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The Bone Collector · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales right there on display, just waiting
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  Speaker 1: for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: It was a cold winter night in nineteen forty two,
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  Speaker 1: and quiet blanketed the Eastern Front as thick as fresh
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  Speaker 1: fallen snow. A dozen Nazi soldiers were huddled in their tents,
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  Speaker 1: shivering against the bitter Russian cold. The steady rhythmic beeps
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  Speaker 1: of the lufoffas officer's radar screen signaled clear skies, and
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  Speaker 1: only static filled the airways. It had been a night.
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  Speaker 1: With any luck, it would stay that way. The officer
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  Speaker 1: sat up as a faint sound came to him over
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  Speaker 1: the mechanical worrying of his instruments. Somewhere far above, he
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  Speaker 1: could hear a noise like a soft wind, whooshing through
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  Speaker 1: the willow branches. His face fell. They were here. Even
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  Speaker 1: as he yelled to raise the alarm, he could see
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  Speaker 1: it was too late. The first bomb was already exploding.
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  Speaker 1: Against the command center, painting the night sky red with fire.
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  Speaker 1: The night Witches had struck again. In the final years
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  Speaker 1: of World War Two, one of the most feared ally
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  Speaker 1: air squadrons of the Eastern Front was the Soviet five
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  Speaker 1: hundred and eighty eighth Night Bomber Regiment. The five hundred
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  Speaker 1: and eighty eighth was nicknamed the Knackhexen or the night
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  Speaker 1: Witches by the Germans, not just because their planes made
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  Speaker 1: a sound like a sweeping room, but because every member
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  Speaker 1: of the five eighty eighth, from mechanics to pilots, were women.
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  Speaker 1: The Soviet Union hadn't intended to have women on the
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  Speaker 1: front line at all. When Hitler invaded Russia in the
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  Speaker 1: summer of nineteen forty one, Joseph Stalin believed his Red
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  Speaker 1: Army would easily defeat the Nazis. By the fall, his
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  Speaker 1: outlook was less rosy. The Nazis had proven stubborn and
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  Speaker 1: Leningrad was under siege. Thousands of young men had been
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  Speaker 1: captured or killed. So when female flying ace Marina Raskova
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  Speaker 1: approached him with a plan for an all female regiment,
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  Speaker 1: Stalin gave her the go ahead. Despite his approval, Marina's
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  Speaker 1: regiment did not have an easy time of it. Her
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  Speaker 1: recruits had just months to master skills that airman learned
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  Speaker 1: for years. Every woman had to be pilots, navigator, maintenance
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  Speaker 1: and ground crew, and of course the male soldiers didn't
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  Speaker 1: take kindly to what they called the little girls serving
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  Speaker 1: on the front line. As a result, Marina's flyers got
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  Speaker 1: the absolute worst equipment. The five eighty eighth were given
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  Speaker 1: Polykarpov P two biplanes. These little wooden two seater boxes
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  Speaker 1: were used as crop dusters and never meant to fly
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  Speaker 1: in combat. They had virtually no protection from the freezing
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  Speaker 1: Soviet winter, they moved incredibly slow, making them an easy
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  Speaker 1: target for anti aircraft guns, and on top of all
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  Speaker 1: of that, they could barely carry any weight. Marina's pilots
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  Speaker 1: flew without radios, guns, radar. Even parachutes were too heavy
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  Speaker 1: for the planes to carry, and for the same reason,
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  Speaker 1: the planes could only transfer two bombs at a time,
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  Speaker 1: meaning in every raid the pilots would have to fly
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  Speaker 1: back and forth dozens of times between their base and
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  Speaker 1: the target. Each attack, pilots and navigators would be in
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  Speaker 1: the air for upwards of ten hours. Any one of
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  Speaker 1: these issues might have made their goal, which was to
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  Speaker 1: bomb Nazi camps and supply lines on the Eastern Front,
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  Speaker 1: seem impossible, but Marina's Night Witches turned their issues into advantages.
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  Speaker 1: The night Witches only ran missions under cover of darkness.
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  Speaker 1: Their tiny planes were too small to get picked up
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  Speaker 1: by radar. Since they had no radios, they couldn't be
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  Speaker 1: spotted by someone listening to the airwaves. Only that, but
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  Speaker 1: their fastest speed was slower than the stall speed of
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  Speaker 1: Nazi planes, meaning that they could outmaneuver German pilots easily.
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  Speaker 1: The only sign the night Witches were there was the
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  Speaker 1: telltale woosh of their wooden planes. From nineteen forty one
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  Speaker 1: to nineteen forty five, members of the five eighty eighth
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  Speaker 1: flew more than twenty four thousand combat missions, dropping three
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  Speaker 1: thousand tons of bombs on the Germans. They were the
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  Speaker 1: most highly decorated unit of the Soviet Air Force during
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  Speaker 1: the war, and so feared by the Nazis that any
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  Speaker 1: German who downed a night Witch was awarded the Iron Cross,
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  Speaker 1: and when their leader, Marina Raskova's plane was shot down,
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  Speaker 1: she was given the very first state funeral of World
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  Speaker 1: War II and had her ashes buried in the Kremlin,
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  Speaker 1: The Night Witches opened the door for women to serve
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  Speaker 1: in combat in the Soviet Union. Marina eventually staffed three
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  Speaker 1: all female bombing regiments, with the Night Witches being the
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  Speaker 1: most famous of these. Still, even after all of their accomplishments,
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  Speaker 1: they faced discrimination on the home front. Despite their impeccable record,
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  Speaker 1: they weren't allowed to fly their planes in Moscow's end
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  Speaker 1: of war victory parade. It wasn't them, the organizers claimed,
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  Speaker 1: it was their equipment, the planes that took them back
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  Speaker 1: and forth across the Eastern Front, that carried three thousand
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  Speaker 1: tons of bombs and scared the wits out of the Nazis.
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  Speaker 1: Those planes, they said, were just too slow. There is
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  Speaker 1: a moment in a lot of horror movies that's critical
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  Speaker 1: to the film success. It's usually right after the protagonist's
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  Speaker 1: first real ghost sighting, when the poltergeist activity or demonic
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  Speaker 1: possession spikes and we finally know what we're dealing with.
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  Speaker 1: It's that moment when many audience members lose their suspension
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  Speaker 1: of disbelief, because when the character knows the ghosts surreal,
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  Speaker 1: you expect them to run and not look back. Any
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  Speaker 1: behavior that doesn't involve removing themselves from the situation as
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  Speaker 1: soon as possible just seems implausible. After all, if you've
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  Speaker 1: ever seen empirical evidence that your house is haunted, wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: you move as well? That's exactly what six year old
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  Speaker 1: Jiang Bowl wanted to know after his first ghost encounter.
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  Speaker 1: The Taiwanese boy was climbing around his family's attic one
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  Speaker 1: day when he saw something that made his blood run cold,
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  Speaker 1: a horrific spectral figure with no eyes, no nose, and
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  Speaker 1: no mouth. Jiang wasted no time in getting out of there.
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  Speaker 1: He fled the attic and didn't stop running until he
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  Speaker 1: found his dad, But when he told him what happened,
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  Speaker 1: he was stunned by the response he got. His dad
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  Speaker 1: already knew about the ghost, but had given up about
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  Speaker 1: doing anything about it. He wanted to move, but they
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  Speaker 1: couldn't afford to live anywhere else at the moment. They were,
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  Speaker 1: as Jiang put it later, poorer than the ghosts. That
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  Speaker 1: experience affected Jiang deeply, and he made sure that he
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  Speaker 1: didn't find himself in that position ever again. First by
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  Speaker 1: dragging himself out of poverty. He grew up and built
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  Speaker 1: a successful business as a fung shwe consultant, now for
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  Speaker 1: the uninitiated. Fung shwe is the ancient Chinese art of
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  Speaker 1: arranging physical items in an environment for maximum harmony. It's
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  Speaker 1: rooted in Taoism, but it's popular all over the world.
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  Speaker 1: Today in the West, we almost exclusively associated with interior design.
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  Speaker 1: Someone might tell you that your living room is bad
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  Speaker 1: fung shui if the furniture is laid out poorly, But
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  Speaker 1: it has applications outside the home as well, from gardening
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  Speaker 1: to architectural design. In fact, some of the earliest uses
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  Speaker 1: were in ancient Chinese graveyards. It was thought that the
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  Speaker 1: proper flow of energy was critical for the spirits of
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  Speaker 1: the dead to rest peacefully. That history may be what
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  Speaker 1: inspired Jiang to look beyond the home of some of
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  Speaker 1: his trickster clients. Through the course of his work as
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  Speaker 1: a consultant, he occasionally encountered people who seemed to practice
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  Speaker 1: perfect fung shwe, but who were never the less plagued
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  Speaker 1: by illness or bad luck. Rather than giving up, he
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  Speaker 1: set out to inspect the graveyards of their recently deceased relatives.
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  Speaker 1: In many cases, he found that the graves had been damaged,
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  Speaker 1: allowing moisture or other problems to affect the human remains.
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  Speaker 1: Jiang theorized that the ghosts were uncomfortable as a result,
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  Speaker 1: and had decided to curse their descendants with bad luck
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  Speaker 1: until someone fixed the problem. So he did just that.
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  Speaker 1: In addition to his Functue consulting work, he began offering
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  Speaker 1: his services as a bone collector. He would dig up
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  Speaker 1: the graves of his client's ancestors, painstakingly clean and dry
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  Speaker 1: the remains, and then place the bones inside a large urn.
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  Speaker 1: Jiang believed that the remains had to be arranged for
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  Speaker 1: maximum comfort and harmony, which usually involved placing them in
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  Speaker 1: a sitting position. A lump of charcoal was added to
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  Speaker 1: the urn to make sure they stayed dry. Then the
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  Speaker 1: whole thing was reburied in the original grave, and according
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  Speaker 1: to Jiang, the practice had incredible results, instantly curing everything
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  Speaker 1: from headaches to mania in his clients and their family members.
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  Speaker 1: And perhaps that claim stretches your suspension of disbelief, but
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  Speaker 1: Jiang's success as a bone collector speaks for itself. He
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  Speaker 1: has many satisfied customers. So if you feel some disharmony
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  Speaker 1: in your life, maybe Functionue can help. But before you
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  Speaker 1: go rearranging your living room for the one hundredth time,
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  Speaker 1: reconsider whether the problem might be less with your furniture
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  Speaker 1: and more with your ancestors. If so, it's probably the
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  Speaker 1: sort of thing you should take care of sooner rather
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  Speaker 1: than later, because there's nothing worse than a ghost with
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  Speaker 1: a bone to pick. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided
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  Speaker 1: tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on
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  Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting
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  Speaker 1: Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me
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  Speaker 1: Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make
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  Speaker 1: another a war winning show called Lore, which is a podcast,
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  Speaker 1: book series, and television show, and you can learn all
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  Speaker 1: about it over at Theworldoflore dot com. And until next time,
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  Speaker 1: stay curious.