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[Assistant] Just as an aside, can you think of anything more hardcore than that? This was clearly a woman on a mission.


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[Assistant] She climbed into a rowboat one night in January of 1862 and made her way alone across the channel.


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[Assistant] When she arrived on the shore of George's Island, where Fort Warren sat waiting, Melanie hid the boat and then made her way through the dark toward the prison. And then, she whistled a song in hopes that her husband would hear it and recognize her. It turns out, he did. And he whistled back.


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[Assistant] Once she found the window where Andrew was waiting, she managed to slip through. A grown man could never have done it, but she was smaller and braver. Honestly, she traveled hundreds of miles from her safe home in the south just to willingly slip inside a northern prison. All for love.


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[Assistant] What happened next is a bit of an action movie montage. It's that scene in the A-Team where they build the tank out of a bulldozer, some sheet metal, and leaf blowers equipped with artillery shells. The Lineers rallied the other prisoners and together they began digging a tunnel.


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[Assistant] Their goal was to dig all their way to the interior of the prison, overpower the handful of guards that were on duty, and then arm themselves for battle.


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[Assistant] It was a solid plan, and they labored at the tunnel for weeks.


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[Assistant] All the while, the men worked together to hide Melanie from the guards. They each gave her a portion of their food. They kept her safe.


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[Assistant] And they dug. Each and every night. Armed with that little hand axe. They dug.


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[Assistant] Until the night they made a mistake, and one of the guards heard the digging.


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[Assistant] The alarm was instantly raised, the tunnel was discovered, and each of the prisoners was pulled out.


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[Assistant] When the last man was yanked free, Melanie jumped out of the darkness and drew her pistol, pointing it at one of the officers. Before she could pull the trigger though, the man slapped the handgun aside, and it fired as it struck the stone floor.


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[Assistant] There was silence for a moment. No one spoke. Not the guards, not the prisoners. It was as if the shot had silenced them all. And for a moment, there was no sound except for the slowly diminishing ring of the gunshot. And then...


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[Assistant] Andrew Lanier toppled over a red bloody wound in his gut. The pistol had found a target after all.


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[Assistant] Melanie would follow her husband soon enough, it turns out. For her crimes, she was sentenced to death. But before they could execute her, she asked for more appropriate clothing. Something more feminine. Something befitting a lady. All they could find, though, was a large black robe.


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[Assistant] Melanie Lanier, they say, was hanged in that black robe.


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[Assistant] After all she'd been through, after all she'd done, she was finally reunited with her husband.


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[Assistant] Death, as is so often the case, turned out to be the great connector, bringing the lost and separated back together again.


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[Assistant] Of course, it could all be fantasy. The tale of Melanie Lanier is one that defies historical research, only appearing for the first time in a 1944 book about the fort. There's no record of a woman ever being hanged in the prison. No record of a tunnel. Nothing that can definitively prove the legend's accuracy.


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[Assistant] But stories have a way of pointing toward the truth. And while that truth might or might not be the tale of one woman's love for her husband and how she gave everything to set him free, it might be something else. Maybe the story, like so much of folklore, was born out of a need to explain things.


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[Assistant] You see, ever since the 1860s, people on the island have frequently reported odd sightings, shapes that seem to slip past the corner of their eye.


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[Assistant] Police have seen these things there, as have tourists and historians, even researchers from MIT.


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[Assistant] Dark shapes outside the fort, moving against the walls. As if something were trying to find a way inside.


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[Assistant] Shapes, according to the reports, that resemble a figure dressed in a long black robe.


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[Assistant] Admittedly, there are a lot of cities around the United States with histories full of tragedy and suffering. But few have seen so much across such a broad space of time. Boston is unique in its dark, unfortunate beauty.


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[Assistant] Every city has a ghost story, though. Or a collection of them. They're as common as the people who tell them. People who believe, deep down, that something darker is going on under the surface of the place they live.


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[Assistant] Think of it this way. Our houses are really nothing more than walls and floors all contained in a closed space. But that's not what makes a house a home. It's the people inside. The personal touches. The familiar objects. They transform a building into a home.


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[Assistant] One of the things I find fascinating is just how many important figures called the Omni Parker House home, if only for a while.


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[Assistant] The hotel has literally experienced a nearly endless parade of history right through its hallways. Ho Chi Minh worked there for a year in 1912. And before Malcolm X stopped calling himself Malcolm Little, he worked there as a busboy in the 1940s.


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[Assistant] The hotel has had countless famous guests and some that were more infamous than others. John Wilkes Booth stayed there just eight days before he killed Abraham Lincoln. He came to Boston to visit his brother, also an actor, but while he was at the Parker House, he slipped over to a nearby firing range to practice using his pistol.


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[Assistant] The most famous guest at the Parker House, though, might just be Charles Dickens. He'd been to Boston before, way back in 1842. But he was a struggling author back then, and so when he arrived in 1867, things were very different. By then, he was a literary superstar.


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[Assistant] He lived at the Parker House for over five months, beginning in the fall of 1866. While there, he performed his novella, A Christmas Carol, for sell-out crowds. And all that performance meant he needed to practice.


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[Assistant] According to the hotel, Dickens would stand in front of his mirror for hours on end, working through his performance trying to get it just right.


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[Assistant] Two years later, Dickens died back home in England, but some say that Boston, and specifically the Parker, always had a special place in his heart. Perhaps he left a bit of himself there, because that would explain another of the hotel's odd stories.


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[Assistant] The mirror that Dickens rehearsed in front of has long since been moved to another location in the hotel. Out in a public area. And because of that, it requires regular cleaning.


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[Assistant] A few years ago, one of the hotel workmen was walking through the hall when he noticed that the mirror had condensation on it. The sort you might expect if someone had leaned in and breathed really heavily on the glass.


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[Assistant] So he stopped and pulled out a cloth from his pocket and then proceeded to clean the mirror.


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[Assistant] When he was done, he turned around and looked to see if anyone was nearby. Someone who might have done it. But the hallway was empty.


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[Assistant] When he turned back to the mirror, the fog had returned.


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[Assistant] He cleaned it a second time, and then watched in horror, as it appeared once more, just a few inches from the first spot.


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[Assistant] It was as if someone were standing at the mirror with him, breathing on the glass. But there was no one else there. As you might imagine.


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[Assistant] The man refused to ever clean the mirror again.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research help from Marsette Crockett.


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


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[Assistant] In southeastern Switzerland, right at the little corner where France and Italy butt up against it, there's a city on Lake Geneva called Lausanne. And for a very long time, they've been maintaining a rare, ancient tradition.


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[Assistant] Yes, the Olympic Committee headquarters are there, but that's not the tradition I'm talking about. No, this one happens more regularly. Daily, in fact. You see, every night, beginning at 10pm, a lone figure wearing a wide, black hat climbs the 153 stone steps that lead up to the top of the cathedral.


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[Assistant] Looks out on the city that surrounds it, and then calls out the hour.


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[Assistant] And they've been doing it every night for 616 years. It's a relic of another era, an artifact that has somehow held on a bit of the middle ages alive and well in our modern world.


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[Assistant] Once, communities all over Europe used to have a night watchman, but there are only about 60 left today across nine countries.


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[Assistant] Still, places like Lausanne have kept at it. In fact, in August of 2020, the torch was passed to a new generation, 27-year-old Cassandra Berdoz. And yes, she is the first woman to hold the role in over six centuries.


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[Assistant] As I said before, it's an ancient tradition. The Night Watchmen was originally tasked with protecting their city by watching out for fires, crime, bad weather, or other unexpected dangers. Today though, they mostly announce the time. All their other roles have been usurped by modern technology.


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[Assistant] And because it's still here, we can see how much our world has changed. How the relative safety we enjoy today would have seemed impossible just a few centuries before. How a lack of systems and technology left people feeling adrift in a sea of fear and danger.


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[Assistant] Context is everything. The setting and players and rules of a story are what give it momentum so that the action can drive home. So, to understand the journey I want to take you on, we need to first understand the road. And I mean that literally.


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[Assistant] Obviously most of us have a rough understanding that the city of London is an ancient one. But for today's purposes we just need to go back about two centuries, to the early parts of the 1800s. And there we would find an ancient street, heading east from London.


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[Assistant] It was once, many centuries ago, known as the road that passed by the red cliffs of the Thames, but over time that red cliff highway became the Ratcliffe Highway. And now, on most maps and tongues, it's just the highway.


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[Assistant] But in 1811, it was also something else. It was a major artery through the poorest part of the city, and a hotbed of theft, assault, and general danger for those passing along it.


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[Assistant] But of course, it was also home to thousands, as well as a business center. Many of those shops had living quarters attached to them, allowing people to work at the street level and then go eat and sleep out back or upstairs.


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[Assistant] People worked insanely long hours too, so many businesses stayed open late into the night. And all of that gave the area around the highway the feel of a buzzing hive.


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[Assistant] But all of that fell apart on the night of December 7th of 1811.


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[Assistant] That evening around 1150 PM, local business owner Timothy Maher sent his servant girl Margaret Jewel out for some bread and oysters. While she was gone, Timothy and his apprentice James Gowan closed up the shop, while his wife Celia took care of their three-month-old son, Timothy Jr.


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[Assistant] When Margaret returned half an hour later, the door was locked and no one would answer her knocks and shouts. She thought she heard movement inside though, so she just sat on the front steps and waited for someone to let her in. About 30 minutes later, one of the parish night watchmen walked by, saw her, and asked what the problem was.


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[Assistant] After listening, this man, George Olney, did his own knocking, which caught the attention of one of the neighbors. And this neighbor man was glad to see the watchman because less than an hour before, he swore he heard some strange noises from inside the Mars shop.


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[Assistant] After confirming with the night watchman, the neighbor agreed to try entering the house from the back, and because that door was mysteriously unlocked, he slipped inside.


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[Assistant] What he found was a charnel house beyond comprehension. The body of apprentice James Gowan lay in a pool of blood, his head beaten so severely that there was no shape to it anymore.


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[Assistant] Celia Mar's body was in a similar state, and even the baby had been killed. And downstairs in the shop, Timothy was found in a heap, also brutally murdered.


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[Assistant] Urgency swept over everyone there. The watchman called for the authorities and an officer from the Thames Division took control of the scene. But a search of the shop only turned up more questions. Nothing had been stolen as far as anyone could tell. Even Timothy Marr's pockets had been ignored, still containing money.


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[Assistant] But what they did find were the murder weapons, a bloody chisel on the floor of the shop, and a shipwright's maul, a sort of small sledgehammer that was discovered in the kitchen, propped up and covered in fragments of bloody hair and fractured bone.


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[Assistant] Now, enough of us have seen an episode or two of CSI to know what should happen next.


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[Assistant] But in 1811, that just wasn't the way things worked. The bodies and evidence were simply left where they were found until an inquest could be held, usually in the area at a local pub. And as you might imagine, it took time to gather a jury and staff that inquest.


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[Assistant] By the 11th of December, a full three days after the murder, the bodies and blood were all still there. And if you think people are obsessed with true crime stories today, you haven't experienced Georgian England.


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[Assistant] People were printing booklets and flyers, and word was spreading fast, often publishing the stories in pieces spanning multiple episodes. Each day those corpses were left uncollected, locals and curious outsiders were parading past the house to catch a glimpse, sometimes even walking inside for a better look. Where were the police?


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[Assistant] Well, the simple answer is that they didn't really exist. Yes, there were a handful of paid officers in each district, but most of the safeguarding was performed by unpaid voluntary patrols. People policed themselves, mostly out of a fear of what a paid armed police force might mean for their freedom.


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[Assistant] But as crime grew, so too did their desperation.


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[Assistant] Which is why no killer had been caught by the time the Mars were buried on December 15th, eight whole days after their death.


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[Assistant] It was a funeral that drew an enormous crowd, and all of them wanted answers.


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[Assistant] But they were going to have to wait for that, because something even more pressing was about to occupy the authorities' time. Another murder.


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[Assistant] People learned of the second murder from the naked man who climbed out of the upstairs window of a pub down a rope made of bedsheets. And while that sounds like the beginning of a racy drama about a love affair, nothing could be further from the truth.


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[Assistant] The naked man was John Turner, a carpenter who was staying in the lodging room at the pub, a place called the King's Arms. And as he climbed down that makeshift ladder, he was shouting at the top of his lungs, they are murdering the people in the house. The people, of course, were the Williamsons.


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[Assistant] John Williamson was an elderly man, although described as large and powerful even in his old age.


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[Assistant] Both he and his wife Elizabeth were well-loved, and their pub, The King's Arms, was described as a respectable establishment. It was where the Williamsons lived, along with their 14-year-old granddaughter and another employee named Bridget Anna Harrington.


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[Assistant] What John Turner witnessed was horrific. He had been out late that night and returned to his room at the pub around 11pm. But just as he was getting into bed, naked, I suppose, he heard Bridget shout from the taproom, we shall all be murdered, and so he crept downstairs to have a look.


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[Assistant] What he found was an enormous man stooped over the body of Mrs. Williamson, slicing her throat with a knife.


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[Assistant] Turner claimed that he bolted back upstairs and immediately crafted that bedsheet rope, shouting as he climbed out the window. By the time help arrived, the deed had been done. Everyone in the house was dead.


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[Assistant] As you can imagine, the authorities were frustrated. Two sets of murders in two weeks was just too much to deal with. They had enough leads to arrest some suspects but almost all of them were brought in on nothing more than suspicion. No solid evidence to actually tie them to the crime.


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[Assistant] Now, if you've heard of this case before, you're probably aware that I'm giving only the broad strokes. Honestly, if I were to go deep into this story, it would take all day. But the important path forward is the one that began three days later, on December 22nd. Because that's the day the authorities believed that they had captured their man.


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[Assistant] His name was John Williams, and he had a lot working against him. He was a sailor, so theoretically familiar with a shipwright's maul. He was known to have a temper, something that often got him into fights with people. And he was seen drinking at the king's arms the night of the murder.


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[Assistant] That said, he also did not fit the description of the large man seen inside the king's arms. In fact, he was a lot smaller. And his initials didn't match the ones carved into the maul that had killed Mars.


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[Assistant] But after dozens of suspects that all managed to walk free thanks to solid alibis, John Williams found himself as a sort of last man standing, which wasn't a good position to be in. And of course Williams was questioned and denied everything.


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[Assistant] Yes, he drank at the king's arms, but so did a lot of sailors. The pubs along the highway were all incredibly close to the docks, and there were probably just as many foreign and domestic sailors on those side streets as there were local residents.


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[Assistant] But while the inquest gathered evidence and discussed their options, he was placed in the prison at Cold Bath Fields in central London.


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[Assistant] There was more debates about the mall used in the Marr murder. There was more discussion about witness testimony, such as William's laundry woman who claimed that she had recently washed a shirt of his with blood on the collar. But above all,


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[Assistant] They needed a suspect, someone to blame, and someone whose conviction would deliver hope and peace to a very frightened neighborhood. So Williams was held and everyone waited.


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[Assistant] Perhaps with more testimony, the truth would come to light.


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[Assistant] They said he was in good spirits. John Williams had a lot to be afraid of, considering he was sitting in a prison cell on suspicion of being the killer of two families, some of the most gruesome murders in recent memory.


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[Assistant] It's fair to say that the people of the East End wouldn't see anything like it again for another 70 years, when a guy named Jack would rip apart their sense of peace.


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[Assistant] What John Williams did not know was that the more testimony the inquest heard, the less certain they felt about his connection to the killings. And he was scheduled to make another appearance in court on December 27th, where there was a good chance he'd toss off those final chains of suspicion and walk free. Except he never made it.


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[Assistant] On the morning of that appearance a police officer went to fetch Williams and escort him to the courthouse. But when he got there Williams was dead.


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[Assistant] All signs pointed to suicide, at least as far as the physical evidence went. But just about everyone there, prisoners and guards alike, made it clear that Williams was a hopeful man, and it seemed odd that he would do something that many viewed as an act of desperation.


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[Assistant] Now, people have been studying this case for two centuries, so I won't claim to be an expert. But like I said earlier, this is a complex story that I've boiled down to a dark reduction and cut straight to the heart of it. And one of the elements you might want to read more about are the two men that Williams was known to hang out with.


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[Assistant] One of whom had a grudge with Timothy Marr and the other who was a very large man.


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[Assistant] Because of that, some people believe these two men were the true killers, and John Williams was their final loose end. It's easy to imagine them staging the suicide to cut that final tie between themselves and the murders. And what happened next only confirms that the investigators took the bait.


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[Assistant] John Williams' apparent death by suicide was interpreted by the court as an admission of guilt. No, he had never been formally charged with the crime, but they saw this as an easy answer to a frustrating situation.


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[Assistant] Because in the early 19th century, the folks in England still followed an ancient practice when it came to those who took their own lives. You see, they believed that people who did that had committed a crime against themselves and God, and therefore deserved a very public humiliation and a troublesome burial.


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[Assistant] There's a lot of folklore out there about crossroads, often centering on things like summoning the devil for some sort of a deal, or that crossroads were the location where one might see fairies or trolls or some other supernatural creature. But running beneath all of that was an older undercurrent. The notion that crossroads, by their very nature, confused spirits.


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[Assistant] It was rooted in this idea that spirits could easily get lost due to all the options that were available at a crossroads. Imagine standing at an intersection of two or three roads, but having no signs to tell you where to go. Apparently that disorienting situation was even worse for the spirits of the dead, and they risked never reaching the afterlife.


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[Assistant] So on New Year's Eve of 1811, the magistrates involved in the Marr and Williamson murders had the corpse of John Williams strapped to the surface of a wideboard and propped it up in the back of a horse-drawn cart so that it was clearly visible.


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[Assistant] The cart was then driven down Ratcliffe Highway, first to the Mars Linen Shop, then to the King's Arms Pub, making stops at each for roughly 10 minutes.


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[Assistant] It's recorded that when the horse stumbled up to the Mars place, William's head rolled to the side facing away from the shop, as if the corpse didn't want to look. One of the officials who were present had to reach over and turn the head to face it.


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[Assistant] After all of those pit stops amidst hundreds of onlookers, the cart headed north to the intersection of what is now today Cable Street and Cannon Street Road. William's body was untied, a shallow grave was dug, and once he was tossed in,


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[Assistant] A steak was driven straight through his heart to keep his spirit trapped and confused.


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[Assistant] Right or wrong, the community felt like justice had been served. They believed that the threat that had clouded over them had finally been chased away. And they were convinced that, even in death, the killer could no longer haunt them.


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[Assistant] Criminal investigation is a complex puzzle. Today that puzzle is a bit easier, thanks to modern forensic tools and better methods for processing a crime scene.


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[Assistant] But two centuries ago, that puzzle must have felt like a steep challenge.


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[Assistant] Certainly in the case of the murders that shook the area around the Ratcliffe Highway, that was true. And because the full case was a tangled web of witness testimony, tips from locals, and shadowy figures seen from a distance, it's easy to see how confused and frustrated everyone could have become. Both the authorities and the larger community.


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[Assistant] The most obvious outcome was a tragedy, no matter how you interpret it. If innocent, John Williams represents the hopelessness of wrongful conviction and the damage that can be done when someone gets caught up in the wheels of the justice system.


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[Assistant] And if truly guilty, he dodged responsibility for his actions. No matter where you come down in this story, there's no question it delivers a lot of pain and a lot of loss.


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[Assistant] But there were some good things to come out of the events of 1811. Those two mass murders tested the limits of their current police methods, and the thin patches and gaps were put on full display.


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[Assistant] People after that started to call for reform in law enforcement. They warmed up to the idea of a full-time armed police force. Someone to keep them safe the next time a killer prowled their streets.


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[Assistant] For a while, they'd have to rely on that weird mixture of volunteer parish watchmen, a handful of paid officers,


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[Assistant] And private police-for-hire companies like the Bow Street Runners. A crew, incidentally, that dressed in blue pants, blue jacket, black boots, and black hats. Possibly giving inspiration for the police uniforms of later generations.


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[Assistant] Clearly, the way people handled crime was, if you'll pardon the pun, at a crossroad. But by 1839, the people of London had the Metropolitan Police. Not perfect, for sure, if history is any indication, but better.


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[Assistant] And John Williams? Well his body remained staked and hidden underneath the dirt at the corner of that old crossroad for a very long time. In 1886 though, the same year Coca-Cola was first sold to thirsty customers and the Statue of Liberty was completed in New York Harbor,


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[Assistant] A gas company dug up the intersection to lay some new pipe.


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[Assistant] With this being the late 1800s, there were fewer rules for handling a discovery like that, so the man who owned the pub right there at the corner, a place called the Crown and Dolphin, took the skull and set it up at his bar, where it greeted customers for years.


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[Assistant] Today, no one knows for sure where it's gone, which feels like it was part of the script all along. After all, the people of the East End had wanted to make sure he was lost. And in a lot of ways, it seems they got their wish.


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[Assistant] Crimes like the Ratcliffe Highway murders were handled in a much different way than modern killings. Clearly, time has had quite an impact on the way we investigate and put suspects on trial.


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[Assistant] But one case from just a few years before gives us an example of the opposite in action, where a criminal case and not time itself brought about a significant change to the system. And it doesn't help that it was filled with ghosts and murder and a whole lot of folklore.


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[Assistant] Stick around through this brief sponsor break, and I'll tell you all about it.


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[Assistant] In November of 1803, a ghost began to haunt the neighborhood. There were multiple sightings, and in a number of instances, the ghost even attacked people. People were upset, and they started telling stories. And stories, of course, can often fan the flames, rather than put them out.


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[Assistant] As usual, there was an origin story connected to the ghost. Locals said that it was the wandering spirit of a man who had taken his own life a year before. But contrary to typical burial practices in that situation, this man was interred on church grounds, which, according to the legend, made the spirit restless, and thus the local hauntings.


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[Assistant] Honestly, all this stuff makes a lot more sense if you just suspend your disbelief. But hey, that's folklore for you, right?


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[Assistant] The reports were frightening, too. Multiple people claimed that the ghost had appeared to them and tried to choke them to death. In two cases, those who were attacked lived long enough to go home and tell others what they'd seen, only to die later from fright, as one might say.


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[Assistant] When a couple of local brewery employees stumbled home one evening, they made the not-so-wise choice to take a shortcut through the churchyard. It was dark out, of course, and according to their later report, when they passed one of the gravestones, a hand reached out and grabbed one of them by the neck.


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[Assistant] The friend tried to intervene, but claimed that he was confused by the powers of the ghost. The last thing he felt was something soft. Like a great coat, he told the police.


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[Assistant] So that was life for a while in this western London neighborhood. Folks would lock their doors, stay off the streets at night, and generally just walk around as if they were waiting for the bad guy from a Scooby-Doo cartoon to jump out of the shadows. And that's what seemed to happen on the night of December 29th.


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[Assistant] William Gerdler was a night watchman, patrolling the neighborhood on his usual route. But of course, he was walking the streets that night with a bit of adrenaline in his blood, thanks to all the terrifying stories. So when he saw the ghostly form of a figure in white appear down the lane, he shouted and chased after it. And the ghost? Well, it ran.


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[Assistant] Gerdler lost sight of his quarry a few minutes later but came upon a young man named Francis Smith who was also out hunting for the ghost himself with a shotgun in his hand. They chatted briefly, discussed the ghost, and then parted company. Which is why it was Smith and not Gerdler who made the next sighting around 11pm.


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[Assistant] The ghost, it seems, was a man named Thomas Millwood. His occupation? A bricklayer. Which meant that his normal uniform was a pair of pale trousers, white waistcoat, and an apron, also white. Which made sense. The man worked with white dust all day long, so why wear anything else, right?


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[Assistant] But it seems Francis Smith didn't understand that, or at least didn't look close enough to figure it out before firing his weapon. As a result, Thomas Millwood was dead. He wasn't a ghost before, but now, well, you get the idea.


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[Assistant] Smith, of course, went to court over the banner. He was charged with willful murder, but it was naturally a tricky situation. Smith had believed that he was defending the safety of his neighborhood, but he was also fully aware and responsible for his surroundings. In the end, the court found him guilty.


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[Assistant] After being sentenced to death by hanging, the king stepped in and changed the punishment to just a year of hard labor. Oh, and as a result of that very public trial, the actual ghost announced himself to one and all. He, too, was a living, breathing person. He was just an old shoemaker. Out for a bit of fun.


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


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


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[Assistant] When Joseph Ash opened his new Ash building in 1901, it was hailed as a modern marvel. It was a massive ten-story block of stone and iron, and it was said to be every bit as solid as it looked. But it was inside the building that the true breakthroughs could be found.


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[Assistant] It had freight elevators, wide open floors, and fire exits. In fact, Joseph Ash was so proud of his modern building that he called it fireproof. And for a city in desperate need of more factory space for its massive garment making industry, it was perfect.


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[Assistant] So business partners Max Blanc and Isaac Harris signed a lease for the 8th floor.


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[Assistant] And business was good. Soon they expanded upward, taking over the top three stories of building. Their shop, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, became the premier manufacturer of the most popular type of shirt in the country. But they also became sloppy.


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[Assistant] On March 25th of 1911, a fire broke out in a pile of scrap cloth. The building might have been billed as fireproof, but the conditions inside were dry, flammable, and overcrowded. Perfect for a horrible tragedy. Less than an hour later, it was over. Some had burned to death.


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[Assistant] Others had fallen ten stories to escape the flames.


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[Assistant] Today the building is part of the NYU campus, but its tragic past hasn't completely evaporated. For years, witnesses have reported the telltale scent of smoke throughout the halls. Others have heard voices. Sometimes it's just a faint whisper, while other times it's a frightening cry for help.


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[Assistant] Most people, though, just sense an overwhelming air of darkness.


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[Assistant] Whether it's the tragic past of countless historic buildings, or the personal darkness of the people who lived inside them, New York, it seems, is a city overpopulated by ghosts. And if you know where to look, the stories they tell believe you feeling haunted.


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[Assistant] New York City is a monster. There's no better way to say it. It's so large and unwieldy that it operates more like a country than a metropolis. Yes, it's beautiful. It's full of life and culture and a depth of social awareness that few other cities in the world can match.


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[Assistant] But it's also a beast. In a lot of ways, New York City is like an Olympic athlete. Mortal like us, yes. But there's very little about it that we'd consider average. And it's old, too.


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[Assistant] Europeans have been in the area for over 400 years, a century and a half longer than America has been a country. It's played host to everything from rebellion and war to epidemics and terrorism. Then all of that death and violence leaves a veneer of darkness on New York, like soot from a wildfire.


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[Assistant] The trouble with a city so large, though, is that it's easy to live inside it and be completely unaware of the stories you're standing right on top of.


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[Assistant] Take Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. It was established in 1827 as a public space, kicking off construction of all those beautiful things that we see there today. The arch, the fountain, all those amazing flowers and trees, and 20,000 dead bodies.


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[Assistant] That's because prior to being a public space, Washington Square was a potter's field, a graveyard for the poor and unidentified. Then, in the early 19th century, as yellow fever rolled across the city like a tidal wave, thousands of victims were added to the burial ground there.


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[Assistant] The graves are shallow, sometimes just a foot or two below the surface. And because of the sheer number of them all, they've never been removed.


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[Assistant] Just three blocks north of the Washington Arch, there's an innocent looking brownstone with a story of its own.


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[Assistant] You see, sometimes we bury the dead and they stay there, in the ground below our feet.


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[Assistant] Other times, they refused to go away, becoming dark roommates in an already overcrowded city. That was the experience of actress Jan Bryant Bartel, who moved into 14 West 10th Street way back in 1957.


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[Assistant] For 16 years, Bartel lived in the building while suffering through what she claimed was intense paranormal activity.


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[Assistant] Shadows that moved, sounds that echoed from empty rooms, even objects that levitated. She claimed it was all a result of the dozens of deaths that had occurred in the building since the 1850s, and she wasn't alone in that theory.


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[Assistant] Decades earlier, in the 1930s, a woman and her mother both reported seeing a white-haired man in a white suit. He turned to the women and reportedly spoke to them.


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[Assistant] My name is Clemens, he said. And I has a problem here, I gotta settle. And then he vanished.


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[Assistant] It turns out that the man looked a lot like Mark Twain, who had lived there for a year in 1901. Twain's real name, of course, was Samuel Clemens.


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[Assistant] All of this was too much for Bartel, though, who committed suicide in 1973, just before publishing a book of her experiences there. Today, many New Yorkers refer to the Old Brownstone as the House of Death.


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[Assistant] But death happens all over the city. It always has, but more often than not, the reason is more human than supernatural. In fact, one of the first highly public murder trials in New York City happened way back in 1799, although it still haunts the area to this day.


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[Assistant] That was the year a 21-year-old woman named Elma Sands was killed and dumped into a well on Spring Street in Manhattan.


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[Assistant] Her killer, according to the prosecution, was her wealthy fiance, Levi Weeks. Now, while much of the witness testimony and evidence pointed to Weeks as the true killer, his wealth brought a team of powerful attorneys to the courtroom. Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton.


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[Assistant] Oh, and if any of that sounds even the least bit familiar to you, go ahead and assume you're the smartest in the room.


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[Assistant] Weeks got off the hook, but Elma Sands has apparently refused to slip away. The well where her body was found was covered by a building back in the 1820s and for decades played host to a restaurant.


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[Assistant] Reports of unusual activity in the building have been non-stop ever since, including plates and silverware that have been seen floating through the air. Some have even claimed to see the ghost of Elma herself crawling out of the well, now located in the basement.


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[Assistant] There's also the small matter of the curse. According to legend, as Burr and Hamilton were exiting the courtroom after their victory, Alma Sands' cousin, Catherine Ring, blocked their path and shouted a prediction to the room.


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[Assistant] If you die a natural death, she cried, I will think there is no justice in heaven. And then she pointed at Hamilton, who would be killed just four years later by Burr.


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[Assistant] But you don't have to take part in a murder trial to attract the attention of the dead. In fact, if you believe the stories, life is full of moments with the potential to leave us feeling haunted.


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[Assistant] And few locations in New York can compare to one historic neighborhood near Prospect Park.


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[Assistant] But the story that lies dormant beneath the ground there is far worse than the shallow graveyard or body in the well. It's a tale of secret rooms, violent politics, and a love that refused to die.


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[Assistant] The area of Brooklyn known today as Flatbush began life as a Dutch colony in 1651.


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[Assistant] The name comes from the original appearance of the landscape, which was described as a flat, wooded plain. It's difficult to imagine, given the urban sprawl of modern New York, but for a while, Flatbush was a wide open collection of forests and farms.


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[Assistant] Roughly a century later though, the city was under British rule and that meant that the old Dutch architecture was slowly giving way to English manors. And one of those newer homes was built in 1749 by an Englishman by the name of Lane.


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[Assistant] He came from a wealthy family that didn't care for his drunken parties and knew lower class wife, so New York became his home in exile.


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[Assistant] Life didn't change much for him in the colonies, though. The parties continued unchecked and his grand manor, which he called Melrose Hall, became the centerpiece of local gossip.


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[Assistant] And then, some years later, he stepped outside during one of his celebrations and never returned.


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[Assistant] As far as I can tell, no one knows what happened to Mr. Lane after that.


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[Assistant] But Melrose Hall remained, and from the descriptions that survive, it was quite the home.


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[Assistant] It was two and a half stories tall, with a gabled roof that created numerous small spaces, something Lane had apparently taken advantage of.


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[Assistant] The right side wing of the house held the dining room and library, while the left wing contained a large banquet hall. But it wasn't this collection of traditional rooms that gave the house its flavor.


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[Assistant] No, the true personality came from its hidden parts.


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[Assistant] According to one writer in 1888, the fireplace in the banquet hall was flanked by two closets, and it was inside one of them that a secret door could be found. It only unlocked from the outside, but once unlocked it revealed a narrow staircase that led to a hidden bedroom above the hall.


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[Assistant] Across the house in the dining room, another secret passage was hidden behind a piece of furniture.


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[Assistant] One writer claims that the whole thing swung outward like a door, and that walking through it would take you into the slave quarters. And as if that weren't enough, the home even had a small vaulted dungeon beneath the main house.


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[Assistant] At the same time, about 15 miles to the south, in what is now Wall Street, a man named William Axtell was growing restless. He was a merchant who'd spend most of his life in Jamaica as part of the business, but had moved to New York in the 1750s.


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[Assistant] But the city was expanding around him, and it was time to find more space and solitude.


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[Assistant] So when a home is textured and unique as Melrose Hall suddenly became available for purchase, Axtell didn't blink.


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[Assistant] But before he and his family arrived to move in, he sent someone ahead of them. His mistress, Isabelle.


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[Assistant] Now, history is a bit foggy on who Isabelle really was. Some say she was his wife's sister, while others claim she was a woman he met in Jamaica.


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[Assistant] She was described as tall and dark, with long black hair and a kind, beautiful smile. And when she showed up at the house ahead of Axtell and his wife, it was Miranda, one of the Axtell's most trusted slaves, who welcomed Isabelle inside and guided her to the secret room above the banquet hall.


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[Assistant] Miranda would, in fact, become Isabelle's lifeline. Since she couldn't open the door in the closet from her side, it was up to Miranda to bring her food and care for her needs. It was also a responsibility that Miranda kept entirely to herself, at the request of Axtell.


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[Assistant] Once the family had moved in, the lovers fell into a new clandestine routine.


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[Assistant] Once a week at midnight, William would creep downstairs to the banquet hall and sit by the fire.


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[Assistant] All of this went on for years. By day, Axtell ran his merchant business and worked for the English Crown as a member of the Governor's Council. At night, though, he secretly met with his mistress. It wasn't honest, but you could certainly call him busy, I suppose.


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[Assistant] But life was about to change dramatically in Melrose Hall. Those midnight trysts would continue, of course. But daily life for William Axtell was about to slip into chaos and danger. You see, war had arrived. Not in some far off land, or even a few miles away.


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[Assistant] All of this was bad news for William Axtell. He was an English loyalist who stood to lose everything, his power, money, land, all of it, if the Americans somehow managed to succeed. And in 1776, the Battle of Brooklyn showed just how close to home this new war for independence could get.


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[Assistant] As a member of the Governor's Council, he had a duty to perform. So it was common for rebel leaders to be captured and transferred to his personal dungeon below Melrose Hall.


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[Assistant] But it wasn't enough to hide away from the watchful eye of the Rebels. Extell was being pushed toward action by the King.


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[Assistant] He was told to gather 500 men and get ready to march.


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[Assistant] It wasn't clear if he'd be gone for weeks or months, but he would be out of the house and away from his lover, Isabelle. And that's when a problem occurred to him.


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[Assistant] Miranda, the slave woman who cared for Isabelle and kept their secret from the rest of the household, was getting along in years.


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[Assistant] In fact, she was old enough that Axtell feared she might be close to death. Which, as we all know, would be a very bad thing for Isabelle. Because without Axtell around, Miranda was the only access that Isabelle had to food and water. That secret door in the closet only opened from Miranda's side. And if she were to die, well, that hidden bedroom would slowly transform. First into a prison, then into a tomb.


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[Assistant] So the night before his departure, Axtell went to the banquet hall at their appointed time, and waited for Miranda to open the door and lead Isabelle to his side. When she arrived, he made his case.


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[Assistant] Leave, he told her. Run away and find safety someplace else.


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[Assistant] He even handed her a bag of gold and told her to use it to take care of herself while he was gone.


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[Assistant] But Isabelle didn't take the news well. She felt as though William were trying to abandon her. That he was essentially breaking up with her and using his impending military tour as an excuse. She screamed and threw the coins back at him and ranted about his motives. And then ran back into the secret staircase inside the open closet, closed the door, and vanished from sight.


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[Assistant] They say that he was gone for a full year. Far longer than he'd expected.


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[Assistant] In his absence, the very thing that he feared might happen did. Miranda, the only keeper of his secret, became sick and died.


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[Assistant] Legend says that on her deathbed she tried to tell the others about Isabelle, but everyone thought it was just the madness of a dying woman.


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[Assistant] His wife welcomed him home. His adopted niece, Eliza Shipton, did the same. Then they led him to the banquet hall, where a gathering of friends waited for him. The moment he walked through that door, the party began.


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[Assistant] But it wasn't all laughter and joy. Axtell kept glancing at the closet door beside the fireplace. He longed to hold Isabelle, to kiss her and hear her voice. But something was troubling him.


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[Assistant] He had seen no sign of Miranda since arriving at the house.


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[Assistant] The legend tells us that Axtell got up from his seat at one point in the night and ran across the house to the slave's quarters. There, he was greeted with the terrifying news that Miranda had passed away weeks before. And that's when panic fully gripped his heart.


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[Assistant] He staggered back into the banquet hall and wandered slowly through the gathering of people.


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[Assistant] They were laughing and singing and talking joyfully, but he couldn't hear it anymore.


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[Assistant] All he could think about was Isabelle and that secret room that had become her prison. And that's when the impossible happened.


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[Assistant] Every single candle in the room went out.


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[Assistant] At first, everything was dark, but then a subtle glow began to illuminate the edges of the room. One newspaper from 1886 described it as a sickly glowworm light. Then, the sounds began.


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[Assistant] They were soft at first, low and distant, as if they were coming from a great distance. Then, just as they exploded in volume, the closet burst open and the secret door swung outward.


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[Assistant] That 1886 article also described the woman who stepped out as ashen pale, each vein strongly defined on the emaciated features, her long black hair hung drooping over her shoulders to the floor, and she seemed clad in airy gossamer.


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[Assistant] She didn't walk so much as glide and she headed straight toward William Axtell. The room was silent.


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[Assistant] Every eye was on this strange new visitor. But maybe they were frightened. Perhaps they were waiting to see if this macabre performance would end in applause. Or maybe they were under some sort of spell.


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[Assistant] Whatever the reason, not a single sound could be heard as the pale shape came to a stop just inches from their host. The woman lifted her hand, a single finger extended, and aimed it at Axtell's face.


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[Assistant] And then she opened her mouth and uttered a single, chilling word. Betrayer, she said. And then the glow vanished, leaving them all in pitch darkness.


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[Assistant] When candles were brought in and lit, the guests found no sign of the pale woman in the room. But they did see something else.


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[Assistant] Extell was sprawled out on the floor, eyes closed and body motionless.


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[Assistant] He was moved to his bedroom almost immediately, and a doctor was called to the house. But the legend tells us it was too little, too late. Colonel William Axtell, they say, died that very night.


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[Assistant] In places as old and sprawling as New York City, history is bound to get buried beneath the bustle of everyday life.


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[Assistant] The tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory evolved into a watershed moment for labor reform and working conditions. The burial vaults and shallow graves of Washington Park have given way to beauty and art and culture that practically pulses with life.


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[Assistant] History slips away. It fades into the backs of our minds, much the same way it sinks beneath our feet.


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[Assistant] Humans are good at a lot of things, but forgetting is one of our crowning achievements.


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[Assistant] But there are always clues, if you know where to look for them.


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[Assistant] Colonel William Axtell was a real person. In fact, if you visit the Met today, you can see him. There's a painting of him hanging in Gallery 747. He commissioned it in the 1750s, just before moving into Melrose Hall, and it hung there for years.


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[Assistant] But as it turns out, William Axtell didn't die that night in the banquet hall of his home.


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[Assistant] The tides of war turned against the British, and by 1782, Axtell had packed up his family and returned to England.


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[Assistant] He died there in 1795, and there were no reports of ghosts at his deathbed. Stories can be tricky, it seems. Sometimes they're rooted in fantasy, in events that never happened at all.


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[Assistant] Other times they sprout from truth like a sapling and take on a shape and a life of their own. Stories grow. They evolve and shift with the passing of time.


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[Assistant] The truth is always there. Even if it's buried beneath centuries of hearsay.


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[Assistant] Melrose Hall passed from hand to hand over the years that followed.


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[Assistant] In a bit of irony, the first couple to take ownership after the Axtells left was their own adopted niece, Elizabeth Shipton, and her new husband, an American military officer named Aquila Giles.


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[Assistant] In 1880, the house was purchased by Dr. Homer Bartlett and he felt it was time for some changes. An entire neighborhood had grown up around the property in the century since the Axtells had left. So he had the main house lifted up and moved 400 feet farther back from the road. And it was a change that came with some casualties.


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[Assistant] All of the external buildings were torn down, as were a number of the ancient trees. The biggest loss of all though was the left wing of the house, which Bartlett decided was no longer necessary.


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[Assistant] But right before they moved it, Melrose Hall gave up one final secret.


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[Assistant] While searching the structure for valuables worth saving, someone discovered a secret chamber. After grabbing a light and venturing inside, they made a grisly discovery. It was a skeleton, many decades old and covered in dust. The skeleton, they say, of a woman.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research help from Marsette Crockett. And you can also follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. When you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.


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[Assistant] When I was a kid, Coca-Cola did something unexpected. They were worried about competition from their big rival, Pepsi, so they did some tests. After looking at the results, they took their recipe of roughly 100 years and tossed it out the window. Out with the old, in with the new, as they say. Right?


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[Assistant] In fact, they literally called it New Coke. And it was a complete failure. Within three months, they brought back the old recipe under the reassuring label of Coca-Cola Classic, hoping to calm all that fear and panic that threatened to ruin them.


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[Assistant] Yes, they kept trying to sell the new version for another five years, but they eventually called it quits. Because most of the time, you can't beat an old classic.


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[Assistant] For example, is the Clash of the Titans film from a decade ago packed with visual spectacle and great action? Absolutely. But it doesn't hold a candle to the 1981 original, despite all that glitz and glamour. The same could be said for cars, or music, or just about anything else.


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[Assistant] Pick a field or genre or medium and there's a list of classics. They stand as examples that define their category or hold on as perennial favorites. Even within the world of folklore, it's more of the same.


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[Assistant] And in the world of folklore, few types of stories are considered classic than one genre in particular.


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[Assistant] Is it ancient? Yes. Is it entertaining? You better believe it. But it also tends to be utterly terrifying. Because even all these centuries later, it's hard to beat a good old-fashioned ghost story.


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[Assistant] We begin today with a story from Devon, a county down in the southwest corner of England. That's where a young man named Francis Fry worked as a servant in the home of a guy named Philip Firs.


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[Assistant] One day in November of 1682, Fry was toiling away in the fields when a spirit of an old man appeared to him. He told Fry that he was the dead father of his boss, Mr. Furs, and that his son had mishandled the distributing of his inheritance. So he wanted Fry to help make it right.


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[Assistant] Now the story doesn't tell us how Fry got his hands on the money. I assume it was stored in a chest in his boss's house and he sort of let himself in and took it.


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[Assistant] And then, following the ghost's instructions, he visited each of the people who would have received an inheritance and handed over what they were owed. And all of them, as you might imagine, were grateful.


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[Assistant] Well, all but one. It seems that the dead man's own sister was a bit suspicious, and she refused the payment.


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[Assistant] She probably assumed that Fry had done some deal with the devil, and this being the 1680s, she was most likely very aware of the dangers of getting involved in something like that. So Fry used her money to buy a fancy ring and offered her that instead. Thankfully, she accepted.


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[Assistant] But the trouble wasn't over, because the dead old man Furs might have been happy now, but his equally dead wife wasn't. She was upset that her dead husband had been so generous, and set about haunting just about every aspect of poor Francis Fry's life.


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[Assistant] A lot happened after that, honestly too much to describe here. But I'll give you a short list to give you an idea. The dead man's dead widow took the form of a giant dog that belched fire, as well as a horse that appeared inside the house before jumping through the window.


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[Assistant] Objects moved in the kitchen too, and an entire slab of bacon was reported to have cooked itself. Although if I had to pick a poltergeist to live in my house, one that randomly cooked bacon would be first on my list.


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[Assistant] Oh, and a few months after all of this began, around Easter of 1683, Fry himself was caught up by the ghost, carried far above the house, and then dumped unceremoniously into the neighboring swamp.


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[Assistant] Nearby in Cornwall, there's another ghost story that's been around for centuries, and it's remained one of the most popular in the region. But before I dive into it, a word of warning. There's a lot to this story that's nothing more than outright fantasy. My guess is that a lot of those bits are what make it so popular.


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[Assistant] But I'm gonna focus today on just the first half, because it's ever so creepy. Is it any more believable? Well, I'll let you be the judge of that.


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[Assistant] He fit that stereotypical bad guy mold pretty well, being powerful, rich, cranky, and dishonest. There were all sorts of rumors about him too. He had killed his sister, they said. Or was it his wife? Well, maybe it was both, because honestly, Jan Tregeagle was a bad guy.


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[Assistant] And the source of all that power and wealth, he had sold his soul to the devil, of course. But ever the dishonest, tricky one, Jan Tregeagle found a way to get out of that bargain too.


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[Assistant] Toward the end of his life, he paid the local church a good sum of money to ensure that he would be buried on consecrated church property and that they would perform an exorcism over his body before filling in the hole.


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[Assistant] And all of that went according to plan. Jan died, he got his post-mortem exorcism, and then his churchyard grave was covered up. Case closed, end of story, right? Well, sort of.


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[Assistant] You see, a while after his death, a court case was brought before one of the local magistrates. It was essentially an argument between two families over ownership of a parcel of land. Basically, one of the families had purchased land from the other without their knowing it. And the guy who sold it to them? Jan Tragheagal, of course.


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[Assistant] Witnesses were heard on both sides, and blame was cast back and forth. But in the end, the case was decided in favor of the family who had had their land taken from them. And how did they find their star witness? They resurrected the corpse of Jantric Eagle.


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[Assistant] The rest of the ghostly legend centers around what to do with the man after the trial was over. Apparently the resurrection made it impossible to put him back in the churchyard. So the local priests came up with a series of impossible tasks to keep the dead man busy.


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[Assistant] Things like emptying a bottomless pond with a tiny shell, or sweeping all the sand off a beach. You get the idea.


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[Assistant] Rumor has it that today, Jan Tregeagle is still toiling away down there at Land's End. The headland on the Penwith Peninsula, mind you, not the retail store. And I suppose, in that way, his story is never really over.


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[Assistant] But if you can't get enough of these classic pre-modern ghost tales, then I have a treat for you. Because we are just getting started.


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[Assistant] This next one's a complicated story, and I'll do my best to reduce the number of names and players, just to make it easier to follow along.


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[Assistant] But the journey is worth it, trust me, because this is a perfect example of a classic 18th century ghost story.


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[Assistant] It begins in the late 1750s in the village of Stoke Ferry on the eastern coast of England in Norfolk. That's where William and Elizabeth Kent lived along with Elizabeth's sister Fanny. You see, the couple was expecting their first child and so Elizabeth's sister had come to stay and help out with all the chaos that would follow.


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[Assistant] But that chaos took on a darker mood when Elizabeth died in childbirth. William was thankful for his sister-in-law's help caring for his newborn son though, and they did their best.


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[Assistant] But two more things happened that altered their trajectory in life. Two months after the birth, the baby also passed away.


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[Assistant] And William and Fanny transitioned from friends to lovers.


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[Assistant] The trouble was, English law at the time prohibited William from marrying his dead wife's sister. So he sold his roadside inn for a good sum of money, quit his job at the post office, and moved himself and his lover south to London. It was that age-old escape plan that worked so much better in the days before the internet. Pack up and start anew somewhere else. And it worked.


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[Assistant] They settled into a room in a house on Cock Lane, which they rented from a guy named Richard Parsons. And then they got on with their life. Although they weren't married, William and Fanny referred to themselves, illegally, mind you, as Mr. and Mrs. Kent. And soon after that, Fanny discovered that she was pregnant.


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[Assistant] Oh, and just for added context, upon moving into this rental space, the landlord noticed that William had quite a lot of money, and asked to borrow a small sum from his new tenant, maybe $150 by today's standards. That'll be important later, trust me.


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[Assistant] One day in 1760, William had to go out of town on business, so the landlord's 11-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Parsons, came to stay and help Fanny out around the house. But that's when things went sideways. Because that Sunday, the house was filled with the noise of mysterious tapping and scratching sounds.


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[Assistant] And Fanny's first thought? Her dead sister had finally tracked her down and was going to torment her for stealing her husband.


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[Assistant] Others believe the noises were an omen, hinting at some impending tragedy caused by their life of sin. Whatever they believed, when William returned home and experienced the noises for himself, he quickly packed them up and moved them out to a different nearby house.


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[Assistant] The noises stopped when they moved, but other problems began. You see, before their baby could be born, William watched as Fanny became sick with smallpox and quickly passed away. Then he learned that he was owed an inheritance from her family, which he fully spent on her burial.


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[Assistant] But it turns out some of that money was meant for her brother, so that brother sued him. William knew where he could get the money though, because his old landlord Richard Parsons had yet to repay him.


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[Assistant] So William went after him in court, and by 1762 everything was settled and life returned to normal. Except it didn't.


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[Assistant] What actually happened was that the noises in the house returned. Of course, William didn't live there anymore, so it shouldn't have really been a problem for him.


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[Assistant] Except that Parson's daughter Elizabeth, now 13, claimed that she could communicate with the ghost responsible. And it had a message. William Kent, it said, had killed Fanny with poison.


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[Assistant] It was classic ghost story material too. Elizabeth created a system for the ghost, who would knock once for yes and twice for no, and all sorts of questions were asked of it.


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[Assistant] The trouble was, most of the answers were wrong. Despite Elizabeth's claim that the ghost was the spirit of Fanny herself, that spirit got her own father's name wrong among many other questions.


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[Assistant] But that one intriguing idea, the idea that William had poisoned Fanny, captured everyone's imagination.


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[Assistant] What followed was a battle of evidence. The apothecary who had attended Fanny prior to her death made it clear that she had indeed died of smallpox. But at the same time, young Elizabeth Parsons began to ramp up her interactions with the ghost. It all came down to which party people were willing to believe.


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[Assistant] Elizabeth's ghost, however, began to draw attention. And with that came suspicion. Everyone from locals to nobles were visiting the house to hear the spirit knock. And people started to notice that Elizabeth was always in the room when these things happened. So they tested her. And she failed.


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[Assistant] The ghost, it turns out, was nothing more than a clever trick. And more than that, it was the visible tip of a larger plot by the girl's father, Richard Parsons, to damage William's reputation and take the focus off of his own failure to honor that old loan.


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[Assistant] In the end, the plans backfired on them. Richard would spend the next two years of his life in Newgate Prison as punishment for his fraud, although thanks to her young age, Elizabeth got off with only a warning. And the ghost? Well, it never made an appearance again.


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[Assistant] But there are always more ghost stories. And there are always more chills. And thankfully I have another one up my sleeve. For this one though, we need to travel across the channel to France. Which, in the grand scheme of things, is a mere stone's throw away.


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[Assistant] There are a lot of differences between England and France, and a lot of similarities too. And one thing they shared in common was the struggle between the old Catholic branch of Christianity and the newer Protestant one.


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[Assistant] In England, that played out mostly as a battle between Catholic and Anglican forces, but in France, the conflict had different names. There, they called them Huguenots, a term used for Calvinist Christians, and for a long time, those Huguenots were violently persecuted. Although, neither side was innocent.


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[Assistant] Huguenots were guilty of destroying Catholic relics and buildings and even murdering priests, and the Catholics returned blood for blood. In 1572, for example, a bunch of French Huguenots gathered in Paris and the surrounding area to celebrate the marriage of a king's sister to a Protestant ruler known as Henry of Navarre.


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[Assistant] Catholics killed upwards of 20,000 Huguenots that day alone.


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[Assistant] So, when I tell you that Francois Perrault was a Huguenot minister who chose to move from Switzerland to France in 1611, I hope you can feel the baggage that comes with that.


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[Assistant] Perreault settled in the town of Mécan, in eastern France, along with his wife and a couple of household servants. But about a year after their arrival, something happened that would prevent them from ever having peace in that house.


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[Assistant] On September 14th of 1612, Francois was out of town for a few days, only to return to a house in chaos. It seems that a spirit had begun to attack the people in the house, and it all began in the bedroom.


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[Assistant] One of the nights he was gone, Francois's wife Anne claimed that something or someone entered her bedroom and violently pulled the curtain off the bed.


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[Assistant] She and the servant girl searched everywhere for an intruder, but couldn't find one. When they tried to search the kitchen though, the door wouldn't open. So after calling another of the servants, a teenage boy, to help them, they managed to get inside, only to find that the kitchen had been thrown into disarray, with pots and pans all over the floor.


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[Assistant] Francois assumed it was all a prank, but the first night he was back home he too experienced the weird events. The kitchen was filled with the sound of falling pots, that loud metal on stone noise that couldn't be ignored. But when he entered the kitchen to catch the culprit, the room was empty.


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[Assistant] Now, being a good minister, Francois took the issue to his church elders, who volunteered to stay up through the night in his kitchen to watch for the real person behind it all. After a few nights of observation though, all they heard was a voice that took credit for the mess, and it claimed to know a few secrets, if they were willing to listen.


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[Assistant] This ghostly voice claimed to be privy to gossip about others in town that no one else knew. And as you can imagine, that was a pretty attractive offer. Word spread and people from all over traveled to listen to the voice come from Francois's house, Catholic and Protestant alike.


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[Assistant] But through it all, Francois himself was still convinced it was a prank.


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[Assistant] Because, well, things like this almost always are.


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[Assistant] After the spirit tormented their maidservant to the point that she quit and left their house, Francois had had enough. The spirit changed tones after that, begging for help in drafting a will. Then it asked for help traveling safely to another village, and then it claimed to know the location of a buried treasure on their property.


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[Assistant] Through it all, though, Francois refused to play along. It was a prank, after all. In response, the Spirit claimed that it knew when Francois would die, and the minister told the voice to just take a hike and not come back. And for about a month, there was peace.


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[Assistant] When the unseen pest returned, it was more violent. According to Francois, writing about it a few months later, the invisible force began to throw stones at his house, off and on for nearly two weeks straight. Many were small, but a good number of the stones weighed close to two or three pounds apiece, and sometimes the stones were aimed outward too.


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[Assistant] In one account, a local notary named Mr. Tornis was passing by Perot's home when he decided to whistle at the house to see if the devil still lived there. In response, a stone flew out of nowhere and struck him. Intrigued and confused, he picked the rock up and marked it with a bit of charcoal and then tossed it back the way it had come.


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[Assistant] When another stone flew toward him a moment later, the mark on it confirmed it was the same one as before.


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[Assistant] No source for the voice or the stone throwing was ever found. Of course, there were theories. Francois held to the conviction that it was a prank, driven by some Catholic's desire to persecute his Huguenot household.


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[Assistant] But others suspected a curse, due to the fact that the previous resident of the house had been forcibly evicted. They believed that her curse had brought all this trouble upon the peros. But again, it was nothing more than a theory.


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[Assistant] And in the end, that's all a ghost story is, isn't it? A way to explain the unexplainable with a dash of entertainment and terror thrown in.


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[Assistant] The impossible suddenly becomes real and the worst nightmares of those involved take on a living, breathing persona right before their eyes.


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[Assistant] And in the case of Francois Perrault, we get to see that old school yard rhyme play out as true. Sticks and stones might break their bones, but words could never hurt them.


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[Assistant] There never seems to be a lack of ghost stories. From campground fire pit gatherings and Halloween parties, to the stories told to newcomers by older folks in town, there seems to be no end to their usefulness and flexibility.


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[Assistant] As we've learned here in the past, tales of restless spirits go back thousands of years, and they've continued right up to today. I live pretty close to Salem, Massachusetts, and it's common to see homes for sale in the area with a little disclaimer on the sign. Not haunted.


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[Assistant] Which begs the question, does that mean that there are some that are?


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[Assistant] It's hard to find a culture or location that doesn't have a few ghost stories embedded in the fabric of society. And they sometimes influence a bigger audience than you might imagine. That story of young Elizabeth Parsons pretending to communicate with a knocking ghost, it was still being passed around a century later.


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[Assistant] We know this because Charles Dickens mentions it in three of his novels.


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[Assistant] And that concept, that there's really no escaping a good ghost story, feels appropriate, since so many of the stories involve an invisible pest that's difficult to get rid of. And there's no better example of that than Francois Perrault's Troublesome Ghost in France.


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[Assistant] But those disturbances he experienced continued even after the stone throwing began. The objects kept moving and the voice kept shouting.


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[Assistant] And then one day, almost three months after it had all begun, one of Francois's neighbors was passing by the house and saw something extraordinary. A large snake slithered its way out the front door and into the yard.


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[Assistant] Of course the neighbor captured it, and of course the snake was paraded all around town as proof that the devil, often depicted as a serpent, had really been inside Perot's home. And of course, and sadly, they killed it, because they blamed it for everything that had happened.


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[Assistant] It shouldn't have made a difference if Perot was right. Killing the snake wouldn't have put an end to things if it was all just a prank. But surprisingly, that's not what happened. Because once the townsfolk killed it, all those disturbances immediately went away.


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[Assistant] One thing that makes good old-fashioned ghost stories so popular is that there never seems to be a shortage of them. I hope our brief tour today through a few of my favorites was as thrilling for you to hear as it was for me to share.


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[Assistant] But of course, I'm not done. I've tracked down one more fantastic tale, and if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll tell you all about it.


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[Assistant] It's easy to forget that things haven't always been the way they are. When we tell ghost stories from centuries ago, we hear them all through the modern filters in our minds. You and I today understand so much more about the world we live in and how it works. We can't help it.


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[Assistant] By the 1860s, though, people were starting to frame everything around them through the lens of science, rather than folklore and religion. Now, what you might expect in response to that was the demise of superstitious beliefs. But weirdly, that wasn't the case.


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[Assistant] Instead of dismissing the paranormal as laughable, people brought that scientific mindset into it. They studied unusual phenomena, they dissected odd experiences, and they recorded everything they learned. Simply put, science didn't kill superstition. It opened it up for study.


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[Assistant] So when I tell you about the house on Pitville Circus Road in Cheltenham, just know that we know this story not because a few people whispered about it around town, but because it was documented by investigators who worked hard through the late 19th century to debunk your everyday run-of-the-mill ghost stories.


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[Assistant] The house was built in the early 1860s, and the very first people to buy it and move in were the Swinhoe family. They say it was lovely, a nice two-story house with a useful cellar and a lot of room to grow a family. Idyllic might even be the most appropriate word here.


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[Assistant] Henry Swinhoe was an attorney who had worked with the East India Company for a number of years. In fact, when he and his wife Elizabeth moved there from India, they named the house Garden Reach after a neighborhood in Kolkata. But not long after arriving, trouble began.


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[Assistant] In 1866, Elizabeth died in childbirth, leaving Henry alone to care for their five children. He buried his wife in the churchyard and then buried his sorrows with the bottle. But in 1869, he remarried, this time to a woman named Imogen Hutchins, and she brought five children of her own. Needless to say, that house was full.


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[Assistant] But just a year into their marriage, Henry kicked Imogen out for, of all things, drinking too much. They separated for two years, then reunited, only to separate again in 1875. Henry died a year later, and then Imogen herself passed away a year after that.


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[Assistant] In 1879, a new family moved into the house on Pittville Circus Road. That's when Captain Frederick Despard moved in with his wife and children. And they soon discovered that the previous family might not have left. You know, despite dying and all.


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[Assistant] It was one of the captain's daughters, Rosina Clara, who documented her experiences for others to read. And according to her, the first sighting of a ghost in the house was a powerful experience.


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[Assistant] It happened when she was climbing into bed one night, ready to blow out the little candle on her table, when she heard a sound at her door.


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[Assistant] Naturally, she assumed it was her mother, but when she opened it, no one was standing outside in the hall.


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[Assistant] So she picked up the candle and headed out to see if someone might be walking away. And that's when she saw the woman.


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[Assistant] Rosina described her clothing as an all-black formal style dress, and the figure was slowly walking toward the stairs. So Rosina followed. When the woman in black descended to the first floor, Rosina followed after her.


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[Assistant] But just as she was about to close in on the mysterious figure, a candle in her fingers went out, leaving her in complete darkness.


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[Assistant] She held onto that story for two years before sharing it with anyone else. Finally, in 1884, she told the rest of her family about it.


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[Assistant] And that's when her unusual experience began to feel more real and more haunting.


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[Assistant] You see, her sister Edith had also witnessed a woman in black moving through the house at night. She had been climbing the stairs to the second floor one night when a woman silently passed her heading down.


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[Assistant] And both of them at different times had witnessed the woman standing motionless in front of a window in the drawing room, staring out into the street.


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[Assistant] Years later, in true classic ghost story fashion, Rosina was presented with a stack of photographs of previous residents of the house, along with their relatives. And although there were no photos of Imogen Swinho to see, Imogen's sister was in the bunch. And that was the woman Rosina pointed out. The woman didn't look exactly like her ghost, she said. But there was a family resemblance.


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[Assistant] Over the years, the house took on a number of other uses. For a while it served as the location of a boys prep school, and later as a training home for local nannies. And since the early 1970s, it's been residential apartments.


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[Assistant] But although the house's purpose and residents have changed over and over throughout the years, there's been one constant theme that seems to point directly toward the past. Every now and then, someone sees an unusual figure in the house. A woman. Dressed all in black.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research by Megan de Roche 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, all of which I think you'd enjoy. My production company Grim and Mild specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical. You can learn more about all of those shows and everything else going on over in one central place. Grimandmild.com


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


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[Assistant] There was a time when they might have been considered a happy family, although truthfully it's easy to look back now and wonder if that was ever possible. The final chapters certainly call a lot of things into question.


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[Assistant] Andrew came from a prominent wealthy family, but forged his own path early on. He started out working with his hands, making furniture for homes and even coffins for graves. But it wasn't until he got into real estate that his fortunes really changed.


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[Assistant] Family life was just as busy too. He and his wife Sarah had their first child, a daughter, in 1851, followed by another girl nine years later.


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[Assistant] But all of that changed just three years after that, when Sarah died at the young age of just 39, leaving Andrew without a partner and, if we're honest about the social norms of the time, without someone to raise the kids and manage the household.


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[Assistant] Which is probably why he remarried two years later. From everything I've read, they seem like a happy couple though. But kids process things differently, and those two girls missed their mother. So much so, that their new mom didn't really have a chance.


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[Assistant] Theirs was a household filled with tension, frustration, and a whole lot of unexpressed bitterness. It was the sort of emotional time bomb that we've learned about over the years from the movies. It wasn't really a question of if things would reach a boiling point. It was more a matter of when.


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[Assistant] When that boiling point arrived though, it would unfold in a way that no one could have expected. Their lives would be shattered, a community would be horrified, and a nation would never forget. And at the center of it all was one young woman. A woman named Lizzie Borden.


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[Assistant] Before we start, I want to acknowledge a couple of things. First, there's a good chance you've already heard the story of Lizzie Borden, and that's okay. I simply hope the path we take today through the wreckage of her life brings a bit of clarity to what you already know.


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[Assistant] And second, this is a massive historical event, with more detail than I have space for here. So what you'll get today is the core narrative at the heart of a well-documented story that has filled entire books. But as usual, we need to start with a bit of context.


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[Assistant] Like I said before, things in their house were a bit tense. Andrew's immediate family wasn't the only Borden household in town, though. In fact, there were a number of them in the Massachusetts city of Fall River. And here's the key detail. All the other Bordens were better connected and more wealthy than Andrew.


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[Assistant] The rest of them lived up on the hill, higher up, both literally and figuratively, than the rest of the community.


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[Assistant] But Andrew Borden and his family, however rich and privileged they might have been, lived in a more modest house closer to the center of town, on Second Street, which was why they spent years trying to improve and expand it, slowly turning a two-family building into a large single-family home.


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[Assistant] Now, something that's important to remember about this house is just how much of a maze it was. Thanks to its original design as a two-family house, it became a rabbit's nest of rooms and doorways once the dividing walls came down.


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[Assistant] Most significantly, the house didn't have that typical layout where a hallway ran down the middle with rooms opening up off of it.


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[Assistant] Instead, many of the bedrooms upstairs open into each other. You might step into Lizzie's bedroom, for example, and see multiple doors and not know which one led to her sister Emma's room or her parents' room. Because of this, many of them placed furniture in front of the unused doorways or locked unneeded doors.


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[Assistant] That's the house. Now, a moment to discuss the people living there. Of course, there was Andrew Borden and his second wife Abby.


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[Assistant] One bit of evidence that the daughters disliked Abby was in the fact that they almost never recalled her mother, despite knowing her since childhood. The sisters also demanded the same amount of allowance as their stepmother, and typically took charge in household matters.


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[Assistant] Honestly, for a Victorian household setting, it was just odd. And I would assume also a bit tense.


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[Assistant] Lastly, rounding out the household were two others. John Morse was the brother of Andrew's first wife, and while he didn't live there all the time, it seems he came and went as he pleased. And the family also employed a domestic servant named Bridget Sullivan.


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[Assistant] Oh, and to further prove how stubborn and privileged Emma and Lizzie Borden actually were, they never called Bridget by her real name. They referred to her as Maggie, which was the name of the previous servant. Apparently, they refused to learn a new name and just kept calling the new woman by the old woman's name.


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[Assistant] Now, through the late 1880s into the early 1890s, Lizzie was a bit of a handful. When Andrew helped his wife buy out part of her own stepsister's house to help her financially, Lizzie and Emma threw a fit until Andrew transferred the same amount of cash into accounts under their own names.


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[Assistant] Next, Lizzie took a trip to Europe with friends, and then almost refused to come back home. When she did, her father gifted her with a sealskin cape, and while I'm most certainly reading into things here, it does feel like Andrew was bribing his daughter to maintain the peace. It was, at the very least, a language that we know she spoke well.


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[Assistant] In June of 1891, the family reported a robbery, which included only a small list of items taken. Cash and gold from Andrew, and jewelry from Lizzie. And looking back on it all from today, I have to say that a lot of it seems odd.