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Ancient Origins · 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. Becoming a published author is a common dream
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  Speaker 1: not everyone can achieve. It takes hard work, determination, and
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  Speaker 1: a healthy dose of luck. For many writers, a little
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  Speaker 1: friendly help can go a long way, even if it
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  Speaker 1: comes from the strangest of places. Pearl was born in
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  Speaker 1: Mound City, Illinois, in three but her family packed up
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  Speaker 1: and moved to Texas before she was a year old.
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  Speaker 1: Pearl was not someone who enjoyed school. She almost never
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  Speaker 1: picked up a book, and when her class work got
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  Speaker 1: to be too tough, she shut down completely and just
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  Speaker 1: stayed home. Pearl also lacked direction. She wanted to sing
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  Speaker 1: for a living and didn't care about much else. Her
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  Speaker 1: parents moved again when she was fourteen, this time to St. Louis, Missouri,
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  Speaker 1: and Pearl started to take her dream a little more seriously.
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  Speaker 1: School was a non starter for her, but she dove
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  Speaker 1: head first into piano and voice lessons, and it seems
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  Speaker 1: she had a talent for both. A career in music
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  Speaker 1: seemed like a viable future for her, so when she
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  Speaker 1: got a little older, she moved back to Illinois for
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  Speaker 1: more advanced vocal training. From there, she got a job
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  Speaker 1: working at a music company to make ends meet. At
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  Speaker 1: twenty four, Pearl met a man named John Howard Curran,
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  Speaker 1: and the two soon got married. Neither of them were
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  Speaker 1: big readers, but they enjoyed the occasional game of cards
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  Speaker 1: and lived a happy life together. Around July of nineteen twelve, though,
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  Speaker 1: something changed in Pearl. She met a woman who had
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  Speaker 1: always wanted to become an author. Her name was Patients,
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  Speaker 1: and Pearl knew that she could help her. Despite having
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  Speaker 1: a limited education and no prior interest in reading or writing,
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  Speaker 1: Pearl transcribed the women's dictations onto the page. They worked
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  Speaker 1: together for hours at a time, word by word, as
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  Speaker 1: the beautiful prose took shape. Over the course of thirty years,
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  Speaker 1: Pearl and Patients wrote at least seven novels, as well
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  Speaker 1: as countless poems and short stories. Patients seem to have
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  Speaker 1: a vast knowledge of other languages, different types of plants,
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  Speaker 1: and other esoteric topics, and she passed that knowledge onto Pearl,
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  Speaker 1: who was only too happy to assist. The two became
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  Speaker 1: so popular folks used to visit pearl letter home to
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  Speaker 1: watch as she and patients worked out the new story
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  Speaker 1: or poem. Among those in attendance were the family of
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  Speaker 1: Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway's first wife. Critics hailed patience is
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  Speaker 1: writing as vivid and descriptive. The editor of the literary
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  Speaker 1: journal The Mirror became so enamored with her he practically
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  Speaker 1: fell in love with her. He might have married her too,
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  Speaker 1: if he had been able to see her. Unfortunately, only
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  Speaker 1: Pearl was able to communicate with pay patients, because the
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  Speaker 1: talented writer had died in sixte You see, on that
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  Speaker 1: faithful summer night in nineteen twelve, when Pearl claimed to
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  Speaker 1: have met patients, she and her good friend Emily Hutchings
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  Speaker 1: had actually taken out a talking board to communicate to
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  Speaker 1: Emily's late father, who had recently passed away, because Emily
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  Speaker 1: wished to speak with him one last time. It took
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  Speaker 1: several attempts over many nights, but finally a message came through,
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  Speaker 1: but the message it spelled out did not come from
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  Speaker 1: Emily's father. Many moons ago I lived, it said, and
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  Speaker 1: again I come patients worth is my name. Except patients
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  Speaker 1: hadn't come to talk to Emily. She had chosen to
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  Speaker 1: speak through Pearl, who wrote down the spirit's messages one
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  Speaker 1: letter at a time with the help from the talking board.
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  Speaker 1: As news of Pearl's literary seances traveled throughout her neighborhood,
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  Speaker 1: folks came to sit in her parlor and talk to patients.
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  Speaker 1: They'd ask her questions, and she would write them poems
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  Speaker 1: about the topics of their choice. Pearl's husband, John, also
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  Speaker 1: took copious notes during each session. If patients used a
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  Speaker 1: word that he didn't know, he would consult his encyclopedia
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  Speaker 1: for a definition. Of course, neighbors weren't the only people
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  Speaker 1: interested in patients in Pearl. Scholars, therapists, historians, and other
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  Speaker 1: academics wanted to better understand the source of such literary skill,
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  Speaker 1: and all kinds of answers were offered up Pearl was
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  Speaker 1: channeling her unconscious mind, or that the talents of her
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  Speaker 1: ancestors had been passed down to her. Charles Corey, who
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  Speaker 1: headed up the philosophy department at Washington University concluded that
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  Speaker 1: Patients was nothing more than one of Pearl's alternate personalities.
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  Speaker 1: But none of these people had ever sat with Pearl
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  Speaker 1: or studied her directly. Their deductions came from anecdotal evidence
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  Speaker 1: provided by news articles and secondhand accounts. The truth is,
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  Speaker 1: only one man ever got to sit down with Pearl,
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  Speaker 1: Walter Prince, the head of the American Society for Psychical Research.
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  Speaker 1: Prince wasn't a man to be trifled with. He had
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  Speaker 1: previously worked to expose psychic fraud alongside none other than
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  Speaker 1: Harry Houdini. Anyone studied by Walter Prince was inevitably found
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  Speaker 1: to be a fake. And yet, despite the odds against her,
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  Speaker 1: Pearl allowed Prince to watch. He read her husband's notes,
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  Speaker 1: he interviewed her loved ones, and he attended her writing sessions.
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  Speaker 1: And when all was said and done, he declared Pearl
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  Speaker 1: to be the real deal. He had found no reason
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  Speaker 1: to believe Patience was anything other than what her medium
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  Speaker 1: had claimed her to be, a spirit communicating with the
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  Speaker 1: world of the living from beyond the grave. Even today,
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  Speaker 1: the debate over Pearl's authenticity lives on The anti spiritualism
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  Speaker 1: camp still considers her a fraud, while her supporters want
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  Speaker 1: desperately to believe we can communicate with the world beyond
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  Speaker 1: our own. But maybe will eventually solve the mystery. After all,
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  Speaker 1: we have news articles, psychological analysis, and her husband's own
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  Speaker 1: notes from all her sessions. Perhaps someday we'll be able
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  Speaker 1: to piece the truth together. All it might take is
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  Speaker 1: a little patience. Beneath the ocean's calm surface lives a
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  Speaker 1: world brimming with life, from majestic blue whales to fearsome
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  Speaker 1: great white sharks. There exists a delicate and rich ecosystem
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  Speaker 1: of animals and plants, unlike anything on land. Over the millennia,
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  Speaker 1: that life has evolved and adapted to survive a changing
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  Speaker 1: ocean landscape. But there are still traces of its history
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  Speaker 1: out there, and we might have come face to face
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  Speaker 1: with that history in The Zooyomaru was a Japanese fishing
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  Speaker 1: trawler sailing just off the coast of New Zealand. On
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  Speaker 1: April it picked up a large, unidentified carcass that was
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  Speaker 1: pale and decomposing. It had been discovered about nine feet down,
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  Speaker 1: much deeper than a creature of that size should have been.
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  Speaker 1: None of the men on the boat could figure out
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  Speaker 1: what it was, but rather than keep the dead animal
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  Speaker 1: and contaminate the fish they had already caught, Captain Akira
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  Speaker 1: Tanaka told his crew to toss it back into the ocean.
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  Speaker 1: As they were swinging the crane over the deck, the
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  Speaker 1: rope slipped and the carcass landed at their feet. Surprised
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  Speaker 1: by what he saw, one of the men on board,
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  Speaker 1: who had studied oceanography, pulled out his camera and started snapping.
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  Speaker 1: He took photos of the creature and recorded its measurements
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  Speaker 1: as well. He even sketched out what he had witnessed,
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  Speaker 1: but his drawings invited a lot more questions than answers.
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  Speaker 1: The carcass had weighed almost four thousand pounds and measured
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  Speaker 1: roughly thirty two ft long. There had been four large
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  Speaker 1: fins on its side, a neck of about five ft long,
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  Speaker 1: and a six and a half foot long tail. Its
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  Speaker 1: internal organs had all been eaten out or rotted away,
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  Speaker 1: but there was still skin on its bones. They dubbed
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  Speaker 1: their discovery NeSSI, based on its resemblance to Scotland's famous
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  Speaker 1: Luckness Monster, and then they tossed it overboard. The photographer
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  Speaker 1: later hitched a ride on another boat and returned to Japan.
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  Speaker 1: As soon as he stepped foot on dry land. He
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  Speaker 1: used the fishing company's dark room to develop his photos.
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  Speaker 1: He showed his findings to the owner of a company,
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  Speaker 1: who then outsourced analysis to local biologists. The photos weren't
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  Speaker 1: enough for any of them to identify it conclusively, but
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  Speaker 1: they had their ideas. A press conference was held by
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  Speaker 1: company executives to let the world know about their discovery.
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  Speaker 1: As a result, more scientists came forward with answers of
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  Speaker 1: their own of a person. A scientist from Sweden determined
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  Speaker 1: that what the crew had found was nothing more than
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  Speaker 1: a dead basking shark. It might have been bigger than
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  Speaker 1: most others, but it wasn't anything unusual, according to an
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  Speaker 1: article in New Scientists magazine. Further analysis of the evidence
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  Speaker 1: seemed to confirm their assumptions. When a basking shark decomposed,
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  Speaker 1: its lower jaw and fins were the first to go.
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  Speaker 1: What got left behind looked like a very long neck
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  Speaker 1: with a head on top. But not everyone agreed. Two
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  Speaker 1: Japanese professors had a much different interpretation of the evidence.
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  Speaker 1: To them, the animal in the photographs from the ship
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  Speaker 1: looked nothing like a shark. Decomposing over Otherwise, there were
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  Speaker 1: four well defined fins, a long neck, and a long tail,
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  Speaker 1: and the anatomical drawings seemed to corroborate that belief. Although
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  Speaker 1: no skin or tissue samples were taken, the pictures clearly
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  Speaker 1: showed evidence of red flesh and large nostrils on the
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  Speaker 1: front of its drooping head. Also, this carcass had been
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  Speaker 1: found floating thirty miles off the coast. Most dead sharks
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  Speaker 1: typically washed ashore before decomposing. The ones that didn't had
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  Speaker 1: never been found as deep as nine feet under the ocean.
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  Speaker 1: The professors concluded that what they were really dealing with
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  Speaker 1: was a creature no one had ever laid eyes on
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  Speaker 1: because it had gone extinct millions of years before. They believed,
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  Speaker 1: as crazy as it might sound, that the carcass dredged
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  Speaker 1: from the depths of the ocean wasn't a basking shark
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  Speaker 1: at all, but a prehistoric creature from the Mesozoic era.
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  Speaker 1: A plea csare I Hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour
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  Speaker 1: of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
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  Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
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  Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me, Aaron Manky
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  Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
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  Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
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  Speaker 1: and television show and you can learn all about it
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  Speaker 1: over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
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  Speaker 1: next time, stay curious. Yeah,