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[Assistant] These are all normal consequences as we understand decomposition today. But three centuries ago, it was less about science and more about belief. This didn't seem normal to them. And so when the physicians wrote their report, they used a term that, until that very moment, had never before appeared in any historical account of such a case. They described these bodies as vampiric.


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[Assistant] In the face of unanswered questions, the only conclusion they could commit to was that each of the twelve bodies had been found in a vampiric condition. With that, the villagers did what their tradition demanded. They removed the heads from each corpse, gathered all the remains into a pile, and then burned the whole thing.


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[Assistant] The threat to their village was finally dead and gone, but it was already too late. Something new had been born. Something more powerful than a monster. Something that lives centuries and spreads like fire. A legend.


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[Assistant] Many aspects of folklore haven't fared too well under the critical eye of science. Today we have a much deeper understanding of how illness and disease really works. And while experts are still careful to explain that every corpse decomposes in a slightly unique way, we have a better grasp on the full picture now than any previous time in history. Answers, when we can find them, can be a relief.


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[Assistant] It's safe to say that we don't have to fear a vampiric infection when the people around us get sick today. But there were still people at the center of these ancient stories. Normal folk, like you and I, who simply wanted to do what was right. We might do it differently today, but it's hard to fault them for trying.


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[Assistant] Answers don't kill every myth though. Vampire stories, like their immortal subjects, have simply refused to die. In fact, they can still be found if you know where to look for them.


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[Assistant] In the small Romanian village of Marutino de Sus, near the southwestern corner that borders Bulgaria and Serbia, authorities were called in to investigate an illegal exhumation. But this wasn't 1704, or even 1804. No, this happened almost two decades ago.


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[Assistant] Petratoma had been the clan leader there in the village, but after a lifetime of illness and hard drinking, his accidental death in the field almost came as a relief to his family and friends. That's how they put it, at least. So when he was buried in December of 2003, the community moved on.


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[Assistant] But soon, individuals from Petra's family began to get sick.


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[Assistant] First, it was his niece, Mirela Marinescu. She complained that her uncle had attacked her in her dreams. Her husband made the same claim, and both offered their illness as proof. Even their infant child was not well.


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[Assistant] Thankfully, the elders of the village immediately knew why.


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[Assistant] In response, six men gathered together one evening in early 2004. They entered the local graveyard close to midnight and then traveled to the burial site of Petritoma.


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[Assistant] Using hammers and chisels, they broke through the stone slab that covered the grave and then moved the pieces aside. They drank as they worked.


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[Assistant] Could you blame them? They were opening the grave of a recently deceased member of their community, but I think it was more than that too. In their minds, they were putting their lives in danger. Because there, inside the grave that they had just uncovered, lay the stuff of nightmares. A vampire.


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[Assistant] What these men did next will sound strangely familiar, but to them it was simply the continuation of centuries of tradition. They cut open the body using a knife and a saw. They pried the ribs apart with a pitchfork and then they cut out the heart.


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[Assistant] According to one of the men who was there, when the heart was removed they found it full of fresh blood. Proof, to them at least, that Petra had been feeding on the village.


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[Assistant] When they pulled it free, the witness said that the body audibly sighed and then went limp.


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[Assistant] Yes, it's hard to prove something that six incredibly superstitious men, men who had been drinking all night, mind you, claimed that they witnessed in a dark cemetery, but to them it was pure, unaltered truth.


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[Assistant] They then use the same pitchfork to carry the heart out of the cemetery and across the road to a field, where they set it on fire.


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[Assistant] No one died of whatever illness they were suffering from, and no one reported visits from Petrotoma after that night. In their mind, the nightmare was over. These men had saved their lives.


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[Assistant] Maybe something evil and contagious has survived for centuries after all, spreading across borders and oceans. It's certainly left a trail of horrific events in its wake, and it's influenced countless tales and superstitions, all of which seem to point to a real-life cause.


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[Assistant] But far from being unique to Serbia or Romania, this thing is global.


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[Assistant] And as if that weren't enough, this horrible ageless monster is, and always has been, right inside of each of us.


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[Assistant] Vampire folklore has a firm grip on our imaginations, and I hope our journey today helped you understand just how deep those roots might be.


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[Assistant] But it's one thing to talk about the history of the name and another to follow the footsteps of the activity. And for that, I have one more story to tell. One that takes us back even further in time to what is quite possibly one of the first vampire stories ever told.


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


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[Assistant] There's a lot we don't know. That's a feature of older stories that I've learned to be more comfortable with over the years, even though my brain always wants to fill in as many blanks as possible. Thankfully though, the meat of this tale is more than filling.


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[Assistant] His name was Jura, and he was, from what I can tell, nothing more than an old villager who lived in Kringa. Back then, the region was called Istria, but today we call it Croatia.


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[Assistant] That's less important to the story, but also worth mentioning because it plants the tail in familiar soil, geographically speaking, to the others that we've already covered today.


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[Assistant] Jura was in his late 70s when he passed away in 1656, leaving behind a wife and at least two grown children. The usual traditions were observed and the local priest, a man named Giorgio, presided over the burial in the village graveyard. And with that, the book was closed on his life and the community moved on.


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[Assistant] Things were normal for a while, but that eventually changed. Soon enough, folks around town started reporting something strange. It seems that during the night, one or two of the houses in the village would receive a knock at their door.


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[Assistant] Later, sometimes the next day and sometimes days later, one of the people inside those homes would die unexpectedly.


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[Assistant] And you know how those things probably worked. The first couple of deaths were just viewed as a tragedy. Probably a lot like Yura's death months before. But once they continued, people started to pay attention to other details. And once those households shared their stories, that midnight knocking must have come up in conversation.


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[Assistant] And this activity, the knocks, the death, and the occasional sighting of some mysterious creature, all of it continued for 16 long years. Long enough for an entire generation to grow up with stories of the monster and the curse it brought to the village. Long enough to fill the entire community with fear.


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[Assistant] Now, I don't know how they made the leap in logic from an unknown door knocker to a specific person, but eventually the pieces were put together. It was probably the moment when poor dead Yura Grando paid a nighttime visit to his frightened widow. She described him as looking like a rotten corpse, smelling of decay and death.


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[Assistant] In 1679, the villagers decided that they had finally had enough.


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[Assistant] First, the very same priest who had buried Yura 16 years before tried to stop him by confronting the walking corpse one night by raising a crucifix to invoke the power of Christ. But when that failed, new plans were set in motion, spearheaded by a young man named Miho Radetic.


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[Assistant] One night, after a midnight chase, Miho managed to stab the creature through the heart with a wooden stake. But this wasn't a Hollywood action film, and the rules we might consider canon didn't apply.


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[Assistant] The stick simply bounced off the dead man's chest, failing to deliver a killing blow. Victorious, Yura ran away, heading in the direction of the graveyard.


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[Assistant] So that's where Miho and the others tracked him down. The old man's grave was intact though, which meant that they all had to pitch in and dig it out. Shovel after shovel, they moved closer to their target. Until finally, there he was. The monster folks had begun to call a Strigon, a Venetian word for a sorcerer.


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[Assistant] The legend says that once the coffin was opened, they found Yura entirely intact, almost as if he'd been buried the day before. And most disturbing of all, the dead man's unmoving face was split by a wide, wicked grin.


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[Assistant] That was all the evidence the villagers needed. After another attempted exorcism by the priest and another try at stabbing him with a wooden stake, they fell back on an older, more effective method. They cut off the head.


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[Assistant] It said that the dead man screamed in agony as they did it. Fresh blood even poured from the new wound in the long dead corpse. But despite being such an unpleasant and messy task, they finally achieved the results they were looking for. The creature's power had been broken.


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[Assistant] The village of Kringa finally had peace. But while the drama was over, the story had been written. And story, like so many other aspects of life, has a way of spreading far and wide. Soon, that Venetian word for sorcerer took on a new connotation.


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[Assistant] And Strigon became Strigoi, one of the most common words for a very specific type of creature in the region around Croatia. The vampire.


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[Assistant] It's a frightening story, no matter how we accept it. Fact or fiction, it was a seed. And from that dark soil, one of folklore's most twisted roots eventually grew into one of its most famous branches. All because of a truth the people of Kringa felt in their bones. It's amazing what you could find when you do a little digging.


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


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


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[Assistant] I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy. My production company Grim and Mild specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical.


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[Assistant] You can learn more about all of our shows and everything else going on over in one central place. GrimAndMild.com


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


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[Assistant] Ask any group of people where they feel the most safe, and the answer is almost universal. Their own house. It's a place they know well, where they have built a life and crafted wonderful memories. Home sweet home is, for many people, an immutable law.


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[Assistant] But what happens when we leave the safety of our homes and travel? Once outside our comfortable safe haven, we often find ourselves exposed to whatever awaits us. Some people are more courageous than others, of course, but travel can be a source of fear for many.


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[Assistant] Hodophobia is the fear of travel. And while the vast majority of people don't necessarily suffer from a clinical fear of leaving their homes, many do struggle with strange places. And no place can feel more foreign and strange to a traveler, in my opinion at least, than the places where thousands upon thousands of guests had stayed.


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[Assistant] Perhaps it's the well-worn carpets or the imperfect walls and ceilings that make us feel uneasy. Noisy plumbing, finicky lights, and the sounds of a settling structure can leave even the best of us feeling a bit out of our element.


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[Assistant] No other place in the United States can cause that uneasy feeling more than an often forgotten mountain lodge built over a century ago in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains. Despite its classic architecture and lavish decor, there is very little inside that feels safe. And I'd like to take you there.


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[Assistant] They were twin wonders. Freeland and Francis Stanley were born in Maine in 1849. They had five other siblings, two of whom were also twins. But something was different about Freeland and his brother. They were exceptional students, quick learners, and gifted with an unusual mechanical aptitude.


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[Assistant] As nine-year-olds, they were using their father's lathe to craft wooden tops, which they sold to their classmates. At age 10, they were taught how to make violins by their parental grandfather. It was said that their instruments were concert quality. Those early experiments, though, helped fuel a lifelong passion for building things.


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[Assistant] After a short career as a teacher and principal, Freeland Stanley went into business with his brother, refining and marketing a photographic process known as dry plating. It was a revolutionary change, allowing even amateur photographers to take quality images.


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[Assistant] So revolutionary, in fact, that Eastman Kodak purchased the technology in the late 1800s, making the brothers very, very wealthy.


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[Assistant] From there, the Wonder Twins moved into the world of motor cars. Their first automobile was built in 1897, and by 1899, it was the best-selling motor car in the country.


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[Assistant] Because of its unique steam-powered engine, the automobile was called the Stanley Steamer. It was the steamer, along with a few other smaller businesses, that helped turn the twins into tycoons in their own right.


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[Assistant] In 1903, Freeland was diagnosed with tuberculosis, sometimes referred to as the wasting sickness. At the age of 53, he had dropped to just 118 pounds and his doctor told him that he had six months to live, at the most.


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[Assistant] So, like many people of that era, Stanley traveled west, to the clean mountain air of Colorado. And that's where he discovered Estes Park.


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[Assistant] Freeland and his wife Flora instantly fell in love with the setting. They built a home there almost immediately, and after somehow shaking the tuberculosis, the couple returned every summer thereafter. He in his tailored suits and pointy gray beard, she in her high-colored floral gowns.


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[Assistant] But it was another building they constructed there, a massive grand hotel that has left the most lasting mark.


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[Assistant] Built to the tune of nearly half a million dollars, the Stanley Hotel opened its doors in 1909 and has been serving guests ever since.


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[Assistant] The Stanley Hotel was a modern marvel in its day. It featured a hydraulic elevator, electricity throughout, running water, telephones, and even a fleet of Stanley's own steam-powered mountain wagons to ferry guests straight from the train station to the front door of the hotel.


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[Assistant] Outside and scattered around the property were staff dormitories, a concert hall, the ice house, carriage house, manager's home, and many others. A private airstrip was even built on the property at some point, although it's been abandoned for decades.


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[Assistant] Over the years, the Stanley Hotel has played host to a number of famous guests. John Philip Sousa not only stayed there frequently, but he would tune the piano in the music room and record the dates inside the lid.


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[Assistant] Other guests have checked in there including Titanic survivor Molly Brown, President Theodore Roosevelt, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Barbra Streisand.


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[Assistant] And Freeland Stanley? Well, the tuberculosis never got him. He died in 1940 at the age of 91, just a year after his wife Flora passed away.


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[Assistant] But while the couple was no longer there to oversee the hotel's day-to-day business, one thing has been very clear to those who work there. The Stanleys, it seems. Never checked out.


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[Assistant] In July of 2009, a tourist in the lobby of the hotel approached her friends with complete shock. She had been shopping for postcards in the gift shop and had exited the store while reading the backs of the ones she'd bought. According to her story, she still had her head down when a pair of pant legs came into view.


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[Assistant] She did the polite thing and stepped to the side to allow the man to pass. But when she did, she claims the legs moved to block her new path.


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[Assistant] Taken aback, she raised her head to scold the man for his rudeness, but stopped when a wave of cold air washed over her. The man, according to the woman, was dressed in clothing that seemed out of place and his pointy beard had an old-fashioned look to it.


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[Assistant] She then watched as the man walked away toward the lobby fireplace, where he vanished out of sight.


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[Assistant] After rushing over to her friends to tell them what had happened, she was approached by another woman who happened to overhear the conversation. This woman led the tourist toward the antique Stanley steamer automobile that sits in the hotel lobby and pointed toward the photo on the wall behind it. A photo of Freeland Stanley.


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[Assistant] The tourist was astonished. The man she had just seen with her own eyes had been dead for over 60 years.


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[Assistant] Mr. Stanley has also been seen in the billiard room, a favorite location during his time at the hotel. According to one report, a group of tourists were once led through the room when a vision of Stanley appeared behind one of the tourists.


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[Assistant] Mr. Stanley also seems to have a soft spot for his beloved rocking chair on the front porch. Visible from the front desk through a large lobby window, it has been witnessed by many to be rocking on its own volition. But if Mr. Stanley really has remained behind in the hotel after death, then he is apparently not alone.


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[Assistant] In February of 1984, the night Bellman was working the front desk when he heard footsteps from the direction of the hotel bar, known as the Cascades. The Bellman leaned over the counter to peer around the corner, and in the reflection of the lobby windows, he was able to see the figure of a woman.


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[Assistant] She wore a pale gown that he described as off the shoulders in a southern belle style.


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[Assistant] The bellman quickly exited the front desk area through the back doorway, but when he arrived in the side hall near the windows, no one was there.


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[Assistant] During an overnight shift in 1976, the clerk at the front desk reported hearing piano music. She left the desk and entered the music room where the sound was coming from, but found it empty.


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[Assistant] According to her however, the piano keys were still moving on their own.


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[Assistant] In 1994, a guest heard similar music from the direction of the music room and stepped inside. He claimed to have seen a young woman sitting at the piano, and he approached so he could watch and listen as she played.


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[Assistant] As he walked across the room though the girl transformed into an elderly woman before disappearing completely.


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[Assistant] The Stanleys have frequently been sighted on the main staircase in formal attire and even in the elevator. The encounters are never violent or malevolent, but they frighten guests and staff nonetheless.


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[Assistant] The bartenders there in the cascades claim they have even seen the deceased owner strolling through the bar. Some have even given chase, only to lose sight of the ghost as it vanishes into one of the walls.


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[Assistant] Whether or not you believe in ghosts, the frequency of the reports is enough to make you wonder. From glowing orbs caught on film to the faint sound of piano music drifting into the lobby, there seems to be no lack of fuel for the legends that fill those halls.


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[Assistant] But it's not just the Stanleys who haunt the hotel. Sightings have been reported throughout the structure's four stories, with the vast majority of them occurring in the most unwelcome of places. The guest rooms.


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[Assistant] In the early 1900s, many visitors to the Stanley Hotel would stay for more than just a weekend. In many cases, guests would stay through the summer, and that meant arriving equipped for months of living abroad.


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[Assistant] Those of us who have spent the past few years watching the British television show Downton Abbey might be familiar with this process. The gentlemen and ladies would arrive by carriage, in this case steam-powered, of course, along with a caravan of servants and luggage.


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[Assistant] And while the wealthy guests had access to the many finely appointed rooms of the hotel, the servants and children were relegated to the fourth floor.


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[Assistant] This was an era when children were expected to be seen but not heard, and so they played in the rooms and halls far above the heads of the guests. They slept there, played there, and even ate there in a small windowless corner of the upstairs kitchen.


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[Assistant] These days, the fourth floor is just one more level of guest rooms. According to many accounts, however, that doesn't mean the children are gone. Many of these stories center around room 418.


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[Assistant] There have been reports of the sound of balls bouncing in the dark, of high, childlike voices laughing and talking in the hall outside the room, of metal jacks on wooden flooring, and the pounding of little feet. Guests have been startled out of their sleep by voices and sounds, some of which have been even captured on video.


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[Assistant] Even the staff have had experiences. The cleaning staff always enter the room with a bit of fear due to the many odd things that have been witnessed inside room 418.


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[Assistant] The television has been known to turn on and off on its own, and on at least one occasion, a housekeeper has turned to see that the bed she has just made up now has the deep impression of a body in the bedspread.


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[Assistant] The room with the most activity though is on the second floor, and there are legends as to why.


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[Assistant] It is said that in 1911, a thunderstorm caused a power outage in the hotel, sending the building into complete darkness. It was dinnertime, and thankfully most of the guests were downstairs in the McGregor Ballroom. But the staff still needed to provide a temporary fix for the lack of light.


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[Assistant] Because the Stanley Hotel was built at a time of transition between gas and electric lamps, the fixtures throughout the hotel were equipped to do both. With the building in darkness, staff were sent room to room with candles to light each acetylene gas lamp. But when one of the chambermaids, a woman named Elizabeth Wilson, entered room 217, something happened.


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[Assistant] It should be said that this room was the presidential suite. It was enormous and elegantly decorated in the style most beloved by Flora Stanley herself.


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[Assistant] Bright floral wallpaper and reds and pinks and greens covered the walls and the carpet was the color of grass with accents of red and blue. It was the jewel of the hotel.


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[Assistant] According to the legend, the light fixture in that room had a hidden leak, and the room had filled with gas. When Mrs. Wilson opened the door with her lit candle in hand, the gas ignited, setting off an explosion that destroyed nearly 10% of the hotel along the western wing.


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[Assistant] Part of the floor gave way, and several steel girders fell on tables in the ballroom below, thankfully missing the guests. Mrs. Wilson, though, was not so lucky. She fell through the floor, breaking both her ankles in the fall.


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[Assistant] It's a good story, but there are many versions of it. Five separate Colorado newspapers carried the story, but details varied widely. One paper listed the chambermaid as Ava Colburn and said that she was thrown through a wall onto the porch with no injuries.


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[Assistant] In another, she was Elizabeth Lambert, who died in the fall. Still, another report claimed the chambermaid was a woman named Lizzie Leitzenberger. All of the stories did agree, though, that the explosion happened at 8pm, but none of them mentioned the thunderstorm.


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[Assistant] There are other glitches in the story as well. No employee records exist from this period in the hotel's history. Among the many photographs of hotel staff over the years, there are no pictures of anyone named Elizabeth Wilson, or Lambert, or Leitzenberger.


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[Assistant] All of it has the smell of window dressing designed to lend some credibility to the odd experiences that guests have had in Room 217. Just what experiences am I referring to?


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[Assistant] Well, according to first-hand accounts, the ghost of Mrs. Wilson has been known to unpack suitcases of guests to toss their clothing on the floor and rearrange the bed linens. Another common report is that some guests and staff have seen a mysterious black hole in the floor, said to be the location of her fall after the explosion.


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[Assistant] The faucet in the bathtub has been known to turn on and off on its own, and maids have seen doors in the room open and close.


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[Assistant] In 1974, a man and his wife arrived at the hotel at the end of the season. According to this story, they were the only guests in the entire hotel. After dinner that first night, the couple retired to bed, where the husband had a horrible nightmare.


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[Assistant] I dreamed of my three-year-old son running through the corridors, he later said. The boy was looking back over his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming. He was being chased by a fire hose. I woke with a tremendous jerk, sweating all over, within an inch of falling out of bed.


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[Assistant] I got up, lit a cigarette, sat in a chair looking out the window at the Rockies, and by the time the cigarette was gone I had the bones of the book firmly set in my mind. That man was Stephen King.


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[Assistant] And the book, of course, would later become The Shining.


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[Assistant] Some folklore is historical. We tell the tales because they happened. At least to some degree. There's a grain of truth at the core of many myths and legends. A real life event or fear that caused people to remember, to retell, and to eventually immortalize.


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[Assistant] Other legends, however, lack that core truth. They work backwards instead, creating a unique story to explain the unexplainable. Oftentimes, these stories lean on the past and mine it for hints of validity. But in the end, we're still left with stories that have no roots. The reason people do that isn't really a mystery. Story, you see, helps keep us grounded.


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[Assistant] It helps provide us with bearings as we navigate life, like a landmark we can all point toward. And when something odd or unexplainable happens, I think it's only human nature to look for those landmarks. When we can't find them, often times we simply invent our own.


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[Assistant] Perhaps the original events that led to the unusual activity at the Stanley Hotel have simply been lost in the past. It would be reasonable to assume that at least some of the stories have a foundation in reality, rather than just a narrative of a hotel with a supernatural reputation to keep. That's not my decision to make. I'll leave that up to you.


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[Assistant] But sometimes we're reminded that stories can evolve. That the unknown can suddenly become a bit more knowable. In 2014, while doing maintenance in a service tunnel beneath the hotel, workers found debris.


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[Assistant] Specifically, they found pieces of drywall covered with pink and green wallpaper.


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[Assistant] Carpet fragments were also discovered, still pale green, with red and blue details.


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[Assistant] It turns out the explosion really did happen. And if we can find truth at the center of one of the stories, even a century later, how much more truth is out there to be found? I'll leave you with one last story from Room 217.


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[Assistant] According to a previous guest who was preparing to go to bed, he opened one of the windows to let in some of the cool Colorado air. Later, after having been asleep for some time, he felt his wife climb out of bed and quietly walk across the room toward the window.


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[Assistant] The man said that he opened his eyes and after glancing at the glowing numbers of the alarm clock, he looked to find her standing at the window, her face pressed against the screen.


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[Assistant] You have to see this, she whispered to him. There's a family of elk outside.


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[Assistant] The guest didn't move. He just smiled and watched his wife for a long time, noticing how her hair moved in the breeze. It's hard to blame him after all. She'd been dead for over five years.


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[Assistant] Stories about the palatial homes of the ultra wealthy are always entertaining, especially when they involve hauntings and unexplainable experiences. So it's no wonder that the Stanley Hotel has been at the top of the list for so many people over the years.


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[Assistant] But it's far from alone in that category. There's actually one more strange mansion that I'd like to take you on a tour of, because it combines all of the things we love to hear about. Odd inventions, the other world, and ghostly echoes of another time. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.


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[Assistant] There was nothing wrong with living in a castle. People had done that for centuries, of course, so it wasn't new or revolutionary. Except this was a medieval castle built on the coast of New England, outside the town of Gloucester. And it wasn't constructed in the 1300s or even the 1600s. No, it was completed in 1929.


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[Assistant] The builder was a man named John Hammond, and if you haven't heard of him, you're missing out. He was an American inventor, mostly known as the father of radio control, as in the technology behind RC cars and that sort of thing.


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[Assistant] In fact, over his career, he was awarded over 400 patents, and for a while even held more than Thomas Edison.


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[Assistant] A castle was his paradise. He imported all sorts of artifacts from Europe and incorporated them into the structure, from the Roman sarcophagus and complete centuries-old buildings that surrounded the indoor pool, to the skull of one of the crew members of Christopher Columbus that sat on a display shelf for guests to see.


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[Assistant] There's a legend that one of the guest rooms even had a radio-controlled door, and Hammond would enjoy shutting it on his friends when they were least expecting it. He was the sort of person who was very smart, very creative, and very eccentric, as one final story will clearly demonstrate.


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[Assistant] You see, Hammond was born in 1888, right at the tail end of the Spiritualist movement. But that didn't stop him from falling in love with everything about it. So when he completed his mansion on the coast, it had everything he ever wanted installed and constructed to his exact vision. He added one last feature.


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[Assistant] In the great hall, near the large pipe organ he loved to play, Hammond had built something else. A Faraday cage.


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[Assistant] Remember, Hammond was a radio guy. He understood the sorts of invisible waves and forces that our modern machinery can throw around the room.


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[Assistant] But he also wanted to hold seances in the Great Hall, and he felt that all of those man-made forces might interfere with a medium's ability to listen for voices from the other side of the veil.


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[Assistant] A Faraday cage is a sort of insulated booth designed to block electromagnetic fields. It's a shield, in a sense, that protects the things inside from the radio and magnetic waves outside. And that's where Hammond would put his medium.


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[Assistant] Whether or not it allowed them to make a stronger connection to the world beyond our own is up for debate, but there are stories that seem to hint at some level of success.


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[Assistant] The castle, you see, is frequently used for weddings these days. Some folks choose to have their ceremony outside in the courtyard, but with New England weather the way it is, guests often find themselves indoors, usually in the great room. And while the Faraday cage is no longer there, people have seen echoes of it from time to time.


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[Assistant] Specifically, there have been multiple reports of a mysterious guest at some weddings. She's always described the same way. A tall, beautiful woman with long red hair. Guests and staff alike have seen her, but she always manages to disappear before anyone can approach her and ask who she is.


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[Assistant] No one likes a wedding crasher, especially when you've been invited to an exclusive reception inside the stone halls of an enormous castle. But taking all of the pieces into consideration, the Faraday cage, the mediums, and the frequent seances, we might be missing the most obvious conclusion.


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[Assistant] The mysterious woman might very well believe that she was invited.


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


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


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[Assistant] I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy. My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical. You can learn more about all of our shows and everything else going on over in one central place, grimandmild.com.


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


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[Assistant] My great-grandmother was a painter. She picked it up late in life, but she produced dozens and dozens of oil paintings once she hit her stride. They're mostly still life studies in landscapes. They're not Dutch masters by any stretch of the imagination, but to our family, they're precious. They connect us to her.


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[Assistant] Because of this, those paintings have become a centerpiece of her extended family. Generation after generation now makes room on their walls for as many of these framed treasures as they can acquire.


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[Assistant] People have a way of becoming attached to things. Maybe it's the long journey these objects accompany us on through our lives, or perhaps it's due to the feelings they could invoke when we see them and touch them.


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[Assistant] Or maybe, deep down, we understand that even though our lives might be fleeting and temporary, these things, these objects we grow to love and revere, seem to live on after we're gone.


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[Assistant] This habit of attributing personality and emotion to our possessions is something known as anthropomorphism. We give human characteristics to things that are far from human. Some people name their cars and talk to them like an old friend. Others will say that their house has a lot of nervous energy.


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[Assistant] They don't, but at the same time they do. You know?


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[Assistant] But the best place to see this practice in action is in the presence of children.


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[Assistant] The toys they cherish, the ones that follow them from room to room or lay in their laps on long car rides or get pulled under the covers with them at bedtime, those objects take on a personality of their own.


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[Assistant] Oftentimes it's just a game. Other times it's a coping mechanism for fear and loss. But sometimes, on very rare occasions, these objects seem to set the rules themselves. They pick their own personality. They guide the child's decisions. As if someone, or something, were controlling them.


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[Assistant] In 1982, a backhoe operator was preparing a building site for development in Titusville, Florida. While working on one of the ponds, he noticed what he thought were rocks visible in the mud. But something didn't sit right with him, so he climbed out to take a closer look.


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[Assistant] What he had thought to be stones actually turned out to be bones. Specifically, a human skull. A country medical examiner was brought in, but it became clear almost immediately that the bones belonged to someone who had died a very long time ago.


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[Assistant] When Florida State University became involved, they uncovered, so to speak, the truth.


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[Assistant] The bones belong to a three-year-old girl who had died more than 7,000 years before Florida had become a state. It was clear that she had been buried by her parents, though. They had wrapped her in cloth made from local plant fibers and placed her in a shallow grave. But she wasn't alone.


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[Assistant] With her in the ground, placed near her arms in case she wanted them, were toys.


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[Assistant] It seems that children have had toys, objects that they loved and played with for thousands of years, perhaps tens of thousands. But toys were still rare. In a world where everyone had to contribute to the well-being of the community, even the children were expected to grow up fast and do their part.


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[Assistant] When they did have toys, they were often basic in shape, such as marbles or tops. They would also play with objects meant to represent the things most important to their village or clan. Toy animals, soldiers, and religious icons are all objects commonly found by archaeologists in the graves of ancient children.


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[Assistant] Interestingly, the ancient Greeks expected children to give up their toys when they came of age. Young women would actually take their toys to the local temple on the night before their wedding, where they would offer them as a sacrifice to the gods.


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[Assistant] These rules began to shift after the advent of the Enlightenment in the mid-1600s though.


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[Assistant] Society became more affluent, and children weren't always expected to work as often as they had previously. In addition, their toys became more complex and more useful. Jigsaw puzzles were born in 1767 as a way of teaching geography, and board games from the same period were meant to entertain. Toys had evolved.


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[Assistant] But throughout all of history, it seems, across cultural boundaries and spanning thousands of years of art and technology, there has been one constant in the world of toys.


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[Assistant] They're little representations of us, after all. They personify the people we love, and provide comfort to the lonely in a way that no other toy can. And because of that, people get attached, children refuse to put them down, and even in adulthood, dolls have a tendency to be kept around.


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[Assistant] Sometimes though, the roles are reversed. As unhealthy as it sounds, there have been more than a few stories of dolls, not children, who refuse to let go.


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[Assistant] They seem to take control, to set the tone and dominate the lives of the people who own them. And sometimes, the consequences have been frightening.


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[Assistant] Thomas and Minnie Otto were a well-off and well-traveled couple who had a deep love of the arts. They were natives of Key West, Florida, and in 1898 they completed building a brand new home there on Eaton Street.


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[Assistant] Two years after moving in, the couple welcomed their third child to the family, a son they named Robert Eugene.


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[Assistant] They called him Gene, and the family quickly settled into the leisurely lifestyle of the Keys.


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[Assistant] They had more than enough money, and they spent it on convenience, which included a staff of caretakers around the house.


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[Assistant] Cooks and maids were always at the ready, including a woman from Jamaica who worked as Little Jean's nurse. History doesn't remember her name.


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[Assistant] If you were a woman in 1904, that was pretty common, unfortunately. If your skin color wasn't pale or European, those chances dropped even more. So we don't know her name.


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[Assistant] But we do know that she loved Gene. She spent hours with him every day. She traveled with the Ottos on their journeys around the country, caring for him like a turn of the century version of an uptown Manhattan nanny. She was close to him. And that's probably why she gave him the doll.


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[Assistant] It was big, about the size of a four-year-old boy, in fact. It was filled with straw, hand-sewn and dressed in a white sailor's uniform. And Gene loved it. He took it everywhere with him, on travels abroad and on day trips into town with his mother.


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[Assistant] It was said that Jean even sometimes wore a similar outfit, and the two seemed like siblings.


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[Assistant] Jean called the doll Robert, using his own first name, and their relationship got off to a storybook start. The doll had its own chair near the dining room table, and Jean would sneak little pieces of food to it as the family ate.


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[Assistant] During bath times, the doll would be placed on a dry towel near the tub while Gene played in the water with toy boats and corks and all the usual things that little kids love to play with. At the end of the night, Gene would bring Robert to bed with him and the two of them would be tucked in together. And everything about this is normal.


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[Assistant] My own children used to do similar things, naming their dolls and bringing them along for car rides. But for Gene, that's where the normality stopped. Because not long after settling into a routine with his new toy, things got weird. And according to most reports, it all started with the talking.


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[Assistant] Gene's parents would often hear the son's voice coming from his bedroom as he played. Even though he was in there alone, it would always sound like he was in deep conversation with someone else.


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[Assistant] First, they would hear his voice, sweet and tiny, and then another voice would reply, different and rougher than his own. Oftentimes, the second voice would sound insistent, while Gene's would almost sound unnerved and flustered. Of course, Gene's parents assumed it was a game, and that he was simply playing make-believe.


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[Assistant] But over time, they began to second guess that presumption.


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[Assistant] During a few of these apparent conversations, Jean's mother would quietly approach the boy's room and then, without warning, she would burst into the room.


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[Assistant] Inside she would find her son cowering in a corner, arms wrapped around his knees, while Robert the doll sat on the bed or a chair.


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[Assistant] She couldn't be sure but it seemed to her like the doll was glaring at the boy.


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[Assistant] They would rush to his room only to find him sitting up in bed, furniture in the room overturned and belongings strewn about. According to Jean, Robert was to blame. Robert, the doll glaring at him from the foot of the bed.


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[Assistant] Robert did it became a common phrase around the auto house after that. They didn't believe their son, of course, but the boy blamed the doll for most unusual activity. When his parents found toys that appeared to have been mutilated or broken, Gene said that Robert had done it.


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[Assistant] Sometimes the autos could hear giggling from somewhere in the house. Sometimes this happened at night, and each time when Jean was supposed to be in bed. Dishes and silverware were often found thrown about the dining room. Clothing would be found on the floor, appearing to have been shredded by some unknown person.


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[Assistant] Sometimes, servants would enter unused guest rooms, only to find that the bedding there had been disturbed and pushed to the floor.


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[Assistant] The staff would even find themselves locked out of the house when making their nightly rounds. If Jean was clearly not at fault, sometimes the servants themselves were blamed for the disturbances. As a result, turnover at the house was high, with a constant rotation of people coming and going.


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[Assistant] But the one constant through all of this was Robert, the unusual doll in the white suit. And according to some reports, he did more than create a mess. He may have killed.


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[Assistant] Now, hearing giggles from distant parts of the house was one thing. Sure, it would unnerve most of us. I know it would freak me out, but the autos soldiered on, putting up with the repeated excuses. They were strict parents, maybe even a little overbearing by today's standards, and were always quick to punish Jean for the mischief.


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[Assistant] It was one thing to make a mess, but staff was hard to train and having them frightened away all the time wasn't compatible with their life of convenience. And so they punished Gene.


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[Assistant] To the boy's credit, he appeared to have been a true believer in his own stories. He would put up a short fight, blame the events on the doll, and then take the consequences like a responsible child.


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[Assistant] But there were other reports about the doll. And these were things that could in no way be blamed on the youngest auto boy.


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[Assistant] Visitors to the house reported that the doll would blink. Some of them claimed to have heard the laughter themselves, and at times when the Otto family wasn't at home.


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[Assistant] Neighbors said that they would sometimes see the doll in the upstairs window, moving from one to another, glancing out through the curtains toward the street.


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[Assistant] Servants would find Roberts in a completely different part of the house from where he had been left moments before. Sometimes the sounds of small little feet could be heard moving from room to room.


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[Assistant] All of this became too much, and extended family stepped in to find a solution.


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[Assistant] One of Jean's great aunts visited the family and pleaded her case. The doll was cursed, she said. Some evil spirit lived inside it, and if they wanted to be rid of the chaos and random episodes of disturbance, they needed to get rid of the doll once and for all.


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[Assistant] On her recommendation, Robert was taken away from Jean and placed inside a box. The box was then moved up to the attic of the large house, out of sight and, at least in theory, unable to cast his shadow of fear over the house anymore. The next night, the aunt was found dead in her bedroom.


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[Assistant] She was an older woman and so the official story that she had died of a stroke was passed around and believed by all. But the autos didn't buy it. Out of fear for their own safety, Robert was brought out of storage and returned to their son's side. And that's how things remained.


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[Assistant] As all kids do though, Gene grew up. He trained as a painter, traveled throughout Europe, and eventually married an accomplished pianist. But after his parents passed away, the couple moved back to Florida and took up residence in his old childhood home, right there on Eaton Street.


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[Assistant] Gene spent his days painting, and his wife Anne settled into domestic life. And right there, in the middle of it all, according to reports, was Robert.


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[Assistant] Rumors in town spoke of how the doll still had a place at the dining room table, and that there was a chair beside their bed for him to sit on during the night. And then, Gene had a habit of taking the doll with him as he moved about the house.


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[Assistant] There were whispers that his wife Anne hated the doll. Unnerved by the presence of the doll so close to their marriage bed, it was said that she stopped allowing Jean to bring it into the room. And for a while, he complied. Robert was locked back in the attic. But according to reports, that didn't help.


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[Assistant] Robert would sometimes be found sitting in a rocking chair downstairs, even though he was supposed to have been locked up.


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[Assistant] A couple would hear footsteps in the attic at night, and the soft, distant sound of laughter.


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[Assistant] Local legend claims that all of this drove Jean's wife insane, eventually ending her life.


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[Assistant] The study of folklore often encounters the same patterns throughout the world and across the centuries. One of the common themes that we can see is the dehumanization of people of minority status.


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[Assistant] The witch trials stand as a somber example of this, where the accused, often women, often poor, and often social outcasts already, were stripped of their humanity and treated like animals and monsters.


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[Assistant] Perhaps it's because Jean Otto's parents needed an excuse for their son's unusual behavior. Maybe it was a culture of superstition brought into the house by servants with ethnically different backgrounds.


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[Assistant] Somehow, a living, breathing Robert was an easier story to swallow than the alternative. But we'll never know for sure whether Gene Otto invented it all. He passed away in 1974. With Robert at his side, some say.


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[Assistant] For a while, the house remained uninhabited, unless you count Robert as a resident. But eventually, a new family moved in and made the house on Eaton Street their own. They restored a lot of the original charm of the house, and in the process, they found the doll.


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[Assistant] Maybe they were compelled to, or maybe they had heard about it from the locals, but for whatever reason, the new family packed up the doll and moved it back to the attic.


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[Assistant] Eventually though, the family donated Robert to a local museum. But it wasn't charity that motivated them. It was fear.


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[Assistant] You see, not long after moving in, they began to experience odd things.


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[Assistant] Things that Gene Otto would have known all too well. Soft giggling, light footsteps in the attic, and random, unexplainable messes.


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[Assistant] The family's 10-year-old daughter reported that the doll would appear in the house on its own, and on a handful of occasions it even tried to attack her, a claim that she holds to even now as an adult.


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[Assistant] But the final straw happened later, when the girl's parents were awoken in the middle of the night.


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[Assistant] In the darkness of their room they could hear laughter and the sounds of movement. Alarmed, one of them flicked on a bedside lamp, only to feel their heart stop.


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[Assistant] Like most of you, I find it easy to be fully and utterly creeped out by the story of Robert the Dal. But that said, I take solace in knowing that it's a rare and unusual example of a very small corner of folklore.


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[Assistant] At least, that's what I thought when I first made this episode. But over the years, more and more examples have come to light. And if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll tell you about another of my favorites.


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[Assistant] Humans have always gravitated toward dolls. On a symbolic level, they make a lot of sense. These are miniature, portable versions of ourselves. They give us something to look at. Something with a human face. And for a lot of people, that offers comfort.


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[Assistant] Children are especially drawn to dolls, which I realize is probably the most obvious thing you've heard today. But I love the evidence that supports that claim, because archaeologists have been finding dolls in graves and dig sites for a very long time.


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[Assistant] In fact, back in 2004, researchers on an island off the coast of Sicily were excavating the remains of a Bronze Age village when they discovered what they believed to be a 4,000 year old example of a children's doll.


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[Assistant] This one was complete with a life like mouth, nose, and eyes, along with what they described as wavy hair.


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[Assistant] So, yeaah, it seems obvious when someone says that kids like dolls. But discoveries like this really ground that truth in reality. For thousands of years, we've been making and keeping dolls for various reasons. But sometimes those reasons aren't exactly cheerful.


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[Assistant] According to the legend that's grown up over the last half century, one man found peace through dolls. It's said that Don Julian Santana found the body of a drowned girl in one of the small lakes just outside of Mexico City. And he responded to this discovery emotionally by leaving his family and moving to an island in that same lake.


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[Assistant] For the rest of his life, he rescued dolls, some taken from nearby trash dumps and others literally found floating in the water just like dead bodies, and he put them on display all over the island.


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[Assistant] Before long there were hundreds of them, placed in the crooks of branches, resting on rocks, and most of all, hanging from trees.


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[Assistant] Santana passed away in 2001, but his dolls are still there, perhaps waiting for him to return. More unsettling though is how he died. His body was discovered floating just off the shore of the island, in the exact same place he had found that girl all those years before.


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[Assistant] But there's one last doll I want to tell you about. It was purchased back in 1918 by 17-year-old Aikichi Suzuki, a boy from the Japanese island of Hokkaido. It was dressed in red robes with a pale face and short black hair that stopped even with the doll's jawline.


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[Assistant] It was actually a gift for his sister, Kikuko, and the stories say that she and the doll were inseparable. Now, if you have kids, you know this behavior all too well. It's sweet and endearing, and knowing just how long children throughout history have been playing with dolls, it certainly makes sense.


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[Assistant] But a century ago, childhood illness was a lot more dangerous than it is today. Many of the medical tools we have today that can keep our kids safe were simply not available then. And the Suzuki family experienced the sad reality of that danger. After getting sick, little Kikuko passed away.


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[Assistant] And naturally, her family was devastated. I can't imagine what it's like to experience that sort of dark moment. But they responded in part by placing her favorite doll in a sort of shrine in their home.


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[Assistant] It was a way to remember her, to keep her present and on their minds, to keep her alive in a way.


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[Assistant] But as time went by, they started to notice something odd about the doll. Where its hair had once been cropped short, just below the ear. It was somehow getting longer. Which is crazy to say, I know. Dolls aren't alive. Their hair does not grow. And yet, well, this doll was.


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[Assistant] Many years later, life pulled the family away from their home there on the island. But rather than take their long lost daughter's doll with them, they chose to donate it to a local temple, hoping that the monks there could care for it, along with the spirit of their daughter that they firmly believed was living inside it. And it's been there ever since.


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[Assistant] Now in a strange echo of Robert the Doll's story, visitors to the temple are not allowed to photograph this old doll. But those who have been there have revealed one startling observation.


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[Assistant] It seems that the doll's hair has continued to grow over the decades and now reaches all the way down to its feet.


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[Assistant] Most shocking of all, if the stories are true, the doll's hair should actually be a lot longer than it is today. Why, you might ask? Because for years, the monks have been cutting it off.


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


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[Assistant] I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy. My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical. You can learn more about all of our shows and everything else going on over in one central place, grimandmild.com.


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


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[Assistant] In the recent video on here, Throwing Voices, we went on a journey into some of the history behind the folklore of demonic possession, and we learned how some people used that fear to their own benefit. But it's not the only example.


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[Assistant] Stories of demon possession and the lengths people have gone to escape them are scattered throughout history. And there's one more to share with you. So if you're ready, let's get started.


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[Assistant] In the late 18th century, the English city of Bristol became the location for two very public topics of conversation. First, the slave trade.


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[Assistant] Bristol had long held a key role in the transatlantic slave trade, and a number of religious groups were up in arms about it trying to put a stop to it.


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[Assistant] That included the Society of Friends, otherwise known as the Quakers, and followers of a guy named John Wesley, the leader of a movement known as the Methodists. But these religious groups had one other obsession at the time. Demonic possession.


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[Assistant] In fact, Methodist meetings played such frequent host to these sorts of outbursts and demonstrations that news of them spread far and wide throughout the region. And over time, the people in and around Bristol became really good at spotting someone who was clearly, in their minds at least, demon possessed.


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[Assistant] Simply put, a bunch of people started believing they were experts in a topic that they'd only read about in the newspapers, and that's rarely a good way to begin a story.


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[Assistant] George Lukens was born sometime around 1743. He hailed from the nearby village of Yatten, but he bounced around the area between work as a tailor, a carrier, and a mummer, a sort of actor whose performance had a lot of similarities to mimes. And life seemed to be going pretty well for George Lukens. That is, until the winter of 1769.


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[Assistant] One night that winter, George was said to have gotten blindingly drunk at a local pub when something inside him just snapped. He would howl like an animal, dance on burning coals, run around all over and jump onto and over things. And while he sobered up the following morning, these odd fits didn't go away.


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[Assistant] After six years of dealing with this condition, it finally prevented him from working as a tailor, and he was checked into a hospital. After several months there though, they declared him to be incurable, and sent him home to rest and recover.


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[Assistant] But that only reinforced George's theory about his condition. He wasn't sick. He was possessed by a demon.


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[Assistant] Seven, actually. And if seven ministers would come and pray with him, he might be healed.


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[Assistant] Within a year, his story had caught the attention of a minister named John Easterbrook, one of the most prominent religious figures in Bristol. And Easterbrook sent a message to Lukens.


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[Assistant] Come to Bristol and I will gather other ministers to help pray for you. And the date was set for June 13th of 1778, Friday the 13th, of course.


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[Assistant] When Easterbrook met Lukens in the vestry of his church that day, he had expected an intimate gathering, but someone had spread the word about what was going to happen. And seeing as how the entire community was obsessed with stories of demonic possession, a massive crowd showed up to watch.


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[Assistant] His face was variously distorted and his whole body strongly convulsed.


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[Assistant] Said it was to no purpose and swore by his infernal den that he would never quit his hold of him but would torment him a thousand times worse for making this vain attempt.


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[Assistant] Two hours later though, Easterbrook had won. With one final seizure and a monstrous howl, Lukens fell silent and still. The demon was gone.


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[Assistant] But there were also a lot of people who saw it and scratched their heads.


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[Assistant] Had the Reverend Easterbrook never heard of Lukens before?


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[Assistant] The biggest, most vocal critic of all was a physician from Lucan's own home village who said it wasn't a demon and it wasn't even something medical. Lucan's was an imposter, plain and simple. And the proof? Had been hiding rights under their noses.


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[Assistant] You see, before achieving fame as a possessed man, Lucas had been an actor known for two specific things. His physical skills and ventriloquism.


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


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[Assistant] Of course, Lore has been a podcast since 2015 with over 350 million downloads to date. You can learn more about the show over at Lore podcast.


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[Assistant] If you enjoyed this video, be sure to click the thumbs up and then click the subscribe and the bell icon so that you don't miss future episodes. And you can also follow the show on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Just look for lore podcast, all one word, 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 a development that any of us would be excited to see happen. His hobby had become something more.


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[Assistant] Antoine worked as a draper for most of his adult life, but in the late 1630s, he hit one of those smooth patches. His business was successful, his community loved him, and the local government had given him a fat, juicy contract.


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[Assistant] So he took on a hobby. Remember, Antoine sold cloth by day, but in his spare time he learned to grind glass discs into viewing lenses.


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[Assistant] Within a few years, he was looking deeper into everyday objects than anyone else in the world. In 1674, he documented protozoa and bacteria. Three years later, he identified the spermatozoa from a variety of animals. Soon, he became the first person to ever see red blood cells.


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[Assistant] What really blew things up for him, no pun intended, I swear, was when he looked through his lenses at droplets of water. And there, moving around in a substance he had always assumed was transparent and empty, were living creatures.


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[Assistant] Excited, Antoine called them animalcules, tiny animals, and hired an illustrator to draw them so that others could see them as well.


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[Assistant] Today, Antoine van Leeuwenhoek is considered by many to be the father of microbiology. But at a more basic level, his hobby demonstrated a universal truth. There is so much left to explore. And if we dig deep enough, we might uncover something truly groundbreaking. And sometimes that discovery might lead to something else. Fear.


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[Assistant] The Himalayas are one of those places on the globe that people think they understand, but really don't.


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[Assistant] Ask a few people, and most of them will give you the basic answer. The Himalayas are a mountain range, but there's so much more to them than that.


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[Assistant] In fact, the Himalayas are really three mountain ranges, all running parallel to each other. The Savalik Hills are on the southern edge, and the lower Himalayas run along the north side. And of course, right down the middle runs the biggest of them all, the Great Himalayas. And together, they mark the spot where the Indian subcontinent ends and China begins.


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[Assistant] Now I've spent most of my life imagining the Himalayas as snow-covered wastelands. I'm guessing a lot of other people have done the same. It probably doesn't help that the name Himalaya is based on two Sanskrit words meaning snow and dwelling.


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[Assistant] But in truth, the climate there ranges from vast tracts of snow and ice to subtropical regions and even desert.


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[Assistant] And the mountains are home to an incredible variety of life. Not only are there over 50 million people living in that region, but a huge variety of plants and animals not found anywhere else in the world. From the snow leopard to the musk deer and everything in between, there is so much to see there.


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[Assistant] Which is why the mountains had drawn explorers for a very long time.


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[Assistant] One of them was a man named James Princep, born in England in 1799.


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[Assistant] Being the tenth child born to his parents, life was probably always an uphill climb, but it was a job in India that finally pulled him out of the mundane and into the extraordinary.


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[Assistant] Officially, he worked in the assay department at a mint in India, testing and assessing the metals used to make coins. But while he was there, far from home, James loved to explore. So that's why in 1832, he found himself traveling in the portion of the Himalayas that cut through Nepal.


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[Assistant] In his account of that trip, he made mention of a number of amazing sights and experiences, but one stands out as more bizarre than the rest. While in the mountains, he claimed to have seen something that was both human-like and otherworldly.


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[Assistant] A few years later, another British man in Nepal, a guy named Brian Houghton Hudson, recorded a similar experience. He claimed that one day, as he and his guides trekked through the snowy mountains, they all saw a creature in the distance that he described as a wild man.


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[Assistant] His guides though used other words, some of which translated as demons. It walked on two legs, said Hodgson's, and was covered in hair from head to toe.


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[Assistant] And then, a few decades later, the sightings transition into something better. Physical proof.


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[Assistant] Lawrence Waddell was a military surgeon who had served in the British Indian Army in the 1880s. It was a posting that took him everywhere in the region, from Tibet and China to Burma and beyond. And then in 1889, he found something amazing.


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[Assistant] He had been exploring Sikkim, a state in northeastern India that's home to a stretch of the Himalayas, including the world's third highest peak. And it was while exploring the frigid slopes high up in the mountains there that Waddell and his guides encountered something unbelievable in the snow.


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[Assistant] Some large footprints in the snow, he wrote, led across our track and away up to the higher peaks. These were alleged to be the trail of the hairy wild men who are believed to live amongst the eternal snows. The belief in these creatures is universal amongst Tibetans. And the name for those creatures was quickly given to him.


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[Assistant] Pointing to the enormous footprints in the snow, one of his Sherpas told him what sort of monster had made them. The Yeti.


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[Assistant] Stories of large hairy wild men are pretty much guaranteed wherever you look. They seem to be as common as rainfall and birdsong. No matter what new land you step into, there's a good chance that you can track down stories about them.


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[Assistant] Of course, most of us immediately conjure up images of the North American legends of Bigfoot or Sasquatch. It's often described as a very tall ape-like creature that walks on two legs like a human, but is covered in hair or fur from head to foot.


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[Assistant] We've discussed some of these North American folktales here in the past, but Bigfoot might also be one of the most famous cryptids in the world, right up there with the Loch Ness Monster and Chupacabra.


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[Assistant] Halfway around the world in the Philippines, though, are similar stories. The Amamango has a familiar description, too. An ape the size of a man who walks upright and is covered in hair. The Amamango was described as violent and dangerous, and a multitude of attacks on people has been recorded over the centuries.


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[Assistant] So much so, in fact, that local authorities have warned the general public to keep an eye out for it. According to reports, the creature has been blamed for slaughtered livestock and even disappearances of people.


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[Assistant] In Russia, there is a creature known as the Chuchuna, which is said to live way out in the Siberian wilderness. Taller than a human, covered in hair, and prone to violence. It sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it? But the only difference I can see regarding this one is that it's occasionally described as having a tail.


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[Assistant] In Japan, there are stories about the hibagan. This one is shorter than some of the others, maybe five feet in height, but is still said to be hairy and muscular. Oddly, this creature's hands are often described as covered in pale or white hair, unlike the rest of its body.


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[Assistant] One sighting in 1972 left people whispering about its deep glaring eyes, although no violent attacks were reported. Another North American creature that's similar yet different to the popular Bigfoot legend is the Nook Look from Northwestern Canada.


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[Assistant] A handful of sightings in the 1960s describe the creature as actually wearing clothing, although nothing more than a simple loincloth and some rough boots. Although it's said to be covered in hair, witnesses have also mentioned a long beard, giving the nook look more of a wild man appearance than most of the other wild beasts.


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[Assistant] And in China, we can find folklore regarding a creature known as the Yeren. It's exactly what you'd imagine, too. Standing close to ten feet tall, covered in fur and hiding away from human civilization inside the wooded wilderness.


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[Assistant] Amazingly, stories of a creature fitting the Yeren's description date back over 2,000 years, often highlighting its odd juxtaposition of human and animal characteristics.


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[Assistant] And maybe because of their reported behavior, preying on humans, often attacking or kidnapping them, along with some of its more human-like features, like a long beard and primitive weapons, it's no wonder that some historians have theorized that the stories are twisted versions of early encounters with Iron Age Europeans.


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[Assistant] But few regions have begged for answers like the Himalayan Mountains.


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[Assistant] Maybe it's the thrill of reaching places few have gone before, or perhaps it's the attraction some feel to new areas of exploration and discovery.


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[Assistant] Whatever the reason, many of those who have ventured up those cold, snow-covered rocks have brushed up against physical evidence of the Yeti. And what they found is terrifying.


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[Assistant] We've all heard of Beatlemania, right? That moment in the 1960s when it seemed like every living person on Earth was under the spell of those four young musicians from England. Well, a decade earlier, it was Yeti Mania.


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[Assistant] All those earlier reports of explorers who had wandered up into the thin air of the Himalayas and encountered evidence of a mysterious creature had left the general public wanting more. And for that, someone had to be brave enough to go get it.


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[Assistant] In 1942, for example, two hikers in the mountains spotted movement in the distance.


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[Assistant] Now remember, up in the snow and pale blue sky, there's a lot of contrast. So it's easier to spot dark objects from a distance. It's mostly bits of stone peeking out from gaps in the snow. But every now and then, the object moves.


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[Assistant] Well, these two hikers spotted what they claimed was a human-like creature, walking away from them about a quarter of a mile down mountain from where they stood. Yet somehow they were able to ballpark a creature's height at about eight feet tall and could even make out physical details like its dark, hairy body and powerful build.


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[Assistant] Others who ventured into the mountains sometimes returned with things they claimed were physical evidence of the creature's existence. Even Hollywood superstar Jimmy Stewart got in on the Yeti mania. How so? Well, it seems that he purchased a finger from someone who claimed it had come from one of the creatures, and


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[Assistant] It's a legend about a legend, of course, so take all of that with a grain of salt. But the story of the finger, if you'll pardon the pun, certainly makes a point. People had become obsessed with the Yeti.


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[Assistant] But the most fascinating story of exploration and the Yeti, hands down, took place in 1951.


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[Assistant] The story centers on a mountaineer named Eric Shipton, who was an Englishman born in Sri Lanka back in 1907. After his father passed away when Eric was a young boy, he was sent back to London to finish his education and eventually discovered a love for the mountains on a family vacation to the Pyrenees between Spain and France. And that was a passion he quickly leaned into.


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[Assistant] In 1929, at the age of 22, he climbed to the top of Nellion, one of the peaks of Mount Kenya. Two years later, he scaled Komet, the second tallest mountain in India, and then he set his sights on Everest.


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[Assistant] Clearly, Eric Shifton was passionate about mountain climbing, and he was good at it.


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[Assistant] For the next 20 years or so, Eric dominated Everest, participating in most of the expeditions there.


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[Assistant] In 1951 though, he was joined by a guy named Edmund Hillary, the man who had returned two years later with his partner and Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, and would become the first people to ever reach the summit of Everest. And Eric and Edmund witnessed something incredible on that 1951 climb.


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[Assistant] According to Edmund, who wrote about the experience later, the pair had encountered a series of footprints that caught their attention, partly because it meant that there had been someone else in their vicinity fairly recently, but mostly because of their size. Because these tracks were huge.


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[Assistant] After following the trail for a way down the glacier, they started to notice other unusual clues. There were a handful of large claw marks on the edge of the ice at the mouth of a crevasse. It was the sort of gap in the glacier that would require rope and climbing gear to get across.


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[Assistant] Matching claw marks could be found on the other side as well, as if whatever made it had simply jumped across.


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[Assistant] To document their find, one of them laid their ice axe down beside a footprint to give it a sense of scale. And then Eric took a series of photographs.


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[Assistant] Today, if you poke around on the internet looking for stories of the Yeti, that photo is one of the most common that you'll see. A legendary clue in a centuries-long journey to uncover the truth at the center of the stories.


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[Assistant] Edmund Hillary wrote about the size of the footprint in relation to his own large feet, and made sure to point out the toe marks at the front, as if whoever or whatever left the tracks had been walking through the snow barefoot.


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[Assistant] And of course, coming from two well respected explorers like Shipton and Hillary, the photos and story were gobbled up by an eager public.


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[Assistant] Yeti mania continued for many years after that, all fueled by the hint of answers just out of reach.


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[Assistant] Sightings became so frequent that the U.S. government got involved issuing a foreign service dispatch through the State Department that instructed Americans how to behave and respond should they ever encounter a Yeti. And of course, Edmund Hillary would return to the mountains there. In fact, just a year later in 1952, he found more evidence to back up the legends.


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[Assistant] While climbing across a series of glaciers, one of the guides who was with him pointed toward a dark object on the surface of the snow before picking it up.


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[Assistant] Curious, Hillary held out his hand to have a look at it, and the Sherpa passed it over. It was hair.


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[Assistant] Some legends have a way of acting like appetizers. They offer just enough to make your mouth water, but lack the substance to replace a full meal. They tease us into expecting more, but leave us waiting and hoping.


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[Assistant] Today in the early 21st century, stories of the Yeti seem to be everywhere. It's a character that has appeared in various pop culture moments, from Monsters, Inc. to Scooby-Doo, to the classic 1964 Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer TV special, where it wasn't really just mean and dangerous, it just needed its tooth pulled.


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[Assistant] It might even be fun to know that the first few episodes of this podcast back in 2015 were recorded on a microphone called, you guessed it, a Yeti.


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[Assistant] But while the legend has grown, many of the pieces of evidence that people have collected have lost their power. Jimmy Stewart's Yeti finger was tested in 2011.


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[Assistant] And determined to be human, not monster. And many of the hair samples found have been narrowed down to a rare but known to science species of bear.


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[Assistant] It seems that if the goal is to find definitive proof, we're going to have to keep searching and hoping. One last story you might find interesting.


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[Assistant] They wouldn't reach the summit, of course, but it was one of those early attempts at the north face of the mountain. And during the climb, Burry and his companions came across some enormous footprints in the snow.


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[Assistant] When they spotted them, one of Burry's guides pointed to the tracks and told him that they belonged to a creature called the Matau Kingmi, a name that is translated into English as Man Bear Snowman.


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[Assistant] Burry saw other clues on that climb as well, including what he claimed to be the creature itself, moving quickly through the snow high above them in the region above the 17,000 foot elevation.


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[Assistant] So naturally, when he descended the mountain, he was eager to talk about his experience. And one man who wanted to hear about it was a journalist named Henry Newman. But this Newman, it turns out, was pretty bad at translating things. And his pass at the creature's name, Mehto Kangmi, gave him a weird English term. The Filthy Snowman. Which didn't seem to roll off the tongue.


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[Assistant] And as a journalist, Newman was interested in giving his readers something more substantial to sink their teeth into. So he swapped out filthy for another word.


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[Assistant] Hey folks, I just want to thank you for watching. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, with research by Ali Steed, and music by Chad Lawson.


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[Assistant] Lore has existed as a podcast since 2015, and you can find an ever-growing catalog of more than 200 episodes on every major podcast platform out there. There's also a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. So check them both out if you want more lore in your life.


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[Assistant] I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts too, all of which you might enjoy. My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at that intersection of the dark and the historical.


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[Assistant] And you can learn more about all of those shows and everything else going on over in one central place, GrimAndMild.com. And you can follow me and the show over on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.


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[Assistant] So if I heard someone say, uh, read that poem.


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[Assistant] Uh, when I was in Hickory and it's just for this role, you know, I'm, I can do that guy all day, every day.


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[Assistant] Easy peasy. And so I recorded the podcast. That's the same guy from Harold and Kumar too. It's the same guy. That's the same guy from the Hemi commercials. Yeah.


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[Assistant] You know, like that guy was a little bit in Rodney Carrington, but without the beard. Yeah.


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[Assistant] The movie into the storm, basically the same dude. So I just do that, you know, but it was great. It was fantastic. Uh, I was there two days. We shot it in LA, even though it took place in Atlanta. I was a little bit nervous, uh, working with Larry David, cause I've heard things, you know, he's a legend and.


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[Assistant] Yeah, they don't give you a script. That part is true. They give you a pages with bullet points of where your conversation needs to go. So in this first scene, I am in jail with Larry. I don't know why I'm in jail.


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[Assistant] Uh, he doesn't know why I'm in jail. All he knows is I got stomach cramps and I'm doing this a lot.


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[Assistant] I didn't do it this time because it didn't go that far. Like when we were there, I mean,


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[Assistant] And I know he's a very busy dude. He's, he's talking to everybody, the director, the lighting, and he's doing all kinds of stuff. So I just sat on the bench.


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[Assistant] No, uh, but I was, uh, intimidated cause he was a little curmudgeony or no, but he was super nice. And the director was a big part of it too. Cause we would just improv the lines. We would go.


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[Assistant] And then we'd stop and the director would come over and go, okay, that was good. Uh, take this part out. John say this this time instead of that. And we just whittled it down to what they want. We, we shot this thing maybe 10 times.


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[Assistant] And then move the camera around, did another 10 times. I was very proud of one moment and I hope it makes it to the blooper reels where I made him laugh out loud. And I wish, I wish, I hope they give me that as the blooper reel.


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[Assistant] Yeah. I'm going to tell you a little story about this. So that character, um,


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[Assistant] Larry later on in the, have you seen this episode yet? No, I saw that clip though. Okay. So later on, Larry needs a favor from me.


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[Assistant] He calls me up and now I owe him something cause he cured my stomach cramps. And so I'd like to know what he did.


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[Assistant] That was it. I didn't either. And so he goes, well, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to steal a long jockey.


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[Assistant] And for whatever reason, he wanted me to go find a lawn jockey and give it to him. So I got him this lawn jockey that's part of the show. Fast forward. Now I have a new house.


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[Assistant] And I've been told that my house looks like the house from Home Alone.


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[Assistant] You've seen the movie Home Alone. You have it, Herring. I'm familiar with it. Alright. In the beginning of Home Alone, I think the pizza guy... You got him out on it.


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[Assistant] In real life, my house kind of looks like that. Okay. Yeah. I just bought a house. Less than, less than a year ago.


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[Assistant] A lot's happened. I got married. Yeah. I got a house. I got, I got a, I have a, I have a new son. Today's his anniversary. You have a new son? Yeah, he's 22. His name is Tate. He lives in the basement. He's my stepson. But he's new to me.


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[Assistant] No. Oh, congrats. Thank you. Do you see the long jockey in the, in the front? Yeah. All right. So.


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[Assistant] Yes. Now what I gotta do is order a pizza.


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[Assistant] A little conspiracy. Call up and go, I need a ginger to bring it out here. And then they'll come and arrest you.


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[Assistant] No other ethnicity or color, please. Only the ginger. And then you have to bump into it because that's what happened in Home Alone. They ran over that thing like two or three times, but yeah, it was good times.


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[Assistant] Well, you'll stand next to it and take pictures and stuff. That's all you care about.


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[Assistant] Yeah, for them. That's way too early for them.


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[Assistant] Yeah. Yeah. It's an interior sort of staircase that if you're on the third or fourth level.


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[Assistant] But here's what had happened. Oh, it was. I was the, I was the MC. Oh, they were on the same show.


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[Assistant] Uh, it was supposed to be Tony Tone. In the newspaper they had Tony Tone.


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[Assistant] So a lot of people showed up to see Tony Tone, a lot of his fans and they messed up. It was Tony Stone.


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[Assistant] He was good. It took him a minute. I'd say so. Yeah. So out of an hour set, he got them going around 10. Once they figured out like, this is what we're stuck with. Some people kind of left, but not in a rude way.


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[Assistant] Oh, it's in Denver. Got it. I didn't know the rules.


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[Assistant] No, I, uh, uh, went to a Crawl Dads game, a Hickory Crawl Dads game, and it was so windy that we stayed maybe two innings.


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[Assistant] But we did hear the guys sing the national anthem. He sounded 13.


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[Assistant] Yeah, it's not bad. It's fun. Who are they affiliated with? It used to be Chicago.


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[Assistant] But like you, I love the weird mascots that, um, different minor league teams have. We are the crawl dads, but this technically is a crawl dad shirt, even though it's a llama. Like once every, I guess once a year they change to a llama.


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[Assistant] Things can be dangerous too, like if you're trying to open it by yourself and you're in a corner.


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[Assistant] Yeah. Well, I wonder how old this person is because I'm 52 and I think