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[Assistant] 34 years. 12 days for a billion? For a million seconds? 34 years. And guess how many? A trillion? Hold the fuck on here.


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[Assistant] I would have did it by now though. Well I guess not. When do you start to learn to count? When you're seven? I'd be close.


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[Assistant] Ricky made you look down there, Joel. I'm gonna sit here and count to it. Five thousand with Ricky. How come you, you said you counted to two thousand one time? Ricky, how come you did that? My fucking dad was pissed off. We got in a big fight. He was drunk. I maybe have stole his last drink of fucking rum and he punched me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Punched him back, he said, you go in that fucking room, you count to two thousand, don't come out until you're fucking done. And it took me a long time.


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[Assistant] Wow. How would he know that you did it, Ricky? Why wouldn't you just go in there for a bit and come out and say, alright, I did it? Fuck, Bubs. See? You're fucking smart. Wow. What the fuck is that thing on the fridge there?


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[Assistant] It's a picture of me, smoking a joint in front of a giant fucking weed palm tree. That's beautiful, Rick. Thanks. You know what, that's not that bad.


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[Assistant] We should auction that off. We should auction that off or something. We're not fucking auctioning off. It's going babies, Moe's fucking room. Just take a picture of it.


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[Assistant] You're also gonna grow up to be a bunch of fuckin' pussies and let's cry when they're 12 and 13. Get all your crying done when you're seven.


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[Assistant] Today's podcast is brought to you by Ricky's Parenting Book. That's a fucking good idea right there. Cause parents are fucked.


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[Assistant] You gotta stop with the fucking chips, man. We don't need chips, Rick.


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[Assistant] I got you some fucking Pogos, I burnt them, I'm sorry for that.


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[Assistant] At least I'm bringing something to the table. All you're bringing is your stolen fucking computer that you said, not swearing at Gabe, and we all know you stole it out of fucking...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I put them on, you know, you used to put your shoes on before you leave the store. And I thought I was bionic, so I started running.


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[Assistant] What's a good, what's a good London shot that we could go have? Is there anything specific to London? Absolutely.


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[Assistant] And wait for the announcement for when they're coming, coming over to Canada.


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[Assistant] Alright, Charlie Perp Boys podcast coming at you. It is episode 27? 28! 28!


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[Assistant] I don't know, I just fucked up. I knew for sure it was 28 but I said 27. Let's just get this going. Ricky!


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[Assistant] Barbecue sauce all over them. Fuckin' kidding me. Fuckin' having boys. Here, sit down, Recky. Oh look, there's your vape pen. Oh yea, okay, it's time to cuss.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You said you were gonna bandage it up and then you did that and then it was leaking so you put it in there. But you don't even have a cut on your hand. That's the weird part.


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[Assistant] Ricky, I put some peanuts in your underwear, but all this other stuff, like the snake and the...


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[Assistant] The show fucking, you're not the cleanest fucking person on earth, alright?


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[Assistant] A six foot rubber snake in your pants. So you're not touching? Well, I don't think it was in him, I think it was just...


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[Assistant] I don't know, I've never had this one before. Lick your lips, man. I wanna try the other type. I heard that helps the smoke come up better.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I've never seen that. Is that, look at that pre-cooked corn. Back of corn. What? What are you talking about? It's already cooked. I think. Where's this shit from, man?


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[Assistant] Huh? We're gonna call them. We're gonna have like phone, gas, there's people that, you know, send in their things and we pick some, we're gonna call them and talk. Alright. See if they have a question for us. This is a brand new...


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[Assistant] What's going on guys? Where's Buddy Van Doodle?


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[Assistant] No, that shit's not as exciting as, you know, jumping a buggy, almost killing yourself.


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[Assistant] See, that's a good rule, dickheads. That's what we should fucking- Ricky, I'm telling you, the only fucking thing we did was put some peanuts in your pants. I don't know how the snake got in there, and I don't know how the fucking other thing got taped to your- I don't know how any of it happened. I did the peanuts and that was it.


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[Assistant] We should fucking come to Inwood. I'd blast the shit out of some of those things over ramps.


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[Assistant] Oh yeaah, we could maybe get there. That'd be fuckin' cool man. Alright, well let's get on to the- Alright guys!


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[Assistant] James. Man, what the fuck is going on here? What the fuck's going on, James?


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[Assistant] What'd you do when you had your breakfast and you're going to work out? We thought you guys had the honey oil.


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[Assistant] We fucked up, okay man, take it easy, have a good workout. Well just wait now, does he have a question for us? You got a question for the trailer perp, boys?


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[Assistant] Did we, did we re-bacon last night? Or where did these fucking things come from? You bought that at the Irving. The man, the Mangina Bar. The what? Mangina Nanai Nozhiro. What is this called? Nanai Mo. Well, it's fucking delicious, isn't it? Mangina Bar. You stole this from the Irving.


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[Assistant] You just wasted our time and you wasted the people listening to this podcast time. So you can go fuck yourself, Connor. Have a good day, you prick. We're gonna put up a graphic. Go fuck yourself, Connor. Okay, fuck off. That was harsh. That wasn't, uh, well, it was wasted.


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[Assistant] Yeah, I dug up my ass. No, I definitely, I swear on everything that was not anywhere near my...


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[Assistant] Alright, okay, this is the Trailer Prep Boys, you got Julian, Bubbles and Ricky here. Ricky's not here, it's Randy. It's Ricky, he's just being a dick.


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[Assistant] Man, I've never fucking said Jeff is a- He is a big fan of Jeff, so I never put it together until right now, but- Jeff? You're obviously-


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[Assistant] Don't hang up on Jeff. Let's just get to the bottom of it. Don't hang up on him just because you're attracted to him. I'm not attracted to Jeff, man, okay? This is getting ridiculous. Hey, Jeff, do you-


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[Assistant] He, uh, he seems like he's a little more fucked up than before he left, but...


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[Assistant] He's done a lot of drugs in his day, I don't know, we just, I don't know. I think part of him's still down there. Yeaah, I think he's still down there.


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[Assistant] It's always March. Well, you're just like fucking Matt Huston. This year it's later. This year it's later because it's a jump year. Alright man. Thanks buddy. You take your easy.


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[Assistant] I'm not taking that back. Alright, we got another one. Man, like, are we just gonna fucking call people all day? I don't know, man. It's... I got dicks to watch. Do you want me to or no? What about Jeff Goldblum? I don't have his number, man. No, but do you think he's a dick because his name's Jeff?


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[Assistant] So look, we'll put the picture right up here. Yeah, okay. That movie scared the fuck out of me. Friend or Fuck Off. Who is it? Terminator. The real one? Yep. You mean the real one.


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[Assistant] Well, that's a good question. The actual Terminator. If, if you could be friends with Terminator. Arnold, Arnold? No, Terminator. Terminator. The robot Terminator.


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[Assistant] No, I'm not gonna be friends with that fucking thing. He's not a friendly person, he wants to fucking cut your nuts off.


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[Assistant] But, does it make more sense to tell Terminator to fuck off, or do you try to be nice to the fucking guy?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, next on this program, we have, pshh, Burt Reynolds. Burt Reynolds. Burt Reynolds! Where did that come from, man? Don't know. Attracted to him. I'm not attracted to Burt Reynolds.


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[Assistant] He wanted to be friends with me. I wonder if he could drive as good as he...


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[Assistant] So he can in the movies. Like smoking the bandit. He was like a fast cannonball run smoking the cocksucker driver.


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[Assistant] He can probably drive pretty good, Burt Reynolds. He's old now though, he wouldn't be able to. I wonder would he let you take a... Take Lonnie out on a date?


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[Assistant] What the fuck are you doing? What are you doing? Nothing. Show us the fucking phone.


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[Assistant] You're on Tinder! What the fuck is Tinder? You know what?


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[Assistant] It's like a banging app, basically. It's an app for doing it. Shut the fuck up right now. Put it to the left. That means no, that means... Oh yeaah. What are you, so, you're not gonna bang all these women. Well, I'm not, you don't...


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[Assistant] What's going on? I'm banging on Tinder. Get it?


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[Assistant] I've only swiped three or four thousand people so far. Three or four thousand people. Has anybody gotten back to you? Do you have a picture up there?


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[Assistant] I put a picture of me up there, but I didn't know, but he just got back to me. Not one person got back to you.


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[Assistant] Not yet, but I think somebody will eventually, I know. I'm just, if you do the math, eventually somebody's gonna say, hey, he looks pretty cool.


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[Assistant] Eventually somebody's gonna message me back. So what's the deal? You hook up with someone on Tinder, you take them, it's like a dating thing, you go on a date? Well, it depends on, you know. Can you just say, let's get it on? Apparently, that's what I've been saying. Alright.


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[Assistant] Seems pretty easy. I think eventually somebody's gonna get back to me on that thing.


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[Assistant] Well, you know, one in 5,000, if we- I mean, eventually somebody probably will. Eventually. There'll be one. That's all I need. Through the 5,000. One's all you need.


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[Assistant] Well, so was Abraham, but I mean obviously if he's bringing up Abe Lincoln, he's talking about fucking Abe Lincoln. He's talking about the hand. Who? The hand. The hand?


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[Assistant] The ham? Why? I don't know, maybe he was the guy that came up with the ham.


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[Assistant] What is the ham? What's the ham? Probably just like a Virginia ham or...


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[Assistant] He wasn't called The Ham, he didn't come up with The Ham. The Ham. Holy fuck, Ricky.


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[Assistant] President. President. If he was running today, I bet he would still win. He would beat the fucking hair off Donald Trump.


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[Assistant] Just the fact that he was back from the dead people be like, holy fuck. Vote for him. He can come back from the dead.


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[Assistant] But even if he's trying to save the place, save the fucking beard, put a suit on him, you know, make him look like he's normal. Then he started running. I bet she could still pull it off.


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[Assistant] I don't know much about that shit, but people are saying there's not a lot of good options for this time around. No, what I'm saying though, is if Abe Lincoln, who was already the president,


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[Assistant] There's these big boom boom machines now that can, one of them can just decimate the world. Handle it. Handle it, the ham. The ham.


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[Assistant] See, I don't know, man. There's a lot of shit going on, bubs. I wish they could just let the...


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[Assistant] Yeah, that's not gonna happen Ricky. That's the right name, right buddy? It could be Donald Trump. Donald Trump could be the president. Yeah. That's not real though, right?


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[Assistant] And you know, I think he's, I respect the guy because he's got a lot of money. Myself, I think he's doing a good job in business. Good entrepreneur. If he did, fucking do it.


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[Assistant] Alright, let's wrap this up, man. I gotta go take a nap. That shit's just fuckin', I just wanna sleep. I gotta finish my dishes.


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[Assistant] The other fucking thing that I did so that I don't sound as dumb is I actually prepared some things that we could talk about today.


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[Assistant] This one's still not that purple, so I'll leave that for a bit, and then I can only do half the drinking or half the smoking. That doesn't even make sense. I hope you didn't. Alright. And we're sponsored today by...


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[Assistant] Alright, I guess I am double fisting again. Hopefully I don't get too fucked up. So you wanna talk about some of my shit?


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[Assistant] Ah, see now I'm fucking getting fucked up again. I don't even know what the shit- Birds are gonna take over the world. What the fuck does that mean?


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[Assistant] I don't know, I'm gonna get baby helicopters in brackets. Baby helicopters?


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[Assistant] So last night I was pretty fucked up. Drunk and high, actually.


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[Assistant] Do you know of these baby helicopters that fucking everyone has now?


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[Assistant] Well, there's gotta be something small enough that I'm thinking, okay, birds know how to fly anyway, so if they were in there, they would fucking know how to probably work the small little helicopters. Something small is in there, what, fucking mice are doing it? Oh, mice are birds are flying drones.


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[Assistant] Okay, well, I didn't fucking know. Sorry guys, I didn't know that we were that smart and we created things you could fly like that. Fuck. I don't want, I don't want this shit. Ricky, you know what I- Oh no, we're fucking, we're doing this now. You're smoking that.


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[Assistant] And I'll tell you right now, it's fucking strong, because I was planning on smoking when we were done. Well here, I don't want this, son.


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[Assistant] I just had some. You do better. You fucking pussy. Pussy. Jesus Christ. Don't fuck yourself, I'll smell this.


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[Assistant] If I'm gonna get fucked up again and embarrass myself, then you should probably do the same.


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[Assistant] He's talking about artificial intelligence, so it's artificial, it's not even real intelligence.


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[Assistant] It's possi- I've seen those movies, it's pretty fucking hard to kill the machines.


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[Assistant] Alright, I fucked up the fucking bird drone baby helicopter thing I guess, but I'm glad we all know and all the people listening probably now know that that's the case. Alright, there's this other guy, Novak DJ Okovik.


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[Assistant] He's a tennis player and he's fucking pissed off because some fans were smoking fucking weed during his match.


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[Assistant] It's from a different country, so I'm not great at saying those type of names, but Novik DJ Okovic.


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[Assistant] I don't even like that guy. Well, he should be pissed when people smoke weed. Oh yea, exactly.


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[Assistant] Why was he pissed at people smoking weed? He said he was distracted, probably because he loves weed so much he couldn't fucking handle it, that he wasn't smoking it with them. Who is he? He's a tennis player, he's like the number one rag tennis player.


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[Assistant] You know what? I probably shouldn't have smoked that until after, but fuck it, let's just roll with it. Russia plans to burn foreign cheese. Okay, I have no idea what the fuck that is. Boys, maybe I shouldn't have wrote down these notes. Next time I write down these notes, I guess I shouldn't be fucked up.


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[Assistant] It says planes, I don't know. Anything popping up there? Burned cheese. Oh my fucking-


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[Assistant] You mean bacon? How do we get from fucking burning cheese to bacon? A food crematoria. Wow. They're really fucked up over there, man.


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[Assistant] I don't know. I rolled that for afterwards so it was a bit of honey oil with some finger hash and some kind of...


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[Assistant] What the fuck? Why? I hope they were not human eyeballs, I hope. Look at the guy.


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[Assistant] That was like the fifth or sixth time I caught my dad masturbating. He was doing that. Ray? Yea. Oh my god.


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[Assistant] Oh yea, a few times. He fucking gives her, too.


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[Assistant] Okay, but the sure and stone thing reminds me of the thing with this. Feed your bird, or what was it again?


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[Assistant] Get your bird hungry, or? Get your... bird... huh? That's the slow...


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[Assistant] Holy dog. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sharon Stonesbird was hungry in that movie. Cause he thinks it's gonna go... It's fucked up.


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[Assistant] Maybe she knows more than she's letting on. Maybe she may have.


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[Assistant] What's going on here? Uh, the Dragon's Den. I don't know if that means I wanna go in and fucking fight a dragon or... Dragon's Den. Dragon's Den? That's a TV show.


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[Assistant] See, here we go again. Fucking bone shaker, and whatever this one is, and fucking joints, and now I'm fucking talking silly. You're talking more than sillier.


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[Assistant] It's Weckerly. He is hand-tracked. There you go. There's nothing wrong with saying that. Doesn't mean we want to bang him.


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[Assistant] You want to do a threesome. You lose. No, I've never thought about that. Five thousand bucks would you do it? That's a lot of money. I don't know. Ten thousand. Let's not talk about this anymore.


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[Assistant] I'm not, no, I'm not anything. What I'm telling you is that what we just smoked is just making me be brutally honest.


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[Assistant] It's just a weird thing to say, man. Well, I guess I'm weird.


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[Assistant] And I'm dumb, is that what you think, dude? And I'm maybe a little bit drunk again, and I'm high. Is that what you think?


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[Assistant] Cause we're doing it for the cash. For pot-cast. For pot-cash.


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[Assistant] Podcast is okay, but podcast- What does it even fucking mean? Podcast.


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[Assistant] Like it's a pod, like a fuckin' pea, or a pod of whalefish, or... And then cast, like you're just castin'...


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[Assistant] It's gonna be in space to do that, like maybe on the moon.


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[Assistant] Oh, let's not do anymore of these unless we get a fucking guest. Fuck it.


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[Assistant] Well that's a character, Rick. Right, maybe he's a fucking cool guy to have on here though. Start showing us some knockout moves.


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[Assistant] She's awesome. She'd be a good guest though. Yeah, she could definitely suck some things back.


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[Assistant] Well, I just don't know what you're talking about. You know, beer. Joints. Beer. Delicious bone shaker beer. Take some more of that, will ya? Holy fuck, boys. I might have to shut this down. I got too fucked up again. Quickly.


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[Assistant] It was a post-show joint that got lit early.


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[Assistant] Talking. Feels like days. Maybe weeks. That'd be freaky. That'd be freaky. If we were on here for a week. A week?


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[Assistant] I learned that in the car. It was fucking cold one night. Had no kindling. Had a bag of Doritos. I sacrificed half the bag.


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[Assistant] I lit them on fire and started a fucking wicked little bonfire. What the Dorito?


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[Assistant] Is there a reason why you're fucking lighting my table on fire, man? There, man, I was watching it. Now you gotta eat it. Fuck that, here, you eat it. I'm not eating it.


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[Assistant] There you go, play with my little pilot. Play with what? Take a couple more of those boat shakers. Call it a day. Play with your pilot? What are you gonna do with that pilot, Ricky? I don't know. But he looks kinda cool right now. Maybe these eyeballs.


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[Assistant] So you're just shutting her down? I think I have to. I'm fucked again. I'm starting to sweat. Alright.


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[Assistant] I was writing that song last night, because I thought there were so many dumb songs that I could write a better one. And that was an original one there. The lilly lilly lilly chicken.


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[Assistant] It's just the type, that's what they call the people in Hawaii sometimes. Louies, isn't it? Louies.


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[Assistant] Chasing after him, then he turns around like, hey, what's that? Someone's calling me. And then you got him. And then you eat him? I haven't written the rest of the song yet, but we could have that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Eric was just four when his family packed up their life and moved across the world to America. Like a lot of people in the late 1800s, they were looking for a better life in a land that promised more opportunity. Heck, just fifteen years after Eric's family made the trip, my own German ancestors boarded a ship and did the same.


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[Assistant] Of course, travelers, settlers, and immigrants all carry some common things with them.


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[Assistant] Treasured belongings, necessary supplies, maybe a nest egg of some kind to fund their new adventure, but they also bring intangible elements with them as well, namely their hopes, dreams, loves, and fears.


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[Assistant] Eric's family first settled down in Wisconsin, where his dad worked as a rabbi. By 1887, though, they had moved to New York City. And it was there, just three years later, that Eric read about a French magician and stage performer named Jean-Eugène Robert. Eric was instantly hooked.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's a good thing too, because that hero worship of an illusionist eventually led to a direct imitation. Eric dropped his childhood nickname of Aerie in favor of Harry, and then added on an altered version of Robert's married surname, giving the world a name that few have not encountered. Harry Houdini.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I don't know about you, but I think a lot of us shared that same passion for magic in our own childhood. We might not have changed our name to reflect our interests, but we've all spent moments in front of the TV or computer screen, our mouths open in disbelief, as some new sleight of hand or illusion is pulled off before our very eyes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But if the pages of history and folklore are any indication, magic is a dangerous tool to play with.


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[Assistant] It's never just been a fantasy. Throughout the pages of history, the idea that people might have access to a more supernatural version of this world has always been an option.


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[Assistant] And I know, thanks to relatively modern books and films, magic has a special connotation for most of us. But there's more to it than bearded sages with glowing swords and a wooden staff.


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[Assistant] If you were to take a trip back in time, and somehow miraculously speak the language of ancient Greece, you would interact with some of the earliest believers in magic.


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[Assistant] Now, back then they broke magic into two distinct camps. First there was the natural stuff, focused on healing and medicine. And then there was the demonic magic, aimed at destruction and death. You know, harming other people, their crops, or their property.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Both categories, though, were part of religion. After all, magic was the realm of the gods. So playing in that sandbox meant participating in that divine space. What sort of magic were they practicing, you might ask? Well, buckle up, my friends, because this stuff is fun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] First, there's a massive collection of spells that was collected in the 700 years between the 2nd century BC and the 5th century AD.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of the inscriptions is a how-to guide for an invisibility spell. All you need is the eye of an ape that died a violent death and a rose. Rub those items with lily oil and then rub the mixture on your face and, as they say, Bob's your uncle. Just don't move from west to east or else you will cancel the spell and be revealed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There are spells for becoming immortal, for restraining your anger, and even gaining friends. Honestly, if you name it, there is an ancient Greek inscription that promises a magic power or result. And judging by Greek mythology, it's no wonder these folks believed that it was possible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hecate was one of the lesser members of the Greek pantheon, but she was known primarily as the goddess of magic and witchcraft. She usually took one of three forms, mother, magician, or maiden. But she's also one of the few deities with the power to enter and leave the underworld.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because of this, her followers tended to use amulets, magical tablets, and memorized curses. Now, despite what D&D and fantasy novels have taught us, amulets were not necklaces with giant gems in them. Usually they were little symbolic objects crafted from wood, bone, or stone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They could look like scarabs, the evil eye, horns, knots, and even genitalia. Because, you know, why not, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And magical tablets weren't iPads. No, these were little scraps of thin metal, typically lead, that had requests that were scratched or etched onto them.


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[Assistant] The person making one would write down their deepest wish or need, maybe a cry for help or even a curse against their enemy, and then that scrap would be folded in half and pierced with a nail before being tossed into a well or a grave. Why?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because those places were located closer to the gods.


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[Assistant] Speaking of enemies, another kind of magic was called a binding spell.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These were used to restrict or harm something in the realm of a person you hated, or who hated you. A person might use a spell to bankrupt their foe's business, or take a rival lover out of the game. There were even binding spells aimed at attorneys who had the power to defeat them in court.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the biggest brand of ancient Greek magic was what we might loosely categorize as medicine. You have to remember, folks back then didn't have the ability to jump into their car and drive to a highly trained physician, and then stop at the pharmacy on the way home with the pills or the cream that might bring them healing.


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[Assistant] Instead, they leaned heavily on the natural world. This might be why they viewed the line between magic and medicine as thin or even non-existent. If someone had the knowledge to harvest a certain herb and prepare it in a special way that brought you healing, you better believe that it was a service looked on as magical.


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[Assistant] Of course, it didn't help that doctors back then might also mutter magical incantations as they performed those services. And a great example of this can be found in The Odyssey by Homer.


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[Assistant] There's a scene in the story where the hero, Odysseus, is wounded by a massive angry wild boar. After his men kill the beast, they get their leader to someone who can help, the two sons of Autolichus, who heal Odysseus with a mixture of practical medicine and some spoken incantations.


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[Assistant] But there's one thing that seems to be missing from the ancient Greeks' attitude towards magic, and that's the tendency to make it illegal.


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[Assistant] It's not that there weren't people who hated it. Clearly anything that claimed to have the power to destroy crops or kill a loved one is something that a lot of people would have been afraid of. And they were. We simply don't have a massive list of criminal cases where magic played center stage.


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[Assistant] It usually entered the picture tangentially in court cases about theft or impiety, but magic itself wasn't a criminal obsession for the Greeks. The Romans, on the other hand, were a whole other story.


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[Assistant] Every culture has some nuance. Sometimes the differences are massive, and other times they are barely perceptible. So while ancient Greece and ancient Rome might feel and look the same inside our minds, it's important to remember that they approached some things very differently.


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[Assistant] Like I said a moment ago, court cases involving magic in ancient Greece were pretty rare.


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[Assistant] But almost from the start in Rome, things were different. Back in 450 BC, the rulers set up something called the Twelve Tablets. This was a list of laws that became the foundation for their entire legal system. And right there on the list were two laws about magic.


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[Assistant] First, it was illegal to create evil charms. You know, the stuff the Greeks thought of as demonic and destructive. For anyone curious, the Romans called that stuff Malum Carmen, and it didn't look too kindly on it.


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[Assistant] I'm not sure why they added that in, but some historians think it might have had something to do with basically trying to keep magic out of their food. But I do want to point out the larger underlying truth beneath these two laws. The Romans believed in the power of magic, which is why they felt the need to restrict its use.


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[Assistant] Now, Roman culture, if you've never heard this before, was sort of a sponge. They rolled across the known world and picked up cultural elements from all sorts of other people groups. So it's no surprise that Roman people pretty much carried the magical traditions of the Greeks into a new era.


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[Assistant] There's this one cursed tablet that I love so much that I want to quote it for you, because if you thought sports rivalries were a modern thing only, you were dead wrong.


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[Assistant] But the similarities continue. Roman boys were even given amulets to protect and bless them, in pretty much the same way that the Greeks did. If you're wondering, those usually took the form of a miniature penis dangling on a chain. But that sort of magic was overlooked by Roman law, which was much more obsessed with aggressive and dangerous stuff.


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[Assistant] For example, in the 2nd century BC, a guy with the amazing name of C. Furious Cressimus was taken to court by his neighbors.


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[Assistant] Why? Well, they saw that his crops were more fruitful and productive, and assumed that the guy was using magic to enhance his yield. But Mr. Furious brought the receipts.


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[Assistant] He showed up for his trial with all of his farm equipment and his workers. And when the court asked about the magic, he just sort of spread his arms wide and motioned toward all of his real world tools. This, he told them, is my magic.


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[Assistant] Which, come on, that's some pretty dark shade, right? Anyway, one more example from Rome's Attack on Magic, and this one is a bit less fun. There was a pretty common dislike toward fortune telling back then, mostly because the people in power often saw that sort of thing as an attempt to subvert their authority.


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[Assistant] Even though people were constantly going to the oracles for guidance and help, it came with some risk.


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[Assistant] Emperor Tiberius, who ruled about 2,000 years ago, had his own astrologer, a guy named Thrasyllus of Mendys. I mention that as proof that he believed in the power of those who claimed to predict the future. Which is why he became a paranoid authoritarian.


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[Assistant] Now, Tiberius didn't care for a lot of people, but one of his least favorites was Marcus Scribonius Libo, who seemed to have it all. Excellent lineage, a ton of wealth, and well-earned popularity and respect. But according to Roman historian Tacitus, he made the mistake of doing what everyone else around him was doing. He consulted an astrologer.


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[Assistant] There's a lot more to the story than that, but for the sake of brevity, let's just say that this accusation got Lebo into a lot of hot water with Tiberius. The Emperor had him put on trial, and under the heat of the spotlights, all of Lebo's friends turned against him.


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[Assistant] In the end, it wrecked him. Using the evil connotations of magic as a weapon, Tiberius essentially crushed his rival in the court of public opinion. Seeing no way out, Lebo took his own life, after which his possessions were seized by the state.


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[Assistant] Even in death he was attacked when he was denied some common funerary rites. And then, as if spitting on his grave, Tiberius even had the man's day of death declared a public holiday. A good life ruined by a jealous man. All thanks to the power of magic.


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[Assistant] Now, history hasn't preserved a first name for him, but because he was a writer of popular fiction, most people refer to him by the name of his best known character, Lucius. So, that's what I'll do here today.


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[Assistant] One quick note though, his novel called The Golden Ass is actually the only Latin work of its kind to survive into modern times intact.


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[Assistant] In it, a writer named Lucius goes on an adventure, messes around with magic, and ends up getting turned into, you guessed it, a donkey. Whether or not that's a bit of art imitating life, we shall see.


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[Assistant] Lucius Apuleius was well-educated, well-traveled, and mildly wealthy. He also belonged to a number of religious schools, going so far as to becoming a priest of Asclepius, and his interests drove him to travel all over the place.


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[Assistant] Sometime in the late 150s A.D., he found himself in the city of Ouya, the location of modern-day Tripoli in Libya. And as luck would have it, he bumped into an old college friend named Sasinus Pontianus. So, like you or I might do in that sort of situation, they got together to reminisce, catch up, and maybe share a drink.


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[Assistant] I don't know the exact details of their meeting, but it probably took place at Sasinus' home, because while he was there, Lucius caught a glimpse of his friend's mom and fell in love.


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[Assistant] Maybe it was a sort of Stacey's mom kind of moment, or perhaps there was a real intellectual connection there. We don't really know much more than that.


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[Assistant] Now, Sasinus' mom Prudentilla was a widow, maybe 50 years old and incredibly rich. Her dead husband had left her a vast fortune that included a bunch of houses, a large bank account, and even some agricultural businesses. She was seen as a level-headed and wise woman.


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[Assistant] So it was surprising when she fell just as hard for Lucius as he had for her. And the couple agreed to get married.


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[Assistant] Now, without getting too deep into the weeds here, Prudentilla's fortune was the target of another person. You see, she had two sons. One was that college buddy, Sasinus, but the other was Pontianus, who had just gotten married himself.


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[Assistant] And his new father-in-law felt that he had a claim on that family fortune through that marriage, which made Lucius a rival and a threat.


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[Assistant] You can probably see where this is going, right? That greedy father-in-law pulled together a bunch of others who stood to lose out if the wedding took place, and then all of them threw their weight behind stopping it. Pretty soon, rumors were flying, and they all had one salacious claim at their core.


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[Assistant] The only reason Lucius had managed to get Prudentilla to agree to marriage was through the use of magic.


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[Assistant] The final nail in Lucius' coffin was his old college pal, Secinus, the son of his new lady friend. His brother's father-in-law managed to get his devious fingers into him as well, turning Secinus against his friend and mom.


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[Assistant] It was all greedy and gold digging, polished up and hidden behind faux outrage over the rumor of magic.


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[Assistant] Now, love magic was certainly a thing back then. Potions and talismans were often sold with claims that they could improve a person's love life. In fact, some historians think that these potions might have worked by enhancing a woman's libido, causing her to make decisions that were less logical and more biological. But that's just a theory.


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[Assistant] It was enough of an argument, though, to get Lucius dragged into court. And then, after a bunch of legal back and forth, a new wrinkle appeared. Pontianus, the college friend's brother, suddenly died. And sure, he'd been sick and everyone knew that, but who did they blame? Lucius, of course. He and his magic had done the deed.


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[Assistant] The trial could have gone badly for him, but thanks to his skills as a public speaker and a philosopher, he managed to dismantle all of the charges against him. He even used his time in the spotlight to mock his accusers, calling them old-fashioned for their belief in wives' tales and superstitions.


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[Assistant] In the end, Lucius Epileus won the case. And we know this because rather than going to jail, he published his speeches from the trial in a pamphlet he called The Apologia.


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[Assistant] He did what all of our parents told us to do when we were kids. He turned lemons into lemonade and walked away from serious trouble without a scratch. And that, my friends, was the only magic he was guilty of.


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[Assistant] Like I said before, magic is attractive. Over the course of thousands of years, cultures have come and gone, but that shimmering thread has stuck around.


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[Assistant] Magic has empowered people, frightened people, and given them the courage to do things, both good and bad. And whether they were wearing phallic icons or little curse scrolls around their necks, all of them were really just expressing


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[Assistant] Hope that there was more to this life than the mundane. Hope that they had a chance to control the chaos. Hope that they could get ahead.


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[Assistant] And because hope never dies, the general belief in magic has stuck around as well.


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[Assistant] Sure, the times changed, empires rose and fell, but through it all there was always that glimmer of hope, expressed through superstition and folklore.


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[Assistant] Which brings me to Hypatia. Born around 350 AD, she was a brilliant, well-educated, intellectual woman who worked in the center of knowledge of the ancient world.


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[Assistant] Alexandria. And she was a teacher running a school for students from all over the known world, focusing on a new version of Platonic philosophy called Neoplatonism.


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[Assistant] Now, by the time she came around, the famous Library of Alexandria had already come and gone. But she was probably the last of a line of thinkers that had been made possible by that legendary collection.


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[Assistant] And she worked within a crossroads. The old world of intellectualism was being pushed aside in favor of the rise of a new, more dominant force. The Church.


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[Assistant] In the year 414, Hypatia got caught up in a religious battle in Alexandria. A Christian bishop named Cyril turned wildly anti-Semitic and closed down all of the synagogues in the city before stealing the possessions of all Jewish citizens and then running them out of town.


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[Assistant] So, another Christian, the governor of the city, sought advice from Hypatia in hopes of settling the matter peacefully and logically.


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[Assistant] Before her wise counsel, she was rewarded by being targeted by the supporters of that bishop. Rumors started to fly that she was using magic to meddle in church matters. They accused her of satanic affiliation and of bewitching the governor. And less than a year later, the rumor mills and hatred of magic led to tragedy.


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[Assistant] In March of 415 Hypatia was surrounded by an angry mob as she traveled through the city. They dragged her inside a nearby pagan temple that had been converted into a Christian church and then stripped her naked and beat her to death. After that, with hands covered in her blood,


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[Assistant] They dragged her dismembered corpse through the streets before burning her remains in front of a crowd


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[Assistant] Her crime had been advocating for the side of peace, and her only magic had been using her wisdom and intellectual powers to make it happen. And yet, in the eyes of her critics, all of it served as proof that she was nothing more than a demonic user of magic.


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[Assistant] I hope you enjoyed today's exploration of magic in the ancient world. From public acceptance to legal restrictions, our belief in the power of supernatural forces has always been around.


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[Assistant] And so too has a tendency to push against them. But that tug of war didn't stop in the Roman era. In fact, it stuck around a lot longer than anyone would have guessed, and I have one more story to tell you that proves it. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.


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[Assistant] Helen MacFarlane was, by all accounts, an unusual child. Born in 1897 in the Scottish market town of Stirling, she started early with behavior that her mother found to be embarrassing. Namely, the young girl would often make predictions that foretold of evil things to come.


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[Assistant] But like most kids back then, she grew up quickly. The outbreak of World War I drove her to work at the Dundee Royal Infirmary, and not long after that, in 1916, she met and married Henry Duncan. The couple would go on to have six children together.


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[Assistant] Henry wasn't like a lot of other people in Helen's life, though. Rather than disapproving of her paranormal interests, he actually encouraged them. Which is why, in the 1920s, she officially started to advertise herself as a professional medium. In fact, it was work that would take her all around the UK.


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[Assistant] The typical seance run by Helen would look a bit like this. Participants would gather in a dark room where Helen would arrive dressed all in black and place a blindfold on her head.


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[Assistant] Then, she would channel various spirits in front of these witnesses, and sometimes even produce physical proof through ectoplasm. Sort of a cheesecloth-like material that she would spit out onto the table.


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[Assistant] Now remember, she had a captive and willing audience. The Great War had left a lot of families in deep mourning. Grief was a constant struggle, and it caused an uptick in beliefs about the afterlife. As a result, her services as a person who claimed to be able to connect people to that other world were in high demand.


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[Assistant] By 1926, Helen had an entire, well-rehearsed act. One that included at least two spirit partners named Peggy and Albert who would speak through her. So, when she and Henry moved the family to Edinburgh, she made quite a splash. Heck, at one of those sessions, she's even reported to have conjured up the spirit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.


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[Assistant] Over the next decade, her reputation only continued to grow. But of course, the larger a presence one builds in society, the bigger a target they become.


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[Assistant] Soon, critics were knock, knock, knocking on Helen's door. In 1928, for example, a photographer named Harvey Metcalf showed up at one of her seances and snapped some photos. In them, it was clear that Helen's ectoplasm was nothing more than papier-mâché and torn-up bedsheets.


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[Assistant] In 1933, someone in a seance managed to reach out and grab Helen's spirit partner, Peggy, only to discover that the figure was just a dummy made out of stuffed clothing. This person reported Helen to the police, and she was convicted of the crime of fraudulent mediumship.


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[Assistant] Surprisingly though, none of this ended her career. In fact, her hardcore supporters ate it up.


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[Assistant] It was just the establishment trying to hide the truth, right? Which might be why legendary paranormal investigator Harry Price was sent in. He sat through a number of her seances and even subjected the medium to a pre-seance x-ray and, uh, some body cavity searches. And still, her popularity didn't waver.


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[Assistant] Not until late November of 1941, that is. That was the month that Helen held a seance in Portsmouth and claimed to hear from a sailor who had just died in the sinking of a battleship called the HMS Barham. When news of that revelation spread to the police, they started an investigation. Why?


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[Assistant] Because the barum was real and had actually sunk, but hadn't been announced to the public yet because of security concerns in the midst of World War II. In other words, Helen had just revealed state secrets and the authorities weren't too happy about it.


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[Assistant] By January of 1942, she had been arrested. Now, had this happened back in the 1600s, she probably would have been tried under the Witchcraft Act of 1603. Instead, she was tried under the more recent Witchcraft Act of 1735. Still, not an ideal position to be in.


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[Assistant] It took the jury less than 30 minutes to return a guilty verdict, resulting in a nine-month prison sentence for Helen. And because the Witchcraft Act would be repealed in 1951, historians believe that she became the last person ever to be tried under the 1735 version of the law.


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[Assistant] But magic is attractive, and so is fame. So she ignored the rules and kept at it. A decade later in 1956, police raided one of her illegal seances, and while they didn't find anything criminal taking place, the experience seemed to have frightened her deeply.


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[Assistant] The last person in England to be sent to prison for witchcraft.


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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.


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[Assistant] Don't like hearing the ads? We've got a solution for you. There is a paid version of Lore on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free. Plus, subscribers get weekly mini-episodes called Lore Bytes. It's a bargain for all of that ad-free storytelling and a great way to support the show and the team behind it.


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[Assistant] Lore is much more than just a podcast, though. There's the World of Lore three-book series, plus two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Learn more about all of that over at lorepodcast.com.


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[Assistant] You can also follow this show on threads, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. 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 had been installed to water this site years before, and usually did the job of keeping the grass green. But back in 2010, a drought hit the area, and the normal amount of water wasn't cutting it anymore.


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[Assistant] And this was Stonehenge we're talking about. People have a certain expectation for how it's supposed to look. An open field of green, dotted with tall imposing stone monuments, arranged in the shape of the letter C. At least, that was the assumption.


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[Assistant] But as the drought went on, the grass at the base of those stones turned brown.


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[Assistant] And so did other patches. Patches that seemed to complete the circle that the letter C had suggested. So for the next four years, a whole series of scans were made of the landscape surrounding the ancient monument. And guess what they discovered?


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[Assistant] Stonehenge was a much bigger sight than we could have ever imagined. The trouble was that all the evidence of that was buried beneath the surface. As the old adage says, appearances can be deceiving, and in the case of Stonehenge, looking beneath the surface has led to new, amazing discoveries.


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[Assistant] And it's a rule of thumb that clearly fits more than just archaeology. Our personal lives are deeper and more textured than a stranger might guess from just one short conversation.


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[Assistant] The whole field of investigative journalism basically uses that same idea as a mission statement digging deep into the unknown business of corporations and politicians. Because sometimes what's on the surface isn't the whole story.


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[Assistant] Johann was looking for a fresh start. Born in Germany in the 1790s, he spent his youth working as an apprentice to his father, a brewer. As a teenager, he even learned from others in the industry, and then set out to make a name for himself. And he failed.


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[Assistant] So in 1836, he boarded a ship and headed to America, leaving his wife and two sons behind until he was sure that he could support them. Two years later, he rolled into the Midwestern city of St. Louis and set up shop as a grocer. And along with everything else that he sold there in his shop, he offered something that was second nature for him to create. Beer.


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[Assistant] Now, St. Louis was a really good place to be if you were a brewer in the early 1800s. You see, a lot of Missouri is built on top of limestone caves, and those dark, subterranean cavities were really good at keeping beer at the perfect temperature for long-term storage, essential in the world before refrigeration. And Johann took full advantage of that.


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[Assistant] His homemade beer took off too. Maybe folks were tired of the typical English ales they had been stuck with for centuries. Perhaps the recipe, rumored to have been carried with him from Germany in 1836, was exceptionally tasty.


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[Assistant] It was probably a mix of both. Either way, pretty soon the grocery store was a lot less important than brewing enough beer to meet demand.


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[Assistant] By 1845, he had to move operations to a new location with more space, which included a massive cave.


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[Assistant] It was over 300 feet long and it's estimated that he was able to store over 3,000 wooden kegs down there. Each one able to fill about 165 glasses. Even my rough math skills tell me that that is a lot of beer.


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[Assistant] And look, I won't drag this out. Johann Lemp's business went from microbrewery to megabrewery almost overnight. Three years after the move, his son William made the trip from Germany to join the family business, and together they made a lot of money.


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[Assistant] When Johann Adam Lemp passed away in 1862, he died a very wealthy man. He was a millionaire many times over.


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[Assistant] More than that, he left behind a business that was only just getting started. Even bigger growth was on the horizon. For the company, as well as the family.


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[Assistant] William and his wife Julia would go on to have eight children together, including William Jr., officially called Billy in the family, in 1867. In 1876, William bought his father-in-law's mansion and moved the family in, turning it into a veritable American palace. And boy, did they make some improvements.


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[Assistant] Remember those caves? Well, the 33-room, limp mansion had them as well. Sure, it was already an opulent expression of wealth, but the visible structure was just the tip of an even more indulgent iceberg.


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[Assistant] Down below, the family installed both a theater and an auditorium. And as if that weren't enough, they also added a bowling alley and a heated swimming pool. Although, that last one is sometimes disputed.


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[Assistant] Along the way, the Lemp Brewery moved to a more modern facility, giving them the ability to produce more and more of their popular beers. Artificial refrigeration was installed at the brewery in 1878. In the 1890s, they went national, becoming the first beer in America to be available all across the country thanks to refrigerated train cars.


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[Assistant] The popularity of their beer radiated outward from St. Louis, especially their Falstaff Lager, named after the Shakespearean character who gave us the phrase, eat, drink, and be merry. As a result, the company ended up with distribution centers all over the place, like


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[Assistant] Canada, Mexico, Japan, England, multiple European countries, and even more locations in South America.


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[Assistant] All that professional expansion was mirrored in his personal life too. In 1897, William's daughter Hilda married a guy named Gustav Pabst.


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[Assistant] That passed. And then, two years later, Billy had his own wedding, marrying Lillian Handlin, the daughter of a wealthy railroad magnate. And Lillian was quite a unique individual.


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[Assistant] You see, she liked the color lavender, and she wore it often. Sorry, strike that, she wore it every single day. Hat, gloves, dress, shoes, all of it was lavender, all the time. It didn't matter what the weather was like, or what mood she was in. She just wanted to stay in that lavender haze.


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[Assistant] So, there you go. That's the Lemp family as of the year 1900. A massively successful brewing empire led by its founder's son, William. And orbiting William's business and personal supernova were his eight children and their spouses.


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[Assistant] But the highest of highs are always relative, often defined by just how low the lows can get. And for the Lemp family, those golden years were about to come to a devastating end. The light of that supernova was fading, and the shadows were about to move in.


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[Assistant] Different people handle life in different ways. Billy handled his explosive success by living like a king. A household full of staff, expensive carriages and clothing, and a never-ending stream of massive parties. All of this was totally normal in the eyes of Billy and Lillian.


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[Assistant] And with the extravagance came whispers of darker things. There was, for instance, the rumor that Billy fathered a son with one of the servants, or possibly even one of the sex workers from his many parties. A son, by the way, that everyone horribly referred to as the Monkey Face Boy because they said he was born with Down Syndrome.


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[Assistant] But money can't shield you from misfortune. In 1901, Billy's brother Frederick died of heart failure. Then in 1904, apparently unable to cope with Frederick's death, William Sr. took his own life in his bedroom inside Lemp Mansion with a .38 caliber revolver.


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[Assistant] It's said that Billy heard his father's gunshot and rushed upstairs to check on him, only to find the bedroom door locked from the inside, forcing him to kick it open. It had to have been a terrifying experience for him and everyone else in the family.


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[Assistant] In 1906, Billy's mother died after a battle with cancer, also inside the family mansion.


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[Assistant] And then in 1909, like a bridge collapsing under the stress of too much weight, Billy and Lillian headed to divorce court. It was a breakup that went straight to the headlines and turned a private struggle into a public event.


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[Assistant] Lillian claimed that she had been forced to endure years of physical and emotional abuse. From a deceptive prenup that gave Billy total control over their children's religious education, to the evening Lillian had to keep her husband from shooting a black staff member because Billy thought that he looked, and I quote, insolent.


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[Assistant] In courts, Billy attacked his wife's choice of wearing lavender every single day.


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[Assistant] But on the final day of the trial, Lillian showed up in all black. The only day that she was ever seen wearing anything other than lavender in public. Maybe she wore it to mourn her lost marriage. Perhaps she was simply dressing for revenge. It's impossible to say.


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[Assistant] Billy broke down after that. He handed over portions of the mansion to the brewing company to use for office space, but also stopped updating their infrastructure. According to most accounts, by the time World War I began in 1914, the brewery was a shadow of its former self. And maybe Billy was too.


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[Assistant] Then, prohibition hit, and all of a sudden it was illegal to produce, transport, and sell alcohol. Which, well, that was kind of all the Lemp Brewery actually did. So, yeaah, not good. And the employees found out that the company had closed down for good when they showed up to work one morning and found the doors locked shut.


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[Assistant] In March of 1920, Billy's youngest sister Elsa took her own life, another self-inflicted gunshot wound, inside her own house across town. There was a bit of speculation that her death was actually the result of murder, committed by her husband Thomas Wright, but those accusations never seem to have gone anywhere.


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[Assistant] The Empire officially collapsed in June of 1922 when Lent Brewery was broken up and sold at auction. Instead of the estimated $7 million in value that everyone expected, the sale brought in less than $600,000. It was devastating to everyone involved, but especially Billy, who never seems to have gotten over it.


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[Assistant] Later that year, Billy took his own life, again, with a .38 caliber revolver inside the family mansion.


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[Assistant] He managed to shoot himself in the heart not once, but twice. His only child, William III, was just 21 years old at the time. And in 1943, he too would pass away tragically young, dying from a cerebral hemorrhage while walking down a sidewalk.


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[Assistant] Billy's last surviving sibling was his brother Edwin, who finally passed away in 1970 at the age of 90. When asked how he seemed to escape what many considered to be a family curse, he claimed that it was by getting away from his family and their business as soon as he was able.


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[Assistant] Sure, he got to enjoy a bit of their wealth, but compared to all the rest, his life seemed to be the most normal, whatever that word means.


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[Assistant] Fame and fortune. Tragedy and loss. These are all key elements of the Lemp story over the years, and I think you can see how attractive that was to outside observers. An elite dynasty plagued by darkness. Honestly, it's the stuff of grand novels.


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[Assistant] Our homes are always places of transition. Most of us just sort of take that for granted. We're typically not the first people to live inside our houses and it's safe to say that we won't be the last either. And the same is true of even the most opulent mansions.


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[Assistant] The Lemp Mansion served its family well for decades. With the death of Billy's brother Charles, though, it no longer had an owner. In 1950, the building became a boarding house, something that was common for old mansions at the time. After that, a local pediatric hospital began using it as living space for children in need.


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[Assistant] Almost immediately, the house picked up a reputation as being haunted. Footsteps were heard coming down empty hallways, and strange knocking sounds were reported by more than a few people working and living inside. In fact, these rumors made it tough to find tenants willing to rent rooms there.


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[Assistant] By the early 1960s, things weren't looking good for Lemp Mansion. It was in a rough state of repair, and St. Louis was growing up around it. Heck, when the Ozark Expressway started construction, the plan was to knock the place down so the highway could pass right through the plot of land.


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[Assistant] A lot of the property was leveled too, including the carriage house, but somehow the mansion itself escaped destruction. Which is why, in 1975, a guy named Dick Pointer was able to buy the place and convert it into a restaurant. Above that, there were a few large suites available for overnight guests.


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[Assistant] It's given the place a new lease on life, although I have to imagine that it wouldn't make Billy too happy to know that his old mansion is now one of the best places in St. Louis to get an all-you-can-eat chicken dinner on Sunday.


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[Assistant] During the renovations back in the 70s though, the workers there experienced a never-ending flow of unusual things.


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[Assistant] So some of the men claimed to hear unusual sounds, and reported the sensation that they were always being watched. Their tools would randomly vanish from where they left them, and a few of them even spotted clear, full-body apparitions. A number of people working there also reported a very specific sound, that of horse hooves clacking on cobblestone.


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[Assistant] It was only many months later that they discovered something lay beneath the lawn in front of the old mansion, the original driveway. It was paved in, you guessed it, cobblestones.


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[Assistant] One worker at the time was Claude Breckwald, a man who'd been brought in to restore an ornately painted fresco on the ceiling of one of the rooms. For the longest time, the artwork had been covered with canvas because, at least according to legend, William Lemp didn't like how it looked.


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[Assistant] Well, Claude's task was to remove that canvas and bring the fresco back to life so that guests at the house could enjoy it. But according to him, he was working very late one night when he became completely overwhelmed by the feeling that he was being watched.


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[Assistant] Claude bravely finished that project, but he never worked at night after that and absolutely refused to help on any of the other frescoes in the house.


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[Assistant] Ghosts have also been spotted in what used to be Billy's sister Elsa's room.


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[Assistant] Still, that hasn't stopped unusual experiences from happening there. Many witnesses assume the spirits in that space are connected to the mansion's time as a part of the local hospital, where terminally ill children were housed, and the experiences match up. Sheets have been tugged at, and sleeping guests have felt a small weight crawling on their legs and feet.


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[Assistant] Even today, guests and staff have seen and heard odd things in the old mansion. Sounds of an invisible piano have been reported from time to time. Doors have been known to shut and lock themselves on their own. And there have been multiple sightings of a mysterious man who's always seen at a table by himself in the dining room, only to disappear without a trace.


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[Assistant] Out of all the rooms though, it shouldn't surprise you that William Lemp's original bedroom is probably one of the most active in the house. It's where the man took his life after all, and guests who know that are always quick to assume that the disembodied voices and groanings that they hear are somehow connected to that tragedy.


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[Assistant] But one common experience puts all of the others to shame. Guests who have stayed in William's former bedroom have reported a most unsettling sound, and one that suggests that echoes of past events are somehow repeating themselves, even today.


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[Assistant] There's always more beneath the surface. Sometimes it's a treasure trove of fascinating new discoveries. But every now and then, it's something darker, more frightening, something that adds a layer of shadows to the story we thought we knew.


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[Assistant] If you've read enough American history, you probably know that the Gilded Age was filled with tales of wealth and power, and how all that seemed to unlock the worst in some people.


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[Assistant] And while the Lemp family seems like just one more example of that on the surface, there's something harder to digest right beneath it. This idea that no amount of wealth or power could hold back the ocean of misfortune, pain, and grief that ended up washing over that family.


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[Assistant] And it felt like those tragedies, just like the rumors and legends that followed them, only grew in number as time went on.


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[Assistant] One big example are the stories of Billy's illegitimate son, the one that cruel rumor mongers refer to as the Monkey Face Boy, which again, has no concrete evidence to support it whatsoever.


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[Assistant] Over the years though, a number of ghost hunters and psychics have worked inside the mansion, capturing stories of odd experiences and even a few bits of curious footage and audio recordings. And a lot of them seem to point to a young man named Zeke, a name that was captured on an EVP during a 1983 radio broadcast from within the house.


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[Assistant] Ghost hunters and obsessed researchers have combined a lot of little pieces over the years into what they believe is a glimpse into the past. Billy's unwanted child, illegitimate and disabled, was named Zeke and he was kept chained in the attic of the mansion for a number of years. Horrifying to even imagine, I know.


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[Assistant] And if the theories are correct, Zeke was one of the last to die in that house. Unlike many of his other relatives, though, this poor young man did not take his own life. Instead, it's believed that he was murdered, and exactly how the deed was done might have been revealed one eerie evening long ago.


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[Assistant] During a ghost hunting session, someone in the attic asked Zeke to explain how he died, and they heard a distinct voice in the darkness call out the word, pushed. And then, as if to demonstrate, a black mist allegedly formed in the center of the room, moved out into the hall at the edge of the third floor stairs, and then toppled over the railing, falling to the main entryway, three stories below.


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[Assistant] Today we lifted the lid and peered deep into the history and legends buried beneath a real life dynasty. I hope the trip down memory lane, with all the detours and darkness it came with, was as educational to you to hear about as it was for my team and I to put together.


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[Assistant] But we're not done yet, because Missouri has one more tale from the depths to offer up to us. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.


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[Assistant] One of the vacations my family took when I was a kid was a drive to Missouri to visit the Meramec Caverns. Like I said earlier, there are a lot of caves in that state, and some of them have even become tourist destinations. For a boy from Illinois who was used to flatlands and very few trees, having a chance to go beneath all of that was an absolute thrill.


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[Assistant] I remember the sound and light show, a stone wall that looked like an American flag when certain lights were pointed at it, and all the crazy rock formations you could ever have hoped for. It was dark and damp and very fun. But not all caves in Missouri are as much of a joy to visit as that one.


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[Assistant] You see, about 120 miles north of my childhood vacation memories is another cave. And this one has a history that's filled with a lot more folklore. Like a lot of caves in the area, it was explored by white settlers early on.


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[Assistant] We know the place changed names a number of times over the years, too. But way back in 1819, locals just called it Sims Cave, after a pair of brothers who claimed to be the first to stumble upon it.


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[Assistant] On top of that, some folks believe that panthers had lived inside it, leading to the name Panther Cave as another option. And throughout the 1830s and 40s, it was even called Saltpeter Cave, thanks to the large amounts of bat guano found inside, a substance that was used to make gunpowder back in the day.


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[Assistant] But in 1848, the cave became home to a new story, and as a result, a new name. It started when a surgeon named Dr. Joseph McDowell purchased the cave and set about building a big stone wall across the entrance, with just one lockable door in the middle.


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[Assistant] Now, McDowell was sort of an odd personality. He was a physician who studied anatomy in an era when people were still a bit squeamish about using human bodies in medical research. So his plan for the cave was to build a safe place where he could do all the slicing and dicing that he wanted to, without the prying eyes of the rest of the community.


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[Assistant] Except building a wall and locking the door to anything is a great way to generate a whole lot of curiosity. Naturally, people started trying to get inside Dr. McDowell's cavern slash laboratory.


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[Assistant] In one instance, it said that a number of people broke in while he was working one night. And he was able to extinguish his lantern, but that left him standing in pitch blackness without a way to find his way out.


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[Assistant] In that moment, he claimed that the glowing specter of his dead mother appeared beside one of his work tables, allowing him to climb on and cover himself with a sheet to look like a dead body. At least at the time, it seems to have worked.


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[Assistant] But there was another curious site inside that cave that locals, especially children, were wild to get a look at. It seems that Dr. McDowell had outlived a number of his own kids, and had experimented with various ways to embalm them.


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[Assistant] Most were in a graveyard somewhere, but his most recent loss, his 14-year-old daughter, had been brought to this new laboratory.


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[Assistant] And there, the doctor apparently built a cylindrical coffin out of sheets of copper, placed her inside, and then filled the tube with alcohol and other preserving agents before sealing the lid. And then that creepy metal coffin was suspended from the ceiling by hooks and rope.


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[Assistant] As if that weren't spooky enough, this metal coffin also had what I can only describe as a porthole hidden beneath a small metal door. Anyone who wanted to look upon McDowell's dead daughter's face just needed to slide the door open and look through the glass. Like I said, he was an odd guy.


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[Assistant] Two years after buying the place and moving in, McDowell got fed up with all the vandalism and the break-ins, and he shut the place down. He moved his daughter's copper capsule to a proper burial site, and quietly moved on. And for a long time, folks in the area called the place McDowell's Cave, because, well, I think you get it.


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[Assistant] Today though, that's not its name. You see, one local who lived there during McDowell's use of the cave was a teenager named Sam. There's no way that he couldn't have heard the rumors about everything that went on inside there, filling him with a sense of wonder and adventure.


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[Assistant] And even though Sam moved away a couple of years after the mad scientist did, those stories stuck with him. He would go on to accomplish a lot in life too, from printer and typesetter to riverboat pilot and journalist. But his biggest claim to fame is probably one of the novels that he wrote that pulled in pieces of that mysterious cave from his childhood.


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[Assistant] He called it McDougall's Cave, and swapped out the medical shop of horrors for a scene where two of the main characters get lost inside, wandering for days. This novel is now viewed by most as a masterpiece of American literature, and one of the people we have to thank for that is McDowell himself.


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[Assistant] Fast forward almost two centuries, and that cave has become a tourist destination. In fact, it's even a registered national natural landmark. Throw in the added detail that infamous outlaw Jesse James also spent time inside it, and you can probably see why people want to pay it a visit.


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[Assistant] One last thing though. Back in 2019, a tour guide was taking some guests through the cave when they spotted something no one had ever noticed before.


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[Assistant] It was a little bit of graffiti. Nothing more than a signature, really. But it was Sam's signature.


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


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[Assistant] Don't like hearing ads? We've got a solution. There's a paid version of Lore on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free. Plus, subscribers also get weekly mini-episodes called Lore Bites. It's a bargain for all that ad-free storytelling and a great way to support this show and the team behind it.


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[Assistant] Lore is much more than just a podcast. There's the World of Lore three book series, plus two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Learn more over at lorepodcast.com. And you can also follow this show on threads, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and 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] There are monsters everywhere. From the big screen to our mobile devices. It seems we can't escape the subject of our fascination. Stories about monsters and the people they frighten are just as popular as ever.


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[Assistant] And of course, pop culture is filled with all manner of examples. From demonic spirits and friendly ghosts, to wolfmen and zombies. Literature and film have all the ammunition they need to show us the darker side of the world.


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[Assistant] But of all the various characters filling the page and stage, no figure has captured the imagination of more generations than one. The vampire.


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[Assistant] They've been portrayed as debonair and sensual and as terrifying and brutal. Honestly, no matter how they're presented to us, we still gravitate toward their stories. Perhaps it's the idea of immortality or the intimate way they kill their victims. Whatever the draw, we can't seem to look away.


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[Assistant] Hollywood has shown us that vampires can be a lot of things to a lot of people. And with each passing year, more and more branches are grafted onto that ancient tree. A tree, as you know, with deep and twisted roots.


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[Assistant] If we go back far enough, though, we can find all sorts of stories about evil people who thirsted for blood, causing their neighbors to question the inevitability of death. And those legends never lose their bite, no matter how old they are.


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[Assistant] But the stories from the past suggest that something darker is lurking in the shadows. And if you're ready, I'd like to take you on a hunt.


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[Assistant] For centuries in Europe, a town's infrastructure was tied to the local church and its burial ground. Homes and businesses would be built around them, putting them at the center of the community. But as urbanization took hold in the 11th century, those simple town graveyards quickly became too small.


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[Assistant] More and more people were moving in and working close by, and of course, dying. And the influx of new bodies eventually became a major public health concern, one that sadly went misunderstood for a very long time.


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[Assistant] All it would take was a heavy rain to churn up freshly buried corpses, or a wild dog might dig up someone's deceased mother.


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[Assistant] Grave robbers with shovels and a bottle of liquid courage in hand were also a problem. But not every body was a rotting mess inside a pine box. Some looked surprisingly plump, maybe even more lifelike than they were when they were still alive.


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[Assistant] Back then, there was no medical or scientific explanation for these strange remains. Locals believed that they looked like that because they had been buried improperly or died suspiciously. These bodies were restless, they said, rising from the grave to stalk the living at night.


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[Assistant] They were called revenant, from the French revenir, meaning to come back. In Slavic, they had two names. One was upir, but the other became more familiar over time. And it's how we today refer to creatures that don't quite know how to stay dead. Vampire.


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[Assistant] Some say that one of the oldest European stories related specifically to vampires is the legend of Count Estruc, whose origins can be found in Catalonian mythology. According to a prominent version of the story, it all started in the 12th century as Muslim kingdoms had taken over southern Spain.


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[Assistant] King Alfonso II worried that pagans in a particular region would side with the Muslims, who he had decided were his enemies.


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[Assistant] He had to bring Christianity to the area, and he sent in a war hero to handle things there, a guy named Count Estruc.


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[Assistant] But the Count didn't convince everyone to convert to his new religion through love. After setting up shop in a castle in the town of Lairs, he got to work convincing everyone by any means necessary. Torture, brutality, and if necessary, murder.


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[Assistant] For years, Estoruk's tyranny reigned supreme, until he finally was assassinated by his own soldiers in 1173.


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[Assistant] It was rumored that one of his captains, a man named Benak, had poisoned both the count and his daughter Nuria, all because she had denied Benak's romantic advances. Other legends claim that he fought for the Spanish crown at the Battle of Las Nahuas de Teloza, but one of the most prevailing stories is that Estruc specifically targeted witches.


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[Assistant] According to that legend, one of the victims he burned at the stake cursed him before she died. He apparently got so sick the day after her execution that he was bedridden until he finally passed away a short time later. And when it came time to collect his body for burial, it was missing.


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[Assistant] Pretty soon after that, strange things started to happen around town. Dead livestock began appearing around the castle where the Count had lived. Animals that had been butchered and drained of their blood.


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[Assistant] It wasn't long before his servants caught sight of the culprit leaving those grotesque calling cards around the castle. It was Estruc himself. He'd been spotted walking the halls of the fortress looking much younger than he had at the time of his death. And it seemed that his diet wasn't limited to cow's blood either.


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[Assistant] Stories began to spread among the locals, as stories do.


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[Assistant] They said that he would drink the blood of villagers and kidnap women before sending them back pregnant. And when those women gave birth months later, the child would never be a bouncing baby boy or girl. They were simply described as monsters, unnatural creatures that only lived for a short while.


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[Assistant] Now, depending on the version of the story you read, Count Astruc's reign of terror eventually came to an end thanks to the works of either a Jewish hermit or an elderly nun. In all of the versions, though, the hero tracks down the location of the vampire's coffin and drives a wooden stake through his heart.


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[Assistant] Today there's not a lot of physical evidence that the people and places in these stories ever existed. It doesn't help that the castle in layers was destroyed during the Spanish Civil War, making it impossible to know for sure if any of the legend is true.


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[Assistant] But the impact of the story is undeniable. Count Estruc may have been one of the first European vampires,


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[Assistant] But he certainly wasn't the last. And as that sort of folklore grew in popularity, it spread, first throughout Europe, with a focus on Romania, of course, but then outward, eventually traveling so far that it crossed the Atlantic, bringing a dangerous legend a little too close to home.


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[Assistant] It takes one to make one. That's one of the most common elements of vampire folklore, right?


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[Assistant] Anytime they wish, they could create more of themselves just by swapping a bit of cursed blood.


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[Assistant] One of the most popular examples of this aspect of vampire folklore is, of course, Interview with a Vampire, the 1976 novel by Anne Rice. In it, we are told the story of a Louisiana plantation owner who is transformed by a vampire named Lestat.


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[Assistant] And of course, it makes sense that Rice would begin her novel in Louisiana, given the region's treasure trove of darker lore, stories that seem to shun the light.


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[Assistant] Now, the French first arrived in that area back in 1685 in a failed attempt to colonize it. It would take years for their efforts to finally yield fruit, allowing France to establish three major settlements along the coast. Mobile, Biloxi, and finally, New Orleans.


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[Assistant] Several years later, during the first quarter of the 18th century, France found itself in something of a crisis. It had lost a huge amount of money fighting the War of Spanish Secession. Soldiers and rural farmers were suddenly out of work, and they flooded the streets of Paris.


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[Assistant] They were destitute, homeless, and considered by the monarchy to be a burden. A lot of them were arrested for the sorts of crimes you might expect from desperate, hopeless people. But no matter how those deeds were classified, at the end of the day, they were simply arrested for being poor.


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[Assistant] Meanwhile, France's Louisiana territory was sparsely populated, and it hadn't produced much of anything.


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[Assistant] The hope was that the region could someday become a lucrative source of tobacco, just like their English neighbors to the east. But the war had used up almost all of France's resources. What they needed there were bodies, literally people, to go and do the hard work.


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[Assistant] So, France decided to solve two problems at once. It could remove its undesirables from the streets of Paris while also growing the colony's population overseas, all in one fell swoop, by shipping them from Europe to Louisiana.


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[Assistant] Of course, at first, most of these people were just men. And they were either convicts, military deserters, or smugglers. And that influx of men ended up creating another problem. Because men alone couldn't populate the area. They needed...


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[Assistant] Now the first ship carrying Casket Girls arrived as a merchant vessel named the Pelican in 1704. These women started in Mobile where they were known as Pelican Girls, but they eventually migrated to New Orleans. The next ship arrived 15 years later in Biloxi.


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[Assistant] But France was running into a problem. Namely, having enough of what they called women of virtue to send over the Atlantic to their colonies.


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[Assistant] So they repeated a formula that had worked the first time. They started sending women of ill repute. And folks, you are more than welcome to roll your eyes at all of these moral definitives. I know I am. Just be sure to consult your optometrist. I wouldn't want any of you to injure yourselves, right?


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[Assistant] Now, a large portion of the casket girls who were deported were convicts, many of whom had been arrested for sex work. Although, in quite a few cases, the charges had been false. Women were plucked from orphanages and poorhouses too, all for the express purpose of becoming brides for the men already there.


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[Assistant] It was possible that some of these women may have gone to North America willingly, given their minimal chance at success in France. At least in Louisiana, there was a possibility of marriage and children.


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[Assistant] But there are no records of such women. What we do have proof of, though, is that a number of families in France downright ordered French officials to deport their own imprisoned daughters to Louisiana, where their lives could be a little better. Of course, that is, if they survive the trip at all.


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[Assistant] In many cases though, those lives did not improve. The men waiting for them were violent and often abused these young women and girls. And while most of those who were shipped to Louisiana did indeed end up getting married as intended, a number of them did not, and simply returned to the same types of work that they had performed in France to make ends meet.


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[Assistant] It's incredibly ironic, but many of the men of the colony were frustrated with and maybe even suspicious of the women that had been sent to them. At the very least because of their reputations. Why were they sent there? What was wrong with them in the first place?


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[Assistant] And when questions like those go unanswered for too long, people start inventing ways to fill in the blanks. And that is how legends are born.


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[Assistant] Legends have been around for a very long time. Since at least the 19th century, stories have circulated that some of these casket girls weren't just criminals and women of the night. They were literal monsters, sinking their teeth into the men of a colony.


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[Assistant] Some said the women arrived in North America malnourished, pale and stricken with fever. What should have been a three month journey took closer to five months to complete.


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[Assistant] They stepped off the ships carrying small suitcases or cassettes in French, filled with clothing, headdresses and other accoutrements in order to make themselves more attractive for their potential husbands.


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[Assistant] But the stories continued to spread. Visitors heard tales about the cassette girls in New Orleans, a word that eventually morphed into the similar sounding casquette, which sounds a lot like the English word casket. And so the cassette girls, or women with suitcases, quickly became casket girls.


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[Assistant] And that new name only added to their lore, because the stories about them continued to change and evolve. Those small suitcases in the story quickly became coffins, both in shape and size. It was as though the women were being shipped across the ocean with their sleeping quarters in tow, much like a vampire.


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[Assistant] One bit of context here for you is that New Orleans had been planned by the French as a virtuous city meant for trade and raising families, but it quickly devolved into a den of poverty and crime. And much of its demise was actually due to the Scottish financier John Law, who had built the city on a pyramid scheme that inevitably fell apart.


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[Assistant] Supplies, food, and other necessities ran out before people had a chance to find their footing.


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[Assistant] What took over was a web of corruption and depravity that had one visitor refer to it as the Devil's Empire. This only added to its reputation as a dark place, built by convicts, orphans, sex workers, and other, using air quotes here, undesirables exiled from Europe.


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[Assistant] There was also a series of disease outbreaks such as cholera, malaria, and yellow fever caused by things like contaminated water and mosquitoes. But the locals didn't understand how illnesses spread, so they found other ways of explaining these epidemics.


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[Assistant] The stories vary, but many tellings suggest that the young women who came to be known as the Casket Girls arrived in New Orleans in 1721.


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[Assistant] They had come aboard the ship La Balline and were somehow different from the other convicts of previous shipments. According to some, these women had been orphans from a poorhouse in Paris known as La Salpietrière.


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[Assistant] The girls were kept under close supervision by a nun from that poor house named Sister Gertrude, along with two other sisters, who watched over them throughout the journey in order to ensure their virginity.


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[Assistant] They faced everything from dangerous weather and pirates to disease and malnourishment. Honestly, survival wasn't guaranteed, and you have to admire their courage.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At some point, rumors about the women coming from France began to spread. That some of them were actually vampires. And worse yet, it was believed that a number of other girls had been transformed on the trip during the journey.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Several years later, around 1727, a group of 12 nuns from France arrived for the purpose of opening a proper orphanage for the younger girls. They were part of the Ursuline order, and they set up a temporary cloister while their convent was being built. But something strange happened after the nuns arrived.