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[Assistant] After being taken inside, Anne continued to have seizures off and on throughout the rest of that day. But whenever she regained control, she would tell the pits that she could see little people climbing in through the window. She asked if anyone else had seen them as well. But of course, everyone shook their heads.


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[Assistant] It took a number of weeks for Anne to recover enough to be trusted with work. The seizures continued off and on, but Anne threw herself into her work and attended church as frequently as possible. Which is why Jane Pitt felt right to leave Anne home with the children one autumn afternoon while she headed into town to run an errand.


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[Assistant] On the way back, Mrs. Pitt fell and injured her leg. After finding someone to give her a ride back to the house, she arrived to find Anne doing well. The young woman saw the injury that Mrs. Pitt had sustained, though, and offered to help. It seems that she passed her hand over the wound, and in front of everyone's eyes, the injury was healed.


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[Assistant] It was the fairies, Anne told them. They had given her special powers that she could use to heal others. Which, of course, sounded like dangerous nonsense to the rest of the household. As you might imagine, rumor of her claims started to spread outward from the farm. And soon enough, people started coming to see Anne for help.


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[Assistant] It was a reputation that got her in trouble with the local church authorities. As I said earlier, claiming to have interacted with the fairies was a great way to have yourself accused of witchcraft. So Anne was arrested and moved to a nearby jail cell. Things only got weirder after that.


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[Assistant] You see, the authorities thought they might be able to get her to drop her fantasy and tell them the truth if they just withheld food from her. But even after weeks in prison with no food, she never showed signs of starvation. Her secret? Anne claimed that the fairies were bringing her pieces of bread to live off of.


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[Assistant] Later in life, the pit's son, Moses, spoke about that bread. He said she lived off it at their house, too, and once she even let him have a taste of it. He claimed it was the best bread he had ever eaten, and would never forget it. Where she got it from, though, would remain a mystery. Unless, of course, you believe that it was from the fairies.


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[Assistant] The authorities eventually lost interest in Anne, and she went on to marry a local farmhand. The rest of her life would be much less remarkable as that early fairy episode, and she passed away many years later, sometime around 1698.


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[Assistant] She never denied what happened and never stopped healing those who came to her for help. But she also never asked for payment and refused to do anything that might have increased her fame. Unusual behavior, I'd like to point out. If she really was faking it.


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[Assistant] All we can do now, over three centuries later, is listen to her story, form our own opinions, and stay open to unexplainable experiences. As Fox Mulder often said, the truth is out there.


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[Assistant] I just wonder if we'll like it when it finally appears.


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


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[Assistant] I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy. My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical. You can learn more about all of those shows and everything else going on over in one central place. Grimandmild.com


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


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[Assistant] When they're good, we tend to use words usually reserved for creative geniuses. They are people who have taken their skills and elevated them to a form of art. However criminal those skills might be. And Hollywood knows we love them too. After all, these flawed and complicated characters make for great movies. Blockbusters even.


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[Assistant] There's something oddly attractive about criminals, isn't there?


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[Assistant] Take Sophie Levy. She was born in 1848 and managed to steal her first purse by the age of six. By 12 she'd been arrested for shoplifting and by 20 she'd been locked up in New York's Sing Sing prison three separate times.


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[Assistant] Soon after, she married an internationally renowned safecracker, and together they pulled off jobs, spent time in prison, and somehow also managed to raise a family.


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[Assistant] For the next 30 years, Sophie perfected her craft. She made shoes with hollow heels so she could smuggle diamonds between Amsterdam and New York. She sold fake gold bricks.


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[Assistant] She even learned to speak French and then traveled to Europe where she picked jewels right off the wealthy elite, bringing in close to 4 million in modern American dollars after just one year of work.


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[Assistant] And when she wasn't picking pockets, Sophie was luring married men into her web.


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[Assistant] Once, she blackmailed a man for the equivalent of half a million dollars.


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[Assistant] Another time she walked into a fancy office building, approached the first CEO she could find, and threatened to reveal their torrid affair. The man paid her off immediately.


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[Assistant] Sure, Sophie took money from the men she tricked, but that was about it.


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[Assistant] Yes, they lost some dignity. And yes, they probably had a lot of explaining to do back home. But their lives were never at risk.


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[Assistant] Right about the time that Sophie Levy was arrested for the first time in 1859, a woman named Brynhilde Stursit was born in Selbu, Norway. We don't know a lot about her childhood, but there are a few important details that still survive to this day.


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[Assistant] Secondhand reports from the area tell us that Brynhild was an angry child. We can speculate why, but speculation won't give us more details. She was angry and spent her childhood living as an outsider without friends.


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[Assistant] But she was also smart. Everyone remembers that. Brynhild, they always said, was a clever girl.


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[Assistant] In 1877, at the age of 18, she went to a local dance to confront a young man who had gotten her pregnant.


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[Assistant] But rather than agree to help her, he attacked her. During the altercation he knocked her down and kicked her. As a result of the injuries, she miscarried the child.


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[Assistant] But despite this, the young man never faced criminal charges.


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[Assistant] Those who knew her say that her personality changed after that. She grew darker, more brooding, more angry, if that was possible, and more determined.


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[Assistant] Interestingly, shortly after the attack, the man who kicked her became sick and died. Stomach cancer, they said. But maybe also his just reward.


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[Assistant] In 1881, Brynhild made the shift that so many of her fellow Norwegians had made. She moved to America.


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[Assistant] Her sister had moved there a few years earlier, so Brynhild travelled to Chicago and reconnected with her. And she also changed her name. To Belle.


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[Assistant] Once settled, Belle found work. And she also found a husband. Mas Sorensen was a fellow Norwegian immigrant, and together as husband and wife, they worked toward a better future.


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[Assistant] Within two years of their marriage, the couple had opened a candy store and had five children living with them, including a foster child named Jenny Olson.


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[Assistant] It's not clear if Belle was the mother of any of the others, or if Mas brought them all into the marriage, but it certainly made life interesting.


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[Assistant] But business was challenging, and the couple struggled to make ends meet.


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[Assistant] Then, two years later, the shop unexpectedly burned to the ground, and the resulting insurance money helped support them. For a while, at least. We need to step aside for a moment though.


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[Assistant] Set Belle on the back burner. We'll come back to her, I promise. But first, I want to talk to you about insurance.


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[Assistant] For you and I in a relatively modern world, insurance is a common idea. Insurance on property. Insurance on lives. All these types of policies, at their basic level, are designed to pay money upon tragedy. But it hasn't always been commonly accepted.


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[Assistant] In the early 1800s, life insurance was mostly seen as taboo. Exchanging money for human life just didn't sit well with most people. So for decades, it was a major struggle to sell life insurance policies.


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[Assistant] And then after a massive 1840s advertising campaign in major cities across the country, something clicked and the industry took off.


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[Assistant] By the late 1800s, life insurance had moved from taboo to common sense.


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[Assistant] Interestingly, there was someone else living in Chicago at the same time as Belle.


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[Assistant] A serial killer, known as H.H. Holmes. And while his story is told elsewhere, there's one aspect of his crime spree that's relevant to this story. Holmes, you see, loved to scam insurance companies.


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[Assistant] As a medical doctor, faking the death of policyholders with real stolen corpses was a relatively easy crime, and he made a killing at it. No pun intended.


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[Assistant] But in 1896, Holmes had been caught, tried, convicted, and executed. Which meant his story was all over the newspapers in town. And maybe, just maybe, that news coverage gave Bell some inspiration. Because in 1900,


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[Assistant] A lot of tragedy struck her family, and all of it netted her insurance money.


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[Assistant] First, part of their home burned down early in the year. Tragic, yes, but Belle collected on the home's insurance policy. Then, in June, two of the couple's five children died. The cause of death was listed as acute colitis, which basically manifests as nausea, diarrhea, and intense pains in the abdomen.


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[Assistant] The couple buried their children, and Belle collected their life insurance policies.


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[Assistant] And finally, a little over a month after the children passed away, Belle's husband died unexpectedly. His death drew more suspicion, though. And there were two reasons for that.


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[Assistant] First, one physician diagnosed the man while he was still alive as suffering from some form of poisoning. The symptoms will sound familiar to you too. Nausea, diarrhea, and abdominal pain.


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[Assistant] Another doctor, though, one who was a personal friend of Bell's, incidentally, blamed it on an enlarged heart, and that's the cause of death that was officially recorded. The second oddity was the insurance paperwork.


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[Assistant] It seems that July 30th of 1900, the day that her husband actually died,


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[Assistant] Was the only day that his two separate life insurance policies overlapped each other.


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[Assistant] Meaning, they were both valid and binding, but only within a small 24-hour window.


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[Assistant] Together, they netted Bell the modern equivalent of a quarter of a million dollars.


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[Assistant] With life now a bit more complicated, and with a lot more eyes on her as a result of the mysterious deaths in her family, Belle decided to pack up the remaining three children and move away.


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[Assistant] Of course, she also had a small fortune to fund that move now.


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[Assistant] She didn't go far though. In 1901, she purchased a large 40-acre farm in La Porte, Indiana, about 70 miles to the east of Chicago.


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[Assistant] And it's during the process of buying the home and moving to Indiana that Belle met a man named Peter Guiness.


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[Assistant] Like her, he was a Norwegian immigrant. He worked as a butcher, and he was a widower with two young children.


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[Assistant] The relationship blossomed after the move. By April of 1902, Peter and Belle were married and set about converting their property into a pig farm. Just a week after the wedding though, there was an accident.


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[Assistant] While Peter was outside working, his youngest daughter suddenly died.


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[Assistant] No one could determine the cause of death, but it should be noted that Belle was the only other person in the house with the child at the time. If Peter suspected anything he didn't act like it.


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[Assistant] The couple carried on with the pig farm and raised Peter's remaining daughter alongside Belle's other three children.


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[Assistant] They cured bacon and made sausage right there in the farmhouse, selling it all locally. And then in December, Peter had an accident. Bell told two versions of what happened.


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[Assistant] At first, she claimed Peter bent over near the stove to pick up his slippers and was injured by a pot of brine.


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[Assistant] Then she changed her details. A meat grinder had fallen off a shelf and hit him on the head. And that wavering, that indecision, well, it drew suspicion.


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[Assistant] Belle was immediately arrested and put on trial for murder.


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[Assistant] After failing to prove anything with concrete evidence though, she was set free.


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[Assistant] Which didn't sit well with the neighbors. They knew Peter. He'd been a competent man and a skilled butcher. He wasn't prone to accidents as preventable as a meat grinder to the skull.


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[Assistant] Peter's brother agreed as well, and had Peter's only surviving daughter sent away to live with family in Wisconsin.


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[Assistant] Still, Belle kept on with the farm despite all the hostility.


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[Assistant] She hired a farmhand named Ray Lamphere to take over Peter's job. And she collected on Peter's life insurance policy, a payday that would be worth over $80,000 today. Then, life on the Guiness farm went quiet. But only for a while.


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[Assistant] Sometime in late 1906, neighbors noticed that it had been a while since they'd seen Bell's adopted daughter, Jenny Olson.


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[Assistant] Belle told them Jenny had gone off to school in California.


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[Assistant] About that same time, Bell placed an ad in a widely distributed Scandinavian American newspaper. Here's what she posted.


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[Assistant] Comely Widow, who owns a large farm in one of the finest districts in La Porte County, Indiana, desires to make the acquaintance of a gentleman equally well provided, with view of joining our fortunes.


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[Assistant] No replies by letter considered, unless sender is willing to follow answer with personal visit. Triflers need not apply.


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[Assistant] In other words, Belle wanted men who were rich, single, and willing to travel right to her front door to prove it. Which doesn't sound suspicious at all, does it? Right. And you thought Craigslist was sketchy.


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[Assistant] The first man to answer the ad was George Anderson from Missouri. He arrived at the farm and the two had dinner together. Of course, she asked him how much money he had and he confessed that he wasn't actually rich at all.


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[Assistant] The personal ad proved to be incredibly successful. Over the course of most of 1907 through early 1908, a number of men responded to Bell's request. John Moe traveled all the way from Minnesota carrying more than a thousand dollars with him to help pay off her mortgage. About a week after he arrived, John Moe went missing. Fred Redinger journeyed from Wisconsin and promptly disappeared.


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[Assistant] Ula Budsberg, also from Wisconsin, was seen just once, at the Laporte Bank of all places, and then he too vanished from public eye.


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[Assistant] Bell and Andrew Helgelin exchanged letters for months before he finally traveled to see her. He disappeared shortly after, and Bell made more large deposits at the bank.


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[Assistant] Through it all, there were odd stories being whispered around town.


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[Assistant] Once, a delivery man named Clyde Sturgis reported that he delivered a number of oversized trunks to Bell's farm throughout the year.


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[Assistant] He was amazed at how strong she was, tossing the trunks onto her shoulder and walking into the house with them.


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[Assistant] Others reported that the farm's houses shutters were always closed, and on more than one occasion, locals passing the farm in the middle of the night said they saw Belle working outside. According to each report, she was digging holes in the hog pen.


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[Assistant] Toward the end of these disappearances, in early February of 1908, Belle fired her farmhand, Ray, and replaced him. According to her, Ray was madly in love with her and jealous of the men who visited.


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[Assistant] Ray had trouble letting go, however, and about a week later, Belle appeared in the courthouse to request that Ray be declared insane.


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[Assistant] It didn't work though. Ray was cleared and set free. And then he continued to stalk Belle at the farm.


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[Assistant] He was arrested for trespassing at least once, and Bell continued to express fear.


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[Assistant] The new Guiness farmhand, Joe Maxson, awoke to the smell of smoke.


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[Assistant] The man managed to escape out his bedroom window, but by the time help arrived, the farmhouse was a smoldering pile of burned timber.


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[Assistant] And no one but Joe, it seems, had made it out alive.


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[Assistant] The wreckage of the house was searched for survivors. What they found was more gruesome.


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[Assistant] The two Guiness children were found dead in their beds.


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[Assistant] Another body, that of an adult woman, was also found. But there was a problem. The body didn't have a head.


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[Assistant] And that made it difficult to identify as Belgenese, so they tried other methods.


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[Assistant] First, they allowed neighbors to view the corpse.


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[Assistant] All of them, without fail, said that the shape of the body didn't seem like it could have been Belle.


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[Assistant] Then her clothing measurements from the local department store were compared to the body, and those too came up incorrect.


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[Assistant] As far as the police were concerned the body's identity was a mystery.


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[Assistant] A local boy came forward and claimed to have seen Ray Lamphere running away from the farm just before the fire.


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[Assistant] That was enough for the police. Even though he adamantly denied it, Ray was arrested and charged with murder.


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[Assistant] That said, they still weren't sure who he'd murdered, apart from Belle's children, of course.


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[Assistant] But before they could get answers, they encountered more questions.


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[Assistant] After searching the wreckage, the police found a set of fake teeth belonging to Belle. Maybe she didn't survive after all.


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[Assistant] Soon after, the new farmhand pointed out some of the work Belle had ordered him to do recently in the hog pen. There were a number of low spots that she claimed were old refuse pits. She told him to bring in soil from another area of the farm and fill them in. After the fire though, he was a bit more suspicious. So the police brought in a team of men to dig it all back up. When they did, they found something horrific. Corpses.


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[Assistant] They identified the bodies of Jenny Olsen and Andrew Helgelin easily enough. A head was uncovered that belonged to Ola Budsberg. They found Joe Moore's body, too.


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[Assistant] Body after body began to appear in the dark soil, confounding everyone present. But a lot of what they found was too badly decayed to allow for identification.


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[Assistant] The counts vary depending on which historian you read, but between the physical evidence uncovered in the hog pen and the reports of missing men from the previous two years, most think that Belganess was responsible for the murder of over 40 people. Most had shown up as a result of her personal ad, and most showed signs of strychnine poisoning.


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[Assistant] Then they were butchered and buried in the yard. Sometimes with quicklime, sometimes without.


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[Assistant] And this revelation put a lot of her personal tragedy into question.


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[Assistant] Ray Lamphere clearly knew something. That's probably why Bell tried to get him committed and locked away. Lucky for him, it hadn't worked. But he had been guilty of setting the farmhouse on fire. So in November of 1908, seven months after his arrest, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He died a year later from tuberculosis.


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[Assistant] Thanks to the false teeth found in the remains of the house, the court decided that the headless body belonged to Belganess.


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[Assistant] Those remains were prepared for burial and then transported back to Chicago a short while later. She was buried beside her first husband, Mas.


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[Assistant] It would be nice to believe that the consequences of a life of crime always catch up with the criminal. But that's not always the case. It's poetic, sure. But unrealistic.


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[Assistant] Yes, we have examples like Sophie Lyons. She did hard time for her crimes, serving at least 50 short prison sentences before the age of 50.


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[Assistant] What's fascinating about Sophie though is that after that last stint in prison, she went clean.


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[Assistant] So clean that she wrote a book about her life as a warning to other criminals. Crime, according to Sophie Lyons, doesn't pay


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[Assistant] For the rest of her life, she used her fame and sizable fortune to help prisoners seek reform.


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[Assistant] They just want a fresh start somewhere else, where they can pick up where they left off. Belganes was clearly one of those criminals.


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[Assistant] Looking back, we can see a woman who most likely poisoned the man who kicked her at that dance in Norway when she was 18.


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[Assistant] As I said already, Ray Lamphere died in prison a year after he was sent there. But before he did, he made a deathbed confession to the Reverend E. A. Schell. According to Ray, he did indeed burn down the house. That much was true. But he did it because Bell told him to.


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[Assistant] In fact, she helped him, and the headless body was part of that plan.


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[Assistant] Belle, he said, had lured a woman to the farm with the promise of a job as a housekeeper, and she'd poisoned her before cutting off her head. Even the children were a lie. They hadn't died in the fire as everyone suspected.


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[Assistant] No, Belle smothered her two remaining children prior to the fire because, according to Ray, they had started to ask too many questions.


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[Assistant] Questions about all the men who had visited the farm. Questions about their disappearances. And questions about all that money.


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[Assistant] Belle, you see, had amassed a fortune. Between all the men she lured to her farm and each of their past insurance frauds, it's estimated that she raked in a massive total worth over six million dollars today. And right before the fire, she went to the bank in town and withdrew it all.


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[Assistant] If Rey was telling the truth, Belle Guinness didn't actually die in the fire.


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[Assistant] Body wasn't the headless corpse pulled from the wreckage.


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[Assistant] Wasn't the type to quit the game and go straight like Sophie Lyons. If she moved, she took her wicked web with her.


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[Assistant] In 1931, an elderly Los Angeles woman named Esther Carlson was arrested and brought to trial for murder. She was a Norwegian immigrant. Her victim was a Scandinavian man. And the crime involved poisoning the man for his money.


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[Assistant] If all of that sounds familiar to you, then you've been paying attention.


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[Assistant] And so were the police in Los Angeles. So they sent a photo of Carlson to the authorities in La Porte, Indiana.


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[Assistant] Now, it had been decades. 30 years, in fact. So the memory of anyone who might have known Belle was a bit fuzzy.


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[Assistant] An old neighbor of hers took a glance at the photo and said, yep, that woman sure looks like her. Same build, same face, same weight. But he couldn't be sure. And the bell that he knew had a wart on her face. This new woman, Esther Carlson, did not.


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[Assistant] The police refused to give up, though. They reached out to the photographer and asked for the original negative to the photo. Even back then, in 1931, it was common to retouch a photo. The Photoshop software, after all, is modeled after photo manipulation techniques that did just that sort of work dating back over a century. When they received the negative and opened the envelope, they were amazed at what they saw. There, right on Esther Carlson's face, was the wart.


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[Assistant] Sadly, Belguiness, if it was indeed her, managed to slip away one last time, although this would be her final escape. You see, shortly after the photo was identified, Esther Carlson became sick with tuberculosis. She died before her trial could begin.


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


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


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


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[Assistant] His was a rags to riches sort of story. Born in the 1650s, William didn't have the easiest start to life. His first job was working as an apprentice to a nail maker. Believe me, it was riveting work.


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[Assistant] But by the 1670s, he was so wealthy he owned a country estate of his own, outside Birmingham. And life was good for a very long time.


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[Assistant] There was however, always that nagging feeling in the back of his mind. That fear that one day, he might get caught.


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[Assistant] You see, William Challenger didn't earn his fortune the honest way. No, he made his money. Literally. His business was counterfeiting.


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[Assistant] Some things always seem too good to be true. You know the feeling, right? That parking spot that turns out to be reserved? The $20 bill in the bushes that ends up being just a scrap of cash? Or that promotion that bumps your pay a little, but doubles your workload?


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[Assistant] Sometimes the silver lining ain't so silver. But as long as it's not a matter of life or death, we usually learn to adapt and move on.


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[Assistant] After all, life is full of surprises. But if you spend a bit of time studying history, you quickly learn that life is also full of darkness, darkness, and an irrefutable truth.


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[Assistant] To understand their problem, we first have to understand their politics. And for the English in the 1640s, that began with Civil War.


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[Assistant] The reasons for those wars started decades earlier. Now remember, all through this era of English history, you have these opposing threads. There were those who thought that the monarchies were great and supported having a king, and they were called royalists. I think that name makes a lot of sense.


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[Assistant] And then there were the supporters of the English parliament, who thought that the people's representatives should have more say in government. And they were called parliamentarians. Yes, that word is a lot more weird, but it still carries its meaning well.


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[Assistant] And during the late 1630s, these two sides were brushing against each other, creating all sorts of friction.


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[Assistant] Please hold tight. I'm going to explain why all of this is important in a moment. Just remember that history always makes better sense when you display it with the context, the other little details that help the larger picture be more clear.


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[Assistant] Think of historical contexts like 3D glasses in the movie theater. Without them, the picture seems confusing. With them though, it comes to life.


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[Assistant] During the English Civil War, King Charles I led his royalist forces in battle all over the place against the parliamentarians.


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[Assistant] But in the fall of 1648 he lost to a guy named Oliver Cromwell. King Charles was subsequently put on trial, found guilty of tyranny, and executed by beheading on January 30th of 1649.


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[Assistant] Now the conflict would continue, and after some back and forth, Charles' son, Charles II, would reclaim the throne. But what's important for us to take note of is the king's execution.


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[Assistant] Think about it for a moment. The people of England had watched their divinely appointed ruler die by human hands. It caused people to question the two most powerful forces in their lives. God and government. It shattered so many worldviews.


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[Assistant] All of a sudden, even the things people used to have control over, their crops and their ability to provide for their families was breaking down.


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[Assistant] And if you add it all up, the perceived failures of God and government, the famine and disease, even the weather itself turning against them, it's easy to see why everyone was in a constant state of fear.


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[Assistant] And that's the world that was instantly hostile to anything resembling witchcraft.


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[Assistant] If you've ever wondered why people in England were able to believe in spirit familiars or a witch's power to kill an infant without touching it, or even to blight their crops, this was why. Everyone was afraid, and they were looking for a reason they could fix and control.


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[Assistant] The most famous of them was a guy named Matthew Hopkins, and we've discussed him here in the past. He was the ultra conservative son of a Puritan clergyman, and during his brief career he was responsible for hundreds of convictions, most of whom were then executed. But he was just one of a larger community of itinerant witchcraft experts, and their work was devastating.


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[Assistant] I think the biggest reason why there were so many witch hunters is that it was such a lucrative occupation. Again, remember all that fear. Communities all over England were in a panic, and any time something even remotely unexplainable happened, accusations of witchcraft would be thrown around.


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[Assistant] Add to that the common practice of using witchcraft as a tool to get rid of unwanted people. Basically by making up accusations and letting the system remove them from your life. And I think it's easy to see why these witch hunters were so busy.


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[Assistant] And all that business made them wealthy too, because towns would pay whatever was necessary to get rid of the evil in their midst. How did it work?


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[Assistant] Well, a desperate town would send a letter out to a witch hunter with a good reputation for results and invite them to come help. After arriving, this individual would interview suspects, looking for leverage and a reason to go deeper. And when they found it, they would have those suspects arrested, despite not having the legal authority to do so.


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[Assistant] Those suspects were tested in more bizarre ways. We've all heard of the dunking method, where suspected witches were tied to a heavy object and tossed into a body of water. If they sunk, they were innocent and received burial on church grounds. If they floated though, it could only be explained by witchcraft, and they were executed for it.


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[Assistant] But one other test was administered quite often, and it was called pricking.


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[Assistant] Now, Matthew Hopkins was England's most famous hunter. But what most people don't realize is that the laws of the country prevented him from doing more damage than he actually did. But it makes you wonder.


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[Assistant] If the laws were less strict and the superstitions a lot stronger, how much damage could one person really do?


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[Assistant] But for the answer to that, we need to travel to Scotland and explore the life of that country's most infamous witch-pricker of all. A man who offered services that almost seemed too good to be true. A man named John Kincaid.


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[Assistant] He was an international man of mystery. And by international I mean that he sometimes crossed the border from Scotland into England. Because honestly, the money was just too good to ignore.


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[Assistant] But we don't know much about John Kincaid before he arrived on the scene in early summer of 1649. Now there's a chance he came from Stirlingshire, which is about 30 miles west of Edinburgh. Our only proof that he lived there is his signature on a few legal documents.


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[Assistant] Actually, they were arrest records, and his signature is just his initials, hinting at a life of crime and a lack of education. Clues that might cast light on the rest of his days, but there I go getting ahead of myself.


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[Assistant] To understand the man, maybe it's best we start with his early work.


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[Assistant] What is also clear from the court documents, though, is that Marion's neighbor, the woman who accused her, had gotten into an argument with her over unpaid debts. She hated Marion, and putting her up for accusations of witchcraft was a way to stab her in the back.


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[Assistant] John Kincaid arrived in the middle of all of this, and then the town asked him to get to work.


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[Assistant] His job was to prove the accusations were true, to use his tools to test her, and to get a confession. But it seems that his first performance was a bit of a bust. Not only did Marion Inglis refuse to confess, but when he used the needle to prick her witch marks, they bled.


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[Assistant] A month later though, he was back at it. This time he was summoned to a castle in Scotland near North Barrick, where two people were awaiting his tests. But here's the crazy thing about this episode. It seems that the people who hired him weren't the town officials, but the victims themselves, a husband and wife pair.


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[Assistant] But in a dark twist of fate, his methods worked, and they were both found guilty of witchcraft. They were executed a short while later.


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[Assistant] They even paid a bell ringer to walk through the streets of town, shouting out what was basically a marketing pitch designed to inspire fear.


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[Assistant] Come forward, he shouted, all ye who have an accusation of witchcraft. Devils, murderers, mad dogs, they be among us. The devil stalks us. His stench chokes our fair town and his hordes practice their evil arts.


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[Assistant] And this is the sort of community that John Kincaid arrived to find. This town was in search of a scapegoat. And soon enough, everyone pointed their finger at the types of people we would expect them to. The poor. The elderly. Local healers who serve their neighbors with unusual methods. You know, the outsiders. The others.


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[Assistant] And because John Kincaid was paid the modern equivalent of roughly $200 per prosecuted witch, he got busy bringing all of them in. When it was all said and done, he had pushed 30 people through the gauntlet of interrogation, witch-pricking, and trial.


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[Assistant] Satisfied with the results of his skilled investigation, 27 of the accused were found guilty and at least 14 were hanged that August.


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[Assistant] But as John Kincaid left town, his pockets filled with generous amounts of coin, problems were beginning to brew. You see, at least one of the accused who was still awaiting execution had requested a second opinion.


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[Assistant] She asked for a new person to test her witch marks with a fresh bodkin, a sort of thick needle mounted in a wooden handle typically used for sewing. And that test caused pain and drew blood.


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[Assistant] It seems that not everything about John Kincaid was on the up and up.


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[Assistant] The money just wouldn't stop rolling in. A few months after his time in Newcastle upon Tyne, Kincaid was called to Dunfermline, a town just across the bay from Edinburgh, and it was a healthy payday for him.


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[Assistant] In April of 1650, he was called to a tougher case. Catherine Walker had been accused of being a witch thanks to her unorthodox religious practices and all-around bad attitude.


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[Assistant] How bad? Well, it seems that she once kicked a man in the groin so hard that he died from the injury. Others believe that she had killed her own children and cursed others in town to great suffering.


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[Assistant] Catherine was a tough suspect for John Kincaid. She refused to confess, and even after he applied a bit of torture, she still professed her innocence.


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[Assistant] So John pulled out his trusty bodkin, that thick metal needle mounted in a wooden handle resembling an antique screwdriver, and magically found the evidence he needed. Her witch's mark refused to bleed, and so she went to jail.


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[Assistant] And as far as I can tell, he did this for years, traveling wherever he was needed and participating in that exchange of goods and services that made him so famous. He would provide proof and security, and they would provide gold and silver.


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[Assistant] Think about it for a moment. The testing technique of dunking, for example, was incredibly public. Entire towns would gather to watch a suspect thrown into the water with a weight tied to them. It was hard to fake that sort of experience.


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[Assistant] But John Kincaid did all of his work behind closed doors with that little tool that no one else could touch. It was suspicious enough to make people wonder, was he telling the truth?


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[Assistant] All of those small local flames of witchcraft that popped up every now and then suddenly exploded into a national terror. Over the 16 months that followed, historians estimate that upwards of 650 people were accused of being witches, and hundreds of them were executed. And right there, in the middle of it all, was John Kincaid.


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[Assistant] It was, after all, the grandest stage for all his skills and services. The big show, if you will. And if handled well, it could turn him into a legend and be the biggest payday of his career. You know, the important stuff.


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[Assistant] So that July, he was called to help a town with a major problem. Not one suspected witch, but many. Among them were Catherine Hunter, Isabelle Ferguson, Bessie Moffat, and Elspeth Graham. But it was elderly midwife Beatrix Leslie who drew the most attention. So that's where Kincaid focused his efforts.


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[Assistant] Beatrix was an 84-year-old woman who had been serving the town for decades as a skilled and necessary midwife.


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[Assistant] But along the way, it seems that she made some enemies too. When a coal mine collapsed and killed two young women, women who had recently been in an argument with Beatrix, she was suspected of causing the accident with satanic powers. Others claim that she took the form of a cat and used odd rituals during the births she oversaw.


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[Assistant] And John did the job he was hired to do. He interrogated the elderly woman and found more than a few witch marks on her skin. And not only did he test those marks with his trusty bodkin, but he also put her through another bit of forensic folklore called cruentation, where the suspect is instructed to touch the corpse of a murder victim.


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[Assistant] In her case, the corpse bled, clearly showing her to be the true killer. And together with the evidence from her interrogation, Beatrix and the others were executed in September of 1661, adding their names to a long and growing list of victims of the national firestorm that would come to be known later as the Great Scottish Witch Hunt. But it wouldn't last forever.


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[Assistant] You see, that massive national panic provided a huge sample of new data.


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[Assistant] It was difficult to find flaws in testimony and evidence when there were only a handful of cases to examine. But when there were nearly 700 of them, all of a sudden the problems became apparent. And it seems that across the board, much of the evidence failed to hold up to scrutiny.


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[Assistant] So, in the spring of 1662, Scotland's Privy Council ruled that it was no longer legal to arrest witchcraft suspects without an official warrant from their office. They also fired a shot directly at people like John Kincaid, making it illegal to torture suspects or to engage in witch-pricking.


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[Assistant] And just like that, his career was brought to an end.


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[Assistant] And that seemed to open the floodgates for all those suspicions that people had about his work. Soon enough, stories were pouring in about his unusual level of cruel interrogation. They complained about his use of torture. But most of all, they expressed a suspicion that turned out to be fairly common among the communities he served. That his special witch-pricking bodkin was rigged.


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[Assistant] For his crimes, John Kincaid was arrested in the summer of 1662 and quickly imprisoned.


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[Assistant] He'd had a good run at it, cashing in all over Scotland and Northern England for over a decade. But in the end, it seems his services were too good to be true.


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[Assistant] P.T. Barnum is famously credited with saying, there's a sucker born every minute. But whether or not that's actually something he said, it's a truth that hides a darker lesson. Behind every sucker is a fraud with something to sell. And the cost is often paid in human lives.


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[Assistant] It's that age old advice that never seems to go out of style. If something seems too good to be true, they say, then it probably is.


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[Assistant] I can't help but think of the hucksters of a century ago. The snake oil salesman promising miracle cures from their secret tonic in a little glass bottle. Or the Fiji mermaid that P.T. Barnum displayed in his American museum in 1842.


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[Assistant] It takes a certain amount of courage to build lies that elaborate and fantastical. And while many dismiss them out of hand, just enough people fell for them that these frauds, in modern terms, went viral.


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[Assistant] What's most disturbing about the story of John Kincaid, however, is the way in which he and others like him preyed on the fears and faith of 17th century Scottish citizens. The services of which prickers weren't meant to offer immediate peace. In fact, I think it could be argued that they were meant to increase the panic in town. Look, one of them would say,


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[Assistant] Your fear of witchcraft was correct. That's one right there. Now pay up.


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[Assistant] We don't know how rich John Kincaid got off his scam, but we do know that he somehow managed to get himself out of jail pretty quickly, thanks to his ability to pay the massive bail amount that was set for him. After that, he sort of slips into the shadows, never to be heard from again.


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[Assistant] But while it seems that he himself escaped the consequences of his crimes, there is a bright ray of goodness at the end of his story. Because thanks to Kinkade's abuse of witchcraft laws and the fears of those communities, Scotland tightened up how witches were treated from that moment on.


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[Assistant] The occupation of witch-pricker vanished overnight, people stopped fanning the flames of satanic fear, and the age of frauds selling fake services to fearful people was brought to a screeching halt. And that, from where we sit today, looks like the happiest ending we could ever hope for.


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[Assistant] Way too many people seem to have sidekicks. For Batman, there's Robin. Pooh has Piglet. Jerry Seinfeld had George Costanza. And for John Kincaid, there was John Dick.


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[Assistant] It makes a lot of sense when you remember that John Kincaid was busy for over a decade. And the more in-demand his services became, the more he must have needed a bit of help. That's where John Dick came into the picture.


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[Assistant] But when Kincaid was thrown into prison and witch-pricking was outlawed, his assistant moved on to build a brand new solo career.


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[Assistant] One of the jobs we know about was way up in the north of Scotland. In March of 1662, a local magistrate up there hired John Dick to be an ongoing member of law enforcement. The task was simple. Specialize in identifying witch marks on suspected witches. The pay?


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[Assistant] Six times the average daily wage. I imagine it was impossible to say no.


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[Assistant] After that, it was a job farther north, in the highlands of Scotland. And everywhere John Dick went, it seems that the fiery reputation of John Kincaid was given a run for its money. I'm not really sure how, given that we know about the changes to the way Scotland approached witch trials that summer.


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[Assistant] John the Assistant managed to become infamous for brutal torture and extreme interrogation techniques.


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[Assistant] But the apprentice followed a bit too closely to the master's training. During a job in the northern parish of Tain, John Dick encountered a tough suspect named John Hay. And yeah, that's another John, and I know that's confusing, but I'll do my best to keep everything clear and understandable. I promise.


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[Assistant] It seems that John Hay had gotten into an argument with an acquaintance who had lashed out by accusing Hay of witchcraft. By now I'm sure you understand why. It was still an incredibly easy way to cause your enemies a lot of grief. But John Hay turned out to be a lot tougher than most accused witches.


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[Assistant] You see, Hay was a court messenger, which meant that he was very well connected to a lot of people in power. They knew him. They trusted him. So when the accusations were brought against him and John Dick was brought to town to interrogate him, John Hay leaned on those powerful friends to help him out.


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[Assistant] As a result, his charges were tossed, and an arrest warrant was issued for John Dick, who quickly skipped town without pay to escape the authorities. But there's no rest for the weary, and soon enough another community was calling for help, this time in the Strathglass Valley region. It seems they had a witchcraft problem of their own. When John Dick arrived there, the community was in chaos.


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[Assistant] As a result, at least 15 members of the clan were arrested and brought to the local church for examination.


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[Assistant] And that's where John Dick stepped in. Each of the accused were stripped naked and their heads were shaved to make it easier to find witch marks. According to one contemporary account, the accused were then subjected to testing with a brass needle. In other words, the now illegal practice of witch pricking. And all of them were found guilty. But that's not all.


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[Assistant] To force a confession from them, John Dick engaged in a brutal series of torture methods. Some were forced to walk on burning coals, while others were hung up by their thumbs. Many were dragged behind horses too, and all of it was productive, in the sense that these McLeans offered up the confessions that the authorities were looking for.


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[Assistant] But that's when a powerful member of the McLean clan from out of town arrived to stop it all. Sir Rory McLean had been petitioned by one of the locals to come and help. And help he did.


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[Assistant] And he was quick to point out that the charges of witchcraft were clearly being used by the accuser to simply steal back the land.


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[Assistant] As a result, the trials fell apart and the landowner was forced to drop his charges. And John Dick? Well, Sir Rory McLean learned that witch pricking had been used and he had John Dick arrested and transported south to Edinburgh for trial. And that's where the story took its most amazing and shocking turn.


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[Assistant] Suddenly, the person in the interrogation chair was John Dick, and others were asking questions and demanding confessions. And the first confession was a doozy. John Dick, it seems, wasn't really John Dick at all, but Christian Caddell. A woman.


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[Assistant] It seems that she had been pretending to be a man for years because women weren't allowed to do the work of witch hunting. To fight against the patriarchy, she had created a new persona and worked alongside John Kincaid. And then, after Kincaid's arrest, carried on without him.


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[Assistant] Her passion and hatred for witches was simply too great to let society tell her what role she was allowed to play.


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[Assistant] The confession and revelation didn't help her though. In the spring of 1663, she was found guilty of her crimes and sentenced to indentured servanthood. Her bond was purchased by a man named Morris Trent, and then she was put on a ship with a dozen other convicts, all taken to Barbados to work on his plantation. She was never heard from, again.


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


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


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


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[Assistant] He ruled over his kingdom around 2600 BCE, and like a lot of the rulers of his era, he wanted to build. He was interested in breaking new ground, doing fresh things, and setting higher benchmarks.


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[Assistant] And for him, that meant mastering the pyramid.


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[Assistant] His first attempt is known as the Maedam Pyramid. He had seen what Dozer had tried to build at Saqqara, what archaeologists today call the Step Pyramid, and wanted to improve upon it, but it seems the structure was never fully completed.


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[Assistant] It's much more smooth in its construction, with the large steps replaced with continuous sides. But you can't miss how the angle of those sides changes about halfway up.


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[Assistant] It's almost as if Sneferu realized that he'd bitten off a bit more than he could chew and became less ambitious. Thus, the pyramid looks blunted, as if someone had squashed it a bit. But on his last pyramid, he seemed to have nailed it.


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[Assistant] While it isn't as tall as the Great Pyramid, the Red Pyramid has the same classic shape. It looks like a pyramid, which is what he'd been aiming for all those years. It just took him a while to figure it out.


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[Assistant] Humans are tenacious creatures. We exist because we adapt. We make mistakes, learn from them, and then try again.


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[Assistant] All of our greatest accomplishments and inventions are a result of that tenacity. The written language, the light bulb, space travel. We people are a lot of things, but persistent is at the top of the list.


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[Assistant] Just like all of us, William and Elizabeth had been looking for a better life. He was a craftsman who specialized in making shoes while his wife worked as a midwife. Having already had 10 children of their own, Elizabeth had seen it all and had a passion for helping others in her community.


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[Assistant] But there are always greener pastures, aren't there? So in 1645, the family packed up and moved west. And by west, I mean they left their home in England and sailed to the New World, arriving in the region north of Boston.


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[Assistant] Less than a year later, they were granted four acres of land in the community of Newbury, just a stone's throw from the bank of the Merrimack River.


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[Assistant] Elizabeth was 30 years old at the time, with a lot of experience behind her, but so much more ahead. And just like back home in England, she settled in to take care of her family and serve the needs of her neighbors.


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[Assistant] Midwives often meant the difference between life and death for pregnant mothers and their newborns, and they also took care of other ailments. I can't imagine anyone in town complaining about their arrival.


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[Assistant] Three decades later, it's easy to imagine Elizabeth and William as fixtures in Newbury. Their children grew up, started families of their own, and life flew by. But two things happened in November of 1679 that upended their peaceful home life. First, one of their grandsons came back to live with them.


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[Assistant] I can't find the reason why, although perhaps his parents had passed away. Illness was a lot more brutal back then, and life was harsh. So their grandson John moved into their empty nest. And that's when the second thing started to happen.


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[Assistant] The day after he arrived, a loud knocking began on the outside of the house. William and Elizabeth, now in their early 60s, rushed to the window to peek out and see who it might be, but no one was there.


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[Assistant] Despite that, rocks began to pelt them through the open window, forcing them back into the house.


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[Assistant] The day after that, William placed one of his leatherworking tools, an awl, in the cupboard where it belonged. A moment later, a sound rattled down the chimney, and an object skittered to a halt at the base of the fireplace. It was the awl.


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[Assistant] How it had gotten there was a mystery, but William shook his head and put it back in the cupboard. A moment later, it happened again.


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[Assistant] The next day more unexplainable disturbances. Stones and small branches fell down the chimney, interrupting the family's meal. The day after that, it happened again.


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[Assistant] And the day after that too, only this time they had company over, including one of the local ministers, Mr. Richardson, and one of Williams' own brothers. And these newcomers backed up the family's claims.


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[Assistant] More alarming than that, their grandson John was said to have experienced fits of unusual behavior. At one point he barked like a dog, as if controlled by an unseen force. Then, as the disturbances and odd experiences continued into early December, William and Elizabeth Morse only became more and more desperate.


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[Assistant] As far as they were concerned, what was happening wasn't natural. It was supernatural, otherworldly, and proof that a dark power had targeted their home. And so a hearing was pulled together to listen to the evidence and discuss what might be done.


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[Assistant] And their conclusion? They decided that William and Elizabeth's home was under attack by their closest neighbor, a man named Caleb Powell. No, he wasn't standing outside their house throwing stones and knocking on boards. And no, he wasn't perched on their roof, dropping stolen tools down the chimney. Caleb Powell, they claimed, was a wizard.


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[Assistant] And while they might have been frightened, they also knew exactly what to do. Powell was to be arrested and put on trial and then all their problems would go away.


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[Assistant] What was it about Caleb Powell that drew the suspicion of the community? Well, like most things in life, it was both complicated and incredibly simple.


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[Assistant] First, Powell had recently had some sort of argument with William and Elizabeth Morse. During that week in November, when all of the unusual things were happening in their home, word about it spread throughout town, and Caleb Powell, being their closest neighbor, decided to pay them a visit.


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[Assistant] His reason was actually very charitable. He knew that they were older and had recently taken on the care of their grandson John, and that must have made it more difficult to deal with their troublesome mystery. So he walked over to their house hoping to offer to care for the boy. He would house him and put him to work, freeing the Morse household up to handle more pressing matters.


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[Assistant] It was a common thing to do, actually. Many families did what was called lending out children. But most of the time, it was a young family with able-bodied kids sending them to the home of an elderly farmer to provide extra hands in the field or around the house. But here, it was a man offering to take a child off the hands of an elderly couple in order to grant them a bit of peace.


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[Assistant] But when he arrived, he never had the chance to ask. He found the family in prayer, visible through the window from where he stood outside. And as he glanced in, he witnessed something else too. While the older couple had their heads bowed in prayer, their grandson John tossed a shoe at William and then closed his eyes and pretended it wasn't him.


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[Assistant] One would think this was good news. Powell had proof that the mysterious disturbances in the house were most likely the work of a bored child. But William and Elizabeth didn't want to hear it, so they sent him away, causing bad blood between them.


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[Assistant] The second reason Caleb Powell was suspected was more complex.


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[Assistant] For a very long time, English folk and their descendants who colonized the New World had a deep suspicion of anything that smacked of witchcraft. There were the obvious things, for sure, like muttered curses or books of magic. But the world of Forbidden also included some things that you and I might be surprised by.


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[Assistant] It turns out that Powell was more than just a farmer. He had bragged for years about some of the education he had received. Two topics in particular, in fact, astronomy and astrology.


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[Assistant] No, he hadn't set up shop in town to offer services with that knowledge, but he also didn't have the common sense to keep it to himself.


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[Assistant] Again, we're talking about English settlers. This is a culture that just a century before arrested a man named John Dee, the man who would go on to be one of Queen Elizabeth's most trusted advisors. And his crime?


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[Assistant] Calculating. In other words, even a subject like math was viewed as a potential gateway for the devil. So maybe Powell should have kept his astrology to himself. And there you go.


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[Assistant] So, he was arrested in March of 1680 and quickly put on trial. The jury heard all of the testimony, allowed Powell to defend himself with his own explanations, and then retired to discuss the case. The verdict they reached was a complicated one.


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[Assistant] The jury agreed that they didn't have enough solid evidence to convict the man of a serious crime, which is amazing when you remember that this took place just 12 years before the Salem witch trials, a town just 25 miles south of Newburyport, and yet they couldn't convict Powell on charges of witchcraft.


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[Assistant] They did, however, agree that Powell had earned his neighbor's anger and so they ordered him to pay the cost of the trial and then set him free.


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[Assistant] I can't find record of the amount of that fine, but it had to have stung. Especially since it all started with charity on his part. But given the world he lived in it's clear that he's lucky he escaped with his life.


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[Assistant] Fine paid, Powell was released. But if anyone in town expected the unusual occurrences to go away now that the trial was over, they were going to be very disappointed. In fact, everything was about to get worse.


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[Assistant] It would have been nice if Caleb Powell had been right. After all, he had claimed to see the grandson throw a shoe at William. It should have been safe to assume that the boy was behind all the other disturbances as well. But assuming is never safe, is it?


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[Assistant] Instead, after Caleb Powell walked free, those disturbances continued. But they also spread farther than the Morse home, making it less and less likely that the grandson was the one responsible. And the things that started happening were also more difficult to blame on a boy throwing things when no one was looking.


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[Assistant] Some of the claims came from local farmers, insisting their livestock had been bewitched. Jonathan Haynes told the authorities that his oxen had mysteriously refused to do any work. And Joseph Bailey told friends that his cows stood as still as statues in the field and wouldn't move.


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[Assistant] Frustrating, yes, but easy for our modern minds to dismiss.


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[Assistant] The more difficult to explain was the sudden uptick in sickness throughout the community. And Elizabeth Morse, being a midwife with decades of experience, was called to most of them to offer whatever care and advice she could.


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[Assistant] But that's when the deaths started, and with them arise in suspicions. After all, those deaths were only happening in the homes that were visited by Elizabeth.


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[Assistant] The Ordway family was one of the first to experience loss when their infant suddenly passed away.


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[Assistant] So too did a child from the Goodwin house. Local woman Mrs. Chandler also became ill, but after a visit from Elizabeth Morse, she took a turn for the worse, and then she did something very odd. She nailed a horseshoe on the outside of her house, directly over the door, as counter-magic to prevent the midwife from returning. And it worked.


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[Assistant] Soon enough, the rumors began to draw from a more fantastic well. John Gladding claimed that he saw Elizabeth at two o'clock in the afternoon as plain as day.


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[Assistant] But only her top half just sort of hovering over his property. John Chase swore that he watched Elizabeth enter his house in the middle of the night by climbing in through the keyhole.


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[Assistant] One man, Jonathan Woodman, was so spooked by the sight of a black cat one day that he struck it with his walking stick. Later on, he learned that the local doctor was called to the Morse House to treat Elizabeth for an injury.


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[Assistant] It was proof enough for most people. The black cat had either been her familiar or Elizabeth herself in her animal form.


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[Assistant] All of these accusations added up to an easy arrest warrant. Elizabeth was taken into custody by the authorities and a trial was organized a short while later. Many of those neighbors who had reported unusual things showed up to repeat those claims for the record. And that list of witnesses included an unexpected name. Elizabeth's husband, William.


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[Assistant] Now it would be easy to assume that he turned on her. That sort of betrayal happened all too often in witch trials throughout Europe.


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[Assistant] But from what I can tell, it seems more likely that he had been asked to come to the trial and tell everyone about those original disturbances from the previous November.


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[Assistant] It was the court and not William who tried their best to connect them to Elizabeth.


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[Assistant] Given all the testimony, the trial was brief and laser focused. On May 27th, Elizabeth Morse was given her sentence by the governor. Elizabeth, you are to go from hence to the place from which you come, and thence to the place of execution, and there be hanged by the neck till you be dead. And the Lord have mercy on your soul.


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[Assistant] A week later though, in a sudden change of mind, the governor issued a reprieve. They would keep her in jail, but look over the evidence once more with less of a hurry. And that bought William Morse a chance to start working on his wife's freedom. He began to petition the governor over and over for her release.


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[Assistant] To Williams' credits, he never gave up. Over the course of the year between her arrest in May of 1680 and the following spring, he returned time and time again to the governor, begging for her to be set free. And finally, in the middle of 1681, it happened. Well, sort of.


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[Assistant] Elizabeth Morse was set free and her execution was cancelled and all of that is good news. But for the rest of her life she was ordered to be on house arrest.


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[Assistant] She had survived an extended period of time in jail, in an era when many people died from the horrible conditions there.


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[Assistant] Jails in the late 1600s were not very comfortable, and winters in New England were just as harsh back then as they are today. It's easy to forget that 20% of the people who died during the Salem witch trials weren't executed, but simply killed by their time behind bars. So Elizabeth's survival is an unexpected triumph.


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[Assistant] But that joy was short-lived. Less than two years after securing her freedom, her husband William passed away. Elizabeth would go on to live another seven years, finally passing away in 1690.


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[Assistant] And today her mark can still be felt in town. The area of Newbury that they lived in was closest to the river, and in 1764 it became its own town, Newbury Ports.


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[Assistant] And if you visit Newburyport today, there's a plaque near their old property close to a busy Starbucks that tells anyone passing by about her tragic story. And the message on her gravestone adds a layer of emotion, especially for a woman who spent her final years living as a prisoner inside her own home.


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[Assistant] If you spend a bit of time reading about history, one thing becomes clear. Humans don't know when to quit. Most of the time that's worked to our favor, but every now and then our refusal to give up has driven us to do some unspeakable things.


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[Assistant] For Caleb Powell and Elizabeth Morse, the tenacity of their community was a curse. First they tried to convict Powell as a wizard, but the weakness of the evidence failed to do the job. So then they moved on to put Elizabeth under the microscope and found much more solid ground. Well, solid as far as they were concerned, I suppose.


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[Assistant] It's easy to look back on events like this over three centuries later and shake our heads. There was so much fantasy, so much superstition, and so much willingness to sacrifice human lives for a little peace of mind.


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[Assistant] But like it or not, this was how their world operated. All we can hope is that we've spent those three centuries becoming better human beings.


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[Assistant] Thankfully, the community wasn't the only player in this drama with a bit of persistence. Elizabeth's husband showed his own incredible tenacity through it all. Even after being forced to testify against her, he fought tirelessly to win her freedom because he knew just how ridiculous her alleged crimes really were.


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[Assistant] William personally reviewed all the testimony from her trial and found ways to point out flaws in those stories.


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[Assistant] He even reached out to local ministers asking them to be character witnesses on Elizabeth's behalf. One of those ministers, it turns out, was John Hale from the nearby town of Beverly. The very same John Hale who would be pulled into the Salem trials a decade later.


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[Assistant] Persistence dragged her into tragedy, and it also pulled her out. But there's one final bit of the story that I find absolutely fascinating, and it has to do with the sick woman I mentioned a few moments ago, the one history remembers only as Mrs. Chandler, because her story didn't end with that horseshoe.


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[Assistant] Remember, the world of witchcraft was fairly nuanced. Yes, there were practices that everyone agreed were fully evil, like the witch's Sabbath or deals with the devil. But there were other areas of magic that people were more comfortable with. Countermagic. And the horseshoe was one of those traditions.


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[Assistant] It was believed that if a witch was bothering you, all it took was a horseshoe hanging over the entrance to your home to keep the witch away.


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[Assistant] The idea dates back to the 10th century legend about a blacksmith named Dunstan who removed a horseshoe from the devil's own foot. As payment for his services, Dunstan was promised that the devil would never enter a home with a horseshoe nailed to the doorframe.


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[Assistant] Mrs. Chandler, after realizing that Elizabeth's visit made her more sick, had simply followed that tradition. And, as I said before, the midwife never returned, so it's easy to assume her countermagic had worked, if that's the sort of thing one might believe in.


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[Assistant] But a short while later, one of Mrs. Chandler's more pious neighbors passed by and noticed the horseshoe, and in a fit of anger, ripped it from the house.


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[Assistant] Whether or not it was meant for good, it was a charm and the devil's work had no place in their community.


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[Assistant] We don't know if Mrs. Chandler was aware that the horseshoe had been removed, but we do know what sort of effect it had on her safety and well-being. A short while later, Mrs. Chandler passed away.


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[Assistant] Stories of witchcraft have a lot of texture. Sometimes they show us the worst in humanity, or reveal how firmly those lives were guided by superstition. But I found one more story that promises to do more. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.


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[Assistant] She was the granddaughter of a wizard and a legend in her own right. But looking back, she probably saw that coming.


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[Assistant] Mary Diamond was born in 1736 in Marblehead, Massachusetts. Like a lot of the craftsmen at the time in New England, her father made shoes. It was a trade that would persist until the Industrial Revolution, when factories took over what cobblers once did alone.


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[Assistant] Her father was normal compared to his own father, the legendary Aholia Diamond. That man was said to be a wizard and could often be found standing in the local graveyard, high up on a hill where he could see the ocean. When storms blew in he would stand up there in the rain and cast spells that saved the ships and the sailors who manned them.


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[Assistant] It was a gift he claimed to have inherited from his own grandfather, and so on down the line into the depths of the past. So, while Mary was raised in the normal home of a common shoemaker, there was always that hint in the background that she was special. That she was born to do something greater.


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[Assistant] She married one of her father's apprentices, a man named Richard Pitcher in 1760, and it was sometime a short while later that she began to make a name for herself.


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[Assistant] Now, I'm going to stop here for a moment and warn you. If you do some internet searching, you're going to find her portrayed as a haggard old woman with a twisted face and a bent nose. You know, the typical image anyone conjures up when they think about witches.


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[Assistant] But Mary Pitcher was not that woman, and she didn't even go by Mary. Neighbors and customers all called her Maul, Maul Pitcher, and Maul they said.


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[Assistant] Folks would travel to her house in Lynn, a house that sat at the foot of a cliff called High Rock, to discover their fortunes. She charged for her services and helped a great number of people during her lifetime. But she did more than help lovers find peace or offer advice to businessmen. She earned a reputation as a witch.


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[Assistant] Now, these are rumors, so keep that in mind. But they're part of the legend of Maul Pitcher, and that means I get to share them with you. Grain of salt and all.


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[Assistant] Whenever a ship wrecked off the coast of Lynn, people whispered that Maul Pitcher was to blame. Then again, they also claimed that she often warned sailors against leaving port. She did this so often that captains would have to recruit men from other cities, where Maul's message hadn't yet spread.


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[Assistant] When the vision of a man was seen walking along the road in another town to the north, a man said to be carrying his own head, mind you, everyone said it was the work of Maul.


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[Assistant] Another story claims that she somehow caused a dead man still in his coffin to chase another still living person. She caused milk to go bad and wool to turn blue. If it went wrong, Maul Pitcher was to blame.


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[Assistant] Now, had these things taken place a century before, she would have been hanged as a witch. But time had washed away a lot of those violent knee-jerk reactions to unusual tales and dark rumors. Maul Pitcher didn't fear the stories. In fact, she seems to have welcomed them, because stories spread. And that was good for business.


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[Assistant] It's said that for a time there wasn't an American ship that didn't pull into a European port and find a crowd waiting, wanting to know what news they carried about the old woman across the sea. Others would send requests back with the sailors or board a ship themselves just for a chance to go visit her and have their fortune told. Maul Pitcher, as you might imagine, stayed busy.


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[Assistant] What they didn't know was just how creative she was. Visitors would approach her house from Essex Street along a well-worn path through her field and would be greeted at the door by one of her adult daughters, Rebecca. They would be told that Maul was not home, but was due back shortly and they were welcome to wait in the large sitting room.


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[Assistant] While they waited, Rebecca would ask them questions to get a sense for what they needed. But what the visitors didn't know was that in a smaller room just a few feet away, Maul sat listening, thinking through how she was going to handle the customer. When she finally arrived, she amazed them by revealing things they have never told her.


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[Assistant] Most of those visitors believed her, paid her the fee, and left happy. But there were occasions when customers would try to skip out on the cost. Thankfully, Maul had a trick for that too. After leaving the customer and Maul to their business, Rebecca would head upstairs to the room directly above them, and she would listen along through the floorboards.


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[Assistant] If they refused to pay, Maul would threaten to unleash the devil himself upon them. And at the same moment, Rebecca would grab a large chain used for controlling cattle, and then drag it across the floor. Most of the time, that was all the incentive the customers needed to make sure that Maul Pitcher was paid her due.


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[Assistant] Looking back, it's clear that Maul lived a powerful life in an age when few women would even dare to dream of it. She was respected, admired, and maybe even a little feared.


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[Assistant] Her skills of observation were said to have helped the colonists defeat the British in the Revolutionary War. Sure, she read fortunes and tea leaves, but she also listened and learned.


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[Assistant] She held more power in a cup of tea than most men ever would.


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[Assistant] Maul died in April of 1813 at the age of 75. And as far as the local historical records show, she never passed on that ancient family gift to her children and their descendants. But they were known to be honorable, hardworking people who were respected and loved by their community. Just like Maul.


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[Assistant] I think it's fair to say that we all love legacies. Fantasy novels have taught us to adore families with mystical powers that seem to span generations. So while it might be disappointing that Maul didn't line up with that stereotype, I think she actually did better.


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


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[Assistant] I also make and executive produce a whole bunch of other podcasts, all of which I think you'd enjoy. My production company, Grim and Mild, specializes in shows that sit at the intersection of the dark and the historical. You can learn more about all of the shows we make and everything going on over in one central place. Grimandmild.com.


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[Assistant] He was sailing in the Southeast Pacific when he and his crew encountered a Dutch ship that was in trouble. Eads managed to save every single one of the Dutch soldiers and then headed for the city of Batavia, known today as Jakarta, to drop them off and see if a reward could be collected. While he waited he did some shopping.


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[Assistant] Now, Eads wasn't rich by any stretch of the imagination, but he owned a small portion of the ship he sailed. And of course, he was expecting a handsome reward for his heroic efforts. With this in mind, he kept an eye open for something unusual and conversation worthy to take home. And that's when he saw it. It was a mummified mermaid.


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[Assistant] It was over two feet long, had the curved tail one might find on a fish, but the upper body of something much more human in shape.


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[Assistant] It was brown from the preservation process, wrinkled with age and entirely addictive to look at, and Captain Eads knew instantly that he had to own it.


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[Assistant] In late January of 1822, he did something bold. He sold the ship he did not fully own and used the proceeds to buy the mermaid. Then he found transportation back to London and put the odd creature on display. Because just about everyone who saw it believed that it was real.


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[Assistant] Of course there were those who could see through the hoax. Captain Eads had been fooled by a clever craftsman who had sewn the torso of an orangutan onto the lower half of a large salmon.


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[Assistant] Elements were added to the face and hands to give it a more human-like appearance, but those with training in natural science and anatomy could spot the hidden clues that gave it all away.


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[Assistant] That didn't matter to most people though. The idea that mermaids could be real had been around for centuries. So when something as powerful as a mummified specimen floated into their world, they were blind to its flaws and impossibility. They wanted to believe, deep down inside, that the hybrids of folklore actually existed.


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[Assistant] Today we know a lot more about our world than we used to, but if we were to go back in time and live through a less learned age, we would be amazed at the stories that await us. Tales of creatures that sit at the very edge of our imagination, living things that defy logic, and monsters that inspire wonder.


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[Assistant] Our hearts want to believe while our minds are ready to move on.


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[Assistant] When we talk about the natural world, the very first thing we need to do is gain some perspective.


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[Assistant] Today we live in a technologically rich society. We carry supercomputers in our pockets that are more powerful than the ones that sent the first humans to the moon. We can walk past an intriguing part of our neighborhood, pull out our phones, and look at a satellite map or do a search for more information.


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[Assistant] We're still hungry people, curious, and drawn to unanswered questions. But rather than starving in a house with little food, we feast each day on a never-ending buffet of answers and information.


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[Assistant] Today, if you want to know something, chances are good you could learn about it in an instant. But hundreds of years ago, that was an impossibility. Not that people didn't try though.


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[Assistant] Two thousand years ago, a Roman named Gaius Plinius Secundus attempted to gather everything knowable into one place, and he did an admirable job considering the world he lived in. Gaius was born into a wealthy Roman family in the year 24 AD and followed a path of privilege all the way to the top.


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[Assistant] He was well-educated, well-connected, and when he entered the Roman military he quickly rose to the second highest level possible, the equestrian order.


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[Assistant] Once out of the military, he served as a lawyer before being assigned various governorships around the empire. And toward the end of his life, he had the privilege to serve as an advisor to two different emperors. Today we know him as Pliny the Elder. But in his day, Gaius was a success story.


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[Assistant] Looking back, his biggest legacy was his 37 volume collection of knowledge called Natural History.


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[Assistant] It was possibly the world's first encyclopedia, gathering everything known about a whole array of subjects, from farming and botany to geography and anthropology.


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[Assistant] Plenty of the elder, like everyone else in his society, lack the proper tools to dig deep and apply hard science to every creature he wrote about.


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[Assistant] He also lacked the ability to travel and see each animal he described. So he relied heavily on others, like Aristotle's Historia and Amalium, and the writings of Eratosthenes and Hipparchus. And that meant his collection was less than perfect.


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[Assistant] How so? Well, his work on zoology included such amazing animals as dragons, mermen, and even something called a blamii, a race of hairy human-like beings who literally had no head on their shoulders, with eyes and a mouth right in the middle of their chest.


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[Assistant] Pliny was thorough for sure, but not very discerning with his source material.


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[Assistant] But what his work did do was give birth to something a lot of people have heard of. A type of book known as a bestiary.


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[Assistant] It took a while for their availability to spread, but by the early middle ages, bestiaries were a common enough resource. They were, at the basic level, books about known animals, typically with colorful drawings to help the reader visualize the specific details of each entry.


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[Assistant] And over the centuries, some editions became more popular than others.


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[Assistant] One of the most famous is the Aberdeen Bestiary, an illuminated manuscript that dates back to the 12th century. Aside from being a beautiful example of medieval artwork, and I mean that, you should seriously do an internet search for sample pages, the Aberdeen Bestiary is also a powerful example of just how popular these books really were.


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[Assistant] It's filled with images of all sorts of animals, along with rocks, fish, trees, and even worms. And a lot of the entries in the manuscript include notes about the nature of the thing in question, making it a valuable reference tool for any budding naturalist.


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[Assistant] But these beastie ironies did more than that. They inspired the popular culture of their day.


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[Assistant] England's King John, who reigned from 1177 to 1216, was said to have a copy of Pliny the Elder's natural history in his personal collection. And John's son and successor, King Henry III, even used images from it to decorate one of the chambers at Westminster.


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[Assistant] As their popularity spread, more and more writers got in on the tradition.


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[Assistant] The Norman poet Philippe de Toun wrote a bestiary about a generation after William the Conqueror invaded England, and it became a gift for King Henry II's wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine.


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[Assistant] Even Leonardo da Vinci made one. It seems if you were an intelligent person in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, making your own bestiary was practically a rite of passage.


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[Assistant] And let's be honest, colorful manuscripts filled with images of unbelievable creatures and animals that defied logic couldn't not be popular. Humans have this innate desire to look at curious things. We've always been rubberneckers, straining to take a long hard look at things that sit outside our normal experience. And the spread of bestiaries is proof of that.


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[Assistant] But those ancient books and manuscripts also teach us something else about ourselves. Human beings are creative creatures. When faced with a mysterious gap in our knowledge, we're more likely to invent something to plug the hole than to leave the question unanswered. And what we've come up with?


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[Assistant] I mentioned earlier how the internet and the accessibility of powerful devices has given us an edge over our predecessors. And in a lot of ways, that's true. Yes, we have access to a huge majority of our collective knowledge. But not all of it. In fact, there are still things we don't know.


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[Assistant] For example, scientists today believe that there are roughly 8.7 million animal species on this planet. And yet, 86% of the ones that would live on land still haven't been discovered or studied. And it's even worse inside our oceans, where over 90% of life is still a mystery to us.


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[Assistant] Some animals are also a bit harder to track down. They're less abundant or more shy, and so it's made studying them more of a challenge.


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[Assistant] A good example is the platypus. For a very long time, scientists thought the descriptions of it were nothing more than a hoax. I mean, it was rumored in 1799 to be a hybrid of a duck and a water rat, part mammal and part bird, with venomous spurs that could kill a dog.


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[Assistant] And while we've learned more about them over the years, the platypus is still an elusive creature. A recent documentarian was able to get what he considered to be a gold mine of actual footage of the animal, amounting to about 30 seconds. And when only half a minute of film is something to celebrate, you know the animal is hard to study.


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[Assistant] Of course, while we're searching for new species, the ones we do know about are slowly dying off, which doesn't help. Some estimates place the number of species on the edge of extinction at around 20,000, and more get added to that list all the time.


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[Assistant] For the medieval writers of bestiaries, this would be their worst nightmare. All those creatures belong in their books, and yet they keep slipping away.


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[Assistant] But at the same time, not being able to see an animal never really stopped those ancient writers from including it in their catalog of life on Earth.


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[Assistant] In fact, there are a lot of entries that would cause most people to scratch their heads. Because, well, yes, we've grown in our understanding of the world around us. These bestiaries serve as a time capsule of our gullibility.