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[Assistant] That was the year Count Johann von Koffstein was rumored to have created a whole gathering of homunculi, ten to be exact, which he kept in large glass jars. These captive humanoid creatures were said to have the ability to predict the future, which von Koffstein used to his benefit.


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[Assistant] An older bit of folklore involves a creature known as the mandragora, which could be grown.


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[Assistant] All you had to do was plant a mandrake root in a fresh grave and then water it regularly with cow's milk that had been used to drown three bats. After a month, you'd be able to harvest your little person and carry it with you. And yes, that's where the screaming mandrake plants of the Harry Potter books actually come from.


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[Assistant] Even earlier than Paracelsus though, we have the Jewish legend of the Golem.


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[Assistant] In most tales, a golem is a humanoid creature that's been crafted out of clay, usually by a rabbi. The word golem has a lot of nuanced meaning, but it essentially boils down to unformed or raw. The idea was that a golem was a raw human, incomplete and lesser than its creator, and they came with a magical key.


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[Assistant] The core legend revolves around words of power, the source of their strength in life.


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[Assistant] When a golem was created, its master would place the Hebrew word for truth on its head, either by writing it on the forehead or in an amulet, or on a scroll shoved into the mouth. A creature would serve its master without question, all the while growing a little bit larger each day.


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[Assistant] And when it was no longer needed, the master would erase a part of the word or remove the amulet or scroll, which acted like an off switch.


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[Assistant] The most famous golem story is about Rabbi Judah Lo, one of the most significant Jewish scholars of all time. He lived and worked in Prague during the latter part of the 16th century and it's during that time that these events were supposed to have taken place.


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[Assistant] By the 1590s, Rabbi Lo would have been an old man. His children had all grown up and moved on, leaving him and his wife alone to handle all of their daily chores. So, according to the legend, he crafted a golem to help with those tasks. He built it out of wood and clay, and placed the magical scroll inside the creature's mouth.


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[Assistant] And it was helpful for a while. A golem chopped wood for him. It carried water from the well to his house. It was even seen outside by others where it swept the street. Every Sabbath though, Rabbi Lo would remove the scroll and give the golem the same day of rest that he and his Jewish community were required to observe.


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[Assistant] The problem came many months later on one of those sacred Sabbath days when the rabbi forgot to remove the scroll. Furious that it was not able to rest as others around it did so, the golem was said to have erupted in anger. It tore down Rabbi Lo's home and the houses of others around it.


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[Assistant] The monstrous creature even pulled fully grown trees out of the ground. Imagine the Incredible Hulk from the Avengers movies, and I think you'll get the idea. It was bad.


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[Assistant] When Rabbi Lo was alerted to his mistake, he rushed home.


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[Assistant] Somehow, the legend is unclear exactly how, though, he managed to approach the golem and rip the scroll out of its mouth. In an instant, the creature froze stiff, and then crumbled into a pile of dry clay.


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[Assistant] If there was one lesson hidden within the story, it was probably about the importance of honoring the Sabbath. But on another level, it might serve as a hint about the power and responsibility that comes with creating life. We might want companionship, but sometimes it comes at a cost.


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[Assistant] Today, scholars view this story as nothing more than an apocryphal addition to Rabbi Lo's life that was invented in the 19th century. But it illustrates an important lesson.


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[Assistant] By the 18th century though, the Age of Enlightenment began to wash away the old stories of magic and replace them with reason and science. The idea that a word of power written on a scroll could ever act like a source for life quickly became tired and foolish.


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[Assistant] But that didn't mean people had given up on figuring out what force did create life. In fact, the scientific method offered them better tools for solving that riddle. What they discovered though, was not what they expected.


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[Assistant] Yes, it revealed new truths about the world they lived in, and helped them better understand how all the parts work together, but it also uncovered something else. Something darker, and much more frightening. And we still fear it today.


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[Assistant] It was the perfect moment to test out his hypothesis. He could see the storm clouds approaching off in the distance and knew that they would bring the final ingredient he needed. And so everything had been arranged and prepared for the test, which included a handful of dead frogs that had been cut open to reveal their internal organs.


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[Assistant] Each of the frogs had been pierced by a metal rod, which was then hung from an iron rack. I have this image in my head of a skeletal wire-frame Christmas tree with a dozen or so dead frogs hanging around it like ornaments.


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[Assistant] I'm sure it was a lot more scientific than that, but you get the idea. This was the setup he needed to find answers to his questions.


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[Assistant] Luigi had been born in Italy in 1737 and graduated from the University of Bologna in 1759 with a degree in medicine. He went on to spend the better part of three decades searching for the key to life.


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[Assistant] His theory was that there was some sort of fluid that could be found inside the bodies of every living thing. Think of it like the Force from Star Wars, only physical and biological, like the sap inside of a tree. When the storm arrived, lightning filled the sky.


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[Assistant] As it did, the bodies of the hanging frogs began to twitch as if their muscles had come back to life.


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[Assistant] For Luigi Galvani, it was the proof he'd been looking for. This force, which he called animal electricity, powered our bodies. And even after death, if enough of that electricity was applied to the dead, it would return to life.


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[Assistant] Except, well, it wasn't the only idea on the block.


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[Assistant] Luigi had a competitor, another Italian named Alessandro Volta, who believed that the frog's movements were the result of a different thing entirely.


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[Assistant] A movement Galvani observed wasn't the re-energized life force inside the dead frogs. It was purely an external force, and the twitching legs were just a side effect, like leaves moving in an invisible breeze.


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[Assistant] The debate between the two men carried on for years, but in the end, Volta was proven right. He would go on to invent the first electrical battery, known as the Voltaic Pile.


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[Assistant] But Galvani's idea of a life force never really went away. Sixteen years after that rooftop frog experiment, Galvani's nephew, Giovanni Aldini, took the ideas of both Volta and his uncle and blended them into something new and terrifying.


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[Assistant] George Foster was a murderer who had killed his wife and daughter in 1802. On January 17th of that following year, Foster was hanged for his crimes. His body was left on the gallows for an hour, which was required by law to guarantee the job had been done well.


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[Assistant] When he was finally cut down though, he was handed over to Aldini for an experiment.


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[Assistant] Voster's body was placed in the middle of a room, and various officials and medical experts gathered around. When they were ready, wires from a battery similar to Volta's were connected to the corpse, and then Aldini flipped the switch. The results horrified the audience.


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[Assistant] Foster sat up, muscles twitching as his body bent forward, his jaw alternated between clenched and slack, and one of his eyes even opened wide.


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[Assistant] He wasn't alone either. Just about everyone else in the room probably did the same thing, with mouths hanging wide open in astonishment. It was as if the dead murderer had been brought back to life by the power of electricity.


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[Assistant] But no, that's not what had happened. The moment Aldini turned off the current, Foster's corpse flopped back down on the table, as dead as before.


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[Assistant] If the power of the electric battery had accomplished anything, those results went away the moment the power was cut off. The experiment revealed a lot of things to the men in the room, but the secret to life wasn't one of them. It did leave its mark on the scientific community though.


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[Assistant] Aldini would go on to succeed his Uncle Luigi's place on the faculty at Bologna in 1798, and an entire branch of biochemistry would begin to grow around the work he and others had pioneered. It would be written about, discussed, and taken further, which is how a young student at Oxford University encountered the entire field of study.


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[Assistant] According to historians, this student had thrown himself into almost every subject with abandon. Whether it was poetry and mythology or medicine and chemistry, he dove into all of it. And at some point he encountered the world of bioelectricity.


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[Assistant] It didn't take long before he too was enamored with the idea that a human body might be brought back to life with electrical current.


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[Assistant] In 1812, he began corresponding with a novelist and philosopher named William Godwin, who invited this student to come visit his home and family.


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[Assistant] It wasn't long though before this young man ran off to Europe and took two of Godwin's teenage daughters with him, Claire and Mary. Two years later, Mary became the young man's wife.


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[Assistant] Perhaps inspired by the subject matter that had originally brought her husband and her own father together, Mary began to craft a story that would eventually be published in 1818.


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[Assistant] The subtitle of the novel was a callback to the Greek god who had stolen fire from Zeus and then crafted humanity out of clay.


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[Assistant] Her husband, by the way, was Percy Bysshe Shelley, who became one of the major English Romantic poets.


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[Assistant] Most of the world, however, simply remembers him as the husband of Mary Shelley, who arguably invented the genre of science fiction when she published her novel Frankenstein. It's a name that instantly evokes the image of an artificial man, built from body parts harvested from corpses, and then brought to life with electricity.


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[Assistant] But history contains another story about our desire for companionship and that longing we feel when someone we love passes out of reach into death. A story that dips into our ancient desire to set ourselves up as God. Of what evil deeds our loneliness can drive us to do.


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[Assistant] It's a tale of the dark, cracked mirror that sits at the center of the human existence. And I want to give you a glimpse of it. But be prepared. You won't like what you see.


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[Assistant] A generation or two after Percy Shelley was discovering the joys of history, chemistry, and poetry, another young man was equally obsessed.


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[Assistant] Born in the German city of Dresden in 1877, Georg was known to fill his family's manor house with experiments of his own. He had an entire room there devoted solely to high voltage electricity, but also spent time constructing other contraptions, like boats and hot air balloons. Georg was a maker, it seems.


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[Assistant] After time at university, he traveled east, first heading to India before sailing south to Australia. All the while, he continued to exhibit that unique skill for building and making.


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[Assistant] Some historians suggest that Georg came from money, and his unusual spending habits and lifestyle certainly seem to confirm that. He apparently picked up supplies in Australia, and then purchased property on one of the South Seas islands, with an intent of exploring more of the world of electrical science.


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[Assistant] He married in 1920, and over the following four years the couple had two children.


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[Assistant] Sometime around 1926, he decided to immigrate to the United States, following his sister's example from a few years prior.


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[Assistant] After sailing to Cuba that February, he boarded another ship bound for Florida and rejoined his sister there in the town of Zephyrhills. Georg's wife and children arrived a year later, but they wouldn't stay together long.


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[Assistant] Sometime in 1927, Georg moved south to the tip of Florida, but he left his family behind with his sister.


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[Assistant] He may have intended for them to join him there eventually, but they never did.


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[Assistant] Actually, by this point, Georg was calling himself Karl, which was actually his middle name. Why, we have no clue. But it seemed that Karl was trying to start fresh and build a new life in this new country. For him, that fresh start would begin in Key West.


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[Assistant] Once there, he lied his way into a job at the local hospital, telling them that he was a doctor.


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[Assistant] Without proof though, he was forced to take the less prestigious role of operating room janitor, cleaning up the blood and tissue left in the room after surgical procedures. Carl was persistent though, and over time he managed to work his way up to the hospital's radiation lab, where he took a job as an x-ray technician. Fake it till you make it, right?


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[Assistant] Now something that's important to remember is that the late 1920s sat right in the middle of a decades long span of tuberculosis outbreaks in the United States.


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[Assistant] In 1900, it's estimated that more than 80% of the population had been exposed to the disease, and it quickly became the leading cause of death in the country. Entire hospital wings, and sometimes whole buildings, were devoted to the detection and treatment of tuberculosis. And one of the main tools used for diagnosis was x-ray.


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[Assistant] She and her husband arrived at the hospital that April after her family doctor suspected she'd come down with tuberculosis. The x-ray confirmed the diagnosis, and it was Carl who had to deliver that horrible news.


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[Assistant] He had an idea though, and wanted to talk with them further about it. There was something special about Elena, and Carl wanted to do everything possible to help her survive.


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[Assistant] To hear his ideas the family invited him to their home for dinner.


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[Assistant] Once there, surrounded by Elena's parents and sisters, Carl presented his idea.


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[Assistant] What if he were to treat her with further x-rays? He would perform those services for free, of course, and if it helped, he would also obtain medication from the hospital.


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[Assistant] He was offering to steal, basically, and he was doing so because he had become infatuated with Elena. The family agreed to this offer.


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[Assistant] And not because of his affections toward Elena, but because without the free treatment she had no chance of surviving.


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[Assistant] For the next few months, Carl came to their home regularly to provide treatment, and in the process, became close with the entire family. In fact, later that year, when Elena's sister Florinda got married, the family invited Carl to the wedding. Things were smooth and friendly.


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[Assistant] Then, Elena's husband Luis moved to Miami.


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[Assistant] Some think it was because he saw no progress in his wife's recovery and feared for his own safety, but we can't be sure.


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[Assistant] What is clear, though, is that Carl saw this as his opportunity to make his next move.


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[Assistant] Shortly before her birthday in 1930, he took Elena aside and confessed his love for her. But it backfired horribly.


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[Assistant] Elena was still married and she declared as much to him. She had no feelings for the older man and while she was thankful for his help, she wanted nothing more than friendship.


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[Assistant] Carl was deaf to reason, though. He was obsessed and no wasn't an option. Soon enough, he proposed marriage, which Elena politely declined.


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[Assistant] And after a whole series of proposals that spanned the next few weeks, Elena's family got involved to try and stop Carl's aggressive, abusive behavior. In the end, two things happened as a result of this obsession.


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[Assistant] First, Elena stopped receiving her treatments in an effort to avoid seeing Carl. And second, her entire family agreed that they needed to cut Carl out of their life. So, without telling him, the family packed up and moved to a new house somewhere else in town.


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[Assistant] When Carl arrived at their door later that week, only to find the house empty, he was enraged and heartbroken in the twisted way that only an unstable stalker could manage. But it didn't defeat him.


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[Assistant] He was stubborn and driven by a deep unhealthy obsession. He knew that it would take time and effort, sure, but he would track the family down. No one, he believed, could keep Elena out of his reach. Not even the hands of death.


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[Assistant] It took him weeks. He drove through Key West every night, slowly scanning the open windows for familiar faces. He must have been utterly systematic in the process, too, mapping out the town and marking off where he'd looked and where he hadn't. If that sounds obsessive, then you're catching on.


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[Assistant] Carl Tanzler was an obsessed man, broken in a way that now threatened the safety of an entire family.


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[Assistant] When he finally found them, he approached the house and knocked. When the door opened, he forced himself inside. Later, Carl would confess in his memoirs that, if anybody had tried to stop me, I would have used violence. But thankfully, it didn't come to that.


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[Assistant] Elena's family recognized that they were dealing with a madman and they chose to use flattery to pacify him. They welcomed him in, gave him gifts, and agreed to allow Elena to resume care.


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[Assistant] Elena wasn't in good health, though. Skipping her treatments in an effort to hide from Carl had allowed the disease to take root and weaken her. Carl brought new ideas to the table, stealing other medications from the hospital and even using electroshock therapy on her to fight back. The battle, however, would not be won.


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[Assistant] Carl was devastated in his own twisted, inappropriate way. But while the death of Elena should have been the turning point that set him free from his obsession, it did the opposite.


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[Assistant] Soon after her death, he somehow managed to get her parents to allow him to move into their home.


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[Assistant] Worse yet, he asked to live in Elena's old room. Honestly, if he was trying to be the biggest creep in the world, he was an absolute overachiever. It continued to get worse though.


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[Assistant] He offered to pay for a luxurious, above-ground mausoleum for Elena, and her family agreed to move her body into it.


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[Assistant] Weeks later, after they moved out to get away from him, Carl actually bought the house. And all the while, he would spend each evening sitting outside her tomb, talking to her and singing songs of love.


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[Assistant] He eventually began to hear her speaking and singing back.


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[Assistant] It wasn't real, of course, but that didn't matter to Carl. To him, it was proof of her love toward him.


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[Assistant] Which is why he did what he did next. One late night in April of 1933, two years to the month after first meeting Elena, mind you, Carl walked into the cemetery pulling a cart behind him. Somehow he managed to open her tomb and then took Elena's body out and placed it into the cart. Then he quietly pulled it home.


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[Assistant] Carl placed Elena's corpse in his own bed, and he probably felt as if his world was finally complete. He had her all to himself. They were together at last. But the laws of nature had other plans. Over the days and weeks that followed, the process of decomposition began to play out like a silent horror film. Carl's beloved was literally falling apart. So he rebuilt her.


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[Assistant] Having access to the hospital was a huge help in that project.


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[Assistant] He brought home disinfectants and preserving agents with the hope of stalling the decay, but it was an uphill battle, and soon there were bigger worries. Her body had begun to lose its shape, so he opened her chest and belly and stuffed rags inside to shore her up and keep her form.


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[Assistant] Later, as her skin began to rot, Carl dipped strips of silk in a mixture of wax and plaster and used them to repair the damaged locations, including her face. He replaced her eyes with glass replicas and even used her own hair to make a wig for the corpse.


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[Assistant] And when the connective tissue began to give way inside her body, Carl was said to have used wire to rejoin her limbs, like a carpenter stringing together a puppet.


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[Assistant] He was slowly building a companion for himself. A friend who would never leave.


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[Assistant] He was the alchemist of old, building another being from the pieces of the dead, and he was also insane, failing to perceive the world around him, or his own behavior, in a normal way.


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[Assistant] Karl Tanzler might have believed he was driven by love, but he was nothing more than a stalker with no regard for the natural boundaries that hold society together.


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[Assistant] Despite that, despite his unusual behavior, his continual theft from the hospital, and his odd social life, Carl managed to keep Elena for himself for seven years.


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[Assistant] During those seven years, though, rumors began to spread. We don't know how, really. Perhaps it was a slip of the tongue in conversation with a neighbor. Maybe it was a random glance through a gap in the curtains.


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[Assistant] However it happened, word got out, and eventually that word spread to Elena's sister, Florinda.


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[Assistant] In October of 1940, Florinda knocked on the front door of her former home and forced herself inside. She found her sister's corpse laid out in a wedding dress on Carl's bed and immediately fled to notify the authorities.


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[Assistant] Carl Tanzler was arrested, Elena's body was recovered, and the entire community was stunned.


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[Assistant] After a psychiatrist found Tanzler to be mentally fit to stand trial, he was charged with what basically amounted to grave robbing. Sadly though, the statute of limitations on the crime had expired before he was even arrested, and he was set free. Elena though, fared better.


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[Assistant] After being examined by the authorities, she was given a second funeral. Nearly 7,000 people turned out to view her body, after which it was returned to the cemetery she'd been stolen from.


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[Assistant] This time, though, they kept the location of her grave a secret, unmarked and hidden away from the public. If there was a perfect punishment for Karl Tanzler, this was it. He would never see Elena again.


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[Assistant] Throughout history, people have gone to great lengths to satisfy their desire for companionship. The notion of domesticated animals who live with us is thousands of years old and speaks to our tendency to seek community and interaction with other living beings, even if they aren't human.


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[Assistant] The mythology of most cultures almost always seems to have stories of constructed beings. Humans crafted from clay is a common feature from the Greeks and Egyptians to the Native Americans and the Incas. And we, in turn, have imitated these stories, crafting things of our own. But some have gone too far.


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[Assistant] Sometimes it was just bizarre. Like German alchemist Hennig Brand, who stored dozens of buckets of his own urine in his basement so he could boil it down in an attempt to make gold.


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[Assistant] Others like him would place human tissue inside a melon and then insert it into a horse's womb, all in an effort to grow an artificial being.


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[Assistant] They crossed the line, no doubt about it, but more from a weird sort of medieval ignorance than anything else.


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[Assistant] Karl Tanzler, though, seems to have joyfully stepped over that line and then reached back to brush it out of existence. He was a madman who couldn't take no for an answer and refused to see death as the end.


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[Assistant] His legacy today is a sad story of violation and misogyny. One that led to the harassment of an innocent woman and the desecration of her corpse.


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[Assistant] He would fade away over the following decade. He returned to Zephyrhills and bought a home near his estranged wife who ended up supporting him financially. He wrote his memoirs and had them published in the pulp magazine, Fantastic Adventures, and eventually became a U.S. citizen.


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[Assistant] He died alone on July 3rd of 1952, his body laying on the floor for three weeks before it was finally discovered. I don't know what his cause of death was, but I have no doubt that he died thinking about his time with Elena. How do I know that?


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[Assistant] Well, when the authorities came to remove his body, they discovered something else there. It was a handmade, life-size replica of a woman, with a face that, for some reason, had been left completely blank and featureless.


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[Assistant] After finding a container high up on a shelf though, they finally understood why.


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[Assistant] Inside the box was a death mask, crafted of plaster and wax, with every detail you might expect from a cast taken from the face of a corpse. It was a morbid replica of the one person Karl Tanzler couldn't seem to live without.


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


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[Assistant] If you're new around here, this is my friendly reminder that lore is a lot more than just bi-weekly audio stories. There is an ongoing book series from Penguin Random House, a television show available on Amazon Prime, a membership site with extra episodes, and so much more.


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[Assistant] And you can learn about everything over in one place, theworldoflore.com slash now.


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[Assistant] You can also follow the show on social media. Lore is on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi.


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[Assistant] The sun above them was hot and bright when the three children wandered off to play in a nearby field.


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[Assistant] And they were siblings, one boy and two girls, the children of a local railroad guard in the city of Gloucester, England. The field was one of their favorite places to go during the day, but they always returned home by dinnertime.


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[Assistant] On this particular summer day in 1906, though, dinner arrived without the children.


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[Assistant] Their parents, Mr. and Mrs. Vaughn, grew worried enough to call for the authorities to come help them.


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[Assistant] Beginning that very night, a search party was formed to locate the missing children.


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[Assistant] They finished their night of searching empty-handed. Not a single clue had been found that might hint at where the children had gone, or if they'd been taken by a malicious stranger.


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[Assistant] But these were their children, and parents rarely give up hope so quickly.


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[Assistant] They searched the following day. And a third day as well.


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[Assistant] After that though, things were beginning to look bleak.


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[Assistant] On the fourth day, a farmer was plowing a field close to the one the children had been playing in when he noticed something in the ditch along the northeast side. It was the forms of the missing children, laying peacefully in the dirt. But they weren't dead. They were sleeping.


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[Assistant] After waking them up and taking them home, the children surprised everyone with a shocking story. They had no memory of the past four days.


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[Assistant] Even 40 years later, the sun was still unable to offer an answer to the riddle of their disappearance. Things go missing.


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[Assistant] Whether it's a sock in the dryer, your car keys, or an entire person. Every now and then, things just sort of slip through the cracks and vanish.


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[Assistant] Thankfully, like the children in Gloucester, a lot of those missing things are eventually found.


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[Assistant] But if we thumb through the pages of history, we'll come face to face with something worse. Something that tugs at our darkest fears and leaves us feeling unsettled. Sometimes people vanish and they're never seen again.


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[Assistant] Let me just say right from the start that history is so full of disappearances that I'm not going to come anywhere close to discussing all of them.


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[Assistant] From the legendary 9th Roman Legion and the Roanoke colony, to the Mary Celeste and Amelia Earhart, the floor of history is so littered with disappearances that it's a miracle none of us trip and hurt ourselves.


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[Assistant] What's become clear is that the most powerful disappearance stories are the ones that involve people.


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[Assistant] That family member who's never seen again, or the public figure that seems to vanish into thin air. Lost objects and ancient colonies lack the emotional weight that we feel when a local man goes missing. And that's where I want to focus today.


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[Assistant] Benjamin Bathurst was born into the upper crust of British society. His father was the Bishop of Norwich. Then after finishing his education, he began work for the Crown as a diplomatic envoy.


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[Assistant] He traveled to Vienna in the spring of 1809 and was part of the group of advisors that helped convince Holy Roman Emperor Francis II to declare war on France.


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[Assistant] But things didn't work out in the Emperor's favor, and Bathurst had to find a way to retreat home to London.


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[Assistant] He decided that traveling north through French-occupied Germany would be his safest bet. So in November of 1809, he and a friend named Krauss set off toward Hamburg.


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[Assistant] On the 25th of November though, their plans fell apart.


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[Assistant] That was the day they reached the city of Perleberg, just 80 miles from their destination. The two men stopped for an early dinner at the White Swan Inn and had the horses on their carriage changed out.


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[Assistant] Then, thinking it would be safer for them to travel in the dark of night Bathurst headed back down to the carriage around sunset to continue the journey.


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[Assistant] He and Krauss inspected the horses and watched as workers from the inn reloaded their luggage. The two men were just a few feet apart when Bathurst stepped out of view to climb into the carriage. And a moment later, Krauss followed him.


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[Assistant] When he looked inside it though, he was shocked to find it empty. Bathurst had vanished.


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[Assistant] Krause claims that he searched the entire area around the carriage and even had guards block off the street so they could stop anyone who might have kidnapped his friend.


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[Assistant] But try as he might, he was never able to find Bathurst. The man had been there one moment, but was gone the next.


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[Assistant] Decades later, and 600 miles to the west, a group of men were traveling home from the pub at the end of a night of drinking in the Warwickshire town of Leamington Spa.


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[Assistant] The three men, Barham Wise, Hammerson Burns, and James Warson, were all seated in the same carriage, laughing and trading stories. When Warson made an outrageous claim,


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[Assistant] He bragged that he was a gifted long-distance runner. He could run for miles and miles without slowing down or tiring, even after a night at the pub.


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[Assistant] His two friends refused to believe him without a demonstration, so they stopped the carriage and told him to get out.


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[Assistant] They told Warson to run the rest of the way home and they would follow behind him to see it with their own eyes. Reluctantly, Warson agreed.


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[Assistant] Even after all the drinking they'd partaken in back in the pub, Warson put on a powerful show.


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[Assistant] According to the story, he set a steady pace and began the long run back to their home in Coventry, 10 miles to the north.


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[Assistant] All the while, Burns and Wise stayed behind him in the carriage, following along from a short distance.


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[Assistant] A handful of miles into the demonstration, something happened that left Warson's friends stunned and afraid. They were watching Warson run straight down the middle of the country lane when all of a sudden the man tripped on something they couldn't see. He stumbled, waved his arms in a panic, and then fell to the ground and vanished.


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[Assistant] When Burns and Wise caught up to the place where Worson had tripped, they expected to find their friend laid out in a ditch. Amazingly though, there was no sign of him. They searched the sides of the road and called out for Worson to end the practical joke. But no matter how long they stayed there and searched for him, he never turned up.


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[Assistant] The police were called to help in this search, as you might expect, but according to the story, Burns and Wise never found their friend.


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[Assistant] He'd tripped over something, then slipped into nothing, and was never heard from again.


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[Assistant] He was a rising star in his country's military, and now everyone had gathered in the town square to catch a glimpse of him.


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[Assistant] He was a man of the people, a newly minted captain, and a knight in France's prestigious legion of honor. If ever there was someone deserving of respect, it was him.


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[Assistant] The trouble was, everyone was gathered to see him branded as a thief, not a hero.


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[Assistant] You see, he'd arrived in the city of Danzig a few months earlier and had settled in as the guest of a local business owner.


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[Assistant] We don't know the shop owner's name, but we do know that he dealt in fancy goods, whatever that might mean, and was also in the middle of a bit of a business slump. As such, the man had no employees, so he enlisted the help of this esteemed military guest.


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[Assistant] It was sometime during his service over those many weeks in the merchant's shop that one of the valuable signet rings went missing.


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[Assistant] It was small and the captain was trustworthy so the merchant assumed it had just been lost under a box or cabinet. It would turn up again. He was sure of it. And it did.


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[Assistant] Many weeks later, the merchant took a Sunday morning stroll through the city marketplace. While he was there, he bumped into an old friend and the two men exchanged greetings and a handshake. And that's when the merchant noticed the man's ring.


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[Assistant] Where did you get that? He asked, motioning toward his friend's hand. This? The friend said, holding up the ring. I bought it off a soldier, if you can believe that. It only cost me five dollars.


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[Assistant] The merchant proceeded to explain that the ring had once belonged to him, but had gone missing.


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[Assistant] Putting the pieces together, the two men came to the startling realization that the entire episode had been an act of theft by that well-respected member of the Legion of Honor, Captain Fritz Alswanger.


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[Assistant] The events moved quickly after that. The captain was arrested and brought before the governor, where a confession was made.


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[Assistant] A trial was set up and Allsvanger was brought before a local general for a court martial.


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[Assistant] Finally, a confession was drawn up and the captain willingly signed it.


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[Assistant] All that was left was for him to be stripped of his rank and removed from the military, which would happen the following day in front of his entire garrison.


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[Assistant] The town square filled with thousands of curious onlookers when Alsvanger was led out into the center. His military uniform was stripped of all its markings, badges, and honors, which were then piled together on a cushion and carried away.


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[Assistant] Women fainted and fellow soldiers openly wept. The noble life of Captain Fritz Alswanger had been literally and figuratively dismantled. That's when Alswanger asked to speak.


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[Assistant] He turned to the general, and then made the most amazing declaration.


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[Assistant] Three years prior he had just completed seven years as an apprentice to a shoemaker in Strasbourg.


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[Assistant] Wanting something new for himself, he left the city and joined up with a small group of Romani.


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[Assistant] After traveling south for some time, they eventually found themselves in the Italian city of La Quila.


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[Assistant] Stopping in a local lemonade shop for a drink, he discovered all of the seats were occupied with military officers, and all of them were watching him intently.


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[Assistant] Moments later, one of the soldiers stood and approached, and that's when Diedrich saw the man's face, and he froze.


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[Assistant] The two men looked so alike that they could have been twins. They spent some time marveling at this, and when Alsvanger discovered that Dietrich was in search of a job, he offered him one. The following day, Dietrich became the officer's valet.


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[Assistant] Life after that was interesting, to say the least. Asvanger loved to use their near-identical appearance for amusement. Sometimes the two would swap clothing so that Asvanger could have more fun and enjoy the non-military life, and to give Dietrich a taste of a bit more power and admiration.


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[Assistant] It was an entertaining life, and at least to Diedrich, it was a major step up. No longer was he the unemployed former apprentice to a Strasbourg shoemaker. He was valet to a well-known and well-respected lieutenant, and that had changed everything for him.


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[Assistant] But now here he was, convicted of a crime that resulted in the utter destruction of another man's reputation. Which begged the obvious question.


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[Assistant] If Fritz Oswanger wasn't the man standing before them, then where was he?


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[Assistant] Dieterich helped his master home on a cold, wet autumn night, although he practically had to drag him. Alswanger complained of a powerful headache and seemed delirious and unaware of his surroundings. After the officer was safe in bed, the valet gave him a cool drink and then retired to his own room for the night.


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[Assistant] In the morning, Diedrich claims he entered Alswanger's room at the usual hour to prepare a morning drink for him, but found the man to be pale and unmoving. Stepping closer, it became obvious why. Alswanger was dead.


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[Assistant] Whether it had been some sort of illness or perhaps a heart attack, Diedrich didn't know. But he knew he had to act quickly.


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[Assistant] Before anyone else in the building was awake, he dragged his former master's corpse into his own quarters where he dressed the man in his clothing.


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[Assistant] Then he quickly dashed back to Alsvanger's bedroom, dressed himself in uniform, and started his day as the other man. After a short while, he faked annoyance at his valet's tardiness and sent someone to fetch him. Naturally, they found him cold and dead.


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[Assistant] Like Farm Boy taking over the role of the dread Pirate Roberts, Dieter Rieck had assumed the life of Fritz Alswanger. He took over every bit of it, from his duties in the military to friendships with the other officers. And thanks to the fact that the two men had been nearly identical in appearance, it worked.


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[Assistant] Of course, that had been two years before his arrest for theft. So the general and governor were intrigued to know what he had been doing all that time.


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[Assistant] Dieterich explained that soon after, he received orders to travel to France, and since that moved him closer to home and farther from the people who had known Alsfanger intimately, he jumped at the chance.


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[Assistant] Along the way, he was even promoted to captain, thanks to his commitment to his role and responsibility as an officer. The only hitch in the entire charade was the visit he paid to his mother.


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[Assistant] She didn't necessarily suspect him of being an imposter, but she certainly noticed he was much less affectionate toward her. A mother always knows, doesn't she?


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[Assistant] When they led Diedrich away to return to his jail cell, the people gathered around were left in stunned silence. Some even wept at the tragedy of it all.


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[Assistant] But none of that changed the current charges of theft to which he had freely admitted guilt. All of the details of his story were sent off to Emperor Napoleon for a decision and the waiting began.


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[Assistant] When word arrived, there was good news and bad news. On the positive side, Napoleon didn't believe that Diederich had murdered Alswanger. On the other hand though, he was still guilty of theft and fraud.


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[Assistant] According to the story, he was branded as a thief in the area of his back between his shoulder blades and then locked up in a local prison.


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[Assistant] The plan was to keep him there for just a short while and then transport him to another prison in Western France where he would work as a slave on board one of the naval ships. Within months of his trial though, the French Empire began to crumble around them. And as a result, that transfer never happened.


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[Assistant] By 1814, the city was in the hands of the Prussians, and as they began the task of taking on the duties of running the various branches of government, one of the things they did was review the prison records.


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[Assistant] As far as I can tell, everything seemed normal and above board. Except for one problem.


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[Assistant] As the story goes, months before the arrival of the Prussians, the guards were escorting a group of prisoners across the open yard of the complex. They were walking in single file, hands chained together, with a longer chain connecting them to each other.


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[Assistant] And right there, in full view of everyone around him, Dieterich began to fade out of sight.


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[Assistant] That's the story, anyway. And while it sounds like a scene pulled straight out of a Star Trek film, it probably does a lot of what folklore has done for us over the years. It takes a kernel of truth and repackages it for a more entertaining storytelling experience.


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[Assistant] Looking back, historians think that the more likely reason he was listed as missing was that he somehow managed to escape.


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[Assistant] Scribbling escaped in the margin of the prison logs would have been a lot more embarrassing, so they decided to go with missing. And honestly, all he needed to do was get over the wall.


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[Assistant] The harbor below the prison would have provided him the perfect place to hide until a ship could carry him away.


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[Assistant] In a sense, Dieterich disappeared the day he swapped clothing with the corpse of Fritz Alswenger. His old life vanished, while the life of his master continued on with a new actor running the show.


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[Assistant] And while we'll never know for sure how he disappeared from that prison in Danzig, whether it was some sort of supernatural evaporation, or just a good old-fashioned prison break,


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[Assistant] It's clear that he lived out one of our greatest fears when he did it. He went missing.


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[Assistant] It's almost terrifying just how easy it is for people to disappear.


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[Assistant] We go through life thinking of ourselves as so permanent and immovable, and yet, well, we're not.


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[Assistant] Sometimes life can carry us away, like a river dragging debris toward a new destination.


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[Assistant] It can be like a strong wind that blows the sand back revealing the truth buried beneath it. Take Benjamin Bathurst for example. After he disappeared in 1809 odd clues started to turn up.


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[Assistant] His pants were found in the woods outside of town. They had bullet holes in them but no blood, and there was a letter to his wife in the pocket.


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[Assistant] Stranger. A coat that was thought to belong to him was discovered in the private home of an employee of the White Swan Inn where he'd been staying.


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[Assistant] That might sound like nothing more than a bit of on-the-job theft, but one final piece of information makes me wonder if something more wasn't going on.


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[Assistant] You see, in 1825, a house in the same town was demolished so that a new one could be built.


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[Assistant] A previous owner of the house had been yet another employee of the White Swan Inn, but they found something more significant buried in the dirt of the original foundation than a coat. They found a skeleton. Benjamin Bathurst might have disappeared, but at the end we have people to blame for it. Not magic. And remember our long distance runner, James Warson?


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[Assistant] Well, his story first appeared in a collection of tales published in 1913 by an American writer named Ambrose Bierce. In fact, it was one of many stories he published over the years that involved people who mysteriously disappear.


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[Assistant] And while that doesn't necessarily mean that Warson's amazing run was entirely fictional, there's no other evidence to prove it wasn't.


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[Assistant] Ambrose Bierce, if you've never heard of him, was the guy who wrote An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, a story I remember being forced to read in high school. He was born in 1842 and worked as a journalist for a number of years, including for an abolitionist newspaper.


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[Assistant] Then the Civil War broke out and he joined the Union Army.


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[Assistant] After the war was over, he continued his career as a writer. While he was mostly known for his journalism, his fiction helped inspire countless others. H.P. Lovecraft cited Bierce as a catalyst for his own writings, thanks to his many horror-themed short stories, and Hemingway held him in high regard as well.


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[Assistant] All in all, his writing career was groundbreaking and influential.


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[Assistant] At the age of 71, Bierce decided to revisit all of his old Civil War battle sites. It was the sort of thing people do when they want to reflect and reminisce. Those few years of military service had become core to who he was, and he wanted to stand in those places one last time.


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[Assistant] He left Washington DC by train in October of 1913 and began the long, slow journey south and west, stopping at each important site along the way.


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[Assistant] He wrote letters home and spoke to journalists in various cities he visited.


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[Assistant] In New Orleans, he told a reporter that he planned to keep traveling south into Mexico, perhaps to join up with Pancho Villa and the Mexican Revolution. I like the game, he said. I like fighting. I want to see it.


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[Assistant] Over a century later, historians are still unsure what that new destination might have been, and what transpired along the way.


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


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[Assistant] I make another podcast called Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, and I think you'd really enjoy it. It's a twice-weekly podcast that explores some of the most bizarre events, objects, and people in history.


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[Assistant] Each 10 minute episode is a bite-sized collection of two short tales that show you just how unexplainable our world really is.


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[Assistant] Lore exists outside this podcast too. There's a book series in stores around the country and online with the third book arriving in October called Dreadful Places and the second season of the Amazon Prime television show arrives on October 19th. Check them both out if you want a little bit more lore in your life.


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[Assistant] And you can always learn about everything going on over in one central place. TheWorldOfLore.com slash now. Oh, and hey, if you're a social media sort of person, you can follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. When you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi.


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[Assistant] It was a hot October afternoon in 1593 and the viceroy's palace in Mexico City was already staffed with enough watchful eyes. So when one of the men glanced over the wall and saw another soldier standing at the front gate, he sounded the alarm.


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[Assistant] The man in question was a guard like them, but he was wearing a very different uniform, which meant that he might be the enemy.


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[Assistant] The captain of the guard brought a few soldiers with him to the front of the palace and then carefully opened the gate. The man outside turned and looked at them with a puzzled expression.


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[Assistant] The captain answered him and then inquired about his name and story.


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[Assistant] The man identified himself as Gil Perez, until a few minutes before he had been a guard serving the Spanish colony of Manila, 9,000 miles away in the Philippines.


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[Assistant] Naturally, the Mexico City guards didn't believe him, most likely laughing at the thought of it. But the man pushed deeper, trying to prove it.


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[Assistant] Just last night, he told them, the governor of Manila was killed by Chinese assassins while our fleet was headed to the Maluku Islands.


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[Assistant] Remember though that this was 1593. There was no internet or radio, let alone a telegraph or mail service. If something had happened 9,000 miles away just hours before, they had absolutely no way of confirming it.


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[Assistant] Instead, the stranger was thrown into one of the palace's jail cells and left there until a better, more believable story presented itself. And that's where he remained for many long months.


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[Assistant] The following spring, a package of correspondence arrived from the Philippines. Among the papers inside it was a letter detailing the assassination of the governor, along with the date of his death, October 25th, 1593.


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[Assistant] Somehow, against all the odds, the stranger had been right.


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[Assistant] Not knowing what else to do, the viceroy released Perez, gave him all the supplies that he would need, and then sent him back west, where he was told to catch the next ship bound for Manila.


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[Assistant] As with so many of these tales, there's very little evidence to help us know for sure whether the events really played out this way. Or if they've been edited over the centuries to give us a bit more of a thrilling experience.


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[Assistant] Either way, the tale of Gil Perez highlights one important question we almost never get a chance to answer. When people vanish from our sight, are they gone forever? Or do they simply end up somewhere else? A stranger in a distant land.


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[Assistant] The artist is unknown, but the painting is a perfect example of 16th century European portraiture.


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[Assistant] Just as in the works of artists like Hans von Essen or Antoine van Dijk, the majority of the frame is taken up by the subject of the image. In this case, an older noble gentleman, while the background is filled with all sorts of activity.


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[Assistant] That background seems to tell a story. Although I'm confident it's not a story we would want to hear.


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[Assistant] In the distance, we can see burning structures with flames that lick upward toward a dark yellow sky. The subject of the painting stands in front of a crumbled wall, perhaps the last remnants of a mighty castle or the defenses of the city behind him. But it's the man himself that draws the eye.


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[Assistant] Perhaps it's the corrupt glint in his eyes, or the mountain of human skulls that he stands on. Together with his gothic studded armor, he seems the very embodiment of evil.


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[Assistant] But don't worry. The painting isn't real, and its subject, Vigo the Carpathian, is a complete work of fiction.


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[Assistant] Ghostbusters, of course, is all about investigation. It's built around the idea that we can apply science to the unexplainable, to dig for the truth, and to capture evidence that proves ideas our rational minds want to reject.


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[Assistant] It opened up popular culture to new forms of entertainment. From the X-Files and Supernatural, to a whole slew of paranormal investigation shows.


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[Assistant] But that concept, investigating paranormal events and locations, wasn't a new idea. In fact, it's a practice that goes back much further than you might expect.


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[Assistant] Before the truth was out there, before the song asked us who we're gonna call, there were enterprising individuals who made it their goal to look deep into life's mysteries and dig for answers. The question is, are we ready for what they found?


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[Assistant] I'm not going to lie to you. The town is pretty insignificant. It has the unfortunate honor of sitting against a small mountain range, which serves to separate it from the rest of the state. Even today, most people in Vermont don't really know it's there. But that doesn't mean nothing significant has ever happened there.


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[Assistant] Zephaniah and his wife Julia were actually born elsewhere in another equally small and insignificant town about 50 miles to the south.


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[Assistant] In 1846, though, they moved north and settled in that little land of insignificance. I'm sure they brought their hopes and dreams with them. That's just a guess, though. But we do know that they brought a lot of children.


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[Assistant] There aren't a lot of documents today that help us nail down a lot of the details, but we do know that Zephaniah and his wife had a total of 11 children. Some had been born prior to the move in 1846, while a few more followed after they were settled. Family life was busy, and crowded, and probably more than a little chaotic. But there was more. Julia apparently came into the marriage with a secret.


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[Assistant] It was something she knew would drive away a man as narrow minded as Zephaniah, who was once described as a barely educated and bigoted religionist.


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[Assistant] Basically, he had a lot of strict beliefs, and Julia assumed her secret would shatter his neat, well-ordered, highly prejudiced world. So she hid it from him, even after they were married.


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[Assistant] But secrets are like water. Given enough time, they always find a way to leak out and ruin things. For Julia, that moment arrived with the birth of their first child, Miranda.


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[Assistant] She could see things that were going to happen in the future, as well as events currently taking place far away. It was as if she had a second set of eyes that stared into the well of time and space, revealing things to her that no one should be able to know. And to her strict and close-minded husband, that was evil.


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[Assistant] The trouble was, her gift was spreading.


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[Assistant] Each of the children began to show signs of their own special abilities. Their oldest was said to be a powerful medium, able to communicate with the dead in a way that fit neatly into every description of the spiritualist movement.


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[Assistant] But the other children brought their own flavor to this unusual family affair. Some of them could levitate, while others could see things that no one else could. Sometimes unusual animals, and other times strange people.


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[Assistant] All of this unusual activity in the house had two major consequences. First, it utterly and completely frustrated their father, Zephaniah. And maybe that's not strong enough. The man was livid about it. Anytime he found a child in a trance, he would shake and slap them to wake them up.


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[Assistant] Once, when his son William was just six years old, Zephaniah apparently tried pulling him from one of these trances by pouring boiling water on the boy's bare skin. When that didn't work, he pulled a burning piece of wood out of the fire and placed it in William's open palm. But that failed as well.


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[Assistant] Those barbaric methods left scars though, both emotional and physical, and they would stick with William the rest of his life.


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[Assistant] The second byproduct of all this paranormal activity was that it became increasingly difficult to send the children to school.


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[Assistant] Early on, they experienced trouble in the classroom. Books would be taken from other students by unseen hands, loud knocking would be heard from inside desks, and small items would levitate around the room. It was too much, so eventually the entire family stopped attending.


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[Assistant] Sometime around 1857, Zephaniah had a bit of a revelation. After the Fox Sisters rose into the sky like shining stars, performing seances around the country to paying audiences, more and more imitation acts began to follow them.


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[Assistant] All of a sudden, Zephaniah saw a business opportunity. If he couldn't stop the children from doing those evil things, he could at least profit from it. So he signed a contract with a manager and said goodbye to four of them. William, Horatio, Sophia, and Mary, all of whom were in their teens.


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[Assistant] For 15 years, the children of Zephaniah and Julia Eddy were paraded from state to state, performing their tricks in front of large crowds. They were even rented out to a separate manager in Europe for a short time.


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[Assistant] They were gone so long that they missed the death of their father in 1862, although considering how he treated them, it's no wonder they never went home for the funeral.


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[Assistant] It was the death of their mother Julia in 1872 that finally brought them home and into retirement. No more national tours. No more supernatural performances in front of massive crowds. The Eddies. Those stars of the supernatural movement for over a decade.


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[Assistant] On the night of April 14th, 1865, John Wilkes Booth put a bullet in the head of Abraham Lincoln. Nine hours later, the president was dead.


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[Assistant] In the weeks that followed, a panel of men was put together to investigate the events of that night. And one of them was Henry Steele Alcott.


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[Assistant] He'd already built a reputation for himself as a rigorous investigator. During the Civil War, he was one of the men sent to root out corruption in various military bases. His hard-line stance against fraud and trickery eventually earned him an appointment to the War Department at the age of 30. Six years later, though, he left to become a lawyer.


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[Assistant] In 1874, on his way back to the office after having his midday meal, Alcott stopped at a newsstand where a magazine caught his eye. It was a spiritualist publication called The Banner of Light. And even though he had no experience with that movement, something compelled him to buy a copy.


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[Assistant] Inside, two years after their retirement, the Eddy family was still the focus of discussion and speculation. And it gave Henry Alcott an idea.


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[Assistant] When he arrived at the Eddie's hometown of Chittenden, Vermont, a few weeks later, he did so with the backing of the New York Daily Graphic, along with one of their artists, Alfred Capes. But the Eddie's siblings weren't ready to roll out the red carpet for Alcott and his investigation.


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[Assistant] They were nervous about his intentions and his methods, and there was a good reason why.


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[Assistant] During their 15 years on the road, William, Horatio, Sofia, and Mary were all subjected to a barrage of tests by skeptics.


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[Assistant] This wasn't a new thing. The spiritualist movement had seen the rise in a number of celebrity mediums and just as many experts who made it their mission to debunk them all. Harry Houdini is a great example.


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[Assistant] We remember him today as an illusionist and escape artist, but he spent a good amount of his final years using those skills to track down and expose frauds.


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[Assistant] The Traveling Eddie family had experienced their own fair share of harassment by men like Houdini, although what they suffered through was much more barbaric.


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[Assistant] When the voices of spirits were heard from the stage, some skeptics insisted on sealing their lips with hot wax, just to be sure. Other investigators nailed all four of them into large boxes to prove that nothing supernatural could occur without them being free to move.


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[Assistant] During their trances, people would pinch their skin or stab them with sharp objects. They were gagged, blindfolded, restrained and forced to hold uncomfortable positions for hours on end.


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[Assistant] All of this abuse left scars on the siblings. Some were visible, while others weren't. And there's no proof that these experiments ever disproved what the Eddies claimed to be able to do.


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[Assistant] In a lot of places, that didn't matter. The mob often took justice into their own hands. They were shot at, stabbed, and pummeled with objects while others tried to kidnap them.


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[Assistant] Once, during a visit to Danvers, Massachusetts, home to many of the victims of the Salem witch trials two centuries before, the crowd accused them of being demons and opened fire on them.


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[Assistant] So, yeaah. When Henry Alcott showed up on their doorstep, he probably got a chilly reception.


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[Assistant] Still, after explaining himself, he was allowed to rent a room in the tavern. Try not to think of it as a simple roadside inn tucked away in the hills of western Vermont, though. The eddies had been busy, converting portions of the house and barn into performance space.


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[Assistant] The large crowds might have been a thing of the past, but visitors there were always welcome to experience the eddy magic.


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[Assistant] Later that evening, Alcott got to do just that. As it happened, he arrived just hours before one of their famous outdoor seances, and so he was invited to come along and see the family in action.


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[Assistant] They left the house well after sundown and followed a winding path into the nearby woods.


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[Assistant] There, at the bottom of a deep ravine, was a large rock formation comprised of two enormous slabs of granite that leaned against each other in a way that formed a pocket inside.


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[Assistant] William Eddy told Alcott that it was called Honto's Cave, named after the spirit of a local Native American. This would be the stage for their performance.


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[Assistant] Before anything began, Alcott inspected the stage. He walked all the way inside, checked for openings or back doors, but found nothing. The only way in was through the front and the small crowd had gathered just a few feet away. Nothing was going to slip inside unnoticed.


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[Assistant] William and the others set to work building the framework of a small hut out of branches and then they covered the pieces with fabric. It wasn't large, maybe the size of a phone booth, but it was enough for a single person. Once everyone was settled, William slipped into the booth and then silence fell over the crowd.


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[Assistant] What happened that evening was something Alcott wasn't expecting.


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[Assistant] Even though it wasn't possible, a figure stepped out of the darkness of the cave behind William's makeshift spirit cabinet. It was a Native American man, possibly even the honto that William had spoken about earlier. He was tall and powerful, and more than a little intimidating to the small crowd of witnesses.


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[Assistant] And then, someone shouted and pointed to the top of the rock formation. Alcott looked up to see another dark figure standing against the night sky. A moment later, another appeared beside it. More and more appeared in the minutes that followed until, according to Alcott, there were nearly a dozen figures around the cave.


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[Assistant] Later, when it was all over, Alcott took the time to climb up and inspect the area on top of the rock formation.


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[Assistant] It wasn't easy, but by the light of his lantern he was able to examine all of it.


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[Assistant] Despite the fact that the roof of the cave had been covered in leaves, dirt, and debris, there were no footprints to be found anywhere.


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[Assistant] Here he was, the skeptic's skeptic, the man known for his keen senses and logic, the impartial judge of fact and fiction. But after that midnight seance in the woods, his confidence had been shaken. It couldn't have been real, and yet there was no evidence to prove otherwise.


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[Assistant] Over the following weeks in the Eddie home, Alcott watched the siblings carefully. He interviewed them to get a better sense of their past and, in doing so, uncovered their traumatic childhoods and 15 horrible years on the road.


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[Assistant] The foray into spiritualism never made them rich, and considering how scarred it left them, both physically and emotionally, Alcott couldn't help but feel sorry for them. Still, he was there to do a job.


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[Assistant] To get to the root of their supposed powers and hopefully reveal their secrets. So when he learned that they held regular seances in a special room on the second floor of their house, he got to work. He asked to see the space and to be allowed to inspect it. And as he did, his artist companion made detailed sketches and measurements.


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[Assistant] Alcott's hope was that the examination would expose the devices of their performance. Trap doors, hidden rooms, wires or cables or anything else that could be pulled or pushed to create an effect that would enhance their show.


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[Assistant] That was his assumption, after all, that the eddies would prove to be frauds who would crumble under the weight of his logic.


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[Assistant] The trouble was, he and the artist were unable to find anything.


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[Assistant] Unwilling to give up though, Alcott reached out to the newspaper that had sent him and requested a team of consultants who could come and lend an expert eye to the search. A week or two later, a group of mechanical engineers and carpenters showed up at the farm and got to work inside the seance room.


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[Assistant] At the end of the day, each of them exited the Eddie house with a bewildered expression. Despite their combined expertise and the steady hand of Henry Alcott to guide them, there was no sign of fraud to be found.


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[Assistant] So with all of his bases covered, Alcott agreed to attend one of the seances. When he entered, the room was dimly lit by a single lantern resting on a plain wooden barrel, adding to the atmosphere.


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[Assistant] He took a seat on one of the long wooden benches that spanned the width of the room and waited for William to step up onto the small raised platform at one end.


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[Assistant] In the center of that makeshift stage was a booth, what the eddies called a spirit cabinet. It was similar to the one built in the woods that first night, except this one was more permanent and furniture-like. And like that first seance, when William did arrive, he opened the door and stepped inside. Almost immediately, the show began.


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[Assistant] The first thing Alcott heard was a distant voice, soft at first, but growing louder. As it did, it was joined with the sound of singing.


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[Assistant] He also claimed to see a number of musical instruments that had been placed near the stage actually float into the air where ghostly hands materialize to play them.


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[Assistant] There were lights, and noises, and sounds of knocking. Some of the people in the room even claimed to be touched by something.


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[Assistant] This was the opening act, apparently. It set the tone and grabbed everyone's attention for the real show, which took place in the middle of the stage. As the sounds and activity died down, the door to the spirit cabinet popped open and a figure stepped down.


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[Assistant] It wasn't William Eddy, though. No, this was someone new. Someone who had not been inside the cabinet before William arrived. A member of the audience shouted out a name.


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[Assistant] It was a loved one, they said, who'd passed away many years before. The figure smiled and waved and then vanished. Another shape stepped out of the cabinet and did the same.


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[Assistant] Over the course of the evening, perhaps two dozen unique figures appeared before the small audience.


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[Assistant] Some, according to Alcott, were completely solid, while others were more hazy and ethereal.


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[Assistant] Most were supposed to be the dead relatives of settlers in the area, but there were more than a few Native Americans as well.


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[Assistant] Alcott also noticed that some of the figures were more unusual, with clothing that hinted at more exotic origins, such as Russian, African, and Chinese. When they spoke, he claims they did so in their native tongue.


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[Assistant] For the next few weeks, Alcott attended dozens of these seances, always paying attention for the telltale signs of trickery. But he never found them.


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[Assistant] Instead, he was presented with a nearly endless parade of unique figures. Men and women that spanned every known ethnicity. By his count, he saw at least 400 such apparitions. What he didn't see, though, was the method by which William Eddy managed to do it.


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[Assistant] That was the part that bothered him the most. Clearly, these were impossible performances. His rational mind screamed against everything his eyes saw and yet he had no evidence to build his case on.


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[Assistant] There was no secret chamber full of dozens of actors waiting for their spot in line. No bins full of elaborate costumes. There was nothing at all.


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[Assistant] In fact, it was worse than that. The Eddies never charged money for these daily seances. They clearly didn't have the funds to pay a troupe of actors or buy the outfits necessary to pull off the gag. And thanks to their limited education, there was no one in the house that could have ever mastered another foreign language, let alone half a dozen.


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[Assistant] At the end of his stay there on the Eddy Farm, Henry Alcott was forced to admit defeat.


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[Assistant] He had studied it all, observed everything carefully and still couldn't explain what had happened. As much as it pained him to admit,


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[Assistant] I think it's safe to say that Henry Alcott walked away from his experience in the Eddie house a changed man.


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[Assistant] He approached the notion of a supernaturally gifted family with the same rationality and due process that he brought to military inspections or insurance fraud cases. Somehow though, all those skills and years of experience just sort of bounced off the surface of that farmhouse in Chittenden, Vermont.


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[Assistant] History is full of stories about unusual things. That's something I'm very glad for. But it's rare to find those moments in the past where we can watch the intersection of cold, experienced logic and descriptions of events that define belief.


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[Assistant] If we were going to wish for a witness to the Eddy family powers, we couldn't have asked for a better man than Henry Alcott.


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[Assistant] But like I said, those 10 weeks in Vermont, changed him.


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[Assistant] Spiritualists at the time referred to the Eddys little town as the spirit capital of the universe. That's a pretty big claim. But it was enough to draw a lot of curious visitors. And a few of those other visitors had such an impact on Alcott that the rest of his life was altered completely.


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[Assistant] In the years that followed, the Eddie siblings endured their fame in different ways. Mary struggled to make a name for herself in her brother's shadows, but she was, however, one of the few Eddies to get married and move away. She passed away in 1910 while serving as a nurse for tuberculosis patients.


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[Assistant] Her brother Horatio moved to the house across the street sometime after Alcott's visit and spent the last 50 years of his life working as a gardener. He passed away in 1922. But it was William, the focal point of so much attention by Alcott and others, who seems to have distanced himself the most from his younger days.


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[Assistant] He said to have refused to work as a medium ever again and ended up living in that big farmhouse all alone until his death in 1932 at the age of 99. Somehow, I can't get the image out of my head of an elderly William slowly climbing the stairs to that seance room on the second floor and just looking around, remembering.


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[Assistant] One of the stories the siblings told Alcott was that their sister Miranda, who had died young years before, actually visited their mother Julia as she lay dying in 1872. Miranda's spirit sat beside their mother's bed like a caretaker, giving her drinks of water and helping her stay comfortable.


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[Assistant] Julia is said to have inherited her gifts from her mother, who was reputed to be powerful in her own right. They also claimed that on the day of her death, a ghostly carriage drawn by a pair of horses pulled up in front of the Eddy home.


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[Assistant] A woman inside the carriage was said to have turned toward them and smiled, and then the entire vision faded away like smoke.


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[Assistant] All of this happened right in front of the entire family, including their father, Zephaniah. He was, consistent with all the other stories about him, incredibly irritated by it.


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[Assistant] I mention these two tales because the abilities the Eddy siblings claim to possess, the levitation and trances and communication with the dead, they were all part of a family legacy.


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[Assistant] The Eddys mother, Julia, was apparently descended from a woman named Mary Bradbury, who was one of the many accused of witchcraft during the Salem witch trials of 1692.


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[Assistant] Some versions of this tale say Bradbury managed to stay in jail until the panic blew over and she was released. Others claim her husband bribed the jailer and took her north to Maine. Some just say she escaped.


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[Assistant] Which makes you wonder, were the unusual gifts exhibited by the Eddie family nothing more than a fraud or performance designed to fool a gullible audience? Or were they real?


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[Assistant] Proven abilities passed down through the generations and verified by a deeply skeptical observer.


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[Assistant] Depending on your beliefs, either choice makes sense.


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[Assistant] In the end, I suppose, no matter which answer we choose, the entertaining and extraordinary abilities of the Eddies will forever be a family affair.


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


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[Assistant] A friendly reminder that Lore is a lot more than just a bi-weekly storytelling podcast. There is an ongoing book series from Penguin Random House, a television show available on Amazon Prime, a membership site with extra episodes, and so much more. And you can learn about everything in one place. TheWorldOfLore.com slash now.


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[Assistant] Lore is also on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. 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.


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[Assistant] At the height of the Cold War tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, the American Navy was using audio technology to detect Soviet submarines.


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[Assistant] These high-powered underwater microphones could detect unusual sounds from hundreds, even thousands of miles away, helping the military see far into the depths of the ocean.


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[Assistant] After the Cold War ended, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, otherwise known as NOAA, built on that old microphone system with the hope of gaining a new understanding of the massive, unexplored world beneath the ocean waves.


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[Assistant] They studied ambient sounds, geophysical noise, and bioacoustics, the sounds that ocean creatures make.


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[Assistant] But in 1997, they encountered a sound that defied explanation. A very low frequency, very organic, and very powerful sound.


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[Assistant] So powerful that it was picked up by their microphone system from over 3,000 miles away.


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[Assistant] Oh, and HP Lovecraft fans might get a kick out of the location they pinpointed. It's roughly 900 miles from the location of the mythical island city of R'lyeh, where Cthulhu is imprisoned, waiting and dreaming.


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[Assistant] It didn't help that, at the time, Noah deemed this sound to be neither man-made nor geological.


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[Assistant] It seemed to be organic, with a signal that varied too much to be mechanical.


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[Assistant] Today, scientists lean toward another theory, though. It's the sound of icebergs scraping against the ocean floor. Maybe.


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[Assistant] Many people still wonder what the Bloop, as they called it, really was.


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[Assistant] We wonder because there's something dark and mysterious about the ocean.


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[Assistant] Even after centuries of exploration, we've only mapped about 5% of the ocean floor.


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[Assistant] It's crazy, but we know more about the surface of Mars than we do about roughly 70% of our own planet. There's so much darkness, so much that's unknown, that it leaves us feeling a bit uneasy.


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[Assistant] We fear the unknown, because it's full of questions.


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[Assistant] Questions are risky. They're dangerous. They prevent us from settling in and feeling comfortable. And the ocean is full of questions. But according to some, there's a very good reason to be afraid.


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[Assistant] One of the endearing features of many early European maps is the inclusion of tiny little sketches sprinkled throughout the ocean.


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[Assistant] Sketches of beastly green heads protruding from the waves, or long lashing tails reaching out for a nearby vessel. You won't find them on navigational maps from the time, but they were a common feature of the decorative maps that were created for aristocratic homes. They were, above all, entertainment.


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[Assistant] There were enough stories told by reputable people to give these decorative maps a bit of credibility.


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[Assistant] One example would be the map drawn around 1530 by Olaus Magnus. He was the Catholic Archbishop of Sweden, along with being a well-respected historian in his day. So when his map of Norway showed the waters off the coast to be literally packed with sea monsters, people believed him.


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[Assistant] In fact, when Conrad Gessner published volume four of his Historia Animalium in 1558, sort of a collection of all known sea creatures, he included a number of sketches from Magnus' map. Because to him, and a lot of other people, they were real.


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[Assistant] It's not entirely their fault, though. Humans have been telling stories of the mysterious creatures of the ocean for a very long time. Almost 24 centuries ago, Aristotle wrote about a creature that he called the deuthos, a gigantic, monstrous squid.


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[Assistant] Centuries later, right in Magnus' backyard, the Norwegians who lived and traveled through the waters around Norway and Greenland spoke of the Kraken.


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[Assistant] It's a name based on the Norwegian word krakke, which means an unhealthy animal or a creature that's unnaturally twisted. It's a meaning that fits perfectly with the notion of a mysterious sea monster. And so for a long while, if it was mysterious and dangerous and beneath the waves, it was a kraken.


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[Assistant] A lot of these old stories can be explained away with an understanding of just how little people really knew about the ocean in the 14th century.


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[Assistant] When a sailor landed on an island and found the decomposing corpse of a giant oarfish on the sand, he didn't say, hey, it's an oarfish. No, he framed the unusual sight through the lens of folklore.


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[Assistant] Of course, modern science has given us a better understanding of the ocean. We know more than Olus Magnus ever did. We know that the giant squid is a very real, very large creature, although it's taking us a very long time to prove that. In fact, it wasn't photographed live in the water until 2004, and took another two years before it was ever filmed.


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[Assistant] And the Kraken isn't the only ancient sea creature to be debunked by science. In 1492, while Columbus sailed the ocean blue, he reported sighting something unusual in the waters off the coast of the Dominican Republic. On January 9th of 1493, he claimed to have spotted three mermaids.


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[Assistant] They are not, he wrote, as beautiful as they are painted, since in some ways they have a face like a man.


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[Assistant] Folklore has always portrayed mermaids as part woman, part fish. For thousands of years, humans have been obsessed with the idea of human-fish hybrid creatures. The Babylonians, the Assyrians, and the ancient Greeks all told stories about them, as did cultures from Africa, China, India, and Europe. History, if you'll pardon the pun, is swimming with mermaids.


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[Assistant] And sailors tried to avoid them. They were viewed by some as bad omens, signs that tragedy was about to strike. And for sailors who were notoriously superstitious, that meant mermaids should be avoided at all costs.


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[Assistant] The mermaids that Christopher Columbus sighted in 1493 were more than likely nothing more than a group of manatees, a large aquatic mammal that's fairly common near the coastlines of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.


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[Assistant] They have fish-like tails, arm-like flippers and, being mammals, pectoral mammary glands. From a distance and viewed through a few feet of water, they tick all the boxes.


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[Assistant] But not everything can be explained away so easily. Sometimes the stories are simply too numerous, too detailed, and too documented to be brushed aside.


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[Assistant] Some stories hold on tight, long after others have caved in under scientific scrutiny.


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[Assistant] And no tale from the sea, at least in America, has held on longer than one that began in New England nearly 400 years ago. If it's true, it's more than intriguing. It's downright chilling.


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[Assistant] In the early days of British settlement of the New World, colonies were often approached as investment opportunities. Financial supporters in England would front the money to hire colonists, buy supplies, and launch the mission.


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[Assistant] You might think of it on the same level as a privately funded human mission to Mars. Except for the early colonists, there was profit to be made.


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[Assistant] Almost 400 years ago, in 1623, a private company was formed in Dorchester, England with the goal of settling a profitable colony in North America. Later that year, the expedition landed in the area north of Boston known as Cape Anne, and it got to work.


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[Assistant] But life in this New England was tough. And within two years, their funding was pulled.


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[Assistant] 1628 brought new money and new settlers. Things were looking up. Within two years, progress there was successful enough to warrant sending more colonists.


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[Assistant] In the decade between 1630 and 1640, more than 10,000 brave souls weathered the Atlantic crossing to start a new life on the northern coast of modern day Massachusetts.


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[Assistant] And more people means more observers. More eyes on this strange new land, full of indigenous people, strange animals, and unknown threats. Fear is a spark that's fanned by large crowds, and in the right setting it can engulf a culture. And that's just what happened in Gloucester.


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[Assistant] The first spark was recorded by John Joslin, a traveler from England.


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[Assistant] Jocelyn was a keen observer of the natural world and would later go on to publish his adventures in two separate books in the late 1600s. A few days after his ship entered port in the summer of 1648, one of the colonists told him the most unusual tale.


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[Assistant] A sea serpent, the man told him, had been seen on the rocks at the northern tip of Cape Ann. This gentleman described the serpent as an enormous snake and claimed that it would slither up out of the waters of the Atlantic to coil up there on the rocks. Other colonists had witnessed it as well.


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[Assistant] Once, he said, a boat was sailing near that area with four men aboard, two English settlers and two Native Americans. When one of the Englishmen saw the serpent moving through the water, he raised his musket to fire at it. But one of the Native Americans placed his hand on the barrel and gently told him to stop. It was too risky, he said.


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[Assistant] If the shot didn't instantly kill it, they would all be in danger.


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[Assistant] He described it as over 90 feet long, with black eyes set into a horse-shaped head, and said that his report could be backed up by a number of other settlers. And he wasn't the last either. For decades, rumors spread across the cold, harsh coastline, like a stiff ocean wind. That's how a lot of folklore works.