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[Assistant] Their hope was to live out their lives, remembering their lost boy, and eventually be laid to rest beside him. It's romantic and powerful, but for the Morgans it proved to be too difficult of a road to walk, and honestly it's hard to blame them. So not long after his burial, the family moved away, leaving the grave of James behind.


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[Assistant] The Morgans aren't entirely gone. Obviously their story is still whispered today, but it goes beyond scraps of folklore. Because over the years, visitors to the cemetery have reported the most unusual experience.


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[Assistant] Many have seen the shape of someone running in and out of the tombstones near the old oak, sometimes scrambling up the tree to vanish into the branches. And more than a few concerned adults have approached, offering a warning to be careful, to be safe. Because, after all, climbing can be a dangerous activity.


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[Assistant] And what they've claimed to find there, up in the branches, always seems to surprise them. Although knowing what you know now, I have to imagine it's more than a little expected. They claim the figure in the tree was that of a little boy. A boy. Dressed in old-fashioned clothing.


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[Assistant] A city as old as St. Augustine will never suffer from a lack of story. Honestly, the hardest part of taking you on today's journey was deciding which tales to visit and which ones to skip. If I had my way, we'd still be here hours later, exploring them all.


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[Assistant] But I've saved one more to wrap up this episode. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.


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[Assistant] When we talk about the Puritans, we often talk about freedom. After all, they were a group of settlers who left a country that hated them for their religious beliefs and came to the New World looking for a better life. But they weren't the first to do that.


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[Assistant] Decades before their arrival in the early 1560s, it was the French who crossed the Atlantic. They might not have been running from persecution, but when they set up Fort Caroline at the place where the St. John's River spilt out into the Atlantic, they certainly intended to be a safe haven for Protestant Christians.


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[Assistant] Life for those early settlers was rough for the first year or so. Much like the legendary stories about the Puritans, these early French colonists wouldn't have survived without the generosity and support of the local Timucua people. But their biggest threat came in 1565, shortly after the arrival of Spanish Captain Menendez.


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[Assistant] Now we've already talked about how Menendez established the settlement of St. Augustine, named for the feast day by the saint of the same name, but that's not the first thing he did, because his primary orders hadn't been to settle new land.


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[Assistant] It had been to defend the territory from French invasion. So after crossing the Atlantic, Menendez first attacked Fort Caroline.


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[Assistant] It didn't go very well for him though. The French had received strong reinforcements just a couple of weeks earlier and they were able to repel the Spanish assault. It was only after Menendez retreated that he sailed about 40 miles south and set up a fort of his own. But his failure would follow him.


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[Assistant] After taking a few weeks to gather their strength, the French sailed out of Fort Caroline and approached the freshly minted village of St. Augustine. But do you remember how I discussed the dangers of the coastline there near the city?


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[Assistant] Yeah, well, it seems the French weren't too knowledgeable about that, and got caught in a massive storm that prevented them from attacking. In fact, most of their fleet sank, and Menendez saw an opportunity.


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[Assistant] Leaving some defenders behind in St. Augustine, he marched most of his troops north to Fort Caroline, where they quickly overran its defenses.


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[Assistant] And this is where the true character of Menendez was revealed. While he took roughly 50 women and children prisoner, the rest of the inhabitants of the fort were rounded up and executed. They were, after all, enemies of the church, being protestants. In his mind, at least.


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[Assistant] With the threat of Fort Caroline removed, Menendez and his troops marched back south to St. Augustine, but headed deeper south along the coast a few days later. It seems the storm that had prevented the French from attacking them had dashed their ships on the rocks, but there were some reports of survivors, and he wanted to catch them.


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[Assistant] The French found them first and flew the white flag of surrender. Menendez, however, wasn't the sort of person to offer peace to Protestants. Immediately after taking them into custody, he had them slaughtered, except for the few who confessed to secretly being Catholic.


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[Assistant] From that day forward, the tragedy was referred to as the Matanzas, the Spanish word for massacre. Nearly two centuries later, in an effort to better their defenses in the area, the Spanish built a fort there, and named it after the slaughter that took place there in 1565.


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[Assistant] Fort Matanzas still stands today, a reminder of the cruelty of Captain Menendez.


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[Assistant] It seems that St. Augustine didn't have the best of starts, which might explain much of the darkness that followed. Just about everywhere you look today, the city's secrets lay hidden just beneath the surface. And after all these years, the true history of the city has made something abundantly clear.


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[Assistant] If there really are ghosts in the ground of St. Augustine, we certainly know who put them there.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research by Ali Steed and music by Chad Lawson. 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 a bit more Lore in your life.


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[Assistant] I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you would enjoy. My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical. You can learn more about all of these 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] Everyone knows a little bit about Pompeii. It's probably one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world, helped along by its dramatic origin story. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, it buried the city in ash and pumice.


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[Assistant] When it was finished, over a thousand people were dead. But the ash also created a time capsule of their life there, preserving much of the city.


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[Assistant] And since the middle of the 18th century, experts have been carefully digging through the layers to uncover that past. They've learned a lot about the city over the years, but one of my favorite things is also one of the least well known.


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[Assistant] Scattered all throughout the city are over 80 locations known as Thermopylaea, a word that means place where hot things are sold.


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[Assistant] They are the ancient Roman equivalent of the modern takeout restaurant, and you would know that the moment you stepped inside. Their brightly painted walls with images of the different foods they sold almost look like ancestors of an Austin, Texas food truck.


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[Assistant] We think we know a place, and then another piece of the puzzle gets added in, and all of a sudden it becomes something else entirely. Pompeii wasn't a boring city with stiff Romans walking around like worker drones.


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[Assistant] It was a town full of life, graffiti, in places where anyone with a few coins could buy a hot plate of what Anthony Bourdain called street meats.


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[Assistant] Which is why I love the American state of Nevada. Because it's a place that most people think they know. Mention Nevada to most people and they'll talk about the Vegas Strip. Slot machines, neon signs, fake pyramids and all-you-can-eat buffets. And sure, that's a part of Nevada. But it's not the entire picture.


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[Assistant] The larger story is much older than the lights of Vegas, and much more dangerous than the risk of sunburn or dehydration. It's a tale filled with big dreams, bigger losses, and more than a few disasters along the way.


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[Assistant] Yes, you may think you know Nevada, but right around the corner is something wholly unexpected and downright terrifying.


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[Assistant] We can't talk about Nevada without discussing the people who have lived there for thousands of years. Their words are all across the landscape and built right into county and city names that people still use today.


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[Assistant] While there are many communities and groups in Nevada, the four major tribes of Native Americans are the Washoe, the Northern Paiute, the Southern Paiute, and the Western Shoshone. Just about all of them have lived there for over 10,000 years, and there's a deep connection between them and the land.


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[Assistant] But since the arrival of Europeans, life has been different for them. Centuries ago, the region we know of today as Nevada was part of the Spanish Empire, called New Spain. In 1804, it was pulled into a province called Alta California, which itself became part of Mexico following the Mexican War of Independence in 1821.


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[Assistant] It was basically a revolving door of controlling governments that wrapped up in 1848 with the Mexican-American War and then finally ended with official statehood two decades later. But what unified people for a very long time there wasn't a political idea or allegiance to an empire. It was silver. And all that started in 1859.


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[Assistant] That was the year that the Comstock Load was discovered. When the ore deposit was located beneath Mount Davidson, along the western edge of Nevada, it signaled a new era for the territory. All you need to do is look at a map of the area, just to the east of Washoe Lake, and you'll see what I mean. Place names like Gold Hill and Silver City pretty much telegraph the plot, don't they?


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[Assistant] Over the decade that followed, a lot of things changed in the area. The silver output from the Comstock load was so enormous that it justified building a new branch of the U.S. Mint in nearby Carson City.


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[Assistant] It's estimated that over the two decades that followed the discovery, close to $320 million worth of silver was extracted, worth roughly $8 billion today.


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[Assistant] I could throw a lot more numbers at you, but they would all start to blur together. Just know this. The Comstock load changed the region. Like gold rushes to Alaska or California, it attracted huge numbers of hopeful people, all looking for their lucky break.


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[Assistant] In fact, in the decade that followed the discovery of silver, the population of Nevada increased 500%. To care for their needs, dozens of boom towns rose up out of the dirt. And one of those places was Virginia City.


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[Assistant] With maybe 900 people living there today, you might not believe it was possible, but by the mid 1870s, it was the largest city in the state with over 25,000 people.


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[Assistant] The potential for getting rich and the buzz of life around those looking for it was attractive to a lot of people. In fact, one writer settled down there for a number of years and wrote articles for the local paper, the Virginia City Daily Territorial Enterprise.


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[Assistant] While he would write under a pseudonym for much of his career, Virginia City was the first place he did so. And his pen name? Mark Twain.


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[Assistant] But with larger groups of people come much bigger risks. And in 1875, Virginia City had a bad role.


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[Assistant] On October 25th of that year, a fire started in a lodging house in the early morning hours. The fire department was called in, but by the time they arrived, the blaze was too big to stop. And it didn't help that the winds shifted unexpectedly, which forced the fire deeper into the city.


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[Assistant] In a city filled with wooden buildings, I think you can imagine just how devastating this could be. One report from the era claimed that the streets were filled with people scrambling for safety. Many were dragging heavy trunks filled with their most valuable possessions.


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[Assistant] Some were even pulling bundles of property wrapped up inside bedsheets, all in an effort to get away from the fire.


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[Assistant] When the smoke cleared, there was both good and bad news. Thousands of people had been left homeless, and businesses had been left in ruin. Everything from houses and churches to banks and breweries. It was a disaster on a massive scale, with estimates putting the cost at roughly $300 million in modern currency. But the silver lining, no pun intended, I swear.


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[Assistant] Was that there were only two known fatalities. And that meant that there were plenty of hands to help rebuild. And Virginia City did just that. It had to, after all. It was a home and economic hub to thousands of workers in the mining industry.


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[Assistant] But it was far from the only disaster to take place in Nevada.


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[Assistant] Over the years that people have been settling and exploiting the land there, a good number of tragedies have haunted them.


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[Assistant] Like shadows that followed communities wherever they went. And quite a few of them, it seems, have left a permanent mark.


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[Assistant] Not all of the dangers in Virginia City were above ground. Remember, the very reason for the city's existence, as well as countless others in the area, was the promise of instant wealth hidden underground. And if there was one common language there, it was the language of mining.


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[Assistant] Now, it wasn't all silver mining, although that's what Nevada was known for. In fact, its official nickname is still the Silver State. But a good amount of gold, copper, and lead was also pulled out of the earth there. But one thing all of it had in common was the digging.


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[Assistant] To reach whatever valuable ore they were after, deep shafts were sunk into the ground. I probably don't need to tell you about how complex and dangerous these underground structures were, with thick wooden beams holding up tons of rock and all the ladders and elevators and track systems that passed through them.


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[Assistant] It's honestly a miracle anyone felt brave enough to venture down inside them. And there was certainly a lot to be afraid of.


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[Assistant] Some of the most common ways miners were injured or killed included cave-ins, falling down elevator shafts, and getting caught in explosions that were set off too early. But there was more to worry about than gravity and gunpowder.


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[Assistant] It wasn't uncommon for miners to break through into a pocket of scalding hot spring water, which would flood the tunnels and boil them alive.


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[Assistant] In fact, years after the silver rush was over, veteran miners would still be referred to by a curious nickname. Hot water plugs. A term that makes a lot more sense when you know the risks they took.


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[Assistant] But their biggest fear, hands down, was fire. And on April 7th of 1869, that nightmare became a reality at the Yellow Jacket Mine in Virginia City.


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[Assistant] That was the day that a fire broke out in an unattended part of the mine, allowing it to burn unnoticed for hours. By the time miners became aware of the smoke and flames, it was too late.


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[Assistant] Timber supports about 800 feet below the surface collapsed, taking tons of rock with it. Rescue efforts were fruitless due to clouds of poisonous gas and massive flames. They tried lowering large metal cages down into the shaft, hoping trapped miners would climb in and ride it safely back up.


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[Assistant] But that cage passed through the fire and gas, making it a special kind of death trap.


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[Assistant] According to reports of the incident, those flames burned for weeks. Workers tasked with fighting the fires tried everything they could to stop the blaze, but by the 20th of May, a month and a half after it had begun, they simply sealed the mine, hoping it would suffocate the flames.


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[Assistant] When it was all over, at least 35 bodies had been hauled back to the surface, with an untold number of others left trapped deep below.


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[Assistant] And while we can't visit those burned out shafts today, there is something close. The Gold Hill Hotel, which operated right on top of the mine.


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[Assistant] In fact, it's the oldest hotel in Nevada, being built in 1859, and it's still there today. And given its close proximity to such a deadly disaster, it's no wonder so many guests have reported unusual experiences there.


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[Assistant] Folks who have stayed in room number four at the Gold Hill Hotel have reported some very odd things. For some, the overwhelming scent of flowers has left them with visions of a funeral or memorial, as if the mourning for the victims of the tragedy had continued on. All these years later,


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[Assistant] They've witnessed lights that turn on and off on their own, and objects that move from one place in the room to another.


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[Assistant] Room number five also has its own smell, but guests there claim it reminds them of pipe tobacco or cigars. Visions of a mysterious figure have been so common there that staff and guests all refer to the spirit in room number five as William. Whether or not it's the ghost of a dead miner, well, I'll let you make up your own mind about that.


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[Assistant] Downstairs is a room known as the Miner's Lodge, located closest to the old closed-up mineshaft, and it's been home to many of the most unusual experiences by guests over the years. And then there's the Great Room, a common area where drinks are served and ghosts are witnessed on a regular basis.


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[Assistant] The most common report though is really just a complaint. Many guests over the years have been disturbed in their rooms by the sounds of children playing in the hallway outside their door. And if their patience is thin enough, some of those folks have picked up the phone and called down to the front desk to ask if they could put a stop to the noise.


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[Assistant] The staff is happy to help, of course, but occasionally there's nothing they can do other than to inform these unhappy callers that none of the guests in the hotel have children with them.


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[Assistant] He was an unlikely outsider. You would think that, in an area settled mostly by Danes, that a German man might fit in, but it seems that he didn't. And to everyone else in the western Nevada town of Genoa, he would always stay that way.


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[Assistant] If I'm honest, Adam's early life is a bit of a mystery. He shows up in Genoa in the spring of 1896 and, from what I can tell, took on a reputation as a troublemaker. How much of that was projected on him by a community that didn't want him around and how much was brought on by his own actions? Well, that's part of the mystery.


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[Assistant] But their assumptions about Adam came to a head on the night of November 25th, 1897. That was the evening that he was seated at a table in a local saloon, drunk out of his mind, when an acquaintance of his named Hans Anderson walked in and spotted him.


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[Assistant] Hans was young and popular. He was the sort of guy everyone loved. It might be even fair to say that the two men were opposites of each other. But they knew each other, most likely through work, and so Hans made a detour over to the older man's table.


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[Assistant] The stories say that they talked, but that their words quickly turned dark. One of them owed the other some money, and an argument broke out.


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[Assistant] The alcohol probably didn't help much either, but in the heat of their disagreement Adam pulled out his revolver and fired a shot straight into Anderson's chest.


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[Assistant] The rest was a blur. Adam was taken into custody and hauled off to the local jail, while Hans was carried to the saloon's back room for medical treatment. But it was too late. Less than two hours later, the young man was dead. And all of a sudden, Adam's crime had graduated from assault to murder.


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[Assistant] When he woke up in his jail cell the next morning, I'm sure his head was pounding. But there was a reporter standing just outside the bars. A gentleman from the Genoa Courier. And he had some questions for Adam.


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[Assistant] It doesn't seem like he was in a talking mood though, so it wouldn't be until a week later that the pair of men would get to chat.


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[Assistant] By then, Adam had learned of what had happened in the saloon.


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[Assistant] The reporter noted just how remorseful Adam was. He was heartbroken. That he had no memory of wanting to kill Hans Anderson or of planning anything. It was a stupid, deadly mistake, lubricated by the alcohol in his blood.


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[Assistant] The authorities though weren't interested in nuance. On December 2nd, official charges were filed. Adam Uber was guilty of first degree murder and would be held without bail until his sentence could be delivered. But the trouble was, there were a lot of people in town who weren't willing to wait that long.


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[Assistant] Mob justice wasn't an uncommon thing in those days, especially in Genoa. In fact, in the two decades between 1875 and 1895, at least eight criminals saw their legal trials cut short by angry locals.


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[Assistant] They had done it so often that they even had a favorite spot for their executions. The hanging tree, a large cottonwood tree in a grove near the Southern end of town.


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[Assistant] So on the night of December 7th, a similar mob appeared outside the town jail. The only men inside were Sheriff Brockless and Constable Gray, but the building was locked and easily defended should the need arise.


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[Assistant] Except, one of the members of the mob lied and said that he was an officer who had come there to drop off a new prisoner, and the men inside opened the door.


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[Assistant] Once in, the mob held the two lawmen at gunpoint while Adam Uber was pulled from his cell. They stripped him naked and then dragged him out into the cool night air, making their way to the hanging tree. And once they arrived, the noose was placed around his neck.


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[Assistant] The legend says that the mob gave Adam one last chance to pray to God, and so the frightened man bowed his head and closed his eyes. And as he did, they pulled hard on the rope, lifting him high up into the tree. But even though he was struggling for his life, he managed to spit out one final statement.


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[Assistant] Each and every one of the men standing around him was cursed, he said. Cursed through seven generations, in fact. They and their loved ones would never be safe and never enjoy peace. Suffering would follow them everywhere they went.


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[Assistant] After his death, the mob took turns abusing his body. Shots were fired, bones were broken, his eyes were clawed out. And then he was left on display until morning, when the full town could come and see what the mob really thought of killers and criminals.


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[Assistant] It was pure hypocrisy, of course. But people like that rarely understand irony.


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[Assistant] The trial, as you might imagine, was an insult to the justice system. A reward was offered for the capture of the members of the mob who were responsible, but it was half-hearted. The local papers published articles condemning the actions of the mob, of course.


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[Assistant] But they also published articles that supported it, proving that the only thing they really opposed was having a moral backbone.


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[Assistant] The authorities were even talked out of taking the case to trial on the pretense that it would be too expensive to bring charges against so many people. And besides, many of them were thought to be prominent business owners and politicians anyway, so really, what was the point?


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[Assistant] In the end, no legal actions were taken against the mob, despite the clear evidence and widespread knowledge of their identity.


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[Assistant] Yes, a grand jury was assembled to investigate the incident, but the jurors, most likely members of the mob itself, refused to bring any charges. Even the sheriff escaped punishment for so easily letting it all happen.


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[Assistant] And I wish I could tell you more. I wish there were better records with names and accusations or even lists of the evidence that was brushed aside. But for that, we would have to go to the Douglas County Courthouse where those sorts of things are kept.


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[Assistant] If there's one word that can be used to describe Nevada's past, it's danger.


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[Assistant] It was incredibly dangerous for the hopeful miners who flooded into the territory in search of riches and for the people who lived in those quickly built boom towns. And it was certainly dangerous, albeit in a very different way for the indigenous people who were displaced by those settlers.


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[Assistant] It seems that for a very long time, life in Nevada meant existing side by side with a danger that was ever present, whether those threats were caused by people or by the natural world around them. And for us today, over a century later,


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[Assistant] That's a challenge to properly understand, but the case can be made that life was much more risky back then. It certainly was for Adam Uber.


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[Assistant] Yes, he killed a man, and there should obviously be consequences for violent actions like that, whether or not alcohol was involved. But the mob took away his chance to be heard, and for justice to be handed out properly. So it's easy to understand why his last words were a condemnation against those who robbed him of that.


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[Assistant] But there are some who think that his tree-side speech wasn't actually the last time he spoke, because his curse seemed to hold some sort of supernatural power over the man who hanged him that cold December night in 1897.


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[Assistant] To prove it, they point out a long list of unusual events, and I thought I'd share a few of them with you to wrap things up.


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[Assistant] One of the leaders of the mob would later suffer an injury that involved having one of his own legs torn off. Where did the accident take place? Right beneath the hanging tree. And while another man from the mob managed to escape personal harm, he lost two of his own children to tragic events both within the same year.


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[Assistant] Another mob member decided it might be better to move away and settled on a ranch in Lovelock, about 130 miles to the northeast. But the curse eventually found him on the day that his daughter got caught in the gears of a horse-drawn water pump, right before his eyes.


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[Assistant] A number of men from the mob suffered from insomnia, and a few simply lost their minds, either because of what they had done or what they had witnessed. Two men in particular were said to have been placed in an institution where they spent the rest of their days. Others, it's said, died by suicide.


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[Assistant] But one story in particular stands out among the rest. Many years after the death of Adam Uber, a woman came forward who claimed that both her brother and her cousin had been present at his hanging. They too suffered for their actions and it brought an early death to both of them.


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[Assistant] But she knew of one other man who was part of the mob that night, an older German fellow, and it was his death that brought her out of silence to add one more piece to the puzzle.


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[Assistant] Those who were still in the room with his body claimed that it suddenly came back to life, drawing a deep breath and then sitting straight up in bed. And then, the dead man shouted,


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[Assistant] Hope you've enjoyed this brief tour through some of the darkest history of the Silver State. But we're not done quite yet. In fact, there are a few more tales I'd like to share with you. Stories that demonstrate just how attached the past still is to the buildings that are there. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.


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[Assistant] If there was a mining hot zone in Nevada, it was along the western edge of the state. It honestly makes a lot of sense. That border roughly follows the line of the mountains, with the foothills spilling into Nevada from the California side.


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[Assistant] And while Carson City and Virginia City are situated right in that neat little corner by Lake Tahoe, there's a lot more to see if you follow the borders south and east. That's where little boom towns like Tonapa and Goldfield were built over a century ago.


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[Assistant] And because they're still there, the stories from their past are still very much alive.


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[Assistant] In Tonopah, the silver came late, around 1900, but the promise of riches never gets old, and so people flocked to the town, which meant that there was a big need for places to stay. Thus, the Mitzpah Hotel, which opened its doors in 1908.


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[Assistant] And for a turn of the century hotel, the Mitzvah brought a lot of luxury to the table. It had electric lights all throughout the building, which was a huge plus, as well as steam heat for those cold nights and a nice elevator for guests. And they would need it too, since the hotel was the tallest building in Nevada when it was completed, at a whopping five stories tall.


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[Assistant] Now, there are a lot of stories about unusual experiences at the Mitzvah Hotel, all of which contribute to its reputation as one of the most haunted hotels in America. There are stories of invisible children tugging on the hands and clothing of guests. Sometimes they'll even approach staff and ask them what they're working on.


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[Assistant] There are the usual tales of disembodied voices, objects that move, and lights that turn on and off by themselves. There are even stories about bottles of liquor exploding at the bar. But if there's one ghost story that tourists come to experience firsthand, it's the tale of the Red Lady.


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[Assistant] It's said that she was the lover of a businessman who lived there at the hotel while traveling the area for work. According to the legend, this man kissed her goodbye one day before heading to the train station for a brief trip. But when his train was canceled, he returned back to the hotel only to find her in the arms of another man.


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[Assistant] They say that after the other man was sent away, the businessman and his lover had a heated argument. At some point she tried to run out of the room, and that was when he killed her right there in the hallway. It was the perfect mix of passion, betrayal, and tragedy that any ghost story needs to succeed.


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[Assistant] And succeed it has. To this day, guests and staff alike have reported sightings of a woman dressed in red, floating up and down the hallway, as if she's looking for a way out.


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[Assistant] A few miles south of town, on US Route 95, is another old boomtown, the town of Goldfield. As the name suggests, it was once the center for the mining of gold, and it lived up to its name.


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[Assistant] Between 1902 when the gold was discovered and 1918 when it stopped, it's estimated that the town was producing the modern equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars in ore, each and every year.


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[Assistant] And all that wealth meant that the place was attractive to newcomers. So, just like in Tonopah, a hotel was built. The Goldfield Hotel went up in 1908 and boasted over 150 rooms, along with all the luxuries people would expect. An elevator, electric lights, and the telephone.


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[Assistant] And for a while, life was really good there. The population topped out at over 20,000 residents, but started to decline around 1910.


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[Assistant] The death knell for Goldfield was probably an event in 1923. In July of that year, a fire broke out in town, most likely from a moonshine still that exploded. They say 25 blocks of the town went up in flames. Tons of businesses were lost. But somehow, the Goldfield Hotel survived.


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[Assistant] And it's still standing today, although it's seen better days, having shut down in 1945.


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[Assistant] Still, the stories told about the place paint quite the picture.


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[Assistant] There was, of course, the George Wingfield room, named after the hotel's first owner. Visitors there claimed that they've smelled his cigar smoke and have even found cigar ashes there.


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[Assistant] The gold room was said to have been home to a memorable spirit known as the stabber, who could be seen with a dangerous looking knife. Those who have witnessed the stabber said that he would throw himself at visitors, only to disappear just before making contact with their body.


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[Assistant] Room 109 was supposed to be the place where Wingfield kept his pregnant mistress locked away, to protect his reputation, I'm sure. And while it's said that she was later thrown to her death down the elevator shaft, many believe her spirit remained in that room, calling out for her baby.


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[Assistant] But that elevator shaft is featured in another story from the hotel's past. Many believe that George Wingfield made a lot of his money by stealing it from the miners who stayed at his hotel. And once he robbed them, he supposedly tossed them down the elevator shaft. Whether they were dead or alive at the time isn't known.


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[Assistant] Of course, legends aren't always the same as truth. But in the 1980s, something happened that caused people to wonder. One of the owners of the hotel at the time, who had plans to restore and reopen the place, claimed that a rattling sound could be heard coming from the basement. So he went down to have a look.


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[Assistant] What he found though was a far cry from a failing elevator or noisy steam pipes. No, he found something altogether different and much more terrifying. Human remains.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research by Megan de Roche, and music by Chad Lawson. Lore is much more than just a podcast. There is a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more Lore in your life.


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[Assistant] I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy. My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical. You can learn more about all of those 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's really amazing what some people manage to find. For metal detector enthusiasts everywhere, that dream is usually coin shaped. Perhaps a nice round silver dollar, or a rare penny from the earliest days of the United States.


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[Assistant] But no one was prepared for what came out of the ground back in 2014. It was a number of small silver coins discovered under the grass in an orchard in Rhode Island.


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[Assistant] And more have been found elsewhere, including Massachusetts and Connecticut. But their origin story might be the most surprising thing of all.


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[Assistant] Back in 1695, an English pirate named Captain Henry Everie crossed paths with the wrong man.


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[Assistant] After sailing around South Africa and up its eastern coast, he spotted a ship in the Arabian Sea. It was a passenger ship carrying Muslim pilgrims home to India after a visit to Mecca, and Captain Everie and his crew brutalized and robbed them.


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[Assistant] In doing so, he made an enemy out of the Emperor of India, one of the most powerful rulers in the world at the time. And to avoid an international scandal, King William III of England also put a price on Avery's head.


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[Assistant] So the pirate and his crew made a run for it, first to the Bahamas, and then to the east coast of North America, where they ditched their ships and blended in with the settlers there. And if the coins are any indication, their escape worked.


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[Assistant] The most fascinating aspect of this story, though, isn't the discovery of Arabian coins in North America that predate the United States. It's the obsession historians have had with tracking down Captain Henry Everie. Because he was an outlaw that got away. A man who slipped through the net, thrown out by two powerful rulers.


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[Assistant] Everyone loves a good outlaw story. From the bandits of the Wild West to the tricksters of modern adventure films, there's something attractive about the bad characters. And our obsession with them has been going on for a lot longer than you might believe.


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[Assistant] So long, in fact, that many of the most legendary criminals throughout history have become archetypes of an entirely new kind of folklore. Because some of them even became heroes.


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[Assistant] The world has always had criminals. For as long as humans have been gathering in communities, there have been those rare individuals who violated the laws of the group.


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[Assistant] Nearly 4,000 years ago, a Babylonian king named Hammurabi published a set of laws, setting his rules into stone, along with the consequences for breaking them, demonstrating just how prevalent criminals were even then.


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[Assistant] But within the general world of criminals, the concept of the outlaw is unique and special.


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[Assistant] In simple terms, an outlaw is a person who operates outside the law on an ongoing basis. Back in the Roman era, to be branded an outlaw meant having all your legal rights and protections stripped from you, which meant that anyone could legally harm or kill you.


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[Assistant] Every now and then though, an outlaw came along who was different. Yes, they might have broken the law, but framed within the goal of bringing trouble and strife to the doors of those in power. And in doing so, they became something more than mere criminals. They became heroes.


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[Assistant] Historians and folklorists have nailed down a pretty simple list of qualities we can find in hero outlaw stories.


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[Assistant] Their tales almost always involve crimes that benefit the community, and their endings usually come at the hands of friends or insiders who betray them to the evil authorities. They have been cast as thieves, magicians, gallant warriors, and saints, and you've probably heard of more than a few of them.


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[Assistant] One of the earliest outlaws was a former Roman gladiator known as Spartacus, who lived about 2000 years ago. His crime was leading a rebellion against the Roman authorities, but he did so by freeing enslaved people and redistributing his plunder equally among his followers.


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[Assistant] In 1594, he tried to assassinate the emperor, but was captured before he could complete his mission.


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[Assistant] As punishment, his wife, child, and nearly two dozen other family members were all rounded up and executed.


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[Assistant] Goemon himself was reportedly boiled in a large tub of oil. Over the centuries, though, his legend has grown. His story has been featured in a number of traditional Kabuki plays and as a character in novels, television, manga, and films.


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[Assistant] If we're going to talk about outlaw heroes who become legends over time though, I think we can all agree that there are few more prominent than Robin Hood.


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[Assistant] Most people know the basics of his story. He was a criminal archer who lived in the woods with his band of merry men, dressed all in green, had a romance with Maid Marian, and constantly battled with his arch nemesis, the powerful Sheriff of Nottingham.


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[Assistant] But there's more to the legend of Robin Hood than that. The earliest version of his story in print dates back to 1377, in a poem written by William Langland. There are earlier mentions of similar sounding names, possibly as far back as the 1260s, but it's hard to prove any are THE Robin Hood.


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[Assistant] That's because Robin was a common nickname for men named Robert. So in a lot of ways, his name was sort of an everyman's title.


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[Assistant] And Robin Hood, of course, was the stereotypical outlaw hero. His best known quality was literally stealing from the rich to give to the poor. And ever since, those who do the same are typically referred to as the Robin Hood of X in their field.


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[Assistant] But in the early years of his legend, his story wasn't a good thing for officials in England.


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[Assistant] You see, they really didn't like the fact that people everywhere were falling in love with the idea of rebelling against authority. It set a bad example and it gave people courage where they might not have had it before. A good example of this tension can be found in some rules passed in Scotland in 1555.


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[Assistant] People there would gather for public festivities throughout the year, and many would arrive in costume. It seems that a large number of people enjoyed dressing up as Robin Hood and his band of loyal warriors, so the Scots Parliament banned them.


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[Assistant] Now, they claimed that the reason was because these individuals tended to cause trouble through drinking and fighting. But the punishment for the crime, actual banishment, seemed to be aiming at an even higher issue.


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[Assistant] They really just didn't want an outlaw to be treated like a hero. The fact that we are still obsessing over his legend all these centuries later though, makes it clear just how utterly they failed.


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[Assistant] Looking back, a lot of these characters from history were more of a hybrid of fact and fiction. Most of them were real people who did real things, but as the centuries ticked by, details and qualities were added on to the legend, turning them into something more.


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[Assistant] For many hero outlaws, those later additions were their most redeeming qualities, the crimes against the powers that be, for the benefit of the underrepresented.


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[Assistant] There, an outlaw was known as a Tory, a word that literally meant to pursue, because these criminals were wanted by the law. They acted as bandits and highwaymen, raiding the English in an effort to help the resistance.


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[Assistant] One early hero outlaw was a man named Redmond O'Hanlon. Born around 1640, he was the stereotypical gentleman robber, stealing from the wealthy and sharing his spoils with the less fortunate. But for him, a life of crime seems to have been personal.


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[Assistant] Ohanlin's family had been aristocrats, but had lost their estate when he was a child. You can imagine how that had an impact on young Redmond, seeing the English come and take everything away that his family owned. The fact that he turned to a life of crime against them almost feels like a superhero origin story.


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[Assistant] But O'Hanlon wouldn't hear of it. His family had been wronged and the English had to pay.


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[Assistant] True to most stories about heroic outlaws, Ohanlin's end came at the hand of an insider. An enormous bounty had been placed on his head, and one of his own gang of men got greedy. During a planned robbery on a group of traveling merchants, the entire group of bandits had hidden themselves in the trees along the road.


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[Assistant] But before they could attack, the traitor in their midst shot Ohanlin and left with his head as proof. A century later, another hero arrived on the scene.


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[Assistant] Donald O'Keefe was a highway robber mostly active in the 1740s in County Cork. His targets were the people the Irish hated most, the English Protestants. And just like every hero outlaw before him, O'Keefe shared his ill-gotten gains with his community, the Irish Catholics living in poverty under the English thumb.


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[Assistant] O'Keefe's betrayal story has a lot more detail than most. It's said that when he wasn't raiding the English, he was with his lover, a woman named Margaret Kelly.


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[Assistant] They would meet at his secret hideout in a cave overlooking the Blackwater River, where the authorities couldn't find them. But when Margaret heard about the bounty on his head, she reached out to the English and struck a deal.


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[Assistant] She arrived at the cave one day, just like she always had, and greeted O'Keefe with a passionate kiss.


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[Assistant] What the outlaw didn't know was that the English had placed riflemen on the river and were waiting for her to lure him out of the cave. But in their moment of passion, he discovered the letter from the crown, promising her reward, and quickly ran her through with his sword.


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[Assistant] As a youth, he was a prankster and a thief, but quickly grew in his skill and his reputation. By the early years of the 19th century, he was already whispered about as a hero of the everyday people, and there were countless stories describing his generosity, sharing the goods and money he stole with the people in his community who needed it most.


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[Assistant] His partner in crime was a man named Peddler Bond, who had previously been, surprise surprise, a peddler. But after an unusual encounter where Willie tried to rob the man and was beaten at his own game, the two paired up and began working together. And they became legendary for it.


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[Assistant] Yes, Brennan was a thief. He robbed people, and that was clearly illegal. But in the eyes of most Irish folk, as long as he was committing those crimes against the English, he was welcome and valuable. And they would do anything they could to support him, as one fun story illustrates perfectly.


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[Assistant] And then, looking up at the cautious barmaid, Willy sort of tilted his head to the side, looked her straight in the eyes, and said rather deliberately, Give me fire.


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[Assistant] It sounded like he was asking for a light for his pipe, but the barmaid caught the underlying meaning. She left for a moment, and when she returned it was with a loaded rifle hidden beneath her apron, which Willy used to make his escape.


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[Assistant] Not long after, Willie Brennan was captured, tried for his crimes, and then hanged as punishment. But while his life as an outlaw had come to an end, his legend has lived on. Because everyone loves telling stories of the people who are willing to stand up to oppression, no matter the methods or the risk.


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[Assistant] But I have one last story to share with you. Partly because it serves as the perfect demonstration of this type of folklore in action, but also due to its many thrills and chills. And proof of just how deadly an outlaw's reputation can truly be.


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[Assistant] John was a legend before he was even gone. And if we're honest, that might have been the problem. But let's start at the beginning, shall we?


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[Assistant] John was born in East London in 1702, but his carpenter father died early, leaving John's mother to care for him and his siblings. She did her best, but in the end, it meant that John had to get a job, which is why, at the far too early age of six, he was already toiling away in a workhouse.


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[Assistant] Now it should be easy to see why John would want out of there. Workhouses were sort of a live-in factory. Up to eight children would share a single bed and then start their 12-hour workday around 6am. The most schooling any of them received was maybe an hour each day. Their main purpose there was to work. To work hard and work fast.


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[Assistant] John lucked out though. A few years in he managed to land an apprenticeship to an old wool draper named William Kneebone. He was a kind old man who also employed John's mother.


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[Assistant] He might have been a family friend, or just someone trying to do the right thing. But he even took time to teach John to read and write, which was a huge advantage for someone of his social status.


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[Assistant] And John did alright. He earned a few nicknames around that time. Jack the Lad, Gentleman Jack, and Honest Jack, just to name a few.


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[Assistant] He was charming and had the sort of smile that would instantly put others at ease. But he was also ambitious and hungry for more. So in 1717, at the age of just 15 years old, he moved on and became an apprentice to a carpenter named, appropriately, Owen Wood.


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[Assistant] It wasn't long after that that he stumbled into the Black Lion, a local tavern on Drury Lane, and over his visits there he met a cast of unsavory characters, people who held jobs that were less than legal.


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[Assistant] Joseph Blue Skin Blake, who would become his trusted partner in crime. Elizabeth Lyon, his eventual lover. And Jonathan Wilde, a high-on-himself crime boss who secretly had connections to the London police as an informant.


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[Assistant] By 1723, John, now going by Jack, had ditched his apprenticeship in favor of easy money. That same year, Elizabeth stole a ring, and Jack showed up and broke her out of jail. Not long after, he himself was arrested for robbing an ale house and fencing the goods, and found himself in jail.


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[Assistant] But using an old razor he found, he managed to carve the ceiling out of his jail cell and escape.


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[Assistant] And that became the first of many. In May of 1723, Jack was arrested for stealing a gold watch that a man was stupidly holding up in the middle of a crowd. A few days later, some of his friends visited him and gave him the tools that he would use to file through his chains, remove an iron bar from the window, and then climb down using bedsheets. It was all enough to get people buzzing. Jack Shepard, it seems, was becoming a hero.


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[Assistant] His final escape was the stuff of legends. Rather than leaving London after his previous brush with the law, Jack Sheppard stuck around to keep working. Soon enough, he stole three watches from a watchmaker's shop and was again turned in by Jonathan Wilde.


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[Assistant] And the man who showed up to take him away was the same jailkeeper from Newgate that he had fooled just days before. Needless to say, the guy was angry.


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[Assistant] So when he got Jack back in jail, he took extra precautions.


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[Assistant] Two weeks later, Jack's run of luck finally came to an end.


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[Assistant] He was caught in a local pub, drunk out of his mind, wearing a silk suit that he had stolen from someone else. The authorities offered him a reduced sentence if he would just snitch on his partners, but he refused. So they put him back in jail. This time with a few more precautions.


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[Assistant] Jack was chained down to the floor of his jail cell and 300 pounds of iron weights were placed on the shackles to keep him from going anywhere.


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[Assistant] He also paid that same printer to hire a medical doctor and a wagon for the day of his execution.


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[Assistant] The idea was simple. It was common practice to allow a criminal to live if they survived the drop. Most saw it as an act of God or a divine intervention.


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[Assistant] So the wagon and the doctor would make that possible by whisking away his nearly dead body to a safe location where he could be revived. Then he and the printer would split the profits from the sale of his sure-to-be-a-best-seller biographical pamphlet.


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[Assistant] The hero outlaw is a complex character. Clearly, they've been part of folklore for a very long time. It might even be safe to include mythological characters like Loki on the list. People who broke the law, but did so in a way that made them larger than life. Heroes to the everyday person. Or a symbol to rally around.


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[Assistant] And those characters have become some of the most evergreen for storytellers. We still talk about Spartacus today, thousands of years later. And Robin Hood doesn't seem to ever get a break from books, TV, and film, despite being nearly six and a half centuries old.


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[Assistant] People love these stories. I know I do. And they show no sign of going away.


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[Assistant] Which is why the tale of Jack Shepard is so amazing. And yeah, I know it's not the most bloody or violent or dark story around, but it fully represents a key archetype of folklore, and one that's still just as relevant today as it was three centuries ago.


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[Assistant] It's said that over 30,000 people arrived to watch his execution at the Tyburn Tree Gallows. Maybe they were just there for the free show, to watch a random criminal hang for his misdeeds. But I think it's fair to assume that a good number of them were drawn by his name. Jack Shepherd, after all, was the hero outlaw of his day.


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[Assistant] So the guards left him hanging for a full 15 minutes, after which his body had stopped moving. And that was when the hired carriage and doctor made their move. They quickly approached the gallows to cut Jack down, cart him away, and resuscitate him. But something unpredictable happened instead.


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[Assistant] You see, the crowd assumed that the carriage and doctor were there for a different reason. Back then, the only bodies that could legally be used for dissection by medical students were those of executed criminals. So when they saw the carriage approaching, they freaked out. Jack was a hero, and no one was going to disrespect his body.


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[Assistant] In the end, the doctor couldn't reach him and Jack's elaborate and risky plan crumbled to pieces. His death remained final and his story came to an end. The reputation he had cultivated as a hero outlaw became the very thing that ensured his death.


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[Assistant] Oh, and that pamphlet that Jack had commissioned, the one that described his life and exploits so that no one would forget him, it was written by someone known for his use of the pen, a storyteller who was known to publish writings without his name attached.


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[Assistant] In fact, just five years earlier, he had published a novel about a shipwreck survivor and the adventures involved in being rescued. And it became a massive hit.


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[Assistant] So after the first edition that proclaimed the main character as also the author, he swapped out that name for his own. The author of Jack Shepherd's pamphlet,


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[Assistant] The world of Hero Outlaws is a fascinating one, and as we've learned today, it's full of so many colorful characters. From misty figures like Robin Hood to concrete criminals like Jack Shepard, hearing their stories is always fun and thrilling.


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[Assistant] But I have one more to share with you, although it doesn't take place in the British Isles. No, for this one, we'll have to travel around the globe. And if you stick around after this brief sponsor break, I'll tell you all about it.


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[Assistant] Edward was born around 1855 in the little town of Beveridge, about 25 miles north of the city of Melbourne in Australia. His father had been convicted of stealing a couple of pigs a few years prior back in Ireland and had been sentenced to life halfway around the world.


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[Assistant] It was there that his parents met and married. His mother Ellen came from a family with their own notorious reputation, which always seemed to draw the watchful eye of the law.


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[Assistant] But before Edward had even turned 11 years old, they all watched as his father was accused of theft once more, thrown in jail, and then drank himself to death after his release.


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[Assistant] One of the stories told about Edward's childhood was that when he was nine years old he managed to save another child who was drowning in the nearby river. That boy's mother gave Edward a green silk sash which he would go on to wear for the rest of his life. But those early heroics changed course after he got older.


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[Assistant] Around the age of 14, Edward met a man named Harry Powers, and the pair teamed up on small robberies. Both were arrested a number of times, but always managed to get off without punishment. But it was also around this time that Edward got tangled up in one of my favorite anecdotes about him.


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[Assistant] It seems that he had an argument with another man in town, and when they were done fighting, Edward sent the man's wife a nasty letter, along with a pair of cow testicles. This apparently got him thrown in jail, although it also created quite a buzz, as you might imagine.


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[Assistant] But it was in 1877, at the age of 22, that he really started to build his reputation.


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[Assistant] That was when he was pursued by police for stealing a horse and riding it while intoxicated. Sort of a Victorian DUI, I guess. That chase led him to hiding out in a boot shop where he got into a gunfight with the authorities. Somehow he managed to slip away though, and he used that freedom to keep on with his life of crime.


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[Assistant] The turning point in his career would probably be the incident at Stringing Bark Creek in 1878. Edward, now going by the nickname Ned, was on the run with his gang, being chased everywhere they went by two separate police groups. But one night they came upon one of these groups camped alongside a small stream and decided to make life difficult for them. No killing, just some good old-fashioned sabotage.


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[Assistant] Thanks to a new law called the Felons Apprehension Act, not only was he a murderer on the run, but anyone, law enforcement or citizens, could shoot him on sight. But that didn't stop him from robbing a few banks.


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[Assistant] During one of these robberies, it's said that he took hostages and entertained them for hours with his horsemanship. Honestly, how could you not love the guy?


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[Assistant] Despite a growing reward for Ned's capture and security being tightened all throughout the area, the police were still desperate to find him. They even started arresting known supporters of Ned's, holding them through the harvest season, which caused their crops and livelihood to fall to ruin.


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[Assistant] Ever the showman, Ned soon gave his supporters something to rally behind. During a robbery in the town of Jerilderie, he and his gang took more hostages inside a bank, where they gave everyone free drinks and burned all the mortgage deeds they could find.


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[Assistant] And while they were in town, he dropped a 56 page letter off at a printer with instructions to make copies and distribute it far and wide.


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[Assistant] It was just the Robin Hood sort of thing his reputation needed.


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[Assistant] What they didn't know was that four police officers were hidden inside the man's house at the time, and they witnessed the whole thing.


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[Assistant] Ned Kelly's final battle happened at the Glenrowan Inn. He and his gang had taken over 70 people hostage and had started plotting how they would derail the train that would be bringing in police reinforcements. But that plan fell apart, and the authorities arrived, ready for a fight.


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[Assistant] Ned Kelly was tried and found guilty of multiple counts of murder, and then sentenced to death by hanging. On November 1st of 1880 at the Melbourne jail, he took the final drop. He was just 25 years old at the time.


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[Assistant] But because of the power of folklore and the magical lure of hero outlaw characters, Ned Kelly has never really gone away. In fact, over the century and a half since his death, he's only grown in popularity. There have been countless publications about him over the years, as well as a good number of representations in other mediums.


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[Assistant] A century after his death as a criminal, Ned Kelly was featured on an Australian postage stamp. And when Sydney hosted the Olympics in 2000, part of their opening ceremony performance featured images of him.


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[Assistant] And that's what's utterly fascinating about Ned Kelly. Every hero outlaw had their draw. A magnetism and attractiveness that brought fame and admiration to what was, at the basic level, a life of crime.


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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] The killer had been waiting for the man to arrive. Abraham was a German immigrant in his mid-fifties who tended to sleep wherever he found work. He was also a trained blacksmith and had been helping out in the shop owned by Peter Lewis Jr. in the small town of Hyde Park, just north of Redding, Pennsylvania.


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[Assistant] On the night of June 8th of 1916, Abraham Fick returned home around 9pm after seeing some friends and walked through the shadows outside the blacksmith shop on his way to the barn where he slept. And that's when a figure stepped out of the darkness and brought the handle of an axe down hard upon his head. Abraham instantly collapsed.


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[Assistant] So when the woman who lived across the street woke up the following morning and looked out the window, Abraham Fick's body was easy to spot. The police were called, and moments after arriving to investigate, they found the killer sitting calmly inside the blacksmith shop and mumbling to himself about what he had done. It was the shop owner himself, Peter Leas.


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[Assistant] But the most terrifying aspect of his story isn't what he did or how he did it. It's why.


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[Assistant] According to newspaper accounts from that week, Peter had recently suffered a nervous breakdown and sought out the advice of a local man he referred to only as a charcoal burner. Today we would know that man as a practitioner of powwowing, a type of folk magic common among German immigrants in Pennsylvania at the time.


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[Assistant] Apparently, this healer told Peter that Abraham Fick had been plotting to murder him, and then gave him a book to help guide his decisions and keep him safe.


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[Assistant] In the end though, it seems that Peter found a solution on his own. To kill before he himself could be killed.


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[Assistant] When he was arrested though, that book was found in his pocket. And in the coming weeks, it would feature heavily in the news. Eventually, Peter would avoid prison altogether, instead being sent to a local asylum because of insanity, they claimed, caused by obsessively reading that book.


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[Assistant] And while it's hard to imagine one small object having that much of an impact on the mental state of a person, the story of Peter Lias highlights a belief that was all too common for centuries. Some books were more powerful than others.


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[Assistant] Today, most of us probably take it for granted, but thousands of years ago, the act of writing things down was revolutionary.


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[Assistant] Before, cultures had to pass their knowledge on through song and story, memorizing what they could and hoping that nothing would be forgotten.


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[Assistant] Writing changed all of that. It allowed one generation to pass its collective knowledge on to the next.


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[Assistant] All of a sudden, humans went from guarding what little they knew to using the writings of the past to learn and then grow beyond. Yes, they are just little characters on the page, but writing is so much more than that. It was our roadmap out of the past.


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[Assistant] But almost as soon as knowledge began to be compiled and saved, some people began to use that method for documenting something less mainstream than philosophy, theology, or history. They began to write about magic.


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[Assistant] In fact, according to Pliny the Elder, who wrote during the middle of the first century, the first person to have written down magic was a Persian astrologer named Austines.


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[Assistant] And Ostenes was special for a big reason. He accompanied the Persian King Xerxes the Great on his mission to conquer the Greek world. And while Persia lost that war, something that you can see fictional glimpses of in the hit film 300, the trip allowed Ostenes to spread his magical writings to a whole new region of the world.


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[Assistant] For many cultures, the very act of writing was considered magic. Among the Toba Batak people of northern Indonesia, their books of magic are known as pustaha.


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[Assistant] They are these amazing documents that can sometimes be up to 50 feet long before being folded accordion style and bound inside a cover. And they were only created by priests using sacred ink because it was the act of making them that made them powerful.


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[Assistant] On the other end of the spectrum though, many books have been considered magical not for their contents, but for their appearance. Despite everyone being taught not to judge a book by its cover, countless books through history have been considered powerful because they are large or bound in leather or have gilded edges.


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[Assistant] All of these books, though, fall into a category that most people have heard of, but very few understand. They are grimoires, books of knowledge and instruction centered around the magical arts.


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[Assistant] Grimoires aren't magical in and of themselves, but they are said to contain charms, instructions, and recipes for making things that provide supernatural help to desperate people.


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[Assistant] And it's also important to point out that while we don't exactly know where the term grimoire comes from, most scholars believe it's related to a French word for books written in Latin.


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[Assistant] And that's a big clue about the perception around these books. In a world where most people couldn't understand a single bit of Latin writing, flipping through them must have felt like exploring the notebook of a magician.


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[Assistant] Most grimoires contain the same sort of information, too. They were a how-to guide for crafting charms that could protect the user or help them achieve some of their more basic cravings, like sex, money, power, and finding objects they had lost but wanted back.


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[Assistant] They weren't books of spells in the Harry Potter sense, but more of a household reference guide for when life got difficult, which was just about every day for most people back then.


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[Assistant] It's also worth mentioning that during the century spanning the Middle Ages and the early modern period, most people couldn't even read these books. And the few who could were often clergy, thanks to the Catholic Church's reliance on Latin.


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[Assistant] So in the hands of the uneducated, a grimoire was more of a talisman. It represented magic simply by existing.


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[Assistant] Historian Owen Davies, hands down one of the world's leading experts on the history of grimoires, illustrates this with a small but powerful anecdote. For roughly a thousand years, an illuminated copy of the Christian Gospels was kept safely inside an abbey in Douro, a town in central Ireland.


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[Assistant] But in the 17th century, the abbey was shut down and the manuscript, known today as the Book of Duro, fell into private hands. And it was sometime after that when the book was taken out of storage and literally dunked in water. Why?


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[Assistant] Because local farmers were desperate to cure their sick cows, and they believed that the water would gain magical powers from contact with the holy book.


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[Assistant] As time went on though, grimoires became more and more associated with the occult world. So much so that the clergy who owned them found themselves at risk. During the various inquisitions of the time, a common charge was possession of books on black magic. And untold thousands of grimoires were burned or destroyed in the hunt for heresy.


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[Assistant] But that association between grimoires and clergy had another side effect.


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[Assistant] Thanks to the growing public awareness of these little instructional books, it became more and more important to justify their authority, to put a stamp of approval on them so that anyone, even those who couldn't read them, might understand just how significant they were.


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[Assistant] While magical writings were common all throughout the ancient world, it was the Hellenistic period when Egypt fell under the rule of the Greeks that those activities really took off. Because when the Egyptian priests began to speak and write in Greek, that meant a whole new world of magic had just opened up to the rest of the Greek world.


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[Assistant] For most grimoires, it all came down to packaging. And what better way to make one collection of magical writings stand out above all the others than by giving it a false origin story that sampled those ancient roots? If a good percentage of people out there couldn't read what was inside them, why not claim that these books were written by legendary figures from the past?


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[Assistant] First on that list was Moses, the Jewish prophet who led his people out of Egypt. In a lot of minds, Moses was a powerful magician. Just looking at the details of his story makes it easy to see why.


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[Assistant] Splitting the waters of the Red Sea, turning his staff into a snake, and communicating with God through a burning bush. All of it smacked of magic. So naturally, a number of grimoires took on his name.


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[Assistant] And there were a lot of them, too. The Key of Moses. The Secret Moon Book of Moses. The Archangelical Teaching of Moses. You get the idea. But the most common one was called the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses.


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[Assistant] Obviously it wasn't written by him, but that didn't matter to most people. And this book was wildly popular.


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[Assistant] One group of people that revered it were the German Hex Doctors of Pennsylvania. Remember the story of Peter Lias from the beginning of this episode? That book that was given to him by the charcoal burner was the sixth and seventh book of Moses. And a quick search of newspapers throughout the region in the late 1800s will net you hundreds of mentions of the book. People using it. People selling it. Honestly, it was everywhere.


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[Assistant] What did the book contain that made it so popular?


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[Assistant] Well, besides the name of Moses on the front, it was viewed by many as a guide for finding lost objects. Misplaced money, hidden treasure, and precious metals. If you wanted to find it, this grimoire was the most trusted how-to guide out there.


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[Assistant] Those who used it though claimed it was filled with power. Historian Owen Davies tells the story of one Pennsylvanian hex doctor who described reading it out loud for the first time. The man claimed that as he did so, his home filled with a flood of voices shouting his name, as if a host of people beyond the veil were calling out to him. When he closed it though, the voices stopped.


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[Assistant] But Moses wasn't the only person worthy of having his name on the front of a grimoire. For a lot of people over the centuries, if you were to repurpose one figure to represent wisdom and power, it would be the biblical King Solomon. The irony is that nowhere in the Bible is he portrayed as a magician.


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[Assistant] But honestly, when has irony ever stopped gullible people from swallowing a lie?


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[Assistant] What Solomon did have going for him was the rumor that he had written thousands of books.


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[Assistant] So when Grimoires began to appear with his name on them, it seemed to many as if those lost books had been found.


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[Assistant] What they contained though were entire fantasies designed to catch the eyes of people hungry for more magic.


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[Assistant] The Testament of Solomon, for example, was a manuscript that told the story of how demons bothered the workmen building the temple in Jerusalem. In its pages were diagrams and drawings that claimed to show exactly how Solomon defeated those demons.


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[Assistant] To a medieval reader, this book was a powerful tool because now they could control the forces of darkness as well.


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[Assistant] The most popular book associated with him was known as the Clavicula Salomonis or the Key of Solomon. It dates to about the 15th century and has more instructional material regarding spirits. How to bind them, how to summon them, or even to control them.


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[Assistant] It also has a healthy dose of help for those seeking to get rich or expand their love life.


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[Assistant] Naturally, texts like that proved immensely popular.


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[Assistant] There were others over the centuries as well. A number of books were attributed to a man named Saint Cyprian of Antioch, which detailed his magical education in Egypt before converting to Christianity. To this day, some people in Armenia still wear scrolls of Cyprian as charms around their necks, while others still recite prayers in his name.


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[Assistant] And then there is the Picatrix, which, despite how it sounds, is not a Pokémon character.


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[Assistant] Thought to have originated in Spain in the 11th century, the Picatrix was written by an Arabic scholar.


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[Assistant] After the book was translated into Latin a century later, its popularity exploded.


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[Assistant] And it's easy to see why. The Picatrix was essentially a how-to guide for making talismans. Physical charms that people would wear that were thought to have magical powers. But it also mixed in a healthy dose of astrology, astronomy, mathematics, and alchemy. Which illustrates something else that's important to point out.


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[Assistant] To many people, there was no wall separating magic and science.


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[Assistant] Yes, clergy were often viewed as possible magicians because of their familiarity with languages like Hebrew, Latin, and Greek, languages that looked to most people like occult symbols. But during the Middle Ages, those assumptions carried over to scientists as well. Because of that,


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[Assistant] One man's name has become more connected than most to the world of magical writing. And if the stories are true, there's a good reason why.


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[Assistant] His name was Michael Scott. No, I'm not about to pitch you my office reunion script. That was his real name. He was born in Scotland, sometime around 1175, and then traveled abroad for work and study. So, it makes sense that the world would come to know him as Michael the Scott, or just plain old Michael Scott.


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[Assistant] Scholars have made guesses for years about where Scott was educated. Some say Oxford, while others believe it might have been Durham. But in the end, these are all just theories. All we can say for sure is that he received an education that gave him the skills to read and write Latin, opening up the worlds of philosophy and science to him.


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[Assistant] And that's about all we know about his roots. The first time he actually shows up in the public record is in Spain in the year 1217 when he completed his translation of an Arabic book on astronomy known in English as On the Sphere by Al Petragius.


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[Assistant] It's also during his time in Spain that he's said to have made a prediction about his own death. Supposedly, a tiny stone would fall from the sky and strike him on the head.


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[Assistant] Prompting him to have a metal cap made, something he was said to wear every day after that.


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[Assistant] He then pops up in Italy in 1220, going on record, of all things, to settle a mathematical dispute between two neighbors. After that, more movements. A few years later, we find him connected to Pope Onarius III, which eventually led to a few church jobs back in England.


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[Assistant] But in 1227, he was back in Italy, and this time his powerful friend would be of the more worldly kind, the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II.


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[Assistant] Now, Frederick was an interesting guy. Despite the title of Holy Roman Emperor, he was publicly not a Christian. It was a position that earned him a reputation as an evil man, and that attracted all sorts of scandal and rumors. And fueling those flames was one clear fact. Frederick was a man of science.


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[Assistant] For example, Frederick actually brought Egyptian scholars to Italy to help him develop a way to incubate ostrich eggs using the heat of the sun. And he not only employed Michael Scott as his court astrologer, but also Leonardo Fibonacci, the famed mathematician who's responsible for just about every challenging math course you ever took in school.


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[Assistant] Frederick's court was a court of science, and in a time when science and magic occupied the same mental space for most people, that got the general public whispering. And it didn't help that Scott had trained in a place that was practically synonymous with magic. The Spanish city of Toledo.


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[Assistant] Toledo in the 12th century, for lack of a better analogy, was Hogwarts. Historian Owen Davies says it best. Clergy men seeking instruction found the liberal arts in Paris, the law in Bologna, medicine in Salerno, and demons in Toledo.


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[Assistant] The city and sorcery were so intertwined in people's minds that for a very long time, a common term for magic itself was Scientia Toletana, the knowledge of Toledo.


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[Assistant] And in a lot of ways, this was Michael Scott's alma mater. He might not have begun his formal education there, but it was certainly where he built his reputation.


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[Assistant] Thanks to the overlap of Arabic and European cultures, he was exposed to all sorts of fields of study that caused rumors. And it's easy to see why. If he had learned about things like astrology and natural philosophy, then surely he had also studied necromancy and demonology, right?


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[Assistant] The stories we have about Scott from his time in the court of Emperor Frederick II are dripping with magic. One tale explains that he had a passion for throwing elaborate dinner parties. It's said that he would frequently invite friends over for a meal, but when they arrived they would discover that no one was busy in the kitchen, leaving them to wonder where their meal would come from.


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[Assistant] That's when Scott would lead them into the dining room, where exotic dishes would all be waiting for them on the table. One by one he would point to a dish and explain where it came from.


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[Assistant] This one was from Paris, and this one here was from London, hinting that all of them had somehow been magically transported from those tables to his own.


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[Assistant] In another story, Scott hosted a large gathering on a hot, humid day, and the Emperor himself was there. Looking for relief, Frederick was said to have asked Scott if he could do something to cool everyone off.


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[Assistant] In response, the magician was said to have summoned a fierce rainstorm, which blew in suddenly, dropping the temperature and then vanished almost as quickly as it had arrived.


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[Assistant] Many of the legends that we have about Scott are centered around a grimoire that he carried with him, entitled The Book of Might.


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[Assistant] With the incantations it contained, he was able to summon familiars to help him perform tasks. Once upon being told to go to France and ask them to put an end to French piracy, he was said to have used the book to call up a demonic black horse, which carried him off into the sky.


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[Assistant] In the end, Scott is a frustrating character. He clearly existed, but so much of his life is still a mystery to us today. What we do know though is that he lived on that blurry line between science and magic, and left a trail of amazing stories in his wake.


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[Assistant] One of the benefits of working in the court of the Holy Roman Emperor meant that there were a lot of other educated people around.


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[Assistant] In 1236, the court poet Henry of Avranche recorded in one of his poems that Scott had recently passed away. And he makes sure we know who he's talking about by describing Scott as someone who revealed hidden secrets through the use of numbers and stars.


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[Assistant] But the most surprising thing about his death isn't that it was recorded, but how it happened in the first place. It's said that Scott was a pious man, but arrived to church one day just as the bell was being rung. Maybe he felt guilty for his late arrival, or perhaps it was something he did every time he attended, but he removed his cap as he entered the church. His metal cap.


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[Assistant] And that's the moment when the rope from the bell ringer brushed against a loose bit of masonry, knocking it free from the tower above.


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[Assistant] It might have been small, no bigger than a man's fist, but a fall from such a great height gave that tiny stone a chance to attain a lethal velocity. The stone landed directly on his bare head, killing him instantly, exactly as he had predicted years before.


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[Assistant] Knowledge is power. I know it's a phrase we've all heard once or twice in our lives, but it's often more true than we realize. The more we know, the more possibilities open up to us. And everyone wants to grow beyond the life they're living in some way, shape, or form.


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[Assistant] At the heart of the world of grimoires is the notion of unattainable knowledge buried within secrecy.


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[Assistant] I know it sounds like a convenient argument, but for a really long time the very fact that people could not understand these books was what convinced them that they were powerful and valuable. Surely, something so mysterious and esoteric must be hiding life-changing secrets.


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[Assistant] All you need to do is read the DaVinci Code to get a crash course in all of that. The written word, some say, can be a hiding place for secret knowledge. And anyone clever enough to tease it out might be able to rise above the rest. It's an attitude that hints at recognition of our human limitations.


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[Assistant] People have wondered for centuries exactly what might go wrong if someone played with the Pandora's box of magical writing. Book burnings, inquisitions, and social pressure have all been used to suppress interest in these books. After all, you can't believe something like that is dangerous without also believing it's true.


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[Assistant] But in doing so, they've missed something important. Grimoires were the sort of books that attracted lovers of learning across all areas of science and philosophy. And the sort of mental gymnastics and high-level translation work that was required to read them ended up equipping brilliant people with the tools to push society forward. And Michael Scott was one of them. The works of Aristotle are a great example.


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[Assistant] His surviving works span a wide assortment of topics, from politics and philosophy to physics and ethical studies. And if it wasn't for Michael Scott's translation of Aristotle's writings, medieval Europe wouldn't have had one of its cornerstones of knowledge.


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[Assistant] The irony is, after many long centuries, it was Scott's own writings that were in danger of vanishing forever.


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[Assistant] As recently as the 1930s, it had become almost impossible to read all of his work in one place. In fact, it was a common complaint among scholars of medieval history that someone should take the time to gather the few manuscripts that still existed.


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[Assistant] And compile them into a new critical edition.


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[Assistant] So a German scholar took up that challenge. His name was Hans Meyer and he gathered most of the remaining Scott manuscripts into his workspace to begin building that master edition. The writings of one of the most famous and infamous medieval scientists and magicians would finally have their chance to shine.


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[Assistant] The trouble was, Meyer had left Germany for the safety of London to do his work. Safety because Germany had fallen under the spell of a Nazi dictator, and war had broken out all across Europe. As far as Meyer was concerned, London was far enough away to stay out of danger. But he couldn't have been more wrong.


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[Assistant] In 1940, Nazi Germany began the Blitz, a bombing campaign against the United Kingdom. German bombers dropped their deadly cargo on cities and targets all across the country in hopes of destroying key military assets and the British morale. But there was one other casualty in all of that. Michael Scott.


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[Assistant] You see, in 1941, a bomb landed on the house that Hans Meyer was living and working in, killing the scholar, and destroying everything inside. Every single Scott manuscript that he had with him at the time was lost, including his own translations of those valuable documents.


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[Assistant] When his house was searched for survivors, all that was found were a couple of torn pages scattered on the floor. Of course, the search and rescue team didn't know what they were, and so they simply walked through the papers, leaving a shoe print on them as if they were nothing more than trash.


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[Assistant] In the end, that's the double-edged sword of the written word.


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[Assistant] Yes, it has allowed those who came before us to record all they know and believe, which could be handed down to the next generations. But it also puts that knowledge in a precarious situation. Whether it's recorded on stone, paper, or the latest in digital technology, nothing is ever permanent.


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[Assistant] Michael Scott certainly provides a unique glimpse into the world of grimoires, but he's far from the only one. Throughout the ages, countless colorful figures harnessed the power of those mysterious tomes, and in the process, left their own indelible mark on the pages of history.


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[Assistant] And if you stick around after this brief sponsor break, I'll tell you one more tale of magic and mayhem.


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[Assistant] I mean that in the most literal sense possible, though. She actually led a team of men who dug for gold. But there was so much more to Hannah Heatherly than just that.


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[Assistant] Hannah lived in the little village of Lidditz in central Pennsylvania toward the end of the 19th century. She was known as a healer and a wise woman and folks traveled from far and wide to seek out her services.


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[Assistant] It might be something as frightening as a sick child, or as benign as a lost wallet. But no matter what the people needed, they believed that Hannah Heatherly could help them with it.


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[Assistant] Hannah was a known practitioner of powwowing, that old Pennsylvania Dutch mixture of folk magic, religion, and homebrewed medicine. So it made sense for her to treat people with physical ailments. She was known to treat patients with epilepsy, nervousness, depression, and even St. Anthony's dance, a type of involuntary movement disorder.


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[Assistant] One newspaper article from March of 1979 described the essence of powwowing like this.


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[Assistant] It consists of blowing the breath over a wound or sore and repeating a mysteriously worded appeal or prayer.


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[Assistant] And these prayers were found inside one of the more recent additions to the list of grimoires, a book called The Long-Lost Friend.