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[Assistant] For example, in the ancient Assyrian culture, the word for mineral, kuku, literally translates as fetus or embryo.


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[Assistant] To them, a piece of flint wasn't just a stone, it was the offspring of the earth, a magical seed that was created for their use. And that attitude helped foster a spirit of respect among cultures that used mining to find resources.


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[Assistant] In Cherokee culture, crystal formations were often fed with the blood of animals that they hunted because they believed that the blood would nurture them and help them grow. Other cultures viewed mining as an act of violence against the earth, ripping the minerals out like a hunter might pull out the entrails of an animal it plans to eat.


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[Assistant] For these cultures, it was all about doing it respectfully and properly, and a great example can be found in the Aboriginal people of Australia. That's where the world's oldest continually operating mine is located, in the western part of the country in a strip of mountains known as the Weld Range.


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[Assistant] But they didn't mind flint there. No, in this location they dug for something more important. Red ochre.


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[Assistant] It's a mineral used as a pigment, and it gets its color from the iron oxide that has tinted the clay, giving it a rusty red tone. In fact, most of those painted handprints I mentioned earlier were created using red ochre. And for many cultures around the world, it was precious, almost holy.


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[Assistant] If we step back for a moment, that should make a lot of sense. Mining at the basic level is about digging through the common to find the rare.


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[Assistant] It's the search for special things buried in the mundane to pull something valuable out of the worthless. In fact, many of the early materials mined by our ancestors were valuable specifically because they were rare. In a sense, the very act of mining is a search for the sacred.


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[Assistant] The aboriginal people of Australia, red ochre was that sacred thing.


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[Assistant] Early European settlers arrived to find the people there already fully obsessed with the pigment. One of the earliest reports by white settlers about Aboriginal activities is a description of the trip many Aboriginal men would make each year from their homes to the nearest ochre mine.


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[Assistant] It's said that they would walk for months, covering hundreds of miles just to make their annual visit. Along the way, more and more ceremony and ritual would enter their days. Then, once they arrived outside the mine, these travelers would fall to their knees and kiss the ground, weeping with joy at the sight of it. But they wouldn't rush inside.


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[Assistant] Instead, they would set up camp and perform one last ritual of preparation. After shaving their entire body from head to toe, the men would cover themselves in fat, abstain from food, water, and sleep, and then dance all the way through the night. Only when this ritual was complete were they ready to do what they came for, to enter the mine and retrieve the ochre they required.


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[Assistant] Among them, it's said that the aboriginal men would gather up the ochre they came for and then retreat back to the entrance of the mine by walking backwards. This was partially so that they never showed their backs to the mine, which would have been a sign of respect. But it also allowed them to use a branch to obliterate their footprints.


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[Assistant] Why? Because they had just stolen from the sacred mine. And if they left tracks behind, they might be followed and punished for it. And who, you might ask, would follow these brave miners up to the surface?


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[Assistant] The Guardians of the Mine, of course, known locally as the Mondongs.


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[Assistant] But mandangs aren't human caretakers. They aren't a priestly caste or a tribe of sworn protectors. No, there's something much more frightening than that.


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[Assistant] They are the creatures who live inside the earth.


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[Assistant] The notion that minds are protected by mystical creatures isn't unique to Australia. In fact, all over the world, there are stories of beings that live inside the Earth, guarding the sacred resources it contains. And humans have shared those stories for centuries.


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[Assistant] One good example can be found in Germany, which is where a 16th century physician and chemist named Georgus Agricola called home.


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[Assistant] In fact, the town he lived in was a hub for mining and smelting metals, and over time his scientific curiosity pulled him into that world. He eventually became one of the leading experts on mineralogy and metallurgy in his era.


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[Assistant] Being a doctor though, he spent most of his time treating the injured miners that worked in the area. Illness and broken bones and everything else that could happen to those who worked the mines kept his medical training in good use. And that put him in a good position to hear all sorts of stories.


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[Assistant] And here's the thing. Agricola was a deeply skeptical man. He preferred science over superstition, and he rejected all of the folklore that surrounded him in favor of cold hard facts. Except for one area. Agricola was a firm believer in cobalds.


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[Assistant] Cobalt was a creature that lived inside the mines. After listening to stories about them for years from hundreds of miners, Agricola documented them as small beings roughly two feet tall and dressed in tiny versions of the typical uniform of a mine worker right down to the leather apron. And they were complex creatures, too.


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[Assistant] Most of the time, kobolds were said to leave the miners alone. They might toss pebbles at them from the dark corners of the work area from time to time, but they typically kept to their own, usually only showing up to warn of a disaster that's about to happen. But they had a darker side, of course.


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[Assistant] It's said that if a miner mocked the kobolds or muttered curses about them, that the creatures would become angry and cause problems for them.


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[Assistant] Caverns, injuries, and unusual sounds and vibrations were all blamed on angry cobalts for a very long time. And it's easy to see why, too. In an age when people understood a lot less about geology and the forces that were at work beneath the surface, those who worked down there wanted answers. So they invented them for themselves.


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[Assistant] Oh, and if the name cobalt reminds you of the mineral cobalt, that's because the latter gets its name from the former.


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[Assistant] It turns out the sorts of metals European miners were digging for in the 16th century, silver and copper mostly, all had a striking resemblance to another ore. But it wasn't until the substance was smelted that the difference became apparent.


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[Assistant] This mystery mineral didn't melt down to a beautiful shimmering silver. Instead, the heat reduced it to a powder that contained a high amount of arsenic, which was toxic to those who worked with it. Over time, miners felt that this ore was tricking them and making them look like fools, so they named it after the cobalts who did the same. It's been cobalt ever since.


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[Assistant] There are other creatures in the folklore of mining cultures around the world. In South America, the mining towns of the Bolivian Andes are home to belief in a spiritual being known as El Teo, who is seen as a god of mines and ore. In parts of England, there are stories of Bluecaps, a mine spirit that usually shows up in the form of a small blue flame.


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[Assistant] But it's in Cornwall that we find one of the strongest veins of mining guardians, the knockers. In a lot of ways, they are similar to the cobalt of Germany, including their physical description. Standing around two feet tall, these creatures are said to resemble weathered old men dressed in the clothing of a miner. And they earned their name in a couple of ways.


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[Assistant] Legend says that the knockers would literally knock in parts of the mine that would net the biggest payload, guiding the human miners to the best ore.


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[Assistant] But there was also a less common belief that the knockers were the spirits of workers who had died in the mine.


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[Assistant] And they would knock from beyond the veil to warn the living about impending danger.


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[Assistant] Like their cobalt cousins on the continent, knockers were better left alone. Because while they might be helpful in tracking down valuable ore, or avoiding the dangers of a rock slide or a cave-in, they were also volatile and vindictive. And I have a couple of stories to help illustrate that idea for you.


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[Assistant] In one, a miner named Tom Trevorrow made the mistake of insulting the knockers in his mine, failing to maintain that necessary level of respect that seems universal across all mining cultures. As a result, Tom's luck was turned bad, and he became such a failure at mining that he had to give up the profession altogether and become a farmer.


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[Assistant] In another story, a man named Barker was exploring the depths of an unoccupied mine when he claimed to have stumbled upon a group of knockers who were working in the depths of the tunnel.


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[Assistant] For a long while, barkers stayed hidden, listening to them as they worked and talked. But it quickly ended.


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[Assistant] One of the knockers had noticed him and he was confronted by them for his disrespect and curiosity.


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[Assistant] As punishment, the creatures magically injured his knee, making Barker lame for the rest of his life. It was one more verse in the same old song. Disrespect to the guardians of the mind came with severe punishment, from physical injury to the collapse of an entire mind.


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[Assistant] Sadly though, we humans rarely need the assistance of supernatural creatures to bring ruin down upon our heads. Whether or not the approval of mythical creatures is secured, minds have been, and always will be, a very dangerous place to work.


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[Assistant] Because down in the darkness, something very real awaits those who venture in.


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[Assistant] Unexpected disaster and horrifying death.


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[Assistant] Mining is far from safe. It's no wonder that early miners told stories about mystical beings that lived in the darkness and warned them of impending danger, because honestly, danger was often waiting right around the corner.


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[Assistant] In 1858, a coal mine in Port Talbot, a town on the southern coast of Wales, suffered an explosion that took the lives of four workers.


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[Assistant] Five years later, another tragedy there killed 39 men. Seven years after that, it was another 30. And a generation later in 1890, another explosion killed 87 workers.


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[Assistant] A similar tragedy took place in France in 1906 when almost 1,100 miners died in an explosion. 36 years later and thousands of miles away, an explosion inside a mine in China killed more than 1,500.


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[Assistant] The stories go on and on, and not just deep into the past either. Even today, reports occasionally hit the news of new accidents and more lives lost. Mining is dangerous work, and like a lot of human endeavors, it comes at a great cost.


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[Assistant] And that was no less true for the people who worked in the mine just outside of Crosby, Minnesota at the turn of the century. Now, when most people think of Minnesota, they probably think of frost-covered tundra, countless lakes, and dense, endless forests. But hidden beneath that landscape is a ribbon of minerals that have been sought after for more than a century.


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[Assistant] Crosby is actually a planned mining town, built specifically to be the home base for those who worked in the nearby mines.


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[Assistant] It sits on what's known as the Kiyuna Iron Range, one of four narrow 68-mile-long strips of flatland that hide iron and manganese ore beneath the surface. And that includes the Milford Mine, situated about three miles north of Crosby, right up against the northwest corner of Foley Lake.


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[Assistant] Mine was just six years old when the work crew arrived on the morning of February 5th, 1924.


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[Assistant] There were 48 of them, and to get to work, each one had to descend 200 feet into the ground by climbing down a seemingly endless ladder, one rung at a time. And remember, at the end of the day, exhausted and filthy and ready for rest, they would all have to repeat that process all over again.


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[Assistant] Frank Jr. was relatively new to the crew in the mine. His father, Frank Sr., had worked there for years as an expert blaster. But Jr. had to start at the bottom of the ladder, so to speak.


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[Assistant] So on the day in question, he was in a less congested part of the mine, fulfilling his duties as a dirt trammer, shoveling up all the smaller bits of ore that were left behind by the bigger equipment.


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[Assistant] It was a hot blast of air that rushed hard against his face. So hard in fact that his lantern was blown out, leaving him in total darkness. And as Frank stood in the suffocating blackness, a new sensation appeared. Water.


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[Assistant] It was flowing against his work boots, fast and thick with dirt and debris. And it was rising.


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[Assistant] Frank Jr. didn't know it then, but today we know what had happened. It turns out that a portion of the mine had actually been dug beneath Foley Lake, and when that happened, it became a ticking time bomb just waiting to blow up in their faces. But Frank didn't need to know what had caused it to react, so in a heartbeat, he made a dash for the exit ladder.


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[Assistant] Above ground, the frozen surface of the lake actually cracked and the water level began to drop. Inside the mine, the reverse was happening and all of that water was quickly filling up the tunnels where the men had been working.


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[Assistant] Frank wasn't the first to reach the ladder, but he threw himself on it as fast as he could, climbing away from the rising danger.


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[Assistant] Along the way, he actually climbed around a slower, older miner named Harry Hosford, and then came to a stop beneath another larger man. His name was Matt Kangas, and he had apparently panicked and froze in his place at a key spot in the exit shaft.


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[Assistant] Frank later described the situation by saying that Kangas had clogged their escape route.


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[Assistant] But he was a smart man and he wanted to survive, so he forced himself up between the legs of the larger man and reached back down and pulled Hossford through.


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[Assistant] Finally, after ascending those 200 daunting feet one last time, Frank and the others collapsed on the ground outside the exit of the mine.


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[Assistant] Only five of them had managed to escape alive.


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[Assistant] Forty others lost their lives that day as well, and most of them did so without someone else to tell their tale or claim to see them trying to escape.


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[Assistant] But there was one lost miner who would forever be remembered for his act of heroism in the face of danger. And his name was Clinton Harris.


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[Assistant] Harris had been the closest miner to the exit shaft. Part of his job down there involved operating a hoist that sent buckets full of coal to the surface. And when the water began to rush in after the tunnel collapsed, he very well could have made it easily to safety. But instead he chose to do something else.


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[Assistant] Stepping toward the ladder, Harris apparently grabbed hold of the cable that operated the warning whistle.


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[Assistant] pulling hard on it, he sent a loud alarm that was designed to announce an emergency and cause immediate evacuation. But in the process, perhaps due to the strong flow of the water pushing against him, Harris became tangled in the alarm device, unable to make his own escape.


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[Assistant] Even after drowning with inside of the ladder, the weight of his body kept enough pressure on the cable to keep the whistle blowing for hours. It became the soundtrack to the panic and despair that every man felt inside the mine.


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[Assistant] And as loved ones rushed from Crosby to learn what had happened, that whistle was the first thing most of them heard.


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[Assistant] Many of those loved ones were wives who learned they had suddenly become widows and a number of them expressed a desire to throw themselves into the water-filled exit shaft to join their lost husbands in death.


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[Assistant] Thankfully, that never happened, and within four or five hours, someone was able to reach the engine room of the mine and silence the alarm whistle.


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[Assistant] The aftermath of the tragedy was an exercise in frustration.


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[Assistant] With more than 40 bodies to recover, rescue efforts began that very same night. But it was soon clear that pumping the water out of the mine was pointless, since it was fed directly by the lake above it. In fact, so much water had flowed from the lake to the mine that the surface of the lake had visibly dropped.


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[Assistant] Instead, they decided to drain the lake, allowing them to gain access to the mine and recover the bodies of their fallen fathers and friends. It took them nine months to do it, but by November of 1924, they finally pulled the last of them out, bringing closure to an experience that would haunt the town for decades to come.


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[Assistant] Mining in the Kayuna Range ended around 1984, but the land still bears the marks of its resident's legacy. The piles of rock and open mines are proof of that.


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[Assistant] But some of the marks are a bit more mysterious, and they serve to remind us of the darker side of humanity's search for riches beneath the surface. In the end, one thing is absolutely clear.


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[Assistant] No matter how deep we delve into the world around us.


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[Assistant] It's clear that we have a deep connection to the world below us. For many, those dark tunnels and unexplored caverns represent horror and uncertainty. They are the shadow, and we're not really sure what they contain, so we stay away.


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[Assistant] The fear of the dark is one of our most primal, after all.


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[Assistant] But that hasn't stopped others from setting aside that fear and going deeper. Whether it was in search of shelter, a place to record a message, or to retrieve something rare and valuable, humans have occasionally set aside their fears in favor of other urges.


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[Assistant] Looking back though, it's unclear whether that has always been a good thing. Frank Jr. certainly understood that.


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[Assistant] Much later in his life, he was interviewed about his experience in the mine.


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[Assistant] And his miraculous survival after such a horrible tragedy.


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[Assistant] And he was quick to disagree with the official declaration that the accident had been an act of God.


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[Assistant] No, Frank believed the true cause was a lot closer to home, and much less noble.


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[Assistant] They wanted the ore real bad, he told the reporter. In those days they needed steel, every place they could get it. After the armistice that ended World War I, they had to replace supplies because steel was gone. They just wanted the ore.


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[Assistant] Frank went on to tell the reporter that they wanted the ore so badly that they went too far. According to him, the mining engineer knew they had tunneled too far beneath the lake. The miners knew it too, and many of them had quit over it just days before the accident.


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[Assistant] But the best ore was beneath the lake, and corporate greed became more important than personal safety.


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[Assistant] Of course, they had reason to be worried. And the events of 1924 validated that fear. But the people of Crosby picked up the pieces and tried to move forward. Eventually, the mine was cleared and operations there were resumed. And naturally, locals signed back up to work there.


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[Assistant] But stepping back into a place that had been home to so much pain and suffering was bound to stir up some feelings.


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[Assistant] Some of the miners to venture down there after it reopened claimed to hear voices in the darkness below. Voices that sounded a lot like those of their lost fellow workmen, which admittedly would have been enough to frighten many away.


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[Assistant] And yet something even more terrifying awaited them down there.


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[Assistant] As they descended for the first time, waves of sensation washed over them. They could feel the cold and the damp. They could smell the scent of death and decay. And there was something else.


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[Assistant] At the bottom of the ladder many of the returning miners saw a shape in the darkness.


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[Assistant] Naturally, they use their lanterns to chase away the shadows.


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[Assistant] When they did though, the light revealed the figure of Clinton Harris, still tied to the alarm whistle.


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[Assistant] The man's body was ghostly and translucent, and his features were ravaged by decay. But they recognized him nonetheless.


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[Assistant] Of course, it was all impossible. Harris's body had been pulled from the mine months before, and the apparatus that housed the emergency whistle had been dismantled and carted to the surface. What they saw did not exist, and yet there it was, right before their eyes.


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[Assistant] So they retreated back up the ladder. With fear pushing against them from below, the men hurried back toward the safety of the open sky and the daylight up above. But as they did, a new terror surged through all of them, like an electric shock. The whistle, long gone and non-existent, began to shriek throughout the mine.


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[Assistant] They reached the surface a short while later, their hearts beating uncontrollably. But as they lay there on the dirt around the opening of the entrance shaft, all they could think about was the vision of Harris, the scent of death, and that horrible, piercing, never-ending whistle. From that day forward, not a single one of them ever set foot in the mine again.


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[Assistant] It takes a lot of faith to set aside fear and enter a place that makes us feel insecure. So it's only natural that thousands of years of mining had netted us more than cartfuls of precious metals. We've also walked away with folklore.


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[Assistant] Stick around after this short sponsor break, and I'll reveal one more piece of that amazing folklore to you. And it's a story you don't want to miss.


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[Assistant] There's a temptation a lot of us feel to assume that folklore is a world we left behind centuries ago. That as reason and science took over, they halted the spread of the stories we've always told. But nothing could be further from the truth.


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[Assistant] That's because story is central to who we are as humans. And when we move and settle in new areas, we take those stories with us. They're part of our culture, our family, and our faith. And no amount of years or miles can make them go away.


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[Assistant] One of the cultures I mentioned earlier were the miners from Cornwall. Back home, they became incredibly skilled at their job. But when economic hardship ravaged the country in the late 19th century, many of those miners packed up and traveled across the Atlantic to make a fresh start in the United States.


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[Assistant] When they arrived, they put those skills to work in places like California where the gold rush was spreading like wildfire and filling heads with visions of wealth and glory. Soon enough, you couldn't walk into a mine in the western United States without finding at least one Cornish miner.


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[Assistant] But of course, they brought more than their trade skills with them. They brought their folklore too.


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[Assistant] But those little creatures they whispered about back in Cornwall took on a slightly different name in America. Instead of Knockers, they became more commonly known as Tommy Knockers. And that wasn't the only change those mystical guardians of the underground would go through. Because American culture was very different from back home.


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[Assistant] In Cornwall, those little creatures tended to be forces for good, rewarding honorable behavior and punishing ambition and greed.


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[Assistant] Ambition and greed were central to much of 19th century America.


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[Assistant] It was the Gilded Age after all, the era of the Rockefellers and the Vanderbelts and all their other ultra wealthy families who represented the pinnacle of the American dream. So when the Tommy Knockers arrived, they had to adapt to those new values. There were other differences too.


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[Assistant] In Cornwall, the Knockers were seen as small, invisible, weathered old men who worked in the shadows of the mine. In America, though, the Tommy Knocker became more of a ghostly figure, a spirit of dead miners who still communicated with the living.


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[Assistant] And in the late 19th century, a time when spiritualism was dominant in American culture, that transformation made a lot of sense.


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[Assistant] But regardless of their new qualities, the Tommyknockers were a common subject of discussion among those who worked in the mines across the country. So much so that they began to become essential parts of that industry. They were protective spirits who never left a mine until it was officially closed down, and they gave those who worked there a bit of extra reassurance.


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[Assistant] It's said that the Cornish miners in America would refuse to enter a mine unless their employers guaranteed that the Tommyknockers were already on duty.


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[Assistant] They were essentially co-workers, so it's no wonder that as mines began to close around the country in the 1950s, the miners wanted to make sure the Tommyknockers were taken care of too.


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[Assistant] In one instance in Pennsylvania, out-of-work miners formed the Society for the Relief and Support of Displaced Tommyknockers. That was its name. They had legitimate concern for the well-being of these imaginary creatures. And they weren't alone.


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[Assistant] In California, newspapers printed articles about the housing crisis faced by so many of what they called mining gremlins.


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[Assistant] The best example of this intersection of folklore and work life happened in 1956, after a large mine in California was shut down.


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[Assistant] The workers there were distraught at the loss of their own jobs, for sure. But they also expressed concern for the Tommyknockers who had worked invisibly alongside them. So they petitioned the owners of the mine to do something extraordinary.


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[Assistant] They asked for all the Tommyknockers to be given pink slips, official notices of the termination of their employment, and they requested that the mine remain open for two weeks after the pink slips had been delivered, just to give the Tommyknockers enough time to pack up and find new work elsewhere. It sounds ridiculous, I know.


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[Assistant] And in the end, the owners of the mine surprised everyone in the area, superstitious miners and cold-hearted business owners alike. They happily complied with the request.


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


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


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[Assistant] I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite sized episodes to season long dives into a single topic.


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


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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 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] Humans love to plan. Whether it's a child's birthday party or a time capsule designed to last centuries, we have a knack for planning and preparing for things. Looking back on the pages of history, that much should be completely obvious.


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[Assistant] A great example is the famous stone circle at Stonehenge. Most agree that the standing stones were first put in place around 5,000 years ago, although there's evidence that an earlier wooden structure existed before that. And while it's fun to speculate all the purposes it might have served, there's one thing most scholars can agree on. Stonehenge is a calendar. And it's not alone.


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[Assistant] Around the world, there are countless neolithic structures that serve a similar purpose. And it makes sense, really. In an era when humans were transitioning from wandering tribes of hunter-gatherers to farmers who needed to stay in one place for a long time, planning for the future became incredibly important. When will winter finally be over?


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[Assistant] When should they plant their crops? And when should they harvest them?


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[Assistant] Planning helps us survive. It unites us. And it speaks to one of the most enduring qualities we have as human beings. We are people of hope.


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[Assistant] We look for patterns in the world around us and hope that our careful plans can thread the needle and succeed. Oftentimes, our very survival depends on it.


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[Assistant] But our expectations, our assumptions about the future and how it will all play out, aren't always right. Broken hearts, shattered dreams, and misfortune are all a result of misplaced expectations. Yes, we planned, but those plans might crash and burn before they get off the ground. Just because we want something to happen, doesn't mean it will.


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[Assistant] In fact, that law applies to more than just the good stuff in life. Sure, it's frustrating when that much-needed vacation suddenly falls apart, but disappointment comes in all shapes and sizes. And if history is any indication, there's a powerful lesson there for us to learn. Even if we don't like what it teaches. When it comes to tragedy, the unexpected is right around the corner.


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[Assistant] In the wide world of historic witch hunts, it's easy to get lost in the assumptions. We assume all witches were burned at the stake, and that they were old. We assume those trials played out against the green backdrop of the English countryside, or that frantic neighbors were always waiting with stories of sick cows or ghostly visitations. But if we did that, we would be wrong.


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[Assistant] Sure, those things happened, but the history of witch hunts is a lot deeper and a lot more nuanced. And they've been around for a very long time. We can find mentions of witches and witch trials in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. And throughout much of the medieval period, small trials were a constant occurrence.


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[Assistant] But back then, those trials were a one and done sort of thing. A lot of them resembled the story of Mary Webster, the woman from Hadley in colonial Massachusetts in the late 1600s, who was tried by the village elders and then shipped off to Boston. One victim, one community, and quick justice.


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[Assistant] Things changed in 1485 when two Catholic clergymen named Heinrich Kramer and James Springer published a book that they called Malleus Maleficarum, or The Hammer of Witches.


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[Assistant] That's because these two men put into print the vast collection of fears and assumptions that people held about witchcraft. And those assumptions would go on to fuel the fire of panic all across Europe.


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[Assistant] One of the overwhelming messages of their book was just how weak and evil women were believed to be.


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[Assistant] Kramer and Springer characterized women as overly emotional, highly impressionable, incredibly superstitious and morally wicked. They were temptresses and gossips and were inferior to men in both body and mind. Basically, women had the potential to become dangerous to society and they needed to be watched.


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[Assistant] And because women were thought to be more impressionable and less intelligent, they were easy targets for the devil. He would come to them and promise to give them power so long as they served him. And if they agreed, these women would become witches, a dangerous addition to any community.


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[Assistant] These witches were said to gather for regular meetings called a Sabbath. At these gatherings they would bring in new recruits to meet their source of power, the devil himself, before being inducted into the group. Then each new member would receive a helper, usually an imp or some small animal known as a familiar, to help them do their work.


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[Assistant] And with their newfound power, they could kill livestock, make children sick, alter the weather, and prevent couples from becoming pregnant. All accusations that were impossible to prove, of course. And almost all of it was based on fear. If your livestock died or a blight killed your crops, your way of life would be under threat. And that made people do desperate things.


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[Assistant] Of course, once a community used the Malleus Maleficarum to identify a witch, it also provided guidance for how to interrogate them, how to choose witnesses for their trial, how to sentence them, and what that sentence should be.


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[Assistant] It didn't help that Pope Innocent VIII issued a papal bull that gave approval and authority to all of that information. A pronouncement that Cromer and Springer actually included in the front of their book.


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[Assistant] And that's pretty much how things worked for the three centuries between 1450 and 1750. The results were tragic too. It's believed that during that time the Holy Roman Empire executed over 45,000 accused witches and roughly four out of every five victims was a woman.


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[Assistant] And socially, it's easy to understand how it happened.


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[Assistant] The typical medieval witch was an older woman, usually one who lived alone. She was poor, uneducated, and unprotected. Without someone to speak for her or defend her, a woman was incredibly vulnerable.


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[Assistant] Throw in a good amount of deep superstition in an unpredictable world and that was a recipe for disaster. Usually.


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[Assistant] Like any other area of study there are always exceptions. Situations that buck the trend and go against the grain.


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[Assistant] Even in something as widespread and hot-headed as European witch trials, there are moments when the tragic events took a very different path. It doesn't make those instances any better, but it certainly makes them worth a deeper look.


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[Assistant] In fact, there's one in particular that I want to share with you.


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[Assistant] To examine it though, we'll need to travel off the beaten path and into a place that most people wouldn't expect to find the remnants of a medieval witch trial. The hills of northern Italy.


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[Assistant] The province of Imperia sits at the top left of Italy. If the country is a leg, then Imperia is the hip, a little stretch of coastline that connects Italy proper to the rest of Europe.


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[Assistant] But don't think of Imperia as a vast expanse of flat land. No, this is hill country. And that geological texture has helped shape the region's history.


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[Assistant] Over the centuries, communities have settled on the many hills in the area, capping many of them with a forest of pale buildings and rust-colored roof tiles. And because the medieval world was a dangerous time to live, a good number of these towns wrapped themselves in a city wall.


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[Assistant] But walls work in two directions. Yes, it protected them from war or external violence. But it also isolated them and left them to fight among themselves.


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[Assistant] A good example of that took place in the 1580s. That was a hard decade for the region, and that trouble helped highlight their isolation.


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[Assistant] Granted, life in the early modern period was never easy to begin with. Medicine wasn't what you would call state of the art, and just about everyone worked themselves to the bone from sunrise to sunset. But during that decade, things got worse.


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[Assistant] Changes in weather patterns had brought drought to the region, killing many of the crops these little farming communities needed to survive. In fact, all over the Argentine Valley to the north, famine was spreading like a plague, and desperate times forced people to do desperate things.


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[Assistant] As the crops began to yield less and less, the landowners took larger and larger shares of the harvest. This left their tenant farmers without enough to live on, adding to their already difficult life. It was an enormous amount of pressure. And while pressure produces diamonds in the world of geology, these challenges resulted in something else. Panic.


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[Assistant] It didn't help that many of these communities were centers of trade with cities to the north in France and Germany. That meant that, yes, their walls might have protected them against invading armies, but the roads allowed a slow trickle of paranoia and superstition to eat away at their social foundations. They were, in essence, being invaded by fear. And that's when the rumors began.


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[Assistant] Because when you live in a time when the Malleus Maleficarum had been around for a full century, roughly four or five generations, it was hard not to view everything through the lens it provided. Blighted crops, sickened livestock, and increased numbers of death among the very young and very old, all of it added up to an obvious conclusion. There were witches on the loose.


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[Assistant] In October of 1587, the rumors had reached a crescendo. And in the small hilltop village of Triora, locals were deathly afraid that witches were everywhere, cursing the crops and livestock and killing their family and neighbors.


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[Assistant] So a letter was sent to the authorities in Genoa asking for help. What they received was a visit from Girolamo del Pozzo.


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[Assistant] Del Pozzo was from the office of the Bishop of Albania, a city nearby on the coast. When he arrived though, he didn't behave as you might expect. Rather than seize control of the situation and place himself above the authority of Triara's mayor, as many medieval witch-finders had done, he partnered with them, hoping to be as much help as he could.


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[Assistant] Until his arrival, all the community had was a collection of rumors. But those rumors were frightening enough to push them further along in the process.


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[Assistant] What Del Pozzo needed was proof, some kind of solid evidence to lead them to the witches. To find it, he visited a number of the local churches during their normal celebration of mass, during which he stood at the front of the church and invited anyone with evidence to come and see him later.


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[Assistant] Based on the information he collected, Del Pozzo and the mayor were able to arrest roughly 40 people. Most of them, of course, were women, but there was one man and five children, all under the age of 13. And once they'd been taken into custody, they were interrogated.


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[Assistant] In Triora, the focus of the accusations went beyond the famine and illness that seemed to be spreading. It seems that Del Pozzo was specifically interested in all the infants that had died, thinking that only a witch could be to blame for those. And after intense interrogations regarding that topic, he narrowed the larger group of 40 down to a total of 13. And that's when the deaths began.


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[Assistant] The first to die was a 60-year-old woman named Izota Stella, but she wasn't executed. Instead, it was the horrible conditions inside the prison that caused her to become ill and die.


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[Assistant] Sadly, that wasn't an uncommon thing in the world of witch trials. Prison conditions were consistently abhorrent, and even a century later in Salem, Massachusetts, five of the 25 deaths happened in jail rather than at the gallows.


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[Assistant] A short while later, another of the accused women died after falling from a high window in the prison. Some believe she was trying to escape the trials, while others think she intentionally took her own life. Either way, she was clearly looking for a way out of a horrible situation, and the results were tragic.


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[Assistant] These two deaths, even before the sentencing began, caused the mayor of Triora to have second thoughts. Sure, they blamed the deaths on the powers of the devil, but deep down, the town's council of elders knew what was happening, so they sent a request to Genoa for Del Pozzo to be recalled and for the trials to be suspended.


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[Assistant] Rather than help the situation though, their letters seem to invite nothing more than a changing of regard.


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[Assistant] The wheels of superstition-fueled panic were already in motion, and there was little they could do to stop it. And as sad as that seems, things were about to get worse.


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[Assistant] Del Pozzo had been a wolf in sheep's clothing. He had arrived with an air of humility and deference, but in the end he had driven the events toward a deadly crossroads. So I imagine the people of Triora were hopeful that someone better would arrive to clean up the mess. But they were wrong.


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[Assistant] There was a moment of respite, though. Immediately after Del Pozzo left, the Inquisitor General for all of Genoa arrived and assessed the damage. After seeing all of the people that remained in the prison, he ordered the release of the thirteen-year-old girl. Why not more? I'm not sure. But it wasn't a simple thing. That much is clear.


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[Assistant] This teenage girl was forced to undergo what was known as abjuration, a sort of public renouncing of past deeds. Essentially, she had to stand before the local church and confess to witchcraft and heresy, but then disavow all of it so that she might be welcomed back into the church. And this she did. And it worked.


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[Assistant] And I think it's worth stepping aside here to point out that this isn't unique to the Catholic Church. In the aftermath of the Salem witch trials, there was a lot of putting wrong to right. One of the key investigators of the events in that community was Ann Putnam, the 12-year-old daughter of two of the chief accusers.


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[Assistant] Without her actions and claims, two dozen lives might have been saved.


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[Assistant] But thirteen years later, she too stood before her church and read her confession out loud, hoping to be welcomed back into the church that she once tore apart. I've held that confession in my own hands, with its tight script and worn edges.


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[Assistant] I desire to be laid low, she wrote, in the dust of humility for accusing people that I now believe were innocent.


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[Assistant] But in Triora, only one prisoner was given that opportunity.


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[Assistant] After her future was settled, the Inquisitor General returned to Genoa. But in his wake, a new official arrived. A man named Giulio Scribani. And he wasn't looking to work in partnership with the Council of Elders or the mayor. He was there to bring a hammer down upon what he believed was an outbreak of witchcraft.


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[Assistant] Rather than free more of the prisoners, Scriabani actually arrested more suspects. And as he did, he made it clear that he had one goal, and only one goal in mind for all of them. The death penalty.


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[Assistant] Upon hearing this news, the mayor sent another urgent letter to Genoa, who sent a trio of new officials to keep Skribani in line.


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[Assistant] Now, I don't want to inundate you with new names, as they won't help move the story forward more smoothly, but it is important to think of them as a team. The leader of the pack arrived with every intention of putting an end to Skribani's plans, but one of his helpers convinced him otherwise.


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[Assistant] I can only imagine that this helper was equally in favor of the death penalty and used his influence over the leader to stay the course that Scriabani had set. What's important for us to remember is that before long, all four of the official government representatives in town were in full support of executing the accused witches.


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[Assistant] At the end of the spring of 1588, two more women died, this time by execution. They were burned publicly, and then the remains were buried on unconsecrated ground. And that spilling of blood had a dramatic effect. For the visiting officials, it filled them with a thirst for more.


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[Assistant] For the local leaders though, it was one more cold shower of reality. So one more fearful letter was sent out.


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[Assistant] This one, though, was sent to the church itself. And by the summer of 1588, Catholic representatives had arrived and took over the trials, sending Scriabani and his cohorts packing. And I know what you're thinking. If this were any other witch trial, the arrival of church authorities would almost guarantee a bloodbath. But not in Triora.


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[Assistant] Instead, these representatives moved the prisoners to Genoa. Their torture was brought to an end


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[Assistant] And all documentation was confiscated and reviewed. And when they were done, around September of 1588, a proper level-headed trial began.


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[Assistant] Without torture hanging over them, every single one of the accused witches retracted their forced confessions. Many were set free and returned to their homes. Those that remained behind were still considered guilty, but when their sentencing took place, the worst they were offered to face was abjuration, just like that 13-year-old girl months before. It's not a bloody finale, I know.


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[Assistant] There was no courtyard or town square filled with a forest of tall poles and burning bodies. There were no gallows to dismantle or mass graves to dig. There was just a lot of regret, a bit of relief,


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[Assistant] Looking back on history, it's remarkable to see the things that we've accomplished. And yet it's also frightening. It seems our potential for greatness is only eclipsed by our propensity for darkness. So while the Triorta Witch Trials were tragic and painful, it's encouraging to find one rare example of a community that managed to right the ship and save lives. In the medieval battle against the power of the devil, there was rarely anything good discovered.


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[Assistant] Triora today is a beautiful hilltop community. It's frequently placed on lists of the most beautiful medieval towns in the country. Tourists visit for the rustic atmosphere and gorgeous views of the countryside. But they also come for the festivals.


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[Assistant] Every September, the town hosts a mushroom festival. Now, I'm not a fan of fungus myself, so I can only imagine what sort of activities a thing like that might include. And of course, in October, they celebrate Halloween, drawing visitors from all around. But it's their summer festival that's the most popular.


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[Assistant] It is a witchcraft festival. Much like Salem, Massachusetts, who has spent decades reinventing itself as the Witch City, complete with a statue of Elizabeth Montgomery from the classic TV show Bewitched,


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[Assistant] They even have their own museum dedicated to the trials. And while some of the rooms are archival in nature, holding the actual documents connected to the events of 1588, there are also rooms filled with wax figures and wooden contraptions that show off the torture techniques used on the victims.


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[Assistant] And everywhere you look around town, you'll find advertisements for mediums and witches for hire.


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[Assistant] Palm reading, tarot cards, and charms. If you can dream it up, it's probably in a shop somewhere in Triora.


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[Assistant] Yes, there is a memorial, but it's easy to feel like it's lost in the noise of everything else. It certainly forces us to ponder the line that separates honoring the dead and capitalizing on their tragedy.


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[Assistant] The witch trials that took place in Triora were the last we know of in Italy. And that's obviously a good thing.


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[Assistant] But they weren't without their impact. In fact, those trials happened at a time when the public perception of which trials was darkening. Many believe that communities had been too lenient. And while some writers continue to urge restraint and grace, the Catholic Church steered the public in a different direction.


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[Assistant] In 1626, Pope Gregory XV published a papal bull that recommended the death penalty for anyone connected to witchcraft, even if it was their first offense. It was a zero grace attitude that would throw gasoline on the flames of superstition, and the resulting fires would burn across Europe and claim even more lives.


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[Assistant] Looking back, it's sadly more than a little ironic. Because of Triora's success in stopping their own trials, future outbreaks of panic became even more violent and drawn out. Rather than see the people of that small town as a rare example of caution over fear, they were viewed as failures. And as a result, tens of thousands of innocent people were murdered.


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[Assistant] The story of the witch trials of Triora, Italy are tragic to learn about, but they still show us the potential for goodness. The madness could be stopped, and lives were saved as a result.


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[Assistant] But not all European trials were so level-headed. In fact, there was a wave of trials that took place in one location over the course of 50 years and claimed the lives of thousands. Stick around after this brief sponsor break, and I'll tell you all about it.


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[Assistant] It's easy to think of England when you hear about witch trials. Yes, Salem, Massachusetts is a lot closer to home for most of us, but that was an isolated 13-month event. And I think it's fair to say that most of us are aware that things were much worse in England.


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[Assistant] And they were. But England wasn't the true hotbed of witchcraft accusations, trials, and executions.


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[Assistant] Now that honor falls to Germany and the decades that cover the end of the 1500s and the beginning of the 1600s. And while I don't have time to walk through each and every trial from that era in one small epilogue, I do think it's worth doing a 30,000 foot flyover because there's a lot that we can learn from it all.


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[Assistant] Keep in mind that there were small scatterings of which trials all over Europe and even within Germany for decades before these specific trials. So it's impossible to point at one person or moment in time and say, yes, that's the first one, the one that kicked it all off.


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[Assistant] But what makes historians sit up and take notice is when the normal stuff, however tragic it might be, suddenly becomes abnormal. And that's what happened in 1581.


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[Assistant] That was the year that Johann von Schönenberg was appointed to the position of Archbishop over the German city of Trier. Now, keep the historical context in mind. The people of Europe were just a few decades into the Protestant Reformation. A time when churches were breaking off from the Catholic Church in waves. And that massive change had deep impacts everywhere.


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[Assistant] The biggest effect the Reformation had was that it created an atmosphere of hatred. Catholics hated the churches who left their fold. And those that left in protest, the Protestants, hated the authority the Catholics tried to hold over them. And that hatred became violence in places all around Europe.


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[Assistant] Kingdoms rose and fell over the issue of Protestant versus Catholic. It was like the tension of the Red Scare in early 20th century America, but orders of magnitude larger and much more violent.


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[Assistant] And when Schoenenberg became Bishop of Trier in 1581, he brought a lot of that hatred with him. The first people he persecuted were the Protestants, but then he moved on to the Jewish people of the area.


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[Assistant] Then after that, he went after a group of people that were just as feared and hated as the rest. Witches.


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[Assistant] Please let that sink in, because it should be utterly horrifying.


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[Assistant] Not only were those people murdered, but once they were dead, the Archbishop took all of their possessions. And if the victims had any surviving family members, those people were exiled from their communities.


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[Assistant] I'd like to say that it all came to a close because people finally saw the error of their ways. But that wasn't the case. Instead, the witch trials stopped when it was no longer profitable, when there were no longer funds available to pay witch examiners and executioners.


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[Assistant] A decade later, they started up again, this time in the city of Fulda to the east. During the four years that those trials occurred, another 250 people were executed for witchcraft.


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[Assistant] Those trials came to an end when it was discovered that the man in charge of them, an official named Balthazar Nus, was getting rich off the process. He was sent to prison and was executed for his crimes in 1618.


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[Assistant] But people had yet to learn their lesson, it seems. A generation later, in 1626, more trials broke out in the region around the city of Würzburg, to the south of Fulda. Just in the city alone, roughly 160 people were burned at the stake, although the gruesome silver lining is that most of them had been beheaded prior to that.


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[Assistant] Outside the city, things were even worse, with the rough estimate placing the death toll at around 900.


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[Assistant] That same year, the German city of Bamberg had their own encounter with witch trials. After decades of similar mass executions all across Germany, the people of Bamberg applied lessons and ideas that made the process easier.


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[Assistant] I know we love to praise that good old German engineering and efficiency. And as someone of mostly German ancestry, I've done that most of my life.


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[Assistant] But these people took a noble gift and turned it into a weapon.


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[Assistant] Rather than fill the town square with hundreds of poles for burning witches, they simply built a walk-in crematorium. There were so many people arrested on suspicion of witchcraft that they had to build a brand new prison just to hold them all. And over the course of the next five years, hundreds of people would be tortured inside those walls before offering up a desperate confession.


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[Assistant] A confession that almost certainly brought on a violent death.


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[Assistant] Those trials ended when it became clear that no one was safe from the inquisition-like hunt for witches. When the pregnant wife of a wealthy merchant was taken into custody in December of 1629, that was the final straw.


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[Assistant] You can come for the outsiders and strangers and underprivileged, they seem to say, but don't you dare come for those of us with a bit of power.


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[Assistant] That merchant's wife was a woman named Dorothea Flock. When the people of Bamberg learned about her arrest, they were enraged. They managed to get the authorities to write a letter demanding her immediate release, and a messenger was dispatched to the prison to make that happen.


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[Assistant] When the prison learned that an order for her release was headed their way, they panicked. Knowing that their time was running out, they dragged Orthea out of her cell on May 14th and tortured her until she confessed to witchcraft. And then she was immediately burned at the stake.


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[Assistant] By the time the messenger arrived, Dorothea Flock was nothing more than a pile of ash.


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[Assistant] When the Bamberg trials were over, the list of victims was staggering. Most historians believe that those specific trials resulted in the execution of roughly 1,000 innocent people. To add insult to injury, the people responsible for it all simply fled the country, escaping the justice they so very much deserved.


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[Assistant] And look, I'll be honest with you, I don't have a neat and tidy way to wrap up a story like this. It's appalling just how brutal we can be toward people who are different from us, or who don't follow our rules, or we just don't like.


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[Assistant] And I want to be able to tell you that in the centuries since this all happened, we've learned our lessons and become better human beings. But I'm not sure that I can do that. Instead, I can only tell you that there's hope.


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[Assistant] The people of Trier, Italy taught us that, after all, that even in the face of horrible injustice, there's always a chance that good will triumph over evil. But of course, that's the trouble, isn't it?


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[Assistant] Because history has shown that the power to be either.


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


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[Assistant] When the young man stumbled into the police station, the officers knew something was wrong just by looking at his face. He was panicked and afraid, and it took them a good long while to get him to calm down and tell his story.


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[Assistant] It seems that he had been trying to hitchhike his way through the town when he saw something that frightened him to the core. While walking through a neighborhood, he saw lights descend from high above in the night sky before hovering roughly 100 feet above the houses. There were five of them, he claimed, and they were all in a perfect row.


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[Assistant] His story actually resembled that of a young woman who had been found sitting in her car around midnight, just a couple of hours before. When the Exeter police had asked her to explain herself, she too told them a story about lights above the road. Except the lights in her story had been red, and they had chased her.


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[Assistant] The hitchhiker took one of the officers back to the place where he had witnessed the lights, and pointed out the wooded area they had moved toward before vanishing. Together they entered the trees, where both of them claimed to see more lights, now tucked low inside the small forest. The next officer to arrive saw them as well.


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[Assistant] And those sightings continued off and on for most of September of 1965.


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[Assistant] All told, roughly 60 witnesses came forward and described the exact same thing, mysterious lights in the sky over the town of Exeter, New Hampshire. And while explanations have been tossed around for decades since, there was one prevailing theory at the time, aliens.


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[Assistant] Honestly, it makes sense when you remember what they had already read about in the news. This was a decade and a half after Roswell, New Mexico. Four years after Betty and Barney Hill's claim of abduction right there in New Hampshire. Pop culture was awash in science fiction adventures and it had left an impression on them.


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[Assistant] People tend to view things through the lenses of personal experience and the folklore of their day. Sure, today we have a lot more scientific knowledge at our disposal and a better understanding of how the universe works.


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[Assistant] But history is long and deep. Communities have encountered the unexplainable countless times over the centuries. And every time they have, they've done their best to frame it in a way their contemporaries would understand.


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[Assistant] When most people think of Gloucester, Massachusetts, they think of The Perfect Storm, the Hollywood film starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg. Or maybe they think of The Fish Sticks, sold by Gorton's Fishermen, also from Gloucester. But this New England fishing town is a lot more than pop culture references and men in yellow raincoats.


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[Assistant] In fact, Gloucester is one of the oldest communities in New England, having been founded in 1623, just three years after the Mayflower landed in what would become known as Plymouth. Gloucester was the first seaport on the East Coast, and when you dig into its history, you get a beautiful snapshot of what early colonial life was like.


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[Assistant] By the time the summer of 1692 rolled around, the people of Gloucester had lived there for generations. King Philip's War, also known as the First Indian War, was decades in the past, but New England was five years into a new conflict. Today we call it King William's War, and it was a struggle for dominance between the English and the French.


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[Assistant] War has always had a way of destabilizing communities, and Gloucester in 1692 was no exception.


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[Assistant] They were figuratively on the edge of the world, positioned far north of Boston at the southeastern tip of a peninsula known as Cape Ann, and they were cut off from much of the rest of the colony by rivers and marshland, making it feel as though they were isolated and alone.


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[Assistant] Because of the war, a good number of Gloucester's young healthy men were off fighting battles against the French and the various Native American tribes who had aligned themselves with them. And I need you to remember that, if the people of Gloucester had a list of fears, the French were sitting comfortably at the top. Why? Well, because of religion.


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[Assistant] The colony of Massachusetts was a Puritan settlement. A group of anti-Catholic Protestant Christians who had left England for more freedom and security in the New World. And not only were the French the long-time enemy of the English people, but they were Catholic. To say that their presence in New England was troubling to the Puritans would be putting it mildly.


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[Assistant] The 400 or so people living in Gloucester had felt safe for a long while, but raids were beginning to happen a bit too close for their comfort. So as you can imagine, tensions were high, and it's in the middle of that perfect storm of isolation and fear that a young fisherman had a strange encounter.


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[Assistant] Ebenezer Babson was just 25 years old in the summer of 1692. He and his family lived in a modest house, and as he sat by the fire one July evening, he heard strange noises as if there were people outside his door.


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[Assistant] He stood up and crept his way over to one of the windows and then peered out onto his dimly lit property. But there was nothing there.


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[Assistant] The noises continued that evening, and every time Ebenezer went to look for the source, he found nothing, which had to have been frustrating for him.


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[Assistant] And don't forget, this was 1692, and the world was a lot more quiet back then. It wasn't a neighbor's radio or the sounds of traffic on 128. In an area where the most common sounds at night were from the local wildlife, the unmistakable noise of other people was a rare thing.


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[Assistant] And it kept happening. Early sources tell us that Ebenezer continued to hear these sounds for weeks. Sure, he could have grown used to them or convinced himself that it was just a new animal that he had never heard before. But something else happened during that time. The noises moved inside his house.


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[Assistant] If that was all, he might have relaxed. After all, most old homes in New England play host to the occasional animals in their cellar. Even today. But if Ebenezer was honest, he would say that these noises felt different. In fact, they sounded like people.


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[Assistant] Then one evening he was returning home from the fields. He was tired and filthy and ready for a refreshing ale. But as his home came into view from a distance, he saw the front door open wide and two men stepped out into the evening light.


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[Assistant] Two strangers and when they saw him approaching, they turned and ran.


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[Assistant] Frightened for the safety of his family, Ebenezer dashed to the house and burst in. Thanks to the stories of local raids by Native Americans and their French allies, he expected to find his family dead or injured. Instead, his wife saw him and turned to greet him with a smile.


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[Assistant] Who were the men I just saw leaving this house? he asked her.


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[Assistant] No visitors had been there, no strangers had threatened her life, no one had come calling on them for days.


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[Assistant] Now, I don't know if Ebenezer spent more time questioning his wife or if he gave up right away. He had seen two men step out through his front door, a doorway that was most likely just a few feet away from where his wife stood inside, and yet she had no memory of them.


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[Assistant] So he turned and exited the house and decided that he would track them down in the fields.


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[Assistant] Once outside, he ran hard in the direction he had seen the strangers go moments before. They had a head start, but he was hopeful. He knew his property, after all, and against all odds, he found them. They had attempted to hide themselves by kneeling in the tall grass that covered much of his land, and they were talking to each other.


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[Assistant] Fear washed over Ebenezer. These strangers were clearly a threat and, given another chance, they might return and do harm to him and his family.


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[Assistant] Without engaging them at all, or even alerting them to his presence, he turned and quickly ran back home.


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[Assistant] They were all in danger, but if he can move them quickly to a safer place, he might avoid the worst of it.


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[Assistant] Perspective is everything. I don't want you to assume that Ebenezer lacked courage simply because he decided to run and hide. In fact, if anyone in Gloucester had a reputation for standing up to danger, it was him. Let me illustrate that with a quick story.


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[Assistant] The Cape Ann Peninsula sticks out into the Atlantic Ocean about 30 miles northeast of Boston. On the southern side of the tip is Gloucester, the setting for today's story. On the northern side, though, is the town of Rockport. They're separated by about four miles, and that put Rockport right into Ebenezer's backyard.


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[Assistant] Just a few years after the events in Gloucester wrapped up, Ebenezer was standing on a small neck of land on the coast that would eventually become Rockport, doing a little fishing with his nephew, when a bear snuck up on them. The legend tells us that the bear went right for the nephew, so Ebenezer distracted it and lured it toward the water.


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[Assistant] Once he and the bear were both hip deep in the cold Atlantic, Ebenezer threw himself at it, a long fish knife gripped in one hand. And amazingly, he won.


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[Assistant] A short while later, he dragged that bear back to shore and then used his knife to skin it where it lay. Ever since, locals have called that strip of land bear skin neck, much to the confusion of modern tourists.


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[Assistant] Because of that, I have a hard time believing that a man who was willing to go one on one with a bear had a low threshold for fear and cowardice. But there was something about these two strange men that bothered Ebenezer enough to convince him to pack up his family and run.


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[Assistant] Maybe it was their strange all-white clothing or their surprising speed. Whatever the reason, he moved fast.


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[Assistant] Family for Ebenezer consisted of not just his own wife, but also his widowed mother, two sisters, one brother-in-law, and that nephew who would later go fishing with him.


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[Assistant] The whole family grabbed whatever necessities they might need and then headed to the Gloucester Garrison. It was the local fortification that had a small handful of soldiers stationed there to help with pirate raids and attacks from the ever encroaching King William's War.


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[Assistant] But just as the last of Ebenezer's family passed through the wooden gates of the fort and the door was shut, the sound of heavy footsteps pounded toward them. Some of the men stationed at the garrison had seen real military action and to them, it sounded like an entire company of soldiers had approached.


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[Assistant] Ebenezer Babson grabbed his musket and slipped back outside the fort, only to see the same two strangers a short distance away.


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[Assistant] At least, he thought they were the same men, their clothing was the same, and their faces, from what he could tell, were similar. It was enough to convince him that these two men were scouts, working ahead of a larger force, and the people of Gloucester were in trouble.


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[Assistant] The alarm was raised, and then a patrol was put into action the following day. Ebenezer joined them of course, but they found no sign of the enemy on that first trip.


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[Assistant] The next day though, everyone in the patrol saw the same two strangers, confirming their white clothing and odd silver muskets. This time though, the strangers chased them, pursuing them all the way back to the garrison.


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[Assistant] Soon enough, it seemed as if the strange soldiers were everywhere. Ebenezer recalled looking out from the fort and seeing the men dart between trees and large rocks, and their movements were far more fluid and light-footed than anyone they had ever seen before. But so far, they had not fired upon the men of Gloucester.


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[Assistant] By mid-July though, the first shots were fired. A man named John Brown, a friend of Ebenezer, saw three of these strange visitors one day outside the fort, and he aimed his musket at them. One historian records that Brown missed, and I quote, owing to the strangers dodging about in so lively a manner. It was as if they were being taunted.


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[Assistant] On July 14th, while on patrol, Babson himself saw six of them together, a sure sign that their numbers were growing.


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[Assistant] The next day, he made the decision that the folks living down close to the harbor deserve to be warned about this serious threat, and so he grabbed his musket and headed south at a run. About a half mile out, though, he heard a gun go off somewhere behind him, and a bullet buzzed past his ear and lodged itself into a hemlock tree beside the road.


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[Assistant] Miraculously, all of the strangers fell to the ground. It seemed too good to be true, but Babson decided to cautiously inspect the bodies while he had the chance. When he was still a few paces off, though, all four of the strangers hopped back up on their feet and dashed off into the woods.


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[Assistant] Babson reloaded, and as he did, a handful of other men from the garrison joined him, most likely drawn to the scene by the sound of gunfire. Together, they carefully approached the last place Babson had seen the strangers, and when they spotted them, the Gloucester men fired upon them, sending a number of the enemy to the ground.


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[Assistant] This time, they were certain. Their bullets had taken down the enemy, and surely this would be the end of the conflict. Babson himself had sighted one of the men in white and watched him topple over after he was struck. So he and the others carefully approached the undergrowth to search for the body.


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[Assistant] They found all the telltale signs of human activity at the edge of the woods there. Broken branches, scattered footprints, even torn leaves lying on the ground. But much to their disappointment, they didn't find the one thing they'd been hoping for. A body.


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[Assistant] Two whole weeks. That's how long this cat and mouse game went on. Two long weeks of seeing the enemy outside the fort, giving chase and coming up empty. Two weeks of firing directly at them but not killing a single one. Two weeks of frustration and failure. And fear.


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[Assistant] As you might imagine, the soldiers inside the Gloucester garrison were exhausted from it all. But that didn't mean they hadn't learned anything new. In fact, those two weeks were very informative.


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[Assistant] On multiple occasions, some of the soldiers actually heard the strangers speaking, although they didn't understand the language they used. And once, while they were out on patrol, a few of the men stumbled upon a larger gathering of the white-clad strangers in a clearing in the middle of an orchard.


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[Assistant] There, between the weathered trunks of apple trees, stood about a dozen of the invaders, engaged in some sort of ceremony or ritual.


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[Assistant] One of the men, a local man named Richard Dolliver, actually pointed his musket at the thickest group of strangers and then pulled the trigger. Today we might think of it as shooting fish in a barrel. All of them gathered so closely together and easy to hit. But not a single one of them fell to the ground. And of course, once the gun went off, they scattered like a flock of birds.


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[Assistant] At the end of their rope, the men of the garrison sent for reinforcements, and a few days later, a troop of sixty fresh soldiers arrived, led by Major Samuel Appleton of Ipswich. But rather than frighten them away, the arrival of help only seemed to push the enemy to escalate their efforts.


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[Assistant] It all came to a head one night when soldiers inside the garrison heard a great commotion outside. They looked out over the walls to see what appeared to be an army of these strangers, all running back and forth in erratic patterns. And they had surrounded the fort completely.


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[Assistant] The English soldiers panicked and began to fire directly into the enemy troops. As they did, more and more of them poured out of the woods and joined the attack. But for every bullet fired into their ranks, the soldiers of Gloucester received yet one more shot of frustration. Because it wasn't working. None of the strangers would die.


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[Assistant] To their credit, the enemy didn't fire back, despite each of them carrying long silver muskets of strange design on their backs.


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[Assistant] They did throw volley after volley of rocks and sticks over the wall. But not once did they draw their weapons and fire. And while I'm sure the soldiers inside were grateful for the non-deadly combat, I can't help but assume that they must have felt like they were being toyed with the entire time.


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[Assistant] It was at some point during this assault that Ebenezer began to think more deeply about who these attackers might be. They weren't French or Native American. They weren't pirates or marauders or even English highwaymen. They were something otherworldly, as evidenced by their magic ability to avoid bullets, even when those bullets appeared to strike them.


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[Assistant] To a Puritan man, that left only one option. These were the forces of the devil himself, sent to torment them.


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[Assistant] Just a couple of months earlier, the people of nearby Salem had finally closed the book on over a year of investigations into an outbreak of witchcraft. What if the devil had simply given up in one place and picked Gloucester as his next target?


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[Assistant] So Ebenezer put that theory to the test a few days later. He was with a number of other men on the walls of the garrison, looking down onto the field around them, when a group of the strangers came into view. Quietly, he told his fellow soldiers to hold their fire and wait, because he had an idea.


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[Assistant] Kneeling down, Babson gripped one of the silver buttons on his uniform and ripped it off. Then, using a ramrod, he pushed the button and some wadding down into the breach of the barrel. Once he was ready, he stood back up and took aim at the stranger who looked, at least to him, like the leader of the group. And then he fired.


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[Assistant] The shot was true. The button, acting like a makeshift bullet, flew straight and struck its target. And the moment it did, the stranger vanished. He didn't topple over or fall backwards, mind you. He disappeared.


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[Assistant] And that was all the proof Ebenezer Babson needed. Silver was known to harm the forces of evil, whether they were a witch or an agent of the devil, and it had worked. It was a litmus test that gave them the results they needed. They weren't wrestling with mortal soldiers after all, but the forces of darkness, which meant they needed a new plan.


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[Assistant] Babson and the others immediately dropped to their knees and began to pray out loud. None of the historians recorded what that prayer might have been, but we can assume it was either the Lord's Prayer or perhaps a Psalm of Deliverance. Whatever words they spoke, they shouted them, making them heard over the walls and out into the field beyond.


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[Assistant] In response, the most horrific sounds came from the other side of the walls. It was a chorus of agonizing, guttural screams as if an army of men were being tortured with red hot brands.


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[Assistant] The screams went on for a long while, building in intensity as they did, until finally they reached what sounded like a crescendo. And then, they stopped.


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[Assistant] When Ebenezer and the others felt it was safe, they all began to stand back up and peer over the wall. They expected to find the enemy still there, running about, but that's not what greeted them when they looked out on the field.


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[Assistant] The world is full of unexplainable moments. That strange sound in what should be an empty house. The odd footprints in the mud outside your bedroom window. Those lights that seem to hover over the woods.


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[Assistant] We all have and will encounter things that fall somewhere along that scale between the mundane and the otherworldly. Most of the time, we have enough information to remind us that it's just the wind, or a neighbor's dog, and we can relax.


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[Assistant] That's how we process life, after all. We have a head full of experience and understanding, and we see the world through those lenses. Sometimes, though, it doesn't work.


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[Assistant] The experiences that leave us unsettled can sometimes refuse to pass through the filters we've set up. They stand out as something outside the ordinary, the extraordinary, and we can't get them off our mind.


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[Assistant] For Ebenezer Babson, those otherworldly visitors who surrounded the Gloucester Garrison were that sort of experience. They didn't fit into the neat and tidy boxes that he and his peers had organized their world into. They didn't match anything in the database, so to speak, and that left everyone else feeling a bit uncomfortable.


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[Assistant] Of course, human beings encounter new things all the time. Explorers have made that a way of life. Whether they're studying the depths of our planet's oceans, or looking at data transmitted here from the surface of Mars by a rover, we are very good at learning and adapting, and in the process, pushing away the shadows that frighten us with the light of science and fact.


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[Assistant] But that's the frustrating part of the events that took place in Gloucester in July of 1692. There was no evidence left behind. No one was injured, no structures were damaged, and no bodies were found.


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[Assistant] Because Ebenezer Babson remembered being shot at and the sound of that bullet that had buzzed past his ear. And he remembered the tree that it had struck. And at some point during the chaos of those three weeks, he returned to the tree to see what he could find.


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[Assistant] Maybe even that same fish knife that he would later use to kill a bear and save his nephew's life, he began to work at the hole in the tree.


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[Assistant] It must have taken him a while, but eventually he managed to enlarge the hole enough to find what he was looking for.


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[Assistant] Gently, he used the tip of the knife to pry it free, and then dropped it into his hand.


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[Assistant] It was a bullet, but it was unlike any of the ammunition that he and the soldiers at the garrison would have used in their muskets. This bullet wasn't a round lead ball, or even the misshapen remains of one. It was round and long, like a cylinder, with a point at one end. And Babson had never seen anything like it.


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[Assistant] In fact, conical bullets were an idea that no one had encountered and wouldn't until Captain John Norton presented a design for them to the British Army. It would take a while for them to catch on, but they would eventually replace lead balls completely. Just not in Babson's lifetime.


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[Assistant] Looking backward in time, it's easy to wonder.


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[Assistant] Much of what we know today about the Gloucester Specters is from the writings of Puritan minister Cotton Mather. Along with being one of the biggest voices in support of the use of spectral evidence in the Salem witch trials, he also spent years gathering tales of the supernatural, which he published years later.


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[Assistant] Stick around after this short sponsor break for one more powerful example of the types of stories Mather loved to collect and share with his audience.


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[Assistant] In 1692, the Puritan colony of Massachusetts viewed everything through the perspective of their faith. And at the top of their list of superstars was a man named Cotton Mather.


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[Assistant] Mather is one of those names you never forget once you learn about him. Maybe it's that unique first name, Cotton, or those stories associated with his deeds and influence. But three centuries later, a lot of his legacy comes down to his writings.


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[Assistant] Mather wasn't a slouch. He began attending Harvard at the age of 12 and earned his master's degree by the age of 18. And the path before him was crystal clear when he left Harvard. He was going to do God's work by becoming a minister in his father's church.


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[Assistant] Over his career, Cotton Mather managed to write and publish more than 400 works, ranging from theology to history.


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[Assistant] His views fed the hungry minds of the most conservative and paranoid people in the colony. And while that might be fine in a more stable era, when the city of Salem erupted in a community-wide panic over the existence of witches, his writings only seemed to fan those flames.


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[Assistant] If Mather had a drum to beat, it was the validity of spectral evidence. In other words, when an accused witch was brought before the magistrates of Salem, Mather believed that testimony involving visions of the devil or ghostly visitors was admissible in the court of law.


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[Assistant] And early on in the Salem witch trials, his beliefs were followed. If a neighbor claimed to see your ethereal form hovering over their bed at night, that testimony was enough to earn you a conviction.


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[Assistant] After the dust had settled in the spring of 1693, and after the events in Gloucester had run their course, Mather gathered a large number of supernatural stories and published them under the title, The Wonders of the Invisible World.


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[Assistant] Like I said, this was his passion, and it cemented his reputation as a purveyor of the unexplainable.


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[Assistant] In September of the following year, one of the young women in Mathers Boston Church began to show frightening symptoms that reminded many of the events in Salem. Her name was Margaret Rule, and she was part of a family that had lived on the frontier in Maine just a couple of years before.


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[Assistant] Like many, it was the conflict between the English and the French, along with their Native American allies, that drove the Ruhl family back south, where they resettled in Boston.


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[Assistant] What happened, as best we can tell, went something like this.


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[Assistant] Margaret's family lived in a small neighborhood in the north end of Boston, and while they got along well with almost everyone around them, there was an older woman who always seemed to give Margaret trouble.


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[Assistant] This woman was cranky and rude and had no trouble speaking her mind. And true to the suspicious nature of those early Puritans, that cast her in a disparaging light.


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[Assistant] Locals whispered that the woman was casting spells on people, but their fear worked both ways. They might not have felt safe around her, but they also feared what might happen if they turned her into the authorities. And then, she publicly threatened Margaret.


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[Assistant] Almost immediately, Margaret fell ill. Friends from all over the neighborhood gathered at her family's home to check on her and offer assistance and advice. And of course, Cotton Mather paid her a visit as well, being the good minister that he was. But looking back, that might not have been a good thing.


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[Assistant] On September 13th of 1692, Mather stood in Margaret's house with a handful of other visitors. He later recorded that the room quickly grew unbearably hot and when Margaret actually fainted in front of them, Mather had to fan her face with his hat.


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[Assistant] When she awoke, Margaret began to make predictions about the future, claiming that she had somehow made a connection with the world of the spirits. She warned her neighbors that a local boy would soon nearly drown, and later that day, the news confirmed she had been correct.


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[Assistant] Which of course encouraged those neighbors to start asking Margaret for information regarding their own fortunes. Mather though was quick to step in. The forces of evil weren't a tool for the righteous to wield, he told them, and he encouraged them to keep their distance.


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[Assistant] Now, maybe he said that because he didn't want another Salem on his hands. Perhaps he'd begun to see the nuance and danger in believing everything one might hear around the sickbed of an afflicted girl.


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[Assistant] Or maybe it had something to do with Margaret's claim that Mather himself was a witch. Any of those reasons could have turned Mather's heart from belief to skepticism, but if I were a betting man, I'd put my money on the latter.


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[Assistant] Instead, Mather chose to watch and wait. He took notes whenever he visited. Notes that would someday help him publish the details of Margaret's story in another book, of course. And while the things he claimed to observe would have landed Margaret in jail in Salem had she lived in that community a couple of years before, he never once called for the sheriff to lock her up. He just watched. And honestly, we don't know why.


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[Assistant] Perhaps he was just waiting for the right evidence to allow him to use Margaret as the centerpiece of a new witchcraft panic. Or maybe he knew it would be more profitable to sell these stories to a willing public. It's hard to say. But what we do know is that Mather's audience was changing. And while a lot of factors played into that, there's one man in particular who we can thank.


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[Assistant] His name was Robert Califf. He was a Boston area textile merchant who had a problem with Mather's approach. He believed the minister had directly contributed to the death toll in Salem and knew that if he let Mather continue, he would only do more damage.