theory.


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[Assistant] What if little Bobby had wandered off in that direction? And what if a drifter had been around, following the tracks, and taken him?


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[Assistant] With nobody in the swamp and the mysterious footprints near the tracks, a different picture was beginning to take shape.


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[Assistant] Bobby Dunbar hadn't been killed in the wilderness. He had been stolen by a stranger. Which meant that their search area had just become bigger than anyone could have imagined. Soon after,


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[Assistant] The family had postcards printed up with a photo and a description of the boy on it.


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[Assistant] Four years old, dark blonde hair, rosy cheeks, and a burn scar on his left big toe. It wasn't much, but this was 1912 and they didn't have a lot to work with back then.


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[Assistant] Thankfully, the family was able to mail the cards out to a massive area, all the way to Eastern Florida, in fact, and they offered a sizable reward. And with that done, all they could do was wait and not give up hope. But the trouble with hope is that it can often lead to the unexpected.


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[Assistant] Actually, it wasn't the family who tracked him down, but helpful strangers in Mississippi. It seems that someone spotted the boy in the company of a man named William Walters, and they put the pieces together.


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[Assistant] Walters did fit that drifter description, and the press did a good job of painting him as a bum, traveling the railroad and getting by. But what they glossed over was that he worked as a piano tuner, and that wasn't the sort of job that allowed for setting up shop and letting customers carry in their items.


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[Assistant] No, by nature of the work he had to spend most of his time out on the road.


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[Assistant] Now, William claimed that the boy was his nephew, Bruce Anderson. His brother and the boy's mother weren't married, but he said that she had asked him to care for Bruce for a while. Which is why they were in Mississippi together. And you can probably understand how this story was taken, seeing as how everyone assumed that he was a wandering beggar, right?


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[Assistant] Bobby was taken away from Walters and brought back to Opelousas to be reunited with his family. And again, here's where the story veers into fairy tale territory. Some say that Leslie Dunbar was allowed to see him while he was asleep, and that when he opened his eyes, he asked, Mother? And she fainted instantly.


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[Assistant] Other newspaper accounts claim that she saw the boy by the light of a dim lantern, and was unsure if it really was her son at all. At this point, he'd been gone for so long, it was probably easy to be unsettled. But her hope and joy won out, and she brought him home to his father and brother, a brother he apparently knew by name.


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[Assistant] The town rejoiced with them. In fact, a parade was held in Bobby's honor, and the day of his return was declared a holiday for everyone. It was a happy, joyous occasion, as any reunion like that should be. But there were dark clouds on the horizon.


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[Assistant] Because while a lot of people smiled and welcomed him home, some of the Dunbar's close friends whispered that Bobby wasn't the same.


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[Assistant] He was different somehow. Changed. And knowing what we know about the folklore of stolen children, I can even see shadows of the changeling story in this experience. It's easy to go that direction, isn't it?


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[Assistant] And that's when Julia Anderson arrived. She was the mother of the boy that William Walters was supposed to have been caring for, and had come as part of the trial for the strange man, who was up on charges of kidnapping. Charges, mind you, that came with the death penalty at the time.


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[Assistant] Remember, that's the narrative that almost everyone assumed was the truth. William Walters had come across Bobby Dunbar by the campsite, taken him, and then had kept the boy with him under an assumed name as he worked his way through Mississippi.


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[Assistant] Julia Anderson's boy Bruce, if he had ever even existed at all, was somewhere else, missing and gone.


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[Assistant] The trial lasted two long weeks. Witnesses were called on both sides and details about how well Bobby was settling back into his old home were used as evidence that he really was the missing Dunbar boy. But there were problems with that trial. For one, everyone involved, from the jury to the judge,


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[Assistant] Came from the Dunbars community. You know, the same community that threw them a parade and held a city-wide holiday in their honor.


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[Assistant] And the people sharing those stories of his well-adjusted return home were his family and their close friends.


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[Assistant] I guess my point is that there was a lot of bias going on, and William Walters didn't really stand a chance. The man was found guilty on the charges and sent straight to prison.


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[Assistant] Thankfully, his sentence was reduced from execution to life behind bars because an appeal two years later found his charges reversed and he was allowed to go home. Two families.


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[Assistant] Two missing children, and a firestorm of opinion and controversy.


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[Assistant] It's no wonder that people still talk about Bobby Dunbar today.


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[Assistant] No one likes to imagine having one of their children taken away. But if it happened, everyone would wish for a happy ending.


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[Assistant] While both families clearly suffered the tragedy of a lost son, only one of them seemed to have their prayers answered. Bobby Dunbar was alive and well. And he was finally home.


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[Assistant] As a parent, I need to say this upfront. The fear of losing a child, of having them taken away by some nefarious individual and removed from our care, is a fully understandable, totally natural thing to feel. I hope that our journey through this specific branch of folklore, along with tragic real life events, made that clear. Our fear is normal. But it can also be preyed upon.


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[Assistant] Back in the 1980s, a decade I remember better than a lot of you, I bet, the concept of stranger danger really clawed its way into the forefront of current events. The kidnapping and murder of Adam Walsh, for example, not only gave us America's Most Wanted, hosted by his father, but it also helped fuel movements


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[Assistant] Putting photos of missing kids on milk cartons and public service announcements from McGruff the crime dog.


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[Assistant] But the fear was also misrepresented by the press. Child abduction advocates claimed that upwards of 50,000 children were taken by strangers each and every year, a staggering number that would make any parent nervous.


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[Assistant] But that figure included runaways and a 1984 FBI report listed the number of actual child kidnappings that year at just 67.


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[Assistant] For the Dunbar and Anderson families in 1912, though, the odds were not in their favor. Both families lost a child, and only one welcomed theirs back. And for decades afterwards, the family and descendants began to ponder what a lot of others had already been thinking.


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[Assistant] Had the boy known as Bobby Dunbar really gone to the right home?


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[Assistant] And this is where it gets wild, because about 20 years ago, a few key people began to crack the case.


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[Assistant] First, Margaret Dunbar Cutright, the child's granddaughter, started investigating the events. It was a journey that led her to the home of William Walter's defense attorney and a conversation with that man's granddaughter, plus over 900 pages of documents about the case.


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[Assistant] Then, Margaret teamed up with a woman named Linda Travers, granddaughter of Julia Anderson, and they realized that thanks to a century of medical advancement, they had all the tools necessary to settle the matter for good.


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[Assistant] So, after taking a DNA sample from Margaret's father, Bobby Jr., and one from the son of Alonzo Dunbar, Bobby's biological brother, they compared the results.


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[Assistant] The boy who had been pulled from William Walter's custody and then handed over to Percy and Leslie Dunbar was not, in fact, a Dunbar.


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[Assistant] He was the son of someone else, most likely Julia Anderson.


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[Assistant] Julia, by the way, went on to have seven more kids, and for decades that family told stories of the brother who was taken from them.


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[Assistant] At the same time, the Dunbars told their own tales of how Bobby had once disappeared only to return again, almost like a miracle.


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[Assistant] Two families with two similar tales. Both stories of love and the difficulty of letting people go. Both stories of stranger danger, abduction, and loss. And none, it turns out, who actually got what they wanted.


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[Assistant] When they pulled her body from a canal in Berlin, the authorities feared the worst. Witnesses had seen her jump from the bridge above, and everyone assumed she had taken her own life. But it turns out, she was alive. She wasn't however in a talkative mood.


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[Assistant] In fact, her demeanor was so distant and unresponsive that they were left with no choice but to take her to the nearby Daldorf Asylum.


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[Assistant] That was 1920, and the young woman with no voice and no name, let alone any papers or items that could help identify her, would spend the next two years there, waiting and hoping.


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[Assistant] At some point in those two years, one of the other patients staying at the hospital there saw something familiar in the mysterious woman's face. After she was discharged, this woman started telling others about the woman she had met in Daldorf, and some of those people included former residents of another country, Russia.


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[Assistant] One person who caught wind of the woman's description and plight was a former guard for the Russian royal family.


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[Assistant] When he showed a photograph of those royals to the mysterious young woman, she reportedly became angry and red in the face. Soon after, through much trial and error, those who were caring for her determined that not only was she connected to the Romanov family,


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[Assistant] But that she was very likely the youngest daughter of the dead Tsar, Anastasia.


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[Assistant] The Romanovs, if you don't remember, were the family that had ruled over Russia for three centuries. But in the lead up to World War I, tensions in the country began to ramp up into outright revolution. And in 1917, the Tsar was forced to abdicate.


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[Assistant] Then on July 16th of 1918, the entire family, along with a number of their servants, all found themselves gathered in the basement of the house they were being held in. Under the guise of having their photograph taken,


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[Assistant] Gunmen opened fire, killing all of them in cold blood.


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[Assistant] But the trouble was, two bodies were not found with the rest. Crown Prince Alexi and his sister, Anastasia.


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[Assistant] There were tests, of course. Her handwriting was compared to known examples of Anastasia's script, and they seemed to match. And an old childhood friend, the son of one of the servants to the Romanov family, visited her and instantly recognized her.


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[Assistant] In fact, he was so convinced Anastasia had returned that he helped fund a legal battle with the German court system to regain her portion of the Romanov fortune.


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[Assistant] As a side note, that case would stay open for 32 years. And to this day, it's the longest running court case in German history.


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[Assistant] After her identity came out, and she was freed from the hospital, this young woman spent a few years living in a number of different luxurious homes, manors, and castles throughout Europe. She was royalty, after all. And a bunch of different fellow royals wanted to make sure she was given the lifestyle she deserved. I imagine she enjoyed it. Honestly, who wouldn't?


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[Assistant] In 1928 though, she traveled to New York City, where she used an unusual name to check into a hotel. Anna Anderson.


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[Assistant] She said it was to avoid the attention, and that her real name, at least the name she had chosen for herself, was still Anastasia.


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[Assistant] But there, for that moment, she was yet another Anderson for us to bump into today.


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[Assistant] As so often happens, she met a man, fell in love, and settled into life as the person everyone assumed she was. Anastasia, long lost daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, miraculously returned from the dead. Except for one problem.


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[Assistant] It seems that Anastasia's uncle, the Grand Duke of Hesse, was still alive and he wasn't buying any of it for a minute. He went as far as to hire a private investigator to uncover the truth and what he discovered was shocking. Well, depending on how gullible her associates really were.


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[Assistant] Anastasia was, in fact, Franziska Sienkowska, the Polish woman who had disappeared around the same time this young woman was pulled from the waters of the canal in Berlin back in 1920.


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[Assistant] Her former coworkers remembered her as having a history of mental illness, and her own family, a family who had, I assume, missed her all those years, quickly confirmed that yes, she was one of them.


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[Assistant] The woman who called herself Anastasia lived a long and eventful life, passing away in February of 1984 at the age of 87.


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[Assistant] All the way to the end, she fought to prove her identity as the lost Russian princess. But after her death, a DNA test of some tissue removed from her intestines in 1979 settled the matter for good. She was not, and never had been, a Romanov.


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[Assistant] But the story has been told for so long because we love a good mystery, and we love when lost children are reunited with their former lives. We watched that play out with the Bobby Dunbar events, and it's been the hope of countless other families over the years as well.


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[Assistant] Who we are, and who the world around us wants us to be.


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[Assistant] Are changeling stories to wrestle with, but it's clear that for those who desperately want to believe, the evidence will always be clear and obvious. It might not just always be. The truth.


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[Assistant] As always folks, thanks so much for watching today. Credits for the episode are in the description below.


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[Assistant] Lore has been a podcast since 2015 with over 375 million downloads to date. You can learn more about this show, the book series, the TV adaptation on Amazon over at lorepodcast.com.


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[Assistant] And of course, be sure to click the subscribe button and the bell icon so that you don't miss out on future episodes. And if you enjoyed this one, be sure to click the thumbs up.


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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] On the 24th of June of 1408, a French court sentenced a murderer to death by execution. She had entered the home of a neighbor and found a four-month-old child inside, alone and unattended. Although she never disclosed her reason for doing so, she killed the child right there in the house.


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[Assistant] After her trial she was moved to the prison to be held until her execution.


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[Assistant] The others who were in prison there were most certainly jeering at her. They called her names. Yes, they were hardened criminals, but to kill a child, even they were appalled. The prison, however, treated her the same as those men by charging her family the same rate for her daily meals. Equality was a rare thing for her, you see.


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[Assistant] On July 17th, she was guided to the platform and a rope was placed around her neck. A crowd was most likely gathered that day to watch the spectacle. Like the criminals inside the prison, they too must have mocked her and shouted insults. And then, after the trap door snapped open and she plummeted to her death, it was over.


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[Assistant] History is full of these stories. A criminal goes to trial and justice wins the day. What was odd about that trial in 1408 though, was the suspect. Because she wasn't a local woman, or even a relative of the child she killed. She wasn't even human, you see. She was a pig.


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[Assistant] Literally a farm animal, tried in a court of law, sentenced to be put to death, and then executed on the gallows three weeks later.


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[Assistant] Edward was a stranger when he rolled into town in the autumn of 1896. He claimed to have come from Pocahontas County to the north. But whether or not he was a mystery to everyone in town, he brought a necessary skill. Edward was a blacksmith and he quickly found work in a local shop owned by James Crookshanks.


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[Assistant] Within days of arriving, one of the local women caught his eye, and so Edward set his sights on winning her affection.


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[Assistant] Elva was young and beautiful, and the locals couldn't really blame the newcomer for falling head over heels for her. For her part though, the feeling was mutual, despite the fact that Edward was at least a decade older than Elva. Within a matter of weeks, the couple were married.


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[Assistant] The first few months of their marriage were mostly uneventful, although it was later said that the young bride had become pregnant shortly after the wedding. The local physician had been treating her for slight complications with her pregnancy since the new year, but most of the people in town had no idea. It seems Elva was good at keeping secrets.


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[Assistant] On the afternoon of January 23rd of 1897, with snow on the ground and a chill in the air, Andy Jones stepped into the warmth of the blacksmith shop.


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[Assistant] He was just 11 years old, but he worked for the newlyweds as an errand boy and a housekeeper when they needed him. It was a common thing to see his small shape darting up and down the road, running messages from husband to wife, and back again.


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[Assistant] Edward told Andy that he was going to stop by the market before coming home at the end of the day, and so he instructed the boy to go and ask Elva if there was anything else that she needed him to purchase.


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[Assistant] This was before text messaging, before the telephone, before email. So Andy, in his own way, was a pre-modern SMS service.


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[Assistant] The boy ran off, and when he arrived at the couple's house he let himself in. When he did, he was horrified to find Elva lying face down on the floor at the foot of the stairs. One hand was pinned beneath her chest, while the other arm was stretched out and away. The house was deathly quiet.


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[Assistant] At first he thought she was sleeping. He called out to her as he approached but stopped when he noticed the odd bend in her neck.


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[Assistant] Even to this young, immature mind, something seemed wrong.


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[Assistant] Rather than moving closer, he backed slowly away and then turned and bolted home. Once there, he told his mother everything he saw.


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[Assistant] Moms have a way of knowing what to do, it seems. She quickly headed out the door to call to the town doctor, George Knapp, and took Andy with her. It took them nearly an hour to track him down and bring him back to the blacksmith's home, but when they arrived, there was no body on the floor of the hall.


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[Assistant] It might have been easy to write it all off as a prank. Certainly in our own day and age, with Tales of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, there's always a small suspicion that unbelievable stories might actually just be lies. Thankfully though, they heard the sound of sobbing from the second floor of the home.


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[Assistant] Andy and his mom politely let themselves out. Dr. Knapp headed upstairs.


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[Assistant] He entered a main bedroom to find Elva's lifeless body laid out on the bed, with Edward seated beside her.


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[Assistant] He had apparently come home after Andy left and discovered his dead wife on the floor. After carrying her up to their room, he had changed her into a dark formal dress with a high collar and long sleeves and then arranged her for burial.


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[Assistant] He was in tears, cradling her head and sobbing. When Doctor Knapp entered the room, Edward didn't even look up. Attempting to be as respectful as he could of the man's loss, the doctor quietly inspected Elva's body for anything that might hint at the cause of her death.


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[Assistant] Having recently helped her with some other medical issues, he was familiar with her current state of health.


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[Assistant] At first glance he felt that nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but he wanted to be thorough.


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[Assistant] It was only when he reached for her head and neck that Edward stirred. He pushed the doctor's hands away and continued to gently run his fingers through her hair, sobbing deeply the entire time.


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[Assistant] It was clear to Dr. Knapp that the man simply needed to mourn. Picking up his things, he let himself out and exited the house.


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[Assistant] While Edward grieved the loss of his young bride, Dr. Knapp went back to his office and recorded what little information he had been able to ascertain. He listed her cause of death as, and I quote, everlasting faint, before amending it to add the phrase, complications from pregnancy.


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[Assistant] Life was hard in rural West Virginia at the end of the 19th century. That much was certain. What Dr. Knapp didn't know, however, was just how much harder it had been for Elva Shue.


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[Assistant] It began with Edward's rather unorthodox appearance at the Undertaker hours before the graveside service. He insisted on helping the Undertaker position his wife in the coffin and then placed one of her favorite scarves around her neck.


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[Assistant] He added two other items of clothing as well, pressing them in on either side of her head. He said it was just so that she would rest easier.


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[Assistant] At the funeral, he continued to act in odd ways. He paced beside the casket the entire time. He stooped low every now and then to adjust her clothing, to make things perfect. And he continuously wept as he did this. It was the sort of panicked, nervous fussing you might expect from a distraught parent.


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[Assistant] The man was clearly grieved. He and Elva had been newlyweds after all. This loss, so close to the emotional high of their wedding, well it must have been crippling. And everyone seemed to understand that. Everyone that is, except for Mary Hester, Elva's mother.


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[Assistant] Mary did not trust Edward, and maybe that distrust was simply fueled by her dislike of the man. After all, he had rolled into town, a total stranger, an older man, a mysterious past, and taken her daughter from her. Maybe she just had issues of her own to deal with.


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[Assistant] Or maybe mother's intuition is always right. No one knew for sure. They just knew that she hated the guy.


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[Assistant] Mary Hester wrestled with this uneasy feeling for weeks. She had trouble sleeping and understandably, she found it difficult to move on, to take a much needed deep breath and press forward through life.


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[Assistant] And according to her testimony, she also prayed. It was a source of solace for her and probably one of the ways she was grieving the loss of her daughter. Every day and night she prayed for the truth, but mostly she prayed for one specific thing.


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[Assistant] She wanted her daughter to return and tell her side of the story.


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[Assistant] Sure, all of us long for the ones we've lost. We'd love one more cup of coffee with them, one more hug, one more conversation. I know firsthand just how hard it is to let go, but Mary wanted her daughter to literally come back and she prayed hard for it every day. And then, it happened.


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[Assistant] Mary told others that it happened over the course of four nights, each night revealing more truth, becoming more visual and real. She said that her daughter, who she had always called Zona, came into her room and spoke to her, first as a ball of light, and later as a fully formed body.


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[Assistant] According to Mary, this was no dream. It was a vision. Her daughter revealed that Edward had killed her after months of physical abuse. There had been an argument that final day and Edward had strangled her right there at the foot of the stairs, breaking her neck high up beneath the skull.


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[Assistant] Once the story was told, Mary said, her daughter vanished once again.


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[Assistant] Whatever suspicion she might have had prior to this vision, Mary Hester quickly became a woman on a mission. She went to the local prosecutor, a man named John Preston, and told him the story. At first, there wasn't much he was able to do. The case was closed, and a ghostly vision was far from being a valid reason to open it back up again. But he wanted to help.


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[Assistant] Maybe, he told her, if there was something new, some new piece of information that could help call the official cause of death into question, it might justify digging deeper. Mary agreed and John Preston got to work.


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[Assistant] Not being a friend or a relative of Elva's, Preston hadn't attended the funeral. When he started to ask around though, people who had been there started to share interesting observations. Edward's odd behavior around the coffin. The positioning of the clothing around the area of the neck and head. His insistence to never leave her side.


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[Assistant] All of it smelled a bit odd to him, as an outside observer.


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[Assistant] Preston took his suspicions to Dr. Knapp and asked the man if he had seen any unusual details when he examined Elva's body the afternoon she was discovered.


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[Assistant] At first, Knapp was defensive and stood by his work, by his medical opinion. We've all been there before, I think. Those moments when we know we might have made a mistake but we refuse to admit it. Dr. Knapp tried to make one of those prideful stands.


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[Assistant] But Preston refused to let the matter rest, and eventually the physician caved in and told him the truth. Yes, he had examined her, but Edward had made a complete examination impossible.


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[Assistant] He was too protective, too territorial. Nap admitted that he hadn't been able to fully examine her neck, and that a mission had haunted him ever since.


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[Assistant] In the end, that was the key they'd been looking for. Those details were enough to reopen the case, and with it, Elva Zona Hester's grave. Dr. Knapp was assisted by two other physicians who came to town to help with the exhumation, and after the coffin was set up in the local schoolhouse, they opened the lid. And what they found inside changed everything.


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[Assistant] Elva's neck was badly bruised. It wasn't an oversight by Dr. Knapp, though. Sometimes bruising happens deep beneath the skin and it's only after death that the marks rise to the surface. Here they were, and these marks were damning. Clear, fingerprint impressions on both sides of the throat.


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[Assistant] The doctors then conducted an autopsy on Elva's body and discovered what the marks hinted at. Her windpipe had been crushed, ligaments had been torn, and the vertebrae at the base of her skull had been completely displaced.


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[Assistant] Elvis' death had been no accident. Someone had strangled her, gripping her throat until the physical trauma ended her life.


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[Assistant] The first thought on everyone's mind was that Edward had killed her, but that was quickly tempered by more sober thoughts. There was no proof tying Edward to the murder of his wife. No evidence that pointed definitively to him. Yes, there were the finger marks, but those fingers could have belonged to anyone, right?


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[Assistant] On the other hand, Mary Hester knew all about the cause of death before the Exhumation. She claimed that her knowledge came to her through an otherworldly vision. That her deceased daughter actually stepped through the veil between life and death and revealed the truth to her. But no one really believed that, did they?


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[Assistant] Mary, it seemed, was more of a suspect than Edward was, and that didn't sit well with John Preston. He had hoped that her vision would be dismissed for the insanity that it was, that it was just crazy enough to avoid suspicion. To help that along, though, he needed to know more about the other suspect, and so he began to investigate Edward's shoes past. What he found was shocking.


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[Assistant] Edward Shoe, it turns out, was a new name. His real name was Erasmus Stribling Shoe. Though many who knew him prior to his days in West Virginia simply called him Trout. And Trout, it seems, had quite the past. Most importantly, Elva hadn't been his first wife. Or even his second. She had been his third.


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[Assistant] The first marriage had taken place 12 years prior to the death of Elva, back in 1885, to one Ellie Cutlip. They even had a daughter together, but divorced in 1889 when Edward was sent to prison for stealing a horse.


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[Assistant] John Preston actually managed to track her down and interview her, and she was quick to tell him about how abusive and violent Edward had been toward her.


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[Assistant] After getting out of prison, Edward married a second time in 1894. Her name was Lucy Tritt, but she died within a year of the wedding.


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[Assistant] Preston was unable to track down a cause of death, but there were stories. There were always stories. And these stories spoke of how Lucy had been killed by Edward, who vanished from town a short while later.


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[Assistant] At the time, the rumors had been dismissed. Death, even among the youth, was not uncommon. Tragic, yes, but it happened. Now though, with a second of three wives in the grave, it raised all sorts of questions.


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[Assistant] It was enough to arrest Edward. His trial began on June 22nd of 1897. Although the prosecution lacked the physical evidence to connect him to the death of Elva, they built their case on his string of marriages and specifically on the death of Lucy Tritt. There was a pattern, they told the jury, and that pattern should be proof enough.


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[Assistant] Edward Shue, they declared, was a cold-blooded killer.


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[Assistant] And the jury found him guilty. But rather than the death penalty that everyone expected, Edward was sentenced to life in prison. And as you can imagine, that didn't sit well with some.


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[Assistant] On July 11th, while Shu was sitting in the county jail waiting to be transported to prison, a mob of nearly 30 angry men gathered outside of town. They were armed with guns and a brand new rope tied into a noose.


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[Assistant] But thanks to a tip from a local farmer who saw the men gathering, the sheriff was able to keep Edward safe. He rushed him out of the jail and into a hiding place until the chaos blew over. And then, as promised, Shue was delivered to his new home at the West Virginia State Penitentiary.


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[Assistant] He died there, three years later, when a wave of pneumonia and measles swept through the prison. Mary Hester died 13 years later, at peace with her role in the trial.


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[Assistant] I doubt we could ever know for sure if Mary Hester's ghostly visitor was really her daughter back from the grave. It might very well have been nothing more than a personification of her suspicion and intuition, or perhaps it was a projection of her grief and loss and pain. We will never know for sure, but the effect was real enough.


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[Assistant] When Mary Hester took the stand in court that day in June of 1897, John Preston was careful to avoid any mention of her vision. Partly because he didn't want her to sound like she had prior knowledge of the cause of her daughter's death. But mostly because it made the woman sound crazy.


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[Assistant] She believed the ghost of her daughter had appeared in her bedroom and told her the truth. That was probably enough to discredit her as a character witness against Edward Shue. And Preston wanted to avoid that at all costs.


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[Assistant] The defense attorney noticed the omission though, and decided to use it against them. While Mary was still on the witness stand, he grilled her about the vision she claimed to have experienced.


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[Assistant] I've read the court transcripts. I've read his insistence that it had been nothing more than a dream, that she had been exhausted, obsessed, and overwhelmed with her loss.


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[Assistant] Thankfully, Mary stuck to her guns. It was a vision, not a dream, she said. She'd been fully awake when it happened, and it had really happened, she said. And the judge allowed the testimony to stand.


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[Assistant] So when the jury retreated to make their decision, they did so with a ghost story as a piece of the evidence. It took them less than an hour to reach a verdict.


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[Assistant] Sometimes folklore creeps into our lives and pushes us in a direction we never thought we'd go.


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[Assistant] Over the centuries, it's driven people to murder, to steal, to abuse, and to build social rules that oppress certain types of people. Folklore in that way is often an excuse for bad behavior.


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[Assistant] But folklore is also like a gem. We can hold it up and turn it and watch the light play off of its different facets. The story of Mary Hester and Edward Shue reveals the hopeful side of folklore, giving us all a glimpse of the power and sway that it commands.


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[Assistant] As rare as it was, this was a moment where folklore took the stand in a court of law, where belief had weight, and the supernatural world, at least for a few moments, entered the public opinion and actually meant something.


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[Assistant] Yes, folklore can transform people into monsters.


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[Assistant] Occasionally though, it's empowered us to dig deeper and find the truth.


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[Assistant] In the world of criminal justice, decisions are supposed to be made on a foundation of truth and proof. And as the tools of science have become more accessible, that foundation has, at least in theory, become easier to build upon.


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[Assistant] Which is what makes stories like the murder trial of Zona Hester that much more amazing. Folklore stepped into the courtroom and contributed to the decision, and it wasn't the last time it would happen. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear exactly what I mean.


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[Assistant] The prosecutor handling Elva's case didn't want her mother's vision admitted as evidence for obvious reasons. After all, who would believe that a murder could be solved in a dream? The thing is, it wasn't the first time the dead had advocated for themselves after their untimely death, and it wouldn't be the last.


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[Assistant] In the town of Wadhurst in East Sussex, England, 27-year-old Nicola Fuller and her 45-year-old husband Harry Fuller were settling into their lives as newlyweds. Harry was a car dealer, and a good one at that, at least in his own mind. He had a habit of exaggerating his wealth to anyone who would listen.


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[Assistant] And that habit got him in a bit of trouble with a man named Steven Young. Young was a 35-year-old insurance consultant and father of two who was up to his eyeballs in debt. Something to the tune of 100,000 pounds.


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[Assistant] And it just so happened that he was also a bit of a gun enthusiast as well. There was an array of both registered and unregistered weapons in his possession, and he was also the treasurer of a local rifle club.


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[Assistant] Young had heard the stories of all the cash Fuller kept in his home, so he came up with a plan. He would make an appointment to meet with Fuller at his house, and then rob him to pay down the money that he owed.


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[Assistant] Except things were a little different on February 10th when Steven Young showed up at Fuller's cottage in Wadhurst. Harry turned his back and Young shot him straight through the heart, killing him instantly. Nicola tried to flee, but she was also fatally shot four times before she had the chance to run.


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[Assistant] Young tried to make the scene look like a drug deal gone bad. He sprinkled some powdered sugar on Mr. Fuller's body before grabbing the cash and running away.


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[Assistant] His ruse didn't work though. His car had been seen on the premises and there was evidence of the call that he had made to Harry the night before. It didn't take long for the authorities to track down the man behind the murders. Stephen Young was swiftly arrested.


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[Assistant] But what should have been a cut and dried case was surprisingly drawn out. The first jury had to be entirely replaced when one of the jurors asked to be removed due to the disturbing subject matter. A new jury was brought in and the trial was restarted.


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[Assistant] It took place over a period of five weeks in Brighton, England. On the final night of the deliberation, the jurors all found themselves sequestered in Brighton's Old Ship Hotel together. They were addled, having been away from their families and their daily lives, all while listening to the troubling and sordid details of a double homicide.


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[Assistant] Several of the jurors eventually went to sleep, while a group of four carried on into the night, drinking and talking. It's safe to assume that they discussed the case and the difficulties in ascertaining the truth. So with a little liquid courage fueling their decisions, someone got a bright idea to ask one of the victims directly. Harry Fuller.


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[Assistant] They found a sheet of paper and scrawled the alphabet across one side, along with the words yes and no. Then they turned an empty wine glass upside down over the letters and each juror placed their hands on top.


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[Assistant] In other words, they had MacGyvered together a makeshift Ouija board. One juror took it upon himself to address the spirit directly. He asked, Is Harry present? The glass slid across the paper. Yes.


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[Assistant] Who killed you? The juror asked. The spirit then spelled out, Steven Young Dunnett.


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[Assistant] A few of the jurors were crying by the end of the seance, but even those who had held it together were visibly shaken by the experience. They all agreed not to tell the others about the board, nor what Harry's ghost had told them.


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[Assistant] This story is one that sounds right at home among other tales of turn of the century spiritualism. A time when folks gathered around a table on a Saturday night and reached out to the dead.


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[Assistant] But this wasn't the 1800s. It didn't even happen during the 1930s or 40s. Stephen Young's fate was decided by a Ouija board in 1994, the year Friends debuted on television.


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[Assistant] But that wasn't the end for the murderer, nor for the jurors.


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[Assistant] One month later, the Crown Court received a three-page long handwritten letter. It was a confession, detailing everything that had happened the night before the verdict was announced.


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[Assistant] It had been written by a juror named Adrian, the youngest of the four who had helped conduct the seance that night. He felt guilty ever since it had happened, saying, to me, this was a miscarriage of justice. I thought to myself, this is someone's life we're dealing with. I was astonished that these grownup people had played this child's game.


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[Assistant] Word quickly spread about the Ouija board jurors in the press and the courts overturned the conviction. A mistrial was declared and now the whole process had to be started over one more time with a brand new jury.


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[Assistant] When it was finally over, justice won out. Stephen Young was found guilty once again. And this time, no witnesses had to be summoned from the afterlife.


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


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


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[Assistant] I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts 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.


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[Assistant] 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] It was the sort of story that all of us live for. In 1967, a building in Chicago needed to go through some renovations and at some point in the project, the plumber told the owner that an entire brick wall had to come down.


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[Assistant] Now, if you love uncovering mysteries, those are practically magic words. Think how many times a lost burial has been located in unexpected places. Like the time in 2012, when archaeologists found the lost remains of King Richard III under a parking lot. But this plumber found something else entirely.


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[Assistant] It was a motorcycle, and not just any motorcycle, but a one-of-a-kind, hand-built masterpiece by a guy named Richard Traub back in 1917. It had features that were years ahead of the time, and when experts got their hands on it upon its removal from the wall in 1967, they were blown away.


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[Assistant] The story about how it ended up behind the bricks, if you're curious, is the stuff of legend. Apparently the previous owners of that home had a teenage son.


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[Assistant] And that son was assumed to have stolen the motorcycle. After finding out about his dirty deed, the boy's parents forced him to enlist in the army, which is why he died in Europe during World War I. It's a journey, for sure.


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[Assistant] But the thing I love about this story is that it's one more in a long line of items we've discovered that are connected to something humans have been passionate about for thousands of years. Transportation.


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[Assistant] From horses to horsepower and everything in between, people love to get around, and the list of options is pretty staggering.


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[Assistant] Context is always important. Without context, a story has less power, less punch. Think of it like a massive gothic cathedral. Yes, the spires are tall and ornate and majestic, but without all those supporting buttresses and columns, it just wouldn't have been possible. And today's story needs some of that same sort of groundwork.


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[Assistant] Painting with a very wide brush, the history of the UK is filled with some dark stuff. And while there are a lot of people to blame for that, right up there in the top five would be King James VI of Scotland. Why? Because he was violently opposed to anything that smelled like witchcraft.


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[Assistant] Once the people were stirred up into a frenzy, he used his power to punish anyone who got called out for those made-up things. As king, he was a brutal advocate of bloody witch trials. But at least he was only King of Scotland, right?


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[Assistant] Well, all of that changed in 1603, when England's Queen Elizabeth I died childless, passing the crown to James.


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[Assistant] And while there were more limits on his power as King of England, things like the Magna Carta and a much stronger parliament, there was also a religious community primed for something bigger to fear.


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[Assistant] And James, along with his demonology, delivered.


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[Assistant] So there's your context. A powerful ruler instilling fear in everyone in the land and using superstition and folklore as a weapon. Which leads me to one of the most common elements of many stories that popped up in the witch trials that followed. This idea that witches could be anywhere, and they could go anywhere.


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[Assistant] Where might a witch go? Well, it would have to be a really evil place, right? So most of the stories talked about accused witches traveling hundreds of miles away to secret locations to have a dance party with the devil. A gathering they called a Sabbath. And how did they get there? Well, that's the question, isn't it?


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[Assistant] Broomsticks had been an object of folklore for a very long time. In 1324, for example, an Irish woman named Alice Keidler was accused of using a broom to literally sweep the good fortune away from her neighbor's porch.


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[Assistant] Investigators searched her house and wouldn't you know it, she did in fact own a broom. Crazy, right? And they claimed that they also found a liquid that she used to give it magical powers. A pip of ointment, they wrote, upon which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin.


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[Assistant] Poor Alice ended up fleeing the country to escape punishment.


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[Assistant] A little over a century later, just outside of Paris, a priest was thrown in prison for the rest of his life. His crime? Well, on paper, he was accused of flying around the area on a broom. But in reality, his real crime was speaking out against his own church's obsession with witch trials. Ironic, yes, but also deeply sad and troubling.


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[Assistant] After that the notion appeared more and more in witch trial confessions. By the early 1500s it was so common that it was just the way people assumed all witches traveled. Sometimes they flew over the village and other times they flew up or down chimneys or through keyholes. But the broom was always a part of the story.


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[Assistant] Today we know the truth. A lot of the stories about flying witches involved a broom because it was a common household object and easy to assume to be in the possession of the accused. But where there are rules, there are also exceptions. Because apparently, one didn't always need a broomstick to get around.


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[Assistant] Clearly the broomstick is the gold standard for which transportation. I don't think there's any question about that. One trip through the Halloween Isle in your local Target should make that truth self-evident.


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[Assistant] But it wasn't the only option available to witches with a taste for road trips. If you took a survey of European witch trial documents, you'll find a whole assortment of bewitched objects that these folks were accused of flying on. Horses and goats were common, as were other types of sticks. Heck, there are even stories of witches flying on sleeping men.