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[Assistant] They brought along a large quantity of alcohol, and while Mr. Hay made sure that the jailer drank as much as he possibly could, as quickly as he could, William slipped over to the cell holding Hay's son and picked the lock.


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[Assistant] Then he smuggled the boy out and into the darkness. But he needed a hiding place where the boy could stay until he could be safely removed from the city, and that's where William proved how bright he was.


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[Assistant] He took the boy to Greyfriar Cemetery and then made his way to the tomb of Sir George Mackenzie, known throughout town as Bloody Mackenzie. William broke into the crypt and then hid the boy inside. And the plan worked.


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[Assistant] In August of 1786, William stepped up his life of crime. He managed to use a counterfeit key to break into a locked desk drawer in the offices of Johnson and Smith, bankers in the Royal Exchange. He stole a pile of sterling banknotes, valued at about $125,000 in modern US currency. Business, it seems, was good for William.


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[Assistant] But you need to spend money to make money, right? So a short time later he hired a handful of associates to become a sort of heist team. He needed more hands, more faces, and more players if he was going to be able to take on bigger jobs with higher payoffs.


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[Assistant] And that's how Andrew Ainsley, George Smith, and John Brown ended up working for William.


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[Assistant] On Christmas Eve of that year, they assembled for their first job as a team, breaking into a jeweler's shop called Bruce Brothers. They walked away with about $50,000 worth of precious stones, watches, and rings. Satisfied that the team had worked well together, William and his crew began a string of thefts that spanned nearly 10 months.


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[Assistant] In late October of 1787, they somehow managed to gain access to the room at the University of Edinburgh College, where the old ceremonial mace was kept. This object was a symbol of the university's authority, as well as being a priceless antique, and the men made off with it as easily as if it had been left out on the back steps.


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[Assistant] The rumors were rampant. The city was plagued by a thief, or thieves, who could not be caught. Shopkeepers were terrified of being the next victim, and some people even whispered about the supernatural nature of the thief. Whoever it was, they said, he seemed to be able to walk through walls.


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[Assistant] But of course they weren't going to catch him because they were looking in the wrong place. They assumed, as anyone would have in the middle of the 18th century in Edinburgh, that the thief was a poor desperate tenant of the slums of Old Town.


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[Assistant] But he wasn't. Instead, he was a member of the town council, the same people who were charged with investigating the theft of the mace and finding a replacement.


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[Assistant] William, you see, was the deacon of the incorporation of rites and masons. Sort of the president of the organization, if you will. And also the head of the craft of cabinet making. He was, in fact, one of the most prominent cabinet makers in the city. A trade and business that he had inherited from his father, Francis.


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[Assistant] And it was all that prominence, as well as his position on the town council, that had actually aided his life of crime.


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[Assistant] Whenever the council needed somebody to handle the city's carpentry jobs, they called on him. Things like repairing security mechanisms and installing locks. He frequently installed the front doors on local shops and all of his work gave him access to their keys.


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[Assistant] By night, though, he had this alter ego that felt ripped from the pages of modern comic books. He would step into a hidden area of his home and literally suit up for criminal activity. He had a disguise, a vast collection of tools, and even strapped on two pistols, you know, for those tricky situations, right?


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[Assistant] Brody hadn't always been criminally inclined. Most historians actually think that the source of his shift was a bit of pop culture.


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[Assistant] You see, as a teen, Brody was obsessed with a play called The Beggar's Opera, which was a huge hit at the time.


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[Assistant] Written in 1728 by John Gay, the show set a record for the most consecutive performances of any play in Scotland or England up to that point. Even after the streak ended, it was still performed consistently for decades.


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[Assistant] The story centers around the world of thieves and the upper class women who loved them.


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[Assistant] One of the main characters is this dashing, charismatic leader of an entire gang of criminals, and yet he somehow managed to find time to balance not one, but two mistresses. The glamour of that lifestyle, according to many historians, must have appealed to young William, because as he grew into adulthood, he took on more and more of that persona.


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[Assistant] William also loved to gamble. He belonged to an exclusive men's club known as The Cape and spent a good part of his time at a tavern called The Dice Box. But all of that gambling had also led to a good amount of debt.


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[Assistant] And even with all of this on his plate, a full-time job, his city appointments, the gambling addiction, all of it, he still managed to father five children by two separate mistresses. And all without either of the women knowing that the other existed. Sometimes it seems life truly does imitate art.


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[Assistant] As you might guess, paying for this lifestyle wasn't easy. And that's where the nighttime career as a thief came in. But for as good of a thief as he was, Brody never seems to have stopped.


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[Assistant] Maybe his gambling debt was just too large to ever go away. Or perhaps he just fell in love with the thrill that came with each successful heist. It's hard to say for sure. But what we do know is that even after a heist as high profile as the University Mace, he stayed active.


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[Assistant] In early 1788, he began planning the biggest heist of his career. It would be an armed burglary of His Majesty's Excise Office, the building where all of the tax revenue of Scotland was kept locked up. So he assembled his team and they set their plan in motion.


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[Assistant] This time though, they had no key, and Brody insisted that the whole team be armed with pistols.


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[Assistant] The events of that night are a bit fuzzy, but we do know that they managed to gain access to the building. At some point though, it seems that Brody stayed outside the door to act as a lookout, while the others made their way to the loot. While he was there, an excise official randomly returned to the building, and when Brody saw the man, he bolted into the night.


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[Assistant] Abandoned and exposed, the rest of the gang did their best to escape. The men walked away with about four pounds in their pockets. Nothing like the fortune that Brody had promised them. And as a result, they were more than a bit disgruntled.


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[Assistant] Later that same night, one of the men, John Brown, decided that it would be more profitable to turn Brody in. There was a price on the man's head, and so he reported the whole crew to the authorities in exchange for a hundred and fifty pounds and a king's pardon. Ainsley and Smith were arrested immediately, but William Brody was nowhere to be found.


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[Assistant] And that's because he had fled the country, making his way to Amsterdam.


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[Assistant] While he was away, the story broke, and Brody's careful public image shattered instantly. The city was shocked. He had been one of the Bright Ones, the elite, the hero, but he had turned out to be nothing more than a fraud.


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[Assistant] Brody was taken into custody and then brought back to Edinburgh, where a trial was set for August of that year. It went on for over two days with very few breaks, and in the end, Ainsley managed to escape charges. Smith and Brody, though, were both found guilty of theft. Their penalty? Death by hanging.


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[Assistant] A crowd of over 40,000 curious onlookers gathered to watch their execution on October 1st of 1788. They'd come to see a hanging. They'd come to see one of the new town elites get strung up like an old town pickpocket. They had come for justice.


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[Assistant] Despite all of this though, Brody was in good cheer that day. He wore a splendid black suit and a powdered wig, as if he were dressing up for a celebration, and climbed up the ladder with a spring in his step.


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[Assistant] He requested that his hands be left untied and then helped the hangman adjust the noose to get it just right before pulling the hood over his own head.


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[Assistant] His last act was to pull a handkerchief free from his pocket and drop it into the crowd.


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[Assistant] There's a legend that as a carpenter for the city, Brody actually built the gallows, but there's little evidence that the rumor is true. If anything, he helped draw up the plans for them, but that's about it.


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[Assistant] Another legend claims that he somehow inserted a metal pipe into his throat to prevent his neck from breaking, and that afterward a French doctor would revive him and spirit him away. None of it, sadly, is true.


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[Assistant] One thing that is true, though, is that Brody's execution took place at the toll booth, the very building, if you remember, where he committed his first crime years earlier, by freeing a prisoner who'd been sentenced to death. Irony is a wonderful thing sometimes, isn't it?


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[Assistant] If historians are correct, that attraction is what got William Brody into trouble in the first place. For him, it was a necessary evil that provided a solution to his personal problems. For others, maybe it's the desire to live out secret fantasies, or to express themselves in ways that their public life won't allow.


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[Assistant] Most people have a secret. Some people yell at their kids behind closed doors or drink a bit too much. Some apparently live secret lives as criminal masterminds and take their final bow from atop the gallows.


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[Assistant] The old cliche says that the real you is the person you are in private. For Brody, that couldn't have been more true. He was a womanizer, a cheat, and a criminal. But you wouldn't have known it by looking at him. It certainly begs the honest question. Deep down, beneath all the polish and public make-believe, who are any of us, really?


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[Assistant] It's a question that another Edinburgh native tried to answer nearly a century later. He was a writer, and in his youth he had written a play about William Brody that he called The Double Life. Sadly, it was a commercial flop.


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[Assistant] And it was a failure that he took personally too, because he felt like he had a real connection to Brody. Growing up, his parents owned furniture handcrafted by the man, so as far as this writer was concerned, it was as if he had been raised in the same household as the legendary thief.


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[Assistant] There was something about the tale that always stuck with him, even as he pushed further into his writing career. In 1885, he was sick in bed, struggling to recover from a lung infection when his sleep became fevered and broken. Then, one night, he awoke from a dream with a plot perfectly formed in his mind.


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[Assistant] Surely, he told his wife, this would satisfy his publisher's demand for a cheap new thriller, what he liked to refer to as a shilling shocker.


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[Assistant] Today, that novel is one of the finest psychological thrillers in all of British literature. It's been adapted more times than Frankenstein or Dracula and has inspired countless storytellers over the years. And if it wasn't for the influence and duplicity of William Brody, we wouldn't have the book at all.


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[Assistant] Folklore around the world is built on a small number of common ideas, all rooted in human nature. And I hope today's exploration of the double lives that people can live has served as a guided tour of one of those big ideas. We want to trust people, but sometimes they just aren't who they appear to be.


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[Assistant] Which is why I've saved one more tale of duplicitous devils for you to enjoy. Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.


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[Assistant] Double lives, ulterior motives, two-faced parents. It seems that throughout history some people have been too tricky to trust. But every once in a while someone comes along who goes against the grain. In a world where it's hard to put your faith in most people, sometimes the only person you can trust is the one you probably shouldn't.


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[Assistant] His name was John Revelstoke Ratham, an Australian-born journalist who was living in the US at the turn of the 20th century. He'd built an impressive reputation for himself over the years, having studied at Harrow School in England before reporting for the Melbourne Argus on a British military campaign happening in the Sudan.


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[Assistant] He was rarely away from the action. After spending some time embedded with the Chinese military, John went to Cuba to cover the Spanish-American war where he was severely injured. He then made his way to South Africa to report on the ongoing Boer War once he had healed.


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[Assistant] He finally wound up in America, where he received his citizenship, as well as congratulatory letters from both President William McKinley and future President Teddy Roosevelt. John had not only lived ten lives in the span of a handful of years, but others had taken notice of his work as well.


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[Assistant] Specifically, the hiring committee at the Providence Journal newspaper in Rhode Island.


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[Assistant] In 1912, they were looking for a new managing editor, and it seemed John was the perfect person for the job. And yes, it's true that the Providence Journal was a small paper in a small state, but its quality was unparalleled, and many of the stories published within its pages were reprinted in every other paper in America.


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[Assistant] John was soon promoted to head editor, and in 1915 saw a way to not just report the news, but to influence it. You see, at the time, the United States had a long history of not getting involved in international conflicts, unless absolutely necessary. The country was not going to intervene in World War I, unless it had to.


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[Assistant] John, on the other hand, didn't agree with this neutral stance, so he took matters into his own hands.


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[Assistant] With his team of journalist spies, the editor of the Providence Journal began uncovering evidence of German espionage. They would sneak into offices, read confidential papers, go undercover with the enemy, and infiltrate the spaces where they weren't welcome in an effort to gather as much intel as possible.


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[Assistant] However, none of this was done on behalf of the US government. It was all done in service of journalistic transparency.


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[Assistant] John published everything he and his team uncovered in the paper, including occurrences of German diplomats committing passport fraud, spreading propaganda, and stirring up labor unrest to sabotage the US weapons manufacturing industry.


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[Assistant] He even accused one specific German diplomat, military attaché Franz von Papen, of masterminding the bombing of a railroad bridge between Maine and Canada.


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[Assistant] John's work got Von Papen and other diplomats deported out of the United States. But that was only the beginning.


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[Assistant] Meanwhile, those who had supported those German diplomats affected by John's work started doing their own digging. Anything pertaining to his past became fair game. Allies, addresses, family members, anything they could use as leverage against him. They looked high and low, and what they finally came up with was... nothing.


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[Assistant] It was believed that the man known as John Wraitham was born as John Solomon in Melbourne, Australia in 1868. He wasn't really a journalist, just a very talented grifter and conman, and a brilliant actor.


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[Assistant] There was no evidence of a John ever having attended Harrow School, nor had anyone by that name written for the Melbourne Argus. Those tales from the front lines of the Spanish-American War and the Boer War


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[Assistant] It's probably safe to say that those were all fiction as well. And those congratulatory letters from present or future presidents didn't exist either. Heck, McKinley had already been dead for five years by the time John had earned his American citizenship.


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[Assistant] He had built his entire career on a foundation of lies. But what about all the hard work that he and his team had done to open the public's eyes to what the Germans were doing?


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[Assistant] Well, the easy answer is, all of that was nothing but propaganda. Every story about international espionage and diplomatic skullduggery had been concocted by John to help push the United States into war.


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[Assistant] But the truth didn't matter. Despite the fiction that he peddled, John became quite influential in American politics. So much so that the US government blackmailed him into silence in 1918.


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[Assistant] John, never afraid to push his luck, fought back and ruined his reputation in 1920. He died shortly after, and his name was barely uttered again.


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[Assistant] But his job was already done, because by that time the United States had fully entrenched itself in World War I, no doubt due in large part to the stories put out by the Providence Journal. So.


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[Assistant] What business did an Australian con man have spreading ally propaganda? Many believe it's because he actually believed in the cause. John allegedly wanted to combat the rampant German propaganda with a healthy dose of his own from the other side. You know, fight fire with fire.


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[Assistant] When you spend your life duping others for personal gain and look back on what you've accomplished, what do you have to show for it? Some money? A legacy of lies? Perhaps John just wanted to become the hero that he had fooled everyone into believing he was. But as the old saying goes, oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with additional writing help from Harry Marks and additional research help from Jenna Rose Nethercott, 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. You can find information about all of those things and more over at lorepodcast.com.


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


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[Assistant] It's right there in front of you. You just need to look harder.


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[Assistant] That was the case about a decade ago when Peter Williams, a historian at the University of Cambridge, asked his students to take images of a medieval document home to study over the summer of 2012.


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[Assistant] The manuscript in question dates back to the 6th century, so it's pretty old and significant on its own. But it turns out it was hiding something even more amazing.


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[Assistant] You see, it was actually a palimpsest manuscript, a fancy term for a recycled book. At some point, 1400 years ago, some economical scribe took an older document and washed and scraped it until it was blank again, so they could use it in their own project.


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[Assistant] But it was never a perfect process, and ten years ago, student Jamie Clare spotted those earlier shadows.


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[Assistant] After putting it through a series of x-rays and photographic tests that can see the microscopic metal from the original pigment, the older script actually came to life. And with it, a historical document that was long thought to be gone forever.


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[Assistant] It was a passage by the Greek astronomer, Hipparchus.


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[Assistant] Well, it was more than that. It was actually a list of coordinates for stars that Hipparchus himself tracked and studied more than 2000 years ago.


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[Assistant] In fact, they were able to prove that Hipparchus himself wrote it by finding the correct date for those star positions using known data about the Earth's precession, which pin the date right in the middle of his writing career.


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[Assistant] And the discovery proves something else. That for a very long time, humans all over the world have been looking up at the sky for answers to their questions.


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[Assistant] Not that they've always found them, though. In fact, sometimes those gazing eyes have spotted something wholly unexpected. And the results have been terrifying.


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[Assistant] If you live near a major city, or even in the suburbs, then you know what you typically see when you look up at night. Almost nothing.


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[Assistant] Sure, the odd planet shines through, and of course the moon, but most of the view is polluted by our electric lights.


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[Assistant] But head out into the wilderness, away from civilization, and you'll get a better idea of what our ancestors saw. Every single night. A sky filled with an uncountable number of stars. In fact, they were so intimate with that view that they started to draw them as collections known as constellations.


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[Assistant] Now the first constellations drawn by humans that we can put a definitive date on come from ancient Mesopotamia, way back in 1300 BC.


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[Assistant] But there's a cave in France that has dotted markings that some archaeologists believe represent stars, and it dates back to over 17,000 years ago.


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[Assistant] Basically, humans have been looking up and sketching what they see there for a very long time.


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[Assistant] Now, if I asked you to name some constellations, you would probably mention the Big Dipper or Orion's Belt. But when the Greek astronomer Ptolemy published his chart of stars about 1800 years ago, it included over a thousand stars grouped into 48 distinct constellations.


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[Assistant] Then in the 17th and 18th centuries, astronomers all over the world started making up their own and the list grew exponentially into the hundreds.


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[Assistant] The 88 official constellations that we have today were selected back in 1922 by the International Astronomical Union, cutting out all the rest.


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[Assistant] Constellations like Aranea, the long-legged spider, Hippocampus, the seahorse, the leech Heruto, and one that was supposed to look like the heart of Charles I of England, who was beheaded in 1649. Yeah.


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[Assistant] Of course, over the centuries there were other things that humans decided they could do with what they saw in the sky.


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[Assistant] There was aeromancy, the practice of divination using the shape of clouds, the patterns of bird migrations, and other atmospheric conditions to predict the future. Sort of a supernatural meteorology, I guess.


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[Assistant] The ancient Sumerians thought that by tracking the movement of certain stars, they were literally keeping an eye on the gods, watching them move across the night sky.


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[Assistant] And in ancient China, it was commonly believed that things like visible sunspots or full or partial eclipses were a sign of how things were going to go for the emperor, good or bad.


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[Assistant] And then there were other things. Objects in the sky that people have been unable to identify. And of course, when I mention that sort of phenomena, your mind probably drags up images of the 1940s and 50s, but UFOs aren't just a modern concept. And sightings date back further than Roswell and Rendlesham in Area 51.


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[Assistant] One early sighting that was recorded in the diary of a public official tells a most unusual story. The writer John tells us that a man named James Everall had been in a rowboat with two other friends on a river just outside of Boston when they spotted a bright light in the sky. John tells us that


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[Assistant] When it stood still, it flamed up and was about three yards square. When it ran, it was contracted into the figure of a swine.


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[Assistant] John, by the way, wasn't a random guy just writing things down for fun. He was John Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. And that diary entry was dated March 1st.


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[Assistant] And according to the rest of the text, other well-respected citizens came forward to report the exact same sighting. Same night, same place, same unexplainable object that moved quickly and then stopped on a dime.


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[Assistant] Oh, and Mr. James Everill reported something else that sounds very UFO-ish today. When the mysterious light finally vanished, he and his friends in the rowboat discovered that they had traveled a full mile against the current of the river without remembering that it happened.


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[Assistant] John Winthrop would go on to record many more similar sightings, but so did a lot of other people over the years. In May of 1900, for example, one woman reported seeing what appeared to be the massive illuminated shape of a cross floating a thousand feet above her town. Sparks seemed to drip off it as the object zipped around the sky.


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[Assistant] But when push comes to shove, no one witnessed more dramatic, mysterious visions in the sky than the folks who lived across America in the late 1890s. It was both a national craze and a local experience. And to those who lived through it, it was also the fright of their life.


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[Assistant] We have to begin with the overall mood of the world at the time. For context, in 1852, a French engineer named Henri Giffard had the bright idea to attach a steam-powered engine to a balloon filled with hydrogen gas and propelled the craft 17 miles. Not too bad for a first go at it.


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[Assistant] In 1895, a German guy named Ferdinand filed a patent for a fully designed airship. It had a rigid frame covered by a tough skin, which was all filled with hydrogen gas.


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[Assistant] Beneath a long thin balloon was something like a cable car, which housed two engines, passenger compartments, and a place for the crew, and it could zip around at 25 miles per hour.


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[Assistant] Ferdinand's last name, by the way, was Zeppelin, which is where the airship's name comes from.


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[Assistant] These were first steps. Rare machines that were pioneering something new. Powered, dirigible flight. They weren't the jetliners of their day yet, so most people only read about them in papers and books. Which is what makes the events of 1896 and 97 so unusual, I suppose.


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[Assistant] It started in November, November 17th of 1896, out in Sacramento, California. That evening between 6 and 7 PM, hundreds of people looked up and spotted something strange in the sky. As the front page article described it the following morning,


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[Assistant] They saw coming through the sky over the housetops what appeared to them to be merely an electric arc lamp propelled by some mysterious force.


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[Assistant] It came out of the East and sailed unevenly toward the Southwest, dropping now nearer to Earth and now suddenly rising into the air again, as if the force that was whirring it through the space was sensible to the dangers of collision with objects upon the Earth.


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[Assistant] More unusual though, was that many of the witnesses claimed to have heard men shouting from the craft. Things like,


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[Assistant] Lift her up quick, you are making for that steeple, and we ought to get to San Francisco by tomorrow.


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[Assistant] If that was the end of it, we could write it off as a random dirigible enthusiast, if that's a thing, who just wanted to go for a joyride in state-of-the-art European technology on the western edge of the United States. But it didn't. In fact, it was just the beginning of many similar sightings.


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[Assistant] Each sighting came with a description, too. And while there were a lot of details that varied from place to place, many were eerily similar. People frequently described a white central headlamp with colored lights beside it, often in red and green. But the strangest similarities centered around the body of the craft.


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[Assistant] Most described it as nearly 200 feet long, larger than any dirigible at the time.


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[Assistant] Weirder still, a good number of witnesses claimed that the aircraft had wings, described as almost as long across as the ship's own length. Some of the ship's surfaces were apparently metallic, too, and there was a sort of basket hanging from its underside, which many said contained a pilot.


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[Assistant] And I mentioned that there were a lot of witnesses, but I'm not sure that fully represents what I mean. Over the span of just five months, reports came in from over 150 different witnesses. The craft was spotted in 20 different states in the US, sometimes hundreds of miles apart on the same day.


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[Assistant] And I could spend hours telling you all about them, but here are a small handful of good examples. On April 6th of 1897, hundreds of people in Wilmington, North Carolina stood on the wharf and watched as a craft covered in green and red lights passed by overhead. Some people even saw a rope hanging down from the basket.


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[Assistant] Eight days later on April 14th, a farmer in Wolf Creek, Arizona named Richard Butler spotted an airship while he was out in his horse-drawn wagon.


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[Assistant] When they spotted the thing in the air, his horses bolted and capsized the wagon. And on the same day, all the way over in Rochester, New York, local man Cyrus Wheatley was out helping a neighbor with a sick cow when he spotted red and green lights in the sky, flanking a brighter white headlight.


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[Assistant] And reading through them, it's easy to assume all of these encounters were benign and safe and from a distance.


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[Assistant] But in at least one report, things became much more dangerous. On March 9th, out in Utah, people all over town looked up at about 9.30 in the morning and spotted a strange craft in the sky. They claimed that smoke billowed out of three distinct smokestacks, and it was moving quickly. And then, the craft exploded.


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[Assistant] Witnesses say that the blast was heard as far away as 20 miles, but it also had been so low in the sky that the explosion was felt like the concussion of some sort of bomb. Windows and houses for miles around were shattered by the force of it, and lights were knocked out.


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[Assistant] After it was all over, one man, David Lefure, went out into his barn to check on his horses.


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[Assistant] He found one of them unresponsive to sound, as if the explosion had caused it to go deaf, and the other according to the report had been decapitated by some of the debris.


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[Assistant] And that right there would be enough for anyone to be afraid of. And yet just a decade later, one woman experienced something that changed not only her own life, but that of her entire family.


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[Assistant] It was 1911, and the whispers of the airship sightings from 14 years earlier had sailed off over the horizon. Folks all across America had settled back into the more mundane aspects of life, although I'd have to assume they sometimes still glanced up at the sky. People will probably never stop doing that.


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[Assistant] Idella was 36 at the time, living in central Ohio. In mid-May of that year, she decided that she wanted to go visit her grandmother who lived about 40 miles away to the east. So she bought a ticket and boarded a train for the town of Broadway, heading out with a smile on her face and that anticipation that comes with seeing loved ones that you miss.


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[Assistant] When she arrived at her grandmother's home, though, something was wrong. Idela had left that good mood behind and seemed to be a shell of her former self. She was in emotional distress. She barely spoke and was sullen and dark. And that was just on the inside.


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[Assistant] Her body also showed signs of some sort of immense physical trauma, as if she had been in an accident. There were burn marks on her face, her tongue was badly swollen, and there was a strange indentation across the back of her lower leg, as if some enormous rope had bound her tightly, leaving a mark in the skin.


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[Assistant] Understandably, her family was concerned. Upon seeing the state that Idela was in, her grandmother called for Idela's mother to come help. Her mother then called Idela's two brothers and one sister, and the family sort of converged on the house in Broadway to surround and support her.


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[Assistant] When it became clear that Idela wasn't going to recover anytime soon, one of her brothers caught a train home to make sure that someone was there to care for Idela's kids. The rest just sort of moved in, becoming full-time caretakers to a woman they had known and loved for years. But they weren't hopeful.


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[Assistant] Idela could barely manage life anymore. And while she would attempt small talk from time to time, whenever someone asked her about what happened, she would immediately become so terrified that she was unable to speak.


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[Assistant] There were darker days ahead too. Idela attempted to take her own life a number of times, once even throwing herself into a nearby river until her mother jumped in to save her. But the truth came out one night in the kitchen, as Idela stood at the sink with her mother and her sister Elsie in the room behind her.


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[Assistant] She told them how, on her journey to the house in May, they had come out of the sky and told her that they were going to destroy everything. Her kids, her family, and the rest of the world.


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[Assistant] She even sat up at night and wrote her experiences down, but according to Elsie, their mother burned those pages every time. Out of shame, she thought, for the fantastical lies that they assumed she was telling.


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[Assistant] By February of 1912, Idella had been sent to a mental health facility in Columbus, Ohio. And a few months after that, she managed to sneak away from the caretakers there and end her own life.


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[Assistant] A very dark chapter had ended for their family, and on a tragic note. And from that day forward, no one spoke of it again. It was a mystery that the family would just lock away and never tell another soul.


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[Assistant] But no secret can stay hidden forever. It took six decades, but eventually Elsie had to speak out. And the reason for that was because of something she read.


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[Assistant] You see, in 1972, a man named J. Allen Hynek started an organization that published articles and research of a very particular kind.


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[Assistant] He had worked for years as a consultant to the US Air Force, but he left after they made it clear that they weren't interested in his unusual ideas.


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[Assistant] And it was those ideas that Elsie read about in 1973, 61 years after her sister's mysterious encounter and tragic death.


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[Assistant] Reports of other events that sounded eerily similar to Idela's. Reports of lost time, unexplainable injuries, and talk of someone or something coming out of the sky.


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[Assistant] It helped Elsie finally put a name to the events that happened to her sister, and helped her better understand the physical and emotional damage that she and her family were all witness to.


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[Assistant] It happened decades before the events at Roswell, New Mexico, but the comparisons were clear.


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[Assistant] J. Alan Hynek, the man who coined the term close encounter, had inadvertently helped her discover the truth.


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[Assistant] Today the skies above us are pretty busy. If you're like me and you live in the vicinity of a major airport, it can often seem like there's always some giant metal bird to look at whenever we glance upward.


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[Assistant] We still can't help ourselves, after all. The sky is a playground, as the Foo Fighters sing. There's always something going on above us.


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[Assistant] But that doesn't explain the mysterious sightings across America in 1896 and 97.


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[Assistant] Yes, it was the sort of vessel that a few people in Europe had heard about, but it was far from a common thing and nothing that anyone would expect to find popping up all over the United States. Even if those sightings were truly just some giant airship in the sky, they were wildly out of place on the timeline of powered balloon flight.


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[Assistant] Sadly, it seems to be a mystery that will never be solved.


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[Assistant] At the time, a number of people came forward with claims to be the mastermind behind one or more of the ships.


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[Assistant] Right after that first sighting in Sacramento in November of 1896, an attorney announced that he had been hired to represent the anonymous scientist who built the airship. A second attorney disputed that story though, claiming that he was the true representative.


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[Assistant] A month later, Henry H. Hearn learned about the airship and claimed that the invention was his own, but that the designs had been stolen. His outbursts of anger turned violent, and he eventually was placed in an institution to make sure that he couldn't harm himself or anyone else.


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[Assistant] In April of the following year, a woman in Ohio named Eleanor Woodruff started to violently attack friends and family members because they refused to give her the money necessary to build an airship of her own. She too was placed in an asylum.


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[Assistant] People were so desperate for answers that they sent countless letters to Thomas Edison assuming that he was either behind it or he knew who it was. Edison eventually had to respond publicly, making it clear that he had nothing to do with the mysterious airships. One last thing.


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[Assistant] Remember how I told you of the hundreds of constellations that were killed off in 1922 by the International Astronomical Union? One good bit of news is that all of Ptolemy's 48 original constellations were kept, even if that meant that we lost so many curious and wonderful alternatives in the process.


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[Assistant] Honestly, this world is a little less cheerful without Scurrious Volans, the flying squirrel looking down on us from the night sky.


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[Assistant] Ferdinand von Zeppelin was a ground-breaker. There's no doubt about that. But a century before he filed his patent, another man was making his own mark on the world of balloons.


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[Assistant] Actually, we really need to go back even further in time to the Montgolfier brothers, Joseph Michel and Jacques Catian.


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[Assistant] They were the ones who gave us the hot air balloon that we think of today. You know, the large globe-like structure with a longer bottom, like an upside down teardrop. And it was their experience with their family business, paper manufacturing, that helped them find the right materials.


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[Assistant] In 1793, that design set a record for manned free flight by soaring 3,000 feet above Paris and traveling nearly six miles. It sounds pretty weak by today's standards, but back then it drew a massive crowd.


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[Assistant] Historians think that upwards of a hundred thousand people gathered to watch it happen, including King Louis XVI and a guy most of us have heard of, Benjamin Franklin.


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[Assistant] But hydrogen entered the picture a couple of decades earlier and balloon enthusiasts were looking for ways to use it. In 1785, a Frenchman named Jean-Pierre Blanchard, along with an American doctor, became the first to fly over the English Channel in a hydrogen balloon. It took them two and a half hours.


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[Assistant] Blanchard became an overnight celebrity in his home country of France. He went on to be the first to fly a balloon in America, Germany, Belgium, Poland, and the Netherlands. And as his fame grew, he started to travel around, putting on balloon shows that, judging by the stories, were the monster truck madness events of the 1780s.


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[Assistant] Seriously, this man would strap dogs into parachutes and toss them out of his balloons. His shows included pyrotechnics too, literally shooting fireworks from his hydrogen-filled balloon. It was like a rock show, just without the loud music.


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[Assistant] Thanks to Blanchard, Europe was swept up in balloon mania. Everywhere you looked there were balloons for sale. Ceramic ones, ones printed on fabric, and even reproduced in fashion through round puffy sleeves and voluminous skirts. Some people even copied the man's haircut. Honestly, people loved him.


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[Assistant] In 1804, he married Sophie Armand, a woman half his age, and started to take her along on his tour. Through on-the-job training, she became a star right alongside Blanchard. In fact, just a year later, she became the first woman to fly solo. And then tragedy struck.


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[Assistant] While giving a balloon demonstration, Blanchard had a heart attack and plummeted out of his balloon.


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[Assistant] It's unknown if the fall ended his life or if he was already dead when he hit the ground, but it seemed as if the balloon tour was over.


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[Assistant] Instead, she kept the show going and just sort of took over. And despite the fact that she was a shy, nervous woman on the ground, once she climbed into that basket and lifted off, she became an absolutely fearless performer.


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[Assistant] She did it all, too. She launched fireworks from the balloon at her show. She dropped explosives and flew enormous distances. And sadly, yes, she also tossed dogs wearing parachutes out into the open sky. I suppose no one is perfect, right?


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[Assistant] For ten years, Sophie was the queen of balloons. Heck, Napoleon named her Chief Air Minister of Ballooning and tasked her with planning an air invasion of England, which obviously never came about.


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[Assistant] Four years later, King Louis XVIII named her the official aeronaut of the Restoration. It seems that everyone loved Sophie Blanchard.


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[Assistant] In July of 1819, she arrived in Paris for one of her regular performances, but she and her team noticed that there were a lot more fireworks than normal. Again, her balloon was filled with hydrogen gas, not hot air. And so it's a detail worth mentioning. And she discussed the dangers with her team and almost, almost canceled the show.


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[Assistant] But at the last minute, she caved into the chants of the crowd, climbed into her baskets, and lifted off the ground. There she was, soaring higher and higher above the crowd, wearing a white dress and white hat, waving a white flag. She was an angel, if ever there was one.


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[Assistant] And then, a spark ignited her balloon. Unable to descend due to high winds, she was blown off course. Minutes later, the basket struck the roof of a nearby building, spilling Sophie out and dropping her to her death below.


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[Assistant] She's buried today in Père Lachaise Cemetery there in Paris. Her epitaph makes sense too, if you know her story. Victim of her art and intrepidity.


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[Assistant] But visitors are given an extra hint, by way of an image carved into the stone above it.


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[Assistant] Lore has been a podcast since 2015 with 400 million downloads to date. You can learn more about this show, plus the book series and the television adaptation over at lorepodcast.com. And of course, be sure to click the subscribe button and the bell icon so that you don't miss future episodes. And if you enjoyed this one, click that thumbs up too.


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


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[Assistant] Elisha Perkins was born in Connecticut back in 1741 and trained as a physician before opening his own practice.


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[Assistant] He happily carried on the family business for years, until in the 1790s, he struck upon a new idea. You see, he had discovered a new tool of medicine, and he was ready to let the world come and benefit from its powers.


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[Assistant] He called them Perkins tractors, and they were a pair of metal pins, maybe three inches long, that were fat at one end and pointed on the other, sort of like two long elongated nails, and their power was quite extraordinary.


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[Assistant] All a person had to do was stand over a patient who was battling some painful ailment and use these Perkins tractors to trace over the area in question. And like magic, their troubles would go away.


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[Assistant] In a world of bloodletting and leeches, these tools were different. No skin was broken, and no blood was drawn. The sick person never even felt a twinge of pain. And for the modern equivalent of about $900, anyone could buy a pair from him.


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[Assistant] Enter John Hagarth, a British physician who was a little bit skeptical about the claims that Perkins was making. So in 1799, he gathered a bunch of patients together and split them into two groups. One received treatment with real metal Perkins tractors, while he used wooden versions on the others. And guess what? The results were the same.


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[Assistant] They didn't call it this at the time, but Hagarth had become the first person to scientifically demonstrate the placebo effect. He showed just how powerful belief can be, specifically in the medical world, but also everywhere else. The power of our imagination


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[Assistant] It's pretty amazing. We humans have this incredible ability to pour so much belief into an idea or an outcome that sometimes, on rare occasions, it actually comes true. And the same can be said for stories. Because sometimes folklore is born in the most mysterious places.


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[Assistant] Like a lot of you, I grew up near a river. There are a lot of them out there, and depending on where you live, they're either dried up remnants of something bigger, or a wide expanse of water used by the entire community for fun and recreation. And most are somewhere in between.


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[Assistant] But in the bottom left corner of Pennsylvania, and the top left corner of West Virginia, there's a river that many people think is special. Now, one reason is because it flows from south to north, and it's a common misconception that all rivers must flow south.


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[Assistant] I know this because I grew up alongside a northward flowing river in Illinois and was taught the exact same thing. But it's just a myth.


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[Assistant] But the Monongahela River in that little corner of Pennsylvania and West Virginia has other reasons to be considered special. Yes, it has a big community life with miles of trails for bikers and hikers on land, plus anyone with a boat and a fishing pole. But that's not why locals think it's special.


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[Assistant] Some say it's because of how deep the river is, 20 feet or more in most places. Others say it's past tragedies that took place there, like the Battle of Monongahela, which saw nearly a thousand British soldiers ambushed and killed by the French and their Native American allies on July 9th of 1755.


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[Assistant] An awful lot of blood was spilled into the river that day. And some folks might think that that has a power to do things.


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[Assistant] Oh, and as a side note, the only reason the remaining 500 British soldiers didn't die that day was because one lowly 23-year-old aide-de-camp took charge and pulled off a miraculous retreat, saving their lives. His name? George Washington.


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[Assistant] But back to the river. You see, over the years, stories have cropped up about mysterious creatures in the region, and I think it would be worth exploring a few right now. Buckle up though, because to tour that folklore is to experience the bizarre and the weird.


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[Assistant] Since the early 1970s, folks in Granttown, West Virginia have whispered about a Bigfoot-type creature that's rumored to hunt the woods there, about five miles from the river. They say it frequents the old coal mine areas, and sometimes refer to it as the Granttown Goon.


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[Assistant] A similar sort of creature is said to live farther inland, near the town of Grafton.


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[Assistant] Like the goon, the beast of Grafton is often described as a sort of bigfoot creature standing nearly 10 feet tall with wide athletic shoulders. But rather than being covered in red or brown hair, the beast is said to have the pale, slippery skin of a seal.


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[Assistant] Back in June of 1964, a reporter from the Grafton Sentinel was driving home from work close to midnight when he spotted the creature. In the weeks that followed, more than 20 other sightings were reported, putting the community in a sort of panic. Folks organized hunts, and much of that wooded area around town was explored. But to no avail.


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[Assistant] But the creature most people talk about has a name that also might get as many laughs. They call it the Sheep Squatch, and yes, you can probably get a sense for the common descriptions of it just by the name. They say it's a dog-shaped beast, the size of a bear, but covered in white fur, reminiscent of a sheep.


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[Assistant] Back in the mid-1990s, a number of sightings were reported. One man, a former Navy SEAL, claims that he watched the creature walk out of the woods and drink water from a stream. And that same year, two children told their parents that they saw it standing on its hind legs at the edge of their yard.


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[Assistant] But the most terrifying encounter with the Sheep Squatch took place back in 1929. Frank Kozel was a local miner, uh, a mine employee, not a child, mind you, and had just left work after nearly 12 hours in the earth. He was tired and dirty and really just wanted to get home and clean up and have something to eat.


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[Assistant] Exhausted at the mere thought of the six-mile walk he had in front of him through the brutal July heat, Frank decided to leave the road and take a shortcut through the woods. It was cooler in there, and the shade was a welcome treat.


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[Assistant] But halfway through he spotted something through the foliage that caused him to catch his breath. It was a pale white beast, roughly the shape of a dog, but with horns and long fangs. And it was looking at him.


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[Assistant] Frank took off running, as any of us would have done in a similar situation, but the creature was faster. In seconds, it was upon him, slashing out with its claws and snapping its vicious mouth at him. Frank used his empty metal lunchbox as a club, batting the monster away, but nothing helped.


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[Assistant] Breaking away, Frank ran faster, this time leaving the forest, but the creature followed. And then, by pure chance, he came upon an old cemetery and hopped the low wall. And the moment he did, the beast stopped and disappeared, as if it had never been there at all. And that's when he noticed the most unusual part of his encounter,


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[Assistant] Looking down at his arms and legs, he inspected himself to see how bad his injuries were, but discovered something that didn't make sense. He had escaped the monster without a scratch.


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[Assistant] As you can imagine, rumors have a way of becoming something more. One story here or there, a careless whisper or a frightful report, is all it might take to put an entire community on edge. And that's exactly what they say has happened over the years along the Monongahela River.


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[Assistant] Folks who talk about Manangi always describe him the same simple way. Manangi is a half-man, half-fish creature that has lived for centuries in the waters of the river from which he gets his name. It has a sort of Fiji mermaid feel to it, or maybe something out of the Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells.


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[Assistant] Some people think that the battle of Monongahela back in 1755 was the moment it was born. That the blood from that encounter helped transform something natural into something darker.


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[Assistant] If you believe the stories, it was around that time that the local Native American communities started to talk about the creature. Everything has a birth story, I suppose, so maybe they're right.


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[Assistant] In the 1930s though, locals started to report seeing things in the river. Some even blame Minangi on the disappearance of a World War II bomber in 1956, which crashed into the river there. The two crewmen never made it out of the river alive, and the plane was never recovered. Both the work of Minangi, they say.


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[Assistant] Reports became so frequent in the middle of the 20th century that the police were said to have formed a task force specifically designed to document and investigate the stories. On a weekly basis, sightings were said to have taken place, hinting that Menangi had become incredibly active.


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[Assistant] It wasn't until 2003 that anyone was able to track down proof.


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[Assistant] That's the year that a local fisherman posted a series of photos online of the creature. But when those photos mysteriously disappeared, folks started to suspect a cover-up.


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[Assistant] Clearly, it was in the government's best interest to avoid a community-wide panic. And Manangi hasn't gone away.


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[Assistant] Back in 2010, swimmers gathered for a race in the river just south of Pittsburgh. They called it the Search for Monongi, and 52 swimmers showed up to compete in the 1.2-mile loop, hoping that their activity in the water might tempt the river monster out of hiding.


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[Assistant] He never appeared though, much to the disappointment of the people who gathered to see him.


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[Assistant] But here's the thing, all of these stories from the modern fishing boat photos to that 2010 swimming race only appear on the historical record after 2010.


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[Assistant] Yes, the race was built around the theme of a local legend, but those 1930s police task force stories, the descriptions from the sightings, all of it first appear in print in an article from 2015.


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[Assistant] True to the dependable qualities of the internet, every other article out there about Manangi simply repeats the same details from that 2015 piece.


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[Assistant] I'm not saying the locals might not have whispered stories about something in the river in that area, but it's also pretty clear that it exists at all in some form or another, simply because people believe it does.


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[Assistant] Call it the placebo effect. Call it the power of our imagination. Call it whatever you want. But it's clearly a moment in time that shows up just how easy it is for a rumor to be accepted as fact and then spread around our global community on the wind of excitement and fear. Which in the end, is the true core of folklore, isn't it? Because whether a story is real or not, that doesn't change how powerful it can be.


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[Assistant] Folklore can be frightening enough when it's complete fiction, but when there are historical records to back it up, that's when things become truly terrifying. Which is what makes one last creature so alluring to the people in the area around the confluence of the Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela rivers.


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[Assistant] The first story we have on record comes from 1746. In October of that year, the Nichols family reported that their 12-year-old son was fishing along the river in full view of everyone else there. And without warning, an enormous creature lunged out of the water, took hold of the boy with its long tail, and then dragged him under, never to be seen again.


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[Assistant] Those who saw it described the creature as a massive turtle the size of a bear, which sounds frightening enough. But when one of the other Nichols children woke in the middle of the night to the sound of something massive rubbing up against the side of their house, the family decided that enough was enough.


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[Assistant] They, along with their closest neighbors, all packed up and left, rather than risk another encounter with the beast.


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[Assistant] A couple of decades later, a young man at Fort Harmer near Marietta, Ohio witnessed something so traumatic that he had to write to his parents about it. He starts his letter off by explaining what the rumors had been, that there was some monstrous amphibious creature that mostly came out at night to hunt on the riverbank.


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[Assistant] They lie in the deer paths, he wrote, undiscovered behind an old stump, until the deer, unaware of its enemy, passes over it. This creature immediately seizes him and, entangling him in its tail, draws him to the water where he drowns and then devours him.


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[Assistant] It was troubling enough to hear the stories, but this young man apparently had his own brush with the creature, too.


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[Assistant] He claimed that he and a group of his friends had been out along the river early one morning when they spotted one of these creatures still wrestling with a deer it had captured.


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[Assistant] They tried to save the deer by beating on the monster with clubs, and while they managed to kill it, the poor deer did not survive.


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[Assistant] He claims that the men weighed the creature, and it was over 440 pounds, which is just massive. It had a shell, just like any other turtle you might see today, only as big around as a grown man. And apparently, this creature was already commonly known to the local Native Americans of the area before white settlers had even arrived. And they had a name for it, too. Ogwa.


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[Assistant] But one or two encounters doesn't make a pattern, does it? Which is why a story from May of 1983 is so important. Because it shows that the monster and the folklore surrounding it has managed to hold on all these centuries later.


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[Assistant] According to the story, a local man named John White was fishing near the town of Rivesville, where the Monongahela River joins up with the Pawpaw Creek. And when you fish, you keep an eye on the water, which is how he spotted it.


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[Assistant] At first it just looked like some small waves, almost like the ripples that form around a boulder when the current is fast. But as John watched it, he noticed that the shape the waves were passing around was actually moving toward shore. And more specifically, toward him.


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[Assistant] Now John claimed that he saw a long fin rise up from the water, but I can't help but wonder if it was really the creature's tail. There's no fin on the monster in the earlier descriptions, but they all do mention a really long, almost serpent-like tail. Regardless, the sight of it caused John to panic, and he stepped back away from the water's edge.


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[Assistant] And just in time too, because as he did, that large boulder-like shape reached the bank and then turned quickly around, swinging its tail at the spot where John had been standing. And then a moment later, it disappeared. Needless to say, John White,


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[Assistant] It's hard to deny the power of belief. For thousands of years, we humans have been filling in the blanks of our understanding of the world with story. And for many of us, those stories have become incredibly real.


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[Assistant] One thing that helps to process the power of folklore is to think of it like a recipe for a good meal. At the core level, there are ingredients and conditions you need to make it all come together, like


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[Assistant] Raw dough and pizza toppings combine with brief but intense heat. Put them together and you get something delicious that didn't exist before.


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[Assistant] And what's important to understand about the stories of monstrous creatures in or near the Monongahela River is that they didn't form in a vacuum. It's harsh territory, and always has been. And when things are dangerous, it's easy to imagine other, more terrifying reasons why.


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[Assistant] Add in the economic troubles of the last few decades as the coal industry has faded from prominence, and you have a recipe for story. As more and more of the mines in the area closed, those cryptid sightings exploded. Life became unpredictable and full of unknowns.


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[Assistant] Let me throw a wrench into the works for a moment. Because sometimes nature does offer an explanation, and there are some who think the answer to the Monongahela River's many mysteries can be found right in the zoological data.


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[Assistant] It's called the Hellbender Salamander, although many people simply call it the Devil Dog, and it's the largest aquatic salamander in the United States. It's known to grow as long as two and a half feet long, and while harmless to humans, does sometimes hunt for meat.


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[Assistant] I'm not sure I can declare with confidence that the Nichols boy was dragged into the water by an actual undocumented monster.


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[Assistant] Or whether the young man who wrote that letter a few years later was documenting something still unknown to science. None of us were there, so it's impossible to say.


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[Assistant] But they certainly encountered something, and the fear and whispers from those moments has left a very real, very powerful mark on the community. That at least is difficult to deny. And while it can often feel a bit like a shell game, believing the story is about one thing when it's really about another, what's important is the belief itself.


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[Assistant] Because in the end, whether we're talking about communal fiction or documented fact, all of us have something to be afraid of.


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[Assistant] I mentioned the Fiji Mermaid a while back as something I assume most people have heard about before. The one that really became famous was displayed in 1842 by P.T. Barnum as part of his American Museum in New York City. But most folks forget that it was actually discovered by someone else.


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[Assistant] Samuel Barrett Eades was a captain of a merchant vessel in the early 1800s, and during an 1822 voyage across the Pacific, he met some Japanese sailors who sold him the mermaid for a hefty price. Money, by the way, that Samuel borrowed from the ship's own expense funds.


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[Assistant] And the key connection here would be the Japanese sailors. Because while the mummified corpse of what appeared to be the top half of a monkey and the back end of a fish might have seemed new to the American captain, it was old hat back in Japan.


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[Assistant] But a good amount of that unusual taxidermy was actually aimed at a different creature than the mermaid.


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[Assistant] And rather than being ocean-bound, this one preferred to live in rivers. They called them Kappa.


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[Assistant] And they were described as reptilian creatures, roughly in the form of a human child, but with scales, webbed hands, and a turtle-like shell. They're also reported to emit a horrible stench, and they supposedly have indentations on their heads that hold water, and if that water gets spilled, the creature will die.


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[Assistant] Now the Kappa are a rather interesting corner of folklore. They're mostly viewed as predators, capable of superhuman strength and responsible for kidnapping, assaulting, and murdering anyone they come across. One thing that popped up in our research was just how obsessed the Kappa were with the human anus. And while there's a lot more I could say about that, I'm gonna leave that one alone.


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[Assistant] The Kappa were also said to be highly intelligent, capable of learning languages, and also proud and honorable.


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[Assistant] In fact, one rumored method for killing them if you met one on land was to bow, because the kappa would be compelled to bow in return, which would then spill the water on their head, killing them.


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[Assistant] Oh, and apart from murder and assault, there was one thing the Kappa loved more than most.


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[Assistant] Cucumbers. Which no, I really don't understand, but let's just file that little detail away in case it becomes important later.


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[Assistant] Now, looking through Japanese history, one thing that really jumps out is how the Kappa have always been treated as a real creature in need to study and document.


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[Assistant] As far back as the Edo period, which began around 1603, there were scientific studies being published about them, complete with anatomical drawings, as if the authors of these reports had actually examined them as they wrote them.


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[Assistant] In the mid 1700s, someone brought a mysterious creature to an herbalist named Ito Chobe and asked him to identify it. When he consulted an older report and a sketch of a kappa, he discovered it was a match.


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[Assistant] They were even known to swim in the moat around Eddow Castle well into the late 18th century. Back to that unusual taxidermy though.


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[Assistant] It was one of a whole number of mummified kappa that had appeared throughout history, all in various states of decay and completeness.


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[Assistant] But honestly, what most people want is a chance to see a live one. And if you happen to be visiting Japan, you might just be in luck.


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[Assistant] It seems that there's a spot behind the temple in Tono City, known as Kapabuchi, where the river is clear and deep, and legend says that it's home to a whole population of the mysterious creature.


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[Assistant] Today, tourists flock there for a chance to witness one firsthand. Although, judging by the legends, I doubt that would end well for the people who see them. But there's also a fisherman on duty there, who uses his own handmade pole. And his bait of choice? Cucumber, of course.


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[Assistant] Unsurprisingly, the current fisherman has never seen a kappa in the flesh, but he claims that his predecessor did. Three times, in fact, complete with its red skin and dish-like indentation on the head.


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[Assistant] Today it's believed that the Kappa is a tool of folklore designed by farmers long ago to keep their children safe near dangerous rivers. And that would make a lot of sense. Lots of folklore is educational and protective in nature.


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[Assistant] But there are others who disagree. They believe people have been seeing a real living creature over the centuries. It's just not a mythical beast. No, they think that everyone has been misidentifying the Japanese giant salamander. And once you hear about it, you might see why.


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[Assistant] Also known as the Hanzaki, these salamanders can grow up to 5 feet long and weigh in at over 50 pounds. They're carnivorous too, with sharp teeth and dark skin, and even emit a strong foul odor. Just like the Kappa of legend.


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[Assistant] Fact or fiction, I'll let you decide. But if you find yourself strolling a riverbank in Japan anytime soon, you might be wise to keep one eye on the water, and your nose to the wind.


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[Assistant] Folks, as always, thank you so much for watching today. Credits for today's episode are in the description below.


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[Assistant] Lore has been a podcast since 2015 with nearly 400 million downloads to dates. You can learn more about the show, plus the book series and the television adaptation over at lorepodcast.com.


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[Assistant] And of course, be sure to click on the subscribe button and the bell icon so that you don't miss future episodes. And if you enjoyed this video, click that thumbs up. And you can also follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for watching.


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[Assistant] It's an obsession that you can see from space. For almost as long as humans have been around, it seems that we've been making light. And while the technology has changed dramatically over the years, that ancient pastime has not.


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[Assistant] Three centuries ago, if you wanted enough light to see by, perhaps to mend your shirt or scratch out a journal entry, you moved closer to the hearth in the center of your house.


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[Assistant] Candles were another option, but they were inexpensive consumables, so most folks just used pieces of plants like Russia's dipped in animal fat. A smelly alternative, from what I've been told.


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[Assistant] Our fascination with light has caused us to get creative. The whaling industry served a lot of consumer demands, one of the biggest being oil for lamps. And then, as we exited the 1700s, it was becoming more and more common to find lights powered by gas, both in the home and out in the street.


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[Assistant] But something a lot of people forget is that for a very long time, light was rare. Homes were pretty dark at night, and the streetlights outside barely delivered better illumination.


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[Assistant] Walking at night could be dangerous, depending on the phase of the moon. And not just because of crime.


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[Assistant] Once you stepped out of the town you lived in, the only light you could count on was the one you brought with you. Which is why for a very long time, travelers around the world have told stories about surprising sources of illumination.


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[Assistant] Little sparks of hope in a place where they weren't expected.


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[Assistant] And while a few of those stories have a delightful, almost comical element to them, many, despite being about light, take us deeper into the shadows. Because no matter how dark the night might be, the last thing you'd want to encounter are ghost lights.


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[Assistant] They're a truly global phenomenon. Pick a culture in any part of the world, open up a book about the folklore there, and you're sure to find mention of them. Ghost lights. Everywhere you look, it seems, you can catch a glimpse of them.


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[Assistant] In Japan, they have multiple versions of the folklore. One variation is known as the tengubi, sort of a red-colored ball of fire that floats and dances over water. Mostly rivers. Legend says that these lights are produced by a supernatural creature known as the tengu, a sort of bird-man hybrid.


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[Assistant] They use them as an aid in fishing, but humans who encounter the lights have been known to become gravely ill, often seen as a bad omen.


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[Assistant] The Japanese also tell stories of the chochinbi, which again can be found hovering over water, this time in rice paddies. The lights are viewed more as spectral lanterns used by entities called yokai. But again, encountering them is never a good thing.


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[Assistant] In the Netherlands, we have the Eerblas, which are said to be the souls of unbaptized children. The legends say that travelers who encounter them can be lured forward toward water, perhaps in an attempt to baptize the living.


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[Assistant] Others claim that these lights act as guides, leading people to buried treasure. Although there are other magical requirements for those who hope to strike it rich, like using a dead man's hand to navigate.


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[Assistant] In southern India, we have the Pei Nerupu, a shape-shifting demon that takes on the form of lights.


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[Assistant] They are most commonly found floating over marshland, and while they are known to change shape and color, their most common appearance is a pale flickering flame, roughly the size of an orange.


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[Assistant] India also has the Aleya, which are the spirits of dead fishermen. Most commonly witnessed by other fishermen, these lights are said to be treacherous, leading people to their deaths where, I would assume, they become spirits themselves.


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[Assistant] The Chirbati are said to inhabit the wetlands near the India-Pakistan border and have a lot of the same characteristics we've discussed already. They're seen near water, they flicker in and out of vision, and can often lead travelers off the path and into danger.


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[Assistant] But at the top of the list of spectra lights are the ones featured in the stories from the British Isles. Not necessarily because they are any more frightening, but just because more people in European and American cultures have heard of them.


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[Assistant] But it's incredible how similar their descriptions are to the lights I've already mentioned.


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[Assistant] Typically spotted hovering over bogs, moors, wetlands, and marshes, these lights are almost always malevolent in nature. They have a tendency, surprise surprise, to lure travelers off the road and into danger, and seeing one was frequently viewed as a bad omen, either predicting your own death or the death of someone you loved.


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[Assistant] Of course, they were often seen as part of the larger tapestry of fairy folklore, because given enough time, just about any story from the British Isles will end up being related to the fairies in some manner or another, right?


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[Assistant] One of my favorite descriptions of these ghostly lights is that oftentimes they are seen hanging from the hand of a faint shadowy creature, like some sort of devilish lantern, and many believe they also appear over the location of buried treasure. Fairy treasure, naturally.


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[Assistant] Now, in Latin, they've been known as ignis fatus, or foolish light, which is either an indictment on those who fall for the stories, or for those who are led off the road by them. I'll let you decide which.


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[Assistant] They first appeared on the written record in Europe around the 13th century, but those documents clearly reference older tales, so it's hard to tell for sure how long they've been around. But if you browse through British folktales about them, you'll encounter a long and entertaining list of nicknames for them. Here are just a few.


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[Assistant] Honestly, each of them is fantastic, and any one of them would serve as the perfect name for a blondie cover band.


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[Assistant] But the most famous name of all comes from a legend about a man named William, who was apparently such a troublemaker that after he died, he was rejected by heaven and told to go try again.


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[Assistant] But after a second horrible life of terrible deeds, he was still prohibited from entering the pearly gates.


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[Assistant] But this sort of bad behavior did impress one person.


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[Assistant] So the Lord of Darkness gifted William with a lump of burning coal to keep him warm as he wandered the Earth on cold nights.


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[Assistant] William, ever the naughty dead man, turned that coal into a torch, and ever since he's used it to lure travelers off the road and into danger. Which is why the most famous name for ghost lights has a touch of William to it. You know them as Willow the Wisp.


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[Assistant] So now you know the pattern. Found near water and marshland, moving in and out of visibility, and often behaving in treacherous ways.


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[Assistant] Ghost lights have a surprisingly uniform behavior across the globe.


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[Assistant] But that doesn't mean that there aren't exceptions, and the best way to explore those is through story.


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[Assistant] There's another Japanese ghost light known as the Hitodama, often described as either red, orange, or bluish white balls of light. But rather than being spotted over water, these lights appear in graveyards and the homes of the recently deceased.


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[Assistant] And that's because they are believed to be the spirits of the dead, spotted in the middle of their journey from the body to the beyond.


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[Assistant] But when the United States government forced Japanese Americans into internment camps during World War II,


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[Assistant] Those lights took on new meaning. In fact, they became a common sight at the Tule Lake Segregation Center in California. The same location, by the way, where Star Trek actor George Takei and his family were imprisoned.


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[Assistant] It said that there, in what must have been a cauldron of anxiety and hopelessness, the superstitions of many of the people there saw a resurgence. Sightings of the Hitodama ghost lights began to be seen as predictors of death, rather than just the spirits of the already dead.


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[Assistant] Stories that reflect the power of folklore, for sure.


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[Assistant] In Germany, there are stories of spectral lights on the road to Sumerde, an ancient town in the center of the country. For a very long time, it was believed that travelers on the road at night risked encountering a glowing lantern held aloft by a disembodied hand. A hand, by the way, that had superhuman strength.


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[Assistant] In the December 1894 issue of Folklore, ethnologist M.J. Wohlhaus reported one story passed on to him by an older German man. Apparently, this man's grandfather had a frightening encounter back in the early part of the 1800s, when he was traveling the high road outside of town and spotted the light ahead. On coming near it, Wohlhaus wrote,


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[Assistant] He uttered a friendly greeting, thinking it was a wayfarer, but saw to his amazement that the light came from a lantern held by a hand only.


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[Assistant] He was one of the common sense people who would not believe evidence of his eyes, so he struck with his stick at the light and was instantly hurled with terrible force to the ground where he lay for a time senseless. On coming to himself, he could not find his way and only reached home after midnight.


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[Assistant] It certainly makes a person cautious about what they do in response to unusual lights at night.


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[Assistant] Thankfully, most people over the centuries have been happy to stand back and watch.


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[Assistant] But sometimes, even that hasn't been enough to keep them from being terrified, as a story from Wales makes clear to us.


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[Assistant] It's in Wales that we encounter another of the more common names for ghost lights, corpse candles. They're described as dim, small lights that often appear beside the bed of someone who is sick or dying. They're also said to travel the path from that person's home to the church, highlighting the future route that the funeral procession will take.


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[Assistant] Now interestingly, it's said that a lot could be learned by the color of the light. Red lights were an omen for the death of a man, while white meant a woman would die.


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[Assistant] The fainter the light, the younger the person would be too.


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[Assistant] Sometimes the light appeared like a candle and sometimes glowing inside a lantern in the shape of a skull.


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[Assistant] It's a fun yet creepy bit of folklore for sure, but in 1895, one man's personal experience was published, and if it's true, it gives us a lot to think about.


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[Assistant] One evening as he returned home from work to his wife and their handful of foster children, he watched as a small faint light exited his house.


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[Assistant] It struck him as odd for a couple of reasons. First, it was a ghost light, and anyone in their right mind would view that as odd.


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[Assistant] But second, the light didn't process down the logical path to the church. So instead of heading down the road and then turning onto a second road that led straight to the churchyard, this procession simply crossed the field between his house and the church. Sort of an as the crow flies shortcut, if you will.


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[Assistant] In the open fields where the unrestricted wind pushed it out of the way.


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[Assistant] So when it came time to process the body of the child from the house to the churchyard, they had to avoid the roads and use the field. The field that the ghost light had crossed two weeks before.


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[Assistant] William was a man who made people uneasy. Born in 1849, he became most famous for his work as a newspaper editor. But it was his other interests, his hobbies, if you will, that caused people to whisper.


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[Assistant] Not that he was bad at his job. In fact, William pioneered the interview format for newspaper articles, which paved the way for a whole new branch of journalism, as well as the British tabloid.


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[Assistant] Through his writings over the years, including interviews with high profile public figures, William was able to shine a spotlight on a number of important social causes.


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[Assistant] We have him to thank for a lot of the reforms to England's criminal codes in the late 1800s, as well as getting the legal age of consent raised from 13 to 16 years of age.


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[Assistant] His work even got him nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize a number of times.


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[Assistant] Speaking of the dead, that's where another of his interests come into the picture. You see, William was a well-known spiritualist and psychic researcher. And that's the bit that made the general public nervous. Respectable journalist striving for a better world.


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[Assistant] Awesome. Dabbler in the darker worlds of seances and ghosts? Not so much. Maybe that's why a lot of people viewed him as a crank and a fanatic.


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[Assistant] Whatever side you fall on, William's work brought a lot of unusual stories to the surface. And one of those was published in 1891 in the Liverpool Post. And while there's been some debate about whether or not he was the first to document the story,


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[Assistant] It's hard to deny the powerful picture the encounter paints for us.


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[Assistant] William wrote that he was out for a walk after midnight in Liverpool at some point in the late 1800s when he found himself within sight of the knotty ash churchyard.


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[Assistant] But even from a ways off, he could tell that something unusual was going on, because the churchyard was filled with thousands of small, bluish lights.


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[Assistant] At the same time, while frozen to the road where he stood, William describes seeing the shapes of dozens of men walking up the street toward him and the church.


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[Assistant] They were visible, but not altogether solid. It seems that he was witnessing a ghostly funeral procession, a crowd of elderly men dressed in formal uniforms and old-fashioned clothing.


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[Assistant] They walked at the head of a coffin, which was covered in a black cloth and carried by others among them. William described the fabric fluttering in the wind and how the men in the procession all wore swords at their sides and carried walking sticks with skulls for handles.


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[Assistant] Behind the coffin walked one man who appeared different. He was younger, dressed in all black velvet and clearly more sad and somber than the rest.


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[Assistant] How he knew, I'm not sure, but William was certain this man was the spirit of the body in the coffin.


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[Assistant] Intrigued, he continued to watch as the figures reached the churchyard and stepped inside.


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[Assistant] When they did, the lights that were still there, hovering over the graves, apparently moved toward the procession, as if to join the mourners in their journey. And then the entire party stepped into the closed doors of the church and vanished.


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[Assistant] Now we could debate the truth of this experience forever, and many people have over the years. And we could even point out how common ghostly funeral processions are throughout folklore.


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[Assistant] But one element I love about this encounter is how the ghost lights in the church seem to participate in the events. It's chilling, to say the least.


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[Assistant] Of course, much of the believability falls on the shoulders of William, who wrote it down and published it for us to enjoy. And surprisingly, while he had a reputation, as I said earlier, as a crank and a fanatic about the spiritual realm, he also had a pretty good track record of getting things right.


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[Assistant] In 1886, for example, he published a story called How the Male Steamer Went Down in Mid-Atlantic. And then another story in 1892 called From the Old World to the New. And both of those tales seem to predict the Titanic disaster years before it happened.


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[Assistant] Perhaps knowing his ability to see the truth even entails a fiction.


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[Assistant] There was something about William Thomas Steed that made him special. And the proof, it seems, might just be in the way he died. He drowned, you see. One of the many passengers who were lost. When the Titanic sank.


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[Assistant] The world is full of folklore. I hope that's something that we can all agree on, especially after over 200 episodes of this show. There are so many stories out there, so many beliefs, so many superstitious practices and the traditions built around them.


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[Assistant] But one thing that never fails to amaze me is when we get to explore a type of folklore with a global presence. Stories of little humanoid creatures like pukwudgies, trolls, and goblins. Tales of creatures that are bigfoot in every way other than name.


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[Assistant] Haunted Lighthouses. These are the big ones, the types of tales you can count on finding everywhere you look. And right up there with the best of them,


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[Assistant] Our ghost lights. From Japan to Europe and seemingly every place in between, we can find stories of spectral lights that share an eerie list of common traits. Whether or not you believe the legends to be true, I hope the weird similarity of it all gives you chills.


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[Assistant] And at the end of the day, there's something alluring about ghost lights. And yes, a lot of the stories can be explained by science. I'm fully aware of that. Decomposing organic matter has a tendency to release methane gas, and if it ignites, you get light. And where do we find lots of decaying plant matter? Swamps, marshes, and wetlands.


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[Assistant] We could also point a finger at bioluminescent organisms like insects, algae, and even mushrooms. There's something called the honey fungus, which are clusters of parasitic mushrooms that grow on trees in the northern hemisphere. And as luck would have it, they have the ability to glow at night.


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[Assistant] But whether they're real or not, ghost lights will forever be a part of the fabric of a lot of cultures.


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[Assistant] Take for example the legend of another badly behaving man similar to William, this one named Jack.


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[Assistant] Rather than be denied a place in heaven, this man apparently chose to make a deal with the devil before death was ever in the picture. And it seems to have worked out alright for him.


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[Assistant] Jack is reported to have tricked the devil a couple of times when it came time to pay up and hand over his soul.


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[Assistant] The first time he fooled the devil into buying him some drinks, and to turn himself into a coin to pay for them. Jack, however, chose to stuff that coin into his pocket and only let the devil out if he agreed to give him ten more years of fun.


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[Assistant] At the end of that decade, Jack tricked the devil into climbing a tree to grab an apple for him. You know, one last meal and all. But then he trapped the Lord of Darkness up in that tree and refused to let him down without a promise that he'd never be sent to hell.


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[Assistant] But to give Jack some light to carry with him as he wandered the earth forever, the devil gave him a ghostly light, trapped inside a hollowed out turnip.