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Monster Mass · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
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  Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales right
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  Speaker 1: there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome
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  Speaker 1: to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Charles was known for two things,
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  Speaker 1: gambling and fraud, though that wasn't always the case. In
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  Speaker 1: the mid nineteenth century, Charles worked on the docks as
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  Speaker 1: an engineer and inventor. One of his inventions, a device
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  Speaker 1: for regulating the speed of ship's propellers, sold for five
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  Speaker 1: thousand francs. With his newfound fortune, Charles moved to Paris,
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  Speaker 1: and that's where the trouble began. He left his old
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  Speaker 1: life behind in favor of a new one, and along
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  Speaker 1: the way he discovered gambling. He became addicted to the thrill,
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  Speaker 1: and having a few extra francs in his pocket made
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  Speaker 1: it year to get hooked. But for as much as
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  Speaker 1: Charles loved to play the tables, he wasn't very good
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  Speaker 1: at it. Eventually, the one time investor went broke, so
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  Speaker 1: he turned to less than legal ways of feeding the
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  Speaker 1: monkey on his back. He convinced investors to finance a
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  Speaker 1: new railway he was building in berk sumer A commune
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  Speaker 1: in the north of France. Well, the railway never materialized,
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  Speaker 1: and when the courts demanded he answer for his deception,
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  Speaker 1: neither did he. He fled Paris for England, where he
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  Speaker 1: found new casinos to lose his money in. When it
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  Speaker 1: was all gone, he started another con. This time he
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  Speaker 1: had the public invest in original inventions of his own design,
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  Speaker 1: promising huge payouts over time once they hit the market.
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  Speaker 1: You can probably guess what happened next. That's right. The
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  Speaker 1: profits that he promised never came. He led the investors
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  Speaker 1: on for years, with one man losing about nineteen thousand
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  Speaker 1: pounds in the deal. That's almost two point five million
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  Speaker 1: dollars today, and the money all gone flushed away at
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  Speaker 1: an number of casinos that he had been known to frequent,
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  Speaker 1: But he wasn't through. There was always another mark one
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  Speaker 1: with the money to give, money that he was only
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  Speaker 1: happy to take off their hands and spend at the table.
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  Speaker 1: Charles had been well known among the casinos in France
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  Speaker 1: prior to his relocation. In his travels led him to Monaco,
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  Speaker 1: home of the world famous Money Carlo Casino. This place
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  Speaker 1: held one hundred thousand francs in its daily cash reserve,
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  Speaker 1: also known as the bank. Anyone who happened to hit
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  Speaker 1: a streak and win more than that amount triggered a
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  Speaker 1: shutdown of all table play. Casino officials would drape a
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  Speaker 1: black cloth over the winner's table and they draw money
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  Speaker 1: out of the vault to cover the difference. This was
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  Speaker 1: known as breaking the bank. Upon arriving, Charles pulled up
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  Speaker 1: to the roulette table and placed to bet. The dealers
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  Speaker 1: spun the wheel and the little white ball bounced from
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  Speaker 1: space to space until finally landing on a number. Charles's number,
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  Speaker 1: He'd one. He placed another bet, and that proved to
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  Speaker 1: be a winner as well. For eleven hours straight, Charles
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  Speaker 1: sat at that roulette table and placed bet after bet,
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  Speaker 1: eventually accumulating a whopping one million francs and winnings. When
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  Speaker 1: he was ready to cash out, the casino draped a
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  Speaker 1: black cloth over the table and pulled out nine thousand
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  Speaker 1: francs from its vault. Charles Wells had become only the
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  Speaker 1: sixth person in history to break the bank at Monte Carlo.
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  Speaker 1: A song was written about him shortly thereafter, titled The
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  Speaker 1: Man who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, immortalizing the
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  Speaker 1: famous fraud ster for all time. No one knows how
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  Speaker 1: he did it either. Given his criminal past, everyone assumed
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  Speaker 1: Wells had found a way to cheat. Perhaps the dealer
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  Speaker 1: had been in on it, rigging the wheel to give
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  Speaker 1: him the correct slot each time so that they could
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  Speaker 1: split the winnings at the end. Or maybe Wells had
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  Speaker 1: finally found a system that just worked. The most likely
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  Speaker 1: explanation was that he just happened to get lucky for
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  Speaker 1: the second time in his life. It didn't last long, though.
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  Speaker 1: Eventually the authorities caught up with him and made him
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  Speaker 1: answer for his crimes back in England, where he served
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  Speaker 1: eight years in prison for fraud. When he got out,
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  Speaker 1: he went right back to his old conniving ways and
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  Speaker 1: back to the casinos, hoping to recapture some of that
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  Speaker 1: glory he'd felt in Monte Carlo. But it never came.
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  Speaker 1: Charles Wells died at the age of fifty one from
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  Speaker 1: kidney failure without a single cent to his name. His
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  Speaker 1: winning streak was finally over. Before the days of mechanical refrigerators,
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  Speaker 1: we'd place a giant block of ice in a box
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  Speaker 1: and then store our food there To keep it fresh.
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  Speaker 1: Someone had to go and get that ice to deliver
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  Speaker 1: it to the customers. They were called ice men, and
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  Speaker 1: they were often farmers who worked during the winter harvesting
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  Speaker 1: ice from frozen lakes and rivers. They'd walk out onto
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  Speaker 1: a lake with at least a foot of ice on
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  Speaker 1: the surface and use a large hand saw to cut
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  Speaker 1: out the blocks. Those blocks were then stored in large
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  Speaker 1: buildings during warmer months so that people could still refrigerate
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  Speaker 1: their food in the summer. As you can imagine, it
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  Speaker 1: was a dangerous job. One wrong step and an ice
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  Speaker 1: man could be lost until spring. As a result, the
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  Speaker 1: men who did the work tended to be pretty tough
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  Speaker 1: to scare. However, in eight two midwestern iceman came face
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  Speaker 1: two I with something that made their blood run cold.
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  Speaker 1: It was early September and Marshall McIntyre and Bill Gray
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  Speaker 1: of Crawfordsville, Indiana, we're getting ready to deliver ice into town.
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  Speaker 1: As they were fastening harnesses around their horses, something appeared overhead.
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  Speaker 1: It was several hundred feet in the air and swirling
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  Speaker 1: above them a creature measured roughly eighteen feet long by
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  Speaker 1: eight feet wide. It had been described by witnesses as
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  Speaker 1: a great white shroud that seemed to move through the
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  Speaker 1: air using large fins that ran along its sides. It
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  Speaker 1: had no head, but looked down upon the men in
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  Speaker 1: their barn with a large flaming eye in its center,
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  Speaker 1: and it made an eerie noise as it got closer.
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  Speaker 1: The creature circled above the farmhouse and the barn. Bill
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  Speaker 1: and Marshall had no idea what it was or what
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  Speaker 1: it wanted, but they didn't want to risk being devoured
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  Speaker 1: by it. They fled to the barn and waited until
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  Speaker 1: it disappeared, which it eventually did. It flew toward the
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  Speaker 1: center of town before turning back to the farm. Bill
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  Speaker 1: and Marshall watched as it floated overhead for another hour
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  Speaker 1: until they decided enough was enough. The men darted for
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  Speaker 1: the ice house, mounted their horses, and departed for town.
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  Speaker 1: When they returned to the farm later that day, the
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  Speaker 1: creature was gone. The ice men give an interview to
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  Speaker 1: the local paper all about their bizarre encounter, telling the
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  Speaker 1: reporter that they'd be carrying a rifle on their deliveries
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  Speaker 1: from now on in the event that the creature ever returned.
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  Speaker 1: The story was published later that day in the Daily
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  Speaker 1: Journal of Crawfordsville. A few days later, another article was
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  Speaker 1: published in the Journal, this time featuring eyewitness testimony from
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  Speaker 1: townsfolk who also saw the enormous white thing squirming in
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  Speaker 1: the air. It's mournful screech continued, and some Crawfordsville citizens
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  Speaker 1: even reported feeling the creature's hot breath as it passed overhead.
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  Speaker 1: The story soon spread to the Indianapolis Journal, a much
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  Speaker 1: larger paper, before making its way across the country to
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  Speaker 1: outlets like the Brooklyn Eagle all the way in New
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  Speaker 1: York City. But even though the story captured the imaginations
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  Speaker 1: of people from coast to coast, the Crawfordsville Monster had
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  Speaker 1: solidified itself as a local legend. In the ensuing weeks,
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  Speaker 1: the Crawfordsville Postmaster received numerous letters about the creature. It
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  Speaker 1: seemed the whole town had monster fever. That is until
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  Speaker 1: two other men, John Hornbeck and Abe Hearnley, encountered the white,
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  Speaker 1: wheezing shroud error arising the town. They followed it for
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  Speaker 1: several miles before discovering the truth about its origin. It
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  Speaker 1: wasn't a shapeless otherworldly mass, after all, It was made
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  Speaker 1: up of birds, kill, deer, to be exact, A gathering
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  Speaker 1: of birds had likely grown confused by the town's electric lights,
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  Speaker 1: which had recently been installed, compounded by the damp, foggy air,
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  Speaker 1: reducing visibility. Marshall McIntyre and Bill Gray and all the
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  Speaker 1: other Crawfordsville locals simply hadn't realized what they were looking at.
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  Speaker 1: Whoever thought up the old cliche had it right when
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  Speaker 1: they said seeing is believing, But that doesn't mean we
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  Speaker 1: have to believe everything we read. The only thing more
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  Speaker 1: frightening than the Crawfordsville Monster was how quickly everyone bought
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  Speaker 1: into the story without doing a bit of critical thinking.
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  Speaker 1: Even though ice houses have faded into the past, our
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  Speaker 1: gullibility is as strong as ever, which might be the
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  Speaker 1: most chilling part of the entire story. I hope you've
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
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  Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
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  Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
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  Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
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  Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
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  Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
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  Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
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  Speaker 1: dot com, and until next time, stay curious.