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[Assistant] So, Caliph wrote a book of his own that painted Mather as a foolish instigator, someone whose blind faith had a deadly undercurrent. The world was maturing and science had the power to triumph over superstition, but only if people listened.


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[Assistant] And that's what his book was meant to accomplish. And as one final jab at Mather, he gave it a title that mocked the minister's own work. More Wonders of the Invisible World.


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[Assistant] Margaret eventually recovered, and no one in the North End was ever hanged for witchcraft. Both men would publish their books, of course, and as the years played out society began to mature.


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[Assistant] The voice of reason had spoken, and the people of New England were beginning to see the world through a new, more modern lens. And just like Margaret Rule and her family, that's something we can all be grateful for.


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


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[Assistant] I also make two other podcasts, Erin 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 more 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 finally, you can also follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, 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. And as always, thanks for listening.


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[Assistant] Hides an entire realm of information that we have yet to uncover.


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[Assistant] That doesn't mean that each new generation of historian rewrites history. It simply means that the more we dig and the deeper we go, the more pieces we have to work with. And in the end, that makes for a much more comprehensive picture. Might it change the things we thought were true? Certainly. But it also gets us closer to the real story.


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[Assistant] Take the story of our own species, the Homo sapiens. Back in the 1950s, scientists believed that our ancestors emerged around 200,000 years ago. And when a skull was unearthed back in 1961 inside a mine in Marrakesh, a skull that dated to about 40,000 years ago, the theories seemed to be confirmed. And for half a century, that was the case.


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[Assistant] Then, just a few years ago, a new scientist decided to return to that same mine and dig in the layer beneath where the skull was found.


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[Assistant] Soon enough, the remains of five new skeletons were discovered, also Homo sapien, along with a set of stone tools.


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[Assistant] But when those tools were dated, the results repainted the entire picture. Rather than 40,000 years old, these new remains were 300,000 years older, shattering theories about the emergence of our species.


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[Assistant] There are stories and legends we've told each other for centuries, from tribal campfires to Hollywood blockbusters, but many of the details have been worn away or buried beneath the waves of time. They were once part of the larger picture, but now they are all but forgotten.


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[Assistant] So today I want to take you on a journey into the past, to explore one of our favorite corners of folklore, and see what the shadows might be hiding. But be warned.


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[Assistant] Because while the core of this legend might be familiar to most of you, there's a darkness just beneath the surface, waiting to break free.


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[Assistant] And if there's one thing we can all agree on, there are few creatures of folklore more terrifying than the werewolf.


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[Assistant] It seems that everyone knows about werewolves. Maybe it's thanks to all those Hollywood films, or perhaps it's just a result of how frequently the stories have been told. Either way, most people have a pretty long list of facts in their head about werewolves.


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[Assistant] For starters, scholars and fans alike would be quick to point out that it's a pretty popular slice of folklore. Ask just about anyone, and they know the gist of it. A werewolf is a human being who transforms into the shape of a wolf. And in doing so, becomes a dangerous threat to their community.


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[Assistant] People will also happily point out the connection to the moon, something we can see prominently in characters like Professor Lupin from the Harry Potter novels. And there's a good chance that most casual fans of the legends might even utter the word lycanthropy, the term for the condition that underlies it all.


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[Assistant] Those are the popular details, and they managed to work their way into just about every new variation on the werewolf mythology. Movies, novels, comic books, and more. All of them dip their quill into this shallow inkwell. But if we were to travel deep enough into the past, the werewolf as we know it, would transform into so much more.


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[Assistant] Traditional beliefs about these creatures had a few different opinions about what a werewolf actually was.


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[Assistant] In some cultures, a werewolf was nothing more than a person's soul that had left their body to go on a ghostly hunt. Others believe the wolf itself was physical and real, but simply a counterpart to the human being, and both could exist at the same time.


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[Assistant] And another view of the werewolf was that the wolf was simply a familiar, a demonic creature that served a witch. And just like other folklore surrounding familiars, if a werewolf was injured, that injury would appear magically on the witch that controlled it.


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[Assistant] Today we're used to the idea that anyone bitten by one will become infected with the same powers, but long ago these creatures were often the product of a curse. Their condition was typically seen as divine punishment for evil deeds, which made curing them all that much more difficult. But there were theories, even back then,


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[Assistant] Some people believe that a werewolf would automatically transform back into human form when they became exhausted enough.


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[Assistant] Others believe that medicine was the only way to cure them, and many of those folk cures involved the flowering plant called wolfspain. Some cultures even recommended surgery, and although I'm not exactly sure how it was supposed to work, more often than not it ended up killing the accused rather than helping them.


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[Assistant] Other brutal cures included piercing their hands with nails or striking them on the forehead with a knife.


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[Assistant] And on the other end of the spectrum, there were those who believed that a werewolf just needed a good old-fashioned scolding to cure it. But that would probably only work on swearwolves. Not werewolves.


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[Assistant] But let's back up for a moment. One of the things we take for granted in the world of werewolves is their transformation. It happens, and then the interesting stuff is able to take place. The hunting and devouring and all of that. But centuries ago, the method of that transformation was just as varied as the rest of the folklore.


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[Assistant] Some cultures believe that transformation required a person to take off all of their clothing and then put on a belt made out of wolfskin.


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[Assistant] Other stories suggested that a person would have to rub their bodies with a magical salve or ointment that caused the change to begin. And there are more than a few stories about drinking water, either from a magical stream or from rainwater collected in the footprint of a real wolf.


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[Assistant] Now, obviously, once a person had transformed, they would be easy to spot. But what about when they were in their human form? How was a community supposed to track down the werewolves living among them, hiding in plain sight? Well, thankfully, there were physical clues they could look for.


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[Assistant] A werewolf, they believed, had curved fingernails, low-set ears, and eyebrows that tended to grow together in the center. Their teeth might look a bit too sharp, and their face might take on a more harsh or gruff appearance. And if they had recently transformed back into human form, they might also be unusually weak or depressed.


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[Assistant] But the biggest misconception of all regarding werewolves just might be how uncommon their folklore really was.


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[Assistant] Before the 14th century, Europe didn't really have many widespread legends about them. Yes, there were some holdovers from classical antiquity, but most of the actual documented appearances of the werewolf were limited to things like court records.


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[Assistant] When they did appear though, those stories typically followed a few set patterns. And while these tales might not be what you're used to, they represent the werewolf as it was viewed by Europeans for a very long time. And when we explore them, one thing becomes abundantly clear. No matter what shape or format they took,


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[Assistant] They are known as the Wound Legends. They were stories that were passed around with one common idea at their core. That a werewolf in human form could be cut to reveal the beast within.


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[Assistant] How deep that cut needed to be was never really settled on and so each community tended to make up their own rules. But the theory gave them some shred of hope to hold onto in the face of their fear. All they had to do was capture someone they suspected of being a werewolf and then cut them.


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[Assistant] These stories were more narrative in nature and always seemed to follow the same pattern, although there were variations from culture to culture. In most German versions of the story, we are told of a husband who seems to have abandoned his wife. One day he is there and the next he's gone, packed up and moved on to start a new life elsewhere.


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[Assistant] But then, during the night, the lonely wife is visited by a werewolf who breaks into her home. Sometimes the beast will bite the clothing that she's wearing, while other times it attacks clothing that's hanging on a line or laying in plain sight. And then it vanishes again into the night.


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[Assistant] The following day, the husband always returns, maybe a little worse for wear. Sometime after the couple reunites, the husband smiles, and that's when the wife notices a thread from one of her favorite items of clothing, one that had been torn by the beast the night before, stuck in his teeth.


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[Assistant] The Oven legends are stories of tension and redemption. They all seem to work off the premise that a human can turn into a werewolf by putting on a magical wolfskin belt. In these stories, a farmhand is usually suspected of being a werewolf. And their suspicions are confirmed one day when they find a belt hidden inside the hollow of an old tree.


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[Assistant] Determined to save the man from his own sins, his co-workers send him away on an errand. Then they take the wolf belt and build a large fire in the oven before waiting for him to return.


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[Assistant] Just as the suspected werewolf is coming into view, the other farmhands toss his magical belt into the flames, destroying the man's source of power right before his eyes.


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[Assistant] After that, he typically repents of his evil ways and expresses relief that they all helped him.


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[Assistant] The most interesting of the four types of werewolf legends though would have to be stories of the backrider. But rather than just tell you about it, here's a great example found in Old Testimony from centuries ago about an experience a man had while traveling through the countryside. Something flew onto my nape.


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[Assistant] I could see the paw hanging over my shoulders and sweat ran from my neck and ears. I didn't know what to do and thought, God, what is happening to me? Then I arrived at the church in Didham in front of the old church and then he jumped off.


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[Assistant] The legends of the back rider, it seems, are stories about hitchhiking werewolves. Beasts that jump on the backs and shoulders of travelers who then have to carry their supernatural passenger for some distance before they vanish back into the night.


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[Assistant] What's missing from these stories, though, is any description of a transformation. Heck, it's even common for them to not even mention werewolves by name. But the threat is clearly implied. Here, let me tell you one more backrider story, because it's a perfect example of the sort of fear that was pervasive at the time.


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[Assistant] One particular account tells the story of a group of young women who had been working all day at a nearby farm, preserving food for the coming winter.


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[Assistant] Because their work wasn't finished before sunset, a few young men were tasked with escorting the ladies home. So they all began that long walk through the shadows and trees between the farm and the town.


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[Assistant] But as they traveled the road, nervous about every single sound and movement in the darkness around them, one of the young men felt a creature land on his back and shoulders. When he cried out, his friends turned and saw the beast with their own eyes.


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[Assistant] Thinking quickly, one of them picked up a large branch and swung it at the beast's head, instantly knocking it out cold and causing it to fall to the road.


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[Assistant] Naturally, everyone ran as fast as they could for town. There was no telling how soon the creature might regain consciousness and they didn't want to stick around to see how angry it might be. But thankfully, the rest of their journey home was completely uneventful.


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[Assistant] In the morning though, with the light of the sun giving them a dose of courage, some of the young men decided to go back to the scene of the attack and look for evidence.


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[Assistant] Now, I get how easy it would be to view these legends as fairy tales. Just harmless little snippets of folklore designed to do nothing more than frighten and entertain. But sadly, that's not the case.


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[Assistant] These types of stories commonly appeared in actual trial documents. Trials where reputations and lives were on the line. And while trials like that couldn't possibly happen today in our modern world,


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[Assistant] Francois Secretain usually lived in the mountains to the east, but sometime around June 1st of 1598, the weather turned bad and she walked to town looking for better shelter. She was 58 years old, after all, and I can't help but assume she just wanted a dry place to sleep that night.


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[Assistant] The house she knocked on was the home of the Maya family, but they turned her away because the man of the house was away on business. Francoise persisted though, and eventually the family allowed her to stay. It was honestly the good Christian thing to do, too. Sucratan was about as impoverished as one could be.


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[Assistant] A few days later though, the Maya's daughter, 8-year-old Luaz, began to crawl around on all fours and twist her mouth into strange shapes. That was followed by what could only be described as seizures and paralysis. But she did manage to get a few sentences out in the midst of it all.


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[Assistant] Words she used to accuse Francois Sucratan of bewitching her.


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[Assistant] Sucratan managed to hear about the accusations before anyone else, and she panicked. She knew how situations like this would play out. All around them in eastern France, witch trials blazed like a wildfire, and she knew that this little lie was something that could turn into a death sentence for anyone. So she went for help.


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[Assistant] That help was the advice of another local beggar, a man named Jacques Bouquet. He was known as one of the cunning folk, a practitioner of traditional folk magic and healing. And according to him, all she needed to do to cure the girl was to take some of the family's bread and use it as a medicine for her. And then he sent her on her way.


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[Assistant] But inside the Maya home, things were escalating quickly. Little Luaz wasn't recovering, so her parents sent for a Catholic priest. When she then declared to be the host of five demons, an exorcism was conducted. And thankfully, all of her symptoms went away after that.


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[Assistant] But of course, that still left the question of who had sent those demons to torment her.


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[Assistant] Sukritan was arrested a short while later and thrown into a filthy prison cell in between torture sessions disguised as interrogations. Naturally, she caved in to their demands. Every idea the authorities put forward, she admitted to.


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[Assistant] How could she not? If she stood by her innocence it would only prolong her pain and suffering. So she confessed to it all.


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[Assistant] But she did more than that. She also mentioned the help she received from Jacques Bouquet. In fact, she painted an image of him that made him out to be just as guilty as her. So it wasn't long before he joined her in prison, the subject of his own series of painful interrogations.


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[Assistant] And this is all exactly what you've probably come to expect from a 16th century European witch trial.


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[Assistant] I get that. Up to this point, it feels a lot like so many other stories. Although, let me add, I don't think that makes the story any less valuable or powerful. We need to remember these victims, to learn from their stories and to help us make better choices in the future.


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[Assistant] But yes, I understand that they can all start to sound alike.


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[Assistant] But then he added that on top of all of that, he could even transform into a werewolf, giving him the power to hunt and kill. And how did he make that transformation? Again, it was with the devil's help.


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[Assistant] Jacques explained that he received a magical ointment from the Lord of Darkness, and once applied, he would change into the monster, and then run through the countryside with an entire pack of others just like him. A pack that gathered for meetings with the devil himself.


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[Assistant] But here's where things get tricky. And to understand it, you have to put on your 16th century hat. Because the Christian Bible mentions witchcraft. It was easy and legal in Europe to accuse, try and execute witches.


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[Assistant] But werewolves were different. They don't appear in the Bible. In fact, Catholic theology had long before deemed transmutations like that to be impossible. And it wasn't legal to put people on trial for fantasy.


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[Assistant] But the Chief Justice of France at the time, a man named Henri Bouguet, saw something in Jacques's confession that, for lack of a better way of putting it, gave the authorities some teeth. They might not be able to try him for being a werewolf, but that partnership with the devil that he admitted to was certainly worthy of death.


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[Assistant] In the days that followed, Jacques and the others he named from his pack were all arrested and interrogated through torture. And while all of that took place, Francois Sucretan, who had suffered inside the horrible condition of the prison for weeks, sadly passed away.


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[Assistant] She might have escaped public execution, but she was executed nonetheless. Jacques would face a more dramatic death a short while later.


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[Assistant] Now remember, not all witches in Europe and England were burned at the stake. Depending on the laws of the nation and the variant of Christianity the people followed, sometimes those victims were hanged. But even those nations that burned witches tended to first strangle or slit their throats, meaning the burning was purely for show.


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[Assistant] But for Jacques Bouquet, his execution would skip that step. Perhaps because of the boldness of his confession or maybe in an effort to send a powerful message to other would-be witches, he was tied to the stake in the middle of town, fully alive and aware of his surroundings.


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[Assistant] Beneath the surface and the obvious things we see and know, there are truths waiting to be uncovered. Maybe they were lost to us a long time ago and bringing them back into the light will help restore our understanding of the world. Or perhaps they are new additions that will require us to step back and rethink it all.


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[Assistant] The folklore of the werewolf is one of those multi-layered pieces of history. There's the stuff we all think we know. The full moons and torn clothing and wolf monsters that stand on two legs and howl. And then there's the historical record.


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[Assistant] Yes, the modern version is highly entertaining, which of course is by design, but that doesn't mean the older stories are any less frightening.


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[Assistant] But after looking back on those earlier versions of the legend, I think it's surprising just how much of the horror came not from the monsters, but at the hands of the people who hunted them.


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[Assistant] Whether it was barbaric exploratory surgery looking for proof or cures that involve nails through hands or dangerous folk medicine, the humans at the center of these stories made it very clear that they too were capable of frightening things.


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[Assistant] In the case of the trial and execution of Jacques Bouquet, there was also one other dangerous outcome, precedent. You see, once word spread that the Chief Justice had found a way around the theological limitations of werewolf trials, other communities suddenly found themselves equipped and ready to handle their own problems.


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[Assistant] In fact, in the following weeks, people just outside of the same town became concerned about some recent wolf attacks. One of the victims had been a young teenager named Benoit Bridell, whose death had been witnessed by others. And those eyewitnesses claimed that the wolf in question had no tail and distinctly human-like hands instead of paws.


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[Assistant] As people are prone to do, the townsfolk went looking for someone to blame. Given the new rumors of an entire pack of werewolves, they made the leap in logic that one of those pack members had yet to be named and arrested. And that's when they fixated on a local woman named Pernette Gondillon.


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[Assistant] Now I can't find the reason why she became a suspect. I can't even find record of a trial. As far as I can tell, Pernette was simply arrested, dragged into the town center, and then stoned to death by her neighbors. With zero evidence outside a hunch, they pummeled her body with heavy stones until she died.


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[Assistant] Then they went after her brother, Pierre. He was a rough, well-worn man with cuts and scars all over his body from a life of hard labor on the farm. But when you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail, as they say. The townsfolk didn't see work injuries. They saw evidence of a werewolf. And they arrested him for it.


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[Assistant] Pierre confessed. Under torture, of course. He explained the source of his powers and his relationship with the devil. He described his murder of various victims. And he named others who ran in his pack. It didn't take long before all of them were rounded up and in custody.


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[Assistant] Supernatural creatures might not be real, but history has made one thing abundantly clear. When communities go hunting for monsters, we don't have to look far to find one.


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[Assistant] They're right there waiting. Just beneath the surface.


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[Assistant] One of the powers of folklore is that it has a way of getting us all onto the same page. The lines are clear, and the antagonists are duly noted. We know who the bad guys are.


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[Assistant] But within a world as rich and deep as folklore, there are bound to be exceptions. And there's one werewolf legend that seems to turn all of our expectations upside down. Stick around after this brief sponsor break, and I'll tell you all about it.


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[Assistant] His plan had backfired in the most spectacular way.


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[Assistant] Hermann von Bruinenk was a historian writing in the early 20th century who was hoping to rehabilitate a bit of his homeland's reputation.


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[Assistant] Ever since the 15th century, the nation of Livonia had been infamous for its werewolf stories. In fact, so many stories about the mythical beast had come from that small country that people all across Europe had begun to think the place was absolutely infested with them.


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[Assistant] Bruin Ink wanted to set the record straight. So in 1924, he published a book he titled, The Werewolf in Livonia.


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[Assistant] Now maybe it was the title, or perhaps he just didn't weave a compelling argument for his case. Whatever the reason was, he failed. The result instead was to take those ancient sketches in the dirt and firmly set them in cement.


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[Assistant] Most of the book is filled with stories that you would expect from 15th century European werewolf tales. But Hidden Away is the most unusual example I've seen, and it all centers around a peasant farmer named Old Thies.


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[Assistant] It seems that sometime in 1691, a church was broken into in the town of Juergensburg, and Old Thies was called in as a witness. Somehow, instead of giving testimony to what he saw that night, accusations of being a werewolf were quickly leveled at him. And the amazing thing is, Old Thies didn't deny them.


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[Assistant] Now in most cases, including the ones we've discussed earlier, the accused would deny the claims of their neighbors and then only confess under torture. Then they would describe all of the evil deeds they committed while in the form of a werewolf and how they were in league with the devil. But Old Thies took a different approach.


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[Assistant] Yes, he told them he was a werewolf, but he had retired from all that about 10 years ago. It was a confession that came without the pressure of torture and it lacked any of the brutal malicious pride the court had expected. Instead, Old Thies mentioned it as if it were a thing he took pride in and he explained why.


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[Assistant] You see, Old Thies and a few others had been benevolent werewolves. Supernatural creatures who aimed to do good, not evil. They had called themselves the Hounds of God and had actually fought against the devil and his witches in an effort to preserve the prosperity of the area.


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[Assistant] According to his testimony, he and his fellow Hounds of God would transform for just three nights each year. Together they would roam the countryside and feast on local farm animals, but only to gain the strength necessary for the next step in their mission.


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[Assistant] With their bellies full and their strength restored, Old Thies claimed that he and the others would then pass beyond the boundaries of our world and invade hell itself. There they would attack the devil and chase away his witches by swinging iron rods as weapons.


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[Assistant] When they accused him of being a werewolf, they probably expected the usual flow of events. However usual it can be to force a confession out of an innocent victim through torture, of course. But Olfiste broke the mold. He turned their accusation on its head and gave them a willing confession that shattered their expectations.


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[Assistant] At the end of the day, this is the sort of story I love to find in folklore. You can learn a lot from the oddballs and exceptions to the rule. They break the monotony and give off a slightly different scent, and that's a good thing.


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[Assistant] Because our world is full of many layers, and if we never dig, we'll never find new pieces to the puzzle, will we?


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[Assistant] Old Thies was able to escape execution, which is just one more reason to love his story. He never admitted to partnering with the devil, or to gathering with witches for regular meetings to plot the destruction of the town. He never admitted to killing innocent people, either.


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[Assistant] All the authorities were able to do was charge him with two things. Practicing benevolent folk magic and failing to attend church for many years. So all he received was a light beating and was then banished from the church forever.


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


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


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


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


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[Assistant] In January of 2018, the Bush family were pulled from sleep at 4am by a loud noise inside their Utah home.


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[Assistant] They did the same thing any of us would do. They climbed out of bed and nervously explored their house for signs of an intruder.


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[Assistant] Nothing, though, was out of place or disturbed.


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[Assistant] Later that morning though, they discovered where the noise had come from.


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[Assistant] A sinkhole had opened in their garage floor. But while that might be shocking enough, it wasn't the most unusual part of their experience. No, it's what they found in the newly opened cavity that was truly frightening.


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[Assistant] In the space that had existed below their garage, they discovered shelves, clothing, a woman's handbag, even a small collection of children's toys.


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[Assistant] Together it all hinted at a disturbing truth. For as long as they'd lived there, there was a room beneath their home that had once been used by people on a regular basis.


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[Assistant] Some people think it was an old section of the basement that had been walled off during a remodel in the 1970s, while others believe it might have been a bomb shelter. Whatever it was, the Bush family had never been aware of its existence.


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[Assistant] I think it's fair to say that most of us live very busy lives. We spend our days bouncing between responsibilities and commitments, and in the process, we sometimes miss key details.


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[Assistant] Maybe they're not as significant as a basement bomb shelter, but lots of things slip past us during our crazy lives, and that can be dangerous.


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[Assistant] Some details might hint at forces beyond our control, or dangers lurking in the shadows. In a world full of the unusual, the unexpected, and the unexplainable, minding the details is an essential part of the human existence. When we don't, we put ourselves at risk.


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[Assistant] Because sometimes the things we miss are the very things that haunt us the most.


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[Assistant] Walburga was born to immigrant parents in Chicago in 1880, just nine years after the Great Fire burned much of the city to the ground. We know that her father left when she was just eight years old, and we know that four years later, she and her sister Magdalene had to take jobs to help support their family.


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[Assistant] Walburga met Fred when she was just 14 and he was 17. He worked as a salesman in his father's shoe store and she as a laborer in a factory that manufactured baby bonnets. Three years later, they were married and started building a life for themselves.


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[Assistant] Part of that new life involved moving north to Milwaukee, where Fred set up his very own shoe store, following in his father's footsteps. It was a big gamble, but it quickly paid off.


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[Assistant] Soon he was able to open more locations, and as the money rolled in, his wife was able to stop working outside the home. But Fred had his sights set even higher. He wanted to move into manufacturing.


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[Assistant] His first factory manufactured men's caps, and the second one produced aprons.


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[Assistant] Each one was more successful than the last. And with every new hit, Fred's business reputation grew exponentially. Everyone respected him as an entrepreneur and lauded him as a solid family man. And while he and his wife never had children, he was known around town as a good provider.


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[Assistant] Wealth brought new change. The couple moved up to a lavish mansion in a posh neighborhood and became active socialites in the evenings. They attended frequent parties and bought expensive items for their home. But beneath that thin veneer of perfection and success, there were cracks forming.


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[Assistant] Fred took to drinking a bit too much and too often, which began to cause problems at home. The couple fought constantly and those arguments were often loud enough that their high society neighbors could hear the shouts. But Fred wasn't alone in his flaws.


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[Assistant] The stories told about Walburga make it clear that she had a bit of a wandering eye. With a husband who traveled often and worked long hours, she had taken to flirting with other men. And that appetite found a target one day in the autumn of 1913 when she needed help with a broken sewing machine at home.


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[Assistant] The repairman was actually sent to her house by her husband.


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[Assistant] The mechanic, a young man named Otto Sandhuber, who was barely 17, turned out to be someone Walburga knew from her days in Chicago.


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[Assistant] He had been the adopted boy who moved in with the family next door, but left years later when he discovered that he was not their biological child.


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[Assistant] Walburga and Otto began an affair that day that would pick up speed as time went on.


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[Assistant] At first they met in a hotel, but soon she was inviting him over while Fred was away on business.


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[Assistant] The trouble was, when your home is known as a place where people shout and scream, neighbors have a tendency to become nosy, and those nosy neighbors took notice of Otto's arrivals and departures.


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[Assistant] Dolly tried to do a little damage control. The man visiting her house was just her half brother, she told someone. He was a bit of a vagabond, and she was just doing the right thing by offering him a warm meal and a place to get out of the cold.


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[Assistant] I can't say for sure, but my guess is that her lies didn't quite convince anyone who heard them.


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[Assistant] Looking back, most historians assume that it was one of those neighbors who eventually told Fred about the affair. He confronted his wife, and he told her to end it. Forced to choose between her lover and her lavish lifestyle, she quickly chose the latter. All of Otto's regular visits stopped, and life seemed to return to normal. But again, life wasn't very normal inside that house.


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[Assistant] Fred's drinking had increased over the years, and he had begun to believe that their house was haunted. Items would often be found in locations where Fred didn't remember placing them.


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[Assistant] Sometimes noises could be heard in distant parts of the house.


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[Assistant] I don't know if he was a believer in the supernatural before moving to Milwaukee, but his experiences in the house quickly turned him into one.


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[Assistant] Because of that, and also maybe a desire to move his wife away from her old lover, Fred decided it was time to create a west coast branch of his manufacturing business.


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[Assistant] In 1918, the couple moved to Los Angeles and Fred got to work on setting up new factories and building the necessary support business around them.


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[Assistant] Walburga was in charge of moving them into their new home, one that she had handpicked herself. She had a reputation for never giving away expensive items, so she had insisted that they find a home with plenty of storage space, and setting up their daily lives in that enormous house took up much of her time for a while.


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[Assistant] But the change didn't help Fred's drinking problem, or his nerves. Rather than leaving the ghosts behind, he was certain that their new home was just as haunted as the last.


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[Assistant] His experience in the new home was so unsettling that if he ever found himself alone there, he would call upon a friend or two from work to come over and keep him company.


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[Assistant] Maybe Fred noticed the little details in a way that most people never do. Maybe he just got paranoid when he drank. We don't know what his thoughts and motivations were, but we do know that he slowly began to fear that the worst was just around the corner. That a phantom haunted his life and meant to do him harm. But as frightening as it would have been for him to admit, Fred was absolutely right.


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[Assistant] After weeks of unpacking and setting up their life in that new Los Angeles mansion, Walburga, who everyone had taken to calling Dolly, was ready for a night out. She and Fred headed to a friend's home on August 22nd of 1922 to do just that. When they returned home around midnight though, their world fell apart.


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[Assistant] Across the street, a neighbor named Mrs. Norton remembered waking up when something in her bedroom fell over. While she was awake, she noticed more shouting from Fred and Dolly's home and sat up to listen for a moment.


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[Assistant] Norton's roommate, Mrs. Rosson, independently awoke at the same time and heard the shouting as well, and went to her window to look at the big mansion.


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[Assistant] Down the street, another neighbor named Jay Ashley heard the shouting as well. And then, all three of those witnesses heard something else. Gunshots.


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[Assistant] Ashley immediately called the police, and then rushed outside to have a better look. Other neighbors arrived as well, and together, they all decided to enter the home of Dolly and Fred and see if they could catch the gunman.


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[Assistant] After kicking in the front door though, all they managed to find was a room in disarray, and Fred's dead body sprawled out on the floor.


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[Assistant] That's when they noticed the pounding and muffled shouts from somewhere else upstairs. The neighbors sprang to the rescue and began searching the mansion for anyone else who might be there.


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[Assistant] After a bit of searching, they discovered a locked closet upstairs and the desperate cries of Dolly coming from the other side of the door.


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[Assistant] Someone found the key somewhere else in the house and unlocked the door. And soon Dolly was explaining what had happened after they returned home.


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[Assistant] She had gone upstairs to undress, she said, while Fred had stayed below to take care of some business. She heard a loud thump, and then after a moment of silence, three gunshots.


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[Assistant] Before she could step out of the closet and go see what had happened, a dark shape had pushed her back in and locked the door, leaving her to fear the worst for her husband Fred.


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[Assistant] Each of those three gunshots, it turns out, had struck him in the struggle. There were two wounds above the heart and another in the side of his head.


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[Assistant] Fred had been dead before the neighbors even broke into the house. And when the police arrived, all they could do was ask questions and help search the crime scene.


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[Assistant] All evidence pointed to an armed robbery. Fred's cash was gone, as was his gold watch and a handful of other expensive items. But there was no sign that any of the doors or windows in the house had been forced open from the outside, and no neighbors witnessed anyone exiting the mansion prior to their arrival.


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[Assistant] So while the clues were there, the full picture seemed to be alluding them.


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[Assistant] Initially, the police arrested a local group of thieves led by a man named James Casey who had been suspected of similar crimes before. He even owned the same type of pistol that had fired the shots that killed Fred.


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[Assistant] But they were released the very same day after it became clear that there was no evidence linking them to the murder. So for a long while, the crime just went unsolved.


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[Assistant] A year later though, something changed. A short while after Fred's death, Dolly had begun a relationship with a man named Roy Klum. He was a friend of theirs from Milwaukee who now worked in Hollywood as a film producer. And for many months, they seemed to get along and make the most of their new phase in life. But not long after they began to see each other, Dolly made a very unusual request.


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[Assistant] She handed him a pistol and asked him to dispose of it in the La Brea Tar Pits. She explained that she was worried the police might find it suspicious that she owned the very same type of gun that was used to murder her husband and thought it might be better to get rid of it and keep things simple.


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[Assistant] Roy, hoping for his relationship with the wealthy widow to grow into more, agreed to do it.


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[Assistant] But that relationship soured a few months later, and Roy, looking back and putting the pieces together, decided to tell his story to the police. As a result, Dolly was arrested and put on trial for Fred's murder.


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[Assistant] Things got even trickier when the police came to arrest her and noticed that her new lover, Herman Shapiro, a man who also happened to be her attorney, was wearing a gold watch identical to the one that had been stolen in the robbery. Shapiro explained that it had been a gift from Dolly.


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[Assistant] The clues were adding up, and as the trial got underway, it became increasingly likely that Dolly would be charged with the murder of her husband. But there was one major flaw in the prosecution's argument, one that her lover and lawyer, Herman Shapiro, was quick to point out. If Dolly was the killer, how did she get locked inside the closet? Maybe some thought. There really was a phantom, after all.


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[Assistant] Fred hadn't been the only person to experience unusual activity in that home. Sometime between his murder and Dolly's arrest and trial, Dolly had a friend from Milwaukee come visit her. Marjorie Tex knew Fred and Dolly well, and when she received word about the murder, she decided to visit Dolly and keep her company.


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[Assistant] Upon arriving in that big house in Los Angeles, Marjorie felt as if something was off. At first, she chalked it up to staying in a house where a murder had taken place. I think any one of us would have felt uneasy in a situation like that, so it's hard to blame her for being nervous. But there were other things that contributed to her uneasiness.


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[Assistant] For example, she wandered upstairs one day when Dolly wasn't home but was overwhelmed by the feeling of being watched as if she wasn't alone.


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[Assistant] The house made noises, and while it probably was the work of her overactive imagination, she still had a difficult time shaking the feeling.


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[Assistant] It happened in the basement too, and after a while, she simply stopped visiting those locations alone.


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[Assistant] Once she even saw something, a vision or shimmer of activity from the world beyond the veil. She described it as the shape of a man, but fleeting and partial, as if the spirit were incomplete. And on one occasion, the shock of it all was enough to cause her to pass out right there in the upstairs hallway.


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[Assistant] Eventually it all became a bit too much for Dolly and her visitors. So in January of 1923, she sold the big mansion and bought a new home in another part of Los Angeles.


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[Assistant] Herman Shapiro moved in with her, and he continued his legal work while she took on the massive job of getting all her things moved into the new house. All those closets and attic spaces wouldn't fill themselves after all.


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[Assistant] And then in July of 1923, Dolly was arrested and the trial began. The case was made against her and Shapiro built his own defense. But in the middle of all of that, Dolly pulled Shapiro aside and whispered a cryptic message to him.


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[Assistant] He's there, she told him with a noticeable amount of panic in her voice. He's there.


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[Assistant] Shapiro was utterly confused, but before he could ask her to be more specific, Dolly went on.


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[Assistant] My vagabond half-brother, she explained. You need to go make sure he has something to eat. And then she gave Herman instructions. Very specific instructions.


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[Assistant] Bewildered but intrigued, Herman went home that day and did everything Dolly had asked him to do. He prepared a meal, probably placing all of the items on a serving tray, and then took it all upstairs. Not to a guest room though, but to Dolly's room.


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[Assistant] Once there, he stepped inside the closet and, doing exactly what Dolly had instructed him to do, he whistled.


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[Assistant] A moment later, a panel in the wall at the end of the closet slid open. It was like a dark hole in his reality. A hidden space inside the home he thought he knew inside and out.


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[Assistant] But here it was, a secret room that only Dolly had known about. Well, Dolly and one other person.


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[Assistant] Hello Herman, came the voice from inside the opening, and then a face appeared.


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[Assistant] He explained that Dolly had always maintained a long string of lovers, even when Fred was alive. Beginning with her affair ten years prior with Otto Sandhuber in Milwaukee, and eventually leading up to men like Roy Klum and Herman himself, Dolly had never stopped cheating.


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[Assistant] The stranger in the hole in the wall probably smiled.


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[Assistant] Otto Sandhuber, the sewing machine repairman that Dolly had broken up with a decade before, was right there, living in their home.


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[Assistant] Naturally, Herman wanted to know more. He was an attorney, after all, and he was very good at asking questions. So he managed to tease a bit more information out of the young man.


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[Assistant] It turns out that Otto never left when Dolly pretended to break off their affair. He simply moved in and stayed.


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[Assistant] All those times when Fred felt as if he wasn't alone, as if someone were watching him and sometimes moving items he left around the house, all those times, it was really just Otto.


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[Assistant] And he'd been there ever since, moving from house to house as Dolly went through life.


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[Assistant] For an entire decade, Otto was her secret lover, hiding in the walls when he needed to and roaming the house when he was alone. No one had ever seen him in all those years besides Dolly, except for that one chance encounter with Marjorie Tex, who mistook him for a ghost. But Otto had one more story for Herman. He knew what happened the night Fred was killed.


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[Assistant] According to him, the night Fred and Dolly returned home from their party, Fred was very drunk. Almost from the moment they walked into their home, the couple began one of their typical arguments. The neighbors had heard screaming after all and it wasn't from the attack and that argument, Otto claimed, began to get violent.


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[Assistant] Fearing for Dolly's safety, Otto told Herman that he climbed out of his hiding place in the attic and grabbed one of Fred's revolvers. Then, as quietly as he could, he rushed downstairs to stop the fight.


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[Assistant] Fred saw him, recognized him, and in his drunken rage began to attack the younger man. It was during the struggle that the gun went off twice into Fred's chest. And after the older man fell to the ground, Otto shot him one last time in the side of the head.


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[Assistant] After that, it was a simple matter of hiding some valuables, making a mess of the room, and then locking Dolly inside the closet to make it look like a burglary had gone wrong. And for months, the police had fallen for it.


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[Assistant] Herman was stunned. Dolly was currently on trial for Fred's murder and here was the solution to all of their problems. So you might imagine that he called the police and had Otto taken into custody, securing the freedom for the woman he loved. But that's not what he did. Instead, he told Otto to run.


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[Assistant] Trying to put ourselves in Herman's shoes, it sort of makes sense.


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[Assistant] Dolly wasn't going to be convicted of murder. No one could explain how she could have locked herself in the closet with the key that was found elsewhere in the house. It was definitive proof that someone else had been in there with her and the court was convinced that someone was the real killer.


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[Assistant] If Herman brought Otto to the police, sure, they would finally know who that someone was. But it would also drag Dolly through the mud and Herman's reputation right along with her. Telling Otto to run was Herman's way of protecting his future. So he handed the young man a bag and told him to pack and leave. And that's what Otto did.


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[Assistant] He headed north to Canada, then Dolly continued on with her trial.


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[Assistant] The state of California spent a year and a half trying to prove that Dolly was the killer. But in the end, they couldn't do it.


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[Assistant] It couldn't prove that she had locked herself in a closet after committing the crime.


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[Assistant] The killer, they believe, had slipped through their fingers, vanishing into the night like some phantom or ghost.


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[Assistant] It's a phrase we hear often and it has a lot of meanings. That project you thought would be simple but turned out to take you twice as long. That Ikea bookshelf you can't seem to build correctly because you missed one tiny little step. Getting pulled aside by airport security because you forgot to leave your pocket knife at home.


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[Assistant] Some things are often made more frustrating by our lack of attention to the details.


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[Assistant] Looking back, it's easy to believe that Fred should have paid more attention. Otto Sandhuber had lived in his home for nearly a decade. Multiple homes. Countless moments when he felt as if he were being watched. As if his home was haunted. In retrospect, Fred was exactly right. He just didn't know it.


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[Assistant] The disturbing realization here is just how normal Fred was. He was just a guy with a busy life who was doing the best he could to manage it all. But in the process, he missed some key details that could have saved his life.


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[Assistant] I'm not sure most of us are any different today. Especially with the new distractions of modern technology and 24-7 news networks. There's always something else to notice. But are we noticing the right things?


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[Assistant] I'm certainly not suggesting that someone is living in your attic, but we have to stop and wonder if most of us would even notice. Maybe Dolly understood that. Maybe she knew how distracted people were and how easy it would be to hide something as significant as a secret lover inside the very place she called home. Or maybe she just took a chance and got lucky.


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[Assistant] Fred never managed to put the pieces together. And let's be honest. Would you?


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[Assistant] Like a lot of her relationships, Dolly and Hermans fell apart after a few years. He was a disgruntled lover and probably had a bit of regret about sending Otto off into the great unknown rather than turning him into the police.


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[Assistant] He was living under an assumed name, Walter Klein. He was working as a janitor, and he wasn't alone. Otto had gotten married in the seven years since his flight from Dolly and Herman's home, but Otto's arrest came as a complete shock to his wife. It turns out, she had no idea about his past. In the end, I suppose, things aren't always what they appear to be.


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[Assistant] The story of Dolly Aesterreich and Otto Sandhuber is a bizarre tale for sure, and one that highlights how little we tend to pay attention to the world around us each day. And while I've done my best to give you a comprehensive tour of their bizarre love affair, I don't want to leave you wondering what happened to Otto in the end.


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[Assistant] The answer, it turns out, might not be as tidy as you would hope. I'll tell you all about it after this short sponsor break.


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[Assistant] Otto Sandhuber went to jail in 1930 on a tip from Herman Shapiro. We know this, and most of us, I think, are glad for it. But it's hard to deny how attractive the story is, and that's always been the case.


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[Assistant] When his arrest went public in 1930, the press had a field day. A phantom lover who lived in the attic. A wealthy couple torn apart by infidelity and hidden secrets. An unsolved murder. It was everything an eager reader wanted to know about. And so articles began to pop up all over.


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[Assistant] One journalist at the time wrote this amazing bit of summarization.


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[Assistant] If you went to see The Terror and The Phantom of the Opera on a town movie bill, came home and read two or three of Edgar Allan Poe's choicer tales of horror,


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[Assistant] Ate three Welsh rarebits and then went to bed. Your resulting nightmare might be something like this amazing drama that Los Angeles police, after eight years of delay, have finally uncovered.


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[Assistant] Otto Sandhuber went on trial and the press began to give him nicknames. The Ghost of the Garrett. The Attic Phantom. One paper even called him the Batman of Los Angeles because he lived in what was essentially a cave in the dark and came out to do his business at night.


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[Assistant] It would be yet another decade before the caped crusader we know today as Batman would appear in a comic book. But Otto Sandhuber was apparently the first.


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[Assistant] And he was a bit of a hero. In his own mind, at least.


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[Assistant] During his grand jury testimony in 1930, Otto told the court about a burglary that had taken place prior to the murder. He had managed to slip out of his hiding place and frightened the thief off by throwing a bottle of ink at the man. After that, he paid better attention to where Fred kept his guns. Just in case.


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[Assistant] In the end, Otto was convicted of manslaughter, but not murder. And since the statute of limitations for manslaughter had passed, he walked away without any jail time.


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[Assistant] After that, Otto Sandhuber disappeared from the pages of history like a ghost vanishing into thin air. Whatever became of him later in life is a mystery.


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[Assistant] The philosophical principle known as Occam's razor states that the best explanations are often the simplest.


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[Assistant] We might have minds that are prone to wild imagination and frightful stories, but most of the time, that noise we hear in the house isn't a ghost or a phantom.


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[Assistant] Perhaps it's just a person living in your attic.


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


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[Assistant] Lore is much more than just a podcast. There's a book series in bookstores around the country and online, and the second season of the Amazon Prime television show was recently released. Check them both out if you want more lore in your life.


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[Assistant] I also make two other podcasts, Erin Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities and Unobscured.


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[Assistant] And I think you'd enjoy both. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic. And you can learn 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] You can also follow the show on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and click that follow button. When you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi.


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[Assistant] In 2014, archaeologists working along Hadrian's Wall in Scotland found something amazing.


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[Assistant] There, at the bottom of a mud-filled pit of garbage, was a perfectly intact 2,000-year-old toilet seat. Historians had already learned a lot about Roman toilets over the years, but this was the first time an actual seat had been discovered.


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[Assistant] It was carefully carved from a single piece of wood and had a shape that would be instantly recognizable to any of us today. That narrow, C-shaped curve that sits between the toilet itself and the person using it. It's become part of the universal language of sanitation, along with pipes and running water. All of which are tools designed to keep us clean.


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[Assistant] The rise of major civilizations has always tended to run parallel to their access to fresh water. The Romans are a prime example of this. Their massive network of 11 aqueducts, which delivered roughly 300 million gallons of water to them each day, allowed them to grow and flourish as a culture.


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[Assistant] Poor conditions led to an outbreak of typhoid fever in Athens around 430 BCE, killing a quarter of the city's population. The Plague of Justinian raged across the Byzantine Empire for almost two centuries, and by the time it was finished in 750 AD, half of Europe was dead.


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[Assistant] Six hundred years later, the plague returned to claim millions more.


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[Assistant] Over the centuries, humans have proven the old adage that cleanliness is next to godliness. That being clean is the best way to stay healthy and fight disease. When we do it right, a society can be transformed, elevating the quality of living to a whole new level. When we fail though, bad things can happen. And sometimes, as history has shown us, those bad things have been intentional.


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[Assistant] The city of Feodosia, once called Caffa, is an ancient seaport on the eastern side of Crimea, the peninsula that juts down from the north into the middle of the Black Sea.


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[Assistant] It was founded nearly 800 years ago by Italian merchants from Genoa, who were given permission to settle there by the Mongol Empire, the biggest kingdom the world had seen up until that moment.


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[Assistant] By the early 1300s, though, relations had soured between them.


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[Assistant] The Mongol rulers felt that the Genoans were a bit deceitful and disloyal. And after years of tension, they sent forces to reclaim Kaffa for themselves. In 1343, a Mongol army laid siege to the port city. But although they outnumbered the Genoans, the fighting was frustratingly slow. And then, the plague arrived.


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[Assistant] And while the Genoans watched from inside their walls, their attackers began to die off. It was one of the first waves of the Black Death, that notorious disease that scientists call Yersinia pestis, to reach the edges of the West.


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[Assistant] Most historians think it had followed the Mongols west from Lake Yizikol, one of the main stopping points on the ancient trade route known as the Silk Road.


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[Assistant] When it finally caught up with the Mongol forces at Caffa in 1346, it decimated them. But in that desperate hour, they tried something new.


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[Assistant] They gathered up hundreds of bodies of plague victims, loaded them into their catapults, and launched them into the city.


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[Assistant] The best contemporary account is a memoir by the Italian Gabriele de Mussi. This is what he wrote in 1348.


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[Assistant] What seemed like mountains of dead were thrown into the city, and the Christians could not hide or flee or escape from them, although they dumped as many of the bodies as they could in the sea.


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[Assistant] And soon, the rotting corpses tainted the air and poisoned the water supply, and the stench was so overwhelming that hardly one in several thousand was in a position to flee.


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[Assistant] Today, historians and microbiologists consider the siege of Kaffa to be one of the earliest examples of biological warfare. It was a shift in the way people thought about disease. And while Kaffa didn't fall to the Mongols that day, the plague was pushed by humans into one of the busiest port cities in the ancient world.


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[Assistant] From there, it would eventually spread west, taking the lives of close to 100 million people over the next five years.


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[Assistant] It might have been one of the first uses of disease as a weapon, but it sadly wouldn't be the last. A few centuries later in North America, it was the Europeans' turn to give it a try.


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[Assistant] In 1758, after four years of conflict known as the French and Indian War, the British came to an agreement with the Native American tribes who lived in what would become Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. The British promised to leave the area if the Native Americans broke ties with their French allies.


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[Assistant] After a number of tribes followed through with their promise, the British changed their minds, provoking a siege of Fort Pitt right there in modern day Pittsburgh. As part of their strategy, the British took items that had been exposed to the smallpox virus and gave them to the Native Americans as Trojan horse gifts.


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[Assistant] The outbreak that followed is said to have killed at least a hundred Native Americans, and left their forces too sick to maintain the siege. But it was worse than that, because like the plague in Caffa, the spread of smallpox reached beyond Fort Pitt, eventually killing Native Americans all across the region.


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[Assistant] In 1940, Japanese forces bombed a city in northern China with fleas infected with smallpox. And while their efforts weren't the most effective, historians believe upwards of 400,000 people were infected in the resulting outbreak.


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[Assistant] The people of Kaffa only saw bodies, but the real weapon lay inside them. As we've learned more about how diseases work, it's opened up new ways to abuse that power. Because the human body will always be at risk of a siege from the outside. Which is why we've gotten very good at defending ourselves. But that's not always been enough.


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[Assistant] That's because our defense hinges on the assumption that the person who is sick knows that they are. That they're aware and responsible and will do anything to protect others. But what if they aren't? What if they were fully aware of the risk they pose to the people around them, but they couldn't care less? The results, as history is about to show us, can be devastating.


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[Assistant] We don't know a lot about her early life, but a few details have stuck around. We know she was born in Cookstown, a poor village in the northern part of Ireland, in 1869, and we know that she boarded a ship at the age of 14 and came to America.


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[Assistant] The 1880s and 1890s were massive years for immigration. That's when my own family arrived at Ellis Island in New York, and I bet a lot of you have a similar story. Mary came for a better life and a chance to start fresh and work towards something bigger. After arriving though, she vanished from the public record.


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[Assistant] Then, 16 years later, she resurfaced. She was 31 years old by then, all grown up and out on her own. Over the years between 1900 and her youth in Ireland, she had become a good dependable cook and had begun offering her services to some of the wealthy families of New York.


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[Assistant] The first job that we know about, the one that she took in 1900, was for a family in a village just up the coast from Staten Island overlooking Long Island Sound.


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[Assistant] For a number of decades, it had been the summer destination for families wanting to get out of New York City, but some also moved there full-time.


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[Assistant] The Mary, that meant a lot of potential employers.


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[Assistant] She settled in with that family sometime in early August of 1900, and for a while, things seemed to be going well. Then, a couple of weeks later,


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[Assistant] A guest arrived to stay with the family, and shortly after he became sick.


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[Assistant] Typhoid fever had been around for thousands of years. It's the disease responsible for the plague of Athens I mentioned earlier, and it's difficult to find a military conflict since then that doesn't see a few cases.


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[Assistant] That's because military camps, for a very long while, were on sanitary places, and typhoid fever is spread through contaminated food and water.


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[Assistant] But science has a way of conquering things over time. And in 1880, they managed to identify the bacteria that caused the illness. In 1896, just four years before the house guest became sick, the first ever typhoid fever vaccine was introduced. But it was rolled out slowly.


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[Assistant] Too slowly, in fact. In 1900, over 35,000 Americans died from the disease, which meant that while people were hopeful, they were also still very nervous.


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[Assistant] So when this guest became ill, Mary packed up and left before she herself could do the same.


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[Assistant] That's okay though, because there were lots of other big families around in equally big houses, and many of them would need a cook.


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[Assistant] Mary managed to escape the illness and find a new job. So life went on.


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[Assistant] In 1901, while working for another family, one of the housekeepers became ill. Again, it was typhoid fever and again, fearing for her own safety, Mary left.


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[Assistant] After that, she caught wind of a job in Maine and traveled north in 1902 to cook for the Drayton family there.


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[Assistant] Two weeks after her arrival though, one of the children became sick.


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[Assistant] Within a month seven of the nine family members were in bed, horribly ill. The culprit?


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[Assistant] After that it was more and more of the same. Mary bounced from house to house, cooking for a while and then leaving out of fear.


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[Assistant] In 1904, while she was working in a house at Sands Point, four of the servants she worked with on a daily basis became sick.


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[Assistant] I have to think Mary was beginning to panic. There was an outbreak of typhoid fever happening. The evidence was all around her, it seemed, and I can't blame her for running away.


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[Assistant] It's also important to point out New York City did seem to be experiencing a sharp uptick in cases of typhoid fever. In 1899, there had been only 2,000 confirmed cases of the disease. But by 1905, that number had doubled to over 4,000.


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[Assistant] Ultimately claiming more than 600 lives that year.


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[Assistant] The risk was real. And Mary, like a lot of other people in New York City, felt threatened and unsafe. So she continued to run.


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[Assistant] Everything Mary experienced reinforced this too. There was an outbreak taking place around her. And I mean that literally. Everywhere she went, people would get sick. Maybe she noticed and forced herself to ignore it. Or perhaps she was honestly clueless and unaware.


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[Assistant] That didn't matter though, because others were about to catch on. And once they did, they wouldn't allow Mary to run any longer.


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[Assistant] Her past, it seems, was catching up with her.


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[Assistant] In the summer of 1906, Mary landed a job at the summer house of a wealthy banker named Charles Henry Warren. Like a lot of her previous employers, the Warrens had rented a large house overlooking the waters of Long Island Sound. It was summer. The ocean was blue. And life must have seemed good and full of joy. For a while, at least.


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[Assistant] In August of that year, six of the people in the house, a mixture of family and staff, all came down with typhoid fever.


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[Assistant] It happened so quickly and infected so many people at once that the owner of the house, a businessman named George Thompson, panicked. He feared that the health department would condemn his profitable rental property and burn it to the ground. So he asked a nearby hospital to send someone out to investigate the cause. The trouble was, they couldn't find a source.


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[Assistant] They were able to map out the spread of the disease through the household, but when they followed it all the way back to the first person to get sick, that was it. They were stuck.


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[Assistant] So Thompson sent a message to the Department of Health, asking for someone more qualified and skilled in this sort of situation.


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[Assistant] What they sent him was a sanitary engineer.


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[Assistant] Now, sanitary engineers had already been around for decades at this point. They were civil engineers tasked with keeping the water supply as clean as possible. But in the late 1880s, an MIT professor named William Sedgwick took the field to a whole new level, setting it on a trajectory that's led to our modern water filtration plants.


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[Assistant] Basically, we have Sedgwick to thank for those clear, sewage-free glasses of water that we drink everyday.


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[Assistant] In the 1890s though, the field was just getting started, and sanitary engineers in New York City were pulling double duty as both scientists in charge of keeping water clean, and also detectives, going out into the city to track down the real sources of new epidemics.


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[Assistant] And that's the sort of person George Soper was and why he was sent to the Warren household. What he discovered there was frightening.


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[Assistant] Each and every one of the people in the house infected with typhoid fever had contracted it from a single source, the food prepared by the cook.


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[Assistant] You see, Soper was a well-read scientist, going so far as to have European medical papers translated so that he could learn from advancements overseas. And one of the new ideas he had encountered was this idea of an asymptomatic carrier. People who are infected with a disease, but show none of the symptoms.


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[Assistant] The trouble was, Mary had already run, so by the time Soper figured out who he needed to talk to, the cook had vanished into the wind.


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[Assistant] Now remember, this was 1906, so tracking people down was a lot harder than it is today. He couldn't just pick up the phone and call her, which is why the detective part of his training was necessary.


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[Assistant] All Soper had to go on was her full name, Mary Mallon. But there was also the agency that had placed her in the Warren household.


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[Assistant] Starting there, managed to get a list of all the places she had worked at prior to 1906, and out of those eight families, seven of them had experienced a typhoid fever outbreak.


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[Assistant] There had even been fatalities, which was one reason Soper wanted to work so fast. Mary Mallon was a walking incubation chamber for typhoid, and she didn't know it.


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[Assistant] Thankfully, the employment agency was also able to give Soper the address of Mary's new job. But by the time he found out about it, one of the children in the house was close to death. So he traveled to the house in hopes of seeing Mary for himself. Obviously, he had a lot to discuss with her.


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[Assistant] You have to understand just how driven George Soper was. He'd managed to track the source of an outbreak to a new type of patient. One that didn't actually look or feel sick. And this was huge for two reasons.


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[Assistant] First, if it was true, it would open up a whole new way of approaching the work of public health officials, potentially bringing an end to the constant outbreaks they fought like firefighters.


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[Assistant] Second though, it meant that if Mary wasn't stopped immediately, things could get very bad, very quickly.


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[Assistant] When he knocked on the door in March of 1907, and Mary actually answered, all of his excitement became uncontainable.


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[Assistant] She invited him into the kitchen and asked what his business was. But rather than explain the situation slowly and clearly, he immediately asked for samples of her urine and feces. Shocked and offended, Mary picked up a rolling pin and chased Soper out the front door.


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[Assistant] George Soper was persistent, though. After tracking down the man she was living with at the time in a room above a tavern, he sat outside the door one evening, waiting for her to return home.


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[Assistant] When she did, he made a better second attempt at his request, but Mary was still put off, and she screamed at him until he was forced to leave.


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[Assistant] With no other choice left, Soper paid a visit to the local Department of Health and told them the situation. On March 20th of 1907,


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[Assistant] They sent an ambulance to Mary's Park Avenue location with a team of police officers, medical interns, and a physician named Dr. Josephine Baker. They had instructions to bring Mary in, whether she wanted to or not. Mary, however, was not about to go quietly.


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[Assistant] I don't know if the police had to knock the front door down or if it was already unlocked. What I do know is when they arrived and Dr. Josephine Baker knocked on the door, Mary opened it up, took one look at the collection of medical professionals on her doorstep, and then slammed it shut. After that, she vanished into the depths of the house.


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[Assistant] It was a high stakes game of hide and seek. One where actual lives were at risk and the pressure was beyond intense. They tore the place apart looking for her. But after the better part of three hours, they came up empty. Mary Mallon had somehow slipped away.


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[Assistant] That's when one of the officers stepped outside the back door. The fenced in yard was tiny and cramped, but he did notice a chair sitting in the grass beside the fence. A kitchen chair.


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[Assistant] He alerted the others and soon they were all climbing over into a neighbor's yard, which is where they found the hem of Mary's dress sticking out of the door of a small shed.


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[Assistant] Dr. Baker would later describe the capture of Mary to George Soper.


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[Assistant] She fought and struggled and cursed, she told him. I told the police to pick her up and put her in the ambulance. This we did. And the ride down to the hospital was a wild one.


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[Assistant] And she should know. Dr. Baker apparently had to sit on Mary the entire way in an effort to keep her from thrashing about. She later told reporters that it was like being in a cage with an angry lion. But they'd captured their suspect. And that was all that mattered.


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[Assistant] Mary was tested for typhoid fever multiple times through urine and stool samples, and almost all of those tests came back positive.


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[Assistant] She was exactly what George Soper had thought she was. An asymptomatic carrier of a deadly disease. To keep the general public safe, she was transported to Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island in the middle of the East River.


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[Assistant] They had explained to her how she carried the disease without knowing it, and how because of that she had infected nearly a dozen families.


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[Assistant] People had died, they told her, but they also thought they knew how to help her. All they had to do was remove her gallbladder, and she would be a safe and normal member of society once again.


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[Assistant] Mary, however, refused. She refused to believe she was sick. She refused to allow them to operate. She refused to admit that she might be responsible for an outbreak of a deadly disease. And so for three years, she lay in a hospital bed, just waiting.


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[Assistant] I imagine that her release from captivity was a complete shock to her.


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[Assistant] In February of 1910, the new commissioner of the health department decided that enough was enough. If Mary would swear to never work as a cook ever again, he would agree to let her go free. Mary pledged to follow his instructions, left the hospital, and vanished.


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[Assistant] She tried her hand at running a boarding house, but it turns out she wasn't very good at that. She missed the good pay that came with being a cook. But Mary Mallon wasn't allowed to do that anymore. So she did the only thing she could think of.


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[Assistant] She changed her name and got a new job as a cook. And she did this for five more years.


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[Assistant] In 1915, our old friend George Soper received a message from Sloan Maternity Hospital in New York City.


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[Assistant] They had 25 patients who'd come down with typhoid fever, and they believed that they'd identified the suspect. A woman who cooked for them. A woman named Mary. When the authorities arrived to take her into custody this time, Mary didn't fight back.


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[Assistant] All told, Mary Mallon spent about 26 years in captivity because of her illness. It was one of those real-life examples of that old Star Trek notion of the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few. However cruel it might have been.


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[Assistant] Mary was a Trojan horse of disease, and during her few years as a cook in the city, she had infected dozens and killed at least three.


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[Assistant] As barbaric as it sounds to us today, the Department of Health at the time felt that if she couldn't be cured, she had to be kept.


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[Assistant] But it wasn't all darkness and isolation for Mary. During her second stay on North Brother Island, the hospital staff there actually gave her a job in the on-site lab. It paid well too.


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[Assistant] They gave her a small cottage outside the main building and every now and then she was even allowed to go into the city to shop and see old friends. They say she read a lot in her spare time.


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[Assistant] Mary had a stroke in 1932. A delivery man found her on the floor of her cottage unable to get up, so she was moved into the hospital and taken care of there. She lived another six years before passing away in November of 1938. She was just 69 years old.


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[Assistant] The threat of infectious disease will always horrify us. The fear is similar to being in a crowded room and someone shouting that there is an invisible killer among the people there.


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[Assistant] Panic and chaos would take over in a heartbeat and every single person would become George Costanza shoving their way to the door without a second thought for the others around them.


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[Assistant] Like that ancient fortress of Caffa, our bodies are under siege every day by invisible forces. And if we ever need proof of that, we needn't look further than Mary Mallon. Dr. Josephine Baker's boss, a man named Walter Bensel, referred to Mary as a living fever factory. She just didn't know it.


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[Assistant] If you dig around the internet enough, you're probably going to read that the staff of the hospital performed an autopsy on Mary's body after she died.


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[Assistant] Those stories say that the medical examiner removed her gallbladder and found it to be teeming with the bacteria that causes typhoid fever. But according to George Soper himself, those stories are lies.


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[Assistant] In an article written a year after her death for the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, Soper explicitly wrote, there was no autopsy. There was barely even a funeral.


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[Assistant] Soper records that only nine people attended her services at St. Luke's and none of them were staffed from the hospital.


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[Assistant] After a tragic lonely life, Mary Mallon received an equally tragic and lonely send-off.


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[Assistant] He doesn't come out and say it, but there's a sadness in between Soper's words. To him she was remarkable.


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[Assistant] For decades after, Mary was used as the literal poster child for infectious disease. They called her Typhoid Mary, and cartoons would usually show her cooking a meal.


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[Assistant] In one of the better known examples, Mary is sprinkling little skulls into a frying pan. Thanks to her, the world became more aware of how careful we need to be about the food we put in our bodies and who prepares it.


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[Assistant] Her story isn't without flaws, though. There are deep ethical questions about the way the entire situation was handled. Somehow, in 1907, the forced captivity and isolation of a human being was presented to the public as a good idea. Mary, though, had a different opinion.


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[Assistant] She claimed it was discrimination. That she was only treated this way because she was Irish and lower class. Before her death in 1938, another 400 asymptomatic patients were discovered in New York City. But none of them were forcibly confined like Mary.


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[Assistant] Judith Walzer-Levitt, a professor of medical history at the University of Wisconsin, presents the best balance I've read on this topic.


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[Assistant] Wherever we position ourselves, she writes, as individuals and as a society, we must come to terms with the fundamental issue that whether we think of them as guilty or innocent, people who seem healthy can indeed carry disease and under some conditions may menace the health of those around them.


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[Assistant] Optimally, we search for responses that are humane to the sufferers and at the same time protect those who are still healthy.


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[Assistant] I'm not saying it's an easy topic to nail down. On one hand, if a contagious plague broke out in our community, any of us would fight for our family's ability to stay away from those who were infected. On the other hand though, all of those patients deserve to be treated humanely.


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[Assistant] At the end of the day, it's all hypothetical for most of us. We don't have to make those choices right now. But Mary lived them each and every day. She fought for her freedom and lost.


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[Assistant] Sure, some people think the authorities did the right thing, but others disagree. What they can all agree on, I suppose, is that people were afraid. And we still are, nearly a century later.


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[Assistant] And with viruses adapting to resist modern antibiotics, and each season of the flu seemingly worse than the last, it's difficult not to ask the same hypothetical questions George Soper and Mary Mallon were forced to face.


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[Assistant] It might be overly optimistic of me, but let's hope we never have to pick sides.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with music by Chad Lawson and research help from Marsat Crockett and Carl Nellis. And if you don't want to miss out on anything new that's happening and you're a social media sort of person, you're welcome to 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.


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[Assistant] In 2001, a team of archaeologists found something that didn't quite seem to make sense.


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[Assistant] They'd been working for 13 years, studying the remains of two ancient roundhouses near the village of Clahallan in the Outer Hebrides, a chain of islands off the northwestern tip of Scotland. And it had been a lot of what you might expect for a settlement dating back to 1300 BCE. Except for what they found beneath those two houses.


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[Assistant] It was a pair of bodies, one man, one woman who'd been there for thousands of years.


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[Assistant] Both skeletons showed evidence that they'd once been preserved in a peat bog.


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[Assistant] Long ago, it seems, the people of this settlement placed their dead in the bog for about a year and then pulled them back out.


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[Assistant] It was enough to preserve the skin and hair, but also leave the bones intact, which the acidic water usually dissolved.


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[Assistant] It took these researchers another eight years to notice something else incredible about these bodies. They weren't the remains of two people.


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[Assistant] Added up between the two graves, there were body parts from six individual humans. Body parts that had been preserved for a reason.


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[Assistant] And when the pieces fell into place No pun intended It painted a grim picture


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[Assistant] And while we have no idea how long the bodies spent among the living before they were finally buried beneath the houses, the bigger question is why? What purpose did these macabre art projects actually serve?


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[Assistant] The most compelling theory to date suggests that it might have been about something any of us could relate to... companionship.


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[Assistant] Keeping the bodies of their ancestors in the house could possibly have offered them peace and comfort, despite how morbid it seems to us today. They were a reminder to the living that they weren't alone. That they were connected to something bigger. And that's a powerful idea.


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[Assistant] Even today, thousands of years after these bodies were assembled, we still fight off isolation. We flock to social media and game nights, to concerts and sporting events, partly out of a need to feel connected to each other. People have always struggled with loneliness, often going to great lengths to fight it.


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[Assistant] The trouble is, however tempting it might be, some lines aren't meant to be crossed.


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[Assistant] It was a fairly simple recipe, but it wasn't one that you're going to find on the Food Network, trust me. The ingredients wouldn't make it out of the writer's room, let alone past the censor's, but they tell us a powerful story.


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[Assistant] All you need is a handful of human bones, some sperm, some blood, and maybe some fragments of skin or hair. Then you just knead it all like bread dough, and then give it time to rise.


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[Assistant] It's a recipe for something the ancient alchemists referred to as the homunculus, an artificial human being. While we tend to think of alchemists as those early fringe scientists who were obsessed with finding the philosopher's stone, which would empower them to turn base metals into gold, the homunculus was their lesser-known pet project.


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[Assistant] We can trace the roots of this idea back to the 16th century Swiss physician who went by the name of Paracelsus. He is credited with being the first person to put the term homunculus to paper, setting off two centuries of story and speculation. By 1775, the folklore had taken on a life of its own, so to speak.