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Woman in White Legends · Curious Cat - where science & supernatural collide

• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for tuning in to Curious Cat, especially on the run-up to Halloween.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: We've got quite the Halloween show that I have been preparing for you, but you gotta wait for that.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, we are diving into the woman in white legends, or the white lady.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: This is a legendary female ghost dressed in a flowing white gown or bridal wear, whose worldwide appearances are almost universally rooted in tragic tales of lost love, of betrayal, or even violent death.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Some legends portray her as a silent entity or omen of misfortune, while others describe encounters where she asks travelers for assistance before mysteriously disappearing.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Here are some of the common themes of the white lady and the symbolism behind them.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: The emotional core.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Almost every regional variation stems from a narrative of profound grief, kind of like the bride being left behind at the altar or a murdered child or a violent betrayal.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's also the symbolism of the color white.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: In Western folklore, white traditionally symbolizes purity or marriage, twisting the apparition's gown into an emblem of ruined innocence.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: In contrast, though, several Eastern traditions associate white with mourning and death, reinforcing the spectral tragedy.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's the encounters.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Witnesses across the globe report seeing her near lonely roads, bridges, forests, and bodies of water, often acting as an omen of doom, a mournful wanderer, or a warning of impending misfortune.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: That reminds me of the Mothman, right?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: But according to Wikipedia, in popular medieval legend from the Middle Ages in Europe, a lady in white is fabled to appear by day as well as by night in a house where a family member is soon to die.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: They also appear within photos just before or after death.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: According to the Nutall Encyclopedia, these spirits were regarded as the ghosts of deceased ancestors.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: In Brazil, there's an entity called Dama Blanca.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: The Brazilian lady is said to be the ghost of a young woman who died of childbirth or violent causes.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: According to legend, she appears as a pale woman in a long white dress or a sleeping gown, although speechless.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently, she occasionally decides to recount her tragic story for some unlucky observer.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Origins for the legend might herald back to women who allegedly committed adultery or refused to have sex with their husbands, so I guess they were murdered, which is pretty freaking awful.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: In Canada, white ladies of Canada are called Doms Blanches.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I know I'm mangling that.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: One legend says the area around Montmorency Falls near Quebec City is haunted by a lady in white.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: She's thought to be the ghost of a young woman whose fiance was killed fighting the British in the Battle of Beauport.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: According to that lore, the young couple's rendezvous point was the place near the top of the waterfall.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: The grief-stricken woman chose this place to die, throwing herself into the raging waters, wearing the white wedding dress she'd had made for their nuptial celebration that never happened.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Wikipedia notes this.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Perchta was the daughter of an important Bohemian nobleman, Aldrich II of Rosenberg, and was married off to Jan or John Liechtenstein in 1449.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: This was a truly unhappy union.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Contributing to the couple's toxic dynamic was the fact that Perchta's father refused to pay the agreed-upon dowry, which, thinking back on that, what a terrible custom that is.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: You have to pay somebody to take your daughter off your hands.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: How disgusting.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: During her life, though, Perchta sent many letters to her brothers and father that described her awful family life and the way John or Jan treated her.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thirty-two of these letters were handed down.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Legend states as her husband lay dying, he asked Perchta to forgive him for the way he treated her.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: She refused to accept his apology, and her husband, obviously not changed due to his dying experience, cursed her, terminally cursed her.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: Sometime later, after Perchta died, she's said to have haunted all of her family properties.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hapsalu Castle and Cathedral is home to Estonia's most well-known white lady.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Their legend states a canon, another name for a religious leader, fell in love with a young woman.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: We are not given details about the age or name of the woman.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: Not wanting his attention, though, she disguised herself as a choir boy and hid in the castle.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's a solid strategy.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: But when the bishop came to the property for a visit, he had the girl entombed into the walls of the chapel for her crime.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: The crime of not returning the canon's affections.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ, I'd never heard of what's called immurement before this, only learning about it through this awful tragic story.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's a form of imprisonment, usually until death, obviously, right?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: In which someone is placed within an enclosed space without exits.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, what evil SOB thought this up.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: To this day, she is said to look out the windows of Hopsalu and is best seen during clear August full moons.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to show those men of old, my full moon, if you know what I mean.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: Called Weißfrauen in German, stories in Germany of white ladies, according to Wikipedia, are most often linked to the residential castles of the Hohenzollern family.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Two women are supposed to be the historical basis of a ghost haunting, the Plazenberg.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: According to legend, the Countess Kunigunda or Orlamunda murdered her two children because she believed this would enable her to marry Albert of Nuremberg, who married Sophie van Hennenberg instead.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: She became a nun and died as an abbess of the monastery Himmelskron.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: A white lady ghost reportedly appeared in 1486, 1540, 1554, and 1677 as a harbinger of misfortune.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: A variation of the tale holds that the White Lady of the Plasenberg is the unfortunate widow, Bertha of Rosenberg from Bohemia, overthrown by the heathen Perchta.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: A white lady ghost, said to be a harbinger of death and misfortune, was claimed to be seen in the Berliner Schloss in 1598, shortly before the death of John George of Brandenburg, and again in 1618, 1625, up until 1940.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: The castle is the residence of the kings of Prussia, and the stories associate the lady with several historical figures, most notably Anna Siddo, the paramour of Yashim II of Brandenburg, who was father of John George, who bore him two extramarital children.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: Siddo was imprisoned in the Spandau Citadel after Yasham's death by John George, despite his promise to care for her.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: She died in 1575 without regaining her freedom.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: The castle of Dusseldorf is claimed to be haunted by a white lady.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: The castle was built in 1260 and demolished in 1896 with only an old tower remaining.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: According to legend, a Duchess named Jacobine and her lover were murdered by her jealous husband.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Her ghost was said to be seen before each of a series of fires that plagued the castle.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Friedland in Brandenburg is claimed to be haunted by a white lady, supposedly the daughter of a baronet cursed by her father for not giving him an heir.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: According to the legend, her ghost haunts the castle and surrounding forests, strangling anyone who talks to her.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Lyneck, or Lainick Castle, is the site of a legend of a white lady ghost claimed to be stalking the castle.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's said that the ghost is Adilla Dub, the main character of a novel titled The Diary of Miss Idalia.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: There is also a legend about an adulterous nobleman's wife in the civil parish of Bottenhorse Reda Weidenbrook, Westfalia.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: The legend originates from the time of the Thirty Years' War.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: According to the story, the nobleman encased her in the cellar of his manor house hostel to assure she could not betray him while he went away to war, but he never returned.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: And her spirit supposedly haunts the premises forever afterwards.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: During recent renovations to that manor, workers found no human remains that might give factual basis to this legend.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: According to legend, also a white lady haunts the remains of a monastery in the forest of Olberg, near the famous Alt Multehall, with its limestone underground and many potholes.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I feel like during our little legendary trip through Germany's legends of the ladies in white, I feel like I have created some ladies in white who are going to haunt me because I mispronounced so much in German.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Turning to the Netherlands.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Vitaven, and no, this is not an IKEA bedlinen, folks.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Vitaven are what Netherlands local dialects consider mythical creatures of Low Saxon origin and are most known in the eastern and northern parts of the Netherlands.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes referred to as the Vitajers or the White Maidens, they can have a benevolent and malevolent nature.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Often related with witches andor ghosts, they show many similarities with the banshee, the fairy, and the elf.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: Understood as malevolent beings, they abduct or switch newborns.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: They abduct women and punish people who have mistreated them.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: As benevolent beings, they may aid in childbirth or offer good advice.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed, though, the adjective vit means white.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: It may originally refer to the Germanic word vid, related to English wit and wise, and so might be better understood as wise women as they are known in Germany, where they are connected to the Volva.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: They are believed to dwell in Tumuli, which is a man-made mound of earth and stones built over an ancient grave.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: The Hunabeden, which are prehistoric megalithic stone tombs and on the moors.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Wisps of mist and fog banks are sometimes called Vitaviven.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: The Schinvelza Bosan Forest is also home to another white lady story.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Archival evidence suggests that the forest was once home to a castle farm that was built in 1396.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: In the 17th century, about 1667, they guess, this site was burned down, killing the daughter of Lord Lambert Raynert.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: This historical event has spawned a few variations on a white lady ghost story based around the death of the woman who burned with the castle farm.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: The most common versions of the tale involve the woman having two fighting lovers, or of the sight being burned on her wedding day by a jealous nobleman.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: However, all versions claim that she now wanders the forest like a ghost in a long white dress.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Some saying she only appears at midnight, and others saying she only appears on nights of the full moon, which seems like a common thread, isn't it?
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: The site of the former castle farm is referred to as Lamendam, after the ghost who supposedly haunts the area.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: The term is a Dutch adaption of the French La Madame Blanc.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is now protected as a cultural historical site, which is probably good, right?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because then there's a lot less visitors to a place that is deeply haunted.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: White ladies, indigenously known as Caparosa, are popular ghost story topics in the Philippines.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: White ladies are often used to convey horror and mystery to young children for storytelling.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sightings of white ladies are common around the country.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: The most prominent one is the White Lady of Balletta Drive in Quezon City.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: It is said that it is the ghost of a long-haired woman in a white dress who, according to legend, died in a car accident while driving along the road.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Most stories about her were told by taxi drivers doing a graveyard shift, such as when a taxi crosses Balletta Drive and a stunning woman is asking for a ride.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: The cabbie then looks behind and sees the woman's face was full of blood and bruises, causing him to abandon his taxi in terror.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like what it would make me do is flee faster in my taxi, but we're all built differently, aren't we?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: In other instances, it is said that when solitary people drive on that street in the early morning, they briefly see the face of a white clad woman in the rearview mirror before she quickly disappears.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Some accidents on this road are blamed on apparitions of the white lady.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Many sources have said a reporter manufactured this entire legend in the 1950s as a combination of multiple stories from the area.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: The country of Switzerland not only acknowledges but celebrates their most well-known white lady.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: A popular legend has been associated for centuries with the ruins of Ruelbow Castle in today's municipality of Manir in the canton of Geneva.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: It centers around a woman without a name, supposedly the first wife of the knight, Humbert de Cholet, under whose leadership the castle was constructed in a swampy area.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: He reportedly repudiated her when she did not give birth to a son.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: The ghost has been linked to the disappearances of people and deaths from unexplained causes.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: It is unclear whether such supposed appearances occurred rather during moonless nights or during a full moon.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: However, it is undisputed that Christmas Eve is said to be her preferred timing.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: On some occasions, the whole castle and its former inhabitants were reportedly resurrected in its old glory for the night.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: La Dame Blanc herself is rumored to be of striking beauty and wears a diadem, which is a crown.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not a Harry Potter fan, why would you know that?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: In a version from 1870, which was published in 1902, a certain Jean Bahout told the story that he went out to the castle ruins on Christmas Eve as a 16-year-old during the French occupation of Geneva at the beginning of the 19th century to shoot some animals for dinner with his widowed and impoverished mother.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: He was hit by an ice cold breath of air, which made him shudder, his blood clot, and his hair stand on end.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: In the darkness, a white shadow came out of the tower, uttering hollow groans.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: It touched him and disappeared.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: The young man tried to flee but could not lift his feet from the ground.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: While the white lady rewarded the commitment to his mother with a treasure of gold and silver, she punished his wealthy and greedy relative one year later in a deadly way by tricking and locking him into the vaults.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: A dirt road through the fields next to the ruins is named Chemin de la Dame Blanc.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: In addition, a street about a kilometer to the north of the ruins bears the same name.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: A bus stop at its junction with the main street is called Vesanots La Dam.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Some two and a half kilometers to the south, in the city of Vandevours, another street is named Chemin de la Blanc.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: The neighboring municipality of Cholet still bears the name of the family, whose lineage Humbert, as the first lord of the castle, was from and which was first mentioned in a document almost 900 years ago.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: In late September 2019, the Geneva Chamber Orchestra performed a series of five concerts in the inner court of that castle's ruins.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: The collaboration by four Geneva-born artists included a video installation and was titled Who is Afraid of the White Lady?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: If we have to pick a winner of the biggest fan club for the White Lady legends, it might be England.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: They lead the pack with 13 tales about a white lady that may be victims of murder or suicide who died before they could tell anyone the location of some hidden treasure.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: In the early 1900s, the castle of Bleckensop in North Cumberland was occupied by a family.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: One night the parents woke to their boys screaming, The White Lady! By the time they arrived at his bedside, she had vanished.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: However, the boy reported that the lady had been angry and she tried to take him away after he refused to accompany her to a box of gold buried in the vaults below.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: She could not rest while it was still there.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: The same events took place the following three nights.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: When the child began sleeping with his parents, the white lady no longer disturbed him, but he never again traveled through the castle alone for fear of her.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: The White Lady, also known in England as the Running Lady of Beeford, East Yorkshire, resides in the Beeford Strait, a stretch of road between Beefford and Brandisburton.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Motorists have reported her apparition running across the Beeford Strait toward the junction of North Frottingham.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Anecdotal tales also report a motorcyclist picking up a female hitchhiker on the same stretch of road.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: A few miles later, the motorcyclist, upon turning around, noticed the passenger had vanished.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: In one instance, a car crashed into a tree, killing six people.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: It is rumored to be the white lady's curse.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: In another story, a white lady is seen retracing her steps.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: She was said to have jumped off the Port Chester Castle while trying to retrieve her fallen child.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Her spirit is said to haunt the castle.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: At Worsted Church in Norfolk, there are stories of ghostly women in white.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: Her story is diverse from being a good ghost to a ghost who brings death to people, so quite the extreme, right?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: She's known locally as the White Lady, and her stories are said to have been told since the 1830s.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Said that she often appears during Christmas Eve.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: Again, that's a through line, right?
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, being on a very kind of a Christian holiday.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: The most famous case occurred in 1975 when Peter Bertholod and his wife Diane visited a church to shelter from the heat.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: And Peter took a photo of Ill Diane sitting in a pew inside with a vague image of a woman in old fashioned white with a bonnet sitting behind her.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: After that, his wife recovered from her illness.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: An old ballad is sung about a ghost that is haunting Ockhampton Castle.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: My lady hath a sable coach with horses two and four.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: My lady hath a gaunt coach.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Blood hound that goeth before.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: My lady's coach hath nodding plumes.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: The driver hath no head.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: My lady is an ashen white as one who is long dead.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: This lady is said to be a Howard lady of the 17th century who has murdered several husbands and children of hers.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Her curse is to collect grass blades in the castle ruins until the end of time.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: No historical event or person could be found to correlate.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: The ghost of a Pomeroy lady called Matilda, also called Margaret, is told to haunt Barry Pomeroy Castle as a harbinger of death to everyone to see her in the dungeon of the St.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Marguerite.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Matilda is said to have been starved to death by her sister in that dungeon.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Edward Montague created a novel titled The Castle of Barry Pomeroy.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: E.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Lady Wen, or the White Lady, or the Woman in White, is a common apparition in the Celtic mythology of Wales and Welsh folklore.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Dressed in white and most common as Kaylin Gaife, which is the Welsh Halloween that I'm sure I mispronounced, she was often evoked to warn children about bad behavior.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: She is characterized in various ways, including being a terrifying ghost who may ask for help if you speak to her.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: This Ogmore apparition story is also noteworthy for containing many of the archetypal aspects common to such Celtic and Welsh stories, including a hidden cauldron, changing physical characteristics, and a chastising morality.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: Here, a spirit was long said to wander the area until a man finally approached her.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: When such a man eventually did that, the spirit led him to a treasure, a cauldron filled with gold, hidden under a heavy stone within the old tower of Ogmore Castle, and allowed the man to take half the treasure for himself.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: However, the man later returned and took more of the treasure.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: This, of course, angered the spirit.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yes, of course it did, who, with her fingers turning into claws, attacked the man as he returned home.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: The man became gravely ill, but only died once he had confessed his greed.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: After that, an ailment known as E.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: Ladiwen's Revenge was said to befall any person who died before disclosing hidden treasure.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a specific reason to die, isn't it?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Welsh topography, inspired by sightings and tales of her, can be found throughout Wales.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: The White Lady is said to haunt parts of the United States, including Durand Eastman Park in Rochester, New York.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Also known as the Lady in the Lake.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: The 19th century white lady wanders the park, obsessively looking for her daughter's body.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: The latter was slain by a boyfriend or group of hoodlums, depending on the story you hear.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Legend has it that the human white lady either killed herself in grief or died alone and heartbroken.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: The Lady in White or the White Lady of Avenel is the most commonly reported apparition at Avenel, Bedford, Virginia.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: The apparition is thought to be Mary Francis or Fran Burwell of the Burrwell family of Virginia.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: The legend has it that she stayed on the front porch, waiting for her husband to come home from the Civil War, but he never did, says Adam Stupin, founder of Southwest Virginia Ghost Hunters.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: The Ghostly Sphinx of MetaDeconk by Stephen Crane recounts the tale of a white lady whose lover was drowned in 1850.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Union Cemetery in Easton, Connecticut, has reported sightings of a white lady since the late 1940s, said to haunt the nearby Stepney Cemetery in Monroe, Connecticut.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: In Altoona, Pennsylvania, she is known as the White Lady of Wopsee.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: Her ghost is said to haunt Wapsononoch Mountain and Buckhorn Mountain in the western part of Altoona.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's said that she and her husband had an ill-fated crash over what's known as Devil's Elbow as you head into the city itself, where both of them tumbled over the side of the mountain.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: According to legend, she is seen looking for her husband on foggy nights, has been picked up as a hitchhiker, and her reflection is not seen in the mirror, but she always disappears around Devil's Elbow.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that whole foggy thing.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if it's easier for an apparition to manipulate the mists of a fog to make an apparition, and that's why she's seen in the fog.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, just spitballing here.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: In Fremont, California, there are two instances of the White Lady legend.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: One is known as the White Witch, and the other simply known as the Prom Dress Girl.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, that feels like a Stephen King novel.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Both legends have ghost sightings in the Nil Canyon area.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: The White Witch story is about a woman named Lowery.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: She was one of the first people in the area killed in a horse carriage accident in the early 20th century.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: People claim to have seen her in a cemetery in the area with strange lights.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Local legends say you can see her walking the ridge between the Niles Hollywood style sign and the canyon.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: But what about that prom dress girl story?
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is about a high school girl who gets in a car accident on February 26th, somewhere around the late 20th century.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sightings of her claim she wears a white prom dress and tries to hitch a ride from passing vehicles on the Route 84 Highway between Fremont and Sinal, California.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: In Dallas, Texas, at White Rock Lake Park, it is reported that the ghost of a 20-year-old-looking girl known as the Lady of White Rock Lake, described as wearing a water-soaked 1930s-style evening dress, who usually appears at night along the roadside of East Louther Drive.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Witnesses claim the Phantom asks to be taken to her home on Gaston Avenue in Dallas before disappearing in the car during the ride and leaving behind a waterlogged car seat.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like if I saw that, my seat would be a little waterlogged too.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Legend claims the woman to be a drowning victim from a boating accident in the 1930s.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: Reports of the ghostly encounter were published in a Dallas area newspaper in the 1960s.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: La Sayona is a legend from Venezuela, represented by the vengeful spirit of a woman that shows up only to men that have love affairs out of their marriages.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: The name Sayona refers to the cloth the ghost wears, which is a long white dress similar to a medieval undergarment.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: The legend claims that when this woman appears, she asks for a ride.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Again, another through line.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And after a while, when the victim tries to see her face, he notices that she has instead a skull with horrible teeth.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: The legend says that La Sayona was a young woman named Casilda.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: She lived in a small town in the plains of Venezuela and was the most beautiful girl there.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: She was married to a great man, caring and loving.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: Casilda and her husband had a baby boy.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: One day, Casilda was swimming naked in a nearby river and a villager saw her.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: After that, the man would always follow her and watch her bathe in the river.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: One day Casilda saw him and told him to leave her alone, and he ignored her and instead told her that he was there to warn her.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Your husband is having an affair with none other than your mother, he said.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Cassilda ran home and found her husband asleep with the baby in his arms.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Blind with anger, she burned the house with them inside.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Villagers could hear their screams while Casilda ran to her mother's house.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: She found her on the patio and attacked her with a machete, striking her in the stomach.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: As the mother bled to death, she cursed Casilda, telling her that from then on she would have to avenge all women by killing their unfaithful husbands.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: And from that day forward, Casilda became La Sayona.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: So in other versions of this tale of Sayona, the who appears to men, she appears to men working in the jungle.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: She manifests when her unsuspecting victims talk to their workmates about sex or think of women they left behind in their hometown.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, Sayona is pretty brutal.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: She appears to such men, assuming the likeness of beautiful women or a loved one, and lures them into the forest so she can reveal her animal-like features and devour them or mangle them, leaving their wretched bodies for their companions to find.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: There are vanishing hitchhiker legends from across the world.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: These are stories of ghosts asking for rides, and they're known globally as the vanishing hitchhiker legends.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: In Chicago, a young blonde woman in white flags down drivers along Archer Avenue.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: She asks for a ride and vanishes when the car nears Resurrection Cemetery.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: In Japan, there are the Tohoku Ghost Taxis.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: Following the 2011 tsunami disaster, taxi drivers in Ishinomaki reported picking up spectral passengers who asked to go to destroyed locations before disappearing from the backseat.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: Most users on Reddit discuss these encounters as manifestations of profound collective trauma and unexpressed grief.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like that is a great overlay for all of the women in white.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: But going back to the hitchhikers, Switzerland's Belchin Tunnel is home to a white woman.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: Drivers near the Belchin Tunnel have reported a ghostly woman in white wearing old-fashioned clothes trying to flag down cars, who mysteriously appears inside cars after dark.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: The N9 road in South Africa is tied to tales of the Union Dale Phantom Hitchhiker who allegedly flags down passing motorists at night before vanishing from a moving or locked car.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was really curious about Chicago's Resurrection Mary, and I found more from the Chicago History Museum because I have links to Chicago and I'd never heard this before.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: They write this: Chicagoland has a lot of ghost stories, but none are as well known as the infamous Resurrection Mary, the hitchhiking ghost who haunts the roadsides of Archer Avenue.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Mary has different origins, depending on who's telling the story, that the most shared narratives put her untimely death sometime in the late 1920s to early 1930s, when she was either a victim of a fatal car crash on the way to a night of dancing, or the unfortunate victim of a hit and run accident when she was walking home in the rain, depending on the teller.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Most documented reports of Mary describe her as a young, fashionable blonde woman, no older than mid-twenties, wearing a white ball gown, accessories, and a hairstyle to match.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: As the story goes, she typically manifests as a lonely guest at a dance hall, and after a night of dancing, she asks for a ride back home, slipping into the backseat and guiding her driver for the night, usually a man up Archer Avenue.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: But by the time the car reaches a local cemetery, Mary vanishes without a trace, leaving nothing more than her ghostly memory.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: Mary is supposedly buried at Resurrection Cemetery in Justice, Illinois, about a 30-minute drive southwest of Chicago.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: This burial ground gives Mary her stomping grounds as well as her iconic name.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: She usually sticks to this stretch of road on Archer Avenue between the cemetery and what was once the O.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: Henry Ballroom in Willow Springs.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Over the years, several researchers have tried to determine the exact identity of Mary, but no answer has proved conclusive.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Resurrection Mary's fame has gone beyond Chicagoland.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: Her hitchhiking ghost has had a number of ballads written about her, along with a few B-list horror movies.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, have I not seen any of these?
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: And even a couple segments of Unsolved Mysteries.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: On a more local level, and for those thirsty for a good drink, Chet's Melody Lounge on Archer Avenue in Justice, right across the street from Resurrection Cemetery, has a tradition for Mary.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Every Sunday, they serve a bloody Mary at the end of the bar for her.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: To date, Mary hasn't shown up to claim the drink.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe she's waiting for the right person to accompany her and then give her a ride back home.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: The trope with the hitchhiking ghost is a common one, not only in the US, as I mentioned, but across the world.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Stories of those phantom hitchhikers are part of the common folklore in both urban and rural areas, with stories similar to Mary showing up in South Carolina's infamous Wahalo hitchhiker, the Phantom Hitchhiker of Bedfordshire in Great Britain, and the one that I mentioned earlier from the Philippines, where she's known as the White Lady.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: These urban legends often serve as cautionary tales, reminding those out in the late hours of the night that not everything may be what it seems, and that sometimes it's best to keep on driving.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've got links to where you could read more about Mary and other Chicago folklore stories in the Encyclopedia of Chicago at the end of the show notes.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: About those ghost riders, though, in Tokyo Taxis, the Yuri of Japan have been riding taxis again.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: While they tend to eschew trains and buses since taxis appeared around the late Taisho period, Yuri have been hailing cabs for quick rides around town.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: In Japan, ghost passengers.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: Taxi drivers have been reporting ghostly passengers who climb on board, ask to be taken to a destination, and then mysteriously vanish before paying their toll.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: The recent spate of ghostly passengers have been attributed to that 2011 Fukushima disaster as the dead struggle to find their own way home or may not even know they're dead.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is no new phenomenon, though.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: One of the first things that this author ever wrote on Yuri was Tales of Ghostly Japan from Japazin back in 2005.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what they wrote.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: The cab driver knew that the ghosts of Japan were not confined to ancient graveyards and shadow-haunted shrines.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: Any modern resident of the nation's capital could tell you that the taxis of Tokyo are more haunted than hearse's, and his own route took him regularly through open gates to the spirit world.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: There was Sendagaya Tunnel, which winds beneath the cemetery of Senujin Temple or Shirogain Tunnel, where legends have it that the screaming faces are silhouetted against the tunnel's pillars in which the Shinigami or spirit of death itself is said to pass.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: All of his fellow cabbies could wax a yarn of passengers who got on, then disappeared, or if catching a glimpse of a woman or child's face in the rearview mirror, he too had a story to tell.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was a stormy autumn night near Aoyama Cemetery where he picked up a poor young girl drenched by the rain.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was dark, so he didn't get a good look at her face, but she seemed sad, and he figured she had been visiting a recently deceased relative or friend.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: The address she gave was some distance away and they drove in silence.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: A good cabbie doesn't make small talk when picking someone up from a cemetery.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: When they arrived at the address, the girl didn't get out but whispered for him to wait a bit while she stared out the window at a second floor apartment.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Ten minutes or so passed as she watched, never speaking, never crying, simply observing a solitary figure move about the apartment.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly the girl asked to be taken to a new address, this one back near the cemetery where he had first picked her up.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: The rain was heavy and the driver focused on the road, leaving the girl to her thoughts.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: When he arrived at the new address, a modern house in a good neighborhood, the cabbie opened the door and turned around to collect his fare.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: To his surprise, he found himself staring at an empty black seat with a deep puddle where the girl had been sitting moments before.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: Mouth open, he just sat there staring at the vacant seat until a knocking on the window shook him from his reverie.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: The father of the house, seeing the taxi outside, had calmly walked out, bringing with him the exact charge for the fare.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: He explained that the young girl had been his daughter, who died in a traffic accident some years ago and was buried in Aoyama Cemetery.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: From time to time, he said she hailed a cab and after visiting her old boyfriend's apartment asked to be driven home.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: The father thanked the driver for his troubles and sent him on his way.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone with a knowledge of folklore can easily recognize these tales of disappearing passengers as the vanishing hitchhiker.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: It is an ancient legend.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: The oldest known account dates back to ancient Rome, when Proclus meets a traveler on the road who disappears after revealing himself as Romulus, one of Rome's legendary founders.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: The story is known in almost every country with slight variations.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: In his 1981 book, The Vanishing Hitchhiker, Jan Harold Brunvond says the legend has recognizable parallels in Korea, czarist Russia, among Chinese Americans, Mormons, and Ozark mountaineers.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: The story has a basic pattern.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: The driver picks up a passenger, either a customer for a taxicab or a hitchhiker.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: The passenger requests a destination and the two chat a bit or don't while the driver speeds along.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: When they arrive at the destination, the driver turns around to find the passenger is gone, always leaving something behind, a trace of the phantom passenger, to prove that they had existed.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: The trace can be a lost glove, that puddle of water we mentioned from rain, or evidence on a taxi meter.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's often some additional confirmation, such as a graveyard with their name or a father coming out to pay the fare, like the Japanese legend I just read.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: They are always told as true stories, not legends, and maybe they are.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_00: In his yokai encyclopedia, folklorist and artist Shiguri Mizuki records a different type of haunted taxi, the driverless vehicles, known as the Yuri Taxis.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: In about 1931, there were rumors of a driverless taxi that drove the streets in the vicinity of the Imperial Palace.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: At night, taxis would line up for passengers, and they often saw a taxi whizzing dangerously through the streets.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: Looking inside, they could see no one at the wheel.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: After the car was gone, they would look on the streets but could find no trace of its passing.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: However, those that saw the car would inevitably meet with an accident within two days.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: Taxi drivers that worked near the Imperial Palace were terrified of glimpsing the phantom vehicle.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: Similar driverless vehicles were reported on the Gotemba interchange between Tokyo and Nagoya and in the Namba area of Osaka.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: Most reported the cars as white and traveling at unsafe speeds.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed our dip into the spooky waters of October with some of these white woman legends.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also reminded that I neglected to tell the story of Pele, who is also a hitchhiking ghost.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_00: She's said to haunt the big island of Hawaii.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't pick her up for a ride, she'll haunt you.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you do pick her up for a ride, you better have a cigarette to offer her.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: Until next week, stay curious.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: I love you.