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[Assistant] First, this robbery supposedly happened at midday, when everyone was up and about throughout the house. And even though Lizzie pointed out a broken lock on the cellar door, that only suggested the impossible. That someone loudly broke the lock, entered the cellar, and then made their way all the way upstairs without getting caught.


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[Assistant] And without getting lost in that unusual maze of rooms I described earlier.


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[Assistant] And then, on August 2nd of 1892, everyone started to get sick. Apparently, that was the day they had leftover swordfish for lunch. By evening, everyone was nauseous and down for the count. Except Lizzie, oddly, who seemed to fare better than the others.


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[Assistant] Abby was so sick that a doctor was called to the house the next day. And one of the causes he suggested was intentional poisoning. But then again, food poisoning during the hot New England summers was so common that it had its own term, the summer complaint. So they dismissed it and moved on.


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[Assistant] That night, August 3rd, Lizzie left the house to visit a friend, and during their conversation, she let slip that she believed their family was in danger.


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[Assistant] Men she refused to name were apparently threatening her father, and Lizzie was afraid of what might happen next.


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[Assistant] Andrew Borden came home early from work on August 4th. It seems his body wasn't quite finished with the food poisoning and he wanted to take a nap. That was about 10.30am if you're taking notes. But the house wasn't running as smoothly as you might expect.


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[Assistant] Bridget, the servant that everyone called Maggie, was also pretty rough that morning. Except she didn't have the privilege of being her own boss, and the Bordens had given her the task of making breakfast, cleaning up from that, and then washing all of the windows in the house, inside and out.


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[Assistant] So when I tell you that she had to run outside around 9am and vomit on the lawn, I hope you can understand why.


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[Assistant] Thankfully, Lizzie allowed her to go take a nap, which is where Bridget was when Mr. Borden came home.


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[Assistant] When he finally arrived, he found the front door locked. Sick and tired, he struggled to get it open, the noise of which caught Bridget's attention, and she came downstairs to let him in. Andrew then took a package upstairs briefly and then came back down to nap on a sofa in the sitting room.


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[Assistant] Interestingly, Lizzie apparently also heard her father come home and stepped out of a room on the second floor to laugh at his struggle from the top of the stairs.


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[Assistant] Lizzie, however, would later deny being up there, despite Bridget's testimony to the contrary. Instead, she claims she was taking care of chores around the house, as well as looking through the barn out back for fishing lures, of all things.


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[Assistant] But it was Lizzie who also discovered the scene of the crime when she stepped into the sitting room a little after 11 a.m. And what she found was grisly beyond imagining.


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[Assistant] Andrew had taken his coat off and placed it folded with care beside himself.


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[Assistant] Now though, it was covered in blood, as was the sofa too. Ribbons of blood had also been flung onto the wall, even as high as the framed artwork that hung above him. There was so much blood, but after glancing at his body, one could easily understand why.


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[Assistant] Andrew Borden's head had been struck violently and repeatedly with a hatchet, carving his face into a ruined mess.


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[Assistant] Ten blows in total, each one devastating the man's face and head. One of the blows actually sliced one of his eyeballs right down the middle. The result was a body that, even to those who knew him, was unrecognizable.


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[Assistant] But when Bridget arrived, Lizzie wouldn't let her look into the sitting room. Instead, she sent the woman to fetch two people. Their physician, Dr. Seabury Bowen, and a friend named Alice Russell, the same woman Lizzie had visited with the night before.


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[Assistant] When they arrived, along with a neighbor woman named Mrs. Churchill, all of them were shaken by what they saw.


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[Assistant] Even the physician, a man who had seen a lot in his career, found Andrew's body to be more than disturbing. But one thing was very clear. The murder had only just happened, and someone suggested they search the house to see if the killer might still be there.


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[Assistant] There was also the question of where Abby Borden had gone. Emma and John, the brother of Andrew's first wife, weren't home, but no one was clear on where Abby might be. Lizzie insisted that she had received a hand-delivered message from a friend and gone out to visit them, but Bridget had no memory of the woman leaving either.


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[Assistant] So Mrs. Churchill joined Bridget in slowly creeping up the stairs. They were looking for a killer, but in the back of their minds they also half expected to find another body. And just as they reached the point on the staircase where their heads were level with the floor of the upstairs bedrooms, Churchill turned toward one of the guest rooms and saw something on the floor. Another body. It was Abby.


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[Assistant] And judging by the evidence, she had been struck by the same person wielding the same weapon. She too had been hit over and over on and around the head, 19 times according to the autopsy. But where Andrew's body had still been bleeding when they found it, Abby's lay in a pool of thick, drying blood.


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[Assistant] Is there another called Alice Russell from below?


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[Assistant] Now, one thing to know about Fall River in the 1890s is that while crime was relatively low, the decades leading up to the Borden murders saw a massive influx of immigrants from less desirable places, like Portugal, Ireland, and, horror of horrors, Canada.


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[Assistant] They took the less desirable jobs and quickly became the go-to boogeymen for any and all fear-related topics of conversation.


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[Assistant] So despite no evidence to suggest it was necessary, the police started to look for clues in the immigrant community. Surprise, surprise, that well came up dry. But they did find another source of suspicious activity and testimony. The victim's youngest daughter, Lizzie. And while it might be obvious to some, let's take a moment to unpack why. First, there was Lizzie's whereabouts at the time of the murder.


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[Assistant] The medical experts placed Abby's time of death at around 9am and Andrew's at about 11am, which means that someone brutally murdered Abby and then stayed in the house for two hours, unnoticed by all the others, before doing the same to Andrew. Or that the killer wasn't really an intruder at all.


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[Assistant] And when you remember Bridget's testimony that Lizzie had been on the second floor landing when her father returned home at 1030, laughing as they both struggled with the locked door, it's easy to wonder.


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[Assistant] How in the world could she have been upstairs and not heard the murder of her stepmother take place?


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[Assistant] There's also the story that Abby wasn't home because she'd been called away to see a friend. A friend who reached out by sending a handwritten note via a messenger. But try as they might, the authorities could not track down who that messenger might have been, if they existed at all. And the person who declared that story as truth? Lizzie Borden.


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[Assistant] And then there was the situation involving the dress. It seems that in the aftermath of the murders, family friend Alice Russell stayed at the house with Lizzie and Emma. And she claimed that one day she stepped into the kitchen to find Lizzie burning a blue dress.


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[Assistant] When asked why she was doing it, Lizzie replied that the dress had paint on it. But it does require us to ask hard questions about how the killer managed to escape without leaving a bloody trail. Or how, if that killer was Lizzie, she might have managed to look neat and clean when the police arrived.


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[Assistant] And I know folks have done the math. The best guess at the time between Andrew Borden's time of death and the exact moment Lizzie shouted for Bridget to come downstairs was a small window of maybe 10 to 15 minutes. Could Lizzie have done the deed, gone to her room and changed, and then returned to the sitting room to cry for help?


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[Assistant] Some believe the answer is yes. And Bridget Sullivan was clear with the police when she described what Lizzie had been wearing that morning before the murders took place. A blue dress.


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[Assistant] I'm not saying it's definitive, but I'm also pretty sure the last thing you would want to do in the wake of a brutal murder in your own home is burn some clothing just because it has some paint on it.


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[Assistant] On August 9th, just five days after the murders, the police held an inquest to discuss the case.


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[Assistant] Many of the people involved were questioned, including Lizzie and Bridget. And after giving a lot of confusing information, Lizzie drew enough suspicion to be formally arrested on August 11th. She would spend the next nine and a half months behind bars, waiting for her trial to begin, which finally took place on June 5th of 1893.


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[Assistant] And look, these sorts of trials are incredibly complex and intricate, and there's just no way I could adequately capture everything that transpired in just a few minutes here. But I do think the important things to point out are that all of those inconsistencies I mentioned just a moment ago were brought up during the trial, and just as quickly, they were dismissed away.


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[Assistant] The confusing stories and testimony about where Lizzie was during the murder, that was blamed on the low dose of morphine that Dr. Bowen had given her, causing, as he claimed, mental confusion.


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[Assistant] That window of time required to finish the murder and then run upstairs to change was also brought into the discussion, but again dismissed as not possible. Plus, they never found the hatchet used by the killer, and how could Lizzie have possibly had time to hide it so well?


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[Assistant] And to make matters worse, a bunch of testimony from Lizzie herself was thrown out because it was given without an attorney present, and she hadn't been properly informed of her Fifth Amendment rights. Add to this the supportive, emotional testimony from her older sister Emma, and Lizzie suddenly looked like a victim rather than the killer.


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[Assistant] Her guilt hadn't been proven without a shadow of a doubt, and that left the jury with a difficult decision to make.


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[Assistant] On June 20th of 1893, they left the courtroom to deliberate and returned just 90 minutes later.


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[Assistant] It was a crime of epic proportions, one that had captured attention on a national level, and everyone was eager for their decision.


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[Assistant] The verdict that was read aloud would bring relief to some and anger to others. But either way, it was the final word.


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[Assistant] The murder of Andrew and Abby Borden has never left us. The blood might have been cleaned up, and furniture and carpets changed over the years, but the stain of that violence and horror will never fade away. Death, after all, is irreversible, no matter how hard we wish it wasn't.


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[Assistant] It doesn't help that it was such a complex story, played out on a massive stage to national attention. It was a crime before the era of DNA, and one that seemed to defy logical timelines. Everyone wanted to find the killer, but no one seemed to be able to put the entire puzzle together to do it.


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[Assistant] There are also many other pieces to the story that I didn't have time to explore here, and all of them have the power to alter our view of Lizzie Borden. There's her visit to a local drug store the day before the murders, where she tried to buy prussic acid and odorless and quick-acting poison.


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[Assistant] And there was the fact that Lizzie had a lifelong passion for animals, and how just months before the murder, she had discovered that her father had opened her homemade pigeon coop and killed all the birds. Killed them, by the way. With a hatchet.


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[Assistant] The conversation could go on and on, which it has, for 130 years. Because the truth of the matter is, the killer got away. Whether it was Lizzie herself, someone else close to the family, or truly the act of a strange invader, the unsolved status of this case has never gone away.


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[Assistant] Either her trial was an enormous travesty of justice, or it was one of the biggest unsolved murders on record. Both options are difficult to process, and each have proven impossible to let go of. Even the house itself has failed to escape the gravitational pull of those horrific events.


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[Assistant] Today the building serves a few different purposes. It's a mixture of a bed and breakfast, a museum, and a general tourist destination for people who are passionate about the story. And that means lots and lots of people have passed through those walls over the years.


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[Assistant] My friend Amy Bruni from the TV show Kindred Spirits said it best on a recent episode of her podcast, Haunted Road. The energy of the Borden house is fed often and fed well by one of the most notorious true crime cases in American history.


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[Assistant] Yes, it's just a house, but it's also the epicenter for something larger, something permanent, and quite possibly something supernatural.


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[Assistant] Countless reports from visitors over the years have detailed various unusual experiences. From visions of mysterious figures to the touches of invisible hands, the Borden House seems to have it all.


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[Assistant] In the end though, the biggest ghost is the spirit of uncertainty. Who was the real killer? What was their true motivation? And how did they manage to slip through the nets of all the people investigating the murders of Andrew and Abby Borden? We might never know the answers to those questions.


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[Assistant] One thing that might help could be to access Lizzie's own files and documents regarding the case. Apparently she kept it all, including legal paperwork, correspondence with her defense attorney, and anything else that was part of the journey. Part of her story. And where is it?


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[Assistant] In a locked box in the hands of the same Boston law firm, she entrusted them to her instructions, guard them forever and never break the seal on the box. And to this day, her wishes have been honored, but it certainly makes a person wonder what could be so innocent that it needs hidden from the world.


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[Assistant] The story of Lizzie Borden is tragic, bloody, and ever so mysterious. How the murders could have taken place and who the true killer might have been are questions that have puzzled historians and researchers for over a century. And after today, I hope you can understand why.


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[Assistant] But there's more to her story than the murders and her trial. And if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll tell you one more tale about her tragic life.


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[Assistant] In a lot of ways, the death of her parents gave Lizzie the life she always wanted. Yes, there was grief. Yes, there was sadness. And yes, there was tragedy. But it also afforded her the freedom and privilege she had always seemed to be drawn to.


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[Assistant] Of course, whether or not that actually mattered more than having her parents around, only Lizzie could tell us. And I'm sure each of us has our own feelings on that.


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[Assistant] Within a month of her acquittal, Lizzie did what she'd always dreamed of. She moved up to The Hill, that ritzy high-class neighborhood that overlooked the rest of Fall River. And she could afford to as well. Her portion of the inheritance from her father's estate netted her the modern equivalent of roughly ten million dollars.


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[Assistant] The house she bought was big, with eight bedrooms, six fireplaces, and a whole lot of space, all spread out across three stories of newly built luxury. Her older sister Emma moved in with her, but I imagine they also brought a lot of baggage with them. How could they not? And sadly, the community didn't let them move on.


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[Assistant] There would always be rumors that Lizzie was the killer. There was mistrust and social distance. And I would imagine that overwhelming feeling that she wasn't welcome, which had to have been frustrating, right? She had been declared innocent and moved into the nice neighborhood. And yet she would always be Lizzie Borden.


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[Assistant] And then there were the children. Neighborhood kids were known to be the most cruel, throwing eggs at her house or gravel at her windows. They would push large needles into the gap between the doorbell button and the metal plate surrounding it, causing it to stick.


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[Assistant] And of course, there was the rhyme. They would chant it most often in front of her house, to the rhythm of their jump rope. If you knew about the Lizzie Borden story before today, you've probably already heard the song as well.


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[Assistant] The details weren't accurate, of course. The number of blows with the weapon are wrong, for example. But you get the idea. And I hope you can see how that little rhyme became like a ghost haunting Lizzie for decades to come. Guilty or innocent, she suffered through that small punishment for the rest of her life.


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[Assistant] In 1905, Emma moved out. Maybe she had had enough of living in the same space as the pariah of the neighborhood. Or maybe she just needed time on her own. But when she did, it left Lizzie alone, with her only company the many animals she had surrounded herself with.


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[Assistant] Over the years that followed, she did her best to live her life on her own terms. She christened her house Maplecroft and even had the name etched into the stone steps leading up to the front porch. But every decision was excruciating and studied intently by the people around her.


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[Assistant] One newspaper article from 1913 said it best, in a piece about her daily life.


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[Assistant] Lizzie Borden lives a recluse, as damned by public opinion, and as ostracized by former friends and enemies alike, as if that same jury had pronounced the one word, guilty.


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[Assistant] In 1926, she checked into a hospital under a false name to get help for gall bladder issues. The following year, she passed away.


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[Assistant] There's some speculation as to how well attended her wake was at Maplecroft, with some accounts mentioning just a few friends and one eyewitness who was hired to sing a song during the service, even claiming the room was empty.


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[Assistant] Lizzie didn't leave any money for her sister upon her death, giving a good-sized chunk instead to a local animal rescue organization. But that didn't matter. After complications with a broken hip after a fall, Emma passed away just nine days after her younger sister.


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[Assistant] Lizzie Borden's graveside burial service at Oak Grove Cemetery was held after the sun went down in the dark with no guests there to remember her. And that burial was right beside her father and stepmother, which was either a tender reunion or an awkward mistake.


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[Assistant] When one of the prosecutors from her trial, a man named Frank Knowlton, heard about where she'd been buried, he asked the question in a letter to a friend that all of us must be thinking.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research by Taylor Haggardorn, 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.


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


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[Assistant] There's a Soho loft known as the New York Earth Room, which contains nearly a quarter of a million pounds of dirt, installed by an artist in 1977.


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[Assistant] There's a World War I fighter plane sitting on top of a 26-story building on Water Street, and there's even a 25-foot waterfall in a park on East 51st Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue.


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[Assistant] But few are aware that there's a deeper secret, one that's tucked away where most will never see it. And it all starts back around 1910, when construction began on Grand Central Terminal.


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[Assistant] At the same time, they built a power plant that supplied energy to the terminal and the surrounding tracks, complete with its own set of tracks and a platform so that cargo trains could carry the plant's waste away.


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[Assistant] But in 1930, the plant was torn down and a hotel was built on the same spot. It was a clean start with everything built from scratch.


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[Assistant] Well, except for one thing. They left the tracks and the platform underground and even connected it to the hotel by way of an elevator. And beginning with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, American presidents have used the secret train station hidden away beneath the iconic Waldorf Astoria.


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[Assistant] There's something powerful about a buried secret. From the legends of pirate treasure beneath the sands of some tropical island, to the academic work of tireless archaeologists, the idea that things can be hidden beneath our feet has never been up for dispute. Countless Hollywood adventure films stand as a testament to that.


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[Assistant] But it goes beyond secret train stations and forgotten public works tunnels. Over the centuries, humans have learned to use the underground like a tool, hiding away more than just treasure. From bodies to bunkers, we've been putting reminders of our own failures and mistakes into the ground, hoping that out of sight can truly be out of mind.


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[Assistant] Sometimes those things are hidden far away from prying eyes and never see the light of day again. Every now and then though, someone with a shovel digs in just the right place and forgotten history is uncovered, exposing a story to the world that paints a tragic and sinister picture.


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[Assistant] Edinburgh is an old city. In fact, people have been living on or near Castle Rock, that volcanic hill that Edinburgh Castle sits atop for thousands of years.


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[Assistant] And you can't fully understand Edinburgh's past without understanding that hill.


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[Assistant] Millions of years ago, it was much larger, but eventually glaciers passed over it. In the process, they wore away all the softer material and left only the hard, solid contents of the volcano's pipe.


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[Assistant] In the process, much of the material that was broken off was dragged in a line away from the hill, creating a sort of tail.


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[Assistant] And early settlements in Edinburgh focused on those two features, the crag or hill and the tail that extends eastward from it. Think of it like a really tall building with a mile long ramp to reach the top.


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[Assistant] And naturally, that made it a fantastic place to build a castle, because its height and inaccessibility made it hard to get to and easier to defend.


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[Assistant] Eventually though, the city expanded beyond the hill and ridge, and other means of defense were necessary. So in 1450, the people of Edinburgh started building a massive city wall to keep them safe.


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[Assistant] Remember, walls by design are meant to keep people out, but they're also an inflexible limitation on the people inside. So, as the population grew, they started to feel the crunch for space.


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[Assistant] Instead of expanding outward, the people of Edinburgh built upward. By the early 1500s the city was home to something rarely seen in Europe.


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[Assistant] Skyscrapers. I know we tend to think of those as a purely modern invention, but five centuries ago, there were structures in Edinburgh that stood at least 14 stories high. They didn't hold office space or corporate headquarters, though. No, these towers were tenement buildings.


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[Assistant] And people didn't just build Skyward. Because of the soft nature of the sandstone beneath the city, it was also common for businesses on the lower level to dig down into the rock, carving out cellars and tunnels. Most cellars even had cellars beneath them, sometimes three or four layers deep.


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[Assistant] Which is probably why Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson described that area of the city as, like a rabbit warren, not only by the number of its dwellers, but by the complication of its passages and holes. Faced with a limited amount of space, I think it's safe to say that the people of the city got creative.


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[Assistant] In 1513, a new wall was constructed to expand the boundaries of Edinburgh, sort of like buying a larger pair of pants. It gave them room to breathe, but only for a little while. As the 16th century went on, that space was quickly filled up with more of the same.


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[Assistant] And as it did, society began to stratify. The richer you were, the higher up you could live. Far above the noise and smell of the filthy streets below.


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[Assistant] At some point though, that wasn't good enough. Looking for a cleaner place to live, plans were put in place around 1766 to build a new area of the city, north of Castle Rock. It became known as Newtown, and when it was completed, the rich moved out of the old town, leaving no one there with the means to keep the streets and buildings safe and clean.


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[Assistant] Around the same time, a series of five bridges were constructed, radiating out from the old town into the regions beyond.


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[Assistant] And they were wonders of engineering and they helped create a level road out from the city over the rolling hills and valley. And the main feature of these bridges was their stone archways. Archways that quickly became filled with their own unique structures called vaults.


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[Assistant] One of the first uses for some of these vaults was as housing for prisoners. The vaults beneath the North Bridge, for example, held impoverished beggars, while the South Bridge vaults served to hold criminals awaiting trial in the sheriff's court above.


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[Assistant] But of course, people found a lot of creative uses for those vault spaces. And over the years, just about everything took place down there in the dark. From occult rituals to wild parties thrown by the rich and powerful.


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[Assistant] But the vaults also began to mimic the streets of Old Town above them, filling up with yet more dirty tenement buildings. They were also where the less acceptable businesses were forced to retreat, like brothels and illegal distilleries.


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[Assistant] These spaces were dark and wet and cold, and were constantly plagued by disease. And being at the bottom of the city, geographically speaking, they were also the place where much of the city's refuse and human waste tended to run.


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[Assistant] Some people rarely saw daylight. Thanks to the bridge and buildings above them, those narrow corridors down below were bathed in shadows and darkness. People would leave their homes early in the morning to work in the mines and then come back in the evening having missed a single glimpse of the sun.


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[Assistant] There was crime and danger and death around every single corner.


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[Assistant] During the 1800s, fires destroyed much of those dark communities. The first in 1824, and then again in 1861. People would rebuild, conditions would worsen, and the cycle would repeat. And each time, corners of those vaults and tunnels would eventually get buried or forgotten. But the world above was changing too.


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[Assistant] There were new places for the city to expand, and the need to live in the vaults slowly faded as the 19th century came to an end. Soon enough, there was very little left of the Edinburgh Underground. But it was still there, as long as you knew where to look.


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[Assistant] The tragedy of the past is a lot like a physical injury. They usually heal, but they often leave a scar. And Edinburgh has its own fair share of scars.


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[Assistant] I mentioned the bridges earlier, built in the latter part of the 18th century, but I wanted to go a little deeper on their use. You see, Edinburgh isn't a city built around just one hill. What we can see today actually spans seven of them, although those are much smaller than Castle Rock for sure. And the reason why we can't see them is that those bridges cover them up.


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[Assistant] At first, they were just bridges, but soon enough, buildings were constructed along their sides. Then, over time, the gaps were filled in until eventually it became impossible to see what was below them. Well, that's mostly true. Because those spaces were used. But we'll get to that in a bit.


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[Assistant] When the South Bridge was completed in 1788, the city planned a big ceremony to open it. There was a woman in the area who was loved by everyone, a socially active widow of a respected judge, who also happened to be the oldest person living in the city. So she was invited to be the first pedestrian to cross the bridge.


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[Assistant] Sadly, the day before the ceremony, she passed away.


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[Assistant] It was a setback for the city's plans, but they found a way to make it work.


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[Assistant] It's recorded that they hired a hearse, placed her coffin inside it, and then carted her body from one end to the other.


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[Assistant] Aside from the obvious poor taste in using a person's body as a prop in some official ceremony, which I think we can all agree might not have been the best decision, there's also the matter of superstition. Knowing that the first person to cross the South Bridge was dead seemed to set a new expectation in the minds of the people who used it.


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[Assistant] But life went on for everyone anyway. Buildings were built along the sides of the bridge, and businesses moved in. Still more set up shop in the vaults below them, in the spaces between the stone spans of the bridge itself.


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[Assistant] But they didn't last long. Those vaults turned out to be inhospitable with water that leaked in bringing unsuitable conditions with it.


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[Assistant] Within a decade of opening, businesses were already moving out of the South Bridge. In their place, the bridge became home to those who had less control over their own safety.


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[Assistant] Infamous body snatchers Burke and Hare were said to have used the vaults, although there's no proof of that. But it's certainly easy to see how it could be true, given the shadowy world that existed down there below.


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[Assistant] What is certain is that despite the horrible conditions and dangerous occupants, those dark and filthy vaults were used as a home by countless people. In fact, when they were excavated two centuries later, all sorts of objects from normal everyday life were uncovered, from buttons and pipes to cooking utensils and toys. But that's not all they left behind.


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[Assistant] If the stories told over the years are true, there's something else down below the South Bridge.


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[Assistant] After those excavations were completed in the mid-90s, a number of tours were set up in the vaults, allowing tourists to pass through and experience those dark spaces for themselves. One vault was even waterproofed and turned into a practice space for musicians, although there were constant, almost supernatural, some might say, issues with lighting.


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[Assistant] One tourist claimed to feel hands grab her from behind, only to turn around and find no one there. Others have felt cold spots or captured strange orbs in their photographs, although those are admittedly incredibly subjective things that probably tell us more about our willingness to believe than anything else.


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[Assistant] I'll add it up. Those details paint a mysterious picture.


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[Assistant] One tourist recalled feeling his backpack being opened while walking through one of the dark tunnels. When he turned to see who was trying to rob him, he found no one there at all.


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[Assistant] Others have claimed to see dark shapes squatting in far corners of the vaults and the overwhelming sensation of being watched. But few stories illustrate the darkness of the vaults like that of a mother and daughter in the mid-1990s.


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[Assistant] It's said that the mother brought her young daughter on one of those early tours, assuming it would be entertaining. And for a while it was. But upon entering one of the larger vaults, the tour guide stopped the group and asked everyone to turn out their lights. It was story time, and they wanted to deliver that tale in the dark.


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[Assistant] As the tour guide told their story, the mother said she felt her daughter reach up and take her hand, holding it unusually tight for someone with such tiny hands. The entire time the ghost story was echoing through the vaulted space, she took comfort knowing her daughter was there beside her, and occasionally squeezed her fingers to reassure the child.


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[Assistant] When the story was over, the tour guide thanked everyone for playing along and then gave them all permission to turn their lights back on. One by one, flashlights illuminated the darkness and the mother looked down to smile at her daughter and asked her what she thought of the story. And then she froze. Her daughter wasn't there.


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[Assistant] Just seconds before she had felt that small hand in her own and couldn't understand how the girl could have vanished so quickly. In a panic she spun around, looking through the group for a sign of her daughter, but found nothing.


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[Assistant] And then her gaze wandered farther away, over to a shadowy corner on the far side of the vault. And there, moving slowly into the darkness, as if being guided by some unseen presence, was the shape of a little girl.


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[Assistant] The mother quickly retrieved her daughter, and they finished the tour without being separated again. But the experience certainly begs a question. If the little girl had wandered so far away, whose hand had the mother been holding?


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[Assistant] Not everything started underground. All across Edinburgh, there were buildings and neighborhoods that extended up toward the sky and enjoyed a fair amount of daylight. But as time went on, those little glimpses of the sun became more and more rare.


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[Assistant] The biggest problem was the tendency to place very tall buildings very close together. By the mid 1600s, that trend had created some very unique streets in the city. They almost looked like canyons, where people could walk along the street below and visit shops and cafes. But the sky seemed miles above them.


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[Assistant] In fact, it made everything feel enclosed, and soon enough that term stuck. A narrow lane at the bottom of a man-made canyon became known as a close. And Edinburgh had a number of them, thanks to its dense urban population.


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[Assistant] Most of the time, a close would be named after a well-known resident, although sometimes it took on the name of a particular trade that was practiced there. Names like Skinner's Close, Lady's Stairs Close, and Bishop's Close get that point across clearly.


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[Assistant] One of the most famous of those tight little lanes was named after a wealthy woman named Mary King. She lived and worked along the Royal Mile back in the 1630s, raising her four children by herself after her husband's death and managing to build a thriving textile business. And she was so beloved that her name became permanently attached to the clothes.


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[Assistant] In 1645, however, something dangerous moved into Edinburgh. The plague.


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[Assistant] As you might imagine, the combination of infectious disease and close quarters meant that much of the city became deathly ill. There was no space to distance themselves from others, and that helped the plague spread like wildfire. It's estimated that by the time the outbreak was over, there were less than 100 people in Edinburgh that were healthy enough to serve in the town guard.


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[Assistant] Conditions in Mary King's clothes were so bad that the local authorities literally walled it up, trapping the sick residents inside. When the quarantine was lifted two months later, plague doctors put on their beak-like masks and broke in, and then began the horrifying task of removing the dead.


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[Assistant] It's said that they used hatchets to cut the bodies into pieces that were easier to carry out, which is why some still refer to the place today as Bloody Mary's Clothes.


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[Assistant] But it's one story in particular that hints at the reputation that Narrow Lane had developed. In 1685, Scottish writer and mathematician George Sinclair published a collection of stories that were meant to prove the existence of the supernatural world to atheists, and in that book was a story that took place within Mary King's clothes.


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[Assistant] As the legend goes, a young woman was seen carrying goods and furnishings into the clothes and was spotted by someone who lived nearby. After asking her if she was moving into Mary King's clothes, the young woman nodded. In fact, she was moving in with a wealthy family there to work as their maid. So the man offered her a warning.


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[Assistant] If you live there, he told her, I assure you, you'll have more company than yourselves.


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[Assistant] His point was clear. Mary King's clothes was haunted, so be prepared for unusual encounters. And as it happened, that young maid bumped into a number of other people that day who told her the same thing. So after much consideration, she told the lady of the house that she had decided to look elsewhere for work, and then went on her way.


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[Assistant] Of course, this troubled the lady of the house, who went to her husband and asked him to sell the house and move them out of the close. But the man, an attorney named Thomas Coldheart, simply laughed at her and told her to be brave. So his wife pushed the rumors aside and carried on.


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[Assistant] And not long after though, she found herself reading in bed one evening when she felt the distinct sensation of being watched. Her husband was asleep beside her, so she scanned the room to see if anyone else might be there. And that's when she noticed the face of the old man.


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[Assistant] He was grey haired and had a long beard, and somehow only his head was visible, as if it had pushed its way through one of the walls.


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[Assistant] It's said that Mrs. Coulhart passed out at the sight of it, but when she awoke in the morning, she told Thomas all about the experience. Again, he laughed at her and told her it was all a dream. But later that day, he too would understand just how real it was. Because the face and arm returned. And this time, he witnessed it for himself.


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[Assistant] The couple were said to have spent the entire night in prayer together, begging God to remove the unnatural being from their home. They pleaded with the old man's face, and yet nothing sent him away. In fact, things became worse when the couple claimed that a number of unusual animals entered their room and began to dance before them.


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[Assistant] But somehow, they held on and remained in their home through the night.


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[Assistant] The following morning, neither of them were laughing anymore. In fact, they had begun to think about moving away to find a safer home elsewhere, but they would never have time to do so. Just days later, the man was found dead at home. With no sign of physical injuries, it would be fair to assume that something else finally got to him. Thomas Coldheart, it seems, had been frightened to death.


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[Assistant] In the years that followed, conditions in Mary King's clothes only grew worse. Soon enough, it became impossible to rent out apartments in the neighborhood because of the rumors of the hauntings, and so the city tried offering homes free of charge. Even then, it was a hard sell.


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[Assistant] In 1750, a fire ripped through the close, destroying many of the tallest buildings, and the city quickly moved in to take advantage of the opportunity. They removed the damaged tops of many of the tallest buildings in the close, and then built a brand new structure on top of them.


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[Assistant] The Royal Exchange was meant to be a merchant center, but by 1811 it had transitioned into the home of the City Council. Today it's known as the City Chambers, but no matter what the place is called, its foundation is more than dark.


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[Assistant] You see, in the process of building the Royal Exchange, Mary King's clothes was essentially walled off. It was still accessible, but not easily, and that restricted the flow of residents and businesses who once called the place home.


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[Assistant] In 1902, the last known resident of the close, a sawmaker named Andrew Chesney, was forced out by the city and the neighborhood was lost to time.


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[Assistant] But it's not entirely gone. Today it's one of the most popular parts of Edinburgh's underground to take a tour of, having been reopened in 2003. And a number of people who work in the city chambers above it have reported their own encounters with the ghosts of Mary King's Close. Literally.


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[Assistant] Time has a way of hiding things from us. We forget them, or lose them, and sometimes we even shut them out intentionally.


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[Assistant] Maybe it's because we're fully aware of our failures, or perhaps we're simply too distracted by the new and shiny world around us to give history much attention. Either way, it tends to get buried. But it's never really far away, is it?


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[Assistant] Today, Edinburgh is a vibrant city that has embraced much of its past. There are a number of underground tours that visitors can take, allowing them to step beneath the modern streets and walk through lanes that were almost lost to time.


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[Assistant] Some of them still have abandoned shops and sidewalks, as if a lid were placed over them, locking the past in a time capsule.


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[Assistant] And the world hasn't forgotten everything about Edinburgh's past. Its landscape was the inspiration for Emerald City from The Wizard of Oz, and its scientific work gave us penicillin and the world's first cloned animal, the sheep dolly. Without Edinburgh, we wouldn't have the decimal point or Sherlock Holmes. But some stories are still less known.


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[Assistant] For example, the plague that ravaged the people of Edinburgh in 1645 had its own unique drama that most people don't know. The city authorities, desperate to contain the disease before it killed everyone, hired its first plague doctor in the spring of that year, but by June the man was dead, a victim of the sickness he had been tasked to fight.


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[Assistant] So the city quickly hired his replacement, a man named Dr. George Ray.


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[Assistant] Now, the work of a plague doctor was fairly simple. Help relieve the symptoms of the sick and help direct the disposal of the dead. Both jobs, though, required direct contact with those who were infected, so it wasn't considered a job with a lot of future.


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[Assistant] But George Ray was dedicated to his mission. He visited countless homes each day, where he would find patients in need of care. He would lance their enormous pus-filled blisters, sometimes as large as tennis balls, and then clean and cauterize the wound to help stop the infection. And if they needed to be isolated, it was George who made that call.


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[Assistant] It was dangerous work too, so he wore the outfit that just about everyone today can picture in their mind. Large leather robes that kept his body protected and a mask that used a beak-like cavity to hold a potpourri of herbs and flowers meant to hide the smell of death but also hopefully stop the disease from being inhaled.


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[Assistant] In every sense of the word, Dr. George Wray was a hero. And yet the city hired him assuming that he would simply be one of many plague doctors who would work and die before the outbreak was contained. And maybe that's why they promised him such a large salary. The equivalent of close to $25,000 per month.


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[Assistant] But George Ray somehow survived the pandemic. So naturally when it was all over, he returned to the city officials to collect his paycheck. A paycheck that they had never expected to pay. So they stalled.


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[Assistant] For ten long years, Dr. George Ray battled with the city of Edinburgh for the money he had been promised. His only crime, it seems, was that he had lived. And faced with such an enormous bill, the people in charge decided to see how long they could make him wait.


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[Assistant] It said that George passed away a decade after the end of the plague, never having received the money he was owed.


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[Assistant] In a place as old as Edinburgh, it would be unusual to not find a bit of darkness hidden away in its past. So I hope you've enjoyed our brief journey through the underground history of such a storied city.


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[Assistant] But I'm not quite finished. I've tracked down one more tale to share, and it straddles the line between the past and our modern world in a way that's guaranteed to entertain. Stick around after this brief sponsor break, and I'll tell you all about it.


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[Assistant] Edinburgh is like the ruins of a forgotten castle. It has a unique topography that's been slowly covered up over time. Distinct lines or features that have been blurred until they're all but vanished. What we see today is vastly different than the city of 1450, or even 1750. Which is why it's so important to look below.


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[Assistant] Today, if you visit the city, you'll most likely stop at Edinburgh Castle, still up there on Castle Rock, watching over the surrounding landscape. And you'll probably hear people talk about the Royal Mile, which is the collection of streets that stretch for a mile between the castle and the royal palace to the east.


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[Assistant] What you don't see though is that the Royal Mile is that ancient natural ramp that I mentioned at the beginning of this episode.


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[Assistant] Over the years, so many bridges and buildings have gone up around the Royal Mile that it's easy to miss what lies beneath. But for the people who live in the city, those rumors and legends are never far away. Especially if you own a business in that area.


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[Assistant] Centuries ago, there was a marketplace about half a mile east of the castle. Back then, much of the trade was managed using weights and measures, so a large wooden beam was set up for the merchants to use there. It would have looked like a cross, only with the cross beam designed to pivot as it weighed goods. And this weighing beam was called a tron.


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[Assistant] The marketplace is gone now, but echoes of it still remain.


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[Assistant] Specifically, the centuries-old church that stands near the location is still called the Tron Kirk. And just a stone's throw to the south, along the south bridge, in fact, is the Tron Tavern. A tavern that was owned in the late 1980s by retired rugby player Norrie Rowan.


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[Assistant] When he took over the business, Rowan heard from a number of people about the building's location and past. There were rumors that tunnels still existed beneath this tavern that had once been part of the network of vaults and passageways below the South Bridge. And sometime in early 1989, he decided to test the stories out.


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[Assistant] Cutting through the floor in a back hallway near the restrooms, Rowan discovered that there was a space beneath it. This made him even more curious, so he just kept going. Soon enough, he was standing in a narrow stone passage and decided to follow it to see where it led. A dozen or so paces later, he hit a dead end.


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[Assistant] Being a rugby player though, he opted to use strength to overcome his challenge. Taking a large hammer, Rowan proceeded to knock a hole in that wall. And when it was large enough, he climbed through.


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[Assistant] The Romanian rugby team had come to Edinburgh for a match and the players and coaching staff all converged on the Tron Tavern after it was over.


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[Assistant] Now, Romania at the time was under the control of a communist dictator, and one of the players there that night, a man named Cristian Radicanu, wanted out.


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[Assistant] So he approached Norrie Rowan and asked the tavern owner to help him defect. The trouble was there were a number of government operatives in the tavern keeping an eye on him. But Rowan had an idea.


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[Assistant] A little while later, Redekanu excused himself to use the restroom, slipped into the hidden passage, and re-emerged on Nidri Street a short while later. From there, he approached a police officer and formally requested asylum. And it worked.


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[Assistant] But not everyone gets out of the Edinburgh Underground. I know story makes that more clear than one that supposedly took place in the early 1800s. It tells of how the city council had been alerted to a discovery in the dungeons of Edinburgh Castle, and they went to investigate it for themselves. It was a tunnel.


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[Assistant] They could see that it extended off into the darkness, heading in an eastward direction that would have followed the line of the royal mile. But it was far too small for a grown man to enter, so they hired a child to do it for them.


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[Assistant] Now, children as young as six had often been employed by chimney sweep companies to help them with some of the more narrow jobs. So even though the notion strikes our modern sensibilities as irresponsible and even immoral, to the city council of that era, it was nothing more than a good idea.


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[Assistant] To help them track him as he moved, they gave the boy a small drum and told him to beat on it as he crawled.


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[Assistant] Then one of the men returned to the castle's gate and the start of the royal mile, and he listened. And there it was, the distant thumping of the drum. So he followed it.


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[Assistant] They say the city council was able to hear the drum and track its movement all the way to the Tron Kirk. But then, without warning, it went silent.


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[Assistant] The men waited, anxiously hoping that it was only a momentary delay.


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[Assistant] But sadly the sound of the drum was never heard again, and the boy in the tunnel was assumed to be lost, or trapped, or even dead.


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[Assistant] The underground is another world. Most of it is hidden from us, and even when people get a chance to enter it, they're met with a strange new place full of darkness and danger. Sometimes people go in, and never come back out. But like I said before, the past is never really that far away.


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[Assistant] Locals today still whisper about the lost boy in the tunnel, and many who live or work near the old Tron Kirk have reported something unusual over the years.


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[Assistant] According to multiple witnesses, on nights when the streets around the old church are calm and quiet,


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[Assistant] It's possible to hear a faint, distant sound, echoing up from the pavement.


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


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[Assistant] I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, including Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities and Noble Blood, all of which I think you'd enjoy.


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[Assistant] My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in making shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and historical. And 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 the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do say hi, I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.


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[Assistant] They had discovered something unexpected. Conservators working on a painting by Pablo Picasso back in 1992 noticed odd patterns in the artist's brush strokes. Lines that didn't seem to match the overall composition of the piece. So they decided to take a deeper look.


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[Assistant] On closer inspection, these conservators noticed that tiny cracks in the surface paint revealed more paint beneath. Paint of entirely different colors. And today, they know why.


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[Assistant] Thanks to advances in x-ray technology, researchers have been able to peer beneath the top layer to see what lies under it. Picasso, it seems, painted his famous work The Crouching Beggar over an older landscape.


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[Assistant] And it's not the only one. It's a technique called overpainting and usually happened when an artist didn't care for the previous work or had a better idea. For Picasso, it might have been a financial decision. The crouching beggar was a product of his early blue period, a time when money was tight and new canvases were hard to buy.


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[Assistant] There's the part everyone sees and then there are the parts beneath it all. Things can be beautiful and entertaining and valuable, and yet hide something older beneath the surface. And while we can't change the past, if we look deep enough, we can certainly gain a better understanding of it.


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[Assistant] In the centuries of distance that piled up between then and now and the alterations that are made along the way, it's often difficult to recognize the truth. Even the places we call home can evolve over time, transformed by the people who live there. And few cities in America demonstrate that as perfectly as New Orleans. But be careful.


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[Assistant] If there's one thing New Orleans has in abundance, it's layers. For thousands of years, people have called that little patch of dry land on the delta at the end of the Mississippi River home. Who lived there though seems to have been a revolving door of diverse cultures.


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[Assistant] As far back as 100 BC, a Native American group known to archaeologists as the Marksville culture occupied the land there, complete with permanent structures and agriculture.


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[Assistant] About 900 years later, it was the Mississippi culture that took over. Thanks to the temperate climate, these people spent a good amount of their lives outdoors, where they excelled at fishing and hunting.


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[Assistant] They held on for quite a while, too, watching the silt from the Great River slowly expand the land they inhabited year by year. But it wasn't until the 1690s, when Europeans first arrived, that they experienced major change, which might be one of the bigger legacies of European colonialism.


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[Assistant] More than anything else, they brought change, and it was rarely good.


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[Assistant] When the French arrived, they set up all sorts of businesses that would be expected. Trading goods, hunting for furs, and exploring the larger area around the River Delta. Some of the settlers joined local native communities, while others branched out and built their own.


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[Assistant] One of those was Fort Saint-Jean, although it was hardly a blank slate. The fort was literally created by repurposing an ancient marksville structure.


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[Assistant] Those early years of colonialism tend to be pretty confusing, looking back from our spot today. There seemed to be a constant switching of powers, and it can be difficult to keep it all straight. Some colonies were a lot more straightforward, like Massachusetts or Virginia. But New Orleans, officially founded in 1718, has been more tumultuous than most.


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[Assistant] For the first seven decades, it was in French control. Then, in 1763, it changed hands to the Spanish, who held onto it for nearly 40 years.


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[Assistant] Then, after a brief return to the French, the city was sold along with a huge portion of the southern part of North America to the United States in what is now known as the Louisiana Purchase. Ever since, it's been one of the greatest American cities.


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[Assistant] But all of those overlapping cultures have given New Orleans its own flavor and texture. Take the word Creole, for instance. It started out as a term used by the French to distinguish between those born in the colony versus those born back in France.


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[Assistant] When the Spanish took over in 1763, they treated it the same, just with citizens who weren't born in Spain.


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[Assistant] Over time though, it took on a more racial connotation, denoting someone who shared European and Black descent, mostly from the Caribbean.


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[Assistant] And it's a word that seems to embody that shared space mentality. The community growing up in old New Orleans was multicultural with a diverse collection of origin stories, but all focused on new lives there in one specific place.


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[Assistant] The city would go on to become a cultural hotbed of music and food, all fueled by that mixture of cultures. And yes, it was a prominent center for the slave trade in the south, which is a scar that will never go away, but it was also home to free people of color who immigrated to the city intentionally.


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[Assistant] It was one of the few places in early America where it was impossible to look out on a crowd and visually identify slaves by the color of their skin.


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[Assistant] I guess my point is that New Orleans was and is a complex city, racially speaking. It was home to black soldiers who fought on both sides of the Civil War. And it was one of the rare places in America where slaves were allowed to maintain large chunks of the cultures they left behind when they were captured and sold into slavery there.


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[Assistant] Is that chapter of history a painful, unforgivable mess? Absolutely. But that mess looked very different in New Orleans compared to other places at the same time. And a powerful example of those differences can be seen in the story of one man, Louis Congo, who arrived on the scene around 1724.


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[Assistant] Louis Congo wasn't his real name, mind you. It was the name he was given as a slave when he was brought to New Orleans years earlier. Louis for Louisiana, and Congo for his country of birth. He worked for many years as a slave under an oppressive system. But something changed in 1724, and it altered his life forever.


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[Assistant] In September of 1722, a hurricane flattened most of New Orleans to the ground. When the people there brushed themselves off and began to rebuild, they did so with an eye toward improvement. The new city would be laid out in a grid, new laws were put in place to guide its growth, and a new role was created to act as incentive. A public executioner.


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[Assistant] I don't know how or even why, but the man they hired to fill that position was Louis Congo. In fact, he was freed from slavery and given the new job as a paid position. Every punishment he doled out earned him a fee, on top of a salary of food and wine, along with a gift of land to call his own.


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[Assistant] In fact, for over 10 years, he was the only person in the entire community who was legally allowed to hang convicted criminals, regardless of their race or place of birth.


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[Assistant] He was even tasked with non-deadly punishments too, like amputation, branding, and whipping. Sure, the job earned him almost constant hatred and abuse, but that was no different from executioners who did the same work back in Europe all throughout the Middle Ages.


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[Assistant] Sadly, Louis Congo was a rare bright spot in an otherwise bleak and tragic survey of the city. Sometimes the pain and suffering was brought on by natural disaster, such as the Great Fire of 1788 that reduced 80% of the city to ash, while other times it was all a product of human nature.


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[Assistant] What's clear though is that suffering was a part of life for a very long time. And those dark marks have managed to stick around long after the people who caused them have faded away. And there's no better place to see the remnants of that tragic past than inside the walls of one of the most historic buildings in the city. But be warned.


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[Assistant] Because while you're free to check in and make yourself at home, the only residents who seem happy to be there are the shadows.


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[Assistant] Mention the city of New Orleans to just about anyone and you're likely to conjure up images of Bourbon Street. It is, to many, the crown jewel of the French Quarter, a name that hides a little known detail.


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[Assistant] Most of the buildings in that area are actually Spanish by design.


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[Assistant] It all goes back to the Great New Orleans Fire of 1788 that I mentioned earlier. Yes, early New Orleans was a product of French colonialism. But when that blaze destroyed 80% of the city, it was under Spanish control. So the rebirth that took place in the aftermath followed their preferences, not the French.


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[Assistant] Just a couple of decades after the city began to rebuild itself, a man named John Davis decided that the local community needed a place to gather and celebrate. When a theater on Orleans Street burned down in 1816, he scooped up the land and started construction. The result was named, creatively, the Orleans Theater and Ballroom.


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[Assistant] For years, this theater was the place where the most elite events were held. Masquerade balls, formal events, even European opera. If it was high class and exclusive, the Orleans Theater hosted it. And it was like that for decades.


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[Assistant] But then, in 1866, fire destroyed the portion of the building that held the theater, leaving only the ballroom intact.


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[Assistant] Within 15 years, the business generated by just the ballroom was no longer enough, and the owner decided to sell it. The buyers, though, weren't what you would expect. Instead of another theater company or even a property developer looking to flip the space, the old building was purchased by a group of Roman Catholic nuns known as the Sisters of the Holy Family.


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[Assistant] First African American religious order in the United States.


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[Assistant] They had founded a school for girls in 1850, but their congregation had been growing steadily, and they needed the space. Thankfully, the Orleans Theater and Ballroom offered plenty of that. Over the coming years, they would fill the building with a convent, an orphanage, and their school. They did a lot of good, but also weathered many storms.


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[Assistant] In the century that they owned the building, the nuns watched as wave after wave of yellow fever raged through New Orleans. It was the sort of outbreak that rarely left anyone alone, and sadly it reached their orphanage too. While a good number of the children survived, an untold number of others were killed by the sickness.


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[Assistant] And if the stories that are told today are true, many of those children have stayed around.


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[Assistant] Today the building is home to a hotel and many guests have experienced things that can only be attributed to children. Youthful laughter in empty hallways. Invisible hands that tug on the shirts of visitors. The light footsteps of a child in places that should be unoccupied.


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[Assistant] The most common sighting, though, is of a little girl, playing with a ball inside the sixth floor hallway. Those that have witnessed her all tell the same story. After stepping out of their room to find her playing, the ball will roll off down the hall, and the girl will chase after it. A moment later, she vanishes.


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[Assistant] Ghostly children aren't the only unusual guests in the building.


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[Assistant] More than a few people at the modern hotel have spotted a figure that's known only as The Man. They claim he's dressed in the gray uniform of a Confederate soldier and wanders the hallway on the sixth floor. And at night, they claim, he walks slowly past the rooms, dragging his sword along the floor.


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[Assistant] Even the old ballroom can't escape the unusual activity. In fact the ballroom is the reason the hotel exists today. Because of the historic significance of the meeting space, the city only allowed the hotel to be set up inside the building on the condition that the ballroom be restored to its former glory.


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[Assistant] Visitors have witnessed everything from ghostly ladies dancing beneath the chandelier to a mysterious figure that seems to stay hidden behind the curtains that surround the room.


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[Assistant] Most common, though, are tails of the blood stain in the middle of the ballroom's floor. No matter how many times the stain is cleaned, it's said to reappear a short while later.


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[Assistant] Perhaps most frightening of all, though, are the reports that have come in over the years from guests staying in the hotel's room 644. It's a room with a story, although there is no proof that any of it is true. Some say that one of the nuns who lived in the room took her own life there more than a century ago.


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[Assistant] Without documentation to back it up, the story is nothing more than speculative fiction.


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[Assistant] But you can't blame people for trying. The things that have been experienced there certainly demand a backstory. For instance, many people are awoken in the night to the sounds of tortured groans and painful cries, as if someone were in great distress.


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[Assistant] What steps have been heard too, causing guests to feel as if they are not alone?


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[Assistant] Most frightening of all though is the vision that many have claimed to see. Now, some might blame the drunken nightlife of Bourbon Street, or exhaustion from a busy day of sightseeing, and I understand the desire to find logic in the unexplainable.


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[Assistant] But it's difficult to brush off what dozens of people have seen in the middle of the night in room 644.


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[Assistant] In every case, guests have woken to find the figure of a woman standing over them, dressed in the typical clothing of a nun. They say she doesn't move, but stands very close to the bed, her head bent low to look down at them as they sleep.


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[Assistant] And each time it happens, the guests have done what you or I would do in the same situation. They've sat up, reached for the lamp, and turned on the light. Only to discover that the ghostly nun has vanished.


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[Assistant] Marie was born well connected. Her uncle, Esteban Rodriguez Miro, was the governor of Louisiana in the latter years of Spanish control. And her cousin served as mayor of New Orleans. To say that she had powerful role models would be an understatement.


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[Assistant] Her first marriage was to a Spanish royal officer named Don Ramon Lopez Yanguello, although it seems to have been controversial. First, she was only 13 when they were married. And second, it seems Ramon neglected to ask for permission from the King of Spain.


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[Assistant] My guess is that he knew that the answer was going to be no, so he went with the old adage, it's better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission. His disobedience earned him a post in a small unimportant town, but within a couple of years he was able to smooth things over. But five years into their marriage, tragedy struck.


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[Assistant] A pregnant 18-year-old Marie was traveling by ship with her husband when there was an accident off the northern coast of Cuba in January of 1805. Marie survived, but Ramon did not, leaving her a widow before many women would even have been married. So she headed back to New Orleans to begin rebuilding her life.


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[Assistant] Three years later, in 1808, she married for a second time. This husband, Jean Blanc, was a prominent merchant and banker, as well as an attorney and legislator in the new American version of Louisiana.


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[Assistant] He was a match for Marie in terms of connections, but also added a lot of new wealth to her name.


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[Assistant] Together they had four children, but within eight years of their wedding, he too passed away.


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[Assistant] Marie, of course, inherited all of that money, but she also inherited hundreds of slaves. Apparently, Blanc died with a lot of debt, and so to preserve the wealth that she had left, many of those slaves were sold off. But not all of them. And that was a decision she would later come to regret. Although, for all the wrong reasons.


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[Assistant] In the wake of the death of her second husband in 15 years, and still not even 30 years old yet, Marie had already established a powerful reputation for herself.


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[Assistant] Part of it centered around her business acumen and ability to make wise, profitable decisions with her growing fortune. But a bit of it also involved her treatment of the slaves she kept locked up at home.


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[Assistant] It was public knowledge that she had emancipated a number of them over the years, and those she didn't release were treated kindly, at least in front of guests. Most people in her social circle, a very powerful and very wealthy circle, mind you, viewed Marie as a generous, caring person. But they couldn't have been more wrong.


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[Assistant] In 1828, Marie married for a third time. Her new husband, Louis LaLaurie, was a 22-year-old physician who specialized in back pain and physical abnormalities. They built a gorgeous new mansion on Royal Street with three stories full of all the trappings that came with life in the upper class. And of course, they're slaves.


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[Assistant] But just four years in, the couple separated. Louis moved out of the new mansion while Marie carried on, business as usual. Except there were rumors that her pretty facade covered up a darker truth. Whispers that the oh-so-kind Madame LaLaurie, who freed slaves and gave them wine, was not in fact treating them well at all.


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[Assistant] Backed by a law that stated that slaves who were shown to be cruelly treated could be taken from their master, an attorney was hired to visit Marie and gather evidence. But it seems that she hid her secrets well and the lawyer left empty-handed.


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[Assistant] A year or so later, more accusations of the same led to an appearance in court, but her money bought her a powerful defense and she walked away unscathed.


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[Assistant] Not long after that though, a neighbor witnessed something terrifying.


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[Assistant] According to the earliest accounts, it said that the neighbor looked out their window to see Marie chasing a young slave girl through the yard, then into the mansion.


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[Assistant] As Marie and the girl passed by various windows, the neighbor was able to follow their pursuits all the way to the top floor. And then


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[Assistant] They watched in horror as the girl was thrown or forced to jump, plummeting to her death below.


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[Assistant] When the authorities arrived, they found enough evidence to take nine of Marie's slaves away. But almost immediately, she had them repurchased by members of her extended family. And I can't begin to understand the despair those nine human beings must have felt. Their hopeful rescue from an abusive home, all erased by the power of money.


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[Assistant] It was a precarious situation that was building toward collapse. And that day arrived in April of 1834.


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[Assistant] That was when a fire broke out inside Marie's mansion there on Royal Street. At the time, the cause of the blaze was unknown, although interviews after the events made it clear. It seems that Marie kept one of her slaves chained to the kitchen stove. And rather than go on living under the abuse of someone so cruel, the cook set the room on fire. A fire that quickly spread to the rest of the mansion.


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[Assistant] It said that Marie and Louis, who happened to be in the house that day, worked furiously to save their precious belongings, but their slaves were unaccounted for.


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[Assistant] So when neighbors saw what was happening, they rushed to help, specifically looking for human lives that needed saving. And it was during this frantic search effort that they found something that shook them to the core.


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[Assistant] Behind the locked door of the slave quarters, a portion of the mansion that was set off from the rest, the neighbors found nine men and women chained to the floor and ceiling. Some of them were covered in fresh wounds, and some even wore spiked collars designed to keep them from lowering their heads. All of them though, were starved, emaciated, and close to death.


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[Assistant] One of the original documenters, author Harriet Martinow, wrote about the aftermath just four years after the events. In her book, she included what she discovered about Marie's typical morning routine.


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[Assistant] Apparently, after breakfast each day, she would step into the slave quarters where her captives were chained, lock the door behind her, and then whip and beat each of them until, as Martino wrote, her strength failed.


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[Assistant] One description in particular has caused even the most resolved historians to shudder.


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[Assistant] Contemporary newspaper accounts of a discovery claim that one of the men was found chained in a kneeling position, his head so badly beaten that open wounds revealed portions of his brain. Although he was still alive when rescuers found him, those wounds were said to contain live maggots, slowly feeding on him. It's a lot to take in, I know.


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[Assistant] It would be nice to believe that one individual couldn't be that cruel.


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[Assistant] But Marie LaLaurie seems to have broken expectations.


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[Assistant] She embodied the drastic change in attitudes in New Orleans toward the value of human life and the autonomy of a person's body. A change that she carried even further over the line. To her, enslaved human beings were not just her personal property. They were the soulless targets of her abuse and cruelty.


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[Assistant] In the nearly two centuries since the events took place, many people have speculated as to what her motivation might have been. And some people always seem to land on insanity. That only someone who had lost all touch with reality could do such a thing.


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[Assistant] And Marie knew this. In the moments when her mansion was ablaze, and neighbors were rushing to help her and the rest of the people inside, Marie attempted to send them away, claiming that they needed to mind their own business. She feared discovery more than the flames. And when that happened, she fled.


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[Assistant] It's said that Marie, along with her estranged husband, climbed into their carriage and escaped the scene, heading for the harbor and a ship that would eventually carry them to Spain, away from the mob, away from the consequences of her actions, and away from the wreckage, both human and otherwise, that she left behind.


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[Assistant] Things often look different beneath the surface. There might be a lost work by a famous artist hiding beneath the paint, or a layer of archaeological importance just below the topsoil. But there could also be rot and decay, and shadows that are better left buried.


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[Assistant] New Orleans certainly is a city with layers, and while it's easy to fall in love with the modern surface with all its charm and music and grand celebrations, it would be wise to remember that there is darkness beneath that beautiful facade. Not to glorify it, but to use it as a roadmap for change.


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[Assistant] And Madame LaLaurie is one of those dark stains.


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[Assistant] The trouble is, her story has been changed over the years.


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[Assistant] If you've heard about her before today and listened with a bit of confusion to my account of the fire and discovery of her tortured slaves, then we have a bit of restoration work to do. Because time has a way of altering the image, muddying the details, and hiding the truth. So let's dig deeper.


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[Assistant] I mentioned earlier that Martino wrote her account of the events just four years after the fire, and that's good. The closer a source is to the actual thing it's discussing, the better. Throw in contemporary newspaper accounts and public records, and the picture that unfolds is pretty much the one that I showed you today.


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[Assistant] But in the century since then, new writers have appeared to paint their own layers on top of the truth. Stories that add gore and violence and a lot more drama. Some have described the scene inside the slave quarters as a sort of medical facility, with Madame LaLaurie working beside her husband the physician to perform experiments.


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[Assistant] Others have described bodies with grotesque disfigurements, like eyes that have been purposefully gorged out, or body parts that have been cut away, like ears and fingers. One wild embellishment even claimed that one of the victims had a hole in their skull, through which LaLaurie had inserted the handle of a wooden spoon.


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[Assistant] But it's fiction. Decorative additions made over the last five decades or so to make the legend more attractive to fans of horror. It's story, yes. But not the story. Not the truth. That doesn't mean the true story is lacking for darkness. It just means that we don't need to invent any more of it on our own.


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[Assistant] One truth we do know is that the house was sold in the aftermath of the fire. And the money was sent back to Marie, back in Spain. And for a while the old mansion sat empty. Maybe people were afraid to step inside it after hearing about what had taken place there. Or perhaps it was the rumors of the ghostly screams that could still be heard inside the place at night.


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[Assistant] The house was eventually repaired, and not long after, it was sold and resold through the mid-1800s.


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[Assistant] Over the years that followed, it would transform into a music conservatory, a furniture store, a bar, and even high-end apartments. But the first thing it was used for, after it stopped being a home in the years following the Civil War, was a school for girls of color. And there are stories from that period in the mansion's life.


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[Assistant] There had already been tales of unusual activity in the building, but these schoolgirls seemed to have experienced more than their fair share. Oftentimes the activity was benign, like doors that opened and closed on their own, or the sound of footsteps in the empty halls.


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[Assistant] But every now and then, according to the tales, the experiences were a lot more violent.


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[Assistant] In fact, one of the more mysterious things to happen wasn't isolated to one or two of the students, and it wasn't easy to ignore.


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[Assistant] It seems that a good number of the girls approach their teachers privately to complain of abuse, and every time they would pull up their sleeves to reveal large bruises and vicious scratches.


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[Assistant] Horrified, the teachers would naturally ask the girls who did this to them.


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[Assistant] It's not often that we return to an old topic for a fresh tour, but if there's one place to break the rules, it's New Orleans. And I know, I probably still manage to leave out one or two of your favorite stories, but that's the beauty of the place, isn't it? No matter how deep we dig, there's always something new to discover.


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[Assistant] In fact, I've got one more tale from the Big Easy that I think you'll love. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.


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[Assistant] New Orleans is a city filled with historic buildings. But not all of them are very old. And a great example of this can be found at 616 St. Peter Street. It's called the Lappetite Theater, and it holds the record for being the longest continually operating community theater in America. But that's not all it holds, of course.


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[Assistant] The land the theater stands on was bought by a group known as the Drawing Room Players, partly because of its pedigree. That's because a theater had already stood there way back in the late 1700s, but was destroyed in a fire. Something that was all too common for theaters in the days of open flame stage lighting.


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[Assistant] After that, the lot was home to a Civil War barracks, a cafe, and a whole list of other businesses until it was torn down and the lot was sold in 1922. So for the drawing room players, their new theater was a sort of callback to the old days. A restoration, as it were, to bring a little bit of the past into the present.


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[Assistant] Although if the stories are true, they didn't need any help doing that.


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[Assistant] Some of the oldest memories of the past seem to be sightings of Civil War soldiers. Visitors have seen figures dressed in uniform walking down hallways inside the theater, and others have heard the rhythmic marching of boots on wooden floors.


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[Assistant] There's even one Civil War apparition that's been seen so often posing in front of an invisible mirror that those who know about him call him The Vain One.


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[Assistant] Being a theater, some of the unusual activity can be noticed by other senses than sight.


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[Assistant] For instance, there have been many reports of eerie piano music when no one else is in the building. Some people think it's the ghost of a composer named Louis Moreau Gottschalk, who performed in the original theater that stood on the plot of land there more than two centuries ago. Others think it's just a bit of overactive imagination. As always, I'll let you decide that for yourself.


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[Assistant] But the most talked about remnant of the past, hands down, is Caroline.


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[Assistant] I don't know exactly when her origin story is supposed to have taken place, but the tale is one that's been whispered about in the theater for decades.


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[Assistant] Caroline worked there at the La Petite and is said to have fallen in love with a stagehand whose name has been lost to time.


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[Assistant] One night though, after meeting her lover on the catwalk above the stage, Caroline plummeted to her death. Some say it was an accident, while others believe it was murder. History, as we've already discussed, has a way of letting a bit of drama creep in, so it's difficult to say what the truth really was.


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[Assistant] But it's easy to see why that story has stuck around. That and the modern sightings attributed to her. Many who have worked there in the past claim that her spirit still wanders throughout the theater. Some even say that she is spotted most frequently on the catwalk, leaving cold spots for modern stagehands to notice.


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[Assistant] But the most frightening story about Caroline was reported just a few years ago.


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[Assistant] According to the tale, one of the theater's directors was working alone there late at night when he noticed the curtain at the right side of the stage move out of the corner of his eye. It was almost as if someone were brushing against it.


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[Assistant] Walking over to the curtain, this director expected to find a co-worker hidden behind the thick fabric. But after looking behind it and finding nothing, he returned to the stage. And as he watched, just a few feet away, it began to move again, as if being pushed by an invisible hand or body.


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[Assistant] But the most disturbing feature of this sighting was the direction of the movement. According to him, the curtain looked as if it were being brushed against by something as large as a human body.


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


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[Assistant] I also make two other podcasts, Erin Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both. 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] You can learn more about both of those shows and everything else going on over in one central place, theworldoflore.com slash now.


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[Assistant] We've all seen the image before. A dusty red cloud painted on the wall of a cave with the imprint of a hand in the center of it. It looks as if someone placed their palm against the cold surface of the rock and then sprayed paint over it. And yet this artwork predates spray paint by thousands of years.


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[Assistant] It's one of many examples of artwork found in caves across Spain and France ranging from 10,000 to 40,000 years in age.


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[Assistant] And similar caves have been found across the globe. Small reminders that our predecessors were just as interested in leaving their mark as modern day YouTube stars and social media influencers. It's an impulse we all share. No doubt about it. But there's more.


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[Assistant] In recent years, scholars have begun to notice a pattern.


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[Assistant] Whether these caves are located in Spain, East Africa, Australia, or Malaysia, the symbols painted on their walls all seem to be pulled from a common lexicon. They act like the emoji on our mobile devices, each one representing an idea or a message, and it's breathtaking to consider.


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[Assistant] For a very long time, people have been drawn to the darkness of caves. Whether it was in pursuit of shelter from the cold and rain or in search of resources that could be used to improve our lives, venturing into the darkness of the earth has always offered us hope and stability.


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[Assistant] But they've also become a focal point for story. Yes, caves and mines might hold the riches we seek, but they can also be dangerous and unpredictable.


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[Assistant] There might be mysteries to dust off or superstitions to pay attention to, but they also contain a powerful warning. Be careful how deep you dig, because you never know what you might find.


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[Assistant] For thousands of years, humans have delved beneath the surface of this world.


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[Assistant] In many instances it was to explore or seek shelter. Other times it was to see what valuable resources might be waiting in the darkness below. And as the symbols on cave walls around the world have taught us, we also use those places to leave messages for the next group to pass through.


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[Assistant] But outside of the natural caves that were available to anyone who stumbled upon them, the most common way humans have gone deep is through mining. The oldest mine on record is located in Swaziland and dates back over 40,000 years. Other mines of a similar age can be found in Europe, and most of them were built with the same goal, to find hematite and flint.


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[Assistant] But mining is a deceptively simple thing. On the surface, it's just digging. You grab a tool, move the earth out of your way, and search for the thing you need. But for most ancient cultures, there was more to it than that. For them, mining was a spiritual thing. And you can see that in the words connected to it.