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[Assistant] According to their tales, it only happened when a dense fog rolled into Casco Bay. They claimed that the legendary ship would sail into view, cutting through the fog like a knife. And even though the sightings took place long after the ship was lost, they knew exactly what they were looking at thanks to the name painted right on the side of the hull. The dash.


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[Assistant] Others saw the ship as well, sometimes from shore.


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[Assistant] They say that the ghost ship always made the same journey, heading north from Casco Bay straight into the long finger-like islands that make up Harpswell Sound.


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[Assistant] It's a direction no sailor in their right mind would race a schooner toward, for risk of running aground on one of the many jagged rocks there. And yet, the ghostly dash never seemed to care.


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[Assistant] The story spread out over the years, as stories have a way of doing. The legendary dash might have been gone, but more and more people claimed to see it from time to time. And those claims inspired even more stories.


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[Assistant] That's how folklore works, after all. It's an organic thing. Alive and growing because of the people who whisper about it. Or maybe in spite of them.


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[Assistant] In 1866, American poet John Greenleaf Whittier sat down and put the legend into verse in a poem he called The Dead Ship of Harpswell.


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[Assistant] It took many of the common elements of the legend surrounding the dash and put them into the popular mind, helping the stories to spread even farther. If you were alive in the northeast of the United States in the late 1800s, chances were good you heard the poem once or twice in your life.


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[Assistant] One of the details that Whittier spread through his poem was the idea of a curse that the wives who witnessed the dash firsthand would soon learn that their husband had passed away. It had become an omen of sorts, a privateer out to steal loved ones rather than British supplies.


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[Assistant] I'm not sure I believe in signs and omens, but there's no denying the power of folklore. Stories like this one rarely fade away. And that's what all of these were. Stories.


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[Assistant] Humans are very good at inventing tales to entertain and keep their memories alive. But one later event seems to call all of that into question. What if the stories were true?


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[Assistant] In 1942, Casco Bay became home to a number of US Navy vessels that were set to guard the coastline from Axis invaders. World War II was in full swing, and enemy ships were a constant threat. So much so that the Navy had set up a new electronic detection system to watch for them, called radar.


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[Assistant] The life in Casco Bay wasn't about to stop for the Navy. Fishermen had work to do, schools had children to teach, and businesses needed to operate.


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[Assistant] But they did all of this with a new influx of neighbors who came along with the military presence. And at least one of those locals became a bit too friendly with one of those newcomers.


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[Assistant] Homer Grimm lived on the southern end of Casco Bay and had been having an affair with the wife of one of the Navy officers, a man named Bragdon. Mrs. Bragdon was said to be a beautiful, vivacious woman with a lot of time on her hands. And Homer Grimm became her pastime of sorts. And they had a pretty complex arrangement.


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[Assistant] Homer would row out from his home in a small boat and pick Mrs. Bragdon up near her own home. Then the pair would row out to an island in the bay, dock their boat, and find a comfortable spot to, well, you get the idea. It had gone on like this for some time.


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[Assistant] They were safely hidden away on their little island when an explosion rocked the ground. One of the warships in the bay had fired and the projectile had struck a little too close to their hideouts.


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[Assistant] Homer cautiously peered out to see what had happened, assuming that Mrs. Bragdon's husband had finally caught on and was using the might of his warship to exact revenge. And that's when he noticed the other ship.


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[Assistant] It was an old schooner, much smaller than the large naval vessel. Her sails were full and she was speeding northward through the water, passing between the warship and their island hideaway. And then he noticed the name painted on the side of the ship. It was The Dash.


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[Assistant] To the Navy, though, it was an invading ship. The sounds of blasting horns and powerful guns filled the air, and the larger ship gave chase to the old wooden schooner.


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[Assistant] Seeing this as their chance to quietly slip away, Homer and Mrs. Bragdon climbed back down to their skiff and pushed out into the bay, hoping to row home before they got caught.


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[Assistant] But moments later, the noises that filled the bay died down, and Homer looked up to see the dash had vanished. Whatever it was that the warship had been chasing, they had lost sight of it, as if it had slipped through the veil between this world and the next. The Navy ship did spot something else though. Homer and his mistress.


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[Assistant] Their little skiff was promptly intercepted, and the officers on duty began to question them about what they had seen.


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[Assistant] Frustrated to hear that Homer had seen the exact same thing as them, the officers decided to send a crew to shore to calm the fears of the locals who had heard the gunfire and also ask if they too had seen anything out of the ordinary.


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[Assistant] And many had, apparently, which left the Navy with a very difficult problem on their hands. They had been tasked with protecting the coastline of Maine, but had somehow ended up firing expensive and deadly ammunition into the bay. They needed to explain it, but in the end, the truth was a lot less believable than it should have been. They had fired at a ghost ship.


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[Assistant] For as long as humans have been building ships and pushing out into the deep dark waters of our world, those ships have been disappearing.


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[Assistant] Some of the oldest shipwrecks discovered by archaeologists have been found in the Black Sea, dating back over 2400 years. But as humanity expanded toward the oceans and then beyond, ocean-borne tragedy was bound to happen.


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[Assistant] Ships were expensive to build, and they took a lot of time and effort to get right. So having one disappear into the waves of the cold Atlantic was a painful loss for any business with a stake in the game. In fact, one of the oldest insurance companies in the world, Lloyd's of London, began in the 1680s as a way to insure ships. Loss was always assumed.


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[Assistant] But the biggest tragedy of all is the loss of life. When a ship goes down, it takes dozens, perhaps hundreds of sailors with it. And each of them has a family back home. A community that will mourn their loss and fight to remember them. Because when a ship disappears, so too does a part of us. So we try to hold on. And that's where folklore comes in.


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[Assistant] In 1975, Sam Smith took his mother out to lunch along the coast of Casco Bay. They enjoyed a bit of conversation, perhaps a bowl of clam chowder, and had a normal lunch experience. But at some point in the meal, Sam's mother glanced out into the bay and went completely silent. Oh look, she said. It's the ghost ship of Harpswell.


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[Assistant] Hours later, he and his mother received a phone call. His father had been working near the shore a little farther north and had suffered a massive, fatal heart attack.


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[Assistant] And as Sam and his mother tried to process what had happened that day, both of them were reminded of the poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, The Dead Ship of Harpswell.


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[Assistant] A poem about the very same ship his mother claimed to see during lunch. A poem about a cursed ship and the death it brings to those who witness it. So they pulled out their copy of Whittier's poems and turned to the correct page and began to read.


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[Assistant] Whittier's words, even a century after they had been written, seemed to vibrate with new meaning.


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[Assistant] They know not that its sails are filled by pity's tender breath.


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[Assistant] The story of the Dead Ship of Harpswell is one of those perfect maritime ghost stories, but it's not the only one that's still whispered about in Maine. I saved one more tale to share with you, and I think you're going to love it. Stick around after the break to hear all about it.


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[Assistant] Portland was a steamer. It was built in 1889 by the New England Shipbuilding Company in Bath, Maine and delivered to a local client shortly after.


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[Assistant] The ship was over 280 feet long and 42 feet wide. And it was a side wheel steamer with large paddle wheels on both sides of the ship that were powered by the engines inside.


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[Assistant] And it was a beauty too. Velvet carpet throughout and gold trim on the fixtures. And even though it had been built for shallow water, the ship's owners used the Portland to transport passengers up and down the New England coast between Portland, Maine and Boston to the south.


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[Assistant] On November 26th of 1898, the Portland left Boston's India Wharf and headed north to make one of those routine trips. It would be an overnight journey, delivering the passengers to Portland by morning. But as they pulled out of Boston, Captain Hollis Blanchard received a warning about the weather farther north. Ignoring it, the ship steamed ahead.


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[Assistant] No one is sure what happened that night as the Portland traveled north. But we know a lot about the storm. It was actually two storm systems that happened to collide off the coast of New England with ferocious intensity.


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[Assistant] Wind speeds reached 90 miles an hour, and waves were recorded as high as 40 feet. Farther north, where it was cold enough, 10 inches of snow fell on land in just 6 hours.


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[Assistant] On the stormy sea though, things were much darker. Over 400 ships were lost or wrecked that night, taking hundreds of innocent lives with them. And among them were the 190 passengers aboard the Portland.


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[Assistant] Even today, we don't know exactly what led to the ship's demise, because not a single person survived.


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[Assistant] But wreckage and bodies washed onto shore, helping to confirm that the Portland would never return home to Maine. All told, 38 bodies were recovered, washed onto the rocky beach by the cold Atlantic waves.


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[Assistant] Of course, word about the wreck spread. Newspapers around the country carried the news, spreading the tragedy and pain to countless strangers in faraway places. It didn't help that the folks had begun to refer to the Portland as the Titanic of Maine.


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[Assistant] The loss of life was morbidly attractive to a lot of people, as was the mystery of the ship's disappearance.


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[Assistant] But the story doesn't end there. Many local Maine residents claim that something bizarre happens every year on the 27th of November, the anniversary of when the Portland had been scheduled to arrive.


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[Assistant] According to the tales, the old port exchange down near the Portland docks becomes the site of the most unusual experience.


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[Assistant] Each year on that date, a crowd of ghostly figures is said to gather there. They are all described as dressed in Victorian-era clothing and are all dripping wet, as if they've just climbed out of the sea.


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[Assistant] And yes, this would be a frightening thing to see on a cold New England autumn evening. There's no doubt about that.


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[Assistant] But that's not the most shocking thing about the sightings, because all of them record one other small detail that makes the tale even more difficult to forget.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research help from Robin Minniter and music by Chad Lawson.


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


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


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


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


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[Assistant] In the world of fairy tales and adventure stories, we are often invited into a strange new land. A place of monsters and magic. Of danger and destiny. And that's what we love about these powerful stories. They transport us. They move us. They show us another world.


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[Assistant] Fantasy is more mainstream today than it's ever been. From the Lord of the Rings to the Game of Thrones, we love it all. But each new fictional world needs a new guide, a voice to help the reader find their bearings and make sense of it all.


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[Assistant] And for a very long time, that voice has been, the wizard.


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[Assistant] Everyone has their favorite wizard, from the Arthurian Merlin and Shakespeare's Prospero, to the more modern Gandalf and Dumbledore. The wizard is the voice of reason, our tour guide in a strange and dangerous place.


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[Assistant] They often speak for the author and serve as a tutor for the uninitiated, readers and fictional characters alike.


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[Assistant] We could spend the next 20 minutes discussing why that is. Why it seems that, deep down, our brains cry out for a sage old voice, full of power and magic and depth, to walk us through a strange new world. But I'm not going to do that, because some things are better left unspoken.


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[Assistant] Wizards, you see, are the stuff of legend. We've invented them to help us cope, to help us understand, or to help us find our way. They're a pillar of storytelling, and yet they're nothing more than make-believe. At least, that's what most of us think.


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[Assistant] But history hides many secrets, and if you know where to look, you might be surprised by the sorts of individuals tucked away in those dusty pages.


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[Assistant] Real people. People who lived and breathed and walked among us. And who had a reputation for the otherworldly.


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[Assistant] One such man existed in the middle of the 16th century. And if you consider the stories,


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[Assistant] Roland and Jane lived in the area of London known as Tower Ward during the first half of the 1500s. Roland was a businessman who specialized in textiles, but thanks to his reputation and close proximity to the White Tower, he also had the opportunity to serve as the court tailor for King Henry VIII.


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[Assistant] Their only child, John, was born in 1527. We don't know much about his childhood, but by the age of 15, he was on his way to Cambridge, where he studied, well, everything. While there, he barely managed to get four hours of sleep each night due to the number of subjects he was studying.


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[Assistant] His mind was hungry. He wanted to know everything, to master it, and connect it all.


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[Assistant] In the truest sense of the word, John was a polymath. But it still wasn't enough.


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[Assistant] After Cambridge, he boarded a ship and sailed for the Netherlands, where he would study at the old University of Leuven. And that's where he dug deeper into the one subject that intrigued him the most. The occult.


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[Assistant] When John finally returned to England in 1551, he brought a collection of European navigational equipment with him, as well as a solid reputation as a sorcerer. And that last bit was certainly his fault.


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[Assistant] Months before, he'd been hired to help with a particular problem in a stage production of Pax, the ancient comedy by the Greek philosopher Aristophanes. It was a story that called for a large, flying scarab. Uh, dung beetle, basically. But it was proving tricky to actually make one that was believable enough.


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[Assistant] Not for John though. He dug in, worked hard, and returned to them with a mechanical version. And it was a massive hit. Legend says that the audiences were so terrified by his animatronic beetle that they assumed he'd acquired his skills by selling his soul to the devil himself.


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[Assistant] Rather than deny it, John stayed quiet, adding a whole new layer to his reputation. A perfect example of how silence can speak just as loudly as words. But things had changed in England while he'd been away.


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[Assistant] Henry VIII had died in 1547, and although his nine-year-old son Edward VI took the throne, the boy king just couldn't compare.


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[Assistant] The economy began to fall apart. Riot and rebellion became commonplace. War with Scotland broke out. When John returned, the England he remembered was in turmoil.


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[Assistant] Then in 1553, young Edward died and his half-sister Mary succeeded him on the throne.


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[Assistant] Seeing his chance, John used his reputation to gain an audience, and then cast horoscopes for both Mary and her younger sister Elizabeth, offering each of them a glimpse into their future.


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[Assistant] But this gift didn't seem to connect with the new ruler.


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[Assistant] In fact, as Catholic Mary began to crack down on Protestant citizens, she didn't hesitate to arrest John's father. He was thrown in prison and stripped of his entire fortune, which was bad on many levels. John lost his father, and at the same time, he lost his inheritance, something he'd been counting on for a very long time. You see, John had a dream.


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[Assistant] He wanted to spend the rest of his life furthering his studies without having to worry about paying the bills. But thanks to Queen Mary, that dream had been torn out of his hands. And then, things got worse.


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[Assistant] Shortly after his father's arrest, John himself was brought to court for a crime of his own. And the charge?


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[Assistant] John Dee, they said, was guilty of calculating.


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[Assistant] Remember, this was an era when the line between math and magic was a lot more blurry than it is today. And it could get you into a lot of trouble. Very few people were educated, and to most of them, math really was magic. It was divination and sorcery and conjuring all rolled into one.


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[Assistant] To use the darkest of magical descriptors, it was black and wild.


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[Assistant] So for the dark crime of calculating, John found himself in prison.


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[Assistant] When he was released three months later, he headed straight back to Queen Mary. He had a grand idea, but he needed her approval. John wanted to build a national library where old manuscripts and scientific records could be stored and used by scholars like himself. So he presented this plan to her.


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[Assistant] Sadly, Mary passed on the idea, so John shifted to a backup plan. In 1556, he moved back to the London home of his mother and began setting up a personal library there.


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[Assistant] Over time, he would amass a collection of nearly 4,000 books, larger than Cambridge and Oxford combined, many times over.


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[Assistant] See? Who says you can't accomplish great things while living in your parents' basement?


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[Assistant] And all of that changed though when Mary died and her sister Elizabeth took the throne. Because Elizabeth, it seems, remembered John Dee. She remembered his horoscope and his passion and his wisdom.


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[Assistant] With her coronation approaching, Elizabeth asked John to pick the perfect date for the ceremony. And when it went off without a hitch, John's place at her side was secured.


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[Assistant] Then, in November of 1572, everything blew up. Well, in the sky, at least. That was the year something appeared overhead. It wasn't a comet, though. Most people had seen those before, and while they were exciting, they weren't new.


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[Assistant] We now know that this new star was actually a massive supernova in the constellation Cassiopeia.


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[Assistant] After it appeared, it remained there, visible to the naked eye, for well over a year. Astronomers as close as England and Europe and as far away as China all recorded it, and everyone seemed to have their own way of interpreting it.


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[Assistant] The scholars like John, though, this new star's appearance had deep, occult undertones. He made the detail observations you might expect from an astronomer, sure, but he also used the opportunity to make predictions, something much more in line with his wizardly reputation.


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[Assistant] A new star, he said, meant the rise of a new empire, and at the center of it all was Queen Elizabeth. He viewed this new empire as a new Camelot, Elizabeth as the new King Arthur, and himself, of course, as the new Merlin.


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[Assistant] He also had this bizarre belief that the New World, the one across the Atlantic Ocean that they were beginning to get a glimpse of, would be the jewel in the crown of this new, majestic British Empire, as he called it.


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[Assistant] For the next two decades, John and Elizabeth worked together to advance that vision of England.


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[Assistant] It was everything he'd hoped for. He was in his prime, publishing books and deepening his understanding of the world around him. And that success was spilling over into the political sphere, including heavy influence over England's colonization efforts in the New World.


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[Assistant] John became advisor to many of the first explorers to sail from England to North America.


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[Assistant] After all, he had the unique advantage of owning that collection of European navigational instruments, as well as a deep understanding of astronomy and geometry, all of which meant that there were few individuals in the world that knew as much about navigation as he did.


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[Assistant] If you wanted to get around in the mid-sixteenth century, John Dee was the closest to Google Maps you were going to get, and everyone knew that.


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[Assistant] But as the world got bigger, John grew increasingly aware of just how little he truly understood. There were just so many questions he couldn't find answers to. So many challenges he couldn't overcome. And that frustration was pushing him deeper into occult territory.


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[Assistant] So rather than seek out answers in this world, John tried to peer into the next. With tools like scrying mirrors and crystal balls, he pushed hard into the world beyond the veil, with the goal of making contact with the spirits there.


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[Assistant] And according to his own journal, those efforts were paying off, if only slightly.


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[Assistant] The one entry from the 25th of May, 1581, describes an unusual encounter that involves seeing shapes and movement in his crystal ball. It was the first time it had happened, but it was also incredibly frustrating. He could only see the shapes.


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[Assistant] Communication, either receiving or sending, was completely nonexistent.


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[Assistant] Remember who this man was? Cambridge, educated by the age of 19, advisor to the Queen of England and wizard in nearly every sense of the word. He was used to setting his mind to something and achieving it. Complex mathematics, global navigation, language and theology and law. And yet here he was, stumped by something. He'd failed.


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[Assistant] The John, the reason was clear. It wasn't that he lacked the knowledge or focus. No, he simply lacked the natural ability to do it. This thing that he was attempting must require a special gift that some were born with, while others weren't.


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[Assistant] So John went looking for those gifted individuals.


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[Assistant] Thankfully, there was no shortage of people in London who claimed to be able to do the thing that John was pursuing.


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[Assistant] One by one, these people were invited into his process and put to the test, only to fail just as consistently. They tried, of course, and they told a good story. But John never fell for it.


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[Assistant] Then, in 1582, after months of frustration, John met someone special. Someone who claimed to be able to do all that John required, and more. His name was Edward Kelly, and although he was much younger than the experienced and educated scientist, he claimed to have the skills necessary for the task. So, he got the job.


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[Assistant] John went into this arrangement with a lot of hope. His dream of seeking out deeper knowledge in the world beyond our own had a deceptively simple requirement. To be able to hear the messages from the other side, and then send back replies.


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[Assistant] Kelly seemed to have potential, if his resume was any indication.


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[Assistant] The younger man claimed to be able to do a lot of things that most people couldn't. Adept in alchemy and necromancy, he told John that he could learn things from the dead, magically teasing out their past secrets while also predicting the future.


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[Assistant] Kelly was a serial liar by trade, which made it a huge risk for him to set up shop right beside the smartest man in England.


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[Assistant] What little we know about him from history paints him as an overweight alcoholic con man with no ears.


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[Assistant] That last part wasn't a deformity. You see, Kelly had been punished by the Crown. It was called cropping. Literally cutting off a person's ears as punishment for their crimes. Which meant there was no way for Edward Kelly to hide his past.


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[Assistant] But John, for his part, didn't really seem to care. He just wanted the man to deliver on his promise.


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[Assistant] The two men approached this task with reverence. They would fast and pray before each angelic session, and always went into it with an eye for knowledge and answers that could benefit humanity. For years, both men would reach out, Kelly would listen, and then write down what he heard.


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[Assistant] The messages came from an assortment of angels who identified themselves by names familiar to most of us. Michael. Gabriel. Rafael.


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[Assistant] And these messages filled volumes too, sometimes consisting of English prose that was said to rival the very best of his day, while other times in the indecipherable language of the angels themselves.


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[Assistant] In 1583, a Polish scholar and alchemist named Albert Lasky reached out and told John about the riches that awaited him in Europe, and in Poland specifically. Nobles and the wealthy elite who were willing to fund the esoteric experiments of people like John Dee.


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[Assistant] So on September 21st of 1583, he and Kelly packed up and headed to the continent, leaving his home and enormous library in the hands of his brother-in-law, Nicolas Fromon.


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[Assistant] The conversations with angels continued while they were on the road. For nearly six years, John Dee and Edward Kelly traveled through Europe, mostly in Poland and Bohemia, showing their work to people with the wealth to fund it. Think of it like a medieval version of Shark Tank, but with the constant risk of imprisonment or exile.


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[Assistant] There were certainly high points in the journey. On April 17th of 1585, he and Kelly were given an audience with King Stephen of Poland. In fact, the ruler became a repeat patron of theirs, sharing their deep interest in communicating with the angels.


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[Assistant] Later, the men were each given a chance to stay and work for the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II. That experience began on a positive note, but ended with the two sorcerers being kicked out of the capital for necromancy and other prohibited arts.


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[Assistant] But something unusual happened while they traveled and worked in Europe. John's reputation, decades in the making and practically legendary in certain circles, began to be eclipsed by that of Edward Kelly.


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[Assistant] It was Kelly who listened and spoke with the angels, after all. Kelly relayed their instructions, which covered a whole assortment of topics, from when and where to travel, to binding new books of imparted wisdom.


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[Assistant] Another unexpected moment occurred in 1587 when Kelly relayed a bizarre message. On Saturday, April 18th, while in their temporary residence in the bohemian city of Trebon, Kelly reported that Uriel had instructed he and John to exchange wives for a night.


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[Assistant] John and his wife Jane found it more and more awkward to be around the Kellys, which I'm sure comes as anything but a shock to us today.


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[Assistant] And that awkwardness wasn't the only thing growing between them. Jane Dee, it turns out, was pregnant.


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[Assistant] When she gave birth in February of 1588, nine months after that April night, they referred to as their cross matching. It was to a baby boy.


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[Assistant] John gave his new son the middle name Trebonius, which means a gift from God at Trebon. Some historians think the name hints at the boy's true father, while others are unsure. But the birth does seem to signal the end of their European adventures.


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[Assistant] Within a year, Dee and his family were packing up to head back to England and they arrived 10 months later after a long, difficult journey.


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[Assistant] But his return home wasn't as rewarding as he'd hoped. He arrived to a house in disarray. His precious library, amassed over many decades and full of rare and annotated volumes, had been looted, as had his collection of scientific instruments.


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[Assistant] Some things would later be recovered, but the losses kept stacking up. In 1594, his young son Michael died unexpectedly. A year later, Queen Elizabeth appointed him warden of Christ College in Manchester, which turned out to be a frustrating and painful experience.


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[Assistant] Then, in 1604, his youngest son Theodore also passed away, followed by his wife Jane and three of their daughters, Medina, Frances, and Margaret.


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[Assistant] In the end, he moved back to London in 1605 and lived his last remaining years in poverty, forced to sell off his precious library book by book so he could buy food.


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[Assistant] What came next didn't happen with the dramatic bang of one of his experiments, or even with the fanfare that he rightly deserved.


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[Assistant] I can't help but wonder how John would fare in our modern times, where the battle between science and superstition is supposed to have ended decades ago.


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[Assistant] But has it really? Maybe he'd be right in his element, guiding us toward progress with steely determination. Maybe he would be overwhelmed. Or maybe he would just be sad that even after these long years, people really haven't changed that much.


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[Assistant] There's so much to love about John Dee. He knew more about everything than most people alive at the time. His personal library was a legendary collection of everything he could get his hands on. The things he could do. Well, people viewed it all as magic. And on some level, it really was.


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[Assistant] He predicted the rise of the British Empire. He proposed a national library long before anyone else valued the idea. And he enabled much of the global navigation that consumed European culture for another century and a half.


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[Assistant] John Dee, at least as he was seen through the eyes of his contemporaries, was a wizard.


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[Assistant] But if you asked him yourself, Dee would tell you he was a scientist. A scientist who just happened to live in a culture where advanced knowledge about the world around him was viewed as necromancy or witchcraft. If it was magic, it was black and wild.


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[Assistant] It's interesting to note that John's surname, Dee, was of Welsh origin. It's a word that means, of all things, black. And his mother's maiden name? Before she was Jane Dee, she was Jane Wilde.


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[Assistant] Turns out, he also held one more role during his time in the service of Queen Elizabeth.


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[Assistant] There are some who think he served as a spy during England's war with the Spanish, which began in 1585.


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[Assistant] Espionage like that was common in his day. And during his adventures across Europe, he encountered many others who were rumored to be spies for Elizabeth.


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[Assistant] We know from historical documents that many Elizabethan spies used a codename rather than their real identity. The Earl of Leicester, for example, signed his letters to the Queen with two zeros. She, in turn, replied with communications signed with her own unique codename.


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[Assistant] John Dee seems to have played along, and in doing so, set wheels in motion that even his brilliant mind could never have predicted.


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[Assistant] He appreciated the symbolism of the two zeros drawn on the page like a pair of eyes. Sometimes they would even have dots inside them to highlight that. But he added something else to perfect it, to fully represent himself as a man who sought perfection and piety.


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[Assistant] Over three centuries later, one British author would discover these tantalizing bits while reading a biography of John Dee.


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


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


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[Assistant] If you love the show, please take a moment to leave a rating and written review over at applepodcast.com slash lore. Your review goes a long way toward helping the show reach new listeners and it's the cheapest way to support something you love.


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[Assistant] And if you're a social media sort of person, you should follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, or all three. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click the follow button and be sure to say hello when you do. And as always, thanks for listening.


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[Assistant] If a human design was scheduled for a revision, that's one of the features that would get an overhaul. Our mortality has been an obsession since the dawn of humanity itself.


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[Assistant] People long for ways to avoid death, or at least to make it bearable.


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[Assistant] Some cultures have practically moved heaven and earth to do so. Thousands of years ago, the Egyptians built enormous stone structures in order to house their dead and ensure them a place in the afterlife. They perfected the art of embalming so that, even after death, those bodies might be ready for a new existence in a new place.


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[Assistant] Death, though, is a reality for all of us, whether we like it or not. Young or old, rich or poor, healthy or sick, life is one long journey down a road, and we walk until it's over. Some think they see a light at the end of it all, while others hope for darkness.


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[Assistant] And that's where the mystery of it all comes in. No one knows what's on the other side. We just know that the proverbial walk ends at some point.


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[Assistant] And maybe that's why we spend so much time guessing at it, building story and myth and belief around this thing we can't put our finger on. What would be easier, some say, is if we just didn't die, if we somehow went on forever. It's impossible, but we dream of it anyway. No one returns from the grave, do they?


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[Assistant] Most sane, well-adjusted people would say no, but stories exist that say otherwise, and these stories aren't new. They've been around for thousands of years and span multiple cultures.


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[Assistant] And like their subject matter, these stories simply refuse to die. One reason for that, as hard as it is to believe, is because some of those stories appear to be true.


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[Assistant] Depending on where you look and who you ask, there are whispers of those who beat the odds. Sometimes the journey doesn't end after all. Sometimes the dead really do walk.


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[Assistant] The quintessential zombie movie, the one that all the commentators say was responsible for putting zombies on the map 50 years ago, was George A. Romero's classic Night of the Living Dead.


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[Assistant] The creatures that Romero brought to the big screen managed to influence generations of filmmakers, giving us the iconic zombie that we see today in television shows like The Walking Dead.


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[Assistant] The trouble is, Romero never used the word zombie to describe the creatures from his landmark film. Instead, they were ghouls, a creature borrowed from Arabian folklore. According to the mythology, ghouls are demons who eat the dead, and because of that, they're usually found in graveyards.


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[Assistant] But Romero's ghouls were not the first undead creatures to hunger for the flesh and blood of the living. Some think that honor falls to the Odyssey, the epic Greek poem written by Homer nearly 3,000 years ago. In the story, there's a scene where Odysseus needs to get some information from a long-dead prophet named Tiresias.


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[Assistant] To give the spirit strength to speak, Odysseus feeds him blood.


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[Assistant] In a lot of ways, the creatures we think of today as zombies are similar to the European tales of the Revenant. They've gone by many names. The ancient Irish called them the Nyavmari, meaning the undead. In Germany, they are the Vederganger, the one who walks again. And in Nordic mythology, they're called the Draugr.


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[Assistant] And the name Revenant itself is Latin and means the returned. The basic concept is pretty easy to guess from that. Revenants are those who were once dead but have returned to haunt and terrorize their neighbors and family.


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[Assistant] It might sound like fantasy to our modern sensibilities, but some people really did believe that this could happen. Historians in the Middle Ages wrote about revenant activity as if it were fact. One man, William of Newbury, wrote in 1190 that, and I quote,


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[Assistant] It would not be easy to believe that the corpses of the dead should sally from their graves and should wander about to terror or destruction of the living. Did not frequent examples occurring in our own times suffice to establish this fact to the truth of which there is abundant testimony.


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[Assistant] Were I to write down all the instances of this kind which I have ascertained to have befallen in our times, the undertaking would be beyond measure, laborious, and troublesome.


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[Assistant] Newbery goes on to wonder why the ancient writers never mentioned events like these, but doesn't seem to take that as proof that revenants are fantasy. They mentioned all sorts of boring things, mundane and important mostly. So why not the unnatural or the unusual?


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[Assistant] He was wrong, of course. The ancient Greeks did have certain beliefs surrounding the dead and their ability to return to haunt the living. But to them, it was much more complicated, and each revenant came back with its own unique purpose.


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[Assistant] You see, the Greco-Roman culture believed that there was a gap between the date of someone's actual death and the intended date of their death. Remember, this was a culture that believed in the Miri, the Fates, who had a plan for everyone's life.


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[Assistant] So, for example, a farmer may be destined to die in his 80s from natural causes, but he could instead die in an accident in his field or at the market. And these people who died early, according to the legends, were doomed to wander the land of the living as spirits until the date of their intended death had arrived. Still with me?


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[Assistant] So what the Greeks believed was that it was possible to control those wandering spirits. All you needed to do was make a curse tablet, something written on clay or tin or even parchment, and then bury it in the person's grave. Like a key in the ignition of a car, this tablet would empower someone to control the wandering dead.


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[Assistant] It might sound like the world's creepiest Martha Stewart how-to project, but to the Greeks, magic like this was a powerful part of their belief system. The dead weren't really gone, and because of that, they could serve a purpose.


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[Assistant] Unfortunately, that's not an attitude that was unique to the Greeks. And in the right culture, at the right time, and under the right pressure, it was an idea that could be devastating.


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[Assistant] In Haiti, the vast majority of the people there are genetically connected to West Africa to some degree. Up to 95% according to some studies. It's a reminder of a darker time. When slavery was legal, millions of Africans were pulled from their homes and transported across the Atlantic to work the sugar plantations that filled the Spanish coffers.


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[Assistant] We tend to imagine African slaves as being shipped to the New World with no possessions besides their clothing on their back, but they came with their beliefs, with their customs and traditions, and with centuries of folklore and superstition.


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[Assistant] They might not have carried luggage filled with precious heirlooms, but they held the most important pieces of their identity in their minds and hearts, and no one could take that away.


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[Assistant] There are a few ideas that need to be understood about this transplanted culture. First, they believe that the soul and the body were connected, but also that death could be a moment of separation between the two. Not always, but it could be. I'll explain more about that in a moment.


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[Assistant] Second, they lived with a hatred and fear of slavery. Slavery took away their freedom. It took away their power. They no longer had control over their lives, their dreams, or even their own bodies. Whether they liked it or not, they were doomed to endure horribly difficult labor for the rest of their lives. Only death would break the chains and set them free.


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[Assistant] And third, that freedom wasn't guaranteed. While most Africans dreamed of returning to their homeland in the afterlife, there were some who wanted to get there quicker. Suicide was common in colonial Haiti, but it was also frowned upon. In fact, it was believed that those who ended their own life wouldn't be taken back to Africa at all. Instead, they would be punished.


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[Assistant] The penalty, it was said, was eternal imprisonment inside their own body, without control or power over themselves. It was, in a sense, just like their life.


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[Assistant] To the slaves of Haiti, hell was just more slavery, but a slavery that went on forever.


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[Assistant] These bodies and trapped souls had a name in their culture, the zombie. It was first recorded in 1872 when a linguistic scholar recorded a zombie was, and I quote, a phantom or ghost not infrequently heard in the southern states in nurseries and among the servants.


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[Assistant] The name, it turns out, has African roots as well. In the Congo, they use the word nzambi, which means the spirit of the dead person. It's related to two other words that both mean God and fetish. Fetish, in this sense, being a manufactured thing, a creature that has been made. The walking dead, at least according to Haitian lore, are real.


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[Assistant] So what do these Zambi look like? Well, thanks to Zora Neale Hurston, we have a first-hand account.


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[Assistant] Hurston was an African-American author known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, and is regarded as one of the pillars of the Harlem Renaissance. And it was while researching folklore during a trip to Haiti in 1936 that she encountered something strange. In her book Tell My Horse, Hurston recounts what happened.


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[Assistant] But I saw this case of Felicia Felix Mentor, which was vouched for by the highest authority, so I know that there are zombies in Haiti. People have been called back from the dead.


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[Assistant] The sight was dreadful, she said, that blank face with the dead eyes. The eyelids were white all around the eyes as if they had been burned with acid. There was nothing you could say to her or get from her, except by looking at her, and the sight of this wreckage was too much to endure for long.


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[Assistant] Wreckage. I can't think of another word with as much beauty and horror as that in this context. Something was happening in Haiti, and the result?


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[Assistant] The assumption might be that these people all had attempted suicide. But suicide is common in many cultures, not just in Haiti. When you dig deeper though, it's possible to uncover the truth. And in this case, the truth is much darker than we'd like to believe. Zombies, it turns out, can be created.


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[Assistant] On the night of April 30th of 1962, a man walked into the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Haiti. He was sick and complained of body aches, a fever, and most recently, coughing fits that brought blood up from his lungs. Naturally, the medical staff was concerned and they admitted him for tests and treatments.


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[Assistant] This man, Clairvius Narcisse, was seen by a number of medical doctors, but his condition quickly deteriorated. One of his sisters, Angelina, was there at his bedside, and according to her, his lips turned blue and he complained to her of a tingling sensation all over his body.


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[Assistant] But despite the hospital's best efforts, Narcisse died the next day.


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[Assistant] Two doctors, one American and one American trained, each confirmed his death. The man's sister, Angelina, signed the death certificate after confirming the man's identity. Because she couldn't read or write, she did so by pressing her thumbprint onto the paper.


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[Assistant] And then his family began the painful process of burying their loved one and trying to move on. Death, as always, is a part of life. Never a pleasant one, but a part nonetheless.


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[Assistant] Over 18 years later, in 1981, Angelina Narcisse was walking through the market in her village, something she did nearly every day. She knew the faces of each vendor, she knew the scents and the sounds that filled the space there. But when she looked down the dirt road toward the small crowd of people, something frightened her, and she screamed.


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[Assistant] There, walking toward her, was her brother, Clairvius. He was, of course, older now, but it was him. She would have recognized him anywhere. And when he finally approached her and named himself with a childhood nickname, any doubt she might have had, melted away.


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[Assistant] What followed was a whirlwind of revelations as Clairvius told his sister what had happened to him. And it all started, he said, in the hospital room.


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[Assistant] According to him, his last moments in the bed there were dark but fully aware. He could no longer see anyone and he couldn't move, but he remembered hearing the doctor pronounce him dead. He remembered the sound of his sister weeping and he even remembered the rough cotton sheets being pulled up and over his face.


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[Assistant] That awareness continued on to his funeral where he claimed to hear the procession. He even pointed to a scar on his face and claimed that it was a result of one of the coffin nails cutting him.


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[Assistant] Later, the family brought in a psychiatrist who performed a series of tests on Clairvius to see if he was a fraud. But the man passed with flying colors, answering questions that no one but Clairvius himself could have known.


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[Assistant] In addition, over 200 friends and family members vouched for the man's identity. This, all of them confirmed, was Clairvius Narcisse. So what happened to him?


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[Assistant] According to Clairvius himself, he was poisoned by his brother over a property dispute.


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[Assistant] How? He wasn't sure. But shortly after his burial, a group of men dug up his coffin and pulled him free. That's a thought worth locking away deep in the back of your brain, by the way. Trapped inside a coffin beneath the earth, blind and paralyzed, cold and scared. It's a wonder the man didn't lose his mind.


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[Assistant] The men who dug him up were led by a priest called a bokor. The men chained clervius and then guided him away to a sugar plantation where he was forced to work alongside others in a similar state of helplessness.


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[Assistant] Daily doses of a mysterious drug kept all of them unable to resist or leave.


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[Assistant] According to his story, he managed to escape two years later. But fearing what his brother might do to him if he were to show up alive, he avoided returning home. It was only the news of his brother's death many years later that coaxed him out of hiding.


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[Assistant] The story of Clarevius Narcisse has perplexed scientists and historians for decades. In the 1980s, Harvard sent an ethnobotanist named Wade Davis to investigate the mysterious drug, and the result of his trip was a book called The Serpent and the Rainbow, which would go on to be a New York Times bestseller as well as a Hollywood movie. But few agree on the conclusions.


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[Assistant] Samples of the drug that Wade collected have all been disproven. No illegal sugar plantation staffed by zombie slaves has ever been discovered. And the doctors who attended to Clairvius in 1962 have all been accused of misreading the symptoms and prematurely declaring the man dead. There are so many doubts.


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[Assistant] To the people closest to him though, the facts are solid. Clairvius Narcisse died. His family watched his burial in the cemetery. He was mourned and missed. And 18 years later, he came back into their lives. The walking dead. Medical mishap or the result of Haitian black magic? We may never know for sure.


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[Assistant] Stories of the walking dead are everywhere these days. It's as if we've traded in our obsession with extending our life and resigned to the fact that normal death, the kind where we die and stay dead, might just be better.


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[Assistant] We fear death because it means the loss of control. The loss of purpose and freedom.


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[Assistant] Death, in the eyes of many people, robs us of our identity and replaces it with finality. It's understandable, then, how slavery can be viewed through the same lens. It removes a person's ability to make decisions for themselves and turns them, in a sense, into nothing more than a machine for the benefit of other people.


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[Assistant] But what if there really are individuals out there, the bokor, or evil priests, who have discovered a way to manufacture their own walking dead?


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[Assistant] Who have perfected the art of enslaving a man or a woman deeper than any slave owner might have managed before, to rob them of their very soul and bind them to an afterlife of tireless, ceaseless labor.


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[Assistant] In February of 1976, Francine Elias was admitted to her local hospital in Haiti. She said she felt weak and lightheaded. Her digestive system was failing and her stomach ached. The doctors there treated her and then released her. Several days later, she passed away and was buried in the local graveyard. She had only been 30 years old.


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[Assistant] Three years later, Francine's mother received a call from a friend a few miles away. She needed her to come to the local marketplace there, and it was urgent. Francine's mother didn't know what the trouble was, but she made the journey as quickly as she could.


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[Assistant] Once there, she was told that a woman had been found in the market. She was emaciated, catatonic, and refused to move from where she was squatting in a corner, head down and hands laced over her face. The woman, it turned out, was Francine Ilias.


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[Assistant] Her mother brought her home and tried to help her, but Francine seemed to be gone. She was there in body, but there was very little spirit left. Subsequent doctors and psychiatrists have spent time with Francine, but with very little progress to show for it.


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[Assistant] On a whim, Francine's mother had the coffin exhumed. She had to see for herself if this woman, little more than a walking corpse, truly was her daughter.


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[Assistant] Yes, the woman had the same scar on her forehead that her daughter had. Yes, they looked alike. Yes, others recognized her as Francine. But she needed to know for sure.


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[Assistant] When the men pulled the coffin out of the earth, it was heavy. Too heavy, they murmured, to be empty.


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[Assistant] More doubtful by the minute, Francine's mother asked them to open it, and when the last nail had been pulled free from the wood, the lid was lifted and cast aside. The coffin wasn't empty after all. It was full of rocks.


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[Assistant] There's a universe of folklore wrapped up in what we think we know about words like voodoo and zombie. In fact, for centuries, an entire belief system thrived and evolved around the activities and services of the head priests known as the bokor.


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[Assistant] But the more you learn about them, and the stories of their deeds, the easier it becomes to realize something important.


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[Assistant] Fear can often be a way of preserving yourself.


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[Assistant] Just how powerful were they? Well, I've tracked down one more story that should illustrate that nicely. Stick around through this brief sponsored break to hear all about it.


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[Assistant] In the world of Vodou, there are many flavors. Depending on the region or country you are in, the expression of the religion might be slightly or wildly different. But few locations have such a rich well of folklore as the islandation of Haiti.


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[Assistant] In the world of Haitian voodoo, there are some core beliefs that are important for us to understand.


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[Assistant] First, because it's a synchronistic religion, meaning a product of mixing a few different larger traditions like Catholicism and West African religions, it has a structure that might feel familiar to many of us. There are local temples where priests known as Hungan or Bokor serve the people there.


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[Assistant] The priests even have altars. Back in the 1950s, researchers tried to document a number of those altars and do an inventory on the types of things found on them. Common objects included candles, matches, one or more crucifix, red paper or flags, small metal boxes, and various broken objects.


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[Assistant] Where the Bocor depart from our image of a priest is in the fact that Bocor charged for their services, similar to a doctor taking a fee for their assistance. The size of the fee depended on the type of ceremony needed, but unhappy customers would sometimes return and ask for a refund or a portion of their funds to be restored.


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[Assistant] And what sort of services did they provide? Well, some of it was pretty mundane. Help with crops. Potions to give your love life a boost. Medical treatment. But there was a darker side as well. It was common for clients to visit a book whore and ask for a rival to be poisoned or killed. But to do that properly, you needed to know their name.


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[Assistant] Of course, that sounds a bit obvious, doesn't it? But apparently there was a huge tradition in Haiti over the centuries that involved the difference between birth names and public names. A person's real name would be listed on their birth records, but those records weren't something that just anyone had access to, making them private and, in some cases, unknowable to most strangers.


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[Assistant] And one reason for that was to protect oneself from evil deeds. It was thought that if someone intended to harm you with a spell or a ritual, that spell wouldn't be able to work without the target's true birth name. So most people kept their name private and just used a less powerful nickname, one that didn't allow others to control them.


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[Assistant] Because as we've already talked about earlier, freedom and control were a constant source of stress for the people of Haiti. And even in the spiritual realm, that battle had dire consequences. There were so many things to be careful of, and doing something incorrectly ran the risk of putting yourself at danger. Or worse, upsetting the gods. One story might help us understand that relationship better.


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[Assistant] In 1953, a man in Haiti found himself with a problem.


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[Assistant] Many years before he had converted to a denomination of Christianity known as the Seventh Day Adventists. But having grown up in and around Vodou, he started to feel uncomfortable about the various Vodou paraphernalia still lying around his house.


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[Assistant] So he reached out to his pastor for help. They had known each other for many years, and the pastor was more than happy to help out. This man requested that the pastor come and burn one of his god stones. What I'm assuming was a small stone figurine of a specific god. And so he did just that. He showed up at the house, took the statue, and set it on fire.


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[Assistant] I imagine the man felt better after that. In his worldview, at least, he had removed an evil influence from his dwelling. And he went about life as if that were the case, that his past was finally behind him, and the old gods no longer had power over him. But three days later, that man suddenly and tragically passed away.


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[Assistant] The night of his death, two neighborhood friends were working late at the nearby coffee processing facility when a noise outside the building caught their attention.


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[Assistant] The darkness of night was a risky time to be up and about for those who truly believed all the folklore of the land there. There were evil spirits and unnatural creatures like the Luguru to worry about. And of course, zombies.


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[Assistant] As these two men scrambled over to a window, they caught movement outside along the nearby river. Under the light of the moon, they could see a group of men beginning to cross, as if they were on their way to some destination on the other side. And while these two men didn't recognize most of the people beside the river, they did see someone they knew.


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[Assistant] The dead man who had had his statue of a local god burned by his pastor.


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[Assistant] But that man had died, which made the scene they witnessed all the more terrifying. According to their testimony, the dead man was walking naked beside the others, his hands bound at the wrists, and as his captors led him at the end of a long leash-like rope, he groaned over and over again.


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[Assistant] It was the sound of a man utterly terrified by what was happening and yet unable to do anything about it.


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


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


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


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[Assistant] On the northern slope of a hill in southern England, near the village of Woolstone, is an artifact from another era. It's a drawing of an enormous horse, at least 3,000 years old and over 350 feet long. Thanks to the white chalk that fills the artwork in, it's been known for centuries as the White Horse of Uffington.


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[Assistant] This past April, the National Trust in southern England announced that it had made a new exciting discovery on the hill. A second chalk figure, nearly as large, had depicted another regional animal. The duck.


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[Assistant] Now, I love Uffington. I've been there twice in the last decade and it's one of my favorite places in all of England. So I felt compelled to read the full article. But when I did, I was surprised by what I found.


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[Assistant] While the article and accompanying video were published on March 31st, they were promoted on social media the following day, April 1st.


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[Assistant] The Duck, you see, was an April Fool's Day joke.


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[Assistant] Now, I'll admit, I was more than a bit relieved. The white horse is special, after all. But every year on the first of April, countless jokes are played out on the local and national level all around the world, taking our expectations and assumptions for a ride.


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[Assistant] Google might just be the biggest perpetrator of the last few years, spending what some think is millions of dollars to create fake product videos, elaborate prototypes, and full-on websites.


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[Assistant] It's not a new thing, though. Humans have always been both easily fooled by and prone to create trickery.


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[Assistant] Ancient mythology is full of characters known as tricksters. And modern media has added a plethora of new names to that list. The Joker from Batman. Q from Star Trek. Even Bugs Bunny and Bart Simpson. And we love them all for it.


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[Assistant] But it's not always fun and games. Many trickster legends are far darker than modern cartoons and movies. In fact, some of them are a lot more frightening than you'd think.


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[Assistant] If you've come anywhere within 10 feet of a comic book movie in the past decade, you've probably been exposed to a number of modern spins on a very old idea. In fact, nearly all of the Marvel movies use a character lifted straight out of ancient mythology and brought to life by Tom Hiddleston. The Norse god, Loki.


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[Assistant] Loki does a great job of living up to the true definition of a trickster. Across the globe and the pages of history, nearly all ancient tricksters have stuck to the same small list of characteristics. They're morally ambiguous, bouncing between acts of good and evil with surprising flexibility.


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[Assistant] They have the power to create and destroy. They're often a messenger, bringing bad news or tragedy to a community. And they excel at taking any situation and flipping it on its head.


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[Assistant] Writing about Loki nearly 900 years ago, Icelandic poet and historian Snorri Sturluson described him like this.


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[Assistant] Handsome and fair of face, he wrote, but has an evil disposition, and is very changeable of mood. He excelled all men in the art of cunning, and he always cheats. He was continually involving the Aesir in great difficulties, and he often helped them out again by guile.


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[Assistant] But Loki isn't alone in the trickster space. Greek mythology has Hermes, who was, among other things, the god of thieves.


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[Assistant] West African folklore has the spider Anansi, although some stories tell of trickster rabbits as well. Many scholars think that those are the roots of the more modern tales of brayer rabbit, which might very well be true. Folklore, as we've discussed so many times before, is a way of growing and adapting over the years.


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[Assistant] We can see that evolution in European folklore. Those old ideas of tricksters who break the rules and make life difficult found fresh expression in new tales and legends. Those stories are different, but also the same if you know what I mean.


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[Assistant] Because underneath all the cultural dress and decoration, every trickster is a shapeshifter, whether that's in practice or just metaphorically. They adapt and shift and change.


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[Assistant] Sometimes they're the one doing the transformation, but oftentimes it's the status quo that gets reinvented. If there's a rule, whether it's social or moral or legal, the trickster is there to bend or even break it.


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[Assistant] In Europe, the concept of one single trickster god transformed into the idea of trickster creatures, plural.


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[Assistant] Their details vary from place to place, but most of their names are just as familiar to us now as Loki, Leprechauns, Brownies, Hobgoblins, Pooka,


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[Assistant] Elves. Gnomes. Each of those names conjures a unique picture in your mind, I'm sure. But for centuries, they've all just been multiple expressions of the same trickster archetype.


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[Assistant] These creatures are united by some common physical traits too. Sure, they're troublesome and morally fluid, but they're also almost universally described as small humanoid beings. Dwarves, elves, tiny men and women. Small enough to be unseen by humans, but large enough to get into trouble.


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[Assistant] Leprechauns are a great example. Their name literally means small body, and while that's not a quality of the most ancient trickster ideas, it certainly lines up with most modern interpretations. And of course, they're morally sketchy. One scholar describes them as, not wholly good, nor wholly evil.


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[Assistant] Second, trickster creatures were often described as red or black in color.


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[Assistant] Some stories say it's a skin color, others say it's fur, but the reason behind the colors had to do with superstitions about evil powers. Black and red, for a very long time, were bad colors, so if you wanted to describe something as evil, of course, it was red or black or both.


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[Assistant] In Celtic folklore, we have the Puca, who are viewed as dangerous bringers of bad luck. In addition to being small, they're usually described as covered in black fur. And they're known to be shapeshifters, frequently transforming themselves into black horses.


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[Assistant] There are many more cultural variants, but I want to mention just one more. The Luton.


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[Assistant] These are a distinctly French version. Like the others, they're said to be small people. Typically men, who are prone to mischief and prank-like fun.


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[Assistant] And like the Puka, they can shapeshift into animals. But the Lutan is unique in that it likes to take the form of a black cat. Something most people recognize as having some element of superstitious power. And because of that, they're often seen as companions to witches and sorcerers. Capable of cursing anyone who crosses their path. A fact that you'll need to file away for later.


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[Assistant] The notion of tiny tricksters is clearly embedded in European folklore. They seem to pop up everywhere from Shakespeare to Harry Potter and everywhere in between. All of them are small in size, morally ambiguous, and need to be appeased to avoid negative consequences.


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[Assistant] What's truly fascinating about folklore, though, is just how portable it is. You can take a person out of their culture, but it's much more difficult to take that culture out of them. So when Europeans began to settle the New World, it's no surprise that they brought their superstitions and beliefs with them.


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[Assistant] The trouble was, these stories were meant to be entertaining. They were benign and harmless tales of morality.


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[Assistant] But three centuries ago, one settlement experienced something that shed a whole new light on the meaning and the power of trickster mythology. And what it revealed was beyond frightening.


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[Assistant] Antoine Lomé experienced that stereotypical, meteoric rise that all of us dream about. When New France covered the full length of the Mississippi River, from modern day Canada in the north to Louisiana in the south, Antoine was nothing more than a fur trapper and explorer.


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[Assistant] He walked thousands of miles, spent far too many nights in the cold, and owned nothing more than what he was able to carry on his back.


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[Assistant] But he was dependable, smart, and had a brilliant grasp of the French territories there in the New World. And that skill didn't go unnoticed, not by the governor of New France, or even by the king himself, Louis XIV.


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[Assistant] Which is why, by 1694, at the age of 36, he found himself in command of the French troops at Fort de Baud in what is now northern Michigan.


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[Assistant] By then, his full name was Antoine de la Moute Cadillac. But since that takes me about 15 minutes to pronounce correctly, let's just stick with Antoine, shall we? And Antoine, you see, was about to experience a significant boost to his reputation and power. And it's a journey we need to follow him on.


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[Assistant] In 1701, Antoine was given permission to establish a new fort about 300 miles south on a patch of land situated on a narrow channel that connects Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair.


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[Assistant] The colonial minister had granted him 15 square miles to build the fort there, and the settlement around it, and he was eager to get started.


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[Assistant] On March 10th of that year, the governor of New France held a celebration for Antoine to congratulate him on his new mission and his title.


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[Assistant] It was a room full of people with great power and position. There was food and drink, crystal and silver, and more ceremony than most of us will ever experience in our modern lives. And at the center of it all was Antoine.


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[Assistant] Hours into the celebration, a door on the far side of the room swung open, and in stepped an old woman.


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[Assistant] She wasn't dressed in her finest. She didn't hold a title that matched the others. In fact, she was, in their eyes at least, less than significant. But she walked in with more authority and poise than any of them could have mustered.


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[Assistant] As she drew closer, it became clear that she wasn't alone. There, upon her shoulder, sat something dark. It was a cat. A black cat.


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[Assistant] She told them her name was Mother Monique, and she was there to tell their fortunes. The men, drunk and cheerful and out of their wits, welcomed the offer and almost immediately all of them held their hands out to her, waiting to have their palms read. She went down the table, hand by hand.


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[Assistant] Describing in great detail the past of each person she touched.


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[Assistant] Every time she paused to examine a new one, a cat on her shoulder would lean in toward her head. Some thought it was licking her ear, but others swore it was whispering things to her.


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[Assistant] Finally, she came to Antoine. But before she could speak, he shook his head.


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[Assistant] See what you can tell me about my future, he told her. I care not for the past.


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[Assistant] The woman nodded and then took out a small metal bowl and a vial of thick silvery liquid, almost like mercury. Then she poured the liquid into the bowl, took Antoine's hand again, and began to speak.


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[Assistant] Your future is strange, she told him. You will soon go on a dangerous journey and found a great city. Someday that city will be home to more people than all of New France right now.


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[Assistant] Antoine nodded with pride and approval and asked her to go on, which she did. Reluctantly.


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[Assistant] Your future is also dark, she continued.


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[Assistant] It's cloudy, and your star is difficult to see.


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[Assistant] Your policies will cause trouble and bring about your ruin.


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[Assistant] The city you found will become home to war and bloodshed.


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[Assistant] Your name will be forgotten, even in the very city you founded.


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[Assistant] But know this, you can change it all. Your future is still yours to decide.


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[Assistant] Just remember not to offend the one thing with the power to bring it all crashing down.


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[Assistant] The woman paused, and everyone in the room seemed to pause with her, holding their breath to hear just what being had the ability to destroy the life of such a powerful man. When she spoke again, it was barely a whisper.


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[Assistant] Even though the words themselves are French, there's no record in Europe of a creature by the name of Nain Rouge, the Red Dwarf.


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[Assistant] It seems to be a purely North American tale, although we could make the argument that the core elements of the legend borrow heavily from European folklore. Dwarf-like. Red in coloring. Easily upset. But hold on. I think I'm getting ahead of myself.


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[Assistant] Let's just say this. Antoine had lived in the territory of New France for a very long time, as had the others in that room that night. And none of them questioned the witch over that name. They were clearly very familiar with it, although how or why is still a mystery.


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[Assistant] While the others might have felt the weight of significance at the mention of the Nain Rouge, Antoine seemed unfazed.


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[Assistant] He was confident in his future and continued his preparations for the journey south. He had a great city to found, after all. It's hard to fight the pull of destiny when it's so sweet and bright, like a siren song.


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[Assistant] His expedition left in early June of 1701 and arrived at their destination about six weeks later on July 24th.


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[Assistant] They called it Fort Pontchartrain in honor of the Secretary of State for the French Navy. And things immediately took off.


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[Assistant] They built a friendly partnership with the local Native American tribes, and set to work building all the things an 18th century military outpost would need. The tall fence of the stockade, the storehouse, a church, and of course, the fort itself.


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[Assistant] After that, life settled into a wonderful period of prosperity.


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[Assistant] The community was growing, and so was Antoine's reputation.


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[Assistant] He was gifted with a large plot of land by the crown and soon had a home built there.


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[Assistant] Years went by, and then in May of 1707, the community held their annual celebration around the Maypole. And it was that night that Antoine had a bizarre and frightening encounter.


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[Assistant] He and his wife were walking back from the celebration to their new home, talking about their good fortune and bright future, when two other locals passed them from behind. When they did, Antoine and his wife overheard their conversation.


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[Assistant] They were essentially complaining about the wealth and position of Antoine and others like him, with their fine silver and nice clothing. And then they mentioned something else.


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[Assistant] The stranger told his companion that his wife had recently seen the little red man. And just as he was about to say more, they moved farther away, and the words were swept up into the wind.


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[Assistant] But Antoine's wife had heard enough and pointed it out to her husband.


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[Assistant] The name Rouge is what that witch warned you about, she told him. But he shrugged it off. It was nonsense. Superstition. Nothing to be concerned about or even waste time discussing. So they walked on.


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[Assistant] And that's when a small figure stepped out of the darkness and into the middle of their path.


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[Assistant] As it was later described, this figure was a dwarf with a red face and shimmering eyes.


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[Assistant] When it saw them, the creature pulled its face into a wide vicious grin, revealing sharp, animal-like teeth. Antoine's wife stepped back and shouted out in fear. Her husband, though, moved forward.


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[Assistant] He swung his cane at the creature, striking it right in the head, as he shouted, Get out of the way, you imp!


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[Assistant] As the cane connected with the dwarf's skull, the creature vanished into thin air. Even as it did though, the shrill echo of its laughter could still be heard in the darkness.


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[Assistant] You were supposed to appease him, but now you've made him angry. Your future, our future, is now at risk.


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[Assistant] Again, Antoine shrugged it off. A few days later though, after visiting Montreal, he was arrested in a secret scheme by his political enemies, and then quickly put on trial. As a result, he was forced to sell his claim to the new settlement.


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[Assistant] The rest of his life was a series of failure after failure, and his wife never forgot why. Antoine had dared to cross the Nain Rouge.


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[Assistant] I'd like to say that the curse ended there, but it didn't. In fact, it seems to have grown worse as the years passed by.


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[Assistant] In 1763, long after Antoine and his contemporaries had passed away, a battle was fought near the fort, at that point under British control. A group of Native American tribes, united under a leader named Pontiac, had gathered to lay siege to the fort, pinning the British down for months.


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[Assistant] On July 31st, 250 British soldiers tried to strike at Pontiac's camp, but failed horribly. Today, it's known as the Battle of Bloody Run, and it comes with an interesting bit of legend attached to it.


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[Assistant] Multiple eyewitnesses claim that after the battle was over, a small red man was seen dancing on the sandy banks of the river.


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[Assistant] He was laughing as he lightly stepped in and around the piles of corpses.


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[Assistant] Forty years later, in 1805, more tragedy struck the community. A fire broke out on June 11th at the building of a local baker, John Harvey. Within hours, the entire town was engulfed in flames, leveling it to the ground. They say all you could see afterward was a forest of chimneys where the buildings once stood.


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[Assistant] Now, community-wide fires were common in those days, especially in cities built almost entirely of wood. But what set this fire apart was the multiple sightings of something incredibly odd in the days before it happened.


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[Assistant] Something that, without context, might not make sense at all.


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[Assistant] They were sightings, they claim, of a red dwarf.


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[Assistant] We all have plans. We have expectations and hopes, and a picture in our minds of the way something is supposed to play out. Tricksters exist to shatter those plans. They're a tool of folklore to explain why things don't always go our way. Why plans fail, or tragedy falls on a community.


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[Assistant] If things had gone according to Antoine's plan, the city he founded would bear his name to this day, Cadillac. Instead, he fell from grace and the settlement took on a different name, the French word for a narrow passage of water between two points of land, Detroit. Of course, he's not completely forgotten, though.


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[Assistant] When William Murphy and Henry Leland created an automotive company in 1902, they looked for a local name to lend the brand some class. So they called it Cadillac, and for a very long time, even used Antoine's coat of arms as their company emblem.


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[Assistant] Of course, it's easy to chalk all of this up to the power of folklore. That this legend was simply part of the superstitions of the French settlers who found themselves far from home in unfamiliar territory. Every immigrant brings stories with them on their journey. So why should this be any different?


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[Assistant] But as I said before, there is no mention in European folklore of a creature called the Nain Rouge. But the story is highly detailed and clearly rooted in something.


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[Assistant] So it should come as no surprise that the Native American tribes of the area around modern-day Michigan and southern Ontario have their own tales of a trickster god named Nainabush.


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[Assistant] It was described as red, small, and able to shift into other shapes. And I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't point out how similar Nenebouche sounds to Nene Rouge.


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[Assistant] Detroit hasn't forgotten that little red trickster though. In fact, he's more popular than ever before. If you travel around the city, you can find local beer named after him. There's also a wine that came out a couple of years ago. It is, of course, a red wine.


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[Assistant] Each year, thousands of people dress up in costumes and march through the city. At the end of the route, they destroy a large effigy of the Nain Rouge as a way of banishing the evil from the city for another year.


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[Assistant] Back in March of 1976, a major snow and ice storm hit Detroit, bringing down power lines and trees all over the city. Five inches of ice fell on the streets, and a tornado was even spotted north of town.


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[Assistant] It was one of those storms that was so devastating and powerful that even 40 years later, people still speak about it with a bit of awe in their voices.


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[Assistant] The day before the storm arrived though, two utility workers were out inspecting a power line when they saw something odd.


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[Assistant] Someone was climbing one of the nearby poles, and it looked an awful lot like a child, which wasn't good.


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[Assistant] So they shouted and ran toward the pole to help the child down.


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[Assistant] And as they did, the small shape reached the top and actually stood up on top of the pole.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke. Research assistance was provided by the talented Marsat Crockett. I have two important things I wanted to mention.


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[Assistant] First, Chad and I will be bringing the live lore experience to this year's Now Hear This podcast festival. If you haven't heard of it, Now Hear This brings your favorite podcast together in one place for a weekend of live shows. This year it's in New York City, from September 8th to the 10th, and you don't want to miss it.


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[Assistant] Get your tickets today before they sell out. Just go to NowHearThisFest.com and grab yours and enter the offer code LORE at checkout to save 20 bucks on your ticket.


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[Assistant] And second, the first book of my upcoming series, The World of Lore is already available for pre-order. So go to your favorite bookseller today and place your pre-order for Monstrous Creatures to make sure that you won't be missing out when it arrives on release day, October 24th. You are going to love this book.


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[Assistant] And of course, lore is a lot more than just bi-weekly audio stories. There are a lot more tour dates coming up later this year. The TV show is landing on Amazon Prime Video this fall. And if you'd like to dive deeper into these episode topics, there's a lore email newsletter called the Epitaph that delivers source material right to your inbox.


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[Assistant] And all of this can be found in one place, lorepodcast.com.


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[Assistant] Oh, and if you're a social media sort of person, you should follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word. Click that follow button and be sure to say hello when you do.


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[Assistant] In a lot of ways, it's just one more beautiful European setting. The land is covered in lush green trees. A 12th century bell tower hovers above a sprawling complex of ruined buildings. And it has the manicured coastline and man-made seawalls that you might expect from a city on the northeastern coast of Italy. But that beauty hides a darker past.


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[Assistant] Thousands of plague victims are buried beneath those idyllic green fields. That manicured coastline is actually part of an 18th century fort where hundreds of French soldiers were brought ashore and slaughtered.


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[Assistant] And those old ruins jutting up from the trees are all that remain of an early 20th century asylum for the mentally ill.


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[Assistant] You'll never accidentally stumble into this ancient town though, because it's an island.


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[Assistant] Poveglia Island, to be specific. And only the people who want to go there ever do.


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[Assistant] Located just two miles south of the grand city of Venice, Poveglia is an abandoned time capsule of pain and suffering. One that illustrates the true power of islands.


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[Assistant] Unlike a metropolis like London or Los Angeles, there's a limit to how far an island can spread out over time. Those shorelines act like a sort of wall, trapping whatever happens there, inside.


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[Assistant] Sure, they might offer more privacy or safety, but as far back as we can remember, communities have been using islands to contain their diseased and undesirables.


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[Assistant] Places like Alcatraz and Rikers Island are infamous homes to brutal prisons. St. Helena in the South Atlantic was used by the British as the home in exile of Napoleon Bonaparte.


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[Assistant] Whenever humans encounter a problem, the instinct has always been to bundle it up and lock it away, even if that thing is a human life.


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[Assistant] But just because you can lock something away doesn't mean it's gone. The tragedy and pain that follows humanity always tends to leave a mark.


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[Assistant] In the early 1600s, Europeans were obsessed with the idea of a northwest passage that cut through the northern parts of North America, giving them easy access to the wealth that could be found in the Orient. They were positive this passage existed too.


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[Assistant] One French explorer by the name of Jean Nicolet actually had a robe made out of Chinese fabric that had been purchased from silk traders in Europe. So when he sailed through the waterways that led him to Green Bay in 1634, he brought that robe along with him so that he could look presentable when he stood on the shores of China.


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[Assistant] This passion for finding the Northwest Passage drove the French to explore much of the area that is now the border between the United States and Canada. Much of that territory is connected by waterways and lakes, making it possible for ships to sail in from the east. Jean Nicolet is famous for being the first European to set foot in Wisconsin, but he was also the first to set eyes on something else. An island.


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[Assistant] It's not a large island, less than four square miles in fact, but he had to pass it on his way to what would someday become Wisconsin.


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[Assistant] You've all seen a map of Michigan before, right? It's an oddly shaped state with two large areas broken up by water. The lower peninsula looks like a mitten. Hold your left hand up, palm away, and fingers together, and you'll get the idea.