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Cautionary Tales: The Mummy's Curse (Halloween Classic) · Spooky Season Podcasts 🎃

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, Cautionary Tales listeners. October is here. And this year,
0:26
Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales is celebrating with a month of pure Halloween horror.
0:32
Speaker 1: We've been working hard on brand new spooky stories. A
0:36
Speaker 1: vampire panic in New England, witch trials in Lancashire, ghosts
0:42
Speaker 1: in Yorkshire mines, and an 80s alien invasion. And if
0:47
Speaker 1: you're a member of our Cautionary Club on Patreon, you'll
0:51
Speaker 1: also be able to listen to a story about a
0:52
Speaker 1: mysterious radio show which appeared to prove telepathy is possible.
0:58
Speaker 1: And I'll share my own ghost stories on our bonus
1:01
Speaker 1: interview episode, Proceed with Caution. We're going to kick things
1:06
Speaker 1: off with a repeat of one of my favourite classic episodes,
1:10
Speaker 1: The Mummy's Curse. about the grisly fates of the people
1:14
Speaker 1: who opened Tutankhamun's tomb, and my own personal encounter with
1:21
Speaker 1: an Egyptian relic. If you have any questions about all
1:25
Speaker 1: things paranormal, or you have a haunted cautionary tale of
1:28
Speaker 1: your own, I'd love to hear from you. Contact tales
1:33
Speaker 1: at pushkin.fm And if you want access to the bonus content,
1:37
Speaker 1: head to patreon.com slash cautionary club. Three and a half
1:46
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, in ancient Egypt, the princess of Amun-Ra
1:51
Speaker 1: passed away. She was laid to rest in an exquisite
1:56
Speaker 1: wooden coffin and buried in a deep vault at Luxor,
2:00
Speaker 1: on the banks of the mighty Nile. More than 30
2:04
Speaker 1: centuries later, in the late 1800s, Four young English tourists,
2:10
Speaker 1: rich gentlemen all, were offered the chance to purchase a
2:14
Speaker 1: delightfully painted mummy case. They drew lots to decide who
2:19
Speaker 1: had the right to buy the prize. The man who
2:22
Speaker 1: won paid a small fortune and had the coffin taken
2:27
Speaker 1: to his hotel. A few hours later, he was seen
2:32
Speaker 1: walking out onto the lone and level sands. He was
2:38
Speaker 1: never to return. The second fellow was wounded in a
2:42
Speaker 1: hunting accident. He lost his arm. The third man lost
2:47
Speaker 1: everything in a bank run. The fourth was struck with
2:50
Speaker 1: a severe illness, lost his job and ended his days
2:54
Speaker 1: selling matches on street corners. The coffin case was purchased
2:59
Speaker 1: by another gentleman. His house caught fire and he quickly
3:04
Speaker 1: donated the unlucky item to the British Museum. The removal
3:09
Speaker 1: did not go smoothly. The removal wagon lost control and
3:13
Speaker 1: hit a passerby. One workman fell and broke his leg
3:18
Speaker 1: while carrying the casket. His colleague simply died inexplicably two
3:23
Speaker 1: days later. Night watchmen at the museum frequently heard sobbing
3:30
Speaker 1: and hammering from inside the coffin. One died on duty.
3:36
Speaker 1: The others refused to go near the Egyptian room where
3:39
Speaker 1: the item was stored. A visitor who treated the exhibition
3:44
Speaker 1: with scorn soon paid the price. His child died of measles.
3:51
Speaker 1: A photographer took a picture of the case, but when
3:55
Speaker 1: he developed the picture, he saw only a tormented human face.
4:02
Speaker 1: The photographer went home, locked his door, and shot himself.
4:09
Speaker 1: The British Museum sold the cursed object to a private
4:13
Speaker 1: collector who soon regretted the purchase. Eventually, he found a
4:17
Speaker 1: buyer bold or foolish enough to take it off his hands.
4:22
Speaker 1: An American archaeologist who simply did not believe in unlucky mummies.
4:29
Speaker 1: He paid top dollar for the coffin case and arranged
4:33
Speaker 1: to have it shipped across the Atlantic to New York.
4:37
Speaker 1: For safekeeping, the lid of the coffin of the Princess
4:42
Speaker 1: of Amun-Ra travelled on the bridge of the finest ocean
4:46
Speaker 1: liner in the world, the pride of the White Star Line.
4:52
Speaker 1: The ship's name was the Titanic. I'm Tim Harford, and
5:00
Speaker 1: you're listening to Cautionary Tales. In 1922, a decade after
5:29
Speaker 1: the Titanic had slipped beneath the icy waters of the
5:32
Speaker 1: North Atlantic, another archaeologist, the Englishman Howard Carter, was at
5:38
Speaker 1: the head of the Valley of the Kings in the
5:41
Speaker 1: heart of ancient Egypt. He was patiently encamped outside what
5:47
Speaker 1: he described as a magnificent tomb with seals intact. it
5:54
Speaker 1: had been a long wait. Not just the three weeks
5:58
Speaker 1: for Carter's patron and financier, Lord Carnarvon, to arrive. Not
6:03
Speaker 1: just the fifteen years of excavating different sites around the
6:08
Speaker 1: valley with limited success. No, someone, or something, had been
6:16
Speaker 1: waiting still longer, for more than three thousand years. Deep
6:24
Speaker 1: Inside that tomb, behind a sealed door, a corridor filled
6:29
Speaker 1: with rubble, another sealed door, a chamber full of treasures,
6:33
Speaker 1: and yet another sealed door, was something that nobody had
6:38
Speaker 1: dared to disturb for millennia. And perhaps with good reason.
6:45
Speaker 1: Everyone knew the story of the unlucky mummy and the Titanic.
6:49
Speaker 1: Such tales were popular in late Victorian and Edwardian society.
6:55
Speaker 1: A famous psychic, Count Haman, sent a telegram with a warning.
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Speaker 1: Lord Carnarvon not to enter tomb. Disobey at peril. If ignored,
7:08
Speaker 1: will suffer sickness. Not recover. Death will claim him in Egypt.
7:15
Speaker 1: And yet, Lord Carnarvon had come. After weeks of further digging,
7:22
Speaker 1: he now stood at the shoulder of Howard Carter, who,
7:26
Speaker 1: after patiently working on a small hole into the burial chamber,
7:30
Speaker 1: put a candle to the hole and peered in. At first,
7:36
Speaker 1: I could see nothing, Carter later recalled, but presently as
7:40
Speaker 1: my eyes grew accustomed to the light, Details of the
7:43
Speaker 1: room emerged slowly from the mist. Strange animals, statues, and
7:48
Speaker 1: gold everywhere, the glint of gold. For the moment, I
7:52
Speaker 1: was struck dumb with amazement. And when Lord Carnarvon, unable
7:56
Speaker 1: to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, Can you
8:00
Speaker 1: see anything? It was all I could do to get
8:03
Speaker 1: out the words.
8:04
Speaker 2: Yes. Wonderful things.
8:06
Speaker 1: Wonderful things. Wonderful things. perhaps. These treasures were there to
8:16
Speaker 1: guard and sustain the mummified body and the golden burial
8:21
Speaker 1: mask of the young pharaoh Tutankhamen. The story was a sensation.
8:28
Speaker 1: The world's press had gathered in Cairo and were jostling
8:32
Speaker 1: for access to the tomb or to Carter or Carnarvon.
8:35
Speaker 1: The Times of London lauded it over the other papers,
8:39
Speaker 1: having paid handsomely for exclusive access. But every newspaper was there,
8:44
Speaker 1: and every newspaper had an angle. These rival newspapers reported
8:50
Speaker 1: that Carter and Carnarvon had deliberately destroyed a terrible warning
8:54
Speaker 1: over the tomb, because they were afraid that the locals
8:58
Speaker 1: would refuse to dig. That warning read, Death. shall come
9:04
Speaker 1: on swift wings to whoever toucheth the tomb of the pharaoh. Reports, too,
9:12
Speaker 1: that Carnarvon had received a tiny injury in the tomb.
9:17
Speaker 1: A stinging or biting insect had pierced the skin on
9:20
Speaker 1: his cheek, just as he had entered the presence of Tutankhamen.
9:26
Speaker 1: And Count Haman was not the only person to have
9:29
Speaker 1: warned about the consequences of Lord Carnarvon's arrogance. One eyewitness
9:35
Speaker 1: turned to the fellow standing next to him. I give
9:38
Speaker 1: him six weeks to live. Nearly six weeks later, Lord
9:44
Speaker 1: Carnarvon's family were rushing to be at his side in Cairo.
9:49
Speaker 1: He was gravely ill. A wound on his cheek was
9:53
Speaker 1: infected and the malady was spreading through his body. The
9:57
Speaker 1: Express newspaper reported that at the moment that Lord Carnarvon
10:02
Speaker 1: breathed his last feeble breath, the lights in his hotel
10:08
Speaker 1: went out. plunging all into darkness. Death had claimed him
10:15
Speaker 1: in Egypt. It was another pharaoh's curse, and it had
10:20
Speaker 1: claimed its first victims. Cautionary tales are true stories of disaster,
10:32
Speaker 1: and lessons for us all to learn, lest we make
10:35
Speaker 1: the same mistake ourselves. But what lesson should we learn
10:40
Speaker 1: from stories about the unlucky mummy, or the curse of Tutankhamen? First,
10:46
Speaker 1: let's establish what exactly is said to have happened to
10:50
Speaker 1: Carnarvon and Carter's expedition. The first indication of trouble was
10:55
Speaker 1: a little on the nose. The death of a canary.
10:59
Speaker 1: Howard Carter's beloved pet canary had been eaten by a
11:03
Speaker 1: cobra the day Carter began to excavate the tomb. The
11:08
Speaker 1: cobra was well known as a symbol of the power
11:11
Speaker 1: of the pharaohs. Another symbol was the jackal, representative of Anubis,
11:17
Speaker 1: the Egyptian god of the dead. In his diary, Howard
11:21
Speaker 1: Carter recorded the unsettling sight of two black jackals. the
11:27
Speaker 1: very image of Anubis. He noted that it was the
11:31
Speaker 1: first time he'd seen a black jackal, despite 35 years
11:36
Speaker 1: working in Egypt. Carter's canary wasn't the only pet to suffer.
11:41
Speaker 1: Lord Carnarvon's dog howled in sorrow and then expired at
11:47
Speaker 1: the same moment that Carnarvon himself did, which is all
11:50
Speaker 1: the more remarkable since Carnarvon was in Cairo while the
11:54
Speaker 1: dog was in Highclere Castle in southern England. Highclere is
11:58
Speaker 1: better known these days as the filming location for Downton Abbey.
12:03
Speaker 1: If it had just been Carnarvon and a menagerie, that
12:06
Speaker 1: would be one thing, but the pharaoh's thirst for revenge
12:10
Speaker 1: was not easily slaked. Soon Howard Carter was showing signs
12:16
Speaker 1: of illness too, and the list of people struck down
12:19
Speaker 1: by the curse grew and grew. A railroad baron from pneumonia,
12:25
Speaker 1: after visiting the tomb of Tutankhamen, in 1923. The same year,
12:31
Speaker 1: Lord Carnarvon's half-brother. A year later, a close colleague of
12:36
Speaker 1: Carter suffered a breakdown and retired. A noted radiologist, after
12:41
Speaker 1: performing an X-ray of Tutankhamen's sarcophagus, died mysteriously also in 1924.
12:49
Speaker 1: A leading British diplomat was assassinated in Cairo again in 1924.
12:54
Speaker 1: A respected French Egyptologist died in 1926 after stumbling near
13:01
Speaker 1: Tutankhamen's tomb. Carnarvon's secretary survived a little longer. He died
13:07
Speaker 1: in his sleep in 1929, in circumstances also said to
13:13
Speaker 1: be mysterious. And the Times of London noted that he
13:18
Speaker 1: is believed to have been troubled by the legendary curse
13:23
Speaker 1: of the pharaohs. The man's father, Lord Westbury, killed himself
13:28
Speaker 1: three months later. His suicide note included the line, I
13:34
Speaker 1: really can't stand any more horrors. But the horrors kept coming.
13:41
Speaker 1: Lord Westbury's hearse knocked down a boy of eight on
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Speaker 1: the way to the cemetery. The boy had died to
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Speaker 1: satisfy the honour of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian. The man who'd
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Speaker 1: given Lord Carnarvon six weeks to live was to die
13:58
Speaker 1: in 1934. The Daily Express noted that he had been
14:02
Speaker 1: killed by the curse. Finally, in 1939, Howard Carter, the
14:10
Speaker 1: leader of the expedition, the man who was the first
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Speaker 1: to glimpse the mask of Tutankhamen in more than 3,000.
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Speaker 2: Years, died.
14:20
Speaker 1: After picking off his pet, his patron, his friends and
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Speaker 1: his colleagues one by one, the pharaoh's curse finally came
14:28
Speaker 1: for Carter, a man doomed to watch all around him die.
14:35
Speaker 1: Even then, the curse was not lifted. After four decades
14:40
Speaker 1: in a museum in Cairo, the Egyptian government arranged to
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Speaker 1: have Tutankhamen's mask and treasures exhibited in Paris and later
14:48
Speaker 1: in London. Numerous untimely deaths followed, in particular of two
14:54
Speaker 1: successive directors of Egyptian antiquities. A Royal Air Force crew
14:59
Speaker 1: took on the job of flying the treasures from Cairo
15:02
Speaker 1: to London, and paid the price. One of them jokingly
15:06
Speaker 1: kicked the box containing the pharaoh's mask. I've just kicked
15:11
Speaker 1: the most expensive thing in the world! Later, a ladder
15:15
Speaker 1: broke underneath him, for no apparent reason. That leg was
15:20
Speaker 1: in plaster for five months. Another crewman lost everything in
15:24
Speaker 1: a house fire. A third suffered two heart attacks in
15:28
Speaker 1: his 30s, while two others died of heart attacks in
15:32
Speaker 1: their 40s, including flight engineer Ken Parkinson. His wife said
15:37
Speaker 1: that he had had a heart attack every year at
15:40
Speaker 1: the same time of year until the last one killed him.
15:45
Speaker 1: Let's try to be rational about this. Could there have
15:48
Speaker 1: been some toxic substance in the tomb that caused death?
15:52
Speaker 1: It's possible. One explanation is that some strange virus, mould
15:56
Speaker 1: or bacteria evolved in there, ready to burst out and
16:00
Speaker 1: wreak havoc. A second possibility is that the ancient Egyptians
16:04
Speaker 1: were masters of poison and primed the tomb with toxic
16:09
Speaker 1: paints or powders. Or perhaps the tomb was built out
16:13
Speaker 1: of radioactive material. delivering a lethal dose to grave robbers
16:18
Speaker 1: with the temerity to disturb it. All of these explanations
16:24
Speaker 1: have been attributed to scientists, but there are some obvious objections.
16:29
Speaker 1: Radiation is easily detected. If Tutankhamen's tomb was packed with plutonium,
16:35
Speaker 1: I think we'd know about it by now. The epidemiologist F.
16:39
Speaker 1: DeWolf Miller says, recently told National Geographic that we don't
16:43
Speaker 1: know of even a single case of either an archaeologist
16:47
Speaker 1: or a tourist experiencing any negative consequences from either tomb
16:53
Speaker 1: moulds or bacteria. He added that given the sanitary conditions
16:57
Speaker 1: of the time in general and those within Egypt in particular,
17:01
Speaker 1: Lord Carnarvon would likely have been safer in the tomb
17:05
Speaker 1: than outside. Anyway, No toxin could explain all the mysterious
17:11
Speaker 1: deaths of all these different people across the decades. But
17:15
Speaker 1: something else might. Something as strange as any pharaonic curse.
17:21
Speaker 1: We'll find out more after the break. Let's move from
17:34
Speaker 1: the realm of ancient curses to the world of cutting-edge science. Cutting-edge,
17:40
Speaker 1: that is, from the perspective of 1784. We're in Paris,
17:46
Speaker 1: the febrile decade before the revolution and the guillotine. A
17:50
Speaker 1: strange cylinder of polished oak with nautical fittings, ropes, brass
17:56
Speaker 1: wheels and iron rods stands in front of us, in
18:00
Speaker 1: the centre of a room with an audience. Poor souls,
18:04
Speaker 1: wretched invalids seeking healing, are brought in, firmly fastened to
18:09
Speaker 1: the cylinder by the ropes, then touch their diseased bodies
18:13
Speaker 1: to the iron rods. They're ready to be healed by
18:16
Speaker 1: the awesome scientific power of magnetism. To add to the
18:22
Speaker 1: sense of occasion, a glass harmonica, a strange instrument invented
18:27
Speaker 1: by Benjamin Franklin, plays eerie music. A contemporary account describes
18:35
Speaker 1: how the patients would cough, spit, feel slight pain, a
18:39
Speaker 1: warmth either localised or all over, and perspire. Others are
18:43
Speaker 1: agitated by quick, involuntary movements. These effects build over several hours,
18:49
Speaker 1: with crescendos of screams, sobs, hysterical laughter, and of course,
18:55
Speaker 1: the harmonica. The climax occurs with the appearance of the
18:59
Speaker 1: device's inventor. dressed in gold slippers and a silk robe,
19:04
Speaker 1: waving a wand and laying on hands, provoking yet more
19:07
Speaker 1: convulsions and hysterics. It's Franz Anton Mesmer, the man who
19:15
Speaker 1: gave us the word mesmerise. Mesmer was a sensation in
19:21
Speaker 1: pre-revolutionary France. A seat at his magnetic device was the
19:26
Speaker 1: hottest ticket in Paris. The charge was steep, But there
19:30
Speaker 1: was no shortage of eager customers. Some were desperate for healing.
19:35
Speaker 1: Others were in it for the thrill and the ability
19:37
Speaker 1: to describe their experiences later in the salon. The Queen herself,
19:44
Speaker 1: Marie Antoinette, was a follower of Mesmer. So was a
19:48
Speaker 1: hero of the American Revolution, the Marquis de Lafayette. But
19:53
Speaker 1: while Mesmer himself claimed to be at the very forefront
19:57
Speaker 1: of scientific thought and practice, the scientific establishment was less impressed. Indeed,
20:04
Speaker 1: the Society of Medicine refused even to debunk his treatments,
20:09
Speaker 1: ignoring him completely. But Mesmeromania could not be ignored for long.
20:16
Speaker 1: And soon the king demanded a proper investigation into this
20:20
Speaker 1: strange sorcerer scientist and his methods. That investigation would include
20:26
Speaker 1: France's finest scientists, led by a distinguished foreign authority, none
20:32
Speaker 1: other than Benjamin Franklin himself. Franklin's team conducted a test
20:39
Speaker 1: in which a patient sat in front of a closed door.
20:42
Speaker 1: She was told that a noted mesmerist was behind it,
20:46
Speaker 1: performing his magnetic treatments. The investigators described the results. After
20:53
Speaker 1: three minutes, she stretched both arms behind her back, twisting
20:57
Speaker 1: them strongly and bending her body forward. Her whole body shook.
21:02
Speaker 1: The chatter of her teeth was so loud that it
21:04
Speaker 1: could be heard from outside. She bit her hand hard
21:08
Speaker 1: enough to leave teeth marks. The mesmerist, of course, wasn't there.
21:13
Speaker 1: The entire effect... was in her imagination. Other tests showed
21:20
Speaker 1: similar results. It seemed clear that mesmerism didn't work, which
21:26
Speaker 1: it didn't. But Benjamin Franklin was sharp enough to note
21:29
Speaker 1: an equally important fact. Even a completely phony cure can
21:35
Speaker 1: have powerful effects on the mind. These patients were having
21:39
Speaker 1: convulsions caused only by their own belief in mesmerism. Franklin
21:46
Speaker 1: also guessed that if these beliefs were powerful enough to
21:49
Speaker 1: cause such reactions, they might also be powerful enough to
21:53
Speaker 1: do some good. He wrote, If these people can be
21:57
Speaker 1: persuaded to forbear their drugs in expectation of being cured
22:02
Speaker 1: by only the physician's finger or an iron rod pointing
22:05
Speaker 1: at them, they may possibly find good effects. And Franklin
22:11
Speaker 1: was right. As Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler note in
22:14
Speaker 1: their book useful delusions, what Franklin had observed, is now
22:20
Speaker 1: called the placebo effect. It's remarkably powerful. Researchers have found
22:26
Speaker 1: that not only do fake painkillers relieve pain, but fake
22:30
Speaker 1: expensive painkillers relieve pain more powerfully than fake cheap painkillers.
22:36
Speaker 1: Doctors have performed placebo knee surgeries, anaesthetic incisions but no
22:42
Speaker 1: actual surgery, and found beneficial effects. The placebo effect is potent.
22:50
Speaker 1: And so too is its evil twin, the nocebo effect.
22:55
Speaker 1: Just as the placebo effect makes you feel better because
22:58
Speaker 1: you think you're being helped, the nocebo effect makes you
23:01
Speaker 1: feel worse because you think you're being harmed. When a
23:05
Speaker 1: doctor says, this is going to hurt, it is more
23:08
Speaker 1: likely to hurt. When you're given a drug or a
23:11
Speaker 1: vaccine shot and told about side effects, you're more likely
23:15
Speaker 1: to experience side effects. In clinical trials, people are often
23:19
Speaker 1: given a placebo, that is a harmless pill or injection
23:23
Speaker 1: that they think might be an actual drug. It turns
23:26
Speaker 1: out that 5% of these people then drop out of
23:29
Speaker 1: the trial because they're experiencing what they think are side effects,
23:34
Speaker 1: ranging from pain to depression to heart disease. It's a
23:38
Speaker 1: nocebo response. A bad response to a fake pill. Could
23:45
Speaker 1: the nocebo effect help to explain some of the heart
23:48
Speaker 1: attacks reported to be caused by the curse of the pharaoh?
23:52
Speaker 1: It might. I can't help but think of poor Ken Parkinson,
23:57
Speaker 1: the flight engineer who helped transport Tutankhamen's mask from Cairo
24:01
Speaker 1: to London in 1972, whose wife reported that he had
24:06
Speaker 1: a heart attack At the same time of year. Year
24:10
Speaker 1: after year. Imagine what he must have been thinking after
24:14
Speaker 1: three or four years of that. It's the kind of
24:16
Speaker 1: thing that would cause some serious anxiety. And that serious
24:21
Speaker 1: anxiety about a heart attack might turn out to be
24:24
Speaker 1: a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, maybe tomb toxins killed Lord Carnarvon.
24:31
Speaker 1: Maybe the nocebo effect gave Ken Parkinson repeated anxiety-induced heart attacks. Maybe.
24:41
Speaker 1: But there's another explanation for these eerie tales of the
24:45
Speaker 1: curse of the pharaohs. Unlike tomb toxins, this explanation is everywhere.
24:52
Speaker 1: It's all around us. We can't possibly escape it. And
24:57
Speaker 1: to understand it, I want to tell you a very
25:01
Speaker 1: different kind of spooky story. Once upon a time, a
25:07
Speaker 1: man walked into a branch of Target near Minneapolis, furious,
25:13
Speaker 1: and demanded to see the manager. He was brandishing a
25:17
Speaker 1: mailer that contained adverts for nursery furniture and maternity clothes,
25:22
Speaker 1: alongside lots of smiling babies.' My daughter got this in
25:26
Speaker 1: the mail,' he said. She's still in high school and
25:29
Speaker 1: you're sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are
25:33
Speaker 1: you trying to encourage her to get pregnant? The manager
25:36
Speaker 1: was rather confused and apologised. A few days later, he
25:41
Speaker 1: called to apologise again. Ah, about that, said the no
25:47
Speaker 1: longer angry dad. I had a talk with my daughter.
25:51
Speaker 1: Turns out there's been some activities in my house I
25:54
Speaker 1: haven't been completely aware of. She's due in August. I
26:00
Speaker 1: owe you an apology. This story, related by Charles Duhigg
26:06
Speaker 1: in the New York Times magazine in 2012, is the
26:09
Speaker 1: modern version of the mummy's curse. It's no longer an
26:14
Speaker 1: ancient pharaoh who wields mysterious power over us. It's an algorithm,
26:21
Speaker 1: analysing our shopping patterns, predicting what we'll do, Where we'll go,
26:25
Speaker 1: what we'll desire, all powerful and subtly nudging us in
26:30
Speaker 1: the direction of corporate profit. Duhigg's story went viral, just
26:37
Speaker 1: as tales of the mummy's curse had been shared a
26:39
Speaker 1: century earlier. People were in awe of the way an
26:44
Speaker 1: algorithm could perceive a hidden truth that even this teenage
26:48
Speaker 1: girl's own family could not. Well, perhaps. But while we're
26:55
Speaker 1: supposed to assume that everybody who received one of those
26:59
Speaker 1: mailers was a pregnant woman, there's no evidence in the
27:02
Speaker 1: story for that assumption. What if Target sent the same
27:07
Speaker 1: mailer to every woman under the age of 45? What
27:11
Speaker 1: if Target sent coupons to absolutely everyone? Maybe they did.
27:17
Speaker 1: From the perspective of the angry dad and the pregnant daughter,
27:20
Speaker 1: the algorithm would seem just as eerily good What's going
27:26
Speaker 1: on here is what a statistician would call selection bias.
27:31
Speaker 1: It's ubiquitous, and while it's easy to understand, it's often
27:35
Speaker 1: hard to solve. I can name far more rich actors
27:39
Speaker 1: than poor ones, and far more professional footballers than amateur ones,
27:44
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean most actors are rich and most
27:47
Speaker 1: footballers are professional. So how many non-pregnant people received coupons?
27:54
Speaker 1: I've no idea. But I do know that if Target
27:57
Speaker 1: sends you some maternity coupons but you're not pregnant, you're
28:01
Speaker 1: probably not going to bother mentioning that to anyone, let
28:05
Speaker 1: alone mentioning it to the New York Times magazine. You see?
28:12
Speaker 1: Selection bias. It's everywhere. But could selection bias have shaped
28:18
Speaker 1: the way we perceive the curse of the pharaoh? We'll
28:23
Speaker 1: find out after the break. Lord Carnarvon died not long
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Speaker 1: after he entered Tutankhamen's tomb. It's a striking coincidence, if
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Speaker 1: indeed it is a coincidence. But to understand whether selection
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Speaker 1: bias might be at play, we need to ask how
28:47
Speaker 1: many others have been involved in such excavations. And what
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Speaker 1: does it even mean to be involved? The mysterious logic
28:56
Speaker 1: of mummy's curse stories casts the net wide. a British
29:00
Speaker 1: diplomat assassinated 500 miles away from the tomb and two
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Speaker 1: years after it was opened. Does that really count? Or
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Speaker 1: remember the young boy whose connection to Tutankhamen was that
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Speaker 1: he was unfortunate enough to be in the path of
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Speaker 1: the hearse of the father of the secretary of Lord
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Speaker 1: Carnarvon six years after the excavation? If the pharaoh's curse
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Speaker 1: can be blamed for such deaths … We could draw
29:26
Speaker 1: plausible lines of connection to countless thousands of people around
29:29
Speaker 1: the periphery of the original dig. To analyse this rationally,
29:35
Speaker 1: we need to compare the fates of people associated with
29:39
Speaker 1: the excavation of the tomb with those who are not associated.
29:44
Speaker 1: An epidemiologist named Mark Nelson has published a serious attempt
29:48
Speaker 1: at this analysis. It was published in the British Medical Journal.
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Speaker 1: Dr Nelson looked at 44 Westerners identified by Howard Carter
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Speaker 1: as being in Egypt during the dig. 25 of them
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Speaker 1: were potentially exposed to a curse by visiting the tomb.
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Speaker 1: 19 did not visit. he found scant evidence of any curse.
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Speaker 1: On average, people lived for another 20 years after visiting
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Speaker 1: the tomb. Howard Carter survived 17 years, slightly below the average,
30:22
Speaker 1: so it's not true that he died quickly, nor is
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Speaker 1: it true that his accursed fate was to live to
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Speaker 1: see all his friends succumb. The only hint of a
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Speaker 1: curse that Dr Nelson found was that the average age
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Speaker 1: of tomb visitors at death was a little younger than
30:40
Speaker 1: the average age at death of the companions who didn't visit. However,
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Speaker 1: these companions were often the wives of the excavators, and
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Speaker 1: women do tend to live longer than men. In any case,
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Speaker 1: even the people who visited the tomb lived, on average,
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Speaker 1: until they were over 70. It's not exactly the stuff
30:59
Speaker 1: of nightmares. Lord Carnarvon did die before his time. But
31:05
Speaker 1: in an age before antibiotics, such things happened. He nicked
31:10
Speaker 1: that mosquito bite while shaving, the cut became infected, and
31:15
Speaker 1: he developed pneumonia. It's an unusual way to die, but
31:19
Speaker 1: not a mysterious one. Still, there is one final reckoning.
31:25
Speaker 1: What of the prophetic warnings that Carnarvon would die within
31:28
Speaker 1: six weeks? What of his dog? What of the lights
31:32
Speaker 1: going out all over Cairo? And what of one final
31:36
Speaker 1: chilling detail? That the wound which killed Carnarvon was in
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Speaker 1: the same spot as a mark on the cheek of
31:43
Speaker 1: King Tutankhamen himself. The rather underwhelming explanation for some of
31:51
Speaker 1: these stories is that they aren't true. Remember that long
31:56
Speaker 1: before Howard Carter gazed upon the mask of Tutankhamen, or
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Speaker 1: Lord Carnarvon succumbed to pneumonia, Edwardians had told each other
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Speaker 1: ghost stories. And no ghost story was more popular than
32:10
Speaker 1: a tale of the mummy's curse. Such tales sold newspapers.
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Speaker 1: Given that most of the newspapers had been shut out
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Speaker 1: by the London Times' exclusive deal with Carnarvon, what else
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Speaker 1: would they print? Journalists made up spooky stories, and the
32:26
Speaker 1: best such stories lived on. The man who claimed he'd
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Speaker 1: given Carnarvon six weeks to live, six weeks before he died,
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Speaker 1: was writing for a rival newspaper. He only published the
32:37
Speaker 1: details of his prophecy several months after Carnarvon's death. The
32:42
Speaker 1: Daily Express reported that the lights went out in the
32:45
Speaker 1: hotel when Lord Carnarvon died. Perhaps they did. It would
32:49
Speaker 1: hardly be astonishing to have a power cut in Cairo
32:52
Speaker 1: in 1923, but the timing was probably less uncanny. Otherwise,
32:58
Speaker 1: other newspapers might also have mentioned it. The haunting detail
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Speaker 1: about the wound on Tutankhamen's cheek was published only in
33:08
Speaker 1: the Daily Mail. Modern examinations of the mummy mention no
33:13
Speaker 1: such wound. Lord Carnarvon's dog? Howard Carter's canary? Roger Luckhurst,
33:20
Speaker 1: author of The Mummy's Curse, points out that all these
33:24
Speaker 1: tales are second-hand or third-hand accounts, newspapers reporting hearsay about hearsay.
33:31
Speaker 1: What about the pioneering radiologist, Sir Archibald Douglas Reid, said
33:36
Speaker 1: to have x-rayed the sarcophagus and then to have died
33:39
Speaker 1: of a mysterious illness? His mysterious illness wasn't mysterious at all.
33:44
Speaker 1: He had cancer, one of the hazards of being a
33:46
Speaker 1: radiologist in those days, and it seems unlikely that he
33:50
Speaker 1: ever x-rayed the sarcophagus. He was too ill to be
33:53
Speaker 1: in Egypt. He was convalescing in Switzerland before he died.
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Speaker 1: The mysterious portent of the Black Jackal of Anubis seen
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Speaker 1: by Howard Carter? It happened, but it wasn't a portent.
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Speaker 1: Carter's diary entry records the Black Jackal in May 1926,
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Speaker 1: several years after Carnarvon's death and many years before Carter's.
34:17
Speaker 1: That rather spoils the story of its potency, doesn't it?
34:21
Speaker 1: No wonder it was the inaccurate version that caught on.
34:26
Speaker 1: And what about Count Haman, the man who warned Carnarvon
34:30
Speaker 1: that death would claim him in Egypt? Well, maybe. Count Haman,
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Speaker 1: who was not a count, also claimed to have warned
34:39
Speaker 1: trophy hunters not to remove the unlucky mummy from Egypt.
34:44
Speaker 1: Since the unlucky mummy left Egypt when Haman was about
34:48
Speaker 1: three years old, this seems implausible. Ah yes, the unlucky mummy. Or,
34:56
Speaker 1: more precisely, the coffin case of the princess of Amun-Ra.
35:01
Speaker 1: I'd almost forgotten that older tale. The one which predates
35:05
Speaker 1: the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. The one which
35:09
Speaker 1: ends with a coffin case sinking with the Titanic. It
35:14
Speaker 1: is quite the story. But it is just a story.
35:19
Speaker 1: And one which endlessly mutates. One man who had indeed
35:24
Speaker 1: lost his arm in a shooting accident used to tell
35:26
Speaker 1: it in the 1890s and early 1900s. He was president
35:31
Speaker 1: of the Ghost Club, at which gentlemen would meet for
35:34
Speaker 1: dinner and frighten each other out of their wits. But
35:37
Speaker 1: there was no shooting accident in his telling of the tale.
35:41
Speaker 1: It was only after he died that others retrofitted that
35:45
Speaker 1: detail to the story. Another brother ghost, one of the
35:50
Speaker 1: members of the Ghost Club, died on the Titanic. His
35:54
Speaker 1: fate too was woven into the story. And so the
35:59
Speaker 1: tale grew and grew, despite specific point-by-point rebuttals from the
36:05
Speaker 1: increasingly exasperated curator of the Egyptian room in the British Museum.
36:10
Speaker 1: But unlike my cautionary tales, the story of the unlucky
36:15
Speaker 1: coffin case just isn't true. The case wasn't on the Titanic.
36:21
Speaker 1: We know that because we have the doomed liner's cargo manifest.
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Speaker 1: It's exhaustive and it lists no Egyptian artefacts. And there
36:34
Speaker 1: is one final reason I'm confident that the coffin case
36:37
Speaker 1: of the unknown priestess of Amun-Ra did not sink with
36:41
Speaker 1: the Titanic. It's that it never left the British Museum.
36:47
Speaker 1: It's exhibit number EA-22542. I know because... I just went
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Speaker 1: into the museum and had a look. Despite everything I've argued,
36:56
Speaker 1: I'll admit I was nervous, but I stood in front
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Speaker 1: of the coffin and now I'm on my way home,
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Speaker 1: safe from the curse of the mummy.
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Speaker 2: The Mummy's Curse Key sources for this episode include Roger
37:17
Speaker 2: Luckhurst's book, The Mummy's Curse, Christopher Turner's article, Mesmeromania, the
37:22
Speaker 2: British Medical Journal, and Snopes.
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Speaker 1: For a full list of our sources, see the show
37:27
Speaker 1: notes at timharford.com. Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford,
37:38
Speaker 1: with Andrew Wright. It's produced by Ryan Dilley and Marilyn Rust.
37:42
Speaker 1: The sound design and original music is the work of
37:45
Speaker 1: Pascal Wise. This show wouldn't have been possible without the
37:50
Speaker 1: work of Mia LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane, Julia Barton,
37:55
Speaker 1: John Schnarz, Carly Migliori, Eric Sandler, Maggie Taylor, Daniela Lacan,
38:01
Speaker 1: and Maya Koenig. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.
38:08
Speaker 1: If you like the show, please remember to rate, share,
38:12
Speaker 1: and review.