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[Assistant] But you can see where that money went when you look at the list of details about the hotel.


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[Assistant] There is over 200,000 square feet of wood flooring throughout the building, and over 10 miles of pipes, and all of that was topped by over 50,000 square feet of roofing tin. When completed, it became the largest wooden structure in all of New England.


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[Assistant] A famous friend even helped put it all together, too. Thomas Edison traveled to the site to oversee the installation of nearly 21 miles of electrical wiring, a modern technology that few other resorts at the time could boast. And with three separate train stations in nearby Brentonwood, there was a steady flow of visitors to come and enjoy it.


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[Assistant] The project wasn't without its critics, of course. Many thought that the White Mountains of New Hampshire were too out of the way for most tourists to travel, and that it would be a waste of money to build something so large and extravagant in such a remote place.


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[Assistant] But Joseph Stickney disagreed, and when the doors opened in 1902, the hotel's success proved him right.


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[Assistant] But Joseph wouldn't have a chance to enjoy much of that victory.


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[Assistant] Just a year after the hotel opened, he passed away from a massive stroke while at his 5th Avenue home in New York City. A year before, so many of his famous wealthy friends had gathered for the hotel's grand opening. Now they were forced to reunite under darker circumstances.


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[Assistant] When the funeral was over and the grave had been filled, Carol and Stickney found herself alone. The couple had no children, and without her true love and best friend, she was left to wander the halls of their Mount Washington hotel without him.


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[Assistant] Eventually she built a chapel on the hotel property in honor of Joseph, and then set about taking the reins and keeping the business running.


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[Assistant] After all, sometimes the best way to honor the past is to move forward into the future. And that's exactly what Carolyn Stickney did.


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[Assistant] Carolyn Stickney found herself on the throne of a magic kingdom. The hotel had its own electric plant which helped power amenities such as refrigeration equipment, an elevator, and lights throughout the hotel.


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[Assistant] The property around the building was crisscrossed with bridle paths, wagon trails, an artificial lake, along with a private golf course designed by Donald Ross, whose other projects include the legendary Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina. And Carolyn presided over it all.


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[Assistant] The guests loved her, and she was a constant elegant presence in the hotel. When she arrived for dinner each night, she always made sure she was the best dressed and the last to enter the dining room, so as to be the center of attention. As the owner and manager of the entire facility, she earned that right.


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[Assistant] But she didn't spend all of her time in New Hampshire. She served for a time as a Red Cross nurse in Europe, volunteering not just her charitable donations, but also her hands and care. She even received the honor of a gold medal of reconnaissance by the French government.


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[Assistant] And it also provided her the opportunity to meet her second husband, Prince Eamon du Fosigny-Lusange, the great-grandson of King Charles X. It was a marriage that pulled her away from America for most of the time, but every summer, she would return to her Mount Washington hotel and preside over it as the Princess.


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[Assistant] She wasn't the only royalty to show up there, though. Over the years, other illustrious guests included Princess Margaret, John D. Rockefeller, Joan Crawford, Bob Hope, Alfred Hitchcock, and baseball legend Babe Ruth. A number of US presidents also stayed there, including Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, and William Howard Taft. But it seemed the tragedy was never far from Carolyn.


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[Assistant] In 1922, just nine years after marrying the prince, he suddenly passed away, leaving her alone with her fortune and the expansive hotel. And with her connection to France severed by the death, she permanently moved back to America, becoming a more regular fixture at the hotel than ever before.


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[Assistant] It's said that although she had a private dining table in her personal suite, she reserved a place at the table among the guests every single night. To this day, her suite contains all her original furniture and is available to guests as room 314. The dining table, though, has been moved elsewhere.


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[Assistant] Over the years to come, Carolyn did her best to guide the hotel through a period of decline. It wasn't necessarily her fault, but more a product of her day. The general public was less and less interested in the grand resorts of the Gilded Age and more interested in modern advancements like the automobile and a growing network of highways across the country.


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[Assistant] And then, of course, the Great Depression arrived like a wildfire, ravaging everything in its path. Between the economic nightmare that had arrived and the Second World War that followed it, the hotel became too costly to keep open.


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[Assistant] The doors were closed to guests in 1942, but it wasn't necessarily the end, because what happened next changed the world forever.


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[Assistant] Two years after the hotel was shut down, a group of representatives from the allied countries of Europe went looking for a safe place to hold a gathering. Their goal was to plan what came next once the war was won, and they decided upon the Mount Washington Hotel as that place.


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[Assistant] In the summer of 1944, delegates from 44 countries arrived for what would become a deeply significant economic summit. The outcome of those meetings established the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and revived the global economy.


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[Assistant] Today, it is referred to as the Bretton Woods Agreement, and all of the paperwork was signed on Princess Carolyn's dining room table.


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[Assistant] Sadly though, she wasn't there to witness it, having passed away eight years earlier in 1936. Her nephew inherited the hotel and tried running the business for a number of years, but eventually had to admit defeat, selling it to a firm in Boston.


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[Assistant] The Mount Washington Hotel was the last of the Grand Resorts, changing hands from owner to owner as the years passed by. But no matter whose name was on the deed, or where the paychecks came from, it was hard to deny the legacy of Princess Carolyn.


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[Assistant] Some people think that the hauntings are intentional.


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[Assistant] Not that they believe it's all a hoax, but that there's something about the hotel that keeps the spirits trapped there. If that's the sort of thing you believe in, Mount Washington Hotel might be the place for you.


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[Assistant] One legend says that the Italian craftsmen who were hired to construct the hotel brought a bit of their old world superstitions with them.


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[Assistant] In an effort to ward off ghosts, it's said that these builders added complexity and variety to the hotel's design, such as staircases with unusual, non-matching numbers of steps. It was all done with the goal of confusing the spirits and keeping them out.


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[Assistant] Instead, some say it backfired, trapping them inside the hotel.


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[Assistant] And if the sightings around the hotel are any indication, that might very well be true. More than a few guests have seen the figure of a woman who seems to step right into nearby walls before vanishing. Others have caught a glimpse of a ghostly father and daughter in the lobby, but when they've turned back to look again, the pair are gone.


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[Assistant] One former employee at the hotel even reported an entire room full of ghosts. Early in the season when guests were less frequent this member of the staff claims that while making his morning rounds through the hotel he passed by the Grand Ballroom.


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[Assistant] But rather than find it empty as he expected, the room was filled with scores of people, all milling about and dancing, while dressed in old fashioned clothing.


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[Assistant] Some guests have even heard unexplainable noises. A common report is the sound of a baby crying inside the empty ballroom, while a few have even heard the telltale sounds of laughing children running through the halls. When the guests have called the front desk to report the noises, they've been told that no children were in the hotel at the time.


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[Assistant] And then of course there are the tragic stories that feed the sightings. In 1907, a wealthy businessman named Daniel Willis James passed away in the hotel after suffering a heart attack. And then, almost ten years to the day after his death, another guest died of internal bleeding.


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[Assistant] But of all the guests to check in and never leave, the most famous is also the most obvious. Princess Carolyn herself.


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[Assistant] If you remember from earlier, Carolyn always had a knack for showing up to dinner in the best, most elegant dress of the night, standing out above all her other guests. But it wasn't by chance.


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[Assistant] You see, a small balcony overlooks the main dining room with a curtain hung across it. And that's where Carolyn would stand before dinner, taking in the competition before heading back to her room to put on the winning dress.


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[Assistant] And that's one of the places where modern guests have caught a glimpse of her, peeking out from behind that curtain, an elegant woman dressed in a Victorian gown.


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[Assistant] Many other sightings have happened in random hallways throughout the hotel, but the vast majority of reports come from one place, room 314, which served as Carolyn's private residence when she was at the hotel. And if the stories are true, she might not have moved out.


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[Assistant] Guests have entered room 314 to find a woman sitting on the end of the bed, brushing her hair, while others have heard a gentle tapping on the door, only to find the hallway empty when they opened it.


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[Assistant] In fact, enough unusual activity has happened in that room that in 2008, the hotel brought the Atlantic Paranormal Society, otherwise known as TAPS from the television show Ghost Hunters, to do their own investigating.


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[Assistant] TAPS member Steve Gonzalez confirmed that the hotel is a hauntingly beautiful place, and one of his favorite investigation sites. For full disclosure, Steve is a friend, and when I reached out to him for his impression of the hotel, he didn't need any coaxing to express just how real and unusual his experiences there have been.


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[Assistant] He and the others witnessed quite a lot during their stay in the hotel, but one event stands out above all the others. During their overnight investigation, the team set up a recording device inside room 314, hoping for a sign that they were not alone in the space, and it wasn't long before they got their answer. Literally.


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[Assistant] Calling out to the room, one of the TAPS members asked the simple question, Princess Carolyn, are you here?


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[Assistant] And I'll be honest, that's not the sort of thing I personally would do because I'm just not sure how effective it would be. But others swear by it, and I'm not one to dismiss the personal experiences of others so lightly. What they captured was astonishing.


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[Assistant] Home is where the heart is. But it's so much more than that, isn't it? Home is where we let down our guard and take on new experiences. Where we become vulnerable and relaxed. Where we build hopes and dreams and suffer through unexpected pain and sorrow.


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[Assistant] We put down roots and those roots inject a little bit of us into the places we call home.


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[Assistant] Perhaps it's not a coincidence that the most common word to pair with haunted is house. Because it's in those places of trust and vulnerability that we can often experience the most pain. And pain, as we all know, tends to linger, as do the stories about it.


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[Assistant] So when countless people begin to consider a building their second home, returning year after year despite the ups and downs of life, it's no wonder that they leave a bit of themselves behind.


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[Assistant] Today, the Mount Washington Hotel stands as one of the last great Gilded Age resorts. Much like the Stanley Hotel in Colorado, Mount Washington is a relic from another time, a reminder of the ambition and wealth of the people who built it.


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[Assistant] But some of the modern tales of unexplainable sightings and mysterious events have left the impression that not all of the former residents are entirely happy. And some people think they know why.


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[Assistant] To explain it, I need to tell you another story. One set elsewhere in New Hampshire.


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[Assistant] You see, in April of 1897, a man named Joseph Kelly walked into the Great Falls National Bank in the town of Summersworth, and he set events in motion that had dark consequences.


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[Assistant] Kelly was just 24 at the time, but was already deeply in debt and desperate for a way out of his financial mess. Which is why he was wearing a fake mustache and beard when he approached one of the teller windows. In his pocket was a loaded revolver, and he was ready to use it.


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[Assistant] Pretending to be a normal customer, Kelly asked the teller for some stamps, and the man behind the counter nodded politely and told him he would be glad to help.


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[Assistant] The stamps though were kept in the cashier's office, so the teller told Kelly to wait there while he went to retrieve them. Kelly didn't listen though.


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[Assistant] The moment the teller turned and walked toward the other room, Kelly quietly followed him. It was only once both men were standing in the cashier office that Kelly revealed himself and then slammed the door shut behind him.


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[Assistant] The teller shouted for help, but Kelly struck the man over the head with a small club. When the other man fell to the floor, Kelly leaned over and cut his throat. He took the money he came for and managed to make his escape, boarding a train that was bound for Montreal.


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[Assistant] But crimes like that have a way of catching up with you. When they found Kelly, he was hiding out in a brothel, dressed in women's clothing like Val Kilmer's character Mad Martigan in Willow. Soon enough, he was back in New Hampshire, where he stood trial for his crimes in the town of Dover. He spent the next 30 years of his life in prison.


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[Assistant] The reason why I'm telling you this story is because of the bank teller's name, Joseph Stickney.


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[Assistant] Not, of course, the same Joseph Stickney who made a fortune in the coal industry and then used some of it to build the Mount Washington Hotel.


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[Assistant] Just a random stranger with exactly the same name. A stranger whose tragic ending put him firmly on the public record.


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[Assistant] Many years later, an artist was commissioned to create two paintings for the hotel, one of Princess Carolyn and the other of her first husband, Joseph Stickney. But when the artist went looking for photographs or sketches to base his paintings on, he grabbed an image of the wrong Joseph Stickney, the murder victim, not the coal magnate, and no one noticed.


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[Assistant] Today, if you visit the Mount Washington Hotel, make sure you look around the lobby for the paintings. They're still there.


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[Assistant] Prominently displayed to show every guest who stays there the faces of the people who built the place. Which is, of course, a lie.


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[Assistant] Rather than spend the decades since her death hanging beside her beloved husband.


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[Assistant] Princess Carolyn has been forced to share the wall with a murder victim she never met.


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[Assistant] And if that's not a reason to make a little noise from time to time, I can't think of one that is.


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[Assistant] With all the guests who passed through the doors of the Mount Washington Hotel over the years, it's easy to assume all of the stories worth telling come from inside those gilded walls. But there's one more tale to tell, one that took place outside on the mountain that gave the hotel its name. Stick around after this short sponsor break to hear all about it.


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[Assistant] It was supposed to be a simple hiking trip. 23 year old Lizzie had traveled with her cousin and uncle from the town of Kennebunk on the coast of Maine. When they reached Mount Washington in mid-September of 1855, they put their plans together. It would be a trip that they would never forget.


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[Assistant] The trio found lodging in the Glen House, a newly renovated farmhouse that now served as a hotel for visitors to the mountain. Their plan was to wake up and begin the long hike up to the summit, and then spend the night in the small lodge there called the Tip Top House. But if there's one place in New England where you can't depend on the weather, it's Mount Washington.


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[Assistant] The morning of the hike arrived with rain and fog, and Lizzie's uncle George called off their plans. I don't know if they had the luxury of waiting a day or if the weather brought utter disappointment to them, but it seemed as if the hike would not happen as planned.


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[Assistant] And then, by mid morning, the weather broke and the trio changed their minds.


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[Assistant] Washington is known for harsh, unpredictable weather. It's a small mountain, but due to its location and shape, it boasts some of the most brutal winds in the world.


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[Assistant] I don't know who holds the record today, but in 1934, the weather station there recorded winds in excess of 230 miles per hour. And because you can never predict when that sort of thing might happen, you need to be prepared for anything.


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[Assistant] But Lizzie and the others were far from prepared. They began their hike by following the rough carriage road that led to the summit, but it was under construction and difficult to navigate quickly. So by the time the sun was setting, they were still a good distance from the top.


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[Assistant] Not that they would know though. They had never hiked the mountain before, and the clouds were low enough that visibility had become an issue. So they would reach a level spot, think that it was the summit, and then discover that the climb picked back up somewhere farther into the clouds. Over and over, they were teased into believing their climb was nearly finished.


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[Assistant] Which is why they ended up standing on a frigid mountainside, in the dark, as biting winds tore at their simple Victorian clothing.


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[Assistant] Lizzie's Uncle George decided that they needed shelter from the wind, so he told the two young women to lie down while he constructed a low wall to allow them some warmth. But even that took a good long while.


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[Assistant] George would later write that he finally completed the windbreak around 10pm. Tired and cold, he settled in behind it, placing himself between his daughter Lucy and his niece Lizzie. Lucy acknowledged his arrival, but Lizzie didn't move a muscle. Just to make sure she was alright, he reached out and touched her hand. It was ice cold.


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[Assistant] Panic washed over George and he moved to his knees and shook his niece, trying to wake her up, but it was no use. At some point between beginning construction on the wall and its completion, poor Lizzie Bourne had passed away.


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[Assistant] Many suspect exposure, which would make a lot of sense, but some have even suggested a heart attack.


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[Assistant] Trapped in the dark on the side of a mountain, George and Lucy did the only thing they could.


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[Assistant] They huddled together and waited for the light of morning to come and rescue them. And when it did, they discovered the bittersweet truth of their journey. That they had been within view of the tip-top house all along.


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[Assistant] Lizzie was carried down the mountain in a small wooden box, but her story has never fully left the summit. Even today, there's a small pile of stones with a marker set on top, just to the side of the railway track that brings visitors up and down the mountain.


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[Assistant] But if you don't think reading her name and epitaph on that white sign is enough, there are other stories that keep her memory alive. There are reports from visitors to the summit who have claimed to see the ghostly figure of a young woman hovering near the pile of rocks. They say the vision becomes more and more clear as the anniversary of her death approaches.


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[Assistant] And according to other stories, at least one group of brave hikers attempted to get a little closer. It's said that they arrived at her monument after dark, just as she would have done over a century and a half ago.


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[Assistant] After spending some time chatting, the group climb back up to their feet, ready to reach the summit and find warmth.


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[Assistant] And that was when one of the men screamed in terror, his voice cutting through the silence like a knife. Everyone turned to him and found him staring at the pile of stones.


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[Assistant] There, a figure was rising from inside the monument, her image glowing softly in the fog. They say she looked sad and that the wind still ripped at her clothing even though it had done its cruel work on her so long before.


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[Assistant] Then, the ghostly woman pointed in the direction of the summit, and then slowly collapsed to her knees, as if giving up on her journey. A moment later, she disappeared.


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[Assistant] Lizzy Bourne was not the first to die a tragic death on the way to the top of Mount Washington, and she would sadly not be the last.


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[Assistant] But over the years the people have been visiting the summit.


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[Assistant] Few other stories have held on with such power and tenacity.


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[Assistant] It seems that no matter how windy it gets up there on the mountain, Lizzy Bourne's memory can never be blown away.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research by Robin Minniter, and music by Chad Lawson. And of course, Lore is much more than just a podcast. There's the 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] And I also make two other podcasts as well. Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both of them. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic.


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[Assistant] And you can learn more about both of those shows and everything else going on all over in one central place, theworldoflore.com slash now.


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


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[Assistant] It's not the largest or the most beautiful. It's not the oldest or even the most historically significant. There are countless other buildings that stand head and shoulders above it and yet its name is firmly implanted in just about every person's mind thanks to decades of popular culture.


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[Assistant] All you have to do is show someone a picture of it, and they'll instantly say its name out loud. The Tower of Pisa.


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[Assistant] That's because long before the tower was completed in 1372, it had already begun to tilt off center. And that slow motion topple has continued over the six centuries since construction stopped. Although modern efforts to correct the cause seem to have stabilized it, even correcting it just a little bit.


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[Assistant] Most people don't know two things about the Tower of Pisa. First, it's actually a bell tower, and it doesn't have just one bell. No, the Tower of Pisa has seven, tuned to the seven notes of the major musical scale. But the other thing most people don't know is why the tower started leaning in the first place.


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[Assistant] It turns out it was built on a faulty foundation. The ground beneath the lowest portions of the structure is too soft to support the weight of all that marble, and so it began to sink on one side.


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[Assistant] It seems that the original builders, the ones that began the work back in 1173, didn't give proper attention to the foundational elements of their project.


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[Assistant] And as it turns out, that's a flaw we've repeated over and over again throughout history.


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[Assistant] Our cities, like the Tower of Pisa, are places that are built on some kind of foundation.


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[Assistant] And in the chaos of building a community and all the infrastructure that it will need to grow and thrive, mistakes can happen. Issues can be woven into the fabric of a location, and problems can become part of the DNA there, setting it up for a future of pain and misfortune.


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[Assistant] To the millions of people who visit it every year, America's capital city looks ancient. Gleaming white marble, vast rotundas, and enormous statues of the greats who came before us. And all of those things are magnificent. But in terms of world history, Washington DC is barely a toddler.


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[Assistant] In fact, if we were to hop into a time machine and travel back to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we would have discovered that the land Washington is built on was nothing more than a collection of farms.


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[Assistant] Sure, they had fancy names like Flint's Discovery, The Knock, and Port Royale, but they were far from glamorous. In fact, most of those farms were worn out and tired.


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[Assistant] Years earlier, the leaders of the newborn United States needed a place to meet and make plans. Initially, that place had been Philadelphia, which is where the Second Continental Congress met in 1775. But as the Revolutionary War picked up steam, British military actions forced that Congress to become a bit more nomadic.


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[Assistant] They met in Philadelphia in 1776, then Baltimore the year after that. After that it was back to Philly before moving on to Lancaster and then York.


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[Assistant] What America needed was a permanent home. A seat of government that could be counted on to remain in place for eternity. And while that might sound like a simple challenge to solve, it proved to be more difficult than they first thought.


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[Assistant] Without digging into the deeper details, a lot of it came down to two things. The North versus the South, and money.


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[Assistant] And yes, I understand that the Civil War, that specific period in our nation's history when we see the North versus the South used the most, wouldn't take place until nearly a century later. But even in the early days of America, there was a divide there that created strife and friction.


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[Assistant] But in the end, the federal government passed the Residence Act of 1790 and gave President George Washington the power to pick a location and begin building a Capitol.


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[Assistant] That spot, it turns out, was a stretch of land along the Potomac River, near the older community of Georgetown. It was over-farmed, thickly wooded, and ready for development. And to help with that, a French-American military engineer named Pierre Linfont was brought in to lay out the design for the future city.


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[Assistant] We have L'Enfant to thank for much of the basic layouts of Washington DC. The decision to place the presidential residence on one hill while locating the Houses of Congress on another. The grand Georgian manors. The stone and brick buildings. All of it was born from his mind.


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[Assistant] But it was a mind that also produced strife and frustration.


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[Assistant] It seems that L'Enfant was difficult to work with and, ultimately, after just a year on the job, he was sent away, completely unpaid for his work. And that black mark on his reputation would haunt him for the rest of his life. When he passed away in 1825, he was practically penniless and was laid to rest in an unmarked grave.


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[Assistant] So much for the man who dreamt up the capital city. We know so well today.


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[Assistant] Things barely got better after that. The buildings that did go up in the years to come had issues from the start.


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[Assistant] According to historian Jeff Dickey, Washington's failure to flourish was almost comical. There was an annoying lack of sidewalks. The city lacked a sewer system and streetlights. You might look outside the window of your stately Georgian manor to see cattle grazing in your yard.


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[Assistant] And thanks to all of that, disease was a common problem.


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[Assistant] When I think of the National Mall area today, I envision a city that is clean and put together. Straight lines, white surfaces, and very well thought out.


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[Assistant] But two centuries ago, it was a mess of muddy pathways and dangerous terrain. America might have been a success, but the city that was meant to sit at the center of it all was an early failure. While the city planners had envisioned a metropolis for 200,000 people, there were barely 3,000 within the city limits.


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[Assistant] Of course, things did eventually improve. The transition from mud hole to mansions took some time, but as it grew and evolved, so too did our governments and the people they served. Wealth flowed into the city, and as it did, the face of the city changed forever.


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[Assistant] The beautiful, elegant appearance is often little more than a facade.


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[Assistant] Just like the people who lived there, Washington DC was a pretty shell with a rotten core. And if we were to take a ride down any of the wealthy avenues that crisscrossed the city two centuries ago, we would see dozens of examples of the darker parts of human nature.


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[Assistant] Every story has a few sides to it, but not many can claim to have eight.


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[Assistant] That's a pretty basic description of the Octagon House, a home built in 1800 by a man named Colonel John Taylor III. It was designed by William Thornton, the same man who designed the U.S. Capitol building. And when Taylor had it built, he was considered one of the wealthiest men in Virginia.


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[Assistant] Immediately, the home became the center of life in Washington DC. In fact, because the White House had been burned by the British in 1812, Taylor offered the use of his house to President Madison. Two years later, the Treaty of Ghent was signed there. But not all of the events in this house are tales to be proud of.


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[Assistant] Apparently, Colonel Taylor was a bit of a control freak, and that attitude might have actually led to the death of two of his daughters. The first occurred before the War of 1812, and was a result of a disagreement between Taylor and his daughter. She had fallen in love.


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[Assistant] But her father disapproved because the young man was a British military officer.


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[Assistant] The entire disagreement came to a head one day in the second floor hallway, right at the top of the stairs. In the heat of the argument, it's said that Taylor's daughter turned to run away, tripped, and fell down the stairs to her death.


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[Assistant] But as if that weren't enough, the legend says that another of his daughters died in the same tragic way just a few years later. Again, after an argument with her father.


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[Assistant] The echoes of that tragedy have stuck around, they say. Visitors to the house have claimed to see mysterious candlelight hovering over the top of the stairs on the second floor.


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[Assistant] Others say there's a corner of a rug on the first floor hallway that refuses to lie flat, a reminder of where one daughter's body landed. It's all mysterious and creepy, for sure. But there's a problem.


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[Assistant] It turns out none of Telo's children ever died in the Octagon House. Perhaps the legends told by visitors today are meant to find logic in their unexplainable experiences. Or maybe it's just a bit of folklore run amok.


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[Assistant] Either way, it seems that the stories, just like the house they inhabit, have a number of different sides to them.


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[Assistant] Another house in the city with a bit of legend surrounding it is the Halcyon House.


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[Assistant] Work on it began in 1787, built as a mansion for the very first secretary of the Navy, a man named Benjamin Stoddard. And if you've been paying attention, you'll recognize the name of the man responsible for designing the home's garden. None other than Pierre Lenfont. Let's hope he got paid for that work though, right? The mansion is massive.


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[Assistant] I've seen a few different numbers quoted in various sources, but it seems that the main house is roughly 2100 square feet of living space.


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[Assistant] That's a lot of house to take care of. And Stoddart apparently went broke trying to keep up. The house passed through a number of hands over the years that followed until a man named Albert Ed Sitt Clemens bought the place in the early 1900s.


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[Assistant] Clemens immediately got to work fixing up the old mansion. He apparently believed as long as he kept construction active, he would ward off his own death. Which sounds awfully familiar if you've heard the tale of Sarah Winchester and her famous mansion in California, The Winchester House.


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[Assistant] A lot of the work Clemens did was practical. He added electricity to the place and connected some of the outbuildings, adding more square footage to the mansion's overall footprint. But he also added bizarre elements, like doors that opened onto blank walls, and stairs that went nowhere.


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[Assistant] He was a big fan of creating rooms and then walling them up. Some of them were tiny, barely larger than a closet, while others were big enough to serve as crypts. In fact, he was such a fan of burials that he was said to have had a number of mummies buried in the fancy garden out back.


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[Assistant] But all of that construction had an impact on the house. Some say that after Clemens began to alter the original design of the place, the spirit of Benjamin Stoddart began to appear.


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[Assistant] Some witnesses reported seeing his figure, dressed in a tan suit, sitting in one of the windows that overlooked the Potomac. Others have seen him walking through the halls and sitting in various pieces of furniture.


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[Assistant] The construction didn't work though. Clemens eventually passed away in 1938. And upon his death, a bizarre request was carried out. Because he had been terrified of being buried alive, he requested that his heart be pierced with a sharp tool. Just to be safe.


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[Assistant] Whoever said it never hurts to be prepared has probably never had a knife pushed into their chest.


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[Assistant] Clemens might have left the mansion in bodily form, but there are stories that suggest his spirit stuck around, joining the ranks of Benjamin Stoddart and other ghostly sightings.


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[Assistant] Those who have lived there since his death have often found windows open wide after closing them moments before. Others say that items hung on the wall have a tendency to fall to the floor without reason. Or perhaps it's all too easy to explain.


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[Assistant] Albert Clemens spent a lot of time making that house just right, and he doesn't want anyone else to change it.


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[Assistant] Homes are tricky places. Sure, they provide us with a place to live, but they also have the potential to be the setting for darker events. And no other home in Washington DC demonstrates that more completely than the White House.


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[Assistant] Construction began on the site of the modern White House all the way back in 1792. It was built by a diverse collection of workers, most of whom were African-American slaves and immigrants. Compared to the place that Lafontaine had envisioned, the finished house was much more humble in appearance. But of course, it would grow over the years to come.


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[Assistant] John Adams was the first president to live there, moving in with his wife Abigail in November of 1800. Legend says that she dried their sheets in the East Room.


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[Assistant] Later, first lady Dolly Madison preferred to work outside, spending her time in the garden.


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[Assistant] But of course, the Madisons had to move into the Octagon House after the British torched the original White House in 1812, and it wouldn't be ready to live in again until 1817.


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[Assistant] Of course, modern visitors claim to have seen echoes from those early years. Some have caught a glimpse of Abigail Adams in the East Room, presumably still doing laundry, while others have spotted Dolly Madison walking through the Rose Garden.


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[Assistant] But whether or not these tales are true, they pale in comparison to what happened decades after the mansion was built, when another family moved in. The Lincolns.


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[Assistant] President Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary had four children together. Their second oldest, Edward, died from tuberculosis in 1850, the same year their third child, William, was born.


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[Assistant] They were loving parents, and I have to imagine the White House was full of laughter and cries of joy on a daily basis. Except for February of 1862.


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[Assistant] That was the month that young William, just 11 years old, died after a battle with typhoid fever.


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[Assistant] Understandably, the loss devastated the Lincolns, but it hit Mary the hardest. She'd already lost one child years before, and this newest death must have obliterated all those years of healing. As a result, she refused to let go, and spoke often of seeing William in different parts of the house.


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[Assistant] Their loss came at a time when spiritualism was incredibly popular, having been around for roughly two decades at that point. It was an open door that Mary pushed through in the hope that she might be able to speak to her children once again.


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[Assistant] And while her husband Abraham wasn't necessarily a firm believer in all the things taught by the spiritualist movement, he was accommodating to anything that would bring peace to his wife.


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[Assistant] Soon enough, there were regular seances taking place inside the White House. Legend says that Abraham Lincoln would sometimes even attend and participate, but it was Mary who planned and hosted them. And it was during one of these many seances that the Lincolns met a man named Charles Colchester.


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[Assistant] Colchester was a spiritualist from England who arrived in the middle of the Civil War with stories of noble birth and remarkable power.


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[Assistant] He claimed to be able to hold sealed letters to his forehead and read their contents perfectly, or cause fully visible spirits to appear during the seances he conducted. It had brought him a lot of fame, and the Lincolns fell for it, especially Mary.


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[Assistant] But it might have been Colchester's amazing performances that finally initiated his downfall.


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[Assistant] Through their multiple seances, Mary Todd Lincoln had revealed a number of sensitive secrets to Colchester, and he began to use that privilege to make big requests.


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[Assistant] For example, he asked Mrs. Lincoln to provide him for a railroad pass that would give him free transportation anywhere in the country. If she didn't cooperate, he would expose her secrets.


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[Assistant] But rather than cave into his demands, Mary called upon Noah Brooks, one of President Lincoln's most trusted friends and advisors. He decided that exposing Colchester would be the better option, so he attended one of his upcoming seances.


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[Assistant] This one involved a table full of musical instruments, which the Englishman claimed he would invite spirits to manipulate while everyone held hands to prevent tampering.


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[Assistant] After the lights were extinguished, Brooks waited for the instruments to begin making music. The moment they started, he let go of his neighbor's hands and lunged for the center of the table.


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[Assistant] His hand gripped something, and a moment later someone else lit a match, washing the small gathering in a pale orange glow. And there, in his hand, was the wrist of Charles Colchester.


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[Assistant] The medium, of course, pretended utter outrage. Brooks had broken the rules, and that was poor behavior. But a few days later, Brooks managed to track Colchester down outside the White House, where he scolded him for deceiving the President and the First Lady, and accused the medium of being nothing more than a fraud.


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[Assistant] History, like the cultures and events that fill it, has a tendency to be a bit crooked. It leans to the side and gives the observer the impression that something's not quite right. Of course, which direction it leans always depends on who wrote that particular part of history, doesn't it? We certainly tried, though.


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[Assistant] Yes, there will always be weak spots in the foundation of any great movement or civilization, but the majority of people do try.


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[Assistant] Sometimes it's simply a matter of trying to manage our daily lives despite the unpaved roads or growing lives inside crooked houses. Life, just like the history that records it, can lean a little. And each of us has learned to adapt to that in our own way.


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[Assistant] But there are always exceptions to the rule. Places where the slant is a bit too severe. Where a weak foundation or a crooked beginning leave a lasting mark. A mark that can be felt centuries later.


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[Assistant] Others have been able to see that lien over the years as well. President Lincoln's friend Joseph Henry certainly saw the lien in Charles Colchester. And while he was never able to definitively prove that the man was a fraud while he was still hanging around the White House, Henry did pick up on a little secret a few years later.


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[Assistant] According to the story, Henry was on a train one day, where he met a man who made gadgets. Items used by performers to enhance their stage presence. And he mentioned that he had designed and built a device for the famous spiritualist, Charles Colchester. A sort of electronic sound machine that the man would wear on his upper arm beneath his suit.


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[Assistant] Colchester had another secret though. A friend. A drinking buddy, really?


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[Assistant] You see, while he was staying in Washington DC and providing ongoing spiritualist services to Mary Todd Lincoln, he stayed at the National Hotel, located nearby on Pennsylvania Avenue. And it was there that he became friends with a handful of other men staying there.


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[Assistant] One of these men was apparently very upset about the war to end slavery. He believed that owning another human being was a God-given right and considered abolitionism to be an abomination.


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[Assistant] And over the months that he and Colchester grew to know each other, he allowed his guard to drop lower and lower. This drinking buddy was a bit crooked, you see?


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[Assistant] One evening over drinks, his friend told Colchester and the others around the table that President Lincoln deserved to die for his role in the war. And he delivered that statement with such conviction, such passion and confidence, that Colchester took him at his word.


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[Assistant] Which is why later, the next time he visited the Lincoln's at the White House, he warned the President to be extra careful about his personal safety.


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[Assistant] The president, of course, had heard warnings like that on a daily basis since taking office, but kindly thanked the Englishman for his warning. Perhaps he dismissed it because it was nothing new, or maybe he ignored the medium because he felt it was a poor attempt at some sort of prediction, the sort that any sideshow con man might have made successfully. We don't know why Lincoln ignored him, but looking back from where we stand today, it's clear that he should have listened.


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[Assistant] It's clear from the historical records that Washington DC got off on a fairly crooked start, thanks to a soft foundation and dreams that didn't match reality. I hope hearing about it today has been as entertaining to you as writing about it was for me.


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[Assistant] But I'm not done. I have one more location in this city that I want to take you to.


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[Assistant] Stick around after this short sponsor break to begin that tour.


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[Assistant] Sometimes the hardest thing to deal with in life is life. The never-ending series of unplanned, abrupt moments that seem to knock us off our path and set us spinning. The tragedies, both big and small, that step unexpectedly into our lives like Kramer sliding into Seinfeld's apartment without knocking. One moment we're at peace, and the next, everything is crooked.


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[Assistant] Such was life for Henry Adams, the grandson of President John Quincy Adams. He and his wife Marianne, who went by the name Clover, moved to Washington D.C. in 1877, where they lived just across the street from the White House on Lafayette Square.


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[Assistant] She was one of the earliest portrait photographers in American history, mastering the chemical process used for development of the photos, which she did right there in her home. And it was a happy home too.


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[Assistant] But that piece was broken in April of 1885 when her father passed away.


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[Assistant] It was a blow that seemed to rock her to the core. For months she battled the depression that came with that loss. And as she did, Henry did his best to support her and encourage her. But grief is a difficult opponent to wrestle with. And in the fall of that year, Clover lost.


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[Assistant] While Henry was out of the house for a dental appointment, his wife stepped into her dark room and drank a solution of potassium cyanide, a chemical she used often to dissolve the silver from photographic plates. Its effect on her, though, was fatal.


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[Assistant] Henry mourned the loss of his wife, as you might expect, but he also took it one step further.


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[Assistant] After her funeral and burial in Washington's Rock Creek Cemetery, he commissioned the famed sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to create a statue in her honor. It took six years to complete, but when it was finished, it replaced her original headstone.


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[Assistant] It features a shrouded figure seated on a block of granite, as if a person had sat down atop the grave and covered themselves with the cloak.


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[Assistant] Saint-Gaudens titled his work, The Mystery of the Hereafter and the Peace of God that Passeth Understanding. But that's quite a lot to say. Most folks have leaned toward a more simple name for the statue. Grief.


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[Assistant] But the story doesn't end there. You see, the statue became so popular that it was eventually copied. In the early 1900s, a man named Edward Pausch made a cast without permission and used it to create a duplicate for a client of his, a Civil War general named Felix Agnes.


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[Assistant] Ever since, the copy has been known as Black Aggie.


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[Assistant] And that duplicate was placed in Druid Ridge Cemetery in Pikesville, Maryland. It quickly became the focus of college hazing rituals and fraternity pranks. Stories were made up about the seated figure, and legends about the grave it sat over began to spread. Because that's how folklore works, right? But of course, there was more.


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[Assistant] Black Aggie was said to have the ability to kill people. The scenarios were fairly hard to imagine, which of course led to the attractiveness of the legend. But it was said that if anyone spent the night sleeping in the figure's lap, they would die before morning.


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[Assistant] Others whispered rumors about the power of the figure's eyes, or how pregnant mothers had been known to miscarry after visiting the grave. It's the sort of folklore that you might expect to grow and develop around such a mysterious, otherworldly figure, and a powerful example of the human desire to fill gaps in history with something, anything, that might answer our questions.


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[Assistant] The folks that managed the cemetery in Maryland eventually had their fill of vandals and visitors, and so in 1967, Black Aggie was donated to the Smithsonian. They placed the statue in the courtyard behind the Cuts Madison house, a historic mansion once occupied by First Lady Dolly Madison.


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[Assistant] Because it happens to be just one block away from the Hay Adams Hotel.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research by Robin Minniter and 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 fantastic seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want a bit more lore in your life.


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[Assistant] I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both.


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[Assistant] Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic. You can learn about both of those shows and everything else going on over in one central place. theworldoflore.com slash now


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


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[Assistant] When the mummified body of a prehistoric man was discovered encased in ice in the Alps of Northern Italy back in 1991, it was like stumbling upon a 5,000 year old time capsule.


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[Assistant] Along with his remarkably preserved body, the Iceman also introduced researchers to well-preserved examples of prehistoric clothing, weapons, and tools. And something else.


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[Assistant] It was a lump of organic matter about the size of a walnut that had been strung onto a leather strap to keep it safe. After getting the unusual object under a microscope, microbiologists realized what it was. A fungus known as Pyptophorus betulinus.


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[Assistant] And this fungus has an amazing property. It contains essential oils that kill off parasitic bacteria. For a prehistoric hunter, traveling through all sorts of harsh environments and eating anything he could find, this fungus would have acted as a sort of antibiotic.


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[Assistant] Humans, it seems, have been medicating themselves for millennia.


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[Assistant] And while the reasons have always been the same, to relieve the symptoms of illness and disease, those tools of medicine have varied greatly over the years. Every new wave of sickness has driven us to find better solutions, fresh cures, and powerful weapons with which to fight back.


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[Assistant] So when a fresh wave of disease swept across America in the late 1800s, one community decided to use every tool at their disposal. The solution they proposed would lean heavily on both social compassion and the power of 19th century medicine.


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[Assistant] It was their last stand against a disease that was killing so many people.


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[Assistant] And that desperation meant that no option was left off the table, however drastic it might be. And honestly, it's hard to blame them.


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[Assistant] They called it the White Plague. It can be found in historical records dating back thousands of years, from the ancient Near East and India, China and Africa.


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[Assistant] Classical writers such as the Greek physician Hippocrates and the historian Herodotus all mentioned it within their body of work. Every culture had a name for it, and all of them meant roughly the same thing. Death from within.


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[Assistant] When European culture moved into the 19th century, the illness became sort of a romantic focal point and took on the poetic title of the White Plague.


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[Assistant] But it was easy for those who remain untouched by its effects to paint it so lovingly. To many, it was just another disease. One they called consumption.


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[Assistant] Today, in the modern age of information, we refer to it by its scientific name, tuberculosis. But you can dress a disease up in any clothing you want, be it romantic or gothic or utterly modern, and it still wouldn't change how powerful it is.


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[Assistant] Whatever people were calling it, tuberculosis was devastating. And as urban population growth exploded across England and America in the mid-19th century, this silent killer expanded with it.


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[Assistant] But consumption did more than make people sick and kill them. It consumed hope.


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[Assistant] There was a palpable fear in the air, spreading as fast as any infectious disease, and people were desperate for a solution. So, with an eye toward how contagious this sickness was, they proposed a new idea. Humane isolation.


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[Assistant] It was an idea that had been proposed by an English physician named George Boddington in 1840, but while his own facility never came to fruition, the idea spread, quickly reaching America. And one of the first places it was put into action was a location in Kentucky known as Mammoth Cave.


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[Assistant] The cave happened to be owned by a physician named Dr. John Krogan, and he saw it as the perfect setting for healing.


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[Assistant] Caves have a tendency to maintain a constant internal temperature, and with a wide opening supplying the interior with fresh air, Krogan felt that tuberculosis patients could only benefit


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[Assistant] In late October of 1842, he transported 15 patients to the cave and set each of them up in small stone huts. Those who were able would share meals together while the rest stayed in their little homes, resting and hoping. It was rustic living with a goal of recovery.


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[Assistant] The experiment didn't last very long, though. By early February, two of the 15 patients had died from the disease. The remaining 13 packed up and went home, and over the following three weeks, they each slowly died as well.


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[Assistant] Even the project's mastermind himself, Dr. Krogan, couldn't escape the grasping hands of tuberculosis, dying six years later at his home, 90 miles to the north in Louisville.


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[Assistant] It would take another 60 years, but eventually, someone else in Louisville tried implementing the idea of an entire facility devoted to the care of tuberculosis patients. With the city positioned right in the wetlands of the Ohio River, it was in a sort of horrible sweet spot for the spread of the disease.


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[Assistant] Which is why in 1910, a fresh outbreak began to take lives.


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[Assistant] In response, an open-air hospital was built with the goal of caring for the sick. But a year later, plans changed, and the location was moved south of the city, into the hills of the Kentucky countryside.


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[Assistant] It was there that the hospital planners purchased the land that had long been known as Waverly Hills, named by a young school teacher in the 1880s after a series of novels by Sir Walter Scott.


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[Assistant] When the first Waverly Hills Sanatorium opened its doors in December of 1912, the physicians had a lot of hope. With open air environments and room for over 40 patients, it was the perfect location to care for the sick.


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[Assistant] Two years later, another 50 beds were added. But as the years went by, that initial hope was giving way to creeping despair. There simply wasn't enough room for everyone who needed their help.


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[Assistant] So funds were raised and construction began on a new, larger, more modern facility.


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[Assistant] It would take them nearly three years to complete it, but when it was finished in 1926, the new Waverly Hills Sanatorium was an impressive beacon of hope. At five stories tall, the new facility boasted room for over 400 patients. Surely that would be enough, right?


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[Assistant] Sadly, that wouldn't be the case. As the gears went by, more and more buildings were added to the original, expanding the hospital's capacity and ability to help. But while their intentions were good,


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[Assistant] Some of the methods they used in the service of that goal were much less humane than we might imagine.


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[Assistant] Modern medicine was offering the doctors there a fresh batch of new treatments. And just as humans have done for thousands of years, Waverly Hills was quick to put those new tools to the test. Still,


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[Assistant] No one fully expected just how many tools would need testing.


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[Assistant] People understood it correctly as an infectious disease and that it focused on the lungs in most patients. But as far as treating it went, well, the medical profession was still in the dark. What they were fully aware of, though, was the destructive path the disease carved through each new victim.


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[Assistant] The infection would set off a chain reaction inside the body of each patient. Breathing would become difficult, even painful. And this would often be accompanied by violent fits of coughing. And it was common for those fits to produce blood.


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[Assistant] As you might expect from any sort of infection in the body, fever was also common, as was digestive issues.


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[Assistant] It was the weight loss and fatigue that earned the disease the common name of consumption. And it was also the most visible sign that caretakers could see.


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[Assistant] Tuberculosis was clearly gaining ground if the sick person was withering away day after day. In the age before x-rays and MRIs, it was hard to argue with proof you could see with your own two eyes.


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[Assistant] And this, of course, was at the root of the New England vampire panic, which spanned the century between the 1790s and the 1890s. All built on the unusual belief that families and communities were plagued by this wasting disease, were actually victims of dark forces feeding on them from the grave.


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[Assistant] Stop and think about that for a moment. Tuberculosis was such a devastating disease that supernatural folklore was a natural lens to view it through.


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[Assistant] Thankfully, as the 20th century picked up steam, so too did modern medical science. There were new ideas about what caused the sickness to spread, and with them came possible new solutions for the infected. For the first time, people had ways of fighting back.


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[Assistant] At the ground level, the spread of the disease needed to be stopped, so patients were isolated in places like Waverly Hills Sanatorium. No matter a person's age or place in life, once they were diagnosed with the disease, they were removed from society.


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[Assistant] Families were often pulled apart, with a parent or child taken away from the rest of their loved ones and kept in isolation.


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[Assistant] It was also believed that fresh air and sunlight could be effective against the disease. After all, that's why Waverly Hills and so many other sanatoriums like it were built high up in elevated places. Because of this, patients would be left to sit for hours inside open-air sunrooms.


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[Assistant] Admittedly, sounds great if the weather is 75 and breezy, but this practice was maintained even in the dead of winter.


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[Assistant] The Waverly Hills physicians weren't content to let the fresh air of the Kentucky hillside do all the work for them though. Patients who didn't recover fast enough were often left at the mercy of new experimental techniques that were born out of noble intentions but carried horrible prices. And almost all of them began with the lungs. One of the ideas wasn't actually new.


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[Assistant] Developed in 1891 by a French surgeon, the technique known as the plombage thoracoplasty was a surgical attempt to intentionally collapse a lung with the hopes that it would force the body to heal faster. To do this, surgeons would cut away a piece of a rib, deflate the lung, and then fill the space with, well, stuff.


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[Assistant] Another object often inserted into the lungs of patients at Waverly Hills was a balloon. Known as balloon dilation, surgeons would open up a patient's chest and place inflatable bags into the infected areas. It was meant to relieve the pain and pressure associated with breathing, but it often came with complications.


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[Assistant] Instead, another practice was implemented to get rid of the tight-chested feeling that tuberculosis created.


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[Assistant] Surgeons at the hospital would literally remove the muscle and ribs that protected the infected lung. In theory, this gave the patient a bit more room to breathe, but it was a horribly destructive procedure and it was used only as a last resort.


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[Assistant] No matter what treatments were employed though, there was always one common element underlying almost every aspect of life inside Waverly Hills.


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[Assistant] Whether it was brought on solely by the symptoms of the disease itself, or due to complications from the various treatments used, death was in the cards for a good percentage of the patients.


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[Assistant] As always, the march of modern medicine rarely misses a beat.


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[Assistant] In 1943, while patients were being locked away inside the walls of Waverly Hills and experiencing the worst of experimental procedures, something miraculous happened. An antibacterial treatment was discovered with the potential to cure a number of bacterial infections. And one of those was tuberculosis.


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[Assistant] As a result, the number of new TB cases began to dwindle year after year. By 1961, the total population of sick had dropped to a level that simply didn't make sense to house in a massive facility like Waverly Hills. And so the patients were moved, and the doors were closed.


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[Assistant] Like a lot of very large buildings, the facility experienced a second life. Waverly Hills became Woodhaven Geriatric Center, but that closed two decades later.


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[Assistant] Since then, the property has bounced around from owner to owner, like a sort of real estate version of Hot Potato. But if the stories are true, the building is far from empty.


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[Assistant] The past is like a shadow, following us wherever we go. And that was no less true for John Lewis Griggs.


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[Assistant] He was a 52-year-old ex-con who had been released in January of 1954 from Kentucky State Reformatory in nearby LaGrange.


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[Assistant] He had worked there for weeks as an orderly when the darkness caught up with him. Another orderly, a man named Edwin Barriss, apparently took offense to the former convict's presence. On the afternoon of March 1st, Barriss approached Griggs with the smell of alcohol on his breath and threatened to kill the ex-con with a knife.


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[Assistant] Griggs, to his credit, shrugged it off. He told Barriss that he was a new man and just wanted to live a good life. And even though Barriss slapped him to provoke a fight, Griggs ignored it. Instead, he went to his quarters to take a nap. And that's when Barriss made his move.


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[Assistant] Sometime shortly before 7pm, Barriss and an accomplice entered Griggs' room and began to beat the sleeping man. And that snapped something inside of Griggs, who jumped from his bed and fought back.


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[Assistant] He tossed Barriss into the hallway like a ragdoll, and when the younger man got back up, Griggs leveled him with a punch to the jaw.


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[Assistant] Rather than walk away though, Griggs reportedly stomped on Barris as he lay on the floor. Then he stood on the man's chest and began to jump up and down, sometimes landing on his ribs, other times landing on his face. When he was finished, a pool of blood covered the hallway floor. Barris was dead.


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[Assistant] Somehow that darkness that Griggs had tried so hard to run away from had managed to catch back up with him.


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[Assistant] Maybe it was just a classic case of old habits dying hard. Or perhaps the shadows of Waverly Hills held some sway over him. If the stories are true, those shadows still roam the halls today.


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[Assistant] There are almost as many stories about unusual experiences inside the walls of Waverly Hills as there are hallways and half-open doors. Some have come down to us over the years from teenagers and adventure seekers who have stepped inside looking for a thrill, while others have been taken by surprise. Either way, they've become part of the common folklore surrounding the building.


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[Assistant] Visitors to Waverly Hills have reported things that might sound at home inside any other supposedly haunted location. Doors that seem to swing shut on their own. The echo of voices from distant parts of the hospital. The sound of children on the playground. Screaming with laughter. Or something else. Others have seen figures throughout the facility.


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[Assistant] One common sighting is a man in a white lab coat, often referred to as the doctor. He's been seen in the dining hall and is sometimes accompanied by the smell of freshly baked bread or other food. And like many other abandoned hospitals, there are tales of a ghostly child who wanders from room to room.


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[Assistant] Many visitors claim to have witnessed the spirit of an elderly woman walking the halls. Her wrists are said to be chained together with blood dripping from her hands. And she calls out to them, begging for help.


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[Assistant] The most frightening visions, by far though, have been the ones with the least amount of detail.


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[Assistant] Many visitors have seen what can only be described as shadow people. Dark clouds that move like humans across open doorways and around the corners at the ends of halls. These shadowy figures almost seem to crawl, sometimes on the walls, sometimes on the ceiling.


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[Assistant] And while they might not have distinguishable features, they always leave witnesses with an overwhelming feeling of dread and fear.


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[Assistant] However spread out across the facility these sightings might be, it's still all a lot to take in. Which is why one room in particular is such a powerful location. Because it's there. So many of these elements all seem to come together.


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[Assistant] Countless stories paint it as the central spot at Waverly Hills, and it's hard to argue. From shadowy figures and visions of a dead woman to otherworldly voices and cries of anguish, Room 502 has it all.


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[Assistant] And there may be a good reason why. Legend says that a nurse took her own life in that very same room back in 1928.


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[Assistant] There are a variety of stories about the reasons behind her suicide, ranging from hopelessness over an unwanted pregnancy to murder at the hands of one of the doctors. Whatever the cause might have been, her story came to an end right there in room 502.


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[Assistant] Even the staff, it seems, could not escape the darkness of Waverly Hills.


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[Assistant] Today we've pushed tuberculosis into the corner, along with other infectious diseases. But it's not gone, and we would be foolish to assume so.


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[Assistant] In fact, TB is still an active killer in places like Sub-Saharan Africa, India, and Asia. And thanks to nearly a century of exposure to antibiotics, TB has started to mutate, becoming even harder to treat.


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[Assistant] To most though, tuberculosis is a distant memory, something much of the Western world never really stops to consider, let alone fear.


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[Assistant] And yet, its effects have altered history. For example, some people have made the case that without tuberculosis, we most likely wouldn't have the darkness of Edgar Allan Poe, whose mother and wife were both taken from him by the disease. And it was his pain that fueled his art.


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[Assistant] Heck, without an outbreak of tuberculosis in Exeter, Rhode Island back in the 1890s, we might not even have Brom Stoker's Dracula.


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[Assistant] Tragedy has always inspired people to rise above the shadows and aim for something higher. Maybe that's the silver lining beneath the dark cloud of TB. But it also took countless lives.


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[Assistant] At Waverly Hills alone, some people have proposed that the total number of deaths succeeded 60,000, but there are no records to back up that claim.


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[Assistant] We do know that hundreds died each year, some from the treatments they voluntarily underwent, and others from the illness itself.


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[Assistant] They were taken up to the heights of the Kentucky countryside and then just withered away.


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[Assistant] There's a large tunnel that runs from the foot of the hill to the facility up top.


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[Assistant] When it was constructed in 1926, the tunnel's original purpose was to serve as a ventilation shaft for the boilers down below. There was even a small track system installed to allow for supplies to be transported up the shaft rather than forcing deliveries to make the trek on foot.


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[Assistant] The hospital staff also found the tunnel to be useful, though. Especially in the winter, when the snow was deep and the winds were cold and piercing.


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[Assistant] The warm, steady climb up the cement tunnel was the perfect alternative to hiking a small mountain each day. One side even had stairs. Honestly, it was perfectly built for pedestrian traffic.


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[Assistant] But as the years wore on and the death toll ticked higher and higher, the hospital staff found another use for that underground passageway.


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[Assistant] You see, along with fresh air and sunlight, the physicians at Waverly Hills believe their patients needed hope and positive attitudes to truly heal. The last thing a patient needed to see from their window was the corpse of a friend being carried away.


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[Assistant] Rather than carry the corpses of TB victims out the front or back door, where the still living might happen to see them, each new body was wrapped up and taken deep beneath the facility. Then, it was placed on a cart, lowered secretly to the bottom of the hill.


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[Assistant] As a result, that old ventilation shaft took on a less optimistic name. The body chute.


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[Assistant] The real story of Waverly Hills isn't one of haunted hallways and paranormal investigations. It's a tale of suffering, death, isolation, and hopelessness. And that's what makes it a place of darkness more than anything else.


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[Assistant] I get it, trust me. Over the years, the facility has played host to countless sightings and unexplainable events. It's attractive, in a dark and gloomy sort of way.


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[Assistant] But in the end, whether or not we believe those stories takes the backseat to a much larger truth.


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


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


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


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[Assistant] Folks, that's a wrap on today's episode, but some people like to stay up on news and have it delivered straight to their inbox. And you can do that by subscribing to the Epitaph, the official Lore newsletter. You'll learn more about that over at lorepodcast.com slash newsletter.


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[Assistant] And I've said it before, but if you're a social media sort of person, you should follow the show. We're available over on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And if you do, be sure to say hello.


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[Assistant] Louis Juliet and Father Jacques Marquette were most likely the first Europeans to sail down the Mississippi River from the Great Lakes. It was a mapping expedition that began in May of 1673, and by the time they were done, they'd made their way down to modern-day Arkansas.


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[Assistant] But it was something they saw earlier at the intersection of the Mississippi and Illinois rivers that stood out to them.


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[Assistant] Marquette wrote that they had been navigating some large rocks in the river when they passed a series of tall limestone cliffs. When it was safe to glance up, they were surprised by what they saw.


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[Assistant] Two enormous paintings covered the surface of the bluff.


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[Assistant] With vivid greens and reds, the local Native Americans had drawn a pair of enormous, otherworldly, monstrous creatures.


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[Assistant] In his description, Marquette said that the creatures were sort of a hybrid of a number of other animals. A chimera, so to speak. And they were so detailed and masterfully done that he had a hard time believing that these savages, as he ignorantly called the indigenous people of the area, could have ever painted them. And yet here they were. It was old, too.


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[Assistant] By the time Marquette and Joliet saw it, it had most likely been there for centuries, having been painted by the Native Americans who lived in the Cahokia settlement to the immediate east. They'd been there since at least the 9th century, and according to archaeologists, they'd probably been painted as a warning to visitors.


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[Assistant] Local legend tells us the creature was called the payasa, a name whose meaning is still up for debate. Some believe it was derived from the word payahasa, which refers to a race of supernatural dwarf-like people. But others hold to a different, more sinister meaning. According to them, payasa actually means the bird that devours men.


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[Assistant] For as long as there have been humans wandering the Earth, the sky above them has been a source of mystery. And it's understandable, isn't it? You can control much of what is on the ground around you, but the sky, well, it's off limits to most of us.


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[Assistant] It's the realm of the gods, the heavens, the firmament above us. Medieval cultures built whole models of thought around this mystery, trying to contain everything known inside a sphere comprised of layers. The higher up the layers went, the less and less we knew about them.


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[Assistant] So it's no surprise that cultures around the world have stories about things that come from the sky. It's the perfect qualifier for marking something as an outsider or an intruder.


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[Assistant] Things from the sky are dangerous. They're unpredictable and uncontrollable. We fear them.


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[Assistant] One branch of this visitors from the sky genre of folklore is centered around large birds.


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[Assistant] To borrow from The Princess Bride, these would be birds of unusual size, and they pop up in folklore all over the world. Creatures that are just close enough to normal to be believable, yet so extraordinary in their descriptions that they inspire fear and wonder.


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[Assistant] In the ancient Persian mythology of the Middle East, they spoke of the rock, an enormous bird of prey similar to the giant eagles of Tolkien's Middle Earth. Iranian culture has the Simurg, and the Egyptians told stories of the Benu.


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[Assistant] In South Central Africa, there are tales of a flying reptile known as the Kangamoto, the breaker of boats. And of course, many of the Native American tribes of North America told tales of the Thunderbird.


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[Assistant] But not all of the stories are ancient. Some of the most bizarre and frightening stories come from more modern times. Yet their contents seem to line up so nicely alongside these ancient legends that it makes it hard to separate out the fact from the fiction.


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[Assistant] And a great example of this comes from the American state of Maryland.


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[Assistant] On a cold February afternoon in 1909, a man named Bill Jefferson was out walking along a country road, past the farms and homes that made up the outskirts of town.


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[Assistant] Someone inside one of those homes reported looking out the window to see Bill. And something else. Something coming down from the sky.


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[Assistant] Like a hawk dipping low to grasp at a field mouse, something unusually large swooped out of the grey winter sky and caught hold of Bill, lifting the man high into the air as it sped away.


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[Assistant] Whoever it was that claimed to see the attack also managed to see where the creature took Bill, a nearby hill.


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[Assistant] According to their story, Bill was then attacked by the creature who appeared to stab its beak into the man's neck. How the witness managed to see all the details is unclear, but according to them, this monstrous bird drained Bill of all his blood, tossed him down the hill, and then flew off into the night.


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[Assistant] The creature was sighted again by a local hunter in nearby Hagerstown. The man, George Jacobs, managed to fire a shot at the enormous bird, and claims he even hit it, but it simply flew off. For a moment.


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[Assistant] It turns out, Jacob's might have made the thing angry, because after a few minutes, it turned around and flew straight back toward him, chasing him into a neighbor's barn. That's when the rumors really began to spread.


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[Assistant] One West Virginia man claimed to have found one of the creature's eggs in his barn. Another man, Dan Schaub, claimed he pulled into the Emmitsburg Railroad station to see the giant bird trying to take off with Bill Snyder, one of the employees there. Schaub managed to grab Snyder's foot and pull him free.


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[Assistant] Then it vanished from public record for more than two decades. It wasn't until 1932 that another pair of locals, driving along a road north of Middletown, Maryland, saw something enormous in the sky above their car. As quickly as it arrived, though, a creature disappeared. The community gave it a name, though.


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[Assistant] It's a mangled English version of an old German word, Schnellegeist, which means quick spirit.


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[Assistant] The Pennsylvania Dutch had used the word for decades to place blame on their missing livestock.


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[Assistant] Claiming they had been swept up into the sky by some invisible spirit.


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[Assistant] But if we believe the final chapter of the Snallygaster story, this thing also had a taste for illegal prohibition-era alcohol.


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[Assistant] You see, the local legend claims that the creature headed north again, back toward Hagerstown, where it spotted a large moonshine distillery. They say that the fumes drifting up from the still were so powerful, the creature passed out and fell right in.


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[Assistant] Like the final scene in an action film, this was the exact moment that two federal agents were pulling into the distillery complex, ready to put an end to the illegal operation there.


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[Assistant] Yes, they saw the Snallygaster fall from the sky. And yes, they were shocked. But they had a job to do. So only after arresting the criminals, they placed dynamite beneath the still. And detonated it.


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[Assistant] The Snallygaster is one of those local legends that seems to have put down shallow roots, despite the local fervor. With only a small handful of witnesses, and nothing more than a crater where the monster's body once rested, it's a story as flighty as its subject.


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[Assistant] Some tales go deeper, though, and a great example of that comes to us from a small Midwestern town. Six years before the Snallygaster, something else hunted from the skies. It's a tale with more eyes, more clues, and more evidence to consider than most.


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[Assistant] Rather than making the tale less entertaining,


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[Assistant] All of that depth gives us something to truly be afraid of.


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[Assistant] It was one of those cool September nights that makes you think of campfires and dry leaves, but the man couldn't see any of that. It was the middle of the night, and he was returning from an out of town business trip.


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[Assistant] Ulysses Griffith sold farm equipment in the surrounding community, and it kept him very busy, even by 1903 standards.


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[Assistant] As he was passing through town exhausted and ready to climb into bed after such a long day, he studied the small village he called home.


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[Assistant] I think we've all done this before, when we're given the chance to see our community through a new lens, while all the hustle and bustle is asleep and the lights have all flickered out. Griffith was probably reveling in it.


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[Assistant] And that's when he saw something out of the corner of his eye.


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[Assistant] It was dark out. The moon was only a quarter full, after all. But he swore he saw a shape moving on one of the nearby rooftops. He turned to look, expecting it to vanish. But no.


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[Assistant] There was something out there, climbing from building to building like an animal, an animal with a light.


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[Assistant] At least, that's what he thought. But it was also 1am and he was dead tired. So after chalking it up to exhaustion, Ulysses Griffith continued on his way and went home.


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[Assistant] The following day, Tuesday the 29th, he got up, went to work, and during the course of his day, he mentioned his experience to a few people.


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[Assistant] All of them seemed taken aback. Griffith was a well-respected member of the community. Then everyone knew that nothing exciting or unusual ever happened in their sleepy little town. So they dismissed it and went on with their lives.


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[Assistant] But someone else was about to have their own encounter later that evening.


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[Assistant] Only theirs would be a lot more difficult to dismiss.


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[Assistant] Dr. Alcott was the town physician, serving a community of roughly 400 people, which meant he had gotten very good at sleeping lightly. He never knew when someone might need him, and he couldn't even begin to count the number of times he'd been pulled from sleep to go stitch up a farmer or set a broken leg.


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[Assistant] So he wasn't startled when something woke him up late Tuesday night, close to 1am. He wasn't even concerned about the sounds he heard.


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[Assistant] What was weird to him, I think, was the bright light shining into his bedroom window. A window on the second story of his house.


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[Assistant] So Alcott grabbed his pistol and carefully crept downstairs to the front door.


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[Assistant] When he opened it though, he nearly dropped the gun, because standing right in front of him, right there on his front doorstep, was a huge inhuman shape.


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[Assistant] Alcott described it as almost like an enormous bat except with human characteristics as well. It stood on two hind legs and large dark wings hung at its side like a dark leathery cloak.


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[Assistant] But its head was the most puzzling, because it seemed to have a long horn that protruded from its forehead, mimicking the shape of its long beak-like snout.


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[Assistant] Dr. Alcott lost his cool. He pulled the pistol back up and leveled it at the thing on his doorstep and then pulled the trigger.


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[Assistant] Five times the gun went off at nearly point blank range. And yet nothing happened.


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[Assistant] So Alcott did what any of us would have done in his situation. He stumbled backwards as fast as he could, and then slammed the door shut.


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[Assistant] He closed and locked the windows, and probably turned off the lights and retreated into the cellar, just like the townsfolk in M. Night Shyamalan's film The Village, hiding from those we don't speak of.


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[Assistant] Like Griffith, Alcott told others about his experience the following day. And like Griffith, his own story was received with a bit of confusion.


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[Assistant] The town doctor, a respected member of the community, wasn't supposed to lose his mind like that, but he apparently had because nothing like what he had described could even remotely be possible. But rumors always spread, don't they?


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[Assistant] The story always finds a way to go knocking on doors, and there's always someone willing to let it in. Clarence Dunn was one of those people.


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[Assistant] He was a teller at the local bank, and while he didn't believe the fantastical elements of the story, he did think something sinister was going on.


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[Assistant] Specifically, he believed the town was being targeted by a burglar.


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[Assistant] Concerned that the bank he worked at was possibly next on the burglar's list, he returned to work that Wednesday night and locked himself inside.


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[Assistant] He sat in the dark with a shotgun across his lap and waited.


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[Assistant] Hours went by, and then, just after the church bell struck one, a bright light flashed through the bank window.


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[Assistant] Dunn didn't mess around. He grabbed his gun and fired right at the light from inside the bank and, in doing so, shot out one of the windows. Glass rained to the floor, and then the light went out.


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[Assistant] Now done, he was confident in his aim, and assumed that he'd struck his target, so he exited the bank to take a look around. There is nothing there.


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[Assistant] Standing right outside the shattered window, he could see where the burglar should have been. But there was nothing there. No body. No discarded flashlight. Not even blood. The dirt was just empty. Except that wasn't true.


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[Assistant] By the light of his own flashlight, Dunn could see something in the dirt there. An impression of some kind.


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[Assistant] So he returned in the morning with plaster and made a cast in hopes of getting a better look at the criminal's boot print.


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[Assistant] When it dried and he pulled it up though, it wasn't what he'd expected. It was an enormous animal trek.


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[Assistant] Dunn wasn't the only citizen of the town to have an encounter that night.


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[Assistant] Sometime after he fired the gun and shattered the window of his own bank, another resident was waking up in his own place of business.


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[Assistant] O.V. White was yet one more person concerned about the sightings in town. And, like many others, he assumed there was a logical explanation for it all.


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[Assistant] So he camped out that night to guard his general store. The front window of his upstairs apartment made for the perfect view of the street outside. So he sat down in a chair to wait it out.