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Hot Stuff · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menkey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is
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  Speaker 1: full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. It's possible to live somewhere all your life
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  Speaker 1: and not know everything about it. When we moved to
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  Speaker 1: a new place, much of what we learned about it
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  Speaker 1: is gleaned from exploration. There might be hidden treasure within
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  Speaker 1: the walls of a home or buried in the backyard.
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  Speaker 1: For the Avery family in eighteen sixty one, that treasure
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  Speaker 1: wasn't just inside the home, The whole place was a
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  Speaker 1: gold mine. Daniel Dudley Avery was a legal dollar from
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  Speaker 1: Baton Rouge. In eighteen thirty one, he married into the
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  Speaker 1: Marsh family, a wealthy clan of landowners with their own
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  Speaker 1: island near the Gulf of Mexico. The Marshes turned the
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  Speaker 1: island into a sugar plantation, as its soil and climate
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  Speaker 1: provided ideal growing conditions. But years later, after Daniel had
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  Speaker 1: become the sole owner of his in Law's empire, he
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  Speaker 1: made some changes. First, he renamed the island Avery Island. Next,
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  Speaker 1: he started digging around, eventually stumbling upon a salt mine
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  Speaker 1: deep underground. Avery didn't know that the Native Americans who
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  Speaker 1: had originally owned the island used to harvest the salted
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  Speaker 1: trade with other tribes in neighboring states, but there it was.
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  Speaker 1: With his newly discovered income stream resting just below his feet,
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  Speaker 1: Avery started mining the island for its salt. At the time,
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  Speaker 1: two major events in his life happened. His daughter Mary
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  Speaker 1: Eliza Avery married a banker named Edmund Mcilhanny, and the
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  Speaker 1: Civil War just began. The Confederate soldiers in the South
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  Speaker 1: needed salt desperately. It wasn't just used to season food.
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  Speaker 1: Salt was a powerful preservative, and the horses liked it too.
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  Speaker 1: Avery got into the business of providing the Confederacy with
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  Speaker 1: barrels of it until the Union eventually took control of
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  Speaker 1: the island in an operation known as the Great Salt Expedition.
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  Speaker 1: With the island compromised, Edmund fled with Mary to Texas,
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  Speaker 1: where he worked in finance for the Confederacy. After the
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  Speaker 1: South lost, Edmund was suddenly out of a job. He
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  Speaker 1: moved with his family back to Avery Island, performing odd
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  Speaker 1: jobs around the plantation. His primary task was maintaining the garden,
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  Speaker 1: where Edmund took to growing all sorts of vegetables, including peppers.
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  Speaker 1: A friend of his, Mansell White, had gifted the former
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  Speaker 1: banker a bushel of peppers and a recipe to use them,
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  Speaker 1: so Edmund planted the peppers for years. He tended to them,
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  Speaker 1: building them up into a viable crop which he could
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  Speaker 1: use in his recipe and then sell to folks on
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  Speaker 1: the mainland. He would pulp the peppers into a mash,
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  Speaker 1: then age them in jars over the ruse of a month,
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  Speaker 1: after which he'd pour in some vinegar and let the
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  Speaker 1: jars sit for another thirty days. Once the pepper mash
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  Speaker 1: had finished fermenting, Edmund would pour the sauce into glass
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  Speaker 1: cologne bottles and top them off with the cork stopper.
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  Speaker 1: And then he would travel all throughout the Gulf coast
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  Speaker 1: selling his product to anyone looking to add a little
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  Speaker 1: flavor to their lives. Each bottle came with a little
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  Speaker 1: sprinkler attachment that made it easier to add it to food,
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  Speaker 1: and it seems the product was a hit. In his
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  Speaker 1: first year, he sold over six fifty of them for
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  Speaker 1: just a dollar apiece. Originally, many customers found the sauce
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  Speaker 1: too spicy. They didn't understand that it wasn't like other sauces,
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  Speaker 1: which could be applied to food with wild abandon. Their
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  Speaker 1: delicate palets just hadn't adjusted to the spiciness. But once
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  Speaker 1: they did, they couldn't get enough of it. The sauce
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  Speaker 1: was so popular Edmund's company kept making it and continues
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  Speaker 1: to do so today. Although some things have changed in
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  Speaker 1: the old day is every pepper used in the sauce
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  Speaker 1: was grown right there on Avery Island. Today, though the
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  Speaker 1: peppers are harvested from all over South America and Africa,
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  Speaker 1: where the climate is better suited to larger crops. The
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  Speaker 1: production of the sauce, however, still occurs right there on
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  Speaker 1: the island, except instead of letting the pepper mash ferment
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  Speaker 1: in jars and now ages in old bourbon barrels for
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  Speaker 1: up to three years. Millions of bottles are sold each
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  Speaker 1: year in grocery stores everywhere, and just about everyone would
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  Speaker 1: recognize the diamond shaped logo on the front. That's right,
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  Speaker 1: the spicy topping invented just after the Civil War, putting
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  Speaker 1: a little family business on the map in the process.
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  Speaker 1: Is now a worldwide hit known simply as Tabasco sauce.
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  Speaker 1: When a trend gets big, people do what or they
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  Speaker 1: can to capitalize on it. One televised singing competition gave
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  Speaker 1: way to an entire genre. As people started taking more selfies,
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  Speaker 1: companies came out with sticks so that they could hold
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  Speaker 1: their phones in front for a better vacation picture. And
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  Speaker 1: in the mid nineteenth century, the spiritualism movement gave rise
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  Speaker 1: to amateur mediums in home seances and for one man,
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  Speaker 1: a strange new way of communicating with the dead. Jonathan
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  Speaker 1: was a farmer from Ohio. He lived with his wife
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  Speaker 1: and nine kids, far from the hustle and bustle of
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  Speaker 1: city life. Jonathan didn't think much of spiritualism. To him,
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  Speaker 1: the people who practiced it were fakes and scammers, but
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  Speaker 1: they were cropping up everywhere. To help put a stop
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  Speaker 1: to it, Jonathan started traveling to seances with the purpose
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  Speaker 1: of exposing mediums as frauds. There was just one problem.
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  Speaker 1: He started second guessing himself. Odd sounds, floating tables, and
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  Speaker 1: automatic writing could usually be explained away. However, during a
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  Speaker 1: visit to Hideville, New York, Jonathan met a medium who
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  Speaker 1: changed his life and his outlook. This person pointed right
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  Speaker 1: at the skeptical farmer and told him that not only
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  Speaker 1: was he physically linked to the other side, but he
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  Speaker 1: might be the most powerful medium in the world. Well.
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  Speaker 1: Needless to say, Jonathan left New York shocked and soon
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  Speaker 1: returned to Ohio. When he wasn't tending to his farm,
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  Speaker 1: he was researching spiritualism. This time, though he was doing
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  Speaker 1: it from a place of genuine curiosity and obsession. He
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  Speaker 1: spent the next several years learning everything he could and
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  Speaker 1: honing his techniques. He would sit at a table with
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  Speaker 1: paper and a pencil and lead his hand write whatever
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  Speaker 1: it wanted to, a technique known as automatic writing. He
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  Speaker 1: also began holding seances in his home along with the
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  Speaker 1: rest of his family. Jonathan had come to believe that
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  Speaker 1: not only had he become a powerful medium, the rest
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  Speaker 1: of his clan were equally gifted as well. One day,
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  Speaker 1: during a session with his eldest son, a message came
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  Speaker 1: through from the spirit world. Jonathan was given instructions to
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  Speaker 1: build a room in which he and his family could
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  Speaker 1: contact the other side. The voice speaking through his son
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  Speaker 1: gave exact measurements for the size of the room, which
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  Speaker 1: was to be constructed within a log cabin on his property.
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  Speaker 1: The room was to be twelve feet by fourteen feet,
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  Speaker 1: accessible by a single door, and have three windows of
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  Speaker 1: a specific size inside. He was told to hang bowls
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  Speaker 1: from the ceiling and place a variety of musical instruments
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  Speaker 1: like drums and violins around the space. The centerpiece would
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  Speaker 1: be the Spirit Machine, intended to be a spiritual amplifier.
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  Speaker 1: This device was meant to easily summon ghosts from their
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  Speaker 1: world and allow them to remain in hours for longer
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  Speaker 1: periods of time. Jonathan's oldest child drew the plans for
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  Speaker 1: the machine as the spirit continued to speak through him.
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  Speaker 1: The base would be a six legged table six ft
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  Speaker 1: long two and a half feet tall. On top of
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  Speaker 1: it would sit a wooden frame for the device itself.
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  Speaker 1: A post in the center would support four curved pieces
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  Speaker 1: holding up drums of different sizes, all fastened together with wire.
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  Speaker 1: There was also copper wire wrapped in zinc that were
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  Speaker 1: networked throughout the rest of the table, along with metal rods, bells,
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  Speaker 1: and glass knobs. All of it had to be perfect
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  Speaker 1: for the spirits, who depended on the machine to harness
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  Speaker 1: electricity in order to create an electro magnetic field in
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  Speaker 1: which they could manifest. When Jonathan finally finished the device,
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  Speaker 1: his family started holding seances in the room with up
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  Speaker 1: to twenty guests and attendance. Spirits would bang the drums
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  Speaker 1: and blow the horns around them while making other objects levitate,
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  Speaker 1: and yes, some spirits appeared in a floating, translucent form
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  Speaker 1: right before their eyes. It looked as though the machine
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  Speaker 1: was working as expected. Many in the family's position would
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  Speaker 1: have charged a hefty sum to attend one of their seances,
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  Speaker 1: which had grown quite popular, but they only asked for
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  Speaker 1: voluntary donations. Unfortunately, as with most mediums of the day,
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  Speaker 1: Jonathan's family was eventually accused of faking their sessions. Linus Everett,
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  Speaker 1: an editor for a local newspaper, claimed to have seen
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  Speaker 1: one of Jonathan's daughters crawling around in the dark to
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  Speaker 1: carry out a ghostly effect. Once the story got out,
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  Speaker 1: the family's fame turned sour. Jonathan stopped holding seances for
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  Speaker 1: the public and locked up the cabin for good. The
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  Speaker 1: mobs were so relentless that he his wife, and their
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  Speaker 1: kids were all forced to leave Ohio behind, moving to Illinois.
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  Speaker 1: A short while later. The family of Jonathan Cohon's and
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  Speaker 1: their spirit machine were never seen or heard from again.
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  Speaker 1: They had been just one of countless mediums to be
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  Speaker 1: vilified in the press, but still, out of hundreds of
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  Speaker 1: guests who attended their seances, only Linus Everett had ever
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  Speaker 1: caught them faking an effect. Had everyone else been too
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  Speaker 1: shocked to pay closer attention, or had the family been
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  Speaker 1: the real deal after all? Without the cabin or the
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  Speaker 1: spirit machine it contained, we may never know, but we
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  Speaker 1: do have Nathan's plans for the device, making it possible
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  Speaker 1: for someone else to build another. For those who want
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  Speaker 1: to know the truth, though, that means there's hope. With
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  Speaker 1: a little wire and a healthy dose of ingenuity, we
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  Speaker 1: could always just give him a call and ask I
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  Speaker 1: Hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
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  Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
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  Speaker 1: was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how
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  Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore,
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  Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and
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  Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
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  Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.
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  Speaker 1: Ye