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[Assistant] Well, they don't know a hundred percent. It could be. It looks, they said it's man-made or somebody made it. Oh, those fuckin' ba-


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[Assistant] Do you know the fucking logistics of loading up a rocket with your garbage and firing it at aliens to say fuck you?


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[Assistant] What they think it could be because of the shape of it, it could be a piece of space junk, you know.


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[Assistant] 50 years old that took a big orbit and it's just coming back.


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[Assistant] And you know what they think it could be? Part of the fucking Saturn V rocket. Hold on a second.


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[Assistant] Well, the rocket went up back in the, you know, 60s or 70s. Yeah. Right?


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[Assistant] That's what you think the rocket scientist who developed that whole


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[Assistant] You think that's what you're thinking? Oh yeaah, this piece is gonna come off. Come back to Earth in 50 years, don't give a f-


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[Assistant] Locking up how far away that is would be kinda cool if we went over and tried to get it. You know what that fucking thing would be worth, Ricky?


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[Assistant] Not coming on you, but you know, if it was coming down on you, you'd have to.


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[Assistant] You imagine you roll down to fuckin' shitties with the fuckin' pieces of Saturn 5, and he's shitty like this. What's that worth? You'd get fuckin', you'd get good money for that.


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[Assistant] There was a British guy and he was in a cave, you know, in a boat.


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[Assistant] Doing some cave exploring, and he went like this and took a selfie. Hey there, shh. And then, you know, whatever, he went home. Back to Scotland or Ireland, wherever the fuck he's from.


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[Assistant] And he's going through his pictures and in the pictures he sees a fucking sea creature that's unidentified in the water behind him.


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[Assistant] Well, no, I don't even know if he was from Scotland, Ricky, did he? Just wait. Yeah, back home in Scotland he was.


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[Assistant] Ricky, what are you talking about? 90% of the fucking oceans have never been explored. They're so deep and you know. Okay.


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[Assistant] Well this thing, it looks like a, it said it looked like a half-dolphin, half-crocodile. And it had crazy flippers and a big long, you know, bitey-pouty.


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[Assistant] That's what you want. That's how you think you're gonna get famous. You're gonna wear a hot dog suit and wrestle a Krogendolphin.


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[Assistant] So that would be the whole TV show, just different people come on and try to wrestle the crocodile.


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[Assistant] So you think you're fucking tough, episode one. People from around the country try to fight a crocodile.


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[Assistant] Nice, fuck, that thing really came aboard me.


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[Assistant] Then we'll go to a drive-through and order an el-elmo combo. A what?


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[Assistant] What percentage of alcohol in the Big Wheeler? Five percent. Good.


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[Assistant] First chair, so I'm number one host, number two host, number three host.


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[Assistant] And he did give some pills, but, you know, it was all they consented in the whole thing, which...


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[Assistant] See, now you're throwing it back at me again.


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[Assistant] And we're getting ready to hop on a, on a plane to go on a vacation.


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[Assistant] Dog the bounty hunter. I know.


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[Assistant] I mean, he's dealing with the cartel, man. He's dealing with the fucking army. Fucking machine guns. He's got a pepper spray gun.


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[Assistant] They got a wonderful menu here at the dump crank. Lots of beautiful weeds. Here, do you want to read some of these out puffs?


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[Assistant] Well, it's a wonderful place anyway. Thank you very much for having us.


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[Assistant] Hanging out in those red light places? Yea, that's what we should be talking about. The red light district here, boys.


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[Assistant] Yeah, it's, uh, it's even crazier than I would have thought it is. It's fucking nuts.


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[Assistant] Yeah, it would take me a lot more than six minutes because I wouldn't, I don't know, it would feel weird.


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[Assistant] Bubbles, you gotta try one of these fucking things. Just take a little nibble off. You're gonna shit yourself. What is it, man? I don't know, but it's fucking delicious.


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[Assistant] It's not that big of a deal. Now we don't have to eat lunch at least. Wow.


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[Assistant] We're going there. We're going there later today.


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[Assistant] With a wedgie, remember? That was a hover wedgie. That's just cause his balls went up inside of him. They couldn't get them back down. He was trying to jump up and down to get them out. I built a little hash, snowman bubs.


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[Assistant] Well, I just feel like I'm in Disneyland World over here, and it's like Christmas that I would have got this trip, and snowman, Christmas, and... I was gonna build a reindeer, but that would have been way too fucking hard right now. Let's put him right there. Alright.


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[Assistant] Look, what's his name? Uh, Superfucked. Cause that's how I feel right now.


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[Assistant] What about this guy that's leaving? Yeah, just look at that. Police investigate after cloaked figure leaves raw meat near NC playground.


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[Assistant] Jesus. I don't think it's a guy. He's leaving food for people that need it. That's definitely a chick. See there?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Jesus. He's supposed to come back. That's what my dad always said.


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[Assistant] Cause he'd be like a rockstar, people like, hey, can I get your autograph? And shit like that, wanna hang out with him and talk to him, so he's probably just trying to stay under the radar.


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[Assistant] If I saw Jesus go down the street, I'd be like, hey bud, we gotta have a little chat here. You know.


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[Assistant] What kind of meat is it? Is it good healthy meat? Or is it like beef jerky? Is it turkey?


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[Assistant] Well, if it's red, then it's not going bad, so it's probably someone doing a good deed.


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[Assistant] You know what? Maybe we should stop getting so fucked up for podcasts, boys. Why? Probably pissing people off.


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[Assistant] That's why you brought the full sized poster of, uh, Yoko. Gonna recreate some action in the area.


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[Assistant] Yeah, but then you, no one would want to hang out with you, because you fuck up sometimes, you start slicing people up.


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[Assistant] What animal have you looked at? Let me guess. A cat or something. A cat. Soft fur.


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[Assistant] I'd like to get a fuckin' boat with paddle paddles at some point. Maybe a swan. We'll go on the paddle paddle, or the paddle paddle boat. Maybe a fuckin' sheathed gorilla paddle paddle boat.


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[Assistant] Well, it depends what we see. We might see something and then go, see? I need an eye shower. An eye shower, cause I...


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[Assistant] Welcome to Lore Legends, a subset of lore episodes that explore the strange tales we whisper in the dark, even if they can't always be proven by the history books. So if you're ready, let's begin.


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[Assistant] Death comes for all of us. It's inevitable. But that doesn't make it any easier to swallow. Not only are we afraid of dying, of missing out on so much that life has to offer, but we also worry about losing the people closest to us. As C.S. Lewis once wrote, No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.


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[Assistant] Grief is, at the end of the day, an expression of loss. It's an emotion that none of us should ever have to experience, and yet most of us will, probably multiple times during our lives. Grief is a reminder that we loved, that the people in our lives made an impression and left a mark.


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[Assistant] Grief is healthy and normal, and so deeply painful, it can bring our lives to a stop.


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[Assistant] So it shouldn't come as a surprise that we humans have become very good at making tools to help us manage that grief. Maybe it's a photo on the wall, or a holiday tradition that keeps a lost loved one's memory alive.


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[Assistant] Or something special at their actual gravesite. And because cemeteries tend to have an eerie connotation, those little details, once designed to be handholds on the mountain of grief, slowly transform into something different.


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[Assistant] As they say, there are two things that are certain in life, death and taxes. But there is a third thing that nobody wants to talk about, that we need to go somewhere when we die. I'm not talking existentially, I mean literally. Our bodies need to be interred in a permanent location.


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[Assistant] We might be cremated and have our ashes stored or scattered somewhere meaningful, or we could have our remains donated to science. More often than not though, most people plan on being buried in a cemetery.


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[Assistant] Before the 1830s, most Americans were buried in small churchyards and town burial grounds. But as the country's population grew, so too did our need for more room. Many church cemeteries buried their dead stacked on top of one another to save space. But that only worked for so long. Soon enough, better solutions were required.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This spurred the creation of the Victorian rural cemetery movement. Large landscape burial grounds were created outside of city centers to give people a place to inter their dead, surrounded by the bucolic sight of trees, grass, and flowers. But then something strange happened.


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[Assistant] The living started spending their time there as well. They headed to cemeteries for picnics and long walks. Children played among the headstones while their parents sipped wine or read a book. It wasn't uncommon for hunters to chase wild game there or for young thrill seekers to race carriages.


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[Assistant] But over time, the desire to party amongst the dead faded, and towns also got wise to the need for true public gathering spaces. So they created parks for families to picnic in, rather than force them to dine with the deceased.


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[Assistant] But there was an unintended consequence of all of this progress. Our lack of connection to local cemeteries changed our perception of them. No longer were they peaceful places to gather with loved ones. Instead they became dark breeding grounds for urban legends.


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[Assistant] Maybe you've heard the one about holding your breath as you drive past a cemetery.


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[Assistant] I don't know where I first heard about it, and I certainly don't believe the folklore, but more often than not, I still do it anyway. And let me tell you, living in a historic New England town means there are a lot of graves to drive past. There are a few ideas as to where this superstition came from. One version claims that holding your breath prevents you from inhaling a ghost.


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[Assistant] Another theory suggests that it's a way to avoid making the ghosts jealous, because you can breathe and they can't.


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[Assistant] It's also possible that this legend dates all the way back to the days of the plague. Back then, people feared that the illness could be inhaled if they stood too close to a dead body. Fear, as always, provided an incubator for strange and unusual ideas.


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[Assistant] In reality, a lot of the folklore surrounding cemeteries comes from a simple misunderstanding of funerary customs and burial traditions.


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[Assistant] For example, lots of headstones feature symbols that were meaningful to the deceased and their families. Maybe you've seen the popular Victorian era carving that depicts a hand pointed upward, indicating that the person buried there is now residing above us in heaven.


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[Assistant] But if you travel to Pine Hill Cemetery in Hollis, New Hampshire, that hand might be pointed elsewhere. It's a cemetery that's home to only about 300 graves and was established in 1769. But the locals there today know it by a different name. Blood Cemetery.


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[Assistant] This creepy moniker comes from the blood family, many of whom are buried within its borders. But there's one grave that stands out above the rest. It belongs to Abel Blood, who died in 1867. His headstone features the iconic finger pointed skyward, but not always.


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[Assistant] According to the legend, those who visit his grave at midnight see something different. They see that finger actually pointing downward. You know, toward hell. Others claim that the soil above the grave leaks a strange liquid, and some visitors who have approached it have been pushed away by phantom hands.


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[Assistant] Naturally, these stories have led to a rumor that Abel and the other Bloods were all murdered, and that their restless spirits wander the graveyard at night. Was he really killed? Sadly, we can't consult his grave for more details. The stone was broken by vandals some time ago, and it's no longer kept in the cemetery.


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[Assistant] And the historical record is equally silent. But creepy tombstone iconography isn't the darkest thing to grace our local burial grounds. In fact, one feature has become so misunderstood that it spawned a chilling legend with a terrifying character at its core. The devil himself.


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[Assistant] Graveyards during the Victorian era were mostly about one thing. Death. They were resting places that were deserving of respect. As a result, people in mourning would often sit beside a loved one's grave and talk as though they were conversing with the dead.


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[Assistant] Because of this, they began investing in ways to remain comfortable during uncomfortable times, literally and figuratively. No one wanted to spend hours standing or seated on the ground as they grieved. So that's where the idea of morning chairs came in.


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[Assistant] They provided a place for people to sit and visit with the deceased for long periods of time. Some were regular chairs, like you might find in a person's home, while others were actual tombstones that had been sculpted to look like seats. They could look like benches, too, either freestanding or built into the walls surrounding burial plots.


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[Assistant] And some of them were so ornate and beautiful, they looked more like works of art than simple functional seating.


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[Assistant] Although they arose to popularity in the 19th and early 20th centuries, morning chairs most likely originated with the ancient Greeks, in an idea known as an excedra. It might sound like some kind of new allergy medication, but an excedra was actually a form of Greek architecture, literally meaning out of a seat.


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[Assistant] In basic terms, an excedra was a semicircular or rectangular recess, sometimes with a dome overhead, and a raised seating area inside. It would have either stood on its own or been placed into the side of another building. In Graveyard specifically, its purpose was to define the boundaries of a burial site.


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[Assistant] In the 19th century, though, their purpose evolved, and most people probably didn't even notice it happening. Yes, they were still architectural elements, a callback to an older time, or a reflection of the popular style of the day, but they also had adapted to the needs of a new generation of people.


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[Assistant] Soon, folks were actually sitting in these recesses while they mourned, hence the term, Mourning Chair.


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[Assistant] But all fads come and go, and by the 1920s, these seats began to fall out of fashion. Before long, they looked more like ancient relics that had lost their meaning, and people started to invent their own stories to explain why they were there.


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[Assistant] It's honestly the same pattern that so much of folklore follows. People encounter a mystery or a question they don't have an answer to, so they invent a solution to the puzzle. They fill in the blanks. And if those little explanations catch on with enough people and stick around for enough years, we end up with a new bit of folklore.


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[Assistant] You can see why people were curious about these chairs. Who put them there, and why? Who had made them? Over time, a new folklore cropped up to give these seats meaning. They were no longer just morning chairs. They became the Devil's Chair.


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[Assistant] Take, for example, the one in the south side cemetery of Pontiac, Illinois. In its heyday, it looked like a chair with an epitaph carved on one side.


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[Assistant] Today it's nothing more than a stone block, broken and chipped away by time and neglect. The inscription has worn off, likely by erosion from the elements and from mischievous teens sitting where they don't belong.


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[Assistant] Local rumor claims that this specific chair marks the grave of a witch who murdered her child as part of a magical ritual. She was, they say, arrested and hanged for her crimes.


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[Assistant] As you might expect, though, the town records show no evidence of a witch ever having lived or died in Pontiac. But that hasn't stopped people from visiting this graveside chair at midnight, where they believe they'll hear the sound of a baby crying. And according to the legend, any youngster who sits in the chair and recites the grave's epitaph out loud will die before their 18th birthday.


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[Assistant] Now, this idea of a Devil's Chair is thought to have started back in the mid-1800s in the Appalachian Mountains. In most legends, they were active only on certain nights of the year, like Halloween or a Friday the 13th. People believed that the ground of a graveyard would literally split open and a chair would sprout out of it like a weed.


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[Assistant] Of course, any person brave enough to sit in one of these chairs would have the chance to make a deal with the devil, trading their soul to obtain their deepest desire. Or, more frightening yet, just sitting in one would doom a person to a life of misfortune and misery.


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[Assistant] It seems that a devil's chair didn't just let someone talk to the dead. It also brought them to the attention of the Grim Reaper a lot faster than they'd care for.


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[Assistant] If I had to describe the 1800s in one word, it would be wild. Obviously, America's westward expansion led to the boom of the Wild West. And don't forget the California Gold Rush and shooting someone over a bad poker hand. But there was always the public's fascination with spiritualism.


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[Assistant] George Colby from Pike, New York was one of those people. During the late 1800s, he would travel the country, attending spiritualist meetings, giving readings, and conducting seances. George became so popular, he even earned himself the nickname the Seer of Spiritualism, which, in a field with tons of other seers, that was quite a claim.


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[Assistant] In 1875, though, George Colby's life changed forever. According to him, he was contacted by a Native American spirit named Seneca, who claimed to be his spirit guide. Seneca allegedly told him to go to Florida and start a spiritualist camp. And it wasn't just important. This was his destiny.


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[Assistant] So that year, George obtained a homestead grant, providing him with 145 acres of land on which to found his institution. He wound up using only 57 of those acres to build new homes for his community, which he called the Kasedega Spiritualist Camp.


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[Assistant] The name Casadega, by the way, comes from the Seneca word meaning water beneath the rocks, which was pretty fitting for his town.


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[Assistant] Some people believe that running water could either contain or spur on paranormal activity in a given place. And as if that wasn't enough, some have even suggested that Casadega is situated above a natural vortex of psychic energy.


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[Assistant] Today, the town is known as the psychic center of the world, and it continues to draw in mediums, psychics, and enthusiasts from all over. Of course, tourists flock to Casa Dega as well, looking for tarot readings and holistic healing services.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The real draw is Casa Dega Lake Helen Cemetery. It's located on the border of Lake Helen and Casa Dega, about 40 miles north of Orlando. In it, you can find a total of three morning chairs, but only one has earned a reputation for being the Devil's Chair.


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[Assistant] It doesn't look like much at first, just a plain bench made from red bricks. It was built into a low-standing wall that looks more like the ruins of an old house than a burial plot. And this wall surrounds two graves whose inscriptions face the bench, as if to greet whoever sits upon it.


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[Assistant] Now, every Halloween and Friday the 13th, teenagers and young adults gather in the cemetery, daring one another to sit in the devil's chair.


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[Assistant] It's a spectacle, for sure. One that seems to have angered local residents. So much so that a metal fence was eventually put up around the graveyard's perimeter, along with signs that warned visitors they will be prosecuted if they trespass after dark.


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[Assistant] Of course, these warnings have only made the Devil's Chair more attractive and amplified the stories about it. One legend states that if you leave an unopened bottle of beer on the chair overnight, it will be empty by morning, and some say it will appear as though it hadn't been touched at all, with its seal still intact.


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[Assistant] But the chair doesn't just enjoy a free beer from time to time. It also, if the rumors are true, acts as a gateway to the underworld. Because according to one legend, any person who sits in the chair at midnight


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[Assistant] One person stated that when they sat in the chair they were overcome by evil voices in their head. As soon as they stood up, those voices disappeared.


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[Assistant] Some even claim that the Devil's Chair is only the tip of a paranormal iceberg. Those who have wandered through the cemetery at night have caught glimpses of dark shadows lurking in the trees.


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[Assistant] The ghostly spirits have been spotted hovering about the gravestones. One witness even claims to have sat in the devil's chair one night only to see strange figures in the darkness, watching them.


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[Assistant] So, is the spectral figure a shadow of the devil himself, or the ghost of George Colby, who is also buried there? After all, the Casadega camp founder must be proud of his lasting legacy. Perhaps he's just touring the neighborhood, admiring what he built.


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[Assistant] The Devil's Chair is a unique bit of folklore. Like the chairs in the legend, it seems to have sprouted from a gap. What we've been left with is a fascinating category of stories that give us a reason to be afraid of some strange graveyard architecture.


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[Assistant] There is a bit of irony, I think, in how one culture's obsession with death and mourning has slowly transformed into another obsession altogether, and one that ended up being a lot more sinister. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that legendary chairs like the one in the Casa Dega Lake Helen Cemetery have a lot more chills to deliver.


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[Assistant] Back in 1926, an old man was spotted in the graveyard there, long before the legends and rumors that we know today began to spread. This man wasn't looking for a thrill, and he had no interest in communicating with the devil. No, he was there because he was wracked with grief, having just lost his wife and daughter in a fire.


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[Assistant] Grief-stricken and overwhelmed, he'd had a morning chair installed so that he could be close to them at all times.


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[Assistant] He'd had it placed facing their tombstones, which was, at least to him, the next best thing to seeing their actual faces. He had no other family or friends, so he spent hours there every day, sitting in the chair, watching over them.


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[Assistant] Naturally, most of the locals wrote him off as eccentric. Some even made fun of him behind his back. They gossiped about the strange man who seemed to spend every waking moment in the graveyard. This wasn't exactly a warm community to him. But at least they left him alone to grieve in his own way.


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[Assistant] That is, until one Halloween night. The moon was high when two youths entered the cemetery around 11pm. They walked across the grass and passed by graves and headstones as they went.


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[Assistant] Maybe they just wanted a break from the Halloween celebrations, or perhaps they were looking for a spooky way to spend the night. Whatever the reason, it didn't take long before they saw him, the old man, sitting in his chair, weeping.


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[Assistant] Not everyone would have done what the boys did next. Most would have left him alone. Some might have hurled an insult at him. Instead, they went to the police and asked for help. Clearly, he shouldn't be left alone in the cemetery, especially on a night like this.


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[Assistant] After giving the police a description, the boys walked them through what they had seen. It was dark, but clearly he was old, maybe 80 or 90 years of age. And he was sitting across from a pair of graves, crying as though he had lost them that very day.


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[Assistant] But the officers were confused. They knew exactly who the boys had seen, because the old man had done this for many, many years. It was just hard to believe that the teens weren't trying to prank them, because they knew without a doubt that what they claimed to have seen could not possibly have been real. Why? Because they knew that just days before, the old man had passed away.


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[Assistant] Cemeteries have long been a reminder of what we have lost, and while there are volumes of folklore all rooted in burial grounds, I hope today's particular tour gave you a new appreciation for some of them. But just in case you want more, I've got one last legend to share with you. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.


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[Assistant] Far to the north of Casa Dega is the small town of Weatherly, Pennsylvania, and within it is Eckley Miners Village. Today the old villages preserve for educational purposes, but if you travel up the road just five minutes, you'll find something interesting.


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[Assistant] It's on top of Buck Mountain, near a flat stretch of woods. No one lives there, so there are no houses or stores to be seen. But along Eckley Road, where the edge of the pavement meets the grass, there is a strange rock formation. Drive too fast and you might miss it though, because it's low to the ground and not that easy to spot. But it's certainly worth a look.


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[Assistant] There's a long seat with a back and a single armrest. Honestly, it kind of looks like a couch, just one made out of stone.


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[Assistant] Which is why it's known appropriately as the Stone Couch. It has been marked with red spray paint and is missing an arm rest on one side, but there's no mistaking what it was meant to be. Strangely though, no one knows how it got there, or whether it was man-made or naturally formed. All we know is that it's cursed.


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[Assistant] The story has changed a bit over the years, but it usually consists of three distinct parts. One legend claims that the first time a person sits on the couch, they will wreck their car soon after. If they sit on it a second time, they'll break a limb. And a third sitting will result in death.


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[Assistant] In another version, the curse states that anyone who sits on the couch will get scratched, a second time will cause them to bleed, and a third will bring about their demise.


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[Assistant] All of the variations of the curse follow this formula, too, where the level of pain or punishment grows each time someone sits on the couch. But as to where the story came from is something of a mystery.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some say that the couch has been cursed since the native Delaware people inhabited the Pocono Mountains. They claim that a Delaware mother had been traveling through the mountain with her baby on her back. She'd been walking for some time, so when she came upon the stone couch, it was a welcome sight.


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[Assistant] She sat down to feed her child and that's when she faced the worst moment of her life. Her child had died. Devastated and angry, she placed a curse on the stone couch, which remains there to this day.


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[Assistant] In a separate legend, a man was crossing Buck Mountain in 1918 at the height of the influenza epidemic. He'd been traveling by automobile with his wife and child in tow, hoping to reach a doctor in Weatherly who could help them.


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[Assistant] As they reached the top of the mountain though, their vehicle broke down, and when the man got out to fix it, he noticed several large boulders along the side of the road. Using a large stick or some other kind of lever, he managed to move them into place, creating a stone seat for them to rest on, while he continued on foot to find help.


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[Assistant] He returned as soon as he could, but it had been too long and his family had already succumbed to the flu.


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[Assistant] Heartbroken and possibly sick himself, the man died soon after, but not before placing a curse on the stone couch where his wife and child had died.


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[Assistant] Today, most folks who encounter the Stone Couch don't think much about the curse. It's just a story after all, right? But it certainly does give a person a reason to pause. After all, some legends serve to document grief that is long in the past. And some hint at grief to come.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore Legends was produced by me, Aaron Manke, with writing by Harry Marks and Aaron Manke, and research by Jamie Vargas and Cassandra Dayalba. Don't like hearing the ads? I've got a solution for you. There is a paid version of Lore on Apple Podcasts and Patreon that is 100% ad-free.


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[Assistant] Plus, subscribers get weekly mini-episodes called Lore Bytes. That's a bargain for all that ad-free storytelling, and a great way to support this show and the team behind it.


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[Assistant] Lore is much more than just a podcast, though. There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Information about all of that and more is available over at lorepodcast.com.


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


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[Assistant] It was great and, ehm, you know, it was great to play with him, same line.


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[Assistant] 89 when they traded him into Los Angeles, I had to shadow him. Yeaah. Skate around with him in a like ballet dancer. All the way ice. Was, was, ehm, that time greatest player in hockey.


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[Assistant] You still talk to him, probably. Yeaah, I talk to him after, after, you know, a bullfire.


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[Assistant] Quit the hockey now, and we're doing different things, and he's still in the Olympics, we see Vancouver, and he was just in the London, what's the sucker game.


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[Assistant] Well, Yari, I know it because he's the same in Esports here and we're doing it together and everything.


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[Assistant] One thing that's great is, eh, you know, coffee. I see him be doing these old-timers tours in the U.S., in Russia and Finland. So he's playing with those too. Oh my god, I gotta get down.


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[Assistant] That's a beer. Oh yeaah? Is it good? Yeaah. It's good. God.


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[Assistant] It's one sponsor in, uh, IHK, in Helsinki. Alright. Nice.


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[Assistant] Well, I think it was Dave Semenko, not the craziest, but toughest.


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[Assistant] Every year in Finland, you take your wife in the back or you carry her and run in some, uh, mile, and if you come in first, you win.


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[Assistant] President Ford. President Ford. That's around 30 years ago. That was one of the times. One of the times, yeaah. Can you tell us that story? Well, that was, eh, when I was rookie in, eh,


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[Assistant] 85 in Palm Springs playing golf. I have to shoeshine President Ford and I think about it, he was car leadership.


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[Assistant] Secret Service pull me out in a...


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[Assistant] I just need to read a little closer than the average person, that's all.


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[Assistant] Oh well, lots of things happened to him. One of the greatest defense ever played in NHL hockey. Absolutely. He was fast as fuck. Well, he never stopped.


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[Assistant] I think he's coming to doorbell next week.


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[Assistant] Are you still playing, Esa? Yeah, I'm doing a little charity games. Cool. And I'm waiting for, you know,


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[Assistant] Joe Morse, legendary name Joe Morse. Oh yeaah.


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[Assistant] He's doing sticks and cleaning in the dressing room and, uh, you know, washing in the towels, underwears, and still singing O Canada every day.


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[Assistant] We have dogs and cats in the city, so they have barks in the dogs and cats, so they like, run around there.


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[Assistant] Yeah, so long he played in Orleans, I was roaming with him and I was a great man. He was taking care, you know.


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[Assistant] But you have to do everything what you can do. Win the game. That's right. So long did referee let you play. Hey.


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[Assistant] No, I have to take care, start 85 couple times after fight, but the biggest thing was when I was 15, I was in Canada, Regina. You guys in Canada, you know where is Regina.


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[Assistant] Always talking to that. I'm gonna talk into that. It won't be good. I think we're ready to fucking go here.


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[Assistant] What are you talking about? The fuck is all this shit? The podcast, Ricky. We talked about this. The what? The podcast. Are you fucking serious?


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[Assistant] You seriously don't remember any of this? A podcast, Ricky, I told you this. It's like a, it's like a, kinda like a radio show. Except we're doing it where you can see us. If you want to. You don't remember any of this?


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[Assistant] Is that cool? No, you are part of the fucking thing, we all agreed. Here, look, you got me all frazzled, I didn't start my... thing. It's alright, Puffs.


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[Assistant] Look, we're gonna have to fucking start over now because he's got it all fucked. No, he doesn't have it all fucked, we just keep it going. Alright, start over.


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[Assistant] Hi there, welcome to the first ever Trailer Park Boys podcast. I'm Bubbles.


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[Assistant] Trailer park boys, holy fuck Ricky. You train wrecked the fucking thing all together.


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[Assistant] Like we have sponsors, okay? People are sponsoring us to do this and now you're making it look like- What do you mean people are sponsoring us to do this? What are you talking about? We're getting paid to do this, Ricky. What? Holy fuck. See this beer, Ricky?


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[Assistant] Where do you think that came from? Liquor store? No. Beer store. That's a good guess. Grocery store. It came from the people that make it. Amsterdam.


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[Assistant] What is it? It's called bone shaker. Look at that. What is it, like a ginger? No, it's like a...


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[Assistant] It's unfiltered into your pale ale, 7.1%.


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[Assistant] Give it a try. Yeah, so this is bone shaker unfiltered into your pale ale and it's fucking nice tasting beer too.


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[Assistant] Well, it's already happening. I'm already hosting. Well, host away.


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[Assistant] Hosting? I am hosting. Here, you host for one second.


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[Assistant] Well, they and, I mean, think of all the fucking ones we could get right.


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[Assistant] Can't say maybe someday we'll be able to set the bag there.


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[Assistant] Clones? Rolling papers. See the little camera down there, Ricky? Oh yeaah. See that?


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[Assistant] Yeah, I slid that in there. Slid that in there, like product placement type thing.


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[Assistant] Official Trailer Park Boys podcast. This is the first one ever.


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[Assistant] We're here in Recchi's kitchen. Got Julian here. My best friend Julian. Recchi. My other best friend Recchi. Bubbles. Okay boys, here we go. So. Alright, let's do this. Basically all you're supposed to do is just talk.


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[Assistant] But whatever. Okay. I got a list of things here. Awesome.


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[Assistant] Current events is something they talk about on podcasts.


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[Assistant] You don't need to explain to people what a current event is.


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[Assistant] Nobody would ever go, oh fuck, they're gonna talk about things that are happening in the river.


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[Assistant] It's supposed to, you know, the podcast's supposed to be, people are like, holy, that was very insightful.


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[Assistant] California drought. Yeah, that's a bad one. That's a big fucking current issue.


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[Assistant] California's fucking losing its water. That's right.


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[Assistant] Ricky, do you know how big the fucking fan would have to be to blow clouds down to California? They build big fucking ships.


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[Assistant] There's 78 fuckin' wildfires burning right now in Canada. Uncontrolled wildfires.


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[Assistant] You would seriously put that forth as a solution. Build a fucking giant fire truck. Then you gotta build a special road for it to drive on. I'll probably...


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[Assistant] I like the fucking fact that you're brainstorming. Uh oh, what happened? Just one on silent mode or something. We lost her. This is the fucking, oh my god boys, I don't know what we're gonna do if this doesn't turn back on.


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[Assistant] 31 minute pieces, Ricky, is 30 minutes, no matter how you fucking slice them up.


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[Assistant] You don't need to test it, it's been tested since the fucking dawn of time. 30 minutes is 30 minutes.


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[Assistant] That's right, man. N-word Scandily Raps, oh my god.


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[Assistant] Ricky! Ricky! Ricky! That's the microphone!


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[Assistant] Did you burn it? I put the microphone down inside your bone to try to keep you interested.


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[Assistant] No, he doesn't get to do that. Nobody does. Doesn't matter. Well, some people do. Well some people do. Snoop throws it around a bit, but he's allowed to.


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[Assistant] Damn, yes. He's not allowed, he doesn't, he can't do that. He's got a nice tan, but that still doesn't.


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[Assistant] No, I was saying, I think that's why he thinks he can drop the end ball.


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[Assistant] I said he's got a beautiful tan, that's different than saying, man. Fack Hulk Hogan's beautiful.


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[Assistant] Because all I said was he's got a beautiful tan, then he goes, oh you think he's beautiful, you wanna bang?


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[Assistant] That I read one time, Julian, and guess what? You talking about that? You know what that means?


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[Assistant] No, but I didn't bring it up, you did. And it's probably because you like his oiled up muscles. And you want to put your muscles up.


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[Assistant] I can't get it working. We can probably just wrap it up. We can wrap it up, I think.


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[Assistant] Well, he sent out an Instagram, I think, or a tweety thing. Yeah. That said, yeah, he took a picture in front of a smart car.


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[Assistant] Said times are really tough, I think he was just pulling my leg. He'd be pulling everyone's leg.


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[Assistant] Alright, Ricky. Take a nap and I'll get reconfigured here.


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[Assistant] For those of you that can't see what's happening right now, Ricky has climbed into his sink. And he's laying on his dirty dishes to have a nap.


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[Assistant] Uh, uh, long time, 10, 13, 14 years, something like that, boys.


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[Assistant] It's, it's team building bud, it's team building. You get them together, you tell stories, you joke, you know, you carry on. Next day you're at work and like, Hey, remember that thing we did there? It was pretty cool. Hey, let's do some more.


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[Assistant] It's perfect timing. At least she didn't shit herself like Ed Sheeran does.


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[Assistant] The ocean is a mysterious place. It never stops moving or changing or drawing us in. For as long as humans have been around this planet, we've been pulled to those waves like a siren song. And no distance has been close enough.


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[Assistant] For thousands of years, sailors have braved those dangerous waters in search of the new, new lands, new creatures, and new civilizations. And it's almost a primal urge to go and see, to discover, to learn. And as we've done that, we've improved our methods.


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[Assistant] One of the biggest reasons for that was safety. Along with being mysterious, the ocean is also deadly, which made it important for those vessels to keep the lives on board safe from harm. And for the most part, it worked.


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[Assistant] But you can't read much about the history of sailing vessels before encountering a frightening truth. Not all ships survived their journey. And while, yes, advances in technology have lessened those losses over time, the pages of history are littered with examples of promising voyages that fail to deliver.


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[Assistant] You see, for as long as there have been ships, there have been the ghosts of the ones who failed. Specters of the sea that arrive when we least expect it. Folks who believe that they arrive to foretell impending doom, while others see them as an echo of dark tragedy.


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[Assistant] Most though, serve to remind us of what once was, and what was lost. And at the core of all of those stories is a more frightening truth, one that few people care to wrestle with.


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[Assistant] The 1600s saw Puritans travel from England to what is now America for some much needed religious freedom. The most famous of these journeys involved the arrival of the ship the Mayflower, which landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620.


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[Assistant] 18 years later, however, a separate group of Puritans came and established the colony of New Haven throughout New England. And the New Haven colony was founded by minister John Davenport, who had left England for Holland to escape religious persecution from the Crown. And then he fled from there to Boston before eventually founding New Haven.


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[Assistant] It wasn't clear what compelled Davenport to found his new colony instead of joining one of the already established settlements. Perhaps he'd been part of certain religious disagreements in Boston, or he might have believed it was easier to prosper in a new location rather than compete with Boston merchants.


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[Assistant] There was also the matter of the Antinomian Controversy, also known as the Free Grace Controversy. It was a conflict within the Massachusetts Bay Colony that had started in 1636 and it continued until 1638.


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[Assistant] Antinomians believed that Christians didn't have to obey Mosaic law like the Ten Commandments. They had the Holy Spirit on their side, which contradicted the beliefs of most of the others in the colony.


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[Assistant] So Davenport set out to start his own settlement called New Haven along the Connecticut River.


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[Assistant] He and his fellow colonists dug cellar-like homes into the hillside, with a plan to trade various goods, such as furs with Boston and Manhattan, then known as New Amsterdam. Those goods would then make their way back to England, and new supplies would be sent back to America.


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[Assistant] A minister by the name of William Hook joined Davenport's new colony in 1644. He was a firm believer in fasting and prayer, which he believed would not only bring them closer to God, but would practically guarantee their success. He was so confident in his beliefs that he was quoted as saying,


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[Assistant] Fasting and prayer are murderers that will kill point blank from one end of the world to the other. Thousands shall fall and never know who hurt them.


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[Assistant] Unfortunately, no amount of fasting or praying could help them get their trade routes off the ground. New Haven started to lose money, and the colonists were getting desperate.


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[Assistant] The merchants decided that a great ship should be built to take goods to England directly, bypassing Massachusetts Bay and providing New Haven with the means to get their much needed supplies.


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[Assistant] And so a ship was commissioned. It was to be built in Rhode Island and to measure 80 feet long, weighing somewhere between 100 and 150 tons. Tied to its masts were massive sails to catch the wind and propel the colony toward victory.


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[Assistant] But large sales weren't what made ships good. Good shipbuilders were. And the great ship didn't exactly live up to its namesake.


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[Assistant] According to its captain, George Lambert, it was a cranky vessel, prone to capsizing if the right wave hit it. It didn't help that the bottom of the ship had been loaded with light items, while the heavier goods had been stored up top. The unbalanced weight made the ship difficult to control. It bobbed in the water like a cork.


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[Assistant] However, despite its shortcomings, it had no choice but to get the job done for the sake of a colony. The vessel was loaded up with furs, lumber, peas, wheat, along with copies of Davenport's sermons. He wanted them printed back in England, of course.


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[Assistant] The great ship was launched from New Haven Colony in January of 1646 to much fanfare once the three mile long ice blockage was cleared out of the harbor, that is. And once free, the ship was towed backward into Long Island Sound, which the sailors viewed as an ill omen of what was to come.


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[Assistant] Along with the various goods for trade, the great ship carried 70 passengers and crew on board who were responsible for keeping her upright and pointed toward England. And once they had cleared the initial hurdles getting out of the harbor, it seemed like things were looking up.


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[Assistant] Davenport, however, watched as the ship disappeared into the smothering sea fog with worry displayed across his furrowed brow. He had been heard uttering the following prayer. Lord, if it be thy pleasure to bury these our friends in the bottom of the sea, they are thine. Save them.


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[Assistant] Months passed with no word from the great ship. It had been expected that any trip back to England would have taken about two months to complete, but so much time had already passed and the remaining New Haven colonists were getting worried.


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[Assistant] But they didn't have much time to dwell on the what-ifs surrounding the vessel. In June of 1647, a massive thunderstorm struck the New Haven colony. It cleared out by early evening, and in its wake, left a beautiful, clear view of the New Haven harbor.


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[Assistant] The sun's descent behind the horizon wouldn't begin for another hour. And as residents ventured outside to assess the damage, they looked out into the distance. And there it was.


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[Assistant] Some said it came down from the sky, a detail wielded by UFO enthusiasts today as proof that aliens have been coming to Earth for centuries. Others from the colony claimed to have seen Captain Lambert on deck with his sword pointed straight ahead.


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[Assistant] Spectators on the shore were shocked and horrified to see what they believed to be the great ship in ruins. And as the crowd watched, the vessel careened to one side and tipped over. It disappeared in a cloud of smoke.


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[Assistant] When the haze finally cleared, the great ship was gone, never to be seen again.


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[Assistant] Its crew and passengers were lost, and to this day, no trace of the wreck has ever been found.


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[Assistant] John Davenport believed the ship that he'd seen that day was a vision sent by God as an answer to the prayers that they were asking for what happened to the great ship.


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[Assistant] What was eventually to befall New Haven? The staggering loss of life and property sent the colony spiraling and by 1662, it had dissolved entirely.


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[Assistant] Over the years, the apparition of the Great Ship has been immortalized in art and verse by many writers and poets, including in a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called The Phantom Ship. And every once in a while,


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[Assistant] It can still be seen, bounding toward the harbor where New Haven once stood, trying its best to deliver those supplies.


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[Assistant] About a thousand miles north of New Haven resides Chalour Bay, which sits within a lobster-claw-like piece of land that separates the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec. The bay is a hotbed of fishing activity, but only for the bravest fishermen in Canada.


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[Assistant] The tall cliffs along its shores tend to draw in harsh weather and winds that whip against ships like angry spirits.


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[Assistant] In fact, for centuries, there have been sightings of a ghostly ship that haunts the bay. Its three masts and hull being devoured by hungry flames. Its origins are as vague and shadowy as the briny depth, but several stories have persisted over the centuries.


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[Assistant] The one holds that two Portuguese explorers named Gaspar and Miguel Correal had kidnapped a group of native peoples back in the year 1501. The captives were then sold into slavery, but their relatives never forgot.


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[Assistant] When Gaspar returned the following year, the mothers, fathers, siblings, aunts, and uncles of those who had been taken were waiting. They chained him to a rock in the bay at low tide and watched as the water slowly overtook his body, drowning him as they enjoyed a picnic nearby.


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[Assistant] Miguel eventually came looking for his brother, but found only his ship. He climbed aboard to have a look around, unaware that he had company waiting for him. Without warning, the native people ambushed him. Miguel tried to escape, and in the process, set the ship aflame.


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[Assistant] As the fire consumed the vessel, Miguel used his final words to curse the people of the Bay of Shalur, vowing to haunt them for a thousand years.


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[Assistant] The brothers were never heard from again, and a rescue effort conducted the following year by their other brother Vasco Anez proved unsuccessful. However, one of their ships did return to Portugal, with 50 captured members of the Bothak tribe.


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[Assistant] Some claim that the inscription on Massachusetts' Dighton Rock proves that Miguel and his men sailed the New England coastline for many years, rendered lost by dense fog and a lack of knowledge of the area. Others believe that the flaming ship is the one that took part in the 1760 Battle of the Restigouche.


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[Assistant] This was a 17-day naval conflict between the French and British forces that took place during the Seven Years War. It was a fierce battle in which the French were forced to scuttle many of their own ships.


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[Assistant] In fact, it was believed by some that the fire ship was actually a French ship. However, that vessel was never burned. After it sunk, its hull was raised and preserved at a local monastery. As a result of this battle, the French were eventually forced to surrender several months later.


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[Assistant] Still, there are those who claim the fire ship of Chalour Bay is actually the specter of the English vessel, the Colburn, which met its end in 1838. It had run aground while carrying a massive haul of gold.


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[Assistant] It was October, and the Colburn had been well off course for some time, with 55 crew and passengers on board.


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[Assistant] The Colburn drifted for days until it was finally to shore, where many bodies were found amongst the wreckage. Cargo from the ship, as well as additional victims, floated their way to land over the following days and weeks. The fishing families who lived in the area became rich after discovering gold from the Colburn that had washed ashore.


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[Assistant] And yet another possible origin for the flaming ship is that of the notorious pirate Captain Craig. Craig primarily appears in stories about the vessel, which may be a twist on the local legend that it had actually been a three-masted sailing ship called the John Craig. It was said to have sunk off Shippegan Island around 1800.


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[Assistant] The only survivor of the wreck had been a cabin boy who swam to shore before passing away from exhaustion.


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[Assistant] Among the tales surrounding Captain Craig's ghostly transport is one version in which a woman from the Mi'kmaq tribe was kidnapped and killed by the pirate.


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[Assistant] In a more gruesome variation on that story, the woman was instead a virgin bride who was taken and assaulted by the crew. They soon discovered that their ship was set ablaze with no escape. Their souls, and their ship, were then cursed to sail along Chalour Bay for eternity.


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[Assistant] And another legend claimed that a crewman on a ship facing bad weather in the bay knelt to pray the rosary. He was murdered by his fellow sailors who believed such an action would bring bad luck.


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[Assistant] Instead, the only bad luck they found was their vessel being destroyed by a fire that was said to have been the Catholic crewman's revenge.


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[Assistant] Of course, there is never a shortage of skeptics to throw water on the idea of a burning ghost ship. The fire ship's existence has been described as a fete morgana, or attributed to phosphorescent marine life in the water.


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[Assistant] Those who have seen it, though, believe it defies scientific explanation. Its presence can mean anything from an omen of bad luck to the impending arrival of a storm.


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[Assistant] The fire ship typically only appears at night, and if it's not sailing in the water itself, it's hovering several feet above the bay. Its phantom crew is sometimes spotted on the decks, or shimmying across the rigging, their pained screams echoing out over the water, as the flames swallow the hull and masts.


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[Assistant] The eastern coast of North America isn't home to just one flaming ship. Another has haunted the waters off the coast of Rhode Island since 1738.


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[Assistant] It was called the Princess Augusta, a majestic name for an aging 200 ton, three-masted British vessel. It had been built for both passengers and cargo, and it was captained by a man named George Long.


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[Assistant] On December 27th, Captain Long was in the midst of his duties, steering his 14-man crew and several hundred German immigrants toward Philadelphia.


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[Assistant] It was likely that the Germans, who hailed from the Palatinate region, intended to join a Pennsylvania Dutch community in America with members from the same area.


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[Assistant] The arduous journey took months and was plagued by difficulties. Between the heavy storms and the dysentery, half the crew and at least 240 passengers died. It's possible that Captain Long also succumbed to the disease while at sea.


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[Assistant] However, the details of the story vary depending on where the person telling it comes from. Those who live on Block Island claim that Captain Long didn't die from dysentery. He was in fact murdered by the crew so they could hold the passengers hostage.


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[Assistant] The scoundrels withheld food and water until the German passengers coughed up their money and belongings. Once the frightened immigrants had given up all they had, the crew abandoned the ship.


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[Assistant] It floated on until it finally ran aground at Sandy Point, a 1.5 mile long sandbar off Block Island known for causing lots of shipwrecks. The islanders took the Germans in and helped them recover, setting the wreckage on fire to prevent it from being drawn back out to sea and becoming a problem for other passing ships.


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[Assistant] Sadly, one wealthy Dutch woman did not make it out of life. Her name was Mary Vanderlijn, and her anxiety caused by the mutiny had caused her to seek refuge in the cargo hold. She was unable to free herself after the Augusta was set ablaze, and she perished in the fire.


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[Assistant] Some say the story that the mainlanders tell is much different and even more tragic. The people on the island apparently lit their own signal fire. Some say it was just a lantern hanging off the neck of an old mule, but others say it was actual timber. And when the ship's crew spotted it and approached, the island folk killed and robbed them.


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[Assistant] And the Princess Augusta was then lit on fire to hide the evidence.


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[Assistant] Now in this version, a female passenger struggling in the water reached for the islanders boat only to have her arm sliced off by the salvagers.


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[Assistant] It wasn't uncommon for Block Island residents to make their money by wrecking or salvaging items from shipwrecks off their shores. However, those on the mainland misunderstood the practice as the islanders causing the shipwrecks in order to rob the people on board.


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[Assistant] Evidence points the truth closer to the Islander's tale of murder and kidnapping by the crew, but some contemporary accounts claim that on December 29th, a strong storm ripped the ship apart and caused it to sink.


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[Assistant] Whatever the case, it is generally agreed that in December of 1738, the Princess Augusta ran aground off the coast of Block Island. Many of the sixty surviving passengers made their way to Philadelphia, where they settled into the colony as planned.


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[Assistant] About 30, though, did not survive. They were believed to have perished shortly after reaching Block Island. And two women, known only as Short Kate and Long Kate, remained on the island. Short Kate became a domestic servant and lived a fairly uneventful life following her ordeal on the Augusta.


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[Assistant] Long Kate often spoke about flying back to her homeland for quick visits, which entailed entering a trance-like state behind a wall or under a bush. It took a lot out of her and it scared the islanders who viewed her as a witch.


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[Assistant] One year after Short and Long Kate had come to the island, a merchant vessel was spotted sailing through Block Island Sound. According to its crew, they caught sight of a giant ship on fire. The men sailed closer, perhaps to get a closer look or maybe to save anyone who was still on board.


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[Assistant] But as the crew drew near, the Augusta vanished. There was nothing on the surface of the water. Not a single body, living or otherwise. There were no charred beams or planks from the ship, either.


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[Assistant] And since the burning vessel had been seen on the one year anniversary of Iraq, it was referred to henceforth as the Palatine Light, named for the Palatinate region its German passengers had originally come from.


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[Assistant] In a letter to the Newport Mercury from 1878, a witness named Benjamin Congdon wrote about having seen it at least 8 to 10 times, if not more, in his life. He wrote,


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[Assistant] Nobody doubted her being sent by an almighty power to punish those wicked men who murdered her passengers and crew. After the last of these were dead, she was never more seen.


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[Assistant] But that wasn't entirely true. Sightings of the Princess Augusta up in flames continued well past the death of the final islander responsible. It appeared to someone in 1963.


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[Assistant] The Coast Guard and Navy were sent in to investigate a burning ship in the Sound, but nothing was ever found there.


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[Assistant] Some accounts say that you can still hear the screams of Mary Vanderlein, the passenger who is said to have died in the ship's hold. And islanders even got in on the booming spiritualism movement in the late 1800s to hold seances, attempting to reach out to the ship's spirit.


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[Assistant] But perhaps the greatest testament to its existence happened on February 9th of 1880, when over 50 people claimed to have seen it all in one evening.


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[Assistant] One of those witnesses happened to be future U.S. Senator Nathan F. Dixon III.


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[Assistant] A woman known only as Mrs. Rose told the New York Times about her experience that night several years later.


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[Assistant] She had seen the Princess Augusta through her window, pushing ahead, its sails plump with wind. And it was on fire, from the water's edge to her highest sail, she said. And yet, despite the ship being engulfed in flames, it sailed onward as if it was unaware of its condition.


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[Assistant] It disappeared fifteen minutes later and left Mrs. Rose overcome with a sense of foreboding. She knew that something bad was on the horizon.


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[Assistant] Four days later, a group of Black Island residents died in Newport Harbor. They had been descendants of the islanders who had caused the Augusta's wreckage all those years before.


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[Assistant] While the Princess Augusta was known for the precious cargo being carried to America, there was other cargo on board as well. One of the loads being hauled was Lignum Vitae, a hardwood from the West Indies. It was known for its strength and density, which made it extremely valuable as shipbuilding material.


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[Assistant] Much of the lignum vitae had survived the wreck and was repurposed by the people of Block Island into mortars for grinding corn. They had been grinding it by hand for years after Mark Dodge, a local eccentric and opium eater, as he's recorded, had burned down the only mill on the island, killing himself in the process.


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[Assistant] One of those mortars measuring 14 inches high and almost a foot in diameter wound up in the home of one Simon Ray.


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[Assistant] Ray had opened his home to many of the shipwrecked survivors and had allowed a number of the victims to be buried on his land.


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[Assistant] The mortar remained in the house even after the Ray family had moved away. The new homeowners kept the Lignum Vitae mortar after moving in, but quickly noticed that there was something off about it.


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[Assistant] For one, they liked to dance. They would move up and down, as if pulled by a puppeteer in the ceiling, but with no strings attached.


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[Assistant] Other times, it would jump off a shelf and flop around the room like a freshly caught trout gasping for air. It would then tip itself upright, then rock back and forth before jumping up and down from the floor all the way to the top of the ceiling again.


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[Assistant] After it was finished, the mortar would be returned to its shelf where it stayed without incident for months at a time. And unsurprisingly, after the dancing mortar's performance, it was said that the ghost ship would make an appearance in the sound as well.


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[Assistant] What caused such a lively demonstration from a seemingly mundane plank of wood?


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[Assistant] According to 19th century chronicler Samuel Livermore, it was none other than the spirit of that dead opium addict, the one who had burned down the mill, Mark Dodge.


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[Assistant] And whether or not the story is true, it certainly illustrates the power that the wreck of the Princess Augusta has had over the people of Block Island, and how even if the vessel is no longer visible,


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[Assistant] It has never stopped doing what ghost ships are said to do best, haunting the open water and reminding those on land of everything they've lost.


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[Assistant] Sailing the high seas is something that humans have been very good at for a very long time. And for almost as long, those voyages have been accompanied by stories full of tragedy and shadow. And naturally, we've only scratched the surface of tales to tell.


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[Assistant] Which is why I've set aside one last tale of ghostly vessels to share with you. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.


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[Assistant] Almost 20 years after the Princess Augusta was lost, the New York Gazette published an unusual letter. A group of fishermen had asserted that on February 4th of 1754, they had seen a shocking apparition in nearby Gardiner's Bay, but it wasn't a ghost ship. It was several.


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[Assistant] The letter described a trio of ships, full-rigged, with their sails unfurled. The men had seen smoke coming from the guns on all the ships but hadn't heard the sound of muskets or cannon fire. The letter goes on.


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[Assistant] During their engagement, they put about several times and the large ship hauled up her courses. The whole was performed with the most utmost dexterity as though they were navigated by most skillful mariners.


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[Assistant] After 15 minutes, the ship disappeared, and the water returned to normal. Now some speculated that this was, in fact, a ghostly pirate battle related to the notorious Captain Kidd who had buried treasure on nearby islands, according to legend.


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[Assistant] In the mid 1600s, a merchant vessel carrying furs and lumber had been overtaken by pirates there. But there was something else on board. A beautiful and valuable white stallion.


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[Assistant] The pirates tied the crew and the horse to the mast before lighting the ship on fire and then fleeing back to their own. The flaming vessel continued to follow the pirates as it burned, its crew and the lone horse wailing in agony.


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[Assistant] Over the years, the inflamed ship has been seen in the Long Island Sound. Some say the crew is still searching for the pirates responsible. Others have seen the men on board going about their duties, accompanied by passengers engaged in some form of gambling as the fire consumes the decks.


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[Assistant] But despite the flames that rage and climb its masts, the ship makes no sound, save for the name of the white stallion, crying out into the night.


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[Assistant] Lore has been a podcast since 2015 with over 415 million downloads to date. You can learn more about this show, plus the book series and the television adaptation over at lorepodcast.com.


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[Assistant] And of course, be sure to click on the subscribe button and the bell icon so that you never miss a future episode. And if you enjoyed this episode, click that thumbs up. And you can also follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast. All one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for watching.


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[Assistant] When they found them, all the work had to stop. These items were just too significant and important to risk destroying them. And it's a good thing they did too, because what the researchers discovered was a rare and special find.


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[Assistant] You see, back in 2021, the National Park Service in Virginia was in the middle of a massive rehabilitation of an old historic home on the site of a former plantation.


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[Assistant] They were working on a room that, back in the middle of the 1800s, had been the living quarters for the Gray family. Married couples, Selena and Thornton, and their children. But the Grays weren't the owners of the house. No, they were the enslaved family who worked for them.


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[Assistant] Now, this discovery was made below the floor. The restoration team was removing some 20th century brick and carefully sifting through the dirt fill beneath them when they spotted glass. And that's when they realized they had found a special hiding place. Something that was common in the living quarters of enslaved people at the time. If you think about it, it makes sense.


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[Assistant] White people went to a lot of effort to disconnect the people that they enslaved from things that might give them hope. So like World War II prisoners and their escape tunnels, these people carved out little storage areas where they could keep special things safe and hidden.


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[Assistant] Few people documented history like Zora. It's easy to read about a culture in a library. Anyone can open a browser and type a few keywords into a search field.


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[Assistant] But the way Zora did things, old school, it was old school. She traveled to the communities that she wanted to write about. She dug deep and opened intimate doors, managing to discover things that no one else ever could.


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[Assistant] Which is why we know so much about the rich traditions and practices of Hoodoo, all thanks to Zora Neale Hurston and her boots on the ground approach.


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[Assistant] So much so that if you truly want to dig deep into that lore, there's honestly no one better to read. Today's tour through this particular dark corner of history will be a love letter to Zora Neale Hurston. And when it's over, I encourage you to seek out the rest of her work. It is a treasure.


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[Assistant] Zora was born in 1891, down in the southern state of Alabama. Although just a couple of years later, her family packed up and moved to Florida and the township of Eatonville. And maybe that's where her sense of empowerment and hope came from. Eatonville was America's first incorporated black township.


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[Assistant] It was a black town run by black officials in a world where that probably seemed like a pipe dream to most everyone else.


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[Assistant] But not everything about her early years was idyllic. At the age of 13, she lost her mother and was forced to grow up far too soon. That led to a late start at high school.


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[Assistant] Actually, late start might not really do that justice. She was 26 when she started, having to lie on her application claiming to be 16. Thankfully, she looked a lot younger than she really was, so she was able to get in.


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[Assistant] After that, she quickly dove into the world of writing. Over her career, she wrote four novels, over 50 short stories, essays, and poems, and she elbowed her way into the powerful Harlem Renaissance, a sort of cultural revival of African American arts centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City.


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[Assistant] But Zora Neale Hurston was more than just a writer, she was also a folklorist, and an area of her passion was the subject I mentioned a moment ago, the practice of hoodoo.


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[Assistant] Now before we start, I need to set some ground rules. First, hoodoo and voodoo aren't actually the same thing. Voodoo is probably the more common word that you know, and it refers to a formalized religion with its own leaders, practices, and deities to be worshipped.


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[Assistant] Hoodoo, on the other hand, is more of an unofficial set of black folk traditions that are all based on sympathetic magic. That's a fancy term for magic that uses objects and actions that are meant to imitate real world people and events.


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[Assistant] Finding its power in the similarities or the sympathy between them, thus sympathetic magic.


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[Assistant] What sort of magic can you find within Hoodoo, sometimes also called Conjure? Well, it was used for healing ailments, fixing relationships, giving legal decisions a supernatural nudge, and sometimes even harming or killing an enemy. And a lot of that involved communicating with the world of the dead.


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[Assistant] Oh, and one last thing. Hoodoo is a mix of old and new. Because enslaved African families were kept together in Haiti, they tended to be able to pass ancient traditions down through the generations. But American-born families were typically broken up, so those communities started to build new folklore based on the


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[Assistant] So that's a bit of an academic tour of the world of Hoodoo.


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[Assistant] Transplanted from far away, evolved over generations of enslavement, and leaned on as a source of hope and power in a world where people had very little control. Although it was widespread across all the South, today we mostly associate Hoodoo with New Orleans, a place that Zora visited in August of 1928.


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[Assistant] She had just earned a degree in anthropology and wanted to learn a bit about Marie Laveau and the hoodoo practices of the community there. But what she discovered though was something bigger and deeper than she had ever expected. Because she was a black woman visiting a black culture, she was given a certain level of access and trust that white anthropologists would have been denied.


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[Assistant] Think of it like cooperative undercover work. She really truly wanted to learn, and the people there welcomed her in and allowed her to experience it all.


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[Assistant] She sat in on rituals, listened to storytellers, and apprenticed with practitioners. And in October of 1931, she published 100 pages of that project in an issue of the Journal of American Folklore, with a focus on spells that she learned from hoodoo doctors. What sort of spells? Well, here's a quick sample of some of my favorites.


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[Assistant] You might want a spell that would drive someone mad. All you had to do was get a hold of nine strands of their hair and bury them in a sinner's grave. Want to make sure that your man stays true to you?


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[Assistant] Get some of his hair from the intimate locations of his armpits and his groin and then burn those hairs while wishing for his devotion. Mix the ashes from that with a little bit of his blood and you're all set. And there were darker ones too.


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[Assistant] To kill an enemy, Zora learned that a spellcaster must set their altar with black and white candles, place a mirror in the center of them, and then get a basin of water and a sharp knife.


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[Assistant] There were certain passages of scripture to read out loud, and when that was done, the image of the person they wished to harm would appear in the mirror. All they had to do after that was stab the water with a knife, and if the water turned red, their enemy would be struck down.


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[Assistant] And I could go on. Spells to keep a secret safe from being discovered. Or to obtain ultimate power. There's even a spell that was said to make the targeted person's body swell up. They are equal parts fascinating and entertaining, and I wish I had the time to share them all with you here.


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[Assistant] But some of these stories are better experienced when we see them play out in the tales that Zora wrote down, after learning about them, right from the source.


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[Assistant] Every community has a larger than life character. That person who everyone looks up to, has respect for, or even fears above all else. And for the folks in South Central Florida, that person was known everywhere as Old Man Massey.


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[Assistant] Now there's not a lot of detail about who he really was. Even Hurston's own writings are sparse on his personal details. But you and I know that sometimes the best way to learn about a topic is through story. And thankfully, I have some fantastic tales to share.


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[Assistant] It's said that once, a bride failed to show up at the altar on her wedding day, and the groom's family was upset. So they turned to old man Massey for help, which came in the form of a curse.


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[Assistant] Her punishment? No man would ever love her longer than one cycle of the moon.


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[Assistant] In another story, Old Man Massey was hired to kill a local woman. How did he do it?


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[Assistant] He sent an alligator to her house with a red bandana tied around its neck. From outside, the alligator called out the woman's name, and when she opened the door to see who it was, the beast turned around and walked away. The woman passed away three days later.


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[Assistant] But the strangest tale about Old Man Massey focuses on another local hoodoo practitioner named Aunt Judy Cox, and it was all about rivalries. You see, Aunt Judy believed that she was more powerful than he was, and she bragged about it all over town. As you might imagine, it was an opinion that ruffled quite a few feathers.


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[Assistant] One evening though, according to the story written down by Hurston, Aunt Judy was overcome with a compulsion to go fishing, which was honestly pretty weird considering she wasn't the fishing sort of person at all. But the urge was so overwhelming that she managed to track down some fishing gear and then she headed out to the lake near her home.


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[Assistant] And for a while it was peaceful. The sun was still up, the water was calm, and I'd imagine that the air was full of birdsong and maybe the hum of insects.


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[Assistant] Now, I'll be honest, I don't know if she caught anything while she was there. The story leaves that detail out. But what I do know is that she stayed all afternoon, right up until the sun started to dip toward the horizon.


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[Assistant] Aunt Judy knew that she needed to head home. Soon enough, the pathway home would be fully dark, and that would make it harder to look out for snakes and other dangers along the way. In fact, the hour was so late that she was starting to get worried.


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[Assistant] And the moment it did, something else happened. A bolt of light, almost like lightning, crashed down on her and tossed her body into the waters of the lake. Then, as she was bobbing there, struggling to stay above the surface, the water beneath started to glow, as if an enormous blue spotlight had been set up on the bottom.


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[Assistant] More lights appeared after that. Little tendrils of red light that snaked and wove their way across the surface of the lake toward her. And there, walking on that pathway of light, as if it were solid ground, was Old Man Massey. And he wasn't alone.


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[Assistant] Swimming beside him were thousands of alligators, like a swarm of birds moving in unison as he traveled the glowing red road. And then when he was finally standing over her, he spoke.


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[Assistant] Where is all that power you make out you got? He asked. I brought you to the lake and made you stay there till I got ready for you. I throwed you in and you can't come out till I say so. When you acknowledge to yourself that I am your top superior, then you can come out of the water.


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[Assistant] The heartbeat later, old man Massey vanished into thin air. All that remained of his entourage was a single alligator who swam closer and locked her in its gaze.


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[Assistant] So now, Aunt Judy had a choice, right? Scream for help and risk getting killed by the alligator, or admit that she wasn't as powerful as Old Man Massey and escape with her life.


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[Assistant] In the end, she chose to wait patiently for help, knowing that old man Massey, her top superior, would use his power to save her. And sure enough, hours after sunsets, her family came out looking for her and found her there, still treading water in the lake.


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[Assistant] From that day forward, Aunt Judy chose a new path for herself, and she never practiced hoodoo ever again.


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[Assistant] Hurston recorded a number of stories about the power of Hoodoo. A lot of them have that flavor of legend and nothing more, but quite a few have something else. A visceral, real-world tone that makes it really difficult to immediately dismiss them. And one of those is about a very bad man.


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[Assistant] John Wesley Roberts was what you might call a rake. He had been traveling around the country from New York City all the way to Chicago and then onwards and had eventually arrived in Orange County where he took a job in a hotel.


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[Assistant] Maybe moving west had been his goal all along, or perhaps it was just a rest stop on a longer journey. For a while though, that was where he stayed.


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[Assistant] While he worked there in the hotel, he played the field. Like I said, he was a bit of a rake, never afraid to use people, mostly women, to get what he wanted. And one of those women was Janie. They were young, looking for fun, and the world was their oyster.


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[Assistant] But then, Janie got pregnant, and everything changed.


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[Assistant] Maybe Janie was hopeful. Maybe she was traditional. Maybe she thought she knew John Wesley Roberts better than she actually did. Any of those could explain why she assumed that they would get married. But John's response quickly proved her wrong.


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[Assistant] Her pregnancy was her fault, he told her. Her problem to deal with. And it probably wasn't his child anyway. So John laughed at her and broke off their relationship. And a short while later, Janie spotted him with another woman on his arm. And it shattered whatever remained of her already broken heart.


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[Assistant] For weeks, she was bedridden, unable to climb out and get back to normal life. Worried about her health, Janie's mother came to stay with her, sitting beside her on the bed all day every day, holding Janie when she could as any mother could understand. The way Hurston describes those days is,


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[Assistant] Painfully beautiful too. She writes about how all of Janie's tears dripped one by one onto the heart of her mother. And over time, those tears turned her heart to stone, which is why after a week of caring for her daughter, Janie's mother stood up and went looking for vengeance. She went looking for old man Massey.


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[Assistant] His door swung open before she even had a chance to knock on it. Old man Massey was standing there, a knowing expression on his face, and he simply said, how do you want him killed?


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[Assistant] It was his forwardness that caught her off guard. So much so that she didn't know how to answer his question. But she stepped inside and he quickly got to work.


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[Assistant] Immediately, Old Man Massey gathered everything he needed. He set his altar with a huge mirror, a lamp, a dagger, a pistol, and a bucket of water with a drinking gourd.


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[Assistant] Then he offered her a dipper of the water and asked her to spit some of it out and swallow the rest and then name the way she wanted John Wesley Roberts killed. The moment she did as she was told, she knew. She wanted to shoot him.


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[Assistant] With that, Old Man Nasty nodded and got to work. He motioned toward a chair in front of the altar and Janie's mother took a seat. And then he told her to look deeply into the mirror and watch for something strange to happen.


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[Assistant] Get your pistol in your hand and cock it, he told her. When you see your man, shoot. Aim at the heart. A moment later, it happened.


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[Assistant] First, the mirror began to haze over, as if it were filling up with fog, but from the inside. And then the fog cleared, and there, clear as day, was John Wesley Roberts, the man who had broken her daughter's heart. And he was standing right in front of her, too, facing her, as if the mirror were just a window instead.


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[Assistant] She took a breath and then she raised the pistol. After taking aim at his heart, she pulled the trigger and a loud bang filled the room.


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[Assistant] Now, she expected to find the glass of the mirror shattered by the bullet, but it was still intact and spotless. A moment later, the fog began to return, eventually filling the entire surface once more. Old Man Massey nodded, and Janie's mother paid him what he was owed.


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[Assistant] And then she went on her way, heading back to her daughter and the heartbreak that had swallowed her. The next morning, while flirting with a young chambermaid,


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[Assistant] I'll be the first to admit that stories like these are tough to believe. They're asking too much of our sensibilities, stretching our trust a bit too thin. At least, that's what most people think.


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[Assistant] Toss in a reminder that Zora Neale Hurston was not just an anthropologist, but also a writer of fiction, and you really do have all the ingredients necessary for a whole bunch of doubt. And yet there's something else that keeps pulling us in, making us want to believe. But here's the thing.


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[Assistant] Hurston was criticized over her career from both sides. Academics felt that she was a bit too creative with her tales, while other literary writers felt that she was a bit too unrefined for their taste. You see, she prioritized documenting the natural folk style of the people that she studied and befriended, rather than polishing them up to be more acceptable.


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[Assistant] Heck, other black writers felt that she was a bit too low brow, all because she simply wrote what she saw and heard.


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[Assistant] So while the stories she wrote down are difficult for us to believe, there's always that voice in the back of my mind that whispers about her integrity and commitment to the truth.


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[Assistant] I'm not naive enough to think that that means that I need to believe every single story she told, but it certainly gives me reason to at least consider the possibility.


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[Assistant] Ultimately though, it doesn't matter whether these stories are fact or folklore, because they serve as a map to the values, lives, fears, and passions of the people who told them to her. At the root is something powerful, that Hurston managed to get a glimpse into such a well-guarded and deeply rich set of traditions, and then she shared it with us. But of course, there's one more thing to consider.


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[Assistant] Our slimy rake, the young John Wesley Roberts, did indeed drop dead on the job in the hotel. And like many mysterious deaths, he was investigated by the coroner.


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[Assistant] After performing an autopsy to find the true cause of such an untimely demise, they came to a conclusion that would have seemed relatively natural to their medical minds.


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[Assistant] The tradition of Hoodoo is filled with tales that stretch the imagination and offer a fresh glimpse into the many ways that we humans have tried to control the world around us over the years. I really do hope today's brief journey into this ancient belief system has helped open your eyes to a whole new world of amazing stories.


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[Assistant] But we're not quite finished just yet. In fact, one of the most powerful stories Hurston wrote down had a very unique main character. Herself. And if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll tell you all about it.


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[Assistant] Zora Neale Hurston did more than observe. I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that, along with listening to storytellers and watching rituals, she also apprenticed with some of those very same hoodoo practitioners, and that gave her a first-person perspective that few others have ever experienced, let alone published for all to read.


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[Assistant] It all began in New Orleans. That was where she learned of a Catholic hoodoo doctor that claimed to be the grand nephew of legendary Marie Laveau.


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[Assistant] His name was Samuel Thompson, and it was said that he could trace his family's involvement in Hoodoo all the way back through their time in Santo Domingo to life in Africa.


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[Assistant] Hurston arrived to find him in the fall of 1928. The first time she knocked on Thompson's door and told him that she wanted to become one of his disciples, he shooed her away.


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[Assistant] The second time, he named it insanely expensive price, close to $6,000 in modern money, just for the privilege of studying with him.