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[Assistant] And it wasn't a practice limited to England and Europe. Even in the New World, practical minds were documenting irrational events.


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[Assistant] In 1671, a Puritan minister in Massachusetts named Samuel Willard spent weeks painstakingly documenting the apparent possession of one of his servants, a young woman named Elizabeth Knapp.


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[Assistant] And in the early days of the Salem witch trials, the town minister Samuel Parris put his own regular observations into a notebook.


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[Assistant] A book that I've held with my own hands. And flipping through its pages, it's easy to see the neat orderly handwriting of a rational man slowly transform into the scribbles of someone governed by panic and fear.


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[Assistant] Looking back, I think it's easy to see these records as historically important but scientifically weak. Some people view them as nothing more than propaganda designed to fuel the fear of the unknown.


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[Assistant] But there's something else going on inside each of them. They are collections of stories. And not just stories, but stories with incredible detail, witness interviews and sworn statements.


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[Assistant] They are the sort of proof that most courts would love to get their hands on. Eyewitness accounts and interviews around the neighborhood that contribute to the investigation.


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[Assistant] And this is what writers like George Sinclair were so good at. But it also invites questions, doesn't it?


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[Assistant] Because when we pair that sort of accuracy and depth of research with tales of the mysterious and unexplainable, sometimes our logic and rationale are put to the test.


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[Assistant] We might want to believe that these stories are nothing more than dramatic works of fiction.


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[Assistant] But there's always the lingering doubt that something more is going on below the surface.


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[Assistant] It's buried in a book about fluid mathematics. In 1672, George Sinclair published a book called Hydrostatics, which discussed the math behind the flow of liquids. Not the sort of place you might expect to find a ghost story. But if we remember that Sinclair was a scientist who believed that spirits were real, it becomes less of a surprise.


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[Assistant] Sinclair wasn't the first to write about the story I'm about to tell you, but the earliest mention was in a personal letter written in 1661 by a man named Robert Bailey, and sometime in the 11 years between then and the publication of Sinclair's version,


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[Assistant] Sinclair had managed to track down many of the key players and conduct his own scientific investigation into it all.


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[Assistant] Either way, everything began in October of 1654. That was when a beggar named Alexander Agnew showed up at the home of Gilbert Campbell in the Scottish village of Glenloose. Agnew was a known atheist, something rare and unusual for the time he lived in. In fact, just two years later, he would be hanged for the crime of blasphemy.


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[Assistant] Agnew knocked on the Campbell's door and asked for food, but was turned away. In response, he threatened them, calling down curses on their household, and then he wandered off. And it might have been easy for Gilbert Campbell to settle back into normal life, to fill his days with work. But fate had other ideas.


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[Assistant] Campbell was what they called a Webster, which was another term for a Weaver.


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[Assistant] His world revolved around threads and scissors and looms, all of which were tools of the trade that helped him craft goods for his customers. I imagine it was difficult work, but he had most likely inherited the business from his father and knew little else. His entire existence probably revolved around his trade.


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[Assistant] But after Agnew's visit and curse, that work became much more difficult to manage. At first it was little things. Threads that had been cut by someone other than himself. Broken scissors. Misplaced items. It was confusing and frustrating, I'm sure. Yet he managed to work around it all. That is, until the voices arrived.


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[Assistant] The first time it happened it was actually his daughter Janet who heard them. She had been walking to the nearby well for water when a mysterious whistling sound filled her ears and she wasn't alone either. Other women around her also heard it and turned toward her when they did.


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[Assistant] So as a sort of joke she said out loud, I would rather hear you speak than whistle.


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[Assistant] And Sinclair makes note of the fact that all the other women heard the threat loud and clear. Naturally, Janet ran home to her father and the safety of their home, but some threats can't be stopped by walls or doors.


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[Assistant] The next time the invisible force made itself known, it did so by throwing stones through the windows of the Campbell home. Some even tumbled down the chimney, as if a person were standing on the roof and dropping them in.


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[Assistant] But of course, no one was up there, or even outside. There was no explanation for the stones at all, which must have been both frustrating and frightening. But then, things became more invasive.


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[Assistant] More of Gilbert's work was tampered with the following day, the threads being cut by invisible scissors, and not just threads on the loom either. Soon they were finding clothing that had been cut while stored inside their chests. Bedsheets were tugged off the bed in the middle of the night, preventing anyone from getting the rest they needed.


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[Assistant] But those attacks on Gilbert's occupation were the hardest to endure. Eventually, he was forced to store his tools at a neighbor's home each night, hoping that the spirit would leave them alone. But soon his tools and loom were so badly damaged by the angry spirit that he was unable to practice his trade, putting his entire family in financial trouble.


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[Assistant] Desperate for help, Gilbert reached out to the parish minister, John Scott, telling him about everything that had happened so far. He also spoke with a number of his closest neighbors, who made observations of their own. It was their opinion that the invisible fiend, whatever it really was, seemed to trouble some of his children more than the others. And that got him thinking.


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[Assistant] As a test, he sent each of his children to stay with a different neighbor. It would give him a chance to see if the ghost that was plaguing them was attached to a particular person or just the house in general.


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[Assistant] And while Campbell wasn't a scientist, I hope you can see the scientific nature of that test. Remove the variables, test the results, and then make adjustments, observing the entire time. And that's exactly what Campbell did.


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[Assistant] After the children were gone, the activity in the house stopped and remained silent for nearly a week.


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[Assistant] But eventually the minister told him that it would be bad parenting to leave his children in danger for the sake of peace at home. So he began to bring them back.


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[Assistant] First he brought back the one that had been staying the closest. When the spirit failed to return with them, he brought another.


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[Assistant] And then another, until finally the only child left was his son Thomas. But when Thomas stepped back inside the Campbell house, everything started back up all over again.


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[Assistant] The voices, the pounding, the destruction of their belongings, all of it.


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[Assistant] The following day, while Gilbert was off talking with the minister, his house caught fire. And while a neighbor managed to put out the flames, Gilbert took that as a sign that Thomas's presence would bring destruction down on their home. So he begged the minister to take the boy in for a while, until they could find a better solution.


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[Assistant] This time though, the unusual activity continued after Thomas had gone. So the minister brought him back.


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[Assistant] When he arrived though a voice boomed out, telling him that he was not allowed to enter the house. Ignoring it, Thomas stepped inside, only to be assaulted by the invisible fiend, over and over again.


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[Assistant] In the end, Thomas was forced to return to the home of the minister and Gilbert Campbell was left with his life in ruins. No way to work, no support for his family, the loss of his son and a home that no one felt safe in.


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[Assistant] They say that the family spoke to it. In the short time that the invisible force had begun to speak with them, they had not only grown used to it, but also became comfortable with responding and asking their own questions. I'm sure there was a level of constant fear, but I imagine there was also a bit of amusement. After all, they were talking to a spirit.


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[Assistant] A few days later, the minister brought Thomas Campbell back home, and Gilbert met them on the path to the front door of the house before walking them inside. As the minister crossed the threshold, though, the spirit, or ghost, or whatever it was, shouted out an insult.


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[Assistant] The minister, though, wasn't visibly insulted. He just sort of smiled and nodded and then commented to Gilbert that he could never take insults from demons to heart. After all, his Lord Jesus had suffered the same.


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[Assistant] In response, and this is one of my favorite moments in the story, mostly because it reminds me of the old 1980 film Airplane, the voice spoke up again and clarified itself. It hadn't actually been speaking to the minister when it shouted the word dog. No, it had been referring to an actual dog that was walking a few steps behind the man.


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[Assistant] And no, that's not essential to the story, but who in their right mind would cut out a detail like that?


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[Assistant] The voice did seem to have a problem with the return of Gilbert's son Thomas. During those first few moments, it made a number of threats toward the boy, which prompted the minister to step in and have his own conversation with the spirit.


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[Assistant] I'm going to skip a lot of the details of that chat, mostly because it goes down some deep theological roads. But after a while, the minister demanded that the spirit show itself. In response, the hand and forearm of a grown man seemed to rise up from the floorboards before forming into a fist and pounding on the floor. Then, the voice made a frightening statement.


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[Assistant] His meaning was clear too. According to the spirit's voice, they had all just laid eyes on the devil.


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[Assistant] The minister had heard enough. He told the family to ignore the demon's attempts at conversation and to instead increase their prayers to God.


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[Assistant] And then he set off to meet with other ministers in the area and ask for advice, leaving the Campbells alone in the house with a disembodied voice.


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[Assistant] They didn't last long, I'm afraid. Sure, they tried to ignore it, but after just a few hours, one of them caved in and began to talk back. Maybe they felt that if they gave the spirit the conversation it desired, it might leave them alone. Or perhaps the novelty of it all was just too tempting to pass up.


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[Assistant] Either way, they kept up the talking, and the demon or devil or whatever it was, kept them busy.


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[Assistant] When the minister, John Scott, returned a week or so later, he had good news.


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[Assistant] He had called a gathering of all the local ministers and their advice had been unanimous. Everyone involved must enter into a season of humiliation, a time of denial and prayer and fasting, sort of like Lent, and that should cleanse the house of any sins that were keeping the demon trapped inside.


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[Assistant] That was the end of February of 1656. By April, things were already becoming more and more quiet. And by August? Well, everyone felt sure that the troubles were over. The talkative demon, known by then as the Devil of Glenloose, seemed to have vanished.


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[Assistant] That August, everything started up again, just as violent and disruptive as it had been back in February. More stones were thrown into the house, invisible hands pounded on the walls, and that disembodied voice resumed shouting at them at all hours of the night.


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[Assistant] Worse yet, their food supplies were ruined and new fires were discovered from time to time, including one that ignited right inside one of their beds. And I wish I could tell you that the story has a happy ending. That a cursed object was removed or that the minister returned and cast the demon out of the house.


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[Assistant] But that's not what George Sinclair tells us in his record of the events.


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[Assistant] According to him, these events continued for years. In fact, he said that if he had written down everything that happened after that August in 1656, the words would have filled an entire book of their own.


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[Assistant] And while Gilbert Campbell survived into his old age to talk about everything that had happened to him, it's hard to imagine he was ever really the same after it was over.


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[Assistant] In the end, we're left with a detailed record of something that defies logic and rational thinking, and yet claims to be a record of fact and evidence.


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[Assistant] But if we take George Sinclair's detailed account of the events in Glen Luce, along with his interviews of neighbors who witnessed it all, as something that constitutes proof of the Spirit's existence, then we have a lot to wrestle with, don't we?


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[Assistant] Because while it might be fascinating to believe that, yes, the spirit world is real and documentable, it's also destructive and dangerous. Which might be the biggest lesson of all, whether we were looking for one or not. Sometimes the proof isn't so positive.


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[Assistant] Sometimes all we really want are answers. So much of human history and folklore in particular has been the story of our journey into the unknown, hoping to bring back something solid to aid in our growth and advancement.


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[Assistant] Those journals of Marie Curie are a fantastic example, as are the notes of Charles Darwin. Great minds have applied themselves throughout the ages to the task of seeking out and writing down the evidence to prove that their convictions were valid. And in a lot of cases, they were right.


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[Assistant] But there's something dangerous about that journey as well. Sometimes it's obvious, as in the case of Marie Curie. Not only are her notebooks kept inside lead boxes, but so is her coffin. Her remains were so radioactive that before being buried, her casket was placed inside a lead box with walls nearly an inch thick.


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[Assistant] Yes, humans are good at searching for answers, but what we find isn't always easy to handle.


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[Assistant] But I want to dip back one more time into the story of the Gilbert's and their vocal housemate. If you remember, the demon was far from excited to have young Thomas return from the minister's care that day in February of 1656.


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[Assistant] And while we don't know why that is, there was one other detail to the story that has left some people scratching their heads ever since.


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[Assistant] You see, the minister, John Scott, tried several times to flat out command the spirit to leave the Campbell house. True to the invisible being's nature though, it chose not to listen. In fact, according to George Sinclair, it even presented a counter-argument, giving the minister a reason for why it couldn't obey.


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[Assistant] I have a commission, it told the man of God, hinting at some sort of obligation or mission it was ordered to fulfill. And my commission will last longer than your own.


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[Assistant] And admittedly, that was an unusual thing to say. But if the demon's commission was to haunt that house, and the minister's commission was his calling to be a man of the cloth, then we can at least see the pieces that are being compared.


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[Assistant] According to the devil of Glenloose, its own mission was going to last longer than that of the minister.


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[Assistant] It was a bold prediction and one that hinted at a bleak future for John Scott. It seems that the spirit believed that it would be working in the Campbell household long after the minister had given up his own mission. A nicer way of hinting at his death. It wasn't a threat, but it certainly was a dark forecast.


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[Assistant] Sure enough, the minister died the following December, years before the devil of Glenloose finally left the Campbell home in peace.


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[Assistant] The notion that the supernatural world can be studied and recorded is probably not the most logical to a lot of people. But science offered people a lot of hope in a time when so much of the world was still a mystery. And the observers we've discussed so far were only a small sample of a larger trend.


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[Assistant] Stick around after this short sponsor break to hear yet one more tale of unusual activity and those who wrote it all down.


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[Assistant] As I mentioned earlier, the trend of documenting supernatural events was pretty widespread in the late 1600s. Along with George Sinclair, other scientists joined in. Men like Joseph Glanville. In fact, an earlier episode of Lore featured one of Glanville's stories, covering the tale of the drummer of Tedworth.


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[Assistant] But even small town believers got involved. I've already mentioned Samuel Willard, the Puritan minister in Colonial Massachusetts who claimed to have a demon-possessed servant in his home. Willard actually observed and took notes for over a month, documenting every little change in his subject's condition.


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[Assistant] In the end, he was convinced it was supernatural in origin, but was unwilling to place the blame on her, as the leaders of Salem would do two decades later.


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[Assistant] Another small town minister got involved in his own study in 1696. His name was Alexander Telfair and he served the community at Kirkubri in South West Scotland, not too far from Glenloose. And it all started with a cow.


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[Assistant] There was a man in the village named Andrew Mackey who worked as a stonemason and a farmer on his own property, which was called Ringcroft. And in February of 1695, he started to notice that his livestock were managing to get out on a regular basis.


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[Assistant] He did his best, of course, lashing gates shut and even tying the animals to stakes, but nothing seemed to help.


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[Assistant] One evening he went outside for some firewood and discovered that one of his cows had been moved to the backside of the house and tied there, but not tied to his stake. No, this cow was tethered to the house itself and so high up the wall that its hooves were off the ground. How it happened was a complete mystery.


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[Assistant] A few nights later Andrew awoke to the smell of smoke in his house. He managed to track down the unattended fire and put it out, but it left him feeling unsettled.


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[Assistant] So when Stones began to pummel his house on the 7th of March, sometimes even falling from the ceiling of his own home, he realized that he was out of his depth. So he called on the local minister, Alexander Telfair.


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[Assistant] When Telfair arrived, he came with information. It seems that Andrew's farm, Ringcroft, had once belonged to the McNaught family.


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[Assistant] But the McNaughts had fallen on hard times, and the father decided he needed answers. So he told the son to head to the village of Iron Grey, about 25 miles to the north, where he was to seek out a witch wife who could give an explanation for their misfortune.


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[Assistant] The son did manage to find the witch wife, but he apparently got distracted before he could return home.


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[Assistant] He ended up leaving the country for some unknown reason, perhaps hoping to make a better life for himself far away from the troubles at home. So it wasn't until years later that another local from his hometown was wandering through Flanders when he recognized the younger McNaught.


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[Assistant] The young man decided it would be good to pass along the witch wife's instructions to the visitor, who eventually headed back to Kirkubri. When he did, he explained to the older mcnaught that they were supposed to search beneath the threshold of the house for a tooth, and when they found it, they were supposed to burn it.


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[Assistant] Sure enough, a search of the soil beneath the edge of the home led them to a tooth, although it was unclear if it was human or animal in origin. Still, they burned it as instructed, and then crossed their fingers. Soon after, life began to look up for the McNaughts, and their fortunes changed.


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[Assistant] But that wasn't helpful for Andrew Mackey, was it? Because if an evil spirit had been driven from the house decades earlier, why in the world was it back, making his own life miserable? And Reverend Telfair agreed, so he proposed an experiment. Let me move in for a while, so that I might be able to witness and document your troubles for myself.


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[Assistant] Andrew agreed, and the good reverend moved in later that day. And right away the minister found himself in the middle of the most unusual events. Stones fell from the ceiling and struck him on the head and shoulders. Hard blows struck him in the way that a club or staff might have done, but there was never any weapon to see. It was all such a mystery.


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[Assistant] And those attacks weren't limited to Reverend Telfair either. Andrew Mackey's own children were dragged out of their beds during the nights. Visitors to the home were physically attacked by invisible forces. And Andrew himself suffered a blow to the forehead that was so powerful it made a deep cut that left a permanent scar.


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[Assistant] Then, on the 5th of April, Andrew's wife noticed a loose stone in the floor of their home, so she pulled it up. Beneath it, she found a cloth bundle that contained human bones, some of which still had flesh and blood still clinging to them. In a panic, she ran to a neighbor's house for help.


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[Assistant] After removing the bones to be studied, the local ministers, including Alexander Telfer, decided to hold an unusual ceremony.


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[Assistant] There was a lot of chaos after that. The ministers all visited the house together only to be attacked by the invisible fiend. More fires appeared and more stones fell from the sky to damage the house.


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[Assistant] More people in or near the house were injured, and all the while, Reverend Telfair was documenting the events, interviewing witnesses, and making diligent notes.


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[Assistant] But that was four days in the future, and a lot could happen before the appointed hour arrived.


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[Assistant] Somehow though, they managed to survive. And on Tuesday, April 30th, a number of neighbors claimed they witnessed it all come to an end. They had been inspecting the property when a handful of men stepped into Mackie's barn. They claimed to see a thick black fog rise up from the soil and fill the space before surrounding them.


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[Assistant] Some of the men claimed that the fog actually caused them pain, as if they'd been squeezed or pinched. Others said that clumps of mud were thrown violently out of the darkness. But it was over quickly. And when it was, the supernatural activity that had plagued the house for so long was gone with it. The demon, it seems, had kept its promise.


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


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


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


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


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


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[Assistant] The construction was called to a stop the moment they found the bones. The work crew was preparing a building site along one of London's many ancient streets when they uncovered what appeared to be a body, or at least the remains of one.


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[Assistant] It was clearly old, given that nothing but bones could be seen beneath the dirt. So a team of archaeologists was brought in to preserve and study the remains. In the end, they determined that the bones belonged to a teenage girl who had lived in London over 1600 years ago. A Roman girl.


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[Assistant] It's not the last time something like that has happened in the city. During some development work near Spittlefield's Market in the 1990s, a work crew uncovered what turned out to be an entire Roman cemetery.


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[Assistant] Among the finds was a perfectly preserved lead coffin, its lid covered in beautiful artwork that had been hammered right into the surface, still visible all these centuries later.


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[Assistant] And that's the way history tends to work. Time will bury it beneath new and current events. But if we dig deep enough and brush away the soil, we can come face to face with it all over again.


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[Assistant] The past never truly goes away, after all. It's there, waiting to be discovered, so that we can study it and relearn the stories it contains.


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[Assistant] Oftentimes though, the things that leave the deepest marks tend to be the most tragic and painful. Events that rattled people to their core and left a shadow on the history of a place that no amount of sunlight could ever chase away. And the older the city, the more common those shadows tend to be.


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[Assistant] Which is why I want to take you on a tour of one of the oldest. Because while the past is always nearby in our modern world, few places allow it to dwell so close to the present as the city of London.


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[Assistant] Its past is both a treasury of historical significance and a crypt full of the darkest tragedies we could ever imagine.


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[Assistant] Because in a city filled with so much light, there's bound to be some shadows.


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[Assistant] London is ancient. There's really no other way to say it. Most Americans live in a community that's less than 200 years old. If you're in New England or one of the other places with roots in pre-colonial America, perhaps those locations go back a bit further. But London's history makes all of those seem brand new by comparison.


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[Assistant] Archaeological work in London can place humans in the area as far back as 4500 BC. But if we're looking for a major settlement where it stands today, that didn't happen until 47 AD, when the Romans arrived and set up a community there that they called Londinium.


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[Assistant] Although from what we can tell, it didn't last long, all thanks to a woman named Budica.


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[Assistant] As far as historians know, Boudicca was the wife of King Prositagas, who ruled over an eastern British tribe known as the Iceni. When the Romans arrived in their territory in 43 AD, they came to an arrangement with Prositagas, allowing him to maintain control of his kingdom.


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[Assistant] When he died 17 years later though, the Romans refused to acknowledge his widow as the new ruler, and instead, invaded them to take the land for themselves.


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[Assistant] But they misjudged Budica, assuming she was a quiet woman incapable of ruling anything. Instead, she rallied a massive army of close to 100,000 warriors and then led them on a campaign against the Romans all over Britain.


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[Assistant] In 61 AD, her army rolled over Londinium like a Sherman tank, burning the entire settlement to the ground. In fact, her campaign against them was so fierce and unstoppable that the Romans nearly left Britain altogether.


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[Assistant] But those who survived managed to rebuild, and within a handful of decades, it had grown large enough to become the capital of the entire province.


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[Assistant] Over the years, the city continued to expand and mature. And even though the Romans left toward the beginning of the 5th century, the community there refused to die. By the 7th century, London had earned a reputation as a major trade center, which brought in a steady flow of wealth and goods, and also turned the city into a political powerhouse.


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[Assistant] Of course, power and wealth has a way of making a community a target for others, and London was no exception. In 1066, William the Conqueror sailed across the English Channel and earned his nickname by taking control of the entire kingdom and making it his own. And of course, special attention was paid to London.


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[Assistant] Within two decades, the population of the city had reached nearly 15,000, and by the 1300s that had multiplied to over 80,000. But something unexpected was heading their way that would ravage that growing community. Something mysterious and dangerous and seemingly unstoppable. The Black Death.


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[Assistant] What started as a plague in Western Asia quickly spread to Europe, bringing death and destruction to every community it touched. By the time the Black Death had burned itself out, some historians estimate that upwards of 200 million people were dead. The people of London lost at least 10,000 lives, most of whom were buried outside the city walls.


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[Assistant] It wouldn't be the last time the city would face tragedy. In 1664, a fresh outbreak of the plague killed another 100,000 people, and then two years later, in September of 1666, a fire broke out in the house of a baker on Pudding Lane.


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[Assistant] It eventually spread west, destroying much of the city as it went. And while there were only six verified casualties, historians now think the fire burned hot enough to completely cremate those who were caught in it, making the true death toll anyone's guess.


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[Assistant] So much of London's history was tragic and outside human control. But there have also been moments along the way that could only be blamed on the people who lived there. Jack the Ripper and the murders that took place in 1888 in the Whitechapel district of the city are always front and center in most people's minds.


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[Assistant] But there has been a lot more bloodshed than just those five innocent women. In fact, a lot of the city's murder and violence could be found higher up the ladder, in the very chambers and homes of the people who held the power and wealth. It seemed that rather than being immune to the shadows that lingered in the city, even the powerful could fall under their spell.


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[Assistant] Because if there's one thing the nobility of England's past seemed to attract more than anything else, it was pain and suffering and death.


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[Assistant] We don't need to look far to find bloody nobles. It sometimes feels as though all we have to do is open a history book and flip it to a random page. Life at the top was often a cutthroat game, both figuratively and literally. And anyone who found themselves in the orbit of a king or queen certainly understood that risk.


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[Assistant] A great example of how bloodthirsty the English kings could be was Henry VIII. Henry is known for a lot of things, not all of which are so great in retrospect. He expanded the power of the crown during his lifetime and based a lot of that on his belief in the divine right of kings, something that threatened the freedom of his people.


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[Assistant] He was greedy and vindictive and had an ego that was only surpassed in size by the codpiece on his armor.


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[Assistant] But if there is one thing that most people remember today about Henry VIII, it's his many wives. Henry had six of them, half of whom were named Catherine, which must have made it a lot easier for him, I'm sure. Five of those six wives came and went within a single ten-year period in his life. But not all of those breakups were friendly.


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[Assistant] After having his first marriage annulled in 1533 and sparking the English Reformation and the country's separation from the Catholic Church, Henry married the sister of a former lover, a woman named Anne Boleyn. Three years later, he had her executed for treason and adultery, but also possibly for failing to deliver a male heir.


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[Assistant] The day after Anne's beheading, Henry proposed to one of her ladies-in-waiting, Jane Seymour. They had apparently fallen in love months before, but Jane had managed to hold off Henry's advances in the name of honor. Once the Queen was dead though, she was much more agreeable. They were married ten days later.


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[Assistant] From everything I can tell, Henry believed that Jane Seymour was the one. He viewed her as his perfect queen, and when she gave birth to his first male heir a year later, he probably sighed with relief.


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[Assistant] But complications from the birth put her life at risk, and over the two weeks that followed, she slowly declined. In October of 1537, Jane Seymour passed away.


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[Assistant] That had taken place at Hampton Court Palace, Henry's favorite London residence. It was a mixture of a pleasure palace, a theater, and a royal home.


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[Assistant] So when Henry brought his next two wives through those doors over the next few years, they were probably bittersweet moments. A lot of joy would be possible there, but it would always sit in the shadows of a painful past.


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[Assistant] His fifth wife, Catherine Howard, made a fool of the king by conducting at least one less-than-secret affair.


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[Assistant] After learning about what she had done, Henry had Catherine arrested and thrown in a prison cell there at the house. She was only 18 at the time, and I can't imagine the fear and desperation she must have felt, being a prisoner of the most powerful man in the kingdom.


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[Assistant] According to the stories, though, Catherine managed to slip away from her guards one day while being walked through the palace. She bolted away and ran down one of the long galleries that led to the King's Chapel, where she knew Henry could be found.


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[Assistant] Her goal was probably to beg for forgiveness, to ask for mercy and to plead for her life.


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[Assistant] But the guards caught up to her before that could happen, and her screams of terror were the only thing to reach him.


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[Assistant] Katherine Howard was beheaded a short while later, and Henry moved on to a new wife, also named Katherine. But just because those former wives were gone, doesn't mean they were forgotten. In fact, if the stories are true, they might have stuck around to serve as a cruel reminder.


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[Assistant] It's said that even today, visitors to that long gallery in the palace have heard echoes of a woman screaming, a desperate panicked cry that chills them to the bones.


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[Assistant] Others have heard the quick rhythm of footsteps as if someone were running down the hallway. And in 1999, according to one source, two different tourists fainted in the gallery at different times on the very same day.


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[Assistant] Elsewhere in Hampton Court Palace, other shadows have stuck around as well. In a room at the top of the staircase known as the Silver Stick Stairs, multiple visitors have claimed to have seen the figure of a pale woman. She stands silently, hovering slightly above the floor, with a mournful expression and vacant eyes.


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[Assistant] For those who have witnessed it, the Spectre has been both calming and terrifying.


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[Assistant] Whether or not the visions are real though, it's fascinating to look at the true history of that room. Because while it has been used for countless purposes over the last few centuries, one specific resident stands out above all the others.


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[Assistant] The old home, located on Berkeley Square, is a townhouse. Just one of many in a long row of similar facades. But as far back as the mid-19th century, it was different enough to stand out from all the others.


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[Assistant] But before I continue with the legends, let me be clear that not a lot is known about the house's origins, and a lot of stories have yet to be completely verified.


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[Assistant] Still, we know enough to make this a journey worth taking. So let's get started.


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[Assistant] The majority of the tales begin with the man who owned the house back in the 1860s. Thomas Meyer wasn't the first to live there, but he was certainly the most infamous. It's said that he had once been engaged to be married, but his fiance eventually changed her mind and ended their relationship.


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[Assistant] Broken and distraught, he retreated into his house and was rarely ever seen again.


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[Assistant] Neighbors claim that the house would be dead during the day, only to come alive at night. It was as if Thomas had traded in the sunlight for the shadows, living the rest of his life during those moments when most of the world was asleep.


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[Assistant] And it might very well be whispers of the house all lit up at night that first gave birth to the rumor that it was haunted, but it could also have been what happened next.


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[Assistant] Sometime around 1872, the house sold to a new family, and they moved in to clean up the home and make it their own. The couple had two daughters, both in their late teens, and they were precious few years left for the parents to enjoy life as a family in this new setting before they became empty nesters.


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[Assistant] In the weeks that followed though, the future crept in. The oldest of the two daughters became engaged to a young officer named Captain Kentfield, and conversation became filled with talk of wedding plans and guest lists. And at some point in their engagement, Captain Kentfield planned a visit, so the family set about preparing the attic bedroom for his arrival.


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[Assistant] According to the story, what happened next is still shrouded in mystery.


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[Assistant] The family maid was sent up to put the final touches on the fiance's room, and while she was up there, the family heard her scream. At once, everyone in the house rushed upstairs to see what had happened, only to find her lying on the floor, an expression of complete horror painted across her face.


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[Assistant] More mysterious yet was that she couldn't seem to put a complete sentence together and was unable to answer any of the questions the family asked her. All the maid was able to do was mutter a low cryptic refrain. Don't let it touch me. Don't let it touch me.


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[Assistant] The maid was immediately taken to the hospital to recover, where I imagine someone observed her and did their best to treat her rattled nerves. But other than that, there was little they could do. Sleep, they assumed, would be the best medicine. The following morning, though, she was found dead in her room.


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[Assistant] The fiance arrived the next day, and after hearing the stories of the maid's unexpected death, he decided to check the room out for himself.


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[Assistant] Maybe he was playing the brave soldier in front of his future in-laws in an effort to impress them, or perhaps his fiance needed some reassurance and he wanted to calm her nerves. Whatever the reason, he climbed the stairs to the attic bedroom and declared that he would keep watch throughout the night.


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[Assistant] In the darkest hours of the morning though, a gunshot pulled everyone from sleep, their hearts racing at the sound of it. Everyone climbed out of bed, threw on their nightcoats, and then rushed up to see what had happened. What they found, according to the legend, was the young captain, dead on the floor of his room, a victim of his own pistol.


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[Assistant] In 1907, author Charles Harper wrote about the house in a book, and it was there that he declared it to be the very picture of misery. After the events that were said to have taken place there, it's easy to wonder if the misery was in the structure or the lives who lived there.


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[Assistant] Either way, the stories we've heard so far shed a bright light on one more tale that Harper added to the legend.


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[Assistant] According to him the next family to own the house moved in fully aware of the tragedies of the past.


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[Assistant] The owner was an older gentleman who was said to be practical and not prone to stories of the supernatural.


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[Assistant] Still, he understood the power of suggestion a creepy old house with a dark past might have over him, so he set some rules for everyone to follow.


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[Assistant] After settling in with his family, he told them all that he would ring his bell to tell them if he ever truly needed help. If it was a moment of fright, he would only ring it once, which they were all instructed to ignore. But if matters were more pressing and he truly needed help, he would ring it twice, a signal that they were to immediately come to his room.


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[Assistant] Everyone went to bed at the end of the evening, and while the night began peacefully, the quiet was broken around midnight by the loud chime of the old man's bell.


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[Assistant] Not once, but twice, which sent everyone rushing to see what might be the matter. What they found, though, weren't answers.


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[Assistant] The old man was writhing in his bed, his face twisted by panic and fear. Just like the housemaid all those years before, he too couldn't answer the questions that the others around him asked. He could only mutter and shake with horror at something no one else could see.


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[Assistant] After doing their best to help him, they calmed him enough to let him sleep and everyone wandered back to their own rooms. They left his bell on the table beside his bed, hoping that he would remember how to use it if he needed them, but the remainder of the night was one long stretch of unbroken silence. In the morning, they discovered why.


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[Assistant] After visiting the old man's bedroom to check on him, one of his family members gently pushed the door open and peered inside. The shape in the bed was unmoving, and so they approached to wake him and see how he felt. But like those in the house before him, he too had passed away.


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[Assistant] There's a lot about London that seems to echo the atmosphere of the house at 50 Berkeley Square. It's a city painted in shadows, but it's unclear if that darkness was always there or if we imported it over the centuries.


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[Assistant] What's clear is that almost from the start, tragedy and suffering has been a resident of this ancient city. Right back to the invasion of Budica, nearly 2,000 years ago, and up to its most modern challenges, the city of London has had to suffer through quite a bit. And that has a way of leaving a mark.


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[Assistant] Over the centuries though, the city has always found ways to move on. New layers are added all the time, building the present on top of the past, and slowly burying one dark moment beneath another.


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[Assistant] Which is probably why London is one of those places where new construction always seems to bump into ancient things. If you dig deep enough, you're guaranteed to find something.


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[Assistant] And look, London is a massive city, and while I did my best to cover some of its larger and more powerful stories, there are hundreds more that I had to leave untouched. Honestly, if you want to visit a haunted location in the city, just visit a local pub, like the Ten Bells, or the Flask, or the Spaniard Inn.


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[Assistant] If the stories are true, you'll find a lot more than a pint of ale waiting for you inside.


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[Assistant] But if there's one mark on the pages of London's history that is bigger than most, it's hard to deny the power of the plague.


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[Assistant] If you remember, when the wave of disease washed over the city in 1665, it took two years to run its course. And in the process, it claimed the lives of nearly 100,000 people. And that was a lot of tragedy to deal with, on the personal and the public level.


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[Assistant] The biggest problem seemed to be what to do with all those corpses.


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[Assistant] We've all seen films like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and can all remember lines like, bring out your dead, and from what we can tell, that's pretty close to how it actually would have been. A steady, daily flow of bodies out of the city, away from the places where people lived in the hope that it would stop the spread of the disease.


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[Assistant] And most of the bodies were carried outside the city limits. One such burial location was started by the Earl of Craven, who purchased a parcel of land west of the city for disposal of plague victims. And every night, for months on end, carts filled with rotting corpses were wheeled out onto his land and then dumped into the pits there.


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[Assistant] Over time, the place became known as the Pest House Field, and later it was named Gelding Close.


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[Assistant] But to be honest, few people actually went there. They were too afraid of what might happen if they got too close to the body of a plague victim or, heaven forbid, accidentally touch one. So the burial plot, like so many others around the city, became a sort of no man's land.


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[Assistant] After years of waiting, the owners of the land eventually made the decision to use the property for development. London was growing, and there would always be a need for a new neighborhood to settle in. So it was sold in pieces and developed into homes for the wealthy and elite to move away from the center of the city.


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[Assistant] Gelding Clothes eventually became known as Golden Square, and today it's a prominent feature in the Soho area of London. But even though the name has changed and the landscape around it has been transformed, the past is still there, lingering in the shadows of modern life.


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[Assistant] In fact, more than a few visitors to the park and buildings that surrounded have bumped into the past in a very real way. A few have seen the figures of people dressed in old-fashioned clothing slipping through the square at night, while most have caught the sound of wailing as if someone were enduring horrible pain and suffering.


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[Assistant] But it's not the specific things people have heard over the years that are the most terrifying aspect of these stories. No, it's where they all claim the voices have come from. The sounds, they say, seem to emanate from right beneath their feet.


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[Assistant] A city as old and historic as London is guaranteed to have a library of mysterious shadows and otherworldly experiences. And I hope today's tour has been a satisfying dip into that enormous pond.


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[Assistant] But I'm not done just yet. There's one more legend from this city that I absolutely love. And if you stick around through the sponsor break, I plan to tell you all about it.


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[Assistant] When you think of London, it's easy to think of money. As far back as the Roman period of the city, there has been an overt focus on the financial industry.


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[Assistant] In about 240 AD, for example, the Romans constructed a Mithraeum, a temple devoted to the god Mithras. Some of the most common members of the cult of Mithras were merchants, traders, customs officials, and politicians. All professions that revolved around the flow of money. But it didn't end with the Romans.


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[Assistant] As the centuries ticked by, the people of London found new and better ways to manage money and build the economy. In the year 1100, King Henry I instituted a new system of currency that even the most illiterate and uneducated citizens of his kingdom could understand.


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[Assistant] The tally stick. It was essentially a polished wooden rod that had nicks carved into it to denote its value, and it was then split down the middle.


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[Assistant] The king kept one half, while the other was put into circulation in places like the city markets. And that's where the system really shined. If anyone tried to change the value of the public half by adding another nick, it just needed to be compared to the other half kept safe by the crown.


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[Assistant] The Bank of England. It was created in 1694 to solve a tricky financial problem the government of England faced. They needed to build a massive navy to defend themselves, but lacked the funds to do it. So an elaborate system of lending and currency came to their rescue.


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[Assistant] It had all the prestige and power you might expect from a government-backed bank. And had established a reputation for itself that has carried into the 21st century. But I don't want to give you a tour of the bank's full history. I just want to tell you about one of their employees. A man named Philip Whitehead.


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[Assistant] Whitehead worked in the cashier's office of the Bank of England in 1811. Everyone around him viewed him as a pillar of the establishment. A hardworking, respectable man who was charming and delightful with staff and customers alike. Except that's not all he was. Philip was also a criminal.


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[Assistant] It turns out he had been forging bank documents for months, cheating the bank out of a slow trickle of money. And at some point in 1811, his misdeeds were discovered and he was quickly arrested and sent off to prison.


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[Assistant] A few months later in early 1812, Philip Whitehead hanged for his crimes, and the bank moved on.


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[Assistant] Several weeks after Philip's hanging though, a woman came into the bank asking for him. She said her name was Sarah, but when she asked to speak with Philip Whitehead, she was simply told that he was out of the office on a business errand. The woman left disappointed, but promised to be back at another time.


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[Assistant] The next time that she returned, she not only told them that her name was Sarah, but that she was Philip's sister. She told them of how she had lost touch with her brother many months earlier and that she had been desperate to find a way to reach him. And at some point, her story must have plucked at the hard strings of just the right bank employee, because one of the men took her aside and told her the truth. Her brother was dead.


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[Assistant] It wouldn't be Sarah's last visit to the bank though. The next time she returned she was dressed all in black, with a black veil that covered her face. She stepped into the lobby of the bank and asked to see her brother.


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[Assistant] Taking pity on the poor woman, an official at the bank pulled her aside, apologized for keeping his imprisonment and execution a secret, and offered a small settlement. It was a payoff, of course, designed to keep her from disturbing the other customers, but I'm sure he sold it to her more as a salve for her aching heart.


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[Assistant] Over and over again, Sarah Whitehead visited the bank, each time dressed in that black gown and veil. At first her voice was nothing more than a whisper, but with each new visit her question became louder and more aggressive. Where is my brother? she continued to ask.


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[Assistant] Each of those visits ended with another small payment from the bank. But they weren't the charity house and eventually decided that enough was enough. Pulling her aside one day, they handed her a massive settlement and told her never to return. And to her credit, Sarah Whitehead listened. She never again set foot inside the bank.


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[Assistant] Although it's said she also never wore anything else but that black gown and dark veil.


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[Assistant] We don't know how long Sarah lived after that. Sometimes grief has a way of speeding up a person's decline, while other times it seems to give them a reason to go on. But decades later, Sarah passed away, having spent the remainder of her life in a constant state of mourning for her dead brother.


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[Assistant] Legend says that the churchyard she chose for her burial was the one right next door to the bank. Maybe she wanted to keep an eye on them from the other world, or perhaps it just happened to be where she attended church. I like to think it was the former, and that those who still worked at the bank and knew her story were aware of where she was buried. It's very poetic, whether or not it was actually true. But her story doesn't end there, of course.


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[Assistant] In the years following Sarah Whitehead's death, employees inside the bank began to report seeing strange things.


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[Assistant] Oftentimes, it was nothing more than a movement just out of their field of vision, caught in the corner of their eye, but never there when they turned their head. Other times, it was the fleeting vision of something black and shadowy.


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[Assistant] Many who have worked in the bank claim that certain areas give them a feeling of hopelessness and despair. And on rare occasions, some claim a mysterious shape has even materialized right before their eyes. All of them have described it in the same way, too, giving the old stories new life as the decades have passed by. They say the shape is that of a woman.


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[Assistant] Each time she appears, her pale skin is framed by a dress as black as coal. A veil that had once covered her face pulled back to reveal twisted lips, red cheeks, and eyes that seemed to glow like fire.


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


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


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[Assistant] They had assembled an artistic dream team.


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[Assistant] The legendary painter, Antoine van Dyck, had been hired to draw the face of King Charles of England from multiple angles.


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[Assistant] Next, those drawings were shipped to Italy, where sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini would bring them to life in the form of a bust.


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[Assistant] But his progress was much slower than the royal court back in England had expected, so they asked for an explanation. Bernini responded, telling them that every time he sat down to work on the bust, there was something in the character of the king's face that unsettled him, and he would have to walk away. Over and over again.


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[Assistant] Finally, in 1637, Bernini managed to complete his work and it was transported back to England. The king, anxious to see the finished product, ordered it to be unveiled right there outside the palace of Whitehall. And when he saw it, he smiled at its beauty.


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[Assistant] Then, as they stood there, a hawk flew over the crowd, a freshly killed animal in its claws, and from that animal, a single drop of blood fell, landing directly on the neck of this brand new ghostly white bust of the king.


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[Assistant] Which was then placed over a door in the king's private chambers without ever being cleaned.


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[Assistant] A decade later, though, Charles I would be arrested and beheaded by the parliamentarians, and those with an eye for detail have noted how that random drop of blood on the neck of his bust almost seemed to hint at his future death, foreshadowing in all its macabre glory.


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[Assistant] Humans have always been obsessed with fate. We use the concept as a fitting explanation for coincidence and chance. But stories like that of Charles I have a way of leaving us wondering if something more is going on.


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[Assistant] What if fate could literally step through the door, materialize right before our eyes, and tell us what we're supposed to do?


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[Assistant] If the stories are true, that's exactly what happened over two centuries ago on the rocky coast of New England.


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[Assistant] Community is a powerful thing. There's something about having people around us, supporting us, being there when life gets rough. Well, it's as powerful as folklore. And that was just as true in the late 1700s, out there on the northern edges of colonial Maine, as it is today. Community matters.


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[Assistant] For the people of the village of Sullivan, community was also essential. They founded their settlement as a community. It worked as one, and struggled as one.


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[Assistant] Now, remember, this was 1797, and back then, death hovered a lot more closely to everyday life. Every time a woman went into labor, she had a 1% chance of not surviving. Children had it worse, with something close to half of all babies failing to survive the first five years.


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[Assistant] For Nellie and her child, the odds were stacked against them.


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[Assistant] Nelly's widower was a man named George, and like so many before him who have suffered horrific tragedy, he mourned and struggled, and then slowly moved forward.


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[Assistant] He recovered. He healed as best he could. And within two years he was courting a new woman. Her name was Lydia Blaisdell.


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[Assistant] A local legend says that Lydia's parents weren't too pleased with her choice in a suitor. But those legends don't actually give us a reason for that prejudice.


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[Assistant] Perhaps it was the fact that she was just 15 at the time. Or maybe that they just wanted someone less experienced than poor, tragic George. But that disappointment didn't stop the couple from staying together.


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[Assistant] In August of 1799, Lydia's parents began to notice sounds coming from their cellar. That wasn't unusual, though. As the weather turned colder, it was all too common for small animals to invade a home and settle in.


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[Assistant] But as autumn turned to winter, those noises also changed. Soon enough, they sounded less like the scratching of animals and more like knocking. And not the random knocking that might have been blamed on contracting timber in the cold weather.


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[Assistant] This seemed more human in origin. It was as if there was a hidden door inside the cellar, and someone was knocking on it, trying to get their attention.


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[Assistant] Someone, it seemed, was talking in the cellar. So Lydia's father, Mr. Abner Blaisdell, grabbed a lantern and carefully descended into the darkness beneath the house.


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[Assistant] I don't know what he was expecting to find, but apparently there was nothing to see.


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[Assistant] His ears though, well they told him a different story.


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[Assistant] The voice called out again, louder now that he was in the cellar, but Mr. Blaisdell couldn't find the speaker.


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[Assistant] It's not clear what Abner Blaisdell's immediate reaction was. We don't know if he dropped the lantern and ran, or slowly backed up the stairs like some character in a Scooby-Doo episode. Maybe he chatted more with the mysterious voice. Or maybe that was all the information he needed.


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[Assistant] What we do know is that soon he was back upstairs with his family, where he told them what he had heard.


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[Assistant] And after a bit of discussion, they all decided that there was only one way to determine whether this was a morbid prank or not. They needed to bring Eleanor's loved ones in for a second opinion. So, two of the Blaisdell children were sent out into the snow.


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[Assistant] One traveled over six miles to reach the home of Eleanor's parents, the Hoopers. The other headed to Butler's Point, where George lived alone.


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[Assistant] But George apparently wasn't alone. In fact, Eleanor's very own sister, Sally, was visiting George along with her husband. And all of them declared it to be a sick joke, and they refused to play along.


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[Assistant] But Eleanor's father, David, was more intrigued. Despite the snowstorm that raged outside in the darkness, he bundled up and followed the Blaisdell messenger home. When he arrived, Abner Blaisdell led him into the cellar.


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[Assistant] We don't have a record of the words spoken to David Hooper that night, but when he came back up, he was convinced the voice was indeed that of his dead daughter. She told him things that only his Nellie would have known. It was proof positive that the unthinkable had happened. Nellie had returned from the grave.


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[Assistant] The voice also told David Hooper something else though. She said that her entire purpose for returning was to deliver her approval.


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[Assistant] She knew that George had moved on and was courting young Lydia. And so Nellie had arrived to tell them that they had her blessing.


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[Assistant] It was only after this powerful new element of the story was revealed that George Butler agreed to visit the cellar and hear for himself what the voice had to say. The next day he arrived and stood beside Lydia in the cellar. And then, he called out to it.


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[Assistant] Who are you? he asked, squeezing Lydia's hand.


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[Assistant] I was once your wife, the voice replied. And then she went on to reveal private conversations that only the real Nellie would have known about.


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[Assistant] And that's when something began to appear in front of them. There in the close quarters of the cellar.


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[Assistant] Butler later described it as the ghostly figure of a woman. A woman, he said, who held an infant in her arms.


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[Assistant] Overwhelmed by emotion and confused by what his eyes were looking at, George is said to have slowly extended his hand and reached out toward the figure. Then, after taking a deep breath, he touched it. The moment he did, though,


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[Assistant] In the following days, the events in that dark cellar began to spread, like a cloud of smoke billowing up from a choked fireplace. And the first of those encounters happened right outside the Blaisdell house, in broad daylight, in the middle of a snowy field.


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[Assistant] That's where Lydia's brother Paul was when he looked up and caught his breath.


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[Assistant] Right there, floating above the snow, was the same ghostly figure of a woman. And she was slowly drifting toward him.


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[Assistant] Naturally, Paul was terrified, and he turned and ran back home as fast as he could. And, let's be honest, most of us would have done the exact same thing.


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[Assistant] The following night, Paul went down to the cellar. And I have no idea why, because he knew that the voice and ghostly visions had all started there. Maybe his parents sent him, I don't know. Whatever the reason was, he did go. But while he was there, the same female voice called out his name.


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[Assistant] Again, he ran. But even as he did, he could hear the voice calling out, asking why. The ghost said she was offended. Paul had been rude to her, but he didn't care. He just wanted to get out of the cellar as fast as he could. Once back with his family, he told them what had happened.


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[Assistant] The trouble was, you can't share a story like that and not expect it to spread.


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[Assistant] Remember, community is a powerful thing. Yes, having people around you means that you have support when life gets difficult.


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[Assistant] Community can be a lot like the wooden concrete forms around the foundation of a house, holding everything in until it's solid again.


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[Assistant] So as the story spread of these encounters in and around the Blaisdell household, neighbors began to travel over to see for themselves. Spectators. Curious onlookers. Rubberneckers. Call them whatever you want. These neighbors came for a show. Boy, did they get one.


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[Assistant] People constantly filled up the Blaisdell house, and everywhere they went, they heard the voice. Oftentimes, it was in various rooms of the house, but the vast majority of sightings, if we can call them that, were down in the cellar.


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[Assistant] Everyone heard them too. It was entertaining. It was powerful. And it was frightening in how believable it had all become.


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[Assistant] On one occasion, Abner Blaisdell had escorted 14 other people, neighbors and strangers alike, down into his cellar. While they were there, he decided to test the ghost, what everyone had come to refer to as the Spectre, and asked her about his elderly father who lived almost 200 miles away.


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[Assistant] Abner knew his father had been sick for some time, but if this entire ghostly, disembodied voice experience was just a hoax, the odds were good that the prankster had no idea.


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[Assistant] There were other reasons to suspect a hoax though, and the biggest of them was the entire reason for Nellie's return. She had told the Blazedells that she only wanted to deliver her blessing to George and Lydia. To tell them it was acceptable for them to move forward and be married. And to a lot of people, that felt a bit too convenient.


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[Assistant] So convenient, in fact, that many people assumed Lydia was somehow behind the entire thing.


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[Assistant] To them, this Spectre was clearly not the ghost of Eleanor Butler, back from the grave to issue her approval. It was Lydia herself.


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[Assistant] Some thought she was trying to convince her parents to allow the marriage. Others assumed George was having second thoughts, and this was some trick that she had devised to keep him close. She was behind it either way. They were sure of it. But there was a problem with that theory.


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[Assistant] You see, people had seen the specter. Multiple eyewitnesses reported the same vision. A pale, ghostly woman, sometimes holding an equally ghostly infant and sometimes alone. Many heard her speak and watched her move.


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[Assistant] Theories were great and all, but it was hard to believe them when proof was standing right in front of you.


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[Assistant] And not just visions in general. Oftentimes the specter of Eleanor could be seen beside Lydia, in the cellar of her house, in other rooms upstairs, even outside as Lydia walked to neighboring homes, following along almost like a travel companion.


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[Assistant] They very clearly couldn't be Lydia in a costume when she herself was standing right there in plain view.


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[Assistant] It was in the midst of all of this that something happened. One day, a knock was heard in the Blaisdell house, but this one came from the front door.


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[Assistant] Abner opened it to find a messenger with a letter, and he welcomed the man inside.


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[Assistant] This man said he'd come to deliver news, news of Abner's father. It had taken him over a week to travel north, but he'd wanted Abner to know as soon as possible. Yes, his father had indeed been sick, but that illness had finally taken his father's life.


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[Assistant] The ghost of Nellie Butler. That had been right all along.


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[Assistant] Abner Blaisdell was one of the few in town who actually needed convincing. Most people had bought into the idea that this specter, this ghostly echo of Eleanor Butler, was actually real. And from what the stories go on to tell us, she was also more than a little bossy.


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[Assistant] This wasn't one of those ghost hunter episodes where you're on the edge of your seat for an hour waiting for a spirit to knock against a pipe in response to a question. No, this spectral visitor took charge, telling the living people around her to do things.


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[Assistant] Sometimes those requests were benign, such as instructing people to stand in certain locations or to walk beside her as she moved from place to place.


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[Assistant] She also asked for more witnesses, telling the people of the village to go and find others who could stand in her presence.


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[Assistant] But that wasn't always as fruitful as everyone hoped. It turned out there were some who were sort of immune to her. They could stand in the same room as the whole crowd of witnesses. And while everyone else might see and hear Eleanor clearly, they would see nothing and only hear distant mumbles that might or might not actually be words.


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[Assistant] There were other, more unusual experiences too. On more than one occasion, the ghost of Eleanor was said to have appeared as a tiny version of herself, and then slowly expanded to full size.


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[Assistant] And then there was the time when she requested that the people of Sullivan actually exhume the body of her dead child and then moved it to another location in the very same graveyard.


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[Assistant] The people complied, by the way. And the legend says that as they completed this morbid task, the ghost of Eleanor hovered nearby like a protective mother.


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[Assistant] All of this activity continued for months. Winter had turned to spring, and then summer. By mid-August, a full year after the unusual noises had begun in the cellar of the Blaisdell home, this ghostly talk show had reached fever pitch.


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[Assistant] People traveled far and wide to come witness the spectral spectacle. Most of them believed it all to be true. But there were some who mocked the experience. Eleanor would attack them, declaring, Some of you say I am not a spirit. Others, that I am evil. But I shall see you all when you will not laugh.


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[Assistant] There was even a suggestion that her appearance hinted at something darker. Folklore said that ghosts often appeared when a person had died of violent death. Some of the records even indicate that a small informal investigation was launched, but it was never officially documented.


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[Assistant] Whether that notion of violent death hinted at murder or was simply connected to her tragic, untimely death during childbirth, no one can say for sure.


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[Assistant] Community thrives on variety though, so it's no surprise that there was at least one vocal skeptic of the whole ordeal. There was a man named John Millar who lived near the Blaisdell home, and it was his belief that all the stories were pure fiction, drummed up just to get attention.


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[Assistant] He even suggested, falsely of course, that the ghost had never been witnessed outside the cellar.


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[Assistant] When his words reached the people gathered in the Blaisdell house, they relayed Millar's message to the ghost herself, who clearly took the notion personally. So she did something unexpected. She gathered all of the people there, a crowd of many dozens, according to reports, and then led them out of the house and into the fields.


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[Assistant] Then, she marched slowly in the direction of John Millar's home.


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[Assistant] The whole experience has been compared to a funeral procession, with all the living participants slowly walking in a long orderly line. Completely normal. Except for the spectral figure leading the way, of course.


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[Assistant] Finally, once the group had reached their destination, the ghost turned her back on the house of John Millar to face a crowd of over 50 people.


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[Assistant] And right there in the field beside the house, she spread her arms wide and began to preach.


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[Assistant] When she was done a short while later, the spectral vision of Eleanor Butler flickered and faded. Until finally, there was nothing left to be seen at all.


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[Assistant] Friends glanced at one another with a look of confusion on their faces, for the ghostly figure was no longer among them. Eleanor was gone.


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[Assistant] A community is a lot like the human body. When something unexpected enters it, like a virus, there's always the chance that the entire thing will be affected or changed.


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[Assistant] Flip through the pages of history and you'll find countless examples of that sort of infection. Politics, religion, science, war. All of them have a way of changing a community.


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[Assistant] The specter of Sullivan was another of those moments, just on a local scale. And still, everyone reacted to the ghost's mission in their own way.


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[Assistant] Hundreds of people believed it all to be true. John Millar was a lot more skeptical. Abner Blaisdell, who'd been opposed from the start to the idea of marriage between his daughter Lydia and George Butler, didn't change a single bit, despite what he had experienced.


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[Assistant] And Lydia herself felt as if she were being forced into something, so she ended their courtship. Yes, she loved George, but she also wanted to make her own choices, not follow the whim of some spectral matchmaker. Her parents were elated, and George, of course, was heartbroken.


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[Assistant] Even as the ghostly visitations of Nellie Butler were bringing travelers from far and wide, Lydia was planning to leave the town for good. And then, she changed her mind.


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[Assistant] Some say that Eleanor appeared to her personally and demanded that she marry George, while others believe she simply gave in and let love lead the way.


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[Assistant] There's an option in there for just about everyone, I guess. The paranormal enthusiast or the hopeless romantic.


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[Assistant] So right in the middle of that bizarre, unexplainable year of the Spectre, on May 28th of 1800 in fact, George and Lydia were finally married. The visions continued, of course, as did the eyewitness reports, and then it all came to a crescendo that August afternoon with Nellie's sermon in front of John Millar's house.


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[Assistant] And it really does seem like the ghost of Nellie Butler got what she wanted. She was upfront about her motives from the start and maintained focus throughout it all. George and Lydia were meant to be married. It was almost as if she had simply returned to make sure that marriage was guided safely into the port of fate.


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[Assistant] If it's true, it's frightening. The idea that people can return from the grave to influence the lives and decisions of the living. That they can make demands, command authority, and literally walk among us. That's not an easy pill to swallow. So it's easy to see why people might doubt that it happened at all.


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[Assistant] Then again, if it is all just a work of fiction, at least it's romantic, right? Their love and marriage were fated to take place, it seems. What better proof could we ask for than two soulmates who belonged together? It was, as George McFly once said, their density.


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[Assistant] But Nellie Butler appeared to have had one more bit of fate to reveal to the happy couple. It's said that on the day after their wedding, she appeared before them privately and gifted them with a warning.


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[Assistant] In March of 1801, just ten months after the couple were married, Lydia went into labor with their first child. The infant, sadly, did not survive.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke. Research assistance was provided by Marsat Crockett, music by Chad Lawson, and administrative assistance by Carl Nellis.


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[Assistant] Lore is a lot more than just bi-weekly audio stories. There's a book series from Penguin Random House, a television show on Amazon Prime Video, a membership site with extra episodes, and so much more. And you can learn about everything over in one brand new place, theworldoflore.com slash now.


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[Assistant] You can get the latest lore news delivered straight into your inbox by subscribing to the Epitaph, the official lore newsletter. You can learn more about that over at lorepodcast.com slash newsletter. And hey, if you're a social media sort of person, you should follow the show on


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[Assistant] Facebook and Instagram or maybe all three. Just search for lore podcast, all one word, and then click the follow button. And when you do say hi, I like it when people say hi.


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[Assistant] Well, let me share one last tale with you since you stuck around. Because life in Sullivan, Maine would never be the same.


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[Assistant] A lot had changed in the five years since the specter of Sullivan had shaken up the community and then disappeared.


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[Assistant] The sightings had stopped. Life had settled back into the mundane routine that everyone remembered. People just sort of moved on.


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[Assistant] For no one was this more true than George Butler. After Lydia died, he took all of her belongings and placed them in a rowboat which he lit on fire and then pushed out into the sea.


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[Assistant] Maybe he was trying to rid himself of all that destiny and fate that seemed to follow him around. If that sort of thing can work, it did.


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[Assistant] He married Mary Guggins a short time later, and she managed to outlive his first two wives by decades, passing away 60 years later at the age of 85.


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[Assistant] Abraham Cummings was a minister who lived near the village of Sullivan, where he cared for the members of his church and went about his normal everyday life. He'd been interested in the sightings of Nellie Butler's ghost, but never plucked up the courage to go see it all for himself. And maybe he regretted that, just a little bit.


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[Assistant] So when he heard a rumor in July of 1806 that her ghost had returned, he didn't think twice. He followed the details of that rumor to a field somewhere in Sullivan, and then he walked around by himself trying to find her, this spectral visitor from another place. And it worked.


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[Assistant] At first, Abraham said he thought it was a pale stone hovering above the ground, but that shape grew and changed, finally becoming the ghostly white figure of a woman.


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[Assistant] She glowed, he said, almost as bright as the sun above them. And he was so overwhelmed with excitement that he didn't even speak to her. He just ran as fast as he could to a nearby house to grab the people inside and bring them out to see her. When they returned to the field though, the sheet was gone.


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[Assistant] Abraham later wrote that it was one of the greatest errors of his life. If he had regrets before those paled in comparison to this new mistake.


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[Assistant] Here he was, a minister of God, presented with the chance to speak to someone who had gone through the veil and then somehow returned, and he dropped the ball.


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[Assistant] He would go on to write about his experience, as well as the experiences of so many others from five years before, in a short book he published called Immortality Proved by Testimony of Sense. But that was it for Abraham.


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[Assistant] His chance had arrived, but like smoke in the wind, it was gone.


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[Assistant] They'd spent over a million dollars building the place and it showed. Architectural critics hailed it as beautiful, elegant, and ready for large, wealthy crowds. There was an asbestos curtain that could be dropped onto the stage and a large skylight that could vent flames and smoke away from the crowds.


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[Assistant] They said the Iroquois Theater was as safe as you could get in the city of Chicago.


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[Assistant] The theater could seat a little over 1,600 people across three levels. That's a lot of people crammed into a small space. And while the owners bragged about how fireproof the place was, it was poorly designed for the quick exit of a sold-out audience.


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[Assistant] So when a fire broke out in December of 1903, right in the middle of a matinee performance of Mr. Bluebeard, they quickly realized they had a problem.


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[Assistant] It didn't help that the show had been vastly oversold. Close to 500 additional standing room only tickets had been made available, bringing the audience to nearly 2,200 people. That's over 2,000 people all trying to run to an exit at the same time.


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[Assistant] A quarter of them would never make it out alive, making it the deadliest theater fire in America.


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[Assistant] During the recovery efforts, first responders spent over five hours carrying the dead out of the building. Over 150 charred corpses were piled there, sometimes ten bodies high, on the brick alleyway behind the theater.


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[Assistant] Today, if you're using Crouch Place as a shortcut between the Chicago Theater and the Goodman Theater, keep your senses on alert.


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[Assistant] Between reports of disembodied voices and the scent of burned flesh, it's a crowded place.


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[Assistant] The Windy City is a wonderful place full of art and beauty and deep historical diversity, but it's also a community plague by tragedy and haunted by stories from the past.


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[Assistant] As far as American cities go, Chicago isn't necessarily the oldest in the country. Considering the sale in which trials took place in 1692 in a community that had been there for three generations, the incorporation of Chicago in 1833 makes it look like a baby by comparison.


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[Assistant] That's not a bad thing, mind you. And as we're about to learn, a city doesn't have to be ancient to have darkness in its veins.


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[Assistant] Humans have actually lived on the land now occupied by Chicago as far back as we can dig. The Native American tribe known as the Illinois were there when the first Europeans rolled up, and it's from them that we get the city name.


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[Assistant] Well, sort of. Turns out, Chicago is a really bad French version of an Illinois word for a kind of wild garlic. Next time you have garlic on your Chicago deep dish pizza, just think about how very meta that is.


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[Assistant] In 1833, there were just 200 people there, but that grew quickly. By 1850, that had exploded to 30,000, and two decades later, it had gone up again, hitting 300,000.


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[Assistant] And you can't grow like that without problems. Too many people too quickly, it has a way of gumming up the system and creating tragedy.


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[Assistant] But the reporter who first circulated that story admitted 20 years later that he made the whole thing up. It was just one more bit of anti-Irish prejudice in a country full of racism toward Irish immigrants. Still, it's stuck around.


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[Assistant] Another theory said that the fire did indeed begin in the O'Leary barn, but it was an accident caused by a group of young men playing a craps game that got out of hand.


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[Assistant] The most unlikely theory however, suggests that a meteor shower caused the inferno.


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[Assistant] A huge patch of the city, roughly a mile wide and four miles long, was burned to the ground. A third of the city was destroyed and, as a result, over 100,000 people were left homeless.


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[Assistant] I'm actually surprised that the loss of life wasn't higher than the 300 on record, considering just how widespread and complete the damage was. Still, it would take Chicago decades to recover from it all. Which presents us with a bit of a problem.


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[Assistant] Between the fire in 1871 and the World's Columbian Exhibition in 1893, Chicago transformed itself. And it wasn't all good.


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[Assistant] Remember, it was in the build-up to that exhibition that a local landlord named H.H. Holmes began his own building project, constructing a block-long apartment building with ground-floor retail space.


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[Assistant] And as we know, that building served a darker purpose as his very own murder mansion, complete with body shoots, gas chambers, and a basement for dissolving the evidence with acid.


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[Assistant] Tragedy would haunt the city in the decades to come. In 1915, over 2,700 employees of Western Electric boarded a steamship called the Eastland. They and their families are going to spend a Saturday traveling to Michigan City, Indiana for a summer getaway.


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[Assistant] Before it even left port, the ship capsized in the Chicago River, killing over 800 passengers.


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[Assistant] In 1929, a different kind of darkness fell over the city. On February 14th, snow was falling on the ground as seven men arrived at a warehouse on Clark Street to receive a delivery.


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[Assistant] They worked for a man named George Buggs Morin, a rival of mobster Al Capone, and the man who had recently had one of Capone's top men assassinated.


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[Assistant] The delivery was a trick, and five of Capone's men soon arrived dressed as police officers. They lined the seven men up against a brick wall inside, and then opened fire on them.


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[Assistant] Most historians today refer to the events of that day as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. But it was also a turning point for Capone.


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[Assistant] While he might have been far away from the Chicago warehouse, the murderers cast a spotlight on his business dealings, eventually leading to his arrest and imprisonment.


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[Assistant] What a lot of people don't know is what happened to that warehouse in the years following the massacre. For a while, someone tried to sell antiques out of the space. But in 1967, the building was in such poor repair that it was just torn down.


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[Assistant] That's when a Canadian man offered to buy the bricks that had made up the wall used by the firing squad. Bricks, according to the story. It still had dark stains on them from the blood of those seven men.


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[Assistant] If the stories are true, he sold each of those bricks for a thousand dollars. But those plans didn't work out so well.


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[Assistant] The few customers he found said they experienced a whole array of personal tragedy after buying the bloody bricks, and most were sent back. Whether they received a refund or not, I have no idea.


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[Assistant] Multiple tragic fires, explosive population growth, and an underbelly full of mobsters and hate crimes. All of it has left a mark on the city of Chicago, like bricks stained with blood.


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[Assistant] And even as the majority of the city tries to ignore it all and just get on with their daily lives, past has rarely been willing to step aside. Sometimes, in fact, it's gone out of its way to get attention, taking innocent people along for the ride.


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[Assistant] It had been a lover's quarrel, according to the people who spread the story.


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[Assistant] She and her boyfriend had been dancing with the rest of the people inside Chicago's O'Henry Ballroom when the young couple stopped moving and started yelling at each other.


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[Assistant] The place was loud, so no one was quite sure what the two were saying, but their body language made it very clear that neither of them was very happy.


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[Assistant] Apparently, it was the young woman who decided to leave the dance hall, so she stormed outside and stood in the cold night air.


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[Assistant] That's when she realized that her boyfriend, the man she had just been fighting with, was her ride home. So she decided to do the only thing she could think of. She would hitchhike.


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[Assistant] She walked to the side of the street and raised her hand toward oncoming traffic.


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[Assistant] Surely one of the passing cars would see her white dress in the darkness and pull over. But after a few minutes, she became frustrated.