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[Assistant] And if that sounds familiar, that's because it closely parallels the Judaic creation story, involving a figure known as Lucifer, the morning star who was banished from heaven for his rebellion.


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[Assistant] But the word most of us know and use is a bit more generic. The Devil. For lovers of language, there's an interesting chain of evolution from the Greek word for slander, Diablos, through Latin and Old English, ultimately arriving in the Middle Ages as Devil, spelled with an E-L instead of an I-L.


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[Assistant] If anything has come close to being a one-word encapsulation of this idea of pure evil, it's devil. In fact, a lot of the names I mentioned earlier, from all those different cultures and religions, are pretty much described today as the Devil of Blink, making it an easy catch-all. That's the name. But for a lot of us, we also have images to deal with.


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[Assistant] And to understand that, you have to remember that Christianity spread outward from the Middle East. And as it entered new and different cultures, it absorbed and repurposed many features that were similar. And the devil is no exception.


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[Assistant] Today, you might think of the devil as a being that's half man, half goats, with horns on his head and cloven feet. That's the stereotypical quintessential devil. But it's also Pan, the ancient Greek god of the wild spaces and fertility.


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[Assistant] Pan, incidentally, is also where we get words like panic and pandemonium. In other words, chaos.


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[Assistant] There are other variations, but honestly to cover them all here would take us hours. But one last image might help us out. Many of the witch trial victims of the 16th and 17th centuries describe the devil as the man in black. It hinted at a dark, shadowy figure who, they claimed, paid them a visit to earn their trust.


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[Assistant] All those stories of witches confessing to signing the book or consummating a pact with a dark figure in their bed draw upon this image. The evil one was still around knocking on doors and looking for those he could control. It seems that the devil, to a lot of people for a very long time, has been viewed like an enemy or an unwanted house guest. And he'd like to come inside.


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[Assistant] Clara was born in 1890 in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal.


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[Assistant] As an infant, she was baptized by the local Trappist Mission at St. Michael's, a sect of the Catholic Church. But by the age of four, both of her parents had passed away, most likely from one of a number of new illnesses to spread into the country, such as smallpox or typhus.


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[Assistant] To care for her, she was brought to St. Michael's, where everyone at the mission looked after her needs. She was given an education and grew into a devout member of the religious community there. It was a happy ending to a tragic beginning.


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[Assistant] But even early on, something didn't settle with the nuns and staff who observed her. She was described as unpredictable and erratic, but they dismissed it as just part of her youth and immaturity. As a parent of young children myself, I can't blame them. Kids can be a handful.


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[Assistant] But by the time she turned 16, that behavior had evolved into something more troubling. How so?


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[Assistant] Well, the list is long, so buckle up. It seems that Clara had frequent conversations with people that no one else could see. Sometimes she would shout things like, you have betrayed me. She would even tear her clothing or remove it entirely, something that must have been shocking inside a Catholic mission.


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[Assistant] But on August 6th of 1906, all of that behavior took a turn for the worse. Clara fell into a fierce argument with an invisible being, tore her clothes, and made wild growling sounds before regaining control of herself once again.


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[Assistant] And in a moment of clarity, she asked for a chance to speak with one of the leaders of their community, a man named Father Erasmus.


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[Assistant] The trouble was, Father Erasmus was away on church business, and it would take time for a message to reach him, and then even more time for him to arrive. And it was that period of waiting that proved to be the most frightening experience to date, because new symptoms seemed to appear, hinting at a darker affliction than they previously believed.


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[Assistant] It seems that religious items had begun to cause her harm. Nuns would hide their crucifixes when they approached her, but she would still know where they were located and refuse to go near them. Sometimes those nuns would have to hold her down to prevent her from harming herself, and she was known to toss them like ragdolls across the room. There were mental changes too.


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[Assistant] All of a sudden, Clara could understand and speak in languages she had never heard before, such as German and French.


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[Assistant] And as difficult as it was to believe, she had also begun to demonstrate an ability to read people's minds. It was an ability she proved over and over again, by revealing out loud, mind you, some of the darkest secrets of the people around her. Things she had no way of knowing, and yet she did.


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[Assistant] But her most unbelievable affliction was also the most frequent. You see, Clara could levitate off the ground. In rooms full of other people, nuns and priests and staff alike, she would rise up and hover there, four or five feet above the floor.


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[Assistant] Sometimes her body would be vertical, with her head above her feet as if she were standing on an invisible platform. Other times, though, she rose up above their heads while in a horizontal position, as if she were sleeping. Oddly, when she did that, her skirts wouldn't fall down as one might expect. Instead, they seemed frozen to her legs.


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[Assistant] Oddest of all, though, was how the nuns and staff were able to end her episodes of levitation by splashing her with holy water.


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[Assistant] Not only did the droplets of the blessed water cause her bare skin to smoke and burn, but the more they sprinkled on her, the lower she would sink, until she was eventually back on the ground.


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[Assistant] Clara Germana Sella had become something more than a tiny 16 year old girl. Some began to believe that she was suffering from seizures or some sort of mental illness like schizophrenia.


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[Assistant] Others thought it all had to be part of some elaborate hoax, and some had begun to whisper about darker notions, that her behavior was nothing short of demonic. The one thing everyone could agree on, though, was that they needed help. Father Erasmus couldn't arrive soon enough.


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[Assistant] He didn't arrive with a trumpet blast, but you can bet the community there at St. Michael's exhaled in unison with relief. It was August 20th, a good three weeks since her condition had worsened, prompting them to call for his help, and he was happy to provide it.


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[Assistant] The only hurdle they had to overcome now was the issue of approval. Yes, the Catholic Church had engaged in exorcisms for centuries, but they had done so according to a strict set of guidelines. In fact, those rules had been written in 1614 and remained in place unchanged all the way until 1999.


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[Assistant] What were they? Well, first they had to make sure the afflicted person wasn't suffering from something natural that had been mistaken for demonic possession. And then they needed the green light from the nearest bishop. But the moment Father Erasmus sat down with Clara, he knew how it would go.


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[Assistant] Clara handed him a written confession, explaining the pact she had entered into with the devil. And in it, she made it clear that she was not possessed by some lesser demon. No, it was Satan himself who was attacking her. And while she wanted help from Father Erasmus, she requested no one else assist him. He had to work alone.


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[Assistant] Permission was requested for an immediate exorcism and after a brief wait, a wait filled with more holy water burns, more levitation, and more abuse of the staff, the bishop sent his agreement.


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[Assistant] But when Father Erasmus sat down with Clara on September 11th of 1906, he did so with help, going against her request.


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[Assistant] Clara was furious. She attacked the newcomer, a priest named Father Mansuetti, by knocking the Bible out of his hand and choking him with his own stole, with nothing but the power of her mind. And with that, the battle began.


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[Assistant] They worked all day, taking only a brief rest at noon for some food. It was a ritual with one goal in mind, to cast the devil out of Clara's body, and to set her free from all future afflictions. Reading through the story, it can almost seem like a scene pulled straight from a movie. And maybe that's okay. It was certainly dramatic.


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[Assistant] There was shouting and harsh conversation. Father Erasmus asked the demon to identify itself, and it replied, through Clara, in a growling rasp, that it was indeed Satan.


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[Assistant] After that, there was more shouting, with him ordering the devil to exit and be gone, and Clara writhing on the bed as the demonic voice refused to obey.


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[Assistant] There were moments when the real Clara broke through, like when the sun manages to occasionally push light through the clouds on a stormy day. When that happened, she would beg for help, asking Father Erasmus to pray for her soul.


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[Assistant] And then she would be gone again, replaced by the sounds and actions of a wild animal. She even bit one of the nuns helping at her bedside.


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[Assistant] Finally, Erasmus had the devil cornered and forced him to agree to leave Clara alone. The devil told him that he should look for a sign at a time he named and then the priests and nuns waited to see what would happen.


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[Assistant] And at the exact hour the devil had proclaimed, Clara's body levitated off the bed, horizontal and bent backwards at an inhuman angle, before letting out one final excruciating cry.


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[Assistant] At that moment, a cold wind filled the room, swirling around Clara's body, and then seemed to exit through an open window. And as it did, she collapsed back down to the bed, and was still.


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[Assistant] The following day, Father Erasmus took Clara to see the bishop. I imagine he was looking for someone to check his work, so to speak. But for Clara, it was also a nervous moment. She'd spent her life at St. Michael's and hoped that she would be allowed to stay, despite everything that had happened.


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[Assistant] After assuring the bishop that her soul was at peace and asking for his forgiveness, Clara received the gift she had been hoping for. She would continue living at the mission. And with that, she was taken home.


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[Assistant] Peace, it seems, had returned to St. Michael's. And for Clara Germana Sella, it was a welcome respite.


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[Assistant] Our fascination with the devil has never faded, all these years later. From The Exorcist in 1973, all the way up to this year's film, The Unholy, with Jeffrey Dean Morgan, it's clear that Satan has entered popular culture in a way our ancestors never would have imagined.


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[Assistant] And we've been just as obsessed with possession stories. According to a recent article in the Atlantic, more than half of all Americans believe demonic possession is real.


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[Assistant] In the state of Indiana, for example, there were more than 1700 requests for exorcisms in 2018 alone. And the number of Catholic priests in America who are authorized to conduct exorcisms has grown by a magnitude of 10 in the past decade.


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[Assistant] And oddly enough, a lot more of the famous exorcism stories from the past century have involved young people. Roland Doe's took place in 1949 when he was just 14 years old. Annalise Michel was just 16 during her 1973 exorcism. One that took her life.


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[Assistant] Clearly, it's a mysterious part of the human existence, and it doesn't seem to be fading as our world becomes more and more modern. And sadly, even Clara's experience didn't go away for too long.


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[Assistant] Within months of her exorcism, her troubles returned. Father Erasmus had left to carry on his work elsewhere, and almost as if he took her protection with him, the devil came back. It was exactly like the first time, or perhaps even worse. It certainly frightened the staff at the mission.


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[Assistant] After another period of suffering, levitation, and animal-like outbursts, Erasmus and Mansuetti both returned, and a second exorcism was performed. When this one was over, there was no cold wind blowing out the window. But witnesses claim that the room they were in was filled with the scent of rotting flesh and foul sulfur. A glimpse of hell, perhaps.


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[Assistant] Clara lived in peace for a few more years, convinced that the devil would ultimately return to take her life one day. And in 1912, that's exactly what seemed to happen. At the age of just 22, Clara Germana Sella died from what everyone assumed was heart failure.


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[Assistant] The people in St. Michael's were left with more questions than answers, in memories of an experience that seemed truly and horrifically supernatural. And the only one who might be able to shed light on the truth, Clara, would no longer be there to provide answers.


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[Assistant] But at least she was finally able to rest in peace.


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[Assistant] The world of exorcism is clearly vast and ancient, and while we only brushed against some of that history today, please know that there is so much more out there for the curious and the stout of heart.


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[Assistant] Well there's one more story I want to tell you here, and it does something that few others have managed to do. It brings the reality of exorcism right into our modern world.


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[Assistant] And if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll tell you all about it.


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[Assistant] If there was anyone close to a superstar in the world of exorcisms, it was Father Gabriel M. Arth. Maybe that's because of how prolific he was, or perhaps it just had to do with him having a career that stretched into the age of the internet.


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[Assistant] Father Amorth was born in Italy in 1925. His father was a lawyer, but rather than follow in the family business he opted for priesthood. And for many decades his work and personal life were under the radar and about as normal as you might imagine.


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[Assistant] In 1986, though, he trained with a priest named Candido Amantini, who was considered by the Catholic Church to be a master exorcist. It was the passing of the torch from one generation to the next, exactly as it had been done for centuries.


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[Assistant] Father Amworth, however, wanted to take exorcisms more mainstream. In 1990, he founded an organization called the International Association of Exorcists, where he would serve until his death in 2016. Along the way, he claimed to have participated in over 30,000 exorcisms, nearly 100 of which were what he considered full-blown.


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[Assistant] One other important thing to note, and this gets skipped over by a lot of people who talk about him, is that Amorth hated the new Catholic rite of exorcism, preferring instead to use the more ancient traditional prayers. And maybe that's why his experiences feel a lot like the older stories that have taken place throughout history.


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[Assistant] But it was one case at the end of his life that would be one of his most powerful. In 2016, he was called to help with a young woman named Rosa, who was described as quiet but beautiful and under the affliction of some dark outside force.


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[Assistant] In fact, Rosa believed that her brother's girlfriend was involved in a satanic cult and had cursed her out of spite. It had brought untold suffering into her life and she was desperate for help. So Father Amorth was called in.


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[Assistant] He began his work with Rosa on his 91st birthday, with a body weakened by the decades and a mind sharpened with experience. And Rosa's behavior that day would have looked incredibly familiar to the priests and nuns of St. Michael's who tried desperately to help Clara over a century before. Growls, shouts, writhing on the bed.


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[Assistant] As the story goes, Father Amorth fought hard, and at one point he shouted in Latin for the enemy to give in and leave Rosa alone, but a supernatural voice replied from inside her, declaring, I am Satan. Don't ever touch her.


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[Assistant] Ultimately though, Father Amorth succeeded, and the evil force inside Rosa, whether it was some unknown demon or truly the Satan of the Christian faith, was driven out and away. When she woke up, she had no memory at all of anything that had taken place that day.


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[Assistant] Oh, and one more thing. As Father Amorth worked with Rosa, he had an observer, someone with a video camera, who taped the experience. And after it was over, this friend took the footage and showed it to a number of medical doctors.


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[Assistant] He was looking for an expert opinion, but what he got was a lot of head scratching instead.


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[Assistant] Nothing about the scene they witnessed, they told him, seemed medical in nature. Needless to say, it left quite the impression on this filmmaker. And his name? William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research by Michelle Muto 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] Most historians agree that the blaze had started in the bakery of a man named Thomas Fariner. He managed to get his family out their window in the room above his shop, but as the fire spread, some people were not so lucky. The sky was aglow and the noise of panic and alarm was steadily rising. London was burning.


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[Assistant] Despite fire safety measures that were advanced for 1666, it was hard to stop a blaze like that in a city built mostly of wood and thatch. What started as a small fire around midnight on September 2nd grew into a hungry monster that devoured most of central London and was still burning four days later.


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[Assistant] When it was over, it had destroyed over 13,000 homes, nearly 100 churches, and left at least 70,000 people homeless. It was life altering. So much so that three and a half centuries later, we're still talking about the Great London Fire.


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[Assistant] But out of the ashes, something new appeared. Something I doubt most people today would even guess at. Because once the city started to rebuild, they realized that their entire system for recovery needed an overhaul. What was created is quite possibly the first of its kind. Property insurance.


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[Assistant] You see, when a building burned down in 1666, it was the tenants who had to pay for the rebuilding.


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[Assistant] Plus, they had to keep paying their rent while it was happening, even if the building was in ruin.


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[Assistant] When this happened in random, isolated instances, it was a frustrating reality.


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[Assistant] But when 13,000 homes needed to go through this process at the same time,


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[Assistant] Folks realized it was a problem that needed correcting.


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[Assistant] So the first fire and property insurance companies rushed in to seize the opportunity.


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[Assistant] It's something that humans are very good at, isn't it? We have this uncanny knack for seeing opportunity and then doing whatever is necessary to benefit from it. It's a skill that mixes being in the right place at the right time with quick thinking and a lot of risk. If it's pulled off right, it can alter lives forever. But not every opportunity is golden.


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[Assistant] In fact, many of them represent trips into uncharted territory where a myriad of dangers wait to shatter our dreams. So grab your warmest coat, pack your bags, and follow me on a journey into the folklore of one of the last great frontiers. We're headed to Alaska.


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[Assistant] Alaska is one of those places that most people think they know. They have enough familiarity with key pieces of its story to assume they know the whole thing, but of all our flaws as humans,


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[Assistant] Assumption is one of our most embarrassing, isn't it?


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[Assistant] Alaska's story begins much earlier than the purchase that added it to a growing United States. In fact, to fully understand that territory, we need to go back in time to an age we know very little about. The latter stages of the Stone Age.


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[Assistant] As early as 15,000 years ago, but possibly as far back as 40,000 years, the first humans to step onto North American soil did so off the coast of Alaska.


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[Assistant] They walked over a low, wide land bridge that once crossed the North Atlantic, and from there dispersed southward, eventually populating much of North and South America. Alaska was the gateway to an entirely new world, one full of endless opportunity.


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[Assistant] But while many of the original inhabitants continue their march south, a good number of people remain behind in the territory that we now call Alaska.


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[Assistant] Even today, all those thousands of years later, at least 15% of the population there are native peoples. They are spread across 11 different culture groups and almost as many unique languages. And over the centuries, they have experienced the worst of humanity.


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[Assistant] In 1725, a full half century before America was birthed as a nation, Russia's Emperor Peter the Great sent an explorer named Vitus Bering to see if North America and Asia were connected. After two wildly expensive and dangerous expeditions, he came home with bad news. They weren't.


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[Assistant] But he left his own name all over the area there, and we can still see it today. The Bering Straits and the Bering Sea being just two of many examples.


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[Assistant] But what Russia did discover was a land rich with resources, never mind the fact that it was a land already inhabited by the native peoples I mentioned earlier. So more Russian explorers traveled there, as did fur trappers and traders.


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[Assistant] But they, just like the Europeans who landed on the east coast of North America a century or so before, brought more than goods and supplies. They brought disease. And the effects were devastating.


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[Assistant] In 1799, Russia made their foothold there official by launching what they called the Russian-American Company to monopolize on the fur trade.


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[Assistant] They built settlements on the coast where the weather was more tolerable and then spent decades systematically hunting down just about every animal they could find. In the process, they left the native communities without the resources they had depended on for thousands of years.


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[Assistant] Some left the area in search of land the Russians hadn't discovered yet. Others were driven to reservations where disease and poverty would hold them down like a prison sentence. And all the while, the Russians took everything they could find.


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[Assistant] But by the 1860s, the opportunity seemed to be running low. It was expensive to maintain their presence there, and the return on their investment was dropping year by year.


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[Assistant] So in 1867, Russia decided to cut their losses and return home, selling the territory to the United States for a little over 7 million dollars, roughly 130 million today.


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[Assistant] For a couple of decades it was viewed by most Americans as an embarrassment.


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[Assistant] We had spent big money to buy a used up far off land that was too cold for most people to live in. They called it Seward's Folly after William Seward, the Secretary of State who orchestrated the deal. But then in the late 1890s, things changed when a new opportunity was discovered. Gold.


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[Assistant] They called it the Klondike Gold Rush because that's where the yellow metal had been found. The Klondike region of the Yukon, far inland to the east. So far east, in fact, that it was actually in Canada. But that wasn't going to stop gold-hungry prospectors looking for the next big break. And they flocked to Alaska by the thousands.


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[Assistant] Some historians believe that upwards of 100,000 people arrived to search for gold. The vast majority of them spent their time there in utter poverty, and many of them died that way as well. To serve that great migration of hopefuls, a number of boom towns popped up along the route to the Yukon, offering all the services the gold miners would need.


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[Assistant] But it wasn't all glittering goodness. That journey from the coast of Alaska to the Yukon territory was incredibly dangerous. Many who set out from places like Valdez would never make it, and those who did faced horrible conditions along the way.


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[Assistant] So in 1899, the U.S. War Department sent a captain named William Abercrombie to see if there was an easier route.


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[Assistant] What he discovered was a horrifying sight. Most of the prospectors along the way suffered from things like frostbite and scurvy, as well as poor equipment and clothing. In some places, small cabins had been set up to house them overnight, but those were packed with a dozen or more sleepers, like sardines in a tiny can.


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[Assistant] But in one place, known then as Twelve Mile Camp, Abercrombie encountered stories of something worse than the harsh elements. The men there all seemed to have been overcome with madness because most of them believed in the existence of a monster that roamed the wilderness outside of camp. A creature they referred to as the Valdez Demon.


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[Assistant] What they knew of it came from a handful of encounters, but one in particular was interesting enough to make it into his official report. He wrote that a pair of strong Swedish men, a father and son duo, had been pushing their sled of supplies north across the Valdes glacier when a dark shape appeared from the snow.


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[Assistant] But when it jumped on the sun, who was at the front of the sled, the father let the battle play out. He knew his son was strong enough to handle it, and sure enough the unknown creature eventually gave up and ran off into the blizzard around them. But after continuing on for a while, the thing returned. This time, the sun wouldn't win.


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[Assistant] The father even rushed to his aid, trying to pull the demon off, but it was no use. The son had been strangled to death, and all the father could do was place his body on the sled and trudge his way back to Twelve Mile Camp. Once safely there, the other men helped him bury his son. And then, they shared the tale.


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[Assistant] Some believed the demon was a creature known as the kushtaka, a shapeshifter from the stories told by the Tlingit people. But looking back, it's likely that it was nothing more than a gold miner who had lost his mind, living more like an animal than a human.


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[Assistant] Which makes a tragic kind of sense. For many, the opportunity that Alaska offered them was little more than a fairy tale. Between the harsh elements, the brutal terrain, and the tragic loss of life, their journey didn't make their dreams come true. In fact, it destroyed them.


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[Assistant] Gold wasn't the only thing of value that they found in the mountains there. In 1900, explorers also found copper. Actually, what they found was one of the richest copper deposits in the entire world. And since the gold rush had died down, a fresh opportunity was more than welcome.


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[Assistant] The miners who arrived there built a little town to suit their needs and called it Kennecott. But they also discovered something else. It seems that the trek from the copper deposit to the nearest smelter was just too long and difficult to make the operation worthwhile for them. So early on those first miners sold their claims to a collection of wealthy businessmen.


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[Assistant] What they created was the Alaska Syndicate, a mining company that included JP Morgan, the Guggenheim family, and many others. Their big money brought in bigger vision. And in 1906, that vision began to take shape in the form of a railroad. Finished in 1911, it allowed the copper deposit to be efficiently mined and delivered. But all that success came with a heavy price.


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[Assistant] The building conditions for that railroad through the Alaskan Terrain were brutal. There was rock to blast, glaciers to cross, and everywhere you went, snow for miles and miles. It was cold and bloody and dangerous. And because of that, countless men lost their lives.


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[Assistant] By 1938, the deposit was depleted. The investors had made good money during their run there, but all good things must come to an end. So they packed up and left, and that meant abandoning Kennecott. But over the years, enough people have made the drive up to the ghost town to report something strange.


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[Assistant] It seems that many people traveling north on the old dirt road that runs alongside the abandoned railroad have noticed something odd. Just off the path, jutting up from the snow and rocks, countless travelers have reported seeing grave markers.


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[Assistant] Not an unusual thing in and of itself, considering the loss of life involved in building that railroad.


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[Assistant] But it's what they've seen on the return trip south that's more troublesome.


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[Assistant] Absolutely nothing. All those tombstones they had seen heading north had suddenly vanished, as if they'd been nothing more than ghostly remnants of a painful past. And sadly, it's not the only location in Alaska to hold on to such pain.


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[Assistant] In the late 1890s, many gold miners would trek along one of the most popular routes from the Pacific coast to the Yukon gold fields, known as the Chilkoot Trail. It was direct and cheap, but it was also dangerous, and those who traveled it were at constant risk, depending on the weather. And on April 3rd of 1898, that weather changed.


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[Assistant] The mountains around them were covered in a thick layer of soft snow. So when a strong, warm wind blew in, many of the experienced guides knew what it meant. Avalanche. And that's exactly what they heard that morning. A distant rumble that warned them of impending danger. And everyone on the trail ran for their lives.


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[Assistant] The wave that came down the mountain buried the landscape in 50 feet of snow. Historians estimate that about 200 people were on the trail that day, and nearly half of them died. So many, in fact, that a temporary morgue had to be set up nearby while they planned out how to transport them south for burial.


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[Assistant] Today, Chilkoot Trail is a popular hiking route, although it's said to be incredibly challenging. And over the years, hikers have found countless items along the trail from the days of the gold rush. Hoping to preserve them for later generations, many of these objects have been taken north to the town of Skagway, where they've been put on display in the mascot saloon.


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[Assistant] But apparently, that's not all that's been transported there.


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[Assistant] Today, visitors to the saloon have reported unusual experiences. Loud noises from empty rooms, knocking on doors by invisible hands, even sounds of disembodied voices. It almost seems as if the miners who died in 1898 aren't quite finished with their journey. One last story.


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[Assistant] In 1918, a ship called the Princess Sophia left the city of Skagway to sail south along the Inside Passage, most likely headed for Washington State. It was a journey the ship had made many times before, although the route was never easy. And it was that risk that would rise up to meet them along the way.


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[Assistant] On the morning of October 24th, a ship found itself sailing directly into a major storm. In the chaos, the captain made a navigational mistake, and instead of heading towards safety, ran the ship aground on the Vanderbilt reef, and then more bad decisions compounded on the first.


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[Assistant] You see, the weather was so bad that the captain decided not to offload his 350 passengers. It didn't help that the storm was also preventing rescue ships from reaching them, so he decided to have everyone waited out on board. But the following day, a massive wave swept the ship off and back into the water, where its torn hull quickly filled.


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[Assistant] Shortly after that, the boiler on the ship exploded, dumping huge amounts of oil into the water. At least half of the passengers went down with the wreckage, but the rest managed to swim to the surface


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[Assistant] or they drowned in the oil. When it was all over, every single person on board was dead. The only survivor was a dog left to fend for itself by its owner.


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[Assistant] Bodies washed up on the shore of nearby Juneau for at least a week. There were so many corpses to deal with that embalmers deemed it to be brought up from Seattle, and many of the cellars of downtown buildings became temporary morgues. And today, the echoes of that tragedy can still be felt.


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[Assistant] One building downtown has had unusual reports for years. Some visitors have claimed to feel a cold hand grip their arm or shoulder, while others have felt a sort of electric shock. Some people have reported seeing the figure of a little boy standing down the hallway, silent and unmoving.


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[Assistant] Most though, just feel things, like an overwhelming sense of anger and dread.


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[Assistant] I think it's clear from the stories, both the historical and the modern, that Alaska has always had a way of exacting a heavy price. Whether it was hopeful miners trekking north toward the promise of gold,


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[Assistant] For travelers hoping to leave the region for a better life somewhere else, every opportunity came with a risk.


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[Assistant] And as amazing as it might seem, the wreck of the Princess Sophia isn't even the most frightening tale from the frigid Alaskan waters. For that, we need to go back a few years earlier to a storied vessel with a complicated past and a ghostly visitor who does the unexpected.


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[Assistant] This story doesn't start in Alaska, and I hope that's okay. Sometimes you need to start elsewhere and allow the context and events to act like an undertow, slowly pulling you toward your destination. But trust me, the journey will be worth it.


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[Assistant] The Eliza Anderson took its maiden voyage in 1858, three years before the start of the American Civil War. It was a 276 ton steamer, measuring roughly 200 feet long, and owned and operated by the Columbia River Steam Navigation Company, which strikes me as a highly specific business name.


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[Assistant] But the Eliza Anderson earned its own reputation just two years later.


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[Assistant] During a voyage to Victoria, British Columbia in 1860, a government official on board learned that the Eliza Anderson had a stowaway. And not just any stowaway, but a fugitive.


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[Assistant] His name was Charles Mitchell and he was a 13 year old son of an enslaved woman. It seems that he had been orphaned at the age of three and over the following years was cycled through various plantations until finally being taken to Washington in 1855.


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[Assistant] Now, Washington in those days wasn't a state yet. It was a territory. And on paper, it was a free territory.


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[Assistant] Due to the Dred Scott decision of 1857 though, that didn't mean that Charlie suddenly became a free man there. Washington would have to become a state for that to happen. And so he settled in, waiting for that day.


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[Assistant] But after five long years, he gave up and decided to make a run for Canada, which was why he was hidden away on board the Eliza Anderson.


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[Assistant] Thankfully, the Black community in Victoria rose up when they learned that Charlie was on board, docked in their harbor and not allowed to step out and into freedom.


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[Assistant] There was a brief battle between American and British attorneys, but in the end, Charlie Mitchell was allowed off the ship.


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[Assistant] He would go on to marry their father at least four children and enjoy his freedom.


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[Assistant] And his story would become part of the Eliza Anderson's legacy.


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[Assistant] Over the next few years, the ship would become a well-used transport, bouncing along the Pacific Northwest coastline as a ferry for gold prospectors and fortune seekers. But in 1877, the gold rush in British Columbia dried up, and the Eliza Anderson found itself anchored in Seattle, and it stayed there for the next six years.


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[Assistant] In 1883, a man named Tom Wright bought the ship, but things weren't looking good. Those six years had been harsh, and it had actually sunk, needing to be raised and repaired in order to be operational again.


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[Assistant] But Wright's run as a captain was short-lived. In 1885, the ship was stopped on its way back to the US from British Columbia by American authorities.


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[Assistant] It seems that the newly passed Chinese Exclusion Act was being enforced with extreme prejudice. It was the first and only federal law to ever prohibit a specific people group from entering the country, built on a foundation of fear.


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[Assistant] But apparently, Captain Tom Wright didn't see things that way, so he was helping transport a small group of Chinese immigrants into the country.


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[Assistant] The scandal would put an end to his career and see the Eliza Anderson back in storage, spending the next 12 years dockside in Seattle.


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[Assistant] But then, in 1897, gold was discovered in the Klondike. And all of a sudden, ships were in short supply. People were willing to pay good money for a ride north, because opportunity was calling, and they didn't want to miss out.


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[Assistant] So Thomas Powers bought the old ship and tried to get it in the game. Apparently it was in really bad shape. I mean, it was 40 years old at that point, and it had spent a lot of those years just sitting in neglect.


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[Assistant] But in one of those scenes that reminds me of the old 80s TV show, The A-Team, he hacked together the ship with anything he could find, and then opened it up for business.


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[Assistant] In July of 1897, the Eliza Anderson left Seattle overloaded with passengers. I don't mean that as a hyperbole. Captain Powers literally sold tickets to about three times as many people as the ship could normally hold. Oh, and because of that, they hadn't loaded up on fuel.


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[Assistant] But they left port with an entire fleet around them, all gold hungry fortune seekers. And then, a storm blew in. You can see where this is going, right?


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[Assistant] First, the Eliza Anderson crashed into another of the vessels in the fleet. Then it was separated from them by the wind and the waves. After that, the smokestack crashed onto the deck. And thanks to the scarce amount of coal for the boiler, they started throwing cargo and furniture into the furnace. Honestly, things weren't looking up for the people on board.


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[Assistant] Taking on water, with the wind howling and the waves crashing against the hull, all hope seemed to be lost. And it was in that moment that a strange, ghostly figure appeared on the deck of the ship.


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[Assistant] Witnesses describe him as ancient and pale, with a long gray beard and hair. But despite his age, he seemed muscular and powerful, like some sort of Greek god.


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[Assistant] And he walked carefully toward Captain Powers. Pushing the younger man aside, this mysterious figure grabbed the wheel and began to steer the Eliza Anderson to safety.


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[Assistant] Somehow, against all the odds, the ship successfully and safely made it to the dock of some random abandoned cannery on Kodiak Island, just off the coast of southern Alaska.


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[Assistant] And after the chaos and celebration, everyone looked around to thank the strange visitor, only to discover that he was gone.


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[Assistant] Their stop on Kodiak Island was short, though. By some miracle, they found over 75 tons of coal just sitting in a pile, and soon enough they were filled up and ready to continue on. They limped to the closest major port, a place called Dutch Harbor, where all the passengers disembarked and switched to a better ship.


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[Assistant] And that's where it stayed, broken and defeated. A year later in 1898, a storm broke the ship's mooring lines and it wrecked on the coast there.


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[Assistant] Alaska is one of those places that instantly conjures up the idea of the frontier. It represents the wilderness in a lot of ways, the old world, the way things used to be.


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[Assistant] Yes, its history is imperfect, as the treatment of its native peoples over the years has demonstrated. And dangerous, as the stories of struggling gold stampeters makes clear. But it's also a place that feels wide open and free. In short, it fully embodies the idea of opportunity.


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[Assistant] Everyone dreams of a better life, of a chance to reach for something bigger and make it theirs. So in a lot of ways, the story of Alaska is our story. It's a tale we can relate to.


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[Assistant] And that makes the tragic moments much more painful for us all. We can see the potential, sure, but we can also see the risk, the failure, and the deep, bloody cost.


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[Assistant] For hundreds of thousands of hopeful miners, Alaska was the promised land. Stories of gold-filled mountains and earlier prospectors who struck it rich were their religion. Was the journey from the coast to the mountains difficult and dangerous? Absolutely. But for them, there was nothing else they could do.


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[Assistant] Opportunity knocked and they had to answer the door.


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[Assistant] All that said, I have to wonder how well that hope was holding up for the people on the deck of the Eliza Anderson during that storm in 1897.


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[Assistant] I can't think of a worse situation for all of them to be in. No fuel, no help, and no clear path forward. I don't care how hopeful they might have been, how optimistic or idealistic. That can't have been easy.


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[Assistant] Which makes their mysterious savior that much more powerful. A stranger no one had seen on board. Suddenly appearing in the storm to guide them to safety. It sounds like a scene from a fantasy novel. Yet it happened. And it got people wondering. Who was that strange man?


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[Assistant] There were a few who firmly believed it was Captain Tom Wright, the former owner of the ship who had once tried smuggling Chinese immigrants into the United States. Indeed, he was still alive at that point, so it might have been possible. But it wouldn't explain why he was on the ship at that moment, so far from home, no longer the owner and captain.


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[Assistant] The truth, it seems, would be even stranger than that. It seems that the man's name was Eric Hiested, and he'd stowed away earlier in the voyage looking for an easy ride to Dutch Harbor. He and his two brothers, Braddock and Olaf, were out of work, and it was Eric's job to go earn enough money to help them all by passage to Alaska.


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[Assistant] And where did Eric and his brothers live and work


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[Assistant] In fact, the abandoned cannery, with the 75 tons of coal just lying about, used to be theirs. And with the storm threatening to ruin his plans, Eric Hested made the decision to come out of hiding and guide the Eliza Anderson to the only safe port he could think of.


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[Assistant] Eric himself would later explain how he used the chaos of their arrival at the old cannery to slip away. One of his brothers actually rode out to the ship in a small boat, picked him up, and then rode back to shore. And no one else noticed a thing.


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[Assistant] Sometimes things turn out to be vastly different than we'd hoped. The rewards don't equal the risk, or the destination turns out to be much less satisfying than the journey itself.


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[Assistant] Not everything that glitters is gold, and not all stories from Alaska's past are about hopeful miners. In fact, if we go back a bit further in time, we can explore another well-known legend. One that's left people wondering for centuries. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.


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[Assistant] It wasn't always called Alaska. In the seven decades or so leading up to the purchase by the United States, it was known as Russian America. I know that sounds like the plot of a Cold War-era fantasy film, but that's the reason why the trading company they founded there was called the Russian American Company.


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[Assistant] At its peak, though, Russian-American company only ever had about 700 people there, compared to the tens of thousands of native peoples.


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[Assistant] He was a Russian merchant and trader born in 1747. He wasn't born into money, so like most people, he had to work hard to get ahead. For him, being a merchant was a family business. And after getting married in St. Petersburg, he took his family deep into Siberia to further his business trades.


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[Assistant] It seems that a couple of turning points set up the rest of his life.


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[Assistant] First, by the late 1780s, his wife had grown fed up with life in Siberia, so she packed up the kids and left him. And around the same time, a business investment went sour, leaving him bankrupt and ruined. So, to get a second chance at success, he took a job in Russian America to manage an outpost there.


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[Assistant] Over the next few years, Baranov moved around a bit, but ultimately settled in near Sitka, a town on a large island that today is known as Baranov Island.


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[Assistant] That sounds nice, I'm sure. But he built his small fortress right on top of an active Tlingit village. Russia maintained that Baranov purchased the land from them, but the Tlingit people say otherwise. It goes without saying, relations between them were becoming tense.


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[Assistant] It didn't help that the Russians saw the native people there as free labor, enslaving them to work for the trading company. So what happened next should have come as no surprise. In 1802, the Tlingit people issued a final warning. Get out, they told the Russians. Give us our land back.


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[Assistant] But the small ford of 150 people refused to listen, so the clinkit attacked.


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[Assistant] Baranov himself escaped, but nearly all of the Russians inside were either killed or taken prisoner. And for a while, it would seem that the true owners of the land might have won. They had their home back.


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[Assistant] For a while, at least. Two years later, Baranov returned with a small army. He drove them out, and then rebuilt his fortress all over again.


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[Assistant] That second fort, known as Baranov Castle, is no longer standing. If you visit the island now, all you'll see are a few plaques and cannons. But some things have stuck around. Namely, story.


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[Assistant] Because since the late 1800s, there has been a constant stream of reports of a ghostly sighting. A woman, sometimes dressed in white and sometimes dressed in black, who wanders Castle Hill, wringing her hands and moving silently through the dark.


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[Assistant] And ever since, there have been stories to explain who she is.


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[Assistant] Some have claimed the woman is connected to Baranov himself, that she is the spirit of his own daughter. But the trouble is, neither of his daughters ever visited him while he was there.


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[Assistant] Another legend claims the story of the Lady in Black was the invention of two young American naval officers who were looking for a way to entertain tourists in the 1880s.


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[Assistant] They pointed to the ruined castle on the hill and expressed what everyone else must have believed. That it was haunted.


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[Assistant] In their invented tale, the ghost was that of a woman forced to marry someone she didn't love, and so she took her own life. It's the sort of tale that appeared often in Victorian romance, and the first person to publish it, National Geographic board member and author Eliza Skidmore, told it wonderfully. But it wasn't true.


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[Assistant] The most convincing fiction is that her name was Olga Arbazov, the niece of a local official. They say that he ordered her to marry a rough and terrible man many years older than her, despite the fact that she was clearly in love with a young, handsome sailor named Demetrius. And when her uncle sent the sailor away on a long voyage, she lost all hope.


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[Assistant] But in a twist of fate, the sailor returned on the very night of her wedding. Upon seeing him enter the castle, hopelessness overcame her, and she snatched his dagger from his belt and plunged it into her heart. A moment later, he used the knife to do the same to himself.


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[Assistant] Later, the lovers were buried together, their grave visible from one of the castle's windows.


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[Assistant] At the end of the day, the story of the ghostly lady in black has remained a mystery. Although there never seems to be an end to the theories about who she might have been, the very fact that her tale is still whispered is proof of just how powerful folklore truly is.


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[Assistant] It's the substance that rushes in to fill the void. The fluid that finds all the cracks and cavities and then seeps in to fill them up and make them whole.


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[Assistant] Those sounds in the night, that unexplainable shape in the trees, or the scattered reports of unusual sightings, all of it is a vacuum, ready to be filled with story.


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[Assistant] We love folklore for its treasure trove of entertainment, sure, but it's also an opportunist. It sees a mystery and then dresses it up into something understandable. And that might just be my favorite thing about it.


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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 our shows and everything else going on over in one central place. Grimandmild.com


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


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[Assistant] The sailors had been stranded on the snow and ice for eight months when their rescuers finally arrived. Of the 25 men who had begun the expedition in June of 1881, only seven survived. One man had been shot after stealing food rations for the second time, but the rest had simply frozen or starved to death.


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[Assistant] When they were brought onboard the rescue vessel, there was a palpable feeling of celebration. Against all odds, these seven men had managed to fight off death with little more than hope to sustain them. They were living examples of just how strong the human will to live can be.


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[Assistant] They'd been on their expedition for three years, with orders to set up a chain of weather stations north of Canada in the Arctic Circle. Their target had been a small Canadian inlet known as Lady Franklin Bay, situated just off the coast of the northwest tip of Greenland.


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[Assistant] At the frozen waters delivered a tragic one-two punch, their resupply ships couldn't reach them through the ice, and then that same ice crushed their own ship, the Proteus.


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[Assistant] When they arrived in America in early August of 1884, a funeral was held for all who had perished on the expedition.


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[Assistant] Not by a scavenger animal after burial, and not in some sort of vicious attack that led to his death. No, the lieutenant had died of natural causes, and then a long while later his corpse had been expertly cut with a knife in order to pull edible meat from his bones. His death, aided in the survival of others.


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[Assistant] Like I said before, the human spirit is a powerful force. When faced with death, that will to live kicks in and gives people the courage to do what is necessary to survive.


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[Assistant] Whether it's the strength to sever your own limb to escape a dangerous situation Or the stubborn refusal to give up hope of rescue People are capable of extraordinary things And when their very life is on the line


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[Assistant] Desperate people will do anything to survive.


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[Assistant] Sailors called it the custom of the sea. But at the end of the day, that was just a fancy euphemism for cannibalism. Now, don't get me wrong. Sailors didn't invent cannibalism. It's not even unique to humans, with over 1500 other species who have been caught in the act. And it's a lot older than you might expect.


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[Assistant] Human bones with clear evidence of cannibalism have been dated back as far as 600,000 years, and that evidence is global, too, with examples found in almost every area inhabited by our prehistoric ancestors. Eating each other, it turns out, is one of our oldest hobbies.


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[Assistant] As civilizations began to solidify, cannibalism found its way into their written history. There are mentions of it in ancient Egyptian texts and the myths of the ancient Greeks, among many others. And as legal codes were solidified across the ancient world, you might expect that these new laws would be emphatically against it, but they were more nuanced than that.


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[Assistant] In ancient Rome, for example, cannibalism and murder were both accepted under an idea known as necessity. The actual maxim declared that from necessity springs privileges upon private rights. In other words, sometimes we have to do horrible things in order to survive.


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[Assistant] And no example is more powerful than the one I mentioned earlier, the custom of the sea.


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[Assistant] The way it worked was simple. In the event of a shipwreck, if the crew were able to do so, they can draw straws to see who survives and who will become sustenance for the rest of the party.


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[Assistant] The sailor who drew the shortest straw would be the one to sacrifice their life, while the second shortest would earn the job of butcher. And while we know this went on for hundreds of years, the earliest recorded instance dates back to the early 1600s.


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[Assistant] Sometimes though, there were no straws to draw, or no opportunity to engage in the custom of the sea in a proper ceremonial way. Sometimes it was all the crew could do to survive, and one example of that took place in 1710 off the rocky coast of Maine.


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[Assistant] The Nottingham Galley had been heading south along the coast of New England on December 11th of that year, when a storm pushed them onto a small barren piece of land known as Boone Island.


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[Assistant] It's roughly the size of two football fields put together, and is so low and flat that at high tide or during rough weather, the water level would cover the entire surface of the island.


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[Assistant] Of the fourteen person crew to survive the shipwreck, the cook was the first to die. The others, hopeful for a quick rescue, released his body into the sea, hoping that the waves would drive it to shore and alert someone that they needed help. But they might as well have tossed a note inside a bottle into the ocean. That's how low their chances were.


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[Assistant] Weeks slowly trickled by with no sign of rescue. The survivors had tried to set up a makeshift camp, but their tents were made of ripped canvas and would flood during the high tide, leaving them constantly wet and freezing. A few of the men grew desperate enough to build a small raft from the wreckage of their ship, and they soon pushed off toward the coast. But they never made it alive.


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[Assistant] One of the bodies did wash up on the shore of the small village of York, which caught the attention of the locals. They quickly put together a party that sailed out to Boone Island, but the choppy sea prevented them from landing or even sending supplies.


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[Assistant] All they could do was observe the gaunt, pale shapes of the stranded sailors and pray for a window of opportunity.


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[Assistant] When the ship's carpenter died from exposure, Captain Dean knew what had to be done.


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[Assistant] He did his best to cut the flesh off his dead crew members in a way that made it indistinguishable from any other kind of meat, but all of them knew. Even as they ate it to preserve their own lives, they knew what they were doing, and that was hard for many of them to live with even after they were finally rescued.


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[Assistant] A French vessel known as the Medusa encountered a similar challenge a century later in 1816.


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[Assistant] It was a warship that had begun sailing along the western coast of Africa, near the Bay of Arguin, when it ran aground. Around 20 of the soldiers decided to stay on the ship and wait for rescue, while over 150 others opted to build an enormous raft from the wreckage and sail to the coast. But the ocean had other ideas.


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[Assistant] Over the course of the first two nights, around 80 men on the raft lost their lives. Some were washed into the sea, while others were murdered by their fellow crew members. It was clear that not everyone was going to survive, and it seems that some had begun to try rigging the system in their favor.


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[Assistant] By the 8th day on the raft, only 15 sailors survived, roughly 10% of the men who had climbed on a week earlier. Without food or fresh water, conditions on the raft fell apart quickly. They drank their own urine to quench their thirst, and eventually cut strips of flesh off the dead to fill their bellies.


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[Assistant] When another French vessel, the Argus, discovered the raft and rescued the men, of course there were whispers about cannibalism. It was expected in circumstances such as those, and the new sailors understood that if they were ever put into a similar situation, they would probably make the same decisions.


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[Assistant] Necessity might be the mother of invention, but it was also the justification for unspeakable things. Far from home, with danger constantly knocking at the door, few things stood between a desperate sailor and his will to live, and just about everyone else was okay with that. But in the middle of the 19th century, all of that began to change.


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[Assistant] They say he was a bit of a playboy. John Henry Want was a wealthy lawyer from Australia, with rugged features and an extravagant mustache. And he wanted a yacht. So in 1883, he boarded a ship in Sydney and traveled all the way to England to find one.


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[Assistant] What he bought was a 16 year old sailboat that was sure to impress the elite back home down under. But he wasn't about to sail it home himself. No, he found a captain willing to do it for a hefty paycheck.


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[Assistant] He gave the man the equivalent of roughly $30,000 in modern American currency as the first half of his fee and then told him to have the ship repaired and to hire a crew to help him in the journey. And then John Henry Want boarded a luxury liner and headed home.


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[Assistant] The newly hired captain had a wife and three children at home, and he knew the job would take him away from them for a very long time. But the money was too good to pass up, so he had the ship inspected and started looking for men to help him.


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[Assistant] That was the easier part, it turns out. First mate Ed and experienced sailor Ned both signed up almost immediately. And as a bonus, a 17-year-old young man named Richard joined them as a cabin boy, hoping to kickstart his own career on the sea. The ship itself, though, needed help.


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[Assistant] Timbers were rotting out. There were holes in places where you didn't want holes on a ship. And there were general questions about the ship's seaworthiness. But the captain was in a hurry. The quicker they left, the quicker they returned home, after all. And so he paid the bare minimum necessary to get the yacht into the water, and then prepared to depart.


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[Assistant] They left England on May 19th of 1884, and the first month or so on the open sea was fairly uneventful. They stopped for supplies at Cape Verde on July 3rd, and the records tell us that the sea was calm and the winds were normal.


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[Assistant] But two days later, all of that changed when a massive storm blew in. And being hundreds of miles from land, they chose to continue on.


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[Assistant] And that's when the captain's decision to scrimp on repairs came back to haunt him.


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[Assistant] As the waves and wind thrashed the fragile yacht, problems started to magnify. Soon there was a hole above the water line, and another forming down below. The delicate ship with the delicate name, the Minionette, had stopped being a safe place to stay, and had quickly become a death trap.


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[Assistant] All four men grabbed what they could and scrambled into the small lifeboat. But the yacht was going down fast, and there was little time to take an inventory and plan ahead. They grabbed, and they ran.


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[Assistant] Five minutes later, the Minionette was slipping beneath the waves and was lost forever.


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[Assistant] The dangers were far from over though. The first night in the lifeboat none of the men slept because they had to defend the boat from a shark attack, and when the sun came up they took stock of their supplies, and the results were disheartening. Two tins of turnips, and no fresh water.


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[Assistant] That was all they had, and they knew instinctively that it wouldn't be enough.


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[Assistant] They rationed the food, of course, and they tried to take advantage of fortuitous moments, like when they spotted a sea turtle. The meat from that catch probably saved their lives so early in that trip, not to mention the blood, which they drank to quench their thirst. But even with all of that help, they were completely out of food within ten days.


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[Assistant] Desperation makes people do unthinkable things. Rather than drink the seawater, which was guaranteed to kill them through dehydration, they began to drink their own urine.


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[Assistant] But it soon became clear that the cabin boy, Richard Parker, was ignoring that rule in the middle of the night. While the others were declining slowly, Parker was quickly spiraling toward death.


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[Assistant] And then it arrived, that moment all captains must have dreaded, the moment when the good of the many needed to be weighed against the good of the few. They began to discuss the custom of the sea.


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[Assistant] The captain, Tom Dudley, was the first to suggest it, and while the others were reluctant, they debated it as an option. Parker was most likely too sick to say much, but the first mate, Ed Stevens, seemed to agree with the captain, while seaman, Ned Brooks, resisted the idea.


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[Assistant] On their 19th day adrift, and over a week since their last bite of food, Captain Dudley told the others that if they saw no vessel in the next 24 hours, they should kill Parker, who was already nearly dead. There would be no drawing of straws for them this time. Parker wasn't going to survive, but everyone else could be preserved if they did the difficult thing.


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[Assistant] The following day arrived with no sign of rescue and a dark cloud of sadness over everyone.


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[Assistant] When he awoke, the others were drinking Parker's blood, which they then offered to him. And as horrible as he felt about where it came from, he knew that the blood, still fresh from Parker's body, would help restore his strength. So he accepted it.


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[Assistant] Over the next few days, the surviving men consumed more and more of Richard Parker. The young man's internal organs were the first to provide them with much needed sustenance, followed by his flesh. Captain Dudley did most of the cutting, but all three of the men ate their fair share.


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[Assistant] Can't help but wonder at the emotional maelstrom that they had to weather. They did a thing they were told never to do, murdering an innocent man, and then they had to live with that guilt while they consumed the man's flesh to save their own lives.


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[Assistant] Eating Richard Parker must have felt like a betrayal of their very humanity, and yet if they refused, his death would have been for nothing. It was a moral no man's land, and I can't begin to imagine how they processed it all.


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[Assistant] On July 29th, they spotted a sail on the horizon. It was a German ship called the Montezuma, and when it finally arrived, the three survivors had been adrift for over three weeks. The German vessel helped Dudley, Stevens, and Brooks on board, and began to give them whatever help they needed. Six weeks later, they were entering port at Falmouth in Cornwall.


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[Assistant] One of the first things Dudley did when they arrived was draft a telegram for his wife. He wanted to let her know what had happened and that he was alive. What he sent her was an incredibly brief and highly edited version of what had transpired.


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[Assistant] The sailors had returned to a very different England than they'd once known. No, they hadn't slipped through some crack in reality and ended up in an alternate dimension. The changes had been going on for a few decades already, but their arrival and the stories that came with them brought all of it to a forefront.


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[Assistant] To understand these changes, we need to step back a few centuries. When King Henry II became King of England in 1154, he attempted to nationalize the laws of his kingdom.


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[Assistant] Rather than being a disparate collection of unwritten accepted behaviors, customs, and traditions, he wanted all of it under one metaphorical roof, which is where English common law comes in.


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[Assistant] For a very long while, court cases were overseen by traveling judges who set up temporary courts around the country. Then those judges would return to London and share the outcome of their cases with their peers who eventually began to incorporate those decisions into their own.


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[Assistant] So for a very long while, and by long, I mean hundreds of years, every court decision was made based on past decisions, not statutory codes or pre-written laws.


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[Assistant] In 1765, a man named Sir William Blackstone began to publish the definitive collection of all those centuries of oral tradition and legal decisions.


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[Assistant] He called it Commentaries on the Laws of England, and it put understandable, printed legal decisions into the hands of everyday commoners with no legal training. That was a good thing for a lot of reasons. But it also opened a new door.


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[Assistant] If all the prior legal decisions were now gathered into one big reference set, they could serve as a list of rules and law, rather than just a record of what happened in the past.


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[Assistant] All of a sudden, centuries of court cases involving the custom of the sea were up for debate. It was a slow battle, but by the time the survivors of the Minionette were delivered to the port in Cornwall, there was a growing opinion that a solid definitive legal decision needed to be etched into the pages of history.


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[Assistant] And Dudley, Stevens and Brooks handed that opportunity to those legal minds on a silver platter.


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[Assistant] We can't blame Dudley and the others though. They endured something horrific and lived to tell the tale. And as far as they were concerned, they had acted in the age-old tradition that had preserved the lives of sailors for centuries.


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[Assistant] Because of that, they told their story freely and without hesitation. So when an officer of the law showed up the day they arrived, Dudley spared no details, even going so far as to give the officer the very penknife he used to murder Richard Parker.


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[Assistant] But Dudley was thinking of an older England, where experiences like his were met with sympathy, rather than contempt. So while he was being honest and forthright, the authorities were beginning to wring their hands in fear. Richard Parker had been murdered, they whispered. And someone needed to pay for that crime.


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[Assistant] The three sailors were arrested and brought in for questioning.


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[Assistant] Brooks made it clear from the start that he did not participate in the murder, but did later partake in the unfortunate meal that sustained them. And because Dudley and Stevens backed up his testimony, Brooks was soon released. A free man without legal guilt.


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[Assistant] Dudley and Stevens though found themselves in hot water, which must have been frustrating for them because of the customs they had been raised with and the specific situation they alone had to live through. But the authorities weren't sympathetic, and soon enough a trial date was set.


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[Assistant] The sailors weren't without support though. It turns out the general public fully supported the things they had to do to survive, because it was part of life at sea.


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[Assistant] And remember, Falmouth was a port city, and in the late 1800s it was probably impossible to find someone in town who didn't have a sailor in their family.


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[Assistant] They understood the risks of a life at sea all too well and would have expected their own kin to make the same decisions that Dudley and the others had. The court though, disagreed.


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[Assistant] And thanks to a new system for capital charges that was instituted just two months before the voyage of the Minunet began, it was up to the judges from London, and not local magistrates, who were about to make the final decision. And at the center of that, was an eager judge named Baron Huddleston.


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[Assistant] He saw an opportunity to have his name on the definitive court decision regarding cannibalism at sea, and threw himself into the case with both feet.


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[Assistant] His goal was to see the men executed for the crime of murder, even though the public rooted for their release. In fact, Richard Parker's older brother even visited Dudley and Stevens in jail, dressed in his own sailing attire, and shook their hands to show his support.


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[Assistant] He brought a jury in that had just delivered the death sentence in another case the day before. He ran the trial with complete and obvious bias. And then, when it came time for a verdict from the jury, he showed up that day with a pre-written verdict statement and told them it would just be easier if they all agreed with him. The judge literally scripted the verdict, and the jury went along with him.


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[Assistant] It didn't matter that Dudley and Stevens only did what they did to survive. It didn't matter that centuries of custom and tradition had told them it was acceptable to do it. And it didn't matter that the entire community around them cried out in support of them. Huddleston only saw murder and he treated the trial as a search for justice. And he got it too.


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[Assistant] After the jury agreed to the judge's own verdict of guilty, he sentenced Dudley and Stevens to death. Others in the legal community were shocked. Attorney General Sir Henry James even went on record claiming that no judge would have inflicted more than three months' imprisonment, and others agreed with him. Huddleston had put his zealousness on display. And won. Sort of.


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[Assistant] You see, those recommendations for a shorter sentence caught on and soon a number of high-level people were clamoring for something more forgiving. Huddleston, they believed, should change his sentence from the death penalty to a stay in prison. And that's when Queen Victoria caught wind of it all and stepped in.


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[Assistant] On the condition that both men serve six months in prison, she agreed to do something extraordinary, much to Huddleston's frustration, and it changed their lives forever. The Queen pardoned both of them.


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[Assistant] There are a lot of easy decisions in life. The sort of decisions that are clear and spelled out and simple to make.


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[Assistant] They fall under the category of common sense most of the time, and rarely do they feel like they're life changing.


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[Assistant] Which is probably a good thing. We don't want to go through life treating each and every decision we make as if they were all a matter of life and death. That level of stress and anxiety would crush us and suck the joy out of life. Easy decisions help give us rest for when truly difficult ones come our way.


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[Assistant] It's also important to remember that life is rarely black and white. It's a long, gradual scale of various shades of grey, and every decision we face falls somewhere along that chart. Is it easy to view the death of Richard Parker as nothing more than a cold-blooded act of murder?


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[Assistant] If that's all we're looking for, sure. But knowing the full story reveals a much more complex situation.


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[Assistant] I can't say what the correct decision was that day in the lifeboat. I can see both sides of the argument, and I understand where they were each coming from. Those sailors saw hope for survival in Parker's unavoidable death, while the authorities saw two men taking the life of an innocent victim. And both of those views were valid.


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[Assistant] Either way, there were always going to be consequences. Whether or not the trial ended in a guilty verdict, Dudley and Stevens weren't going to live out the rest of their lives in peace. Sure, they might put on a happy face and try to move on, but I can't imagine it's easy to forget events like those in the lifeboat.


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[Assistant] Captain Tom Dudley and Ed Stevens both served their six-month terms in prison and were released on May 20th of 1885, a full year and a day after they had set sail on the Minionette. They paid the price that was set before them, and when they walked away, the court was satisfied.


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[Assistant] Ed Stevens struggled with the consequences in his own way and spent the next 30 years slowly drinking himself to death. Captain Dudley left prison and boarded a ship for Australia, hoping to start fresh in a new place.


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[Assistant] I can't imagine what the journey must have felt like for him. Memories of that first failed trip to Australia must have haunted him the entire way.


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[Assistant] And they weren't the only ones to remember the events of 1884.


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[Assistant] It was the kind of story that left an enormous footprint, both in the legal world and in popular culture. So it should come as no surprise that tales of castaways and sailors lost adrift on an open sea have stuck around ever since. In fact, one of the most popular movies of 2012 was about just that sort of thing.


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[Assistant] In it, a teenager discovers he is the sole survivor after the freighter he had been sailing on is sunk by a massive storm. But he's not alone.


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[Assistant] Inside the lifeboat with him are a handful of animals from his family's zoo, including a hyena, a zebra, an orangutan, and a tiger.


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[Assistant] Over the course of the story, the animals turn on each other, until the only survivors are the teenager Pi and the enormous tiger. By the end of the film, it's clear that Pi owes his life to the tiger, even though their relationship is tenuous and strange.


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[Assistant] Finally, 227 days later, the pair arrive on a Mexican beach and go their separate ways, providing a happy ending to a dangerous adventure.


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[Assistant] And you're probably wondering why I'm telling you all about this. Especially considering the fact that it's all made up. One big work of fiction. However award-winning and lauded it might be. Well, two reasons.


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[Assistant] First, the novel and film both illustrate just how powerful the story of being stranded and lost in the middle of the ocean can be. All those tales we've discussed today, of the Nottingham Galley, the Medusa, and yes, the Minionette, are all part of a larger and older legacy, one that has never really gone away.


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[Assistant] But the other reason is more poetic. Because characters have names, and authors often pull those names from inspiration, either in their own lives or from within the subject matter they plan to discuss.


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[Assistant] So it's no wonder that in a story that explores how one young man found the strength to survive from another passenger in his lifeboats, that his source of strength, the Tiger, would have a significant name. The Tiger's name, you see, was Richard Parker.


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[Assistant] The story of those who survived the sinking of the Minionette is one that certainly blurs the lines between acceptable and taboo. But outside its impact on the world of England in 1884, their tale also manages to leave its mark in other places.


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[Assistant] Not where you might expect. Stick around after this short sponsor break to discover what I mean.


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[Assistant] Although he's known for his short stories, Edgar Allan Poe did publish one complete novel during his short career. It began life as a serialized story published in a literary magazine, but the episodes stopped before he gathered the full story together and published it. Its name was The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.


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[Assistant] Most readers adored it for the adventure and suspense it delivered. A few critics found it to be a bit too grisly for their taste, but I'm not sure what they were expecting. This was Poe, after all. Gruesome was a way of life for him.


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[Assistant] The book's main story revolves around a young man named Arthur Gordon Pym, who stows away on the whaling ship owned by his friend's father. Pym's friend, Augustus, doesn't tell his father about Pym's presence on the ship, which turns out to be an unfortunate thing.


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[Assistant] When Pym first boards the ship and hides away, Augustus tells them that he will bring him food and water until the ship is too far from land to turn around. But right away, something feels wrong.


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[Assistant] No food arrives, and there's no sign of Augustus, and so Pym begins to worry as any of us would.


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[Assistant] As a side note, Pym also brought along his dog for this illicit adventure. A little thing named Tiger. I'm not entirely sure how he thought that would help him hide away on a ship full of loud sailors, but that's what he did.


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[Assistant] And after a few days of waiting for food, Tiger returned from one of his prowls around the ship with a note attached to his collar. A note written in blood.


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[Assistant] It was from Augustus, and it detailed how shortly after leaving port in Nantucket, a mutiny had taken place.


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[Assistant] A number of the sailors were slaughtered, but the mutineers won the ship, and Augustus's father was placed into a lifeboat with a few others and set adrift. Augustus himself, who wrote the bloody note, only managed to survive by pretending to agree with the mutiny.


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[Assistant] Along the way, Augustus became friends with one of the younger mutineers, a sailor named Dirk Peters, who was beginning to struggle with regret over what he and the others had done. And that's why Augustus had written to Pym. They planned to retake the ship for the captain, and they needed Pym's help.


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[Assistant] The rest of the story is something you might expect to see in a modern Hollywood film. Pym is given the bloody clothing of a dead sailor. But because it's a ship out in the middle of the ocean, he couldn't just appear and pretend to have been there all along. So he pretends to be a ghost. Naturally.


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[Assistant] In the commotion that follows his ghostly appearance, Augustus and Peters are able to kill all the remaining mutineers but one, a sailor named Richard, and they retake the ship.


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[Assistant] Their victory is soon upset though, when a storm blows in and capsizes the vessel, leaving the four of them to cling to the wreckage.


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[Assistant] There's a lot more that happens. But at one point, long after the four men have been set adrift on the wreckage of the old whaling ship, they realize all of them are going to die of starvation unless they do the unthinkable. Take part in the custom of the sea.


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[Assistant] And so four splinters of wood are pulled from the remnants of the ship, and Pym held them out for the others to grab.


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[Assistant] The second shortest piece fell to Pym, meaning that he would be the one to do the killing.


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[Assistant] The shortest straw, the sign that fate or god or pure misfortune had chosen a victim was drawn by the last remaining mutineer, Richard.


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[Assistant] After that, we know how this story goes. After all, that's most likely why the critics felt this novel was a bit too grisly, right?


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[Assistant] By now you probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that the name of this mutinous sailor, the one who had switched sides to help the others and eventually drew the shortest straw and provide for the survival of others, was named Richard Parker. It almost seems fitting at this point, doesn't it?


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[Assistant] But what is surprising about Poe's story is something more bizarre. You see, his tale of the shipwrecked sailors and their fight to survive, a tale that involved the murder and butchering of a young man named Richard Parker, wasn't based on the events that took place on board the Minionette in 1884.


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[Assistant] They were powerful events for sure, but they didn't inspire Poe to write the narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. How do we know? Because of the date the novel was published. 1838.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research by Taylor Hagridorn 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 two other podcasts, Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic.


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


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[Assistant] The gods had abandoned them. At least that was how the ancient Greeks interpreted the signs in the sky.


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[Assistant] Earlier in the day, everything had seemed normal and fine, but hours later, the sun had grown dark, as if covered by a great disc.


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[Assistant] The Greeks refer to this as a great abandonment, when their greatest fears had come to life. The gods had forsaken them. It was a sign that great disaster was about to arrive, either from war or disease, or even the death of their king.


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[Assistant] The Greeks weren't alone in how they interpreted rare natural events. Over 4,000 years ago in China, the royal astronomers failed to predict an eclipse and the emperor had them executed for the error.


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[Assistant] And the list goes on and on. In ancient Egypt, the event signified a battle between Apep, the serpent of death and chaos, and Ra, the sun god.


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[Assistant] Thankfully, Ra always won, and the sun would return. In the mythology of a number of Native American tribes, an eclipse happened when a little boy trapped the sun in a fishing net. It was only freed when wild animals chewed the ropes away.


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[Assistant] For thousands of years, humans have built deep superstition around rarity. When something happened so infrequently that its occurrence felt otherworldly, stories would be crafted around it. These rare occurrences were miracles, after all, at least in the minds of those who witnessed them.


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[Assistant] When they happened, it had the potential to be a frightening, life changing event.


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[Assistant] And few outliers captured that reverence and fear more fully than when it happened right in our midst, when the very people who told the stories experienced those miracles firsthand. Because folklore wasn't always an invention of the mind, just some clever story invented and then passed along. Sometimes, it was more tangible, more physical, and more real.


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[Assistant] Because in the world of the unusual and unexpected, nothing was more powerful than the birth of twins.


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[Assistant] Those that visit the village are always struck by its beauty. Tucked away in the southeastern tip of England in the Weald of Kent, the village of Binden is a snapshot of another time.


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[Assistant] Lattest windows adorn ancient Flemish cottages. Field stones and thatched roofs and whitewashed plaster cut up by blackened oak beams. Honestly, it's a crime how stereotypical the place looks, and I'm not going to fault them for it at all. It is a thing of beauty. But that's not all that's wonderful about Biddenden.


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[Assistant] It seems that every year on Easter, the local church gives out food to the most needy in the region. It is often a meal of tea and cheese and loaves of bread.


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[Assistant] Funding for that ongoing charity comes from the revenue earned by a plot of farmland now known as the Bread and Cheese Lands. Land. That was a gift from a set of conjoined twins.


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[Assistant] Mary and Eliza Chalkhurst were born to wealthy parents in the year 1100, but passed away in 1134.


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[Assistant] In their will, they deeded 20 acres of land to be used as a source for future charity. And ever since, the sisters have been sort of the patron saints of the town. In fact, the cakes that are given out each year, now known as Biddenden cakes, bear their image. The figure of two women, literally joined at the hip. But it's not the only town to revere twins.


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[Assistant] In southwestern Nigeria, there's a group of people known as the Yoruba. One of the things that sets this group apart from a lot of others is their definition of what a family is. For them, it's more than just parents, children, and siblings. And because of that flexibility, each clan can often grow to over 100 members.