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[Assistant] Legends claimed that the island was haunted by actual demons and that the beasts that lived there would attack passing ships and kill sailors.


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[Assistant] But Rabberval hadn't been entirely cruel. He had left them with just enough to survive. A little food, some supplies, a few guns with ammo, and of course, a Bible. The three castaways sought shelter in the caves on the island, but it was also believed that they built a small cabin to live in as well.


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[Assistant] Before long though, things got more complicated because Marguerite became pregnant and the food supply was running low.


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[Assistant] With their provisions running out, the three survivors were forced to eat plant roots and drink brackish water to get by. Marguerite's lover couldn't handle the change in diet. He grew ill and soon died, leaving his beloved to get through her pregnancy and birth with only her maidservant by her side.


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[Assistant] But even that hope was short-lived, as Damien could not deal with the harshness of island life. She also got sick and passed away.


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[Assistant] And some time later, Marguerite, without any help from others, gave birth to her child.


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[Assistant] Yet no matter how hard she tried, she could not escape tragedy for long. Her baby sadly did not survive.


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[Assistant] Marguerite was now truly alone on the island. And while others may have thrown in the towel, the former French socialite did not. She refused to give up. In fact, she went into full survivalist mode, allegedly going so far as to kill a bear and wear its skin to keep warm.


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[Assistant] This young woman who had lived a life of comfort back in France survived by herself on the Isle of Demons for two years before she was finally rescued. Basque fishermen discovered her frail and emaciated and brought her back to safety.


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[Assistant] Marguerite eventually returned to France and became an instant celebrity. The Queen of Navarre, the sister of King Francis, even wrote a romanticized version of her ordeal in a book of short stories.


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[Assistant] Her cousin Jean-Francois, however, was less than thrilled by her return. But Marguerite didn't attack him, or take him to court and sue him, or take any action against him for what he had done. Instead, she let fate handle that.


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[Assistant] When Robert Voll was roughly 60 years old, he had a violent encounter on his way out of a Calvinist meeting. He became one of the first victims of the War of Religions, which would last from 1562 until 1598.


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[Assistant] And meanwhile, Marguerite lived the rest of her life to the fullest, going on to found a private school for girls. We can only imagine what kind of skills she taught them.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with additional help from Jenna Rose Nethercotts and Harry Marks, and music by Chad Lawson.


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


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[Assistant] I also make 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.


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[Assistant] You can learn more about all of our shows and everything else going on over in one central place, grimandmild.com. 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] They were staring at a paradox. It was a stone tool chipped away to form a sharp edge with all the characteristic marks of something handmade. It was, in fact, a perfect example of an early stone hand tool. And yet, well, there was a problem.


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[Assistant] You see, the scientists who uncovered this tool in Kenya back in early 2015 believe that it was created 3.3 million years ago, which is about 500,000 years further back in the evolutionary scale than the earliest humans known to date. We don't know who they were, but we know this. Like us, they use tools.


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[Assistant] Clearly, technology has always been intoxicating to us, however far back in time we go.


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[Assistant] Tools for hunting and food prep later gave way to instruments of war and writing. Complex machines powered by gears or steam or electricity.


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[Assistant] It's our heritage, and it's evidence of a deep passion for making things.


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[Assistant] It's actually a great way to view human behavior when you think about it.


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[Assistant] Study the history of firearms, and you'll see the transformation of ballistics and chemistry into military hardware. But it's also a revealing glimpse into the violence of human nature.


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[Assistant] The history of navigational science is also the history of our passion for exploration. Who we are drives what we make. Some inventions have gone further, though.


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[Assistant] They've tapped into a deep longing that most people have felt, a few were willing to admit, that there was a world beyond our own. The other world. The afterlife. Heaven.


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[Assistant] Whatever we called it, it was a world populated by divine beings. And believe it or not, there were people who wanted to control it.


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[Assistant] People have always wanted to talk with spirits, and for just as long, we've crafted tools to help us do it.


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[Assistant] Nearly a thousand years ago in China, mediums used a device called a talking board. They're part of the ancient tradition known as automatic writing. The modern Ouija board being a newer interpretation of that old idea. But all of them share a common purpose. They were tools for speaking with the dead.


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[Assistant] As we moved into the middle of the 19th century, new devices rose to prominence. Like the planchette. That heart-shaped piece of wood that a medium would set their fingers on so the spirits could guide them. Those were originally made with a hole in the tip for a pencil, allowing spirits to write messages from beyond the veil. And mediums loved it.


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[Assistant] Mediums, if you remember, are individuals who claim to stand between the living and the dead in order to pass communication between them. And while they've been around for thousands of years in one shape or another, it wasn't until the mid-1800s that mediums really began to gain attention.


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[Assistant] In 1849, three sisters from Rochester, New York became overnight superstars. As the Fox sisters, they toured America and performed seances in front of packed audiences. In the process, they kicked off a wave of spiritualism that transformed the way people thought about how this world was connected to the next.


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[Assistant] Another New Yorker, Andrew Jackson Davis, was making his own contributions to the movement. He was a self-taught expert in mesmerism who traveled all over and lectured about topics from his many books.


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[Assistant] In 1853, a universalist minister named John Murray Spear published a book of his own, a series of messages from his hero and namesake, John Murray.


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[Assistant] It was a collection of messages that wasn't so revolutionary in their content as it was in their premise. You see, John Murray had been dead for nearly 40 years.


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[Assistant] We don't know a lot about John Murray Spear's early life, but we do know that he was born in Boston in 1804. His father died when he and his brother Charles were still young, forcing him to leave school and find work in a local cotton factory.


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[Assistant] He managed to make the most of it though. A kind factory clerk took the time to teach him to read and write, which, looking back, most likely saved his life. Without those skills, he might never have left the factory. Reading was a tool that allowed him to move on, to grow, to become his own man.


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[Assistant] And by 1830, he made it. He was married, the father of five children, and fully ordained for ministry in the Universalist Church.


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[Assistant] Bajan also had a passion for social justice, which he spoke about frequently. Issues like labor reform, women's rights, and the abolition of slavery.


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[Assistant] In 1844, he traveled to Portland, Maine to participate in an anti-slavery rally. While he was speaking, an angry pro-slavery mob dragged him off the stage and beat him senseless, leaving him horribly injured.


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[Assistant] His wife, along with a friend named Oliver Dennett, cared for John over the following months, slowly nursing him back to health.


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[Assistant] But the attack only served to deepen his commitment to the cause. After recovering, he began to organize public events of his own. Anti-slavery conventions, speeches, local rallies. He even became a leader in the Boston portion of the Underground Railroad.


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[Assistant] But when his friend Oliver Dennett died unexpectedly, John's focus began to shift.


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[Assistant] Maybe he was already on the edge emotionally. Or perhaps it was the country's growing obsession with the spiritual world. Whatever the reason, John left the church in March of 1852 and published the book of letters from his long-dead hero, entitled Messages from the Super State. And in it, he made some pretty strong assertions.


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[Assistant] He claimed that God was asking him to communicate with the spirit world. John saw this as his new calling and he threw himself into it with the same passion that he had with social issues. And it was at some point in his practice of mediumship that he learned he could fall into a trance and become a mouthpiece for the forces beyond the veil.


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[Assistant] While he was in that state, John was said to dictate medical advice for sick friends. And although he wasn't a physician, his recommendations actually worked. John was helping people get better. And while he was proud of that, he refused to take all the credit.


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[Assistant] Everything he was doing, he said, was made possible by his spirit guide, none other than his old friend, Oliver Dennett.


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[Assistant] But Denet wasn't the only spirit sending important messages to John. According to him, there were others, all lined up and waiting on the other side of the veil, eager to share their own messages as well. And John said that they had a mission for him. Just what the spirits were asking him to do though,


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[Assistant] Would turn out to be one of the most ambitious undertakings of the 19th century.


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[Assistant] The various spirits that John claimed to be hearing from resembled a who's who's list of important dead personalities. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson are just two examples, but there were so many others.


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[Assistant] John's guides included prominent minds from the fields of philosophy, medicine, science, agriculture, politics, and education.


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[Assistant] He called them the Association of Beneficence, and said that they were a collection of spirits, all grouped into specialized categories, whose goal was to help advance humanity.


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[Assistant] Through their connection with John, he claimed to be gifted with insight into a number of unusual topics.


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[Assistant] For example, John claims that one of the spirits told him that women shouldn't curl the hair on the backs of their heads because it interfered with their memory.


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[Assistant] And while that one is pretty laughable, other claims were a lot harder to disprove. Like the accurate and comprehensive 12-part lecture on geology that he gave at Hamilton College in New York. A topic that John had absolutely no training in.


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[Assistant] More spectacular were the devices that these spirits requested John to build.


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[Assistant] I can't find evidence that he actually followed through on any of these projects, but he was given plans for electric airships, for devices he called thinking machines, even for an entire circular city. It was Jules Verne on a whole new level.


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[Assistant] But John said that these benefactors had one particular task in mind for him. They wanted him to help give birth to what they called the New Messiah, the Second Coming of Christ. But this Messiah wouldn't be a flesh and blood person. No. It would be a machine.


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[Assistant] A mechanical bean built by John's own hands. But to do it, he would need help.


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[Assistant] So he began gathering a group of followers. There weren't many of them, but some of the prominent members included a pair of editors of popular spiritualist publications. Simon Hewitt, who had helped John publish his book the previous year, and Alonzo Newton. Both men brought clout to the project, and their own small cadre of supporters.


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[Assistant] John said that the spirits told him to build the new messiah in the town of Lynn, just north of Boston.


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[Assistant] There was a hill there called High Rock that was said to hold deep spiritual power. And, conveniently enough, the hill already had a building on it, owned by a musical group called the Hutchinson Family Singers.


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[Assistant] Think of them as a mid-19th century version of the Osmond family, traveling the country as a variety show that combines song, comedy, and dramatic performances, but with a hint of politics, including anti-slavery songs, which is most likely how John Murray Spear first met and befriended them.


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[Assistant] The Hutchinsons handed over the keys to the building there on top of the hill, and John moved in and set up shop.


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[Assistant] In October of 1853, John lay down on a bed and fell into one of his trances, giving control of his body to the scientific group of spirits that he referred to as the Band of Electricizers.


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[Assistant] He spoke while others took dictation. The plans were drawn out, and all of the important steps were written down.


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[Assistant] Their goal was to build what John kept calling the new motive power. Or, even more mysteriously, the infant motor. A device that would become home to the spirit of the new messiah.


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[Assistant] But don't picture a little robot, ready to get up and walk around. This thing was completely unique.


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[Assistant] There are no pictures of the device. Nothing exists today that can allow us a better glimpse of the vision that John was given. No notes or drawings or schematics.


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[Assistant] And the construction was said to have been completed in a manner reminiscent of modern remote surgery. John would literally just place his hands on the parts and tools and let his spirit guides do the work.


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[Assistant] Over time, the machine was given limbs, a respiratory system, and a central motor, all of which was fastened to the top of a small table.


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[Assistant] Each part was handcrafted from either copper or zinc, none of which was cheap.


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[Assistant] Estimates put the cost at around $2,000, nearly $60,000 in modern American currency.


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[Assistant] So here's where things get really bizarre. You see, while this mechanical messiah was being built, two other things were taking place. First, only the most carefully selected individuals were allowed into the machine's presence. John said it was to introduce the infant motor to what he called positive vibration levels.


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[Assistant] Second, and more importantly, a woman was chosen to be the new Mary. Through her, somehow, the spirit of the new Messiah would be born and passed over to the device. Yeah, I know. Just stay with me.


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[Assistant] On June 28th of 1854, nine months after the construction began, for anyone looking for more birth symbolism, Mary went into labor.


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[Assistant] In response, Spear was said to have climbed inside a sort of copper armor, complete with gemstones and batteries, and slipped into a trance.


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[Assistant] The witnesses reported seeing a glowing, transparent umbilical cord appear between the machine and Mary. Or maybe it was John. The events aren't really clear. But after two hours of labor, Mary was said to have reached out her hand and touched the infant motor. What happened next?


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[Assistant] An article in the Spiritualist magazine called The Boston New Era tells us everything we need to know.


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[Assistant] That we announce to our readers, for the first time, the result of some peculiar labors under spirit direction. Now, after about nine months of almost incessant labor, often times under the greatest difficulties, we are prepared to announce to the world, the thing moves.


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[Assistant] John Murray Spear was the proud father of a mechanical messiah. Or, at least, that was the idea. He'd allowed himself to be used by the spirit world in order to create a new life. A life that was meant to usher humanity into a better age. An age of enlightenment and power. And salvation.


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[Assistant] In an earlier article in his Boston New Era publication, Hewitt said that this new god machine was built as, and I quote, an exact correspondence of the human body, at least insofar as involuntary motion is concerned. It was designed to be a living being.


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[Assistant] With a divine soul and earthly parents, and everyone wanted to see it.


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[Assistant] Spear's collection of spiritualist followers there on High Rock were soon given access to the device, to see for themselves this new, world-changing power. And as word spread, more and more people flocked to Lin to see it with their own eyes. But the vast majority of them walked away severely disappointed.


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[Assistant] The trouble was, no one was seeing the movement that had so boldly been proclaimed. I mean, a living creature moves around, right?


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[Assistant] This thing, well, contemporary accounts say that it basically just had balls. Dozens of metal balls hanging from its chassis like Christmas tree ornaments. And if you watched it long enough and stared at just the right places, sometimes, maybe, you might see one of them move. Perhaps.


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[Assistant] It was all enough to attract a constant stream of criticism. Spears' experiment was a hoax. A fraud.


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[Assistant] Or at the very least, an experiment in misguided thinking.


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[Assistant] Remember Andrew Jackson Davis, the seer of Poughkeepsie? He didn't go as far as to declare it a hoax, but he was pretty sure that the spirits had played a practical joke on their earthly representative.


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[Assistant] Home, by the way, built his own reputation on the claim that he could levitate into the air during his seances. To get a man like that, to call something bogus is, admittedly, quite an achievement.


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[Assistant] In fact, just a few decades after Spear's first claims, another medium by the name of E.W. Wallace wrote a popular guide to mediumship called, a guide to mediumship and psychic unfoldment, and took a moment within it to trash the whole idea.


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[Assistant] A spirit guide, he suggested, was just an easy cop-out. If a medium turned out to be wrong, oh look, it was the spirit guide's fault. Wallace found that to be all too convenient in a field that already had a steep uphill climb toward credibility. And maybe the events that unfolded in John Murray Spear's life simply highlighted that flaw.


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[Assistant] As the days and weeks went on, John encouraged Mary to spend more and more time with their mechanical child. Maybe it needed maternal attention. Maybe it needed her around to grow and develop.


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[Assistant] But instead, the God Machine seemed to grow weaker and weaker.


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[Assistant] There was also a storm brewing. Enough of the public had heard about the machine and found the purpose behind it so offensive and heretical that it was actually inspiring anger and resentment.


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[Assistant] People were upset at John and his followers, and they were becoming restless. Given enough time, that anger was bound to spill over into violence of some kind.


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[Assistant] Conveniently, John heard from his spirit guides once again, his band of electricizers, and they told him that the device needed to be moved to a better location to thrive. They directed him to move everything to Randolph, New York, where a tall hill was located that spiritualists had long believed was electrically conductive.


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[Assistant] The move happened in the summer of 1853. It's not clear just how many followers joined him, but Spear and a few others managed to transport their god machine to its new home in Randolph, in a small structure on top of the hill.


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[Assistant] And then, later that fall, tragedy struck.


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[Assistant] The rumor was that a local Baptist congregation was to blame.


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[Assistant] John later wrote that a good number of his friends had sacrificed everything for the project. Their time, their energy, their wealth. And he knew that they were mourning the loss with him.


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[Assistant] Regardless of whether the world viewed it as a success or a failure, the great experiment had finally come to an end.


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[Assistant] According to everyone who knew him, the loss utterly destroyed John Murray Spear.


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[Assistant] Like the death of his friend Oliver Dennett, which had sparked this whole crazy adventure in the first place, the death of the infant motor flipped the switch in the other direction. John seems to have walked away from divinely appointed mechanical projects and his band of electricizers.


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[Assistant] Life after that was much less unusual, but still had its rocky points.


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[Assistant] He left his wife in 1863 for another woman, and they married a short while later.


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[Assistant] A couple spent six years touring England, trying to promote John's spiritualism to a new audience, but his message fell on deaf ears. In the end, they gave up and returned to America, settling in Philadelphia. In 1872, the spirits reportedly told John to retire.


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[Assistant] The old cliche says that we are what we eat. But I think it's more accurate to say that we are what we build.


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[Assistant] Our creations reflect our true nature. The history of invention, if viewed the right way, can also be an insightful journey into the human psyche.


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[Assistant] We're prone to exploration, to risk, and to uncovering answers beneath the mysteries of this world. And so we, for millennia, have been explorers.


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[Assistant] Our craving for stability and safety transformed us from nomadic tribes to city dwellers, literally building nests around our lives.


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[Assistant] And proof of our fear of death is just around the corner in your local graveyard.


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[Assistant] Maybe that means John Murray Spear was a lunatic. I wouldn't fault anyone for jumping to that conclusion.


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[Assistant] But it could also mean that he, and the dozens of people who followed and supported his experiment,


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[Assistant] They meant well, even if most of the general public found the journey to be more than a little bit insane. Still, there are some who wonder what if it actually did work?


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[Assistant] John was already intimately familiar with mob mentality. Getting dragged off that stage and beaten senseless in Portland almost a decade earlier had taught him just how violent people can be when they disagree with something strongly enough. It was only a matter of time before the crowds brought their hate to his workshop door.


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[Assistant] Only this time, their violence would destroy something else.


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[Assistant] So John knew it was coming. There's no way he couldn't have. But if that's true, then why move the device and broadcast the location of its new home? It was like taking out an advertisement specifically targeting the people he most wanted to avoid.


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[Assistant] What history says took place should never have happened at all. Unless it didn't. What if the device didn't go to New York?


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[Assistant] Some people believe the proof is in the press, or in the absence of it. There was no newspaper coverage of their arrival in Randolph. No reports of visitors and this bold new attraction in town. At the height of the Spiritualist movement, Spear claims he brought the centerpiece of that movement to a new location. But no one there wrote about it.


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[Assistant] Even more telling, there are no local reports of the destruction of the device. That dark night in the fall of 1853, when the Baptist Ma was said to have crept to the top of the hill and destroyed the new Messiah, not a single newspaper mentioned it.


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[Assistant] The only reason we know what happened at all is because Spear himself told us over a year after it was said to have happened. So what options are we left with? I'm not sure.


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[Assistant] But those who believe the move and the destruction were a hoax also believe something else about the device. They think that it actually worked.


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[Assistant] It was small and weak, for sure. Even Spear himself called it nothing more than an embryo. But it was the beginning of something bigger to come. The God Machine, they say.


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[Assistant] This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research help from Marsette Crockett. And you can also follow the show on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. When you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.


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[Assistant] When archaeologists first uncovered them, they knew there was something special about the two cities.


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[Assistant] While so many ancient settlements around the world have a more organic, haphazard shape and form, the twin capitals of the Indus Valley in eastern Pakistan, the cities of Mahenjo-Daro and Harappa, looked entirely different. They were planned out.


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[Assistant] Instead of beginning life as a collection of small homes and growing over the centuries, these ancient cities were laid out along a grid pattern from the beginning. In a lot of ways, they look less like the sprawling maze of tiny streets that you might find in some parts of London and more like a rudimentary New York City.


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[Assistant] They are a memorial to one of humanity's oldest urges, to plan ahead. We love to map things out and see where it's all going. From daily planners that many of us keep on our desks to the strategy meetings that build the roadmaps for tech devices, feature films, and family road trips, people are planners.


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[Assistant] There's just one problem with that. The future is unpredictable. If you've been around on this planet for any amount of time, one of the key truths that becomes apparent is that we honestly have no idea what will happen next.


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[Assistant] To them, the future was right there to examine, to know, to follow. Entire subcultures and religions were built around this idea and for thousands of years, everyday people believed that it was all possible. So, can some people predict the future?


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[Assistant] Can individual human beings living in a certain time and place glimpse the things to come and give us all a preview? If the stories found in history are any indication, maybe. But seeing what's ahead of us can't always prevent disaster.


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[Assistant] Let's spend a moment talking about language. Full confession, I love words. I love the way you can see their history, their DNA right inside the letters. Words, if examined properly, can tell us stories.


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[Assistant] In ancient Greek, the word forming element pro means in advance. So think of words we use today like provide or prologue, and you can see the hint of that story inside them.


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[Assistant] Now another word in Greek is phesian, which means to speak or to tell. Put them together and you get prophesian, or prophecy. Literally, to tell things in advance.


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[Assistant] Prophecies were delivered orally by speaking.


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[Assistant] Of course these types of people have taken different titles and roles throughout history.


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[Assistant] Two of the most common terms you might bump into are prophets and oracles, but they aren't interchangeable. While prophets receive a word from the divine and then carry it out into the world for others to hear it, an oracle traditionally was someone you would go visit, ask a question, and then wait for an answer.


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[Assistant] And to make things more complicated, you might also hear or read about people who were called seers. And these were different yet. A seer, technically, is someone who reads the signs and makes a trained guess to the meaning behind them.


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[Assistant] Here's the best way that I can explain it. An oracle or a prophet receives text messages directly from a deity, while a seer just scrolls that deity's social media posts and draws conclusions from the general public things they say. They both had power in the ancient world, but hopefully you can see the differences between them.


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[Assistant] So how did profits work? Well, that was a really mixed bag, and it all depended on where and when that profit worked. And remember, this concept has always been global, so there are a lot of variations.


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[Assistant] Some prophets used involuntary dreams, while others used intentional meditation. A frequent element was some sort of substance that altered their perception of reality, like a powerful drug or an herb, whatever it would take to put the prophet in the right state of mind.


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[Assistant] I mentioned oracles a couple of minutes ago, and if you've gotten even a basic understanding of the ancient Greek world, that term probably makes you think of the oracle of Delphi. Delphi was a community located on the lower slope of Mount Parnassus, and it was the home of an ongoing group of prophetesses known as the Pythia.


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[Assistant] In some ways, the Pythia were sort of like priests or nuns. They dressed in special clothing, they lived apart from the rest of the community, and they worked at the temple there in Delphi, giving out prophecies to those who approached them. But some of the oracle's mystique and power certainly came from some, well, controlled substances.


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[Assistant] Historians are now pretty certain that the Pythia entered their trances through a mix of chewing on laurel leaves and inhaling the smoke from burning oleander. It was a pretty toxic mix, and so the Pythia would typically be pushed into some epileptic-like seizure, something the Greeks refer to as the sacred disease.


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[Assistant] It was this unnatural movement that convinced the Greeks that the Pythia were under the control of the god Apollo. And as she spoke, priests would scribble down the words that she said, regardless of whether or not they made sense. And then from those words, predictions would be made. Trippie?


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[Assistant] Absolutely. But it was also powerful, and it's a legacy that held on for thousands of years.


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[Assistant] Not all prophecy stayed in the ancient world. In fact, some of the most well-known examples happened much later. And I'd like to tell you about a couple. But you probably already saw that coming, didn't you?


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[Assistant] And the actual truth. And sometimes they look very different from one another. And that's exactly the situation when it comes to the guy named Michel do Nostradam, otherwise known to history as Nostradamus.


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[Assistant] Now, we don't know a ton about his early life. We know that he was born into a big family with close to ten siblings and that he was considered incredibly bright. In fact, he was already studying at the University of Avignon by the young age of just 14. So, not too shabby.


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[Assistant] About a year into his studies, though, the school shut down because a wave of the plague was raging across the countryside. So for the next eight years, he'd travel France, helping out where he could, and developed a reputation as a skilled apothecary, using herbs to help heal the sick.


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[Assistant] After that, life was a series of disappointments for him. He enrolled in medical school, but was expelled due to his work as an apothecary, something those stuffy, snobbish medical professors didn't approve of.


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[Assistant] He married in 1531 and they had two children, but the plague returned shortly after and everyone but Nostradamus died. So, back to traveling for him.


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[Assistant] Roughly 15 years later, he was back in France working as a physician's assistant, married again and growing a new family. But he was also doing something else. He was writing an almanac, sort of a cross between an annual calendar and an astrology guidebook for the year to come.


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[Assistant] And wouldn't you know it, it took off in popularity, so he wrote another one.


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[Assistant] Soon people were writing to him asking for personal horoscopes, and he would send back replies. And along the way, he caught the attention of Catherine de' Medici, wife of Francis King Henry II.


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[Assistant] About a decade before he passed away, in 1566, he started publishing collections of prophecies. They were written in quatrains, a set of four rhyming lines, sort of like the verses in a pop song.


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[Assistant] Then they were organized into groups of 100, which is why they were called centuries. Not because they refer to a period of history, but because century literally means a group of 100.


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[Assistant] By the time he died, he had written nine centuries, or 9,000 quatrains, plus another 42 quatrains. So, 942 prophecies. And how'd he do? Well, that depends on who you ask.


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[Assistant] Now a lot of people see it as a prediction of the Great Fire of London in 1666, a century after he wrote it, right down to the statue of the Virgin toppling from the steeple of St. Paul's Cathedral.


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[Assistant] Most of his successful predictions, if we'll call them that.


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[Assistant] Actually, we're post-dictions, meaning that they only seem to make sense looking backwards into history.


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[Assistant] Never mind the fact that most of the stuff Nostradamus wrote was actually lifted from the works of earlier historians, then just written out in a cryptic mixture of word games, multiple languages, and frustratingly non-specific details.


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[Assistant] Still, if you mention predictions to just about anyone today, there's a high probability they'll think of one man, Nostradamus. But there's another figure to talk about as well.


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[Assistant] Thomas Learmont was a Scotsman, born in the early part of the 13th century, down near the English border. Now, his story is even less documented than that of Nostradamus, but it has such a powerful and entertaining edge to it. Here's how it goes.


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[Assistant] Thomas was apparently taking a nap under a hawthorn tree when a beautiful woman in a green velvet dress rode up to him on a white horse. Naturally, she introduces herself as the queen of Elfland and motions to the back of the horse. You know, climb on and let's go for a ride. That sort of thing.


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[Assistant] So she rides off with him, and straight into the alternate dimension that is Elfland. And for seven long years, Thomas parties it up there, becomes friendly with the locals, and really just sort of endears himself to the elves. But then the Queen gives him some bad news.


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[Assistant] You see, typically they would sacrifice their seven year guest to the devil. But they ended up liking Thomas a bit too much. So instead of killing him, they sent him back home to Scotland. And in the process, gifted him with the ability to see the future.


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[Assistant] Thomas is known today as Thomas the Rhymer, and his reputation pretty much hangs on one event. One day in 1286, Thomas apparently visited Dunbar Castle and told the Earl of March that Scotland's King, Alexander III, would fall off his horse and die. The very next day, that's exactly what happened.


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[Assistant] Kenneth was born on the Isle of Louis in the Outer Hebrides, on land that was owned by the Earl of Seaforth and part of the Mackenzie clan, which is why he's sometimes called Kenneth Mackenzie. Others refer to him by his Gaelic name, Cognac Orr.


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[Assistant] He wasn't much more than a common laborer, working hard for a living just like everybody else around him. But after his mother had a mysterious encounter in a graveyard, things began to change for him. It seems that one night she was out in the field near the church and noticed that all of the graves were open and the dead were walking about.


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[Assistant] After walking over to investigate, she could see all of them returning to their graves. All but one. And that dark, empty grave seemed like a curiosity to her. So she stood next to it, wondering where its occupant had gone. And that's when they walked up behind her.


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[Assistant] This ghostly revenant had apparently once been the daughter of a king of Norway, thus the long walk there and back to the grave. And when Kenneth's mother kindly stepped aside to let her return to the grave, she thanked her and gave her a blue stone with a hole through its center as a gift.


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[Assistant] A stone, she said, that would give her son the gift of prophecy.


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[Assistant] Over the years that followed, Kennett's reputation grew, and soon he left the Isle of Lewis for the mainland, where he took on work for the Earl of Seaforth at Bran Castle. Which is why, as more and more people learned about his abilities, they began to refer to him as simply the Bran Seer. What could he do?


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[Assistant] Well it seems that all he needed to do was lift that stone up to his eye and look straight through the hole down at center.


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[Assistant] Through it, he was able to see the future and then answer the questions that others asked of him.


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[Assistant] And he knew it worked too because once, early on, he glanced through the stone and saw the wife of his foreman putting poison into his lunch. After she delivered it to him, he gave a bite to his dog as a test, and the poor animal quickly died.


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[Assistant] Over the years, he foresaw a number of key events. It's said that he witnessed a vision of the Battle of Culloden and the discovery of oil in the North Sea. He also once stated that Scotland would never see the return of its own parliament unless people found the ability to walk across the channel between England and France.


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[Assistant] Amazingly, in 1994, the Channel Tunnel was opened to the public, making the impossible possible. And five years later, the Scottish Parliament returned.


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[Assistant] The story and the life of the Bran seer came to an end one day when he was summoned to Bran Castle, seat of the power of the Earl of Seaforth and his wife.


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[Assistant] It seems that the Earl had been traveling to Paris on a business trip, but had been gone so long that Lady Seyforth had begun to worry about her husband's safety. So she called for the famous seer to come and shed some light on the situation.


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[Assistant] Kenneth was said to have gladly arrived to help out, and after being asked the question by the lady, he held his stone up to the light and looked down the center. A moment later, he lowered it and nodded, Yes, my lady, your husband is alive and well, and still in Paris.


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[Assistant] Lady Seaforth, though, was naturally relieved, but as Kenneth turned to go, she stopped him.


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[Assistant] The Earl of Seaforth was indeed in Paris and had been inside a beautifully ornate room complete with velvet and silk and he had been kneeling before


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[Assistant] A beautiful woman, one arm around her waist and the other lifting her hand to his lips.


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[Assistant] Enraged by the vision, Lady Seyforth screamed at him. How dare he say such slanderous things about the Earl? And before he could defend himself, she had him bound and carried from the castle out to nearby Shannonry Point for an immediate execution.


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[Assistant] There on the shore of the water, where witches had been executed in centuries past, a large barrel of tar was set on fire. Kenneth didn't have to be a seer to know what was going to happen next, so it's said that he shouted one last prediction.


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[Assistant] When I look far into the future, he cried, I see the end of the house of Seaforth. Generations from now, it will all end in sorrow.


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[Assistant] And with that, he was dragged to the burning barrel and his head was dunked into the flaming liquid inside. It was an act as old as time and one that has never really gone away, although it might look different in modern times. When people in power don't like the truth, they are very good at silencing it.


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[Assistant] It's pretty clear why so many people are obsessed with knowing what the future holds. It's an idea that offers a bit of hope in the face of an uncertain world. We don't know what's just around the corner. It could be something good, or something unfortunate. But whatever it is, I bet most of us would welcome a sneak peek.


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[Assistant] And I think that desire is something that ties us to our ancestors. We can go all the way back to the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest known literary work in the world, and see prophecy and visions of the future at work in the story. And we can pull up any number of films on our streaming apps and see the same thing.


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[Assistant] I want specifics. That's the frustrating thing about Nostradamus for a lot of people. His wording and diction is like one of those 3D stereogram posters from the 90s. You can see their meaning and power, but only if you squint really hard, blur your vision, and maybe stand on one leg.


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[Assistant] In the end, looking back at how prophecy has been handled across the millennia, those of us who want it to be as easy as owning a copy of Grey's Sports Almanac from Back to the Future 2 are going to be sorely disappointed. The best anyone has ever been able to do honestly just feels like a good guess.


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[Assistant] Most of the time. I do think that there was something going on with Kenneth McKenzie, the Brand Sear, though. If he was a real historical figure, that is. Why?


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[Assistant] Well, it has to do with how his story really ends. Yes, he died in a horrible way, having his head dunked in a barrel of burning tar. But folks around Bran Castle felt his presence for many more years. For one, there's a monument stone down at Shannonry Point, briefly telling his story. But then there's the Seaforth family line.


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[Assistant] You see, in 1781, the last Earl of Seaforth passed away without a son.


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[Assistant] His daughter, Caroline Mackenzie, lived at Brianne Castle for a number of decades after that, but she tragically died in 1823 after being thrown from her horse. A distant, non-direct branch of the Mackenzies took over after that, but by 1923, they too were left without an heir.


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[Assistant] It seems that the brand Seer had been right, calling the shot before it ever happened. How?


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[Assistant] Well, we'll never know. But there's one thing I am certain of.


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[Assistant] Many years from now, far into the future, the people who live in the area around the ruins of Bran Castle will still be talking about him. And that's a guarantee.


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[Assistant] When he first appeared, it was in Welsh mythology as a warrior in the court of a 6th century chieftain.


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[Assistant] The way his story is told, he accompanied this ruler to battle, and when that chieftain was killed, our hero was so overcome with grief and despair that he ran off into the nearby forest of Caledonia, spending the next few decades living the life of a hermit or some sort of wild man of the woods.


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[Assistant] But that mental break that sent him running apparently did something else. It gifted him with the ability to prophesy about the future.


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[Assistant] Keep in mind, for a lot of cultures throughout history, there was a thin, permeable line between those suffering from madness and those seen as touched by the powers that be. And that was his story 1,500 years ago.


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[Assistant] When another writer, a Welsh monk named Nennius, arrived in the 9th century, he included this warrior prophet in his collection of historical tales called the History of the Britons. There, he was known as Ambrose, and his life was given some differences, most notably something that took place when he was a boy.


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[Assistant] It said that a powerful warlord named Vortigern was trying to build a castle, but the work of his builders kept falling down. So he was told to consult Ambrose, then living as a boy with a reputation for prophecy.


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[Assistant] When asked about the trouble with building the castle, Ambrose told the warlord that the problem was actually below the foundation, deep inside the earth.


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[Assistant] It seems they were building over an ancient pool that contained two dragons, one red, one white. The dragons were soon uncovered, and after an intense battle with them, the red dragon won. Ambrose tells Vortigern that it's a prediction about the future battle between the Britons and the Saxons, and how the Britons would win.


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[Assistant] The 12th century writer Geoffrey of Monmouth is the next one to put this prophet into his work. His multi-volume collection known as The History of the Kings of Britain covers a lot of the same ground as his predecessors. Even the battle between the White and the Red Dragons makes another appearance.


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[Assistant] In Jeffrey's retelling of this prophet's life though, some details are changed and new ones are added in. For one, the boy prophet isn't consulted by Vortigern. He's captured on order of the court magicians to become a human sacrifice as a solution to the castle building problems.


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[Assistant] It's only after the boy stands up to the magicians and the warlord, lecturing them on the true nature of their problem, that the pool and the dragons are revealed.


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[Assistant] And what was added? Well, it turns out that hundreds of this prophet's predictions are recorded in the book, making it clear that's how he was still viewed by people in the 1100s.


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[Assistant] After Jeffrey Imamoth's depiction of this prophet though, popular culture began to change him. Gone were the stories of his prophetic visions of the future, and in their place came intricate tales about magical powers.


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[Assistant] For example, he apparently once traveled to Ireland and used magic to steal a ring of giant stones and then moved them to Salisbury Plain where they ended up becoming, you guessed it, Stonehenge.


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[Assistant] Oh, and he also helped another warlord, a guy named Uther Pendragon, find a wife, and then give birth to a son, quite possibly fathered by this prophet, a son named Arthur.


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[Assistant] And there you go. How an ancient Welsh warrior was transformed over time from a prophet named Myrthyn to a powerful magician named Merlyn.


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[Assistant] Over the centuries a number of other familiar pieces were added on, from a sword embedded in stone,


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[Assistant] It's fair to say that the Merlin of today looks nothing like the one who first appeared over 1500 years ago. And that's the tricky part of folklore. Over time, it evolves and changes shape, becoming something new for a new generation, filling the gaps in each era's understanding of the world as it does. Which is why folklore can be described two ways. It's impervious to prediction, and it's very much like a box of chocolates. Because you never know.


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[Assistant] As always folks, thanks so much for watching. Credits for today's episode are in the description below.


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[Assistant] Lore has been a podcast since 2015 with over 375 million downloads to date. You can learn more about this show over at lorepodcast.com.


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


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[Assistant] It's an all too common occurrence for most of us, but that doesn't mean it's any less irritating.


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[Assistant] When we're sick, life sort of grinds to a halt. We stay home from work or school, and if you're like me, you probably don't even like leaving your bed. Depending on the symptoms and how long the illness can last, getting sick for a lot of people can even be frightening.


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[Assistant] And I honestly don't have to tell you that, do I? If the events of the last couple of years have taught us anything, it's just how vulnerable we all are to various illnesses.


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[Assistant] While scientists seem to be regularly putting old maladies into the history books, as they have with polio, whooping cough, and smallpox for example, it seems like new and more deadly threats are always waiting in the shadows to take their place. And as a culture, we've learned to be afraid, haven't we?


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[Assistant] From mainstream hits like 12 Monkeys and I Am Legend to horror classics like Zombieland and Resident Evil, the risk has captured our imaginations and left us crossing our fingers that our life never imitates that specific art.


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[Assistant] History, though, shows us that our hope might be misplaced. During the thousands of years that they spent building civilizations all around this planet, our ancestors had to wrestle with a nearly constant onslaught of disease. And oftentimes, it was absolutely devastating.


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[Assistant] Allow me to set the stage. There have been a number of periods in English history, usually named after a specific monarch or dynastic family. Edwardian, Victorian, you've heard those names before.


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[Assistant] Another was the Stuart period, stretching from the reign of James I of England, which began in 1603, all the way to the death of Queen Anne in 1714. It covered a pretty tumultuous century of English history.


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[Assistant] The Stuart period had such classic hits as witchcraft trials, the First English Civil War, the Second English Civil War, and the restoration of the monarchy. Oh, and a few people lost their heads along the way.


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[Assistant] But diving down into the finer details, life in the Stuart period was anything but glamorous. A lot of that had to do with a population boom that happened right before the Stuarts took control. Overcrowding and fewer jobs than workers meant that earning a living wage was oftentimes impossible.


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[Assistant] Those who could find work only earned enough to cover their rent and groceries, and even that was a stretch for most. Folks were turning to their communities for help, and almost no one was able to save up enough money to actually buy a home. Desperate people often turned to begging.


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[Assistant] The English Civil War didn't help much either. As hungry soldiers crawled across the country like ants, they plundered food from people lucky enough to have saved a bit. And because the war was more important to the government than basic needs, those people often starved.


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[Assistant] There was one bit of irony, though. The wealthiest in England enjoyed a diet of food made from meats and sugar, while the poorest in the land had to settle for beans and other vegetables. As a result, the lower class was often much more healthy than the elites.


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[Assistant] It might not shock you to learn though that the average person's life expectancy then was a lot shorter than it is today. Infant mortality rates were high and even childbirth itself proved to be a serious risk to expectant mothers. And everyone, and I mean everyone, had parasites like lice and fleas.


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[Assistant] People dealt with life as best they could though. They still married, usually for love, but sometimes for money if they could find it. And there were all sorts of distractions to take their mind off suffering.


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[Assistant] Bear baiting, cock fights, and public executions. Honestly, it sounds like a Disney theme park but with more blood sports and public health issues.


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[Assistant] And that was life in Stuart, England. If you were lucky enough to have a job, you were probably a farmer or laborer. But there was a chance you might land a gig as a smithy, a shoemaker, a porter or a glover. Or, like George Vickers, as the assistant to a tailor.


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[Assistant] George lived in the small village of Eam, located to the north, in Derbyshire. He worked under the tutelage of tailor Alexander Hadfield, doing everything you might imagine a tailor would have done in 1665. And on this particular day in late August, that included managing a delivery of cloth that had just arrived from London.


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[Assistant] George unrolled the bundle and then hung it up in front of the large fireplace so that he could inspect it and let it air out from its journey. It was the same thing he had done with every new bundle of cloth, all part of his monotonous role as assistant.


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[Assistant] There are three different types of plague. Each of them are caused by the bacterium known as Yersenia pestis, but they manifest in different ways.


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[Assistant] We've all heard of the bubonic plague, of course. That form is distinguished by the large, pus-filled swellings known as buboes.


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[Assistant] Septicemic plague is what happens when the infected lymph nodes drain into a person's bloodstream, infecting the whole system. And pneumonic plague is what happens when the infection settles down in the lungs. Coughing and sneezing send contagious droplets into the air, where others might inhale them and become infected themselves.


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[Assistant] It's all the plague, but each form has unique symptoms and ways of spreading. And for George Vickers, that vector was most likely fleas embedded in the new cloth he took delivery of from London. A London, by the way.


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[Assistant] The reaction in London had been utter panic. The wealthiest people in the city just packed up and left, believing they were safer out in the countryside. Even the elected officials left their post, essentially taking off for vacation while the majority of their citizens were fearing for their own lives.


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[Assistant] By the time the people of Eam heard what had happened to poor George Vickers, it was too late. It was a small village of just 800 people, and every single one of them was at risk before they even knew it.


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[Assistant] After Vickers died, he was followed by a young boy named Edward Cooper. Then, Peter Hawksworth passed away, followed by Thomas Thorpe and his 12-year-old daughter. In fact, before the outbreak was over, the entire Thorpe family would be gone.


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[Assistant] By December of that year, 42 other villagers had died, and those deaths continued into the winter, although they were thankfully slowed by the cold weather.


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[Assistant] By spring though, the people of Eam knew that they had to start making difficult decisions, because they knew that the plague spread from person to person, although they weren't exactly sure how, and that meant that there might be a way to stop it.


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[Assistant] Now if you hopped into a time machine and headed back to 1666, the most educated person you'd be able to find in just about any village in the countryside, if they had one at all, was the minister.


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[Assistant] But ehm was lucky, because they actually had two of them.


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[Assistant] One, Thomas Stanley had served the people of Eam for many years, but had been exiled three years earlier because he had refused to use the new edition of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.


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[Assistant] So, he lived on the edge of town in a small hut, while the new minister, 28-year-old William Mompesson, served in the church, along with his wife Catherine and two young boys.


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[Assistant] But desperate times called for strange alliances and the two ministers met together to discuss their options.


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[Assistant] They knew the plan they'd come up with was going to sound like an overreaction to most people and a violation of their personal freedom. But it was also their best chance at stopping the plague in Eam before it spread on to other communities farther north.


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[Assistant] So on June 24th of 1666, the ministers gathered everyone together to offer their proposal. Complete and total quarantine. No one who lived in the village would be allowed to leave, and no visitors would be given entry until the plague had been stopped in its tracks.


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[Assistant] To do this, they had settled on a reasonable boundary line, an invisible barrier that signaled their new tiny kingdom. The Earl of Devonshire, who lived nearby, even agreed to send food and supplies to help them get through the experiment.


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[Assistant] They also did something that was, looking back, pretty ingenious. At various places along the boundary, they placed water troughs that were filled with vinegar, which was a much better sterilizing agent than soap. Merchants would leave goods by the troughs and the villagers would toss their coins into the vinegar, preventing the spread of the sickness.


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[Assistant] It was an extreme sacrifice. There's no doubt about that. But after discussion, everyone who lived in Eam agreed.


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[Assistant] They would stay inside the boundaries of the village and follow all the rules set by Stanley and Mompesson. All they had left to do now was wait.


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[Assistant] What happened that summer was the social equivalent of a soldier knocking a bystander out of the way and taking the bullets meant for them. The people of Eames suffered and the effects were everything you might expect from a plague-ridden village in Stuart, England.


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[Assistant] One of the steps that people agreed to take was the immediate burial of the dead.


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[Assistant] Folks at the time didn't have definitive proof, but they suspected, correctly it turns out, that the plague could be passed on by touching the dead and anything else they owned or wore. So as people died, their families dragged them out into the yard and buried them right on their property, rather than across town to some sort of community grave.


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[Assistant] Some weren't so smart about it though. One man, Marshall Howe, got sick early on and somehow survived. Believing he was immune, he started looking for people who had died without anyone else to bury them and took care of the task himself.


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[Assistant] But before you think of him as a hero, though, I should mention that he was helping himself to their belongings, which he brought home to his family. And once, while dragging a man called Unwin out into the yard for a quick burial, Marshall was frightened out of his mind when the man opened his eyes and asked for a drink.


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[Assistant] Marshall ran home, believing the dead were rising from the grave. Sadly, his wife and son would soon die from the plague as well. Historians think it's likely they picked up their infections from the stolen goods he was bringing home.


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[Assistant] The local church continued to meet, but they moved their services outside, thanks to the warm weather and open air. They felt it was better than expecting people to cram into small pews indoors. But not everyone in the church was safe. Reverend Mompesson lost his wife after she became sick, and then appeared to recover.


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[Assistant] She was one of many who tragically died that month. In fact, through August, roughly five people each day were passing away. And it was decimating families like a wildfire. A woman named Jane Hawksworth, for example, lost 25 members of her immediate and extended family.


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[Assistant] Another local woman, Elizabeth Hancock, watched helplessly as her husband and six of her own children passed away that summer. With each death, she was forced to drag their bodies out to a hill on their property and bury them all by herself.


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[Assistant] There are stories of people from the next town over, Stoney Middleton, being able to see her dig those bitter graves from a distance, but unable to approach and help, or even offer comfort. I can't imagine what that experience must have been like for her. It's hard to call anyone who goes through something like that a lucky survivor.


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[Assistant] When the dust settled, 260 of the 800 residents of Eam were lost to the plague that summer. The final victim was a young man in his late 20s named Abraham Morton, who passed away on November 1st. He was one of 18 members of his family to succumb to the sickness.


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[Assistant] That Christmas, after two months of no other deaths, they officially declared the plague over. But they did one last thing to make sure. The villagers gathered all of their belongings, their books, their furniture, and every article of clothing that wasn't currently on their body, and they carted it out into the center of town. And then they set it on fire.


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[Assistant] The experiment almost broke them though. Witnessing that much death, the daily burial of loved ones, the constant worry that your neighbor was next, or even worse, you.


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[Assistant] Yes, Reverend Mompesson survived his wife, a casualty of a plan he helped mastermind. But it's clear from a letter he sent to a friend that summer that he didn't have a lot of hope for himself. And his words could have been echoed by just about every other survivor in town.


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[Assistant] I want to say upfront here that I did not go fishing for parallels between the events in EME and the pandemic of the last couple of years. All I could do is report the things to you as I saw them in the historical record.


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[Assistant] But that said, it's incredible just how often the present mirrors the past, isn't it? I think that's where a lot of the fear of deadly outbreaks comes from. We can look back and see how devastating a sickness can truly be, and that's frightening.


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[Assistant] But my hope is that stories about people like the villagers of Eam might offer us something more powerful than fear. Hope.


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[Assistant] After it was all over, the folks in the community began to rebuild. There was a lot of work to do and fewer hands to do it. But they pitched in and clawed their way back from a dark period in their lives. And they did it together.


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[Assistant] The Reverend William Monpesson might have survived, but he would never be the same. He stayed on there in Eam until 1669, but eventually had to leave. There was just too much pain each day, in the scenery around the village, in the eyes of the people in his church, and in his own home.


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[Assistant] He moved on to another town who hired him to be their new minister, but the transition wasn't that easy. Knowing he had come from Eam, they forced him to quarantine in a hut in the woods until they were certain he wasn't sick and contagious.


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[Assistant] Now, one thing you might be thinking at this point is that fewer people might have died if they hadn't locked down the village. That shutting their borders served to concentrate the damage, making matters worse.


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[Assistant] But in truth, the death rate in Eam was only 32%, a far cry from the 75 to 90% that a lot of other communities experienced. It seems that their precautions not only stopped the plague from spreading northward, but also made it easier on themselves. But that's not all.


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[Assistant] In recent years, curious researchers have begun to wonder if there was another reason for so many of the villagers' survival. And to find it, they looked deeper, inside their descendants' genetic code. And what they found was groundbreaking.


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[Assistant] Among current residents there, who are direct descendants of those who survived in 1666, they found that 14% of them had a genetic mutation that scientists refer to as Delta-32.


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[Assistant] It's a mutation that first appeared about 700 years ago, right when the first waves of the plague spread across Europe. And it seems that it came about as a way to fight off the illness.


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[Assistant] And scientists now think they understand what happened. Among the villagers with only one copy of the mutation, meaning inherited from one parent, there was a chance they would survive, but no guarantee. Among those with two copies, one from each parent, those odds increased exponentially.


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[Assistant] In other words, the survivors of Eem were born for the mission they assigned themselves.


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[Assistant] All that said, it's important to remember that the people of Eem had no idea their genetic code was special. They probably wouldn't have understood it anyway, even if someone spelled it out for them. No, all they knew was that victory over the plague depended on one simple thing. Their courage.


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[Assistant] But there's no better way to sum things up than by quoting William Wood, a historian writing in the 1800s about just how important the events truly were.


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[Assistant] Let all who tread the green fields of Eam, he wrote, remember, with feelings of awe and veneration, that beneath their feet repose the ashes of those mortal heroes.


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[Assistant] With a sublime, heroic, and unparalleled resolution, gave up their lives, yeaah, doomed themselves to pestilential death to save the surrounding country. Their self-sacrifice is unequaled in the annals of the world.


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[Assistant] There is so much we can learn from stories from the past, and forgotten tales like that of the people of Eem go a long way to helping us find hope in dark times. I hope you enjoyed the dive into their experience, no matter how painful it might have been.


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[Assistant] But we're not quite finished yet with that little village. It seems that there are a few more unexpected details to share. And if you stick around through this brief sponsor break, I'll tell you all about them.


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[Assistant] There's a lot that can be said about the lasting legacy of the story of Eam. Their efforts in 1666 had an impact on the countryside around them, and even today, their descendants are helping scientists better understand how the plague works and how the human body can fight back.


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[Assistant] But there's more left behind than medical clues. Visitors to the village today can still see a small graveyard on the eastern edge, known as Riley Graves.


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[Assistant] It's the location where Elizabeth Hancock dug seven graves by hand and buried the remains of her husband and six children. And in many ways, it's a concrete reminder of her loss and bravery.


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[Assistant] The water trough filled with vinegar is no longer sitting on the village perimeter, but it's been replaced with a large rock known as the Boundary Stone. And there are still buildings there that predate the plague, including George Vicker's house. And the tomb of Catherine Monpesson is still there as well.


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[Assistant] And every year on the last Sunday in August, the people there gather outside for a church service in the open air. They call it Plague Sunday, and it's held in memory of those outdoor gatherings back in the summer of 1666.


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[Assistant] One of the biggest attractions in the village is the Plague Cottage, partly because it's reported to be one of the most haunted buildings in Derbyshire. One common report is that visitors have seen an older woman wearing a blue smock who has a habit of approaching guests in bed at night and waking them up.


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[Assistant] While Eam Hall was built in the decade after the plague, it has stories of its own. Among them are frequent sightings of a young girl named Sarah Mills, who was reported to have drowned in the town well. There are also stories of a ghostly man who has appeared so many times in an upstairs room that the door is now locked permanently to guests.


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[Assistant] But if there's one place where most people have reported something unusual, it's the local pub, the Miner's Arms, which has been standing there since the 1630s.


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[Assistant] The guests who have stayed there have reported a whole laundry list of odd experiences, including mysterious footsteps in empty hallways, cold spots in an otherwise warm room, and objects that seem to move on their own.


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[Assistant] Others have noticed strange smells, the laughter of invisible children, and doors that open and shut on their own.


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[Assistant] Whether or not the building is truly haunted is something that I'll leave for you to decide. But one thing is certainly clear. It's difficult to pay the pub a visit and not feel the weight of history in every room.


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[Assistant] In the end, the village of Eam will always be haunted by the tragedy of its past. But keeping those ghosts company is the knowledge that so many people did something so selfless, giving their lives for the greater good. And in the process, they gave us an example to imitate. And if that's not a ghost worth keeping around, I don't know what is.


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


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


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[Assistant] And you can also follow this show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lorepodcast, 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] They're honestly hard to miss. All over the British Isles, there are stone structures that have been there for thousands of years. Stonehenge is probably the most famous one that comes to mind, but there are many, many more.


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[Assistant] For example, west of Stonehenge is the town of Avebury. It's a quaint little community built around its own hinge. A massive arrangement of three stone circles. The largest megalithic circle in the world, in fact. And to stand in the center of town and look around is to be constantly reminded of the ancient people who built it all.


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[Assistant] Which is why a farmer in southwest Ireland was so surprised by what he found this spring. While taking a walk through one of his fields, he came upon a flat stone embedded in the earth. Knowing that he would like to plow that soil, he spent some time removing the rock to get it out of the way. But when he looked beneath it, he was surprised to find a hole.


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[Assistant] It turned out to be an ancient wedge tomb, but while most tombs of that kind are standing structures above ground, this farmer had found an exception, and it has kicked off an exciting adventure for archaeologists, especially because this particular tomb appears to have remained untouched for thousands of years.


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[Assistant] We often forget just how powerful the act of digging can be. It's right there in our language with phrases like buried treasure and gold digger, yet we still act surprised when something significant is pulled from the ground and brought to life.


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[Assistant] But some discoveries are more significant than others. In fact, sometimes the breaking of Earth is just the first of many steps down a new road. The starts of a journey rather than the end. And sometimes the thing that's been hidden in the dirt has the power to change lives. Just not in the way you'd imagine.


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[Assistant] Many people would have seen Isabelle as a bit unusual. When she moved to town, she brought a very young child and an even younger marriage.


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[Assistant] Church records make it clear that her baby had been born out of wedlock, but they don't answer the question of who the father might have been. It could have been her new husband, William, or someone else entirely. But regardless of the answer, it's clear that she was doing her best to stay afloat, to make something more of what many viewed as a messy life.


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[Assistant] Now, I'm not going to throw a ton of names and places at you right now. It's all there in the source material. But the important things to know are this. Isabelle and William had moved to a little town called Great Drifield, which sits between the English city of York and the North Sea to its east.


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[Assistant] And they seem to have moved into a house owned by another person who had tasked them with running it as a lodging house.


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[Assistant] Truth be told, there was a lot about her life that needed settling. Between the new baby, the new marriage, and all the social complexities that came with them. But she was also getting the lodging house into shape. And one day, while working in the kitchen, she dropped her knife, which landed on the floor and clattered away. Before falling through a small hole.


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[Assistant] Isabelle dropped to her knees, probably cursing to herself as she did, and then glanced into the hole. She could see the blade glinting in the darkness, almost like it was winking at her. But when she tried to see if she could fit her hand inside, she discovered that the floorboard was loose. Popping it off, she easily found the knife and picked it up.


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[Assistant] But that's not all she saw. There, beside the blade, sticking out of the hard-packed dirt was a wooden stake.


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[Assistant] Curious, she gripped it and pulled, but the wood was rotten and broke apart in her hand. So she used the knife, and then a small bowl, to dig away the top of the soil to see what might be beneath it all. And after a while, she struck a rock.


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[Assistant] Curiosity now had control. Isabelle managed to get all her fingers beneath the flat stone and pulled with all her might, finally managing to pry it free. And there, beneath all of it, was something that must have struck her as quite odd.


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[Assistant] A few teeth in the fragments of a flat, rounded bone. Almost, she wondered to herself, like pieces of a skull.


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[Assistant] But the past is the past, and just like the whispers about her child's questionable parentage, Isabelle probably told herself to leave well enough alone. So she set the stone back down, brushed the dirt back over it, and replaced the floorboard. There was already plenty of work to be done, after all.


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[Assistant] The days that followed were a blur of busyness. It's likely that William worked elsewhere, so running of the lodging house fell entirely on her shoulders. So she probably blamed her exhaustion for what she saw one evening between the hours of 8 and 9 p.m., the figure of a man walking through her home.


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[Assistant] The following night, another vision appeared and it left her feeling a bit unsettled.


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[Assistant] A few days after that odd incident with the floor, on August 23rd, Isabelle found herself sitting by the fire late in the evening.


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[Assistant] I'd imagine she was tired from a day of running the house and being a mother, and the quiet would have been nice. But as she sat there in the dark room illuminated only by the small fire, she felt the distinct presence of someone enter and turned around to see who it might be.


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[Assistant] What she found was the shape of a human being, standing off in the deepest shadows. From what she could see, the figure had long blonde hair, and was dressed entirely in green. But Isabelle, to her credit, didn't seem frightened at first. Instead, she just assumed it was a lodger who had arrived late looking for a place to sleep. So she called out to them. Who are you? she asked. And what would you have? Without answering her, the figure approached.


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[Assistant] It's clear from her report that the figure didn't walk as much as glide to her side, which scared her enough to cause her to mutter a prayer out loud. And then, when it was at her side, the figure spoke.


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[Assistant] Fourteen years have I wandered this place, suffering wrong three times, and seven years I have to wander.


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[Assistant] The next evening, though, the figure returned. This time, instead of green, it was wrapped in a long white cloth, like the sort of winding sheet that some corpses would be bundled in. And Isabelle found the courage to speak up at its appearance.


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[Assistant] In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, if thou wouldn't have anything, speak.


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[Assistant] It was an attempt to control the situation and maybe prepare herself for what was to come. Maybe part of her mind still wanted to believe that it was just a strange traveler looking for a bed for the night, but invoking the Trinity like that, well, it reveals more than a little fear and superstition. In response, the figure spoke.


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[Assistant] My life was taken from me, it told her, between eight and nine of the clock at night in this place. And then it added, and I received my grave between twelve and one.


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[Assistant] Almost as if the effort to reveal this information had sapped the figure of all its strength, it quickly disappeared from view, leaving Isabelle to ponder the story she had heard and what it all could mean.


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[Assistant] And even through the weeks that followed, that encounter would not leave her alone.


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[Assistant] But she also remembered the bones in the hole and began to wonder if there were enough threads to pull on to chase the clues to the truth. But to do that, she would need help.


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[Assistant] So, sometime in September of that year, she dug deep for some courage and traveled to see the local justices of the peace.


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[Assistant] The two men, Sir Thomas Rennington and Thomas Crompton, listened carefully, nodded with understanding, and then paused to confer together.


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[Assistant] Isabel was certain they were about to tell her that she was crazy and to leave them alone. Or worse, accuse her of some dark magic and have her tried as a witch. But instead, they came back with a request.


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[Assistant] They wanted her to talk with the spirit again and get more information from it. Names, dates, a deeper understanding of the full story, anything that would help them chase down leads and bring the killer to justice.


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[Assistant] All of a sudden, Isabelle's world had changed. She had arrived as a woman with no power, but had suddenly been given a task of the utmost importance. To help the authorities solve a long forgotten murder.


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[Assistant] It wasn't an unusual request. I know it seems incredibly odd to us today. Public officials asking a woman to have another chat with a ghost and see if she could pump it for information. But in the late 1600s, it was a lot more normal than you'd think.


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[Assistant] In fact, let's take a little detour so I can show you what I mean.


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[Assistant] Less than a decade earlier, back in 1655, a man named William Morgan and his shepherd John Rogers both witnessed the appearance of a ghost. Both men described the figure as dressed in bright and glittering armor and were so excited by what they saw that they told every traveler passing by their farm.


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[Assistant] Soon enough, their story appeared in the newspapers in London. And it wasn't the only one.


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[Assistant] In 1675, a man named William Clark made the journey from Northamptonshire to London to deliver an amazing bit of testimony.


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[Assistant] It seems he had been visited by the ghost of a murdered man who claimed that his death had occurred 267 years earlier. It might have been a little too late to bring the killer to justice, but the papers printed it as the gospel truth.


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[Assistant] And in 1679, a ghost appeared in Lincolnshire to share the story of its own murder. This ghost blamed his own brother, a man who happened to still be alive. So the brother was arrested and questioned, and in the process, buckled under his own guilt and confessed to exactly what the spirit had claimed.


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[Assistant] So, yeaah, it was really odd for a couple of professional justices of the peace, people tasked with the authority to weigh in on legal matters, to tell Isabelle to go ask the ghost for more information.


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[Assistant] But odd or not, it was also pretty common and wouldn't turn nearly as many heads back then as it would today.


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[Assistant] So Isabelle continued, I desire thee to tell me who took thy life.


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[Assistant] What followed was the most extraordinary tale. According to the ghost of Robert Elliot, he had been murdered by not one person, but three. Mary Burton, Alice Colson, and Anne Harrison, who had all beaten him to death while he had slept in his bed.


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[Assistant] And truth be told, Isabelle had no idea what that meant. There were so many more questions to ask and parts of the story to learn.


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[Assistant] But for that she would have to wait a couple more days. Thankfully the next time Robert's ghost appeared he was ready to talk and gave a full accounting of the events and the motive behind his murder.


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[Assistant] It seems that he had been working as an apprentice to a raftsman, someone in charge of transporting lumber down rivers on large flat barges. Through the course of his travels, he had visited that particular lodging house every now and then. And at some point in the past, he had met one of the three women, Mary Burton, and lent her a good amount of money.


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[Assistant] So when he showed up for the last time, Mary wasn't happy to see him. She owed him money and he asked for it to be repaid.


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[Assistant] First she just flat out told him no, but then he promised to return with the authorities.


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[Assistant] Then, as if the situation wasn't tense enough, he asked to lodge there for the night. After refusing for a bit, Mary eventually relented and showed him to a bed to sleep on. And of course, it was that very night, while he slept, that Mary returned with two friends, who murdered him in cold blood.


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[Assistant] Robert told Isabelle Moore, Mary apparently robbed his corpse before hiding it beneath the floorboards of the kitchen. And then she took some of his papers and traveled south to his home near London, where she tricked his family into handing over even more of his valuables to her. Isabelle didn't know the legal system well.


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[Assistant] She wasn't a justice of the peace or anyone with power.


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[Assistant] But she knew desperation. She understood how a person's past can limit their future.


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[Assistant] Mary Burton needed Robert to go away, entirely and completely, in order for her crime to go undetected. And that included making sure his spirit wouldn't return to spill the beans, which we now know was a common belief.


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[Assistant] All of a sudden, Isabelle saw the pieces fall into place. The stake had worked, and for 14 years it had kept his spirit silent and imprisoned. It buried the truth, but then Isabelle came along, dropped her knife, and pulled that stake free.


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[Assistant] The puzzle was complete. Now all she had to do was tell Rennington and Crompton what she had learned and let them do the rest.


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[Assistant] Her cold case had nearly reached its hope for a conclusion. But even still, it was far from over.


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[Assistant] The job was done. With her head filled with all the new information about the cold case, Isabelle marched back to Sir Thomas Rennington and his esquire, Thomas Crompton. And with the handoff complete, she returned home to the lodging house.


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[Assistant] It would be Crompton who would do the legwork now, a combination of letter writing and trips to various officials in the area. And we can't help but wonder if the supposed date of the murder was part of his urgency, because 14 years prior to 1662 was smack in the middle of the Second English Civil War.


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[Assistant] Add in the fact that York and the surrounding area where they all lived had been a hotly contested region between both sides of that conflict, the Royalists and the Parliamentarians, and it probably filled Crompton with more than a bit of curiosity. Could someone have been murdered in 1648, or their political beliefs?


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[Assistant] Back home, Isabelle was having more encounters with the ghost of Robert Elliot. In one conversation, Robert revealed to her that four other spirits were nearby in a similar state of unresolved tension. But whether or not they were victims of murder or even of the same killer wasn't very clear.


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[Assistant] Isabelle also used her connection to the world of the dead to ask Robert more philosophical questions. One of the things she asked him was if there really was such a place as purgatory, which honestly makes a lot of sense for a woman in a country that had tossed aside Roman Catholicism. Robert gave her the Protestant friendly answer. No, there is no purgatory.


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[Assistant] And before we just gloss over a detail like that, let me explain why it was so important. You see, in the Catholic world, a ghost was seen by many as a spirit of a dead person that was allowed by God to return from purgatory to the world of the living. That would make it friendly and benevolent.


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[Assistant] It's one of the reasons why the witch trials of Europe happened when they did, in a post-reformation world. Because all of a sudden, ghostly visitations and spectral sightings were no longer assumed to be safe.


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[Assistant] After this, the ghost told Isabelle something different. It was a glimpse into the future rather than the past. He told her that two men were plotting to murder the newly returned king, Charles II. Their names, according to the ghost,


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[Assistant] ...were Robert Jenkins and his son Philip, who worked in the king's household as clerk and page, respectively.


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[Assistant] But while Isabelle was having wild success in learning new details from her ghostly friend, Thomas Crompton was having a more difficult time. It seems that his letters to a few local ministers asking for the whereabouts of Mary Burton or any of the other women mentioned by the ghost had come up empty.


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[Assistant] One letter did come back with a glimmer of hope, although only slightly. It seemed that Isabelle might have misheard a town name or confused it in her mind with another.


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[Assistant] So Crompton had been looking in the wrong place. A local minister informed him that there had been a woman named Anne Harrison in his area, but she had married and moved away.


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[Assistant] Over 30 years earlier, which would have put her out of the murder's timeline.


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[Assistant] When Crompton informed Isabelle of these dead ends, I think it's safe to assume he was frustrated and more than a little embarrassed. Here was a public official who decided cases at all sorts of important levels of society. And he had been chasing imaginary people on the recommendation of a ghost. So he asked her to explain herself.