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Can You Dig It? · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
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  Speaker 1: 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. The Cabinet of Curiosities is no stranger to
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  Speaker 1: premature burials. In the past. For example, we've covered safety
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  Speaker 1: coffins built with bells and other mechanisms to let those
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  Speaker 1: on the surface know the person below them was not,
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  Speaker 1: in fact deceased. We've also told stories of people who
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  Speaker 1: were accidentally buried alive and rose from the dead to
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  Speaker 1: scare the pants off their living relatives. John McIntyre, however,
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  Speaker 1: is a different kind of burial story entirely. He lived
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  Speaker 1: in Edinburgh in the early eighteen hundreds, a time when
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  Speaker 1: body snatching was an easy way for ne'er dwells to
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  Speaker 1: make the money. People, often men, would dig up freshly
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  Speaker 1: deceased bodies and sell them to medical schools which were
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  Speaker 1: in desperate need of cadavers for educational purposes. It was
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  Speaker 1: a competitive industry and body thieves or resurrection men as
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  Speaker 1: they were called, resorted to inventive ways to pilfer corpses
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  Speaker 1: without anyone noticing. For example, one method involved digging a
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  Speaker 1: hole about twenty feet away from the grave that was
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  Speaker 1: big enough for a person to fit through. The digger
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  Speaker 1: would then tunnel his way to the coffin, pry off
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  Speaker 1: the foot or the head, and then pull the body
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  Speaker 1: through the tunnel to the surface. Once they were out,
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  Speaker 1: they would replace the dirts and fill in the hole,
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  Speaker 1: and everybody, especially the families of the dead, would still
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  Speaker 1: believe that their loved one was six ft under. Once
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  Speaker 1: body snatching became a big enough problem, though, those closest
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  Speaker 1: to the deceased would stay in the cemetery before and
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  Speaker 1: after the burial to watch over the plot, you know,
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  Speaker 1: just in case someone with a shovel happened to be
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  Speaker 1: waiting nearby. John McIntyre, however, didn't have anyone watching over him.
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  Speaker 1: Around mid April of eighteen twenty four, he had been
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  Speaker 1: feeling sick, struggling with a fever and feelings of sluggishness.
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  Speaker 1: Within days, he couldn't lift a finger. The prognosis was grim,
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  Speaker 1: and McIntyre didn't see any point in going on, he
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  Speaker 1: heard someone crying beside his bed, and then a nurse
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  Speaker 1: pronounced him dead. He passed with his eyes still open,
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  Speaker 1: having lacked the ability to close them in his final moments.
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  Speaker 1: McIntyre's father closed them for him. His home remained open
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  Speaker 1: to the public for three days so that friends and
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  Speaker 1: family could pay their final respects. Then, on April fifteenth,
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  Speaker 1: he was placed in a coffin and carted to the cemetery,
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  Speaker 1: where he was finally laid to rest. Dirt was shoveled
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  Speaker 1: back into the grave, filling the hole and covering the
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  Speaker 1: coffin for good. At least that was the plan, you see,
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  Speaker 1: not long after he'd been buried, McIntyre was exhumed by
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  Speaker 1: grave robbers looking for a fast buck. They hauled him
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  Speaker 1: out and sold him to a local anatomy school. He
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  Speaker 1: was stripped of his burial clothes and hoisted onto an
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  Speaker 1: operating table where a doctor stood over his body, knife
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  Speaker 1: in hand. An audience of medical students looked on from
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  Speaker 1: the perimeter of the room as the doctor pressed the
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  Speaker 1: blade to the man's skin and drew blood. McIntyre, as
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  Speaker 1: if freed from the bonds that had rendered him immobile,
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  Speaker 1: all this time, sprang to life in front of everyone.
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  Speaker 1: People gasped and screamed. The dead had risen before their eyes.
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  Speaker 1: Well sort of. John McIntyre hadn't really been dead. Whatever
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  Speaker 1: illness he had nearly succumbed to had simply placed him
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  Speaker 1: in a trance. He couldn't lift his arms or move
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  Speaker 1: his legs. He couldn't even blink his eyelids. He'd heard
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  Speaker 1: the crying at his bedside and the nurse announcing his death.
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  Speaker 1: He had heard every person who had come to say
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  Speaker 1: goodbye to his corpse. He remembered being placed in the
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  Speaker 1: coffin and being lowered into the ground, and he had
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  Speaker 1: heard them throwing dirt over his casket, a sound he
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  Speaker 1: described as far more tremendous than thunder. McIntyre had heard
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  Speaker 1: and felt nearly everything that had happened to him from
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  Speaker 1: the time at which he had died, all the way
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  Speaker 1: up until when he finally woke up on the operating table.
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  Speaker 1: When the doctors realized that he was still alive, they
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  Speaker 1: helped him with all the tools at their disposal, and,
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  Speaker 1: according to McIntyre's own account, in the course of an hour,
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  Speaker 1: I was in full possession of all my faculties. It's
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  Speaker 1: terrifying to think what might have happened had the body
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  Speaker 1: statures not dug him up. How he would have perished alone,
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  Speaker 1: trapped below the soil, unable to call out for help.
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  Speaker 1: Crime doesn't pay, but every once in a while they
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  Speaker 1: can evidently save a life. Most of us are familiar
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  Speaker 1: with the seven deadly sins lust, gluttony, sloth, wrath, envy,
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  Speaker 1: and pride, and the seventh is the one that most
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  Speaker 1: people think sits at the root of most evil in
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  Speaker 1: the world. Greed. It can lead to theft and robbery, exploitation, extortion,
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  Speaker 1: and even murder. Luckily, for William Schmidt, he didn't have
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  Speaker 1: to deal with any of that. All greed did to
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  Speaker 1: him was give him one heck of a workout. Born
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  Speaker 1: in Rhode Island in the mid eighteen hundreds, William Schmidt
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  Speaker 1: sadly grew up to see nearly all of his family
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  Speaker 1: wiped out by tuberculosis or consumption as it was called
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  Speaker 1: back then. He decided to try his luck out west,
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  Speaker 1: moving to California to prospect for gold in a place
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  Speaker 1: aptly named Last Chance Canyon, located in the Mojave Desert
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  Speaker 1: among the El Paso mountains. The area yielded exactly what
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  Speaker 1: he'd been looking for. In other words, he struck gold. Unfortunately,
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  Speaker 1: that wasn't very convenient for him because his mind was
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  Speaker 1: on the north side of the mountain, while the smelter
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  Speaker 1: resided on the south. In order to get his gold
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  Speaker 1: to the smelter, he had to load up his two
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  Speaker 1: burrows with all of the golden supplies and then trek
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  Speaker 1: down a hard to navigate path crossing over difficult terrain.
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  Speaker 1: So William had an idea. He decided to create a
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  Speaker 1: shortcut from his dig site to the smelter by way
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  Speaker 1: of a tunnel. Using his hand tools and dynamites, he
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  Speaker 1: got to work tunneling his way through the solid granite mountain,
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  Speaker 1: which was hard to get through on his own. This
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  Speaker 1: was partly due to his lack of experience. William, you see,
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  Speaker 1: wasn't a miner by trade, and he was also just
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  Speaker 1: using antiquated tools like simple picks and hammers. Even in
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  Speaker 1: nineteen there were modern alternatives that made the act of
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  Speaker 1: tunneling through a mountain a little easier. Unfortunately, those tools
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  Speaker 1: were out of his price range, so he would chip
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  Speaker 1: away at the walls and load up canvas bags with
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  Speaker 1: broken pieces of rocks. Once they were full, he would
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  Speaker 1: haul them out of the mine and dump them out
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  Speaker 1: before starting again. Eventually, he replaced the bags with the
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  Speaker 1: wheelbarrow until he was able to install a mine car
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  Speaker 1: on tracks which he actually laid himself. This so called
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  Speaker 1: shortcut became his life's work and obsession that even earned
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  Speaker 1: him a nickname Burrow. William kept to himself, mostly choosing
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  Speaker 1: not to get married or have children. Some say that
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  Speaker 1: he remained childless so as to have passing down consumption
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  Speaker 1: to his offspring, although it was possible that he simply
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  Speaker 1: was just too busy with his pet project. He spent
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  Speaker 1: very little money in the process, choosing to burn cheap
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  Speaker 1: twopenny candles instead of kerosene. Each night. When he ripped
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  Speaker 1: his clothes, he would patch them with pieces of flour sack.
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  Speaker 1: He fixed his shoes with crushed cans. His daily menu
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  Speaker 1: was also pretty limited. William didn't eat much more than sardines, rice,
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  Speaker 1: and onions, which he cooked on a cast iron stove
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  Speaker 1: in his tiny cabin. He was so frugal, in fact,
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  Speaker 1: that he used short fuses on his dynamite to save money.
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  Speaker 1: That also meant that when he lit them. He only
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  Speaker 1: had seconds to get out of range of the blast.
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  Speaker 1: It wasn't uncommon for William to hobble out of the tunnel,
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  Speaker 1: bloodied and hurt from falling rocks caused by the explosion.
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  Speaker 1: Those who knew him thought that he was suffering from
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  Speaker 1: a mental illness, perhaps even a breakdown of some kind.
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  Speaker 1: After all, who would subject themselves to such punishment all
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  Speaker 1: to save a few hours on donkey back. But at
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  Speaker 1: a certain point it is no longer about making a shortcut.
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  Speaker 1: The tunnel became something more. It became a testament to
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  Speaker 1: his unbreakable will It became a legacy. In that legacy
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  Speaker 1: was put to the test when a road was created
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  Speaker 1: between the canyon and Mojave, covering the exact ground William
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  Speaker 1: had been trying to bypass with his tunnel, but he
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  Speaker 1: didn't let it stop him. He'd already been digging for
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  Speaker 1: twenty years and saw no point in stopping now. He
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  Speaker 1: continued to chisel and carve his way through the mountain
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  Speaker 1: for another eighteen years. By the time he finished in
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  Speaker 1: ninety eight, his tunnel measured half a mile long. He
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  Speaker 1: moved nearly six thousand tons of granite by himself, all
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  Speaker 1: for nothing. The new road had already given minors easy
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  Speaker 1: access to the smelter in the south, but William didn't care.
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  Speaker 1: He'd already gone too far to just stop, and after
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  Speaker 1: the tunnel was finished, he didn't even end up using
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  Speaker 1: it for himself. He sold the rights to it to
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  Speaker 1: another minor. Was it the best use of his time
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  Speaker 1: and energy? Probably not, but that doesn't mean it wasn't curious.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
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  Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership
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  Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
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  Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
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  Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
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  Speaker 1: World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.