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Short Stuff: The Sad, Strange Tale of Margaret Schilling · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. Here's job, there's Jerry.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Dave's not here, but we're thinking of him. So it's
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: short stuff. Let's go.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Can I start this with an anecdote?
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: So, in the mid nineteen nineties, a young, scrappy, young
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: student at Ohio University named Emily Sinobocan did her senior
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: telecommunications film project on what was called at the time.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: I don't know what they call it at the time.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Actually it had a lot of names over the years,
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: but the Athens Lunatic Asylum or the Athens Hospital for
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: the Insane. Oh wow, right there in Athens, Ohio, where
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: my wife went to college. And she said, I tried
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: to do a spooky sort of ghosty thing and it
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: didn't turn out so great. But that was her senior project.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: That's awesome. I'd love to see that.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would do.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: Actually, oh, you haven't.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: No, I don't know if she still has that stuff.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: I should ask.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Well, she does, and she's willing to let me see it.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: I'd love to It's probably like beta tape or something
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, you said this hospital, the State hospital, had names,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: many names over the years. It started out as the
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Athens Lunatic Asylum when it was opened in eighteen seventy
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: four and it ran all the way to nineteen ninety three.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: And when it opened, it was one of those giant, Gothic,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: amazing nineteenth century mental hospitals. And I didn't know this,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: but you know, the US is just populated with these
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: and they're starting to tear them down more and more.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: But there was a guy who basically came up with
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: the blueprint for these things. His name was doctor Thomas
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Story Kirkbride, and he basically said, hey, you know how
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: we keep the mentally ill chained in basements in jails.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Now we should not do that. We should do the opposite.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: We should build huge hospitals on big, rambling, beautiful grounds
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: with lots of sunlight and open air, and we'll at
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: the moral treatment of the insane. That's really what we
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: should get behind. And he wrote a book called on
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: the Construction, Organization, and General Arrangements of Hospitals for the Insane,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: And he literally wrote the book I and changed everything.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: So when you see those amazing old institutes or institutions,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I should say, they all basically follow this pattern that
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: doctor Thomas Kirkbride came up with.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we've talked about him on another episode for sure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: But Emily said that there were and I couldn't find
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: pictures of this online. The buildings themselves, this campus is
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: amazing looking, this beautiful Victorian buildings. But Emily said that
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: there were ponds on the campus that were in the
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: shape of playing card suits, and that's the one thing
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: she remembers, and really I could Yeah, I couldn't find
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: those anywhere, but I imagine she didn't imagine those.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Sure, that's a weird thing to just suddenly make up
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: or you know, get wrong.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: And now that I'm looking at the date, I mean
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: this it might have been there, just had been closed
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: when she did this. They closed in ninety three. But
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: she called it the Ridges, as I remember now because
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: that's what it's called now. Yeah, because Ohio University has
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: bought that area and now it's part of the school.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: But none of that has to do with our story,
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: which is a story of Margaret Shilling, who was a
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: fifty three year old woman. At the time, not a
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: lot was known about her. She obviously had some sort
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: of mental illness that led her there sadly but apparently
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: some people say she was about an hour north of there,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: had a husband and a son. But what we do
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: know is that she was a good patient and well trusted,
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: so much so that she was just sort of allowed
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: to roam freely about the grounds and no one really
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: worried about her too much.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we should say that, like this is one of
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: those stories that because little of her was known, but
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: her story is so fantastic, lazy have felt totally liberated
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: to basically add little details or assume little details or
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: something like that. So there's a there's a definite like
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: silhouette to this story is we'll see that does seem
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: to like hold shape, but it's it's just the little
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: details you have to kind of take with a grain
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: of salt, essentially. Yeah, but yes, apparently the one thing,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: one of the things that I have seen in a
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: lot of places that because she was free to roam
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: the grounds, and I don't know if it was just her,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: she was among a special few or something. When she
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: didn't show up for breakfast, that didn't raise any alarms. Literally,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: it wasn't until on December one, nineteen seventy eight, that
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: she didn't show up for dinner later that evening that
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: it literally raised the alarm because they now realized they
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: had a patient missing.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: That's right, so they called a code round, which meant
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: someone as missing. We need to go search this sprawling,
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: enormous campus. I think I saw seven hundred thousand square
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: feet in total, and I think that might be a
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: good place for a cliffhangy break.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Yes, how much does seven hundred thousand square feet translate
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: to an acres?
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: All right, So where we left off, there was a
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: search being conducted for Margaret Shilling. They looked, they thought, everywhere,
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: seemingly turned that place upside down. But one of the
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: only places they didn't look is the place where she was,
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: which was a fourth floor room on campus. Pretty frustrating
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: they couldn't find her. My guess is that I think
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: parts of this campus had been shut down over the
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: years by this time, and it was in one of
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: the buildings that was shut down, because everywhere online I
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: saw she was in one of those two magnificent towers upfront.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: But there's no way it could have been that from
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: the looks of the room and the windows.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I didn't know how you knew that, but yes,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: you see everywhere. Everybody's like she was in the tower.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: She was in the tower. The tower was unused and
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: it was you could only access it through essentially a
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: hidden stairway. And that's why they didn't find her. But
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: that's odd that they didn't find her if they searched everywhere.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: You know, well, they clearly didn't search everywhere.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: But they because they couldn't find her. Did you say
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: the police were called in? Eventually, no, Okay, So the
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: police were called. They start helping to there's like a genuine,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: like bona fide search for Margaret Shilling, and they finally
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: just come up empty. And so the police are like,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: I think that you have an escape patient on your hands.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Let's just call it that. So we can go back
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: home because it's cold and over the next few weeks,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: starting from December and into January, Ohio winters can be
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: pretty bad, but I get the impression that this was
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: not one of the lighter ones, that it was pretty
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: pretty rough and over this time, like Margaret Shilling was
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: just missing. On January twelfth, nineteen seventy nine, about six
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: weeks after she went missing, she was discovered. And I
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: don't know how she was discovered if by accident, I
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: saw somewhere that somebody noticed a smell and followed it
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: and found her body. But however she was found, she
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: was no longer alive. She was dead. She was found
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: dead somewhere in a room on that campus.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was pretty distressing what comes next, because
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: she was found unclosed with her clothes beside her, folded
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: very neatly as if I guess she had given up
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: or something. Who knows. No one can say for sure,
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: but they ruled her death of heart failure, even though
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: they're not exactly sure. You know, subfreezing temperatures, no food
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: and water, so you know you're not going to survive
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: for too long. She would be buried by her family.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: But what is really sort of key to this story
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: is this stain on the floor of the outline of
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: her body that could not be cleaned off.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so if you have a body that decomposes over
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: say six weeks, so let's say she died very quickly.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: And even though there were sub freezing temperatures, that room
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: that she was found in had a lot of windows
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: with that were exposed to bright sunlight. So clearly her
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: body was exposed to enough heat from the sun that
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: it allowed decomposition to take place, and under any circumstance
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: that somebody's going to leave some residue behind them, gross
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: as it is after six weeks. The thing is the
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: thing that made Margaret Shillings legend grow very quickly in
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: addition to her sad story, was that that that that
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: remnant of her, that silhouette, that outline that she left
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: it would not come clean despite the several efforts by
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: the maintenance crew to remove it. And so if you
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: have a woman who died mysteriously alone in a mental
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: hospital who left a stain behind that won't come clean,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: her legend's going to grow pretty quickly.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know, you can look up this picture
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: of the stain and it's it's a very clear picture
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: of a human body, you know, like any part of
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: her skin that made contact with that cement floor made
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: an impression, like a literal impression, and it's you know,
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: it's just one of those really really creepy things that's
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: lived on and you know, as kind of a ghost
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: story kind of thing.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because I mean, like this this was like if
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: you a college you remember Chuck, like you just love
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: stories like this. Some like remember the ghost that you
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: saw in Athens, Georgia in the middle of the road,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: Like when you're in college, it's prime time for that
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: kind of thing. There was literally a stain left by
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: a woman who died mysteriously on campus there like right there.
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: So I can't imagine what that must have done to
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: the student body. Just freaked them out on the daily,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: I would guess, But the fact that it wouldn't come clean,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: it was just a mystery forever, Like clearly she had
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: cursed this hospital. That was probably the biggest explanation for it.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: But in two thousand and seven, some Ohio University biochemists
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: did a study of the stain to figure out exactly
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: what was going on, and they came to some pretty
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: pretty standard conclusions that still are just fascinating, But it
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: seems to have been the attempts to clean it had
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: the opposite effect. They actually locked it in place in
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: that concrete floor. They used some sort of acid I
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: think to clean this off, and it it locked in place.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: The adiposcire, which is known as gravewax, which we've talked
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: about before, which comes from the breakdown of fatty acids.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: But this was special at a posts here in that
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: the sodium ions in it, in this grave wax interacted
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: with the concrete and were replaced by calcium ions from
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: the concrete, so it was like unusual grave wax. And
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: then when they added these acidic cleaners to clean it off,
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: it actually locked it into the concrete, created a white
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: silhouette outlined with a darker kind of smudgy, almost water
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: color outline of the silhouette, and that, as far as
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: we can tell, is what's still in that concrete today.
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what I'm curious about is if that room. Obviously
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: that's closed down, like they use a lot of that
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: campus for stuff today as the ridges, but there's no
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: way like they let people in there.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: No.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: There was a group called Preservation Works that's dedicated to
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: preserving Kirkbride hospitals, Kirkbride style hospitals, and they did a
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: tour as recently as twenty eighteen and suggested like, hey,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: by keeping this locked away away from the public, it's
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: all it's doing is making it seem creepier and weirder
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: and scandalous, Like maybe you should come up with a
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: respectful way to get the story across and allow the
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: public to respectfully, you know, visit it.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: Hmm.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: I know that'd be a tough one to pull off,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: for sure.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure about that idea.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean what the alternative is just you know,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: college students breaking in and touching it and dying afterward.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: That's the legend.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, Emily hadn't heard of this one in particular, which
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: I thought was interesting because she did say that there
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: obviously were all kinds of you know, ghost stories and
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: campus stories.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I mean, like an indelible mark left
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: by a decomposed body from a woman who died mysteriously
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: and a mental institution. It doesn't get It's almost ready made.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: It's almost like you made a mad libs for a
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: ghost story lot, you know. Yeah, uh, you got anything else?
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: I got nothing else?
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Well, rip Margaret Shilling. And I think since I said
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: that the short stuff is.
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